I would like to highlight something that is less professional development and more professional service—less producing my own work and more facilitating professional development and scholarship for others.
I have been on the board of the New England Educational Assessment Network since 2015, and in 2019 I was elected president. Within 8 months of taking the position, the pandemic forced a dramatic rethink of our operations which had previously centered mostly around in person conferences. In response, I led the move to more online content by organizing a series of webinars grouped around different themes, including “Re-thinking Courses for Remote Engagement and Evidence of Learning” (Summer 2020), “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Assessment” (Fall 2020), and “NECHE and Accreditation” (Winter 2021).
Doing so has widened our scope and membership from a regional to a national and even international level, and has also reshaped our financial models. Although we are a nonprofit dedicated to serving the assessment and faculty development community, I’m proud to say that we have actually run in the black over the previous 16 months.
One of the more rewarding events for me personally was the opportunity to interview both the outgoing and incoming presidents of NECHE in May 2020 and February 2021, respectively, about current and future challenges in accreditation. But the most rewarding aspect has been working with other like-minded professionals, in a moment of crisis, to find new ways to fulfill our mission: promoting the ideas and methods for using evidence of student learning to improve teaching.