Since 2017, Sierra Adare-Tasiwoopa api, PhD, has served as Instructional Technologist at Nevada State College in the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence. Prior to NSC, she worked as the Instructional Support Specialist at Niagara University, developing online courses in the effective use of Canvas and online course design, in addition to providing training on Canvas and other classroom technologies. She managed the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, conducting a variety of active and integrative learning workshops centered around hands-on, concentrated, independent or scaffolded themes that emphasize the latest research and best practices in instructional technology, outcomes, assessment, pedagogy, and online learning for both the U.S. and Canadian campuses. As the faculty development coordinator for Trocaire College, Sierra facilitated and presented professional development seminars and workshops in classroom pedagogy, instructional technology, and instructional design. Sierra has also taught online and face-to-face courses in academic writing, American and Native American literature, film, American and world history, magazine writing, and contemporary issues. Her presentation was awarded Best in Track for Technology and Future Trends at the Online Learning Consortium Accelerate 2022 Conference. Sierra’s latest book, Gamification in Higher Education: A How-To Instructional Guide, co-authored with Nathan Silva, is scheduled for release from Stylus Publishing in Fall 2023. She received her Ph.D. at the University at Buffalo, her Masters at the University of Kansas, and her undergraduate degree at SUNY Empire State College.

Bridget Arend, PhD, has 20 years of experience supporting teaching and learning in higher education. She is the Associate Director of Teaching and Learning at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and the former Executive Director of the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Denver. She consults with faculty members, facilitates and oversees professional development programs, and organizes teaching-related initiatives including the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. In 2012 she won the POD Innovation Award for the development of a successful Online New Faculty Workshop. Bridget enjoys helping college faculty be intentional in their teaching practice so that they can feel calm and purposeful in this aspect of their work. She continues to teach courses related to teaching, training, educational evaluation and curriculum development at the University of Denver. Bridget received her PhD in Higher Education and Adult Learning and continues to write and pursue research interests including teaching strategies in higher education, encouraging critical thinking in discussions, the role of reflection in learning, and alternative ways to evaluate teaching. She is co-author of a comprehensive book about instructional practices in higher education, Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning: A Resource for More Purposeful, Effective and Enjoyable College Teaching.

Laura Cruz (PhD, University of California at Berkeley, 2001) is an Associate Research Professor of Teaching & Learning Scholarship with the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Penn State.  She previously served as the director of two centers for teaching and learning.  She has been a very active member of the POD Network for 15 years, serving as an elected member of CORE, chair of the research, publications, and scholarship committees, and editor of To Improve the Academy. 

Rob Flaherty, PhD, serves as Associate Dean and leads the Center for Educational Innovation at the United States Air Force Academy. The Center is responsible for supporting teaching and learning at the Academy, including the areas of faculty development, instructional design, academic assessment, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Rob holds a PhD in (Social) Psychology as well as a Master of Business Administration degree. Rob has held positions at several different types of institutions, including a small, private, liberal arts college, a large private research institution and a medical school. As a faculty member he has taught in traditional residential settings, non-traditional accelerated programs and online programs.  His roles have included responsibility for faculty development, curriculum, academic assessment, accreditation, and strategic planning.  Rob is a past President of the Association for Psychological and Educational Research in Kansas and served as co-chair of the Kansas City Professional Development Council.  He is also a peer reviewer and team chair for accreditation with the Higher Learning Commission. He has presented and conducted workshops on a wide variety of topics including assessment, general education reform, experiential learning, and effective teaching. 

Chris Garrett, PhD, served as Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and Professor of Education at Nevada State College for the past six years.  He just recently started in a new role as Assistant Director of Faculty Development at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. With fifteen years of experience leading educational development and faculty affairs initiatives, Chris works with faculty and academic leaders across disciplines, mentors faculty across career stages, and promotes high-impact, inclusive educational practices.  He has coordinated faculty mentoring programs, organized new faculty orientations, designed and led professional development activities, coached department chairs on developing leadership skills and on conducting teaching evaluations, helped faculty prepare portfolios for promotion and tenure applications, and directed faculty award recognition programs. As chair of the Core Curriculum Revision Committee at Nevada State, Chris led the campus-wide initiative to reform general education, selecting new Essential Learning Outcomes, designing a new second-year integrated learning community experience for students, and assessing learning outcomes via e-Portfolios.  His research interests include seventeenth-century devotional literature and the scholarship of teaching and learning.  After earning a bachelor’s degree at Brigham Young University in American Studies, he continued his academic training at Oregon State University (MA, Interdisciplinary Studies) and Texas A&M University (PhD, English). Chris has taught in higher education for nearly two decades at various institutions including large R1, small private, and medium-sized public universities.  He teaches courses in literature, college success, composition, and education.  Chris is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, former President of the Intermountain Consortium of Faculty Development, and serves on the review board of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development.

Peggy Hsieh, PhD, is the Director of Educational Development at McGovern Medical School. She received her doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin with specialization in the areas of learning and instruction.  Peggy’s passion and responsibilities as the Director of Educational Development are to provide faculty and residents consultation on teaching effectiveness and educational research.  Since joining the school in 2009, she has created more than 35 educational development workshops to support faculty and resident teaching and student learning. She has presented more than 30 workshops at international, national, regional, and local conferences. Topics include teaching effectiveness, providing effective feedback, skills related to time management and test-taking, curriculum and program development, program evaluation, educational research, and survey design.  In 2016, Peggy developed the Physician Educators Certificate Program (PECP) for residents and fellows to enhance their teaching skills and to support their academic career aspirations. To date, over 350 residents and fellows have completed the program.  She enjoys working with educators to find the most optimal teaching method for learners and to explore innovative ways to teach.

Morgan Iommi, PhD, serves as Interim Director of Nevada State College's Center for Teaching & Learning Excellence. She joined the CTLE as an Instructional Designer in 2021. She previously facilitated faculty development at New Mexico State University and Graduate Student Development at University of Iowa.  She has a PhD in communication from Ohio State University and has taught courses in persuasive writing, magazine writing, and communication history. 

Laura Naumann, PhD, is the current Chair of the Department of Psychology & Counseling at Nevada State College and was recently promoted to the rank of Professor. Dr. Naumann received a Teaching Excellence award from Nevada State College in 2016 and a system-wide Regents’ Teaching Award from the Nevada System of Higher Education in 2023. Trained as a personality psychologist, Dr. Naumann’s research intersects personality and individual differences with cultural factors such as gender and race/ethnicity.  Recently, she has become interested in examining factors that promote equitable workload distribution among faculty. This research informed her grant proposal for her recently-awarded $1M National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE Adaptation project titled, Pursing Equity to Enhance Retention (PEER). The specific aims of the PEER Project are to address three institutional challenges identified by women and underrepresented racial minority STEM faculty at Nevada State, including: 1) inequitable service and teaching loads, 2) lack of recognition and rewards for invisible service, and 3) inadequate scholarship and career development support. The PEER project will adapt and implement evidence-based systemic change strategies by creating transparent workloads, developing policies and procedures to address service with students, and increasing scholarship and psychosocial support to improve faculty job satisfaction, research/publication, and tenure/promotion.

Theresa Ronquillo, PhD, is the Associate Director; Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences Specialist at Amherst College’s Center for Teaching and Learning. Prior to joining Amherst, she worked at the teaching and learning centers at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Washington, providing pedagogical and curricular support to faculty and departments across the disciplines. At the University of Washington, she co-founded and co-directed Theater for Change UW (TfC UW), a program that used applied theater techniques to promote community dialogue, problem solving, and multi-level change in teaching and learning environments. TfC also trained and mentored several multi-disciplinary graduate students in applied theater as pedagogical and career development.  In 2020, Theresa founded Embody Change, LLC, an online creative facilitation and teaching practice that promotes community building, embodied practices, play and joy in educational and professional development. Through workshops, partnerships, and a Community of Embodied Practice pilot program, she has connected with a diversity of educators and educational developers worldwide. Furthering her own skill advancement, Theresa trained as a Simulation Specialist for Mursion, a simulation platform that provides opportunities to practice challenging workplace conversations. Through a collaboration at William & Mary in 2021-2022, she provided over thirty simulations with staff and faculty on issues such as equity in faculty search committees and microaggressions in faculty meetings. As a certified “sim specialist,” Theresa continues to demonstrate simulations at academic conferences.

Theresa served as faculty for the 2019 Institute for Faculty Developers in Greensboro, NC.

Ursula Sorensen, PhD, is a teaching and learning consultant for the Center for Teaching & Learning at Brigham Young University and an adjunct faculty professor at Utah Valley University. She is an HEA Senior Fellow and has 24 years of teaching and 15 years of faculty development in higher education. Ursula has presented on mindfulness in the classroom at several local, national, and international conferences. She has also presented on the Students Consulting on Teaching program with other universities and other teaching and learning topics.

Mary Wright, PhD, is Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning, Executive Director of the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, and a Professor (Research) in the Department of Sociology, Brown University. She is also a former president (2017-18) of the POD Network. From 2002 - 2016, Mary worked at the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching and served in multiple roles that include Director of Assessment, Associate Research Scientist, and Coordinator of Graduate Student Instructor Initiatives.  Mary’s research interests include measuring the impact of educational development services, graduate student professional development, and curricular assessment of student learning. Her most recent book, Centers for Teaching and Learning: The New Landscape of Educational Development, will be published by Johns Hopkins Press in 2023. Her first book, Always at Odds?, focuses on the development of cultures of teaching and was published in 2008 by SUNY Press.  Mary is a co-author on the ACE-POD Center for Teaching and Learning Matrix (2017), which created operational standards for CTLs, as well as Defining What Matters (2018), which established guidelines for CTL evaluation. She is a co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development, the journal of the International Consortium for Educational Development. She is currently excited to be working with a team on a new book that examines course design institutes (Stylus, 2024).

Todd D. Zakrajsek, PhD, was a tenured associate professor of psychology and built faculty development efforts at three universities before joining UNC-Chapel Hill school of medicine, where he currently provides resources for faculty on various topics related to teaching/learning, leadership, and scholarly activity, Todd has served on many educationally related boards and work groups. Current and past board memberships include the Journal of Excellence in College Teaching, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, College Teaching, and Education in the Health Professions. Todd has consulted with organizations such as The American Council on Education (ACE), Lenovo Computers, Microsoft, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Todd also directs the four onsite Lilly Conferences and one online conference. Todd’s recent books include Teaching At Its Best (with Nilson, due out early 2023); The New Science of Learning, 3nd Ed (2022); Teaching for Learning 2nd Ed (with Major & Harris, 2021); Advancing Online Teaching (with Kelly, 2021); and Dynamic Lecturing (with Harrington, 2017). Todd has given over 300 campus workshops and keynote addresses in 49 states, 12 countries, and 4 continents. Follow and connect with Todd on Twitter @toddzakrajsek and LinkedIn.