 And now without further ado, I'd like to turn it over to Alan Wookner to introduce our next panel session. Thanks, John. So I'm gonna put the message in the chat too, but hello everyone and welcome to day two of the USETDA conference. I am here introducing the workshop or the panel from correcting margins to creating best practices, reconsidering the role and responsibilities of the thesis office. Sharing this information with us today are Heidi R. B. C. Kilman, Aaron Kaufman from the University of Iowa Graduate College, Ashley Miser Smith from Purdue University College of Engineering, Valerie Emerson from the George Washington University Libraries and myself. My name is Emily and I will be the moderator for the next 60 minutes. A quick reminder before we begin, during the presentation portion, please keep your audio and video muted unless you are presenting or have been asked to participate by the moderator. You may use the chat tab to ask questions which will be addressed during the Q and A portion. Thank you for joining us and I would like to turn it over to Heidi R. B. C. Kilman. Thanks, Emily. And Emily, I hope that you will join us as a panelist as well. So maybe double duty for you. I'm excited to be here today with everyone and especially our assembled panel of thought leaders in this ETD space that we all care so much about. As Emily mentioned, my name is Heidi R. B. C. Kilman. I'm an assistant dean at the University of Iowa and I've worked with all of these dear colleagues on the panel who are experts in ETD and together we have led different transformations in this space and so I'm excited for you to hear from them. My role today will be to prompt the panelists with questions for them to respond to and so also without further ado, I'm gonna invite them to introduce themselves. I'll call each of you, I'll call on each of you so that we kind of have an order. I'll ask them to share the number of years they've worked in ETD and their role at their institution currently and formerly and then I'll start with the first question. So Ashley, why don't you go ahead and go first? Sure, okay. Ashley Messersmith from Purdue University. I am currently the senior administration specialist in the College of Engineering. So I'm now working with faculty. Previous to this, I worked in the graduate school for approximately eight years as the thesis and dissertation manager where we have changed the thesis process completely for all students. So that's me. Thanks Ashley. And Valerie, why don't you go ahead and go next? So I'm Valerie Emerson. I'm from the Georgia University Library. Thanks Valerie. And I've been, I actually initiated the project. I've been on the ETD project since 2018 when we started first accepting of electronic thesis and dissertation. I've also had a dual role being in the library. I also worked with electronic resources. So. Thanks Valerie. Erin Kauffman, please. Hi, I'm Dr. Erin Kauffman. I manage thesis and dissertation for the graduate college here at the University of Iowa. I'm sitting here trying to do the math. I began my position in summer of 2015. So I believe I'm starting my ninth year with the graduate college. In terms of sort of big 10 institutions, we're a little bit smaller. We see about 600 deposits a year across a wide range of degree goals. So thank you. Thanks Erin. And Emily, again, as a panelist and as a dear colleague and expert in this space, would you introduce yourself and your role at your institution? Sure, I'm Emily. I'm the Associate Director for Student Experience at the Graduate College at the University of Illinois, Irvinga Champaign. And I've been on my position for around seven years. Okay. So the first topic that we're going to ask panelists to address is the changing culture of higher education. So as we all know, graduate education is constantly evolving and changing. Thinking about the ways in which the rapid pace of change shapes and intersects the work of the thesis examiner. First question, how would any of you characterize the perception of your role and your job? What about those perceptions? Do you consider to be accurate? And what would you change? I can go ahead and start. I was at a graduate college luncheon a few weeks ago and actually had somebody come up and talk about margins. And that is such an interesting experience because that actually represents so little of what we do anymore. I think there are still perceptions of thesis examination as something that's sort of done right at the end and sort of tucked away within the confines of the graduate college. And I think for me, the biggest change in perception that I would like to see happen is us thinking about thesis and dissertation more as a team sport where my work intersects with the work of other staff in the graduate college with the libraries, with campus. And so I think there's definitely been a broadening and sort of a connecting that's happened with my position that maybe wouldn't have happened with the staff who occupied my position previously. Yeah, definitely there's that perception that we are just the people who sign off on the last of the paperwork, right? And we do much more than that, of course. So it's really about getting people to realize what we do. So how do we do that? What do the students need? We can survey the students, right? What do the students need? What do the faculty think about our roles? So yes, we are the final people who sign off on the paperwork and we are the ones who are really checking the margins but we also do so much more than that. And I think finally our, the social identity is changing, right? Around our role finally. And there still is a lot of room to grow and it's trying to get the visibility of the higher leadership to understand that. One of the things that I think is that people very much, and I think we've all said this, underestimate what we do and the impact of what we do. We are the final gatekeepers. So every dissertation that comes out of my office has to look good because it represents the university, it represents the department. Some of the things that I see, not all of the time but frequently, text running off the page, images missing, chapters missing, things just not looking good. And I get it because students are stressed out, they're trying to graduate, they're trying to move maybe, they've got like family and all these other things thinking that they're thinking about. And if I weren't here to know that chapter four is not there or this happened recently, a student put the text for chapter two and it was the same text for chapter three. So it was repeated multiple times. If we didn't help fix that or help catch that, what would it look like on the institution? And what would that look like? So I think that there are so many things that like we said that we do that are big impact that people don't see and they don't think about. I was gonna say that in my circumstances, the perception of what I do varies depending upon who you are in the university. If you're at the administrative level or your faculty, you're the ruler lady. If you're a student, you're the ruler lady, you're the lady who helps you fix your dissertation so you can graduate. Fix your dissertation in terms of formatting. To the graduate schools, I'm a problem solver. So again, it's very swivelly. So it's difficult to create a cohesive picture of who you are. Well, let's stay on that point for a second because what I've heard you all say is that, well, you all have led important accomplishments and innovations in your offices, communicating those changes and this evolution to others outside of your offices may be more difficult. So what observations and advice do you have for how to articulate the work of the thesis examiner, thesis manager to others? For example, if your dean values equity and student well-being, how might you articulate your work differently for them as an audience versus how you would talk about it with us, your fellow colleagues in the ETD space? I can share from some experience, the communication to the outside, we'll say graduate school leadership at Purdue. I've been invited to serve not necessarily as an expert but share really specific details to the graduate council at our institution and explaining to them some of the changes that we've made. So we have changed policies to be able to include so many more things than just the traditional PDF, that we have influenced other schools in at Purdue to adopt as well. So we'll say the non-traditional PDF or the non-traditional dissertation, sorry, it's being allowed by other schools now in the institution from the changes that we've made in the graduate school. And why is that important? The reason that it's important is because that's the way that graduate education is leaning towards, right? So there are technological advances and we need to be able to stay current with that and be able to follow these students and what their ambitions are when it comes to their digital scholarship and submitting their thesis and dissertations. A lot of their advisory panels or their graduate committees, whatever terminology you use at your institution, they're allowing these technological advances to be embedded into their thesis and dissertations which is fantastic. So it's explaining those changes and it's getting the faculty to see that, hey, these changes are actually, they're not only being discussed, they're happening. So trying to advocate at the highest level the importance of these changes and where it can only go from here, right? We're not the ones who are dreaming this up. We're here for the students, the students that are doing this, right? And these are the reasons that we're having these discussions is because the students are wanting it, the faculty are seeing it. So it's time to change. And who do you make those suggestions to? You have to make them to your leadership. You have to make the proposals to the faculty in charge, right? Of all institutions. I think at Iowa, a big piece is trying to identify the relevance of the work to different stakeholders. And so by that, I mean sort of what, to follow up on what Ashley is saying, we have done pilots that have allowed for innovative thesis forms to be submitted with our School of Music and our dance department. And those were ideas that sort of originated in those departments. But if we can be an asset, if we can be relevant, if we can help move that conversation along, to sort of be seen as a partner and that I think is a really important way to sort of situate yourself. Even things like taking the stereotype of the margins and the person who checks and thinking, how can I take that? Because there is a level of expertise that comes with that. How can I take that and sort of repackage it in a way that shows campus that that is a benefit to students? So for Iowa, for example, we do a lot with pre-checks. We do a lot with manuscript construction. And so even that, ooh, she's the checker at the end. Now I become the person who helps early on. And in the Graduate College, student wellbeing, student support at Iowa is a really important thing. So that allows me to show how I can be relevant to that conversation. Yeah, I think that's great. And I think to kind of build on that, I like to think about transferable skills. What are the things that we do every day that we just know, like, oh yeah, we do this, we check the margin? Well, what does that mean? It means attention to detail. You know, we communicate with students' changes. Okay, well, we communicate clearly and efficiently. We problem solve, like Valerie said, like if we can just, and I've been thinking about doing this as a workshop for the community engagement group, but there's a workshop that we do at Illinois for students that's transferable skills. And so breaking down everything that you do, okay, well, what does that mean? What sorts of things are you doing that make up a part of that? And then how can we articulate that and bring it to someone to say, this is a valuable thing. We do all of these things. And I think thinking about our transferable skills is a really good exercise just to know what you're doing and what you bring to the equation. I also think that having a champion, I guess, or an advocate, you know, Erin has Heidi, I have my boss Alexis, they're gonna go to bat for us with everything. And so if you can find a champion who's there, who you can talk to and say, hey, I wanna do this, or hey, I wanna talk about this, or hey, can we think about this bigger picture? I think that is a really great way to then keep that conversation going even broader and then even higher up. So being in the library is a real challenge because I'm not part of the graduate programs or the graduate schools. And so the best way I found to sort of try and elevate the role is to work with the scholarly communication committee in the library. And I found that I have to be an advocate for the students and an advocate for the graduate schools. And to demonstrate that we as ETD professionals discuss things like embargoes and scholarly communication. And all the things that come with publishing electronic dissertations copyright. So that's been the best avenue for me. What I hear you saying there, Valerie, is really situating your expertise and the work that you do sort of in the interest of others, what's important to them and how do I connect with that? So kind of to this point of the purpose and why that you all have been speaking about, could you give an example of an innovation that you have led in your role either recently or over time? And then why is that accomplishment important to the ETD field? Why is it important to students? Why is it important to your institution? So sort of illustrating this transferable way of kind of doing the work, but then also articulating its import to others in ways that they can agree with and understand. And I was thinking about this from what Valerie just said previously. I think for me, part of the way I've been able to make a contribution is through my positionality in the process. So I am the only person at the University of Iowa who sees every thesis and dissertation. So every student comes through my office. I'm an office of one. And so that's a really important place to sit when the libraries come to me and say, what do you see? Well, I see students who maybe have questions about the inclusion of prior publications or maybe have questions about patent related information and I might not be the person to answer that, but I'm the person who sees everything and who can make sure students are pointed in the right direction. I'm currently collaborating with library staff now on a press book that sort of scholarly resources for thesis students, which includes some of those earlier issues like what do I have to think about in terms of data collection? Give me a little bit of information about IRB. And so what we do is we take sort of all of those issues that come up in thesis and dissertation and we tease them apart and make resources for students. So that's I think an important thing. We have been, I have been very, very lucky to be a part of the development of processes for innovative thesis forms. The fine arts and performing arts are very important and sort of lay at the heart of the University of Iowa. And so to be able to support processes that allow students to submit sound recordings or dance performances has been a real joy. I think building, I'd like to build on what Erin said about the first point about being situated in a place. That place is like she mentioned a place where you can go say, hey, I'm seeing this or if you have departments that there's some pattern that you're seeing, you can go call attention to that and say, hey, department, can we have a conversation? Can I come talk to your students? Can we do this? But it's also that position of seeing what students are doing at the end and how we could support them better at the beginning so that things aren't as bad at the end because sometimes things are real bad at the end. So what can we do? Are there communications that we can send out to students that say, hey, I've started doing this actually recently. Once we get the final degree list, everybody at the last day to add your name to the degree list, the day after I send an email that's like, hey, I'm so excited that you're gonna be graduating. I'm really proud of you. Get a head start on thinking about the thesis process and the deposit process. Here are some of the things that you need to do. And I only started doing that like a couple of semesters ago but the result has been outstanding. People are depositing way earlier than they used to. We don't have as, we still have a rush but not as much of a rush. And so if we're able to get back to the students and say, hey, we saw this, students are stressed. What can we do about this? You can think creatively about that to get that message out and to make things easier, not just for us but really for the students and the departments as well. Absolutely, all this comes down to convenience for the student, right? Because we know that the time that we see them is usually in the last semester or the last year that they are at the institution. And that's, at that point, it's too late, right? So getting involved will say maybe even in graduate orientation fairs to get our name out there, Flyers, Freedies, whatever you can name to put, just to get your name in their head that you are here to support them. One of the initiatives that I was working on before I left the graduate school was working on a small course or we'll say a mini course that when a student registers for candidacy in their last semester they have to complete a little workshop. Now that's not to say that we don't be proactive and go out to the different schools at the beginning of each semester to talk about candidacy workshops and what you need to worry about when it comes to thesis and dissertation formatting and depositing and resources that we can provide and that are available to you even from the graduate school to the libraries, right? But I was working on a course that we would have put onto Brightspace which I'm not sure what everybody uses but Blackboard I suppose. So when a student were to register for candidacy this little seminar course would pop up and they would take it. And it's not meant to give the overall picture of everything but it's enough to give everybody at least a little detail on what you can expect or things that you should consider. Exactly, I mean, I know that we're going to talk about it but open access and ADA and archival and other campus partnerships and what the thesis office can do for you and things that you need to consider when formatting, use our templates, right? We have three different types of templates that we're working on, right? So we have Microsoft Word and all the variations of that. We've got Latex and we even had a student who was developing a template in R. And it's just, yeah, so pretty fantastic things that were happening that need to be communicated as being as service to the students. When it's easier for the students it's easier for the faculty, right? So everybody benefits from that. Now go ahead and leave it there. Valerie, did you have anything you wanted to add? Really in terms of innovation really in my role I have to develop procedures to handle cases that don't sit within the regular process. So, and I developed one such process for things that need to go, that can only go into our IR, needs to have sidestep progress. So I developed that process. Again, being in the library I don't have a lot of capability to initiate. I can really only suggest and support. So... Thank you for expressing that and sharing that. There are challenges, right? I think I can tell here every single one of our panelists is a leader on their institutions or on their campuses but everybody runs up against challenges for sure. So our panelists have also effortlessly segwayed into our next topic which is just wonderful which is serving students and the institution. So to that end, the thesis manager is responsible for many things as all of you have shared in different ways your day to day responsibilities and the things that you do for students. What beyond performing manuscript examinations have you had to learn so that you can better serve and assist the students that we're all here for? I'll go first. So when I was hired into my role, of course, it was just the last stop, the deposit into ProQuest and checking the margins that that was it. Students started having issues. I mean, students were having issues to begin with but it's one of those, it takes the right person to see that there are issues in what can you do to make it easier for the student, right? So when we're talking about those sort of issues and university initiatives and governmental initiatives especially around ADA compliance and what the document should do for screen readers on the way out, right? So I've had to learn not only the backend and out of Microsoft Word which I would say probably I knew a little bit, right? Cause I went to school and I wrote technical papers. I luckily didn't have to write a thesis for my master's project but I worked on technical papers and so I knew a little bit about Microsoft Word but it's actually enriching yourself in knowing the back ends of Word to build templates that will work for the student that will format itself for the student. So more of a technical side of things I didn't know latex, I know latex now. I still don't know R but I have a better familiarity of R so knowing how PDF can work and the accessibility with PDF and not only just the technical things but also open access publishing and knowing the different license types with Creative Commons and I will say Purdue did move away from ProQuest and we opened up our own institutional repository through FigShare for Theses and Dissertations and so that was, I built that and so that was a different learning curve and knowing everything about archival issues and a copyright and patents and ITAR and export controlled Theses and Dissertations and all that information goes into it and now we have the Purdue Applied Research Institute so it's Perry and we're working with now Dissertations that have confidential information in it that cannot be stored anywhere. So literally how do we manage that especially when students are wanting to give you a digital copy of that work, what can you do with it? So data compliance, data management, right? The library is a great resource for all of this as well. But the students are wanting more of a one-stop shop when it comes to this and they're wanting a point of contact. Who is that point of contact? When you put your face out there from the very beginning you're going to be that point of contact, right? And so you can refer if you don't know the answers to some questions. Purdue deposits about 1,300 students a year so I can't imagine dumping 1,300 students onto the library that's just not professional, right? So that's just some things you have to learn as your role evolves and the importance of some of this research evolves too. I'll go ahead and stop there. I wanted to just say one thing about process from our earlier question. There have been processes that the libraries and I have put in place that have made things so efficient and so streamlined. Things like embargo extension requests. You know, anytime I can work with the libraries to put a process like that into place, it's a time saver, it's a mistake safeguard. And so I wanna sort of underscore how important those things are. I would say it's not the fancy answer but really, really having a technological understanding of Microsoft Word is probably the thing that lets me reach the most students. And again, that's something that it seems little like, oh, Erin puts up the templates and she can generate my table of contents. But then when we think a step beyond and start thinking of what role does my office play in things like accessibility, those things make a huge difference. It makes a huge difference because I can help students and be a stopping point along that line of progression in a way that makes it a little bit less scary for students that makes it a little bit more supported. You know, and certainly I feel like in my job, I know enough to point students to where they need to go. So I will never have that sort of technical understanding of patents that somebody in the College of Engineering will have. And so it's important enough for me to know where to point students. And again, it's that sort of, where do you sit in the process? I'm the person whose name is on the website. And so students will, they'll tend to ask me questions if they don't know where else to go. So part of it I think is just a navigation issue. You know, I'm kind of the, I'm old school. I'm kind of the roadmap, I guess, for some students. I'm the GPS, so. I love that, Erin, the GPS. Emily or Valerie, additional comments? Did I see you both shake your head? Okay. We have kind of talked around this particular issue and both Ashley and Erin alluded to it. So we all know, and these topics have been present at the conference yesterday. ADA, open access, data management and non-traditional dissertation forms are all future topics that are important to all of us and our campuses and the students that we serve. So you all have kind of touched on this a little bit, but more explicitly, what role does the thesis manager play in serving students and the campus related to these emerging areas? How can you be leaders in these spaces on your campuses? So I think that having the understanding that, you know, these technological changes are coming and or they're already here, especially Heidi with, I can't remember the year now back in Iowa beyond the PF many conference, I have to reference that because that was the inspiration, I think to a lot of us. And so knowing that in some of these graduate policies so each school operates differently, right? And I'm not even just talking about college or even talking at the school level. So I believe at Purdue, we might have about 12 different colleges and within there are so many different schools of and so each school has their own policies based on what the output is supposed to look like. So it's really getting in and knowing, you know, as a thesis examiner, what the thesis landscape is and knowing what's on the horizon, what's already here, what changes can we make, especially since the students are wanting it. If you don't know if your students want to survey them, right? So after a deposit, just have a little survey that you send out to them and ask them because that's how we're going to know, right? What's on their radar? Even the faculty are the faculty seeing some of this. There are some of these technologies and are they wanting it and, you know, embedded into the dissertation or in lieu of a dissertation at this point in time. It's going to the different schools in telling them, informing them, educating them on the different changes that we're seeing or, you know, what's on the horizon. I know that there have been articles posted in the higher ed or the Chronicle of Higher Education. I think that's one of the journals around of some of these, you know, nontraditional thesis formats. And again, beyond the PDF, it just has opened our eyes of what is actually being done. Getting in, writing policies. And I think in our respective roles, we have much of an influence where we are able to write policies and get them approved pretty quickly just to help the students and help the efficiencies. We can't say no, right? If we say no, then that just stops ever progress, right? So I think I'm getting a little off topic now but kind of circling back to that, you know, just stand your ground, have your champion. I know Emily, you've said this, Erin, you have a great champion. Valerie's still unsure, right? But if you have the champion on your side, then policies can be enforced pretty quickly. And so it's just the education point. I'll go ahead and stop. Somebody else can take over now. So the accessibility issue is coming out of the library. And as the EGD administrator, I consider it my role, the most important role I can play is to educate the people who are developing the policies, developing the timelines for implementation, is to educate them on the capabilities of the students the required training they will need, the training the graduate schools will need, educating them on timeline and what kind of support they're gonna have to provide to the students because I have all these students coming through, I know I have a good sense of what the graduate schools you're dealing with. So somebody, I feel, somebody needs to champion and support my stakeholders. I consider them to be my stakeholders. And represent them to the library. So we have a smooth and comfortable transition into creating accessible documents at GWM. I think that Valerie made a really good point. I sort of feel like my office is the place where sort of potential processor policy equals or starts to match up with possibility. So it is a thing to say the University of Iowa will have fully accessible manuscripts by a certain date. We don't currently, we would certainly work toward that because it's a really important goal. But I think, again, because I see what those manuscripts look like when they come in, it's really important to have a seat at the table to say, yes, this is where we can start. This is what is possible in the coming year because I have a really good sense of what students are doing. And so I feel like that's a really important, an important role that I can play just to make sure that there's a voice or there's a seat at the table that is sort of steeped in that experience of students who are going through that final semester. I totally agree. I think it's like, you know, we mentioned that we need a champion but our students need a champion too and we can be that for them. And I think like Ashley mentioned, you can pull them just observe some of the things that they're saying and not saying in the emails that you get or things like that. You can go to departments and say, hey, what's up? You know, what are you guys doing? You know, what kinds of work are you seeing? Cause I think that's one of the things that has happened with us with, you know, non-traditional EDDs we know they're coming. We just don't know when and we haven't seen them and no one said anything. So I don't know how to help you if I don't know you're doing something, you know? So getting out there to those departments and those faculty having those conversations I think is important and coming to conferences like these are also really important. We can hear what other people are talking about what's on the horizon and other places and then prepare for that to bring that, you know, back to our institution so that we can stay ahead or in line with everyone else and not get too behind. So much insight and wisdom shared here today. We're getting a few questions in the chat. So I'm on the last topic and we've got about a little bit less than 20 minutes left. So we're sort of right on time. We'll finish through this topic with our panelists and then take some questions from the chat and continue to take your questions for the panelists. So our last topic today that we really wanted to cover was supporting growth in the thesis examiner role. Again, we've been kind of talking to that all morning but now we're gonna focus in on it really explicitly. So here's a question for all of you. How do you prepare today for your job as you expect it will function in the future? I'm hoping this is not a non-answer. I think one thing that, I mean, there are going to be technological changes throughout. So there will always be shifts. I don't think that technology necessarily takes a job away. I think it changes the job. So that's one thing. So we at Iowa, for example, thesis sign-off is now done electronically through ProQuest which is great for the students. That introduced a management element to my position. I think one thing that I maybe didn't think about in 2015 that I think about now is thinking about my job and how to align it with sort of the overall vision and mission of the graduate college. Right, so for me, I think a big priority that we work toward is student support. And so it's always trying to figure out how the things that I do on a daily basis fit into that vision and figuring out ways to articulate it. And if I can show that, if I think about my job in terms of relevance to the college and the institution as a whole, it helps me communicate the importance of what I do even if that's gonna shift over time. Yeah, I think that's a great point. When I took my job long time ago, much like everybody else on this panel, I am the thesis office and I sat in the thesis office and that's kind of like that was my safe places where I was, that's what I did. But I think as I've grown and as I've learned, I've tried to insert myself into more things. So like I'll go downstairs and say, hey, what's the degree audit process look like? Can you show me this? Or my dean right now is really into AI. And so I've kind of got myself into that conversation too. So it's just kind of like figuring out how your piece of the puzzle fits and then trying to insert yourself into those conversations whether it's like going down there and saying, what are you doing today? Like what's happening? What does this mean? I don't, you know, this is a part of the process where students seem to be getting frustrated. How can I help? Like what can we do? Can we problem solve this? Can we think of an easier solution? I think Erin mentioned that with the signing of documents and that sort of thing. You know, how can we work together? And how can I assert my importance in not just the thesis office, my little cubby, but like into the graduate college and then into the university. Once you start getting in with these people, especially like your champion and those people, that's when you get to, you know, potentially make an even bigger impact campus-wide and that sort of thing. On AI, I wanna go ahead real quick because Erin did mention that technology is coming and it's scary and we don't know what's happening. But I wanted to tease that later today at the community engagement group session, somebody will be talking about AI and related to the thesis process. So stick around for that. It's gonna be really exciting. And not only just the technological advances too. I mean, sorry, Valerie, I just wanna kind of piggyback off of the AI thing. I really have nothing to add to, you know, growing in our roles. I'm clearly not in it anymore, but I understand the importance and it absolutely needs to happen. But with AI, what can we do? We have chat GPT now, right? A chat GPT can write a dissertation for you. And how do we navigate the plagiarism around that as well? So I know that a lot of institutions have back policies that will say, okay, run your document through Identicate before you can deposit. And your professors are the experts in the field and they can spot plagiarism from a mile away. Is that true? I don't know, right? But in the very least, are we going to eventually have to start running plagiarism detection before we allow the deposit into ProQuest or into any other institutional repository just because of these technological advances? That's a question, right? So again, I have nothing to add to Aaron and Emily. They have provided a rich, you know, description of what we can think about going forward. But that is just another talking point as well. I was just gonna say probably the most important thing I think I can do is make sure that I stay current on things like copyright and embargo policies and technology and everything that works with ETDs and figure out how that's going to affect the ETD process and ETDs at my institution. Again, that's just such a nice segue to sort of the last round of questions here for our panelists. You know, we've seen even this morning in the chat, right? How folks have been supporting each other, answering each other's questions, asking questions, exploring different topics. You know, our national professional organization of USETDA is really important for us and we are important for each other. So what do you four believe that you need from your national professional organization to continue to evolve in your role in responsibilities and what do we all need from each other? Can I turn that question around Heidi and ask everybody on this call? What do you need? What can we do to support each other? Because I think that's what we really wanna do. We wanna know, we don't know what you need unless you tell us it's kind of like that thing. But what can we do to support each other? What are some things that our group can do? Guides we can make, I don't know anything. What can we do to support each other? I can pop out and say, you know, just to continue to have discussions on current topics and circle back on those current topics if it becomes a little bit, you know, stale and I would probably challenge when we're talking about current topics to anything that is being discussed in ETD meetings, take it and talk to your superiors at your institution. And then we create, you know, a group here. So if everybody, right, we'll start the ETD movement again, right? So if we talk about current topics or even if the association links to other ETD news, right? So maybe we're not the ones who are out there scouring the web for ETD news, but if the, you know, Chronicle of Higher Education puts a link out there, some publication. Okay, US ETD, maybe you can send that our way. Then we discuss it, right? And then we move that forward onto our administration and say, hey, these are actually current topics. If we need to start creating policies around that, then we do that. I think the most valuable thing to me is having the opportunity to talk to other ETD professionals because most of us are one person shop. And it gives us the opportunity to bounce ideas off of each other and learn what other people are doing. And for me, that gets me thinking about, well, how would this work at my institution? Well, that may not work, but if I give it a little twist, it could, you make a big difference. And so on the chat that someone mentioned, we've had a lot of good stuff coming in through the chat. So the communication, just being able to converse with others like you mentioned, Valerie, the USEDA could develop tutorials or certifications or I was almost thinking too, we had sometimes talked about like maybe conference awards or that sort of thing that then you could take back to your supervisor and say, hey, look at this. Aura mentioned a Facebook group or a Slack group. That crossed my mind the minute that you wrote that down so great minds think alike. I think that would be really great that we would have that one place you can go and ask whatever question, look through the archive of answers, that sort of things, sharing best practices. I think it's great to even have a technical committee. So if we're the ones who are building the Microsoft Word templates and we have issues with building those templates or there are features that somebody is struggling with that they see another institution is excelling and be the technical support for each other as well. Yeah, so Ashley, you may have just signed yourself up to be the person who teaches us all how to use the tech because I don't know and I want to know. Oh yeah, the certifications, we have our author. That's great. I will tell you it has taken me years to learn it because I didn't learn it on a full-time job and I don't have a programming background. So if anybody wants to sign up for that one, I think Latex does a pretty good job with or Intro to Latex YouTube, Google becomes Stack Latex Exchange. That's where I've learned it all from, Google. All of that just went, I have no idea what you just said but I believe that you know exactly what you were talking about. And so that's... If it's confusing, you don't want to learn it. So there you go. Oh, I do want to learn it. I want to be able to speak your language and say all the technical things that people with others won't understand. Sorry, Heidi. No, it's so great. I mean, again, this is it, right? It's just these spaces for conversation that are so vital and essential. Erin, did you have anything that you wanted to add about this last point before we sort of begin to wrap up? You know, I think everybody made really great points. Having a point of connection with other offices of one, I think can make that position feel a little bit less lonely. Having opportunities to collaborate, I was so excited to listen to my colleagues from Iowa State yesterday talking about the OER that they're developing for accessibility. Like, those opportunities are fantastic. And I think it's great to have a forum to share it. You know, if there are 50 ETD administrators in a room, there are probably 50 differences in terms of process and tradition and all of those things. But I do think it's really important to be able to come together and figure out opportunities to learn from each other. Ashley kindly referenced Beyond the PDF, which was a conference that Erin and I planned with our libraries. And we like to say that, yes, we did plan a conference with content that we wanted to explore, but it was also about establishing a really strong partnership with our libraries. That was as big of an outcome from that initiative as anything else. And there were quite a few outcomes. One of the things I had learned prior to planning that conference was that ProQuest has identified that there's about 3,000 ETD administrators nationally. And we know that there are even more when you start to think about the globe and all of the universities internationally where there are so many ETD administrators. So we're a pretty big community. And so I would love to see USETDA continue to grow. A couple of ideas I've had as folks have been talking is the BTAA, the Big Ten, which is expanding, has communities of practice, email listservs. I've always been really envious because when Beyond the PDF was planned, I happened to get signed up for sort of a Google listserv, I think, that's a library and IR professional listserv. And I gotta tell you, it is so active. I still to this day, almost daily, see them communicating with each other about questions of practice. So I think, again, these are just so many good ideas which have emerged today for how we can use technology to continue to expand our community and sort of the resource sharing and the expertise sharing that I've heard folks allude to here today. So with that, we are about at time. I will let anyone have a last thought if they want. Otherwise, I'm going to ask everyone here who's participated to join me in thanking our panelists. But before I do that, Erin, Ashley, Valerie, Emily, anyone want to share kind of a parting thought? I think we can keep the conversation going for sure. And I think that I lead the community engagement group within the US ETDA. And I think that this group plus Sally's group that's meeting a little bit later today is our great places to bring some of these topics that we've discussed and really dig deeper into them. I know that I saw in the chat that John Fu-Drow's students are really exciting stuff and a lot of people are wanting to hear more about that. So I think, if you have topics or things that you want to talk about, I think we can have those conversations that either with Sally or I can help organize that with you. So I think don't be afraid to come to us with a full proposal of something or just like an idea that you had or just a question that you have. We've built some of our discussions over just a single question and it's been a very enriching time to learn more. So I think the other piece I just want to share is don't feel alone. There's a community here of people. So if there are people in this call or in the chat that you've seen that you want to just learn more from and reach out to, I wouldn't hesitate in doing that. We all want to support each other. We all want to help each other and we're all very nice people. So just go ahead and reach out to us, anybody on this call and we would really be happy to help and talk in brainstorm however you would like. I don't know that anything more or better could be said. I think Emily hit it on the head and just grateful for all of that. I really appreciate all of you and I appreciate all of the dear colleagues on this panel. It is an honor and a pleasure to have heard you speak and share today. Thank you for all the years of experience that you've shared with everybody today. So much appreciation in the chat as well. So I just wanna thank everyone for being here today and thank you to USETDA for giving us the time and opportunity to have this conversation. I hope everyone has a great rest of your conference and enjoys everything. Take good care.