 It was not a linear path to land here. I entered college thinking that I would do physics education in a hands-on museum and it turned out that some of the math required was not quite what I was prepared for and I made a transition to anthropology and archaeology through a very fun liberal arts curriculum at a very small public institution here in Florida called New College. I went down that path fully. I thought that I would pursue an academic career. I got my masters and PhD. I had a very fun time learning a very different set of technology doing archaeology over in Ireland and in order to I felt best prepare myself to be the type of professor that I wanted to be I went out and I did work in the field so I worked for a private contractor and then I worked for the federal government. One of the things that I noticed among the faculty that I had when I was a student was that they were all lifetime academics. They didn't have applied experience and as a student who was also working in an applied area I knew that most graduates in anthropology go into applied work so it was really important to me to get some of that experience. As it turns out I was not prepared to make some of the sacrifices that people often have to make to go fully down that academic path and as I went on some faculty interviews and started to have that realization I really reflected on what it was that made me want to be an academic and it wasn't as much about the research or about the publishing as it was about the teaching. I really missed teaching. When I was in graduate school at Syracuse University I had was really really fortunate to be able to participate both in the future professor program and the preparing future faculty programs and at that time a technology enabled classroom meant that we had a computer in it and that we were making the transition from overheads to projectors but that was where we were. We would do classroom visits for faculty and teaching assistants with the HSCAM quarters so they could see themselves teaching but that's where we were and that's really where I was introduced to the idea of thinking about teaching and reflecting on teaching and even some of the articulation of technology and higher ed. So when I was in this position of realizing that maybe the academic path wasn't for me I started to look around and think about what I could do to support teaching in higher ed that wasn't the academic route and I wound up in instructional design and from there I really got to learn more about the IT landscape and how IT really supports pedagogy now it's such a deep way across higher ed and and that's how I've landed here. So I hope that our team is able to bring to faculty and staff some of the the same core ideas that they want their students to walk away with. We want them to reflect on their experience in teaching we want them to want to grow and learn about their experience as teachers. We make a lot of recommendations as instructional designers that faculty are not always ready or maybe don't have time to implement but we hope that by planting that seed we spark a little bit of curiosity a little bit of interest and maybe they'll come back and they'll be ready so we see that oftentimes with accessibility so if somebody has never encountered any kind of training or resources around what it means what digital accessibility means if we expect them to then make a fully online course 100 accessible they may get overwhelmed so can we start to scaffold some of that information into the instructional design process or the support process can we introduce you know heading structure and why meaningful text and hyperlinks is important and then from there move on and the same thing with everything from course design and user paths to assessment strategies um adopting technologies that we hope are not creating barriers for students not not artificially placing obstacles in their path but are very intentionally selected and incorporated in a meaningful way to develop skills and knowledge that'll help the student either in the rest of their curriculum or in their job search or their careers after after graduation. We're trying really hard to incorporate really explicit conversations with faculty about diversity and inclusion and how to make sure whether it is through technology selection or the language that they use and their syllabus. We've got faculty who have to use specific course policies that are provided by the the institution but or institutional policies but they can add to that they can provide a human component to that and their own interpretation whether it's of the academic integrity policy or accessibility resources I think it helps for faculty to take a really personal approach and try to make sure they're humanizing themselves and their course in in such a strange time so that's uh diversity and inclusion is a key focus for us. What I've seen time and time again is the organizations that do the best job of using technology to help them teach and learn and do research are the ones where there's some strong IT leadership in the organization on campus and that's organization that is not just focused just on keeping the bits flowing but understanding how we can help the school leverage things. This award ceremony opened up to us oh maybe I don't know eight nine years ago or so and we grabbed it right away because I'm a big I'm a big fan of role models and have people kind of say well how did they get the award and take a look and they get them to have the conversation to think through who's getting the award and why and there's always a great story behind many of these recipients. I just think it's critically important to reach out and and help organizations like this help the industry and this is the this organization we can work here and have the biggest impact on the industry anywhere we're on board we're supporting why because it's getting the award winners out there getting that to happen and and you know I've been around a long time I'm sure I'll be around 30 years from now but I'll stick around a few more years but I more worry about the longer-term picture of the industry healthy so things that promote that are always good for the industry they're good for the industry as a small boutique firm like ours they're good for us too