Yesterday I had a great day at North Carolina Museum of Art having a tour around the Frida Kahlo exhibition. It was an event organised by the North Carolina Fulbright Chapter (the folks who also organised the Trolley Bus tour of Raleigh). I also had a Mexican meal out with my house mates. It was a great last day out before I fly home today.

I’ll be home for a few weeks that will involve some days at the office, a good number of Christmas parties and lots of catching up with family and friends. It seems like a good time to take stock of how things have been going so far. I feel as if I’ve been working and playing hard. My research plans are nearly ready to apply for IRB approval, I’ve been putting a lot of time into planning the 2 courses I’ll be teaching in the January and Spring Semesters, I’ve been attending quite a number of strategic planning committees and events, and I’ve been making progress on my book manuscript. All of which is good progress.

Perhaps one of the things I’m most pleased with is that I feel very settled. It’s hard to make progress with work if you feel like you are still orientating to a new country, home and work settings. I am also delighted with how I have managed to get to know a large number of faculty, staff and students across campus in a short period of time. I take great pride in introducing faculty and staff to one another who I know, but who don’t know each other!

So what have I liked most about living in the USA so far?

I have been enjoying sharing a house with two lovely house mates, who have made it very easy to settle into our cosy house. I have appreciated the milder weather so far, and that fall lasts longer than the 3 weeks it usually lasts in Scotland before a big storm takes away the final leaves. I’ve also appreciated 2 hours more daylight each day in the November and December.

I have enjoyed the excitement of going around a supermarket in another country (it takes me longer to do my shopping though!). I have loved the opportunity to start to get to know different parts of this vast country through the travel I’ve been fortunate to do through my work. I’m loving getting to know the names of birds in the garden, which I’ve never seen before. I particularly love the cardinals that visit. I’ve really appreciated the beautiful campus at Elon, which is simply beautiful to walk around. I’ve also enjoyed the beauty of the trees during the fall. I like campus coffee each week at Elon where everyone gets together for coffee one morning, usually outside. Who doesn’t like rocking chairs on the porch? US school buses are quite cool. I have to confess that I fear I may be addicted to pimento cheese dip! I’ve really noticed and appreciated greater racial diversity at work – and some would say that Elon is not actually that diverse. I’ve also appreciated the warmth and genuine random acts of kindness from people I’m just getting to know (an unexpected gift of a scarf; an offer of a lift to the airport; the loan of a suitcase; a bowl of homemade soup; an engraved padlock; kind words; invitations into homes; lunches; and so much more). And I’ve really enjoyed working closely with, getting to know better, and stimulating conversations about teaching and research with, a range of people on campus, but particularly folks from the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, and the Center for Engaged Learning.

Some of the newer or more challenging things I’ve faced include…

Realising there was a sinkhole that opened up a couple of weeks before I visited Pittsburgh, just outside the convention center where we were having our conference. It was big enough to swallow a bus so that was a bit scary! Seeing how quickly I have become dependent on a car to get around because public transport isn’t great or doesn’t exist to go to where I want to go, and there are either no sidewalks or fewer sidewalks in some areas that make it more tricky to walk. The challenge of buying a small carton of milk or eggs – some things are just super-sized!

Speaking a new language that means different things when it talks about pants, biscuits, trunks and flasks! There have been some signs that I have needed to pay more attention to because they differ from signs back home. I am driven a bit bonkers by the obsession with leaf blowing on campus – it’s not just Elon, but I saw it at Bryn Mawr too. Lots of hours are spent by maintenance staff blowing leaves off paths and off the grass and then sucking them up to remove them. The problem is that the leaf blowers are usually gas powered so are totally

environmentally dreadful and anywhere where they are sucking up leaves they are also sucking up the insects 🙁 I presume they are worried about people slipping on wet leaves… Driving on the right hand side of the road was initially quite disorienting, but I’ve adjusted quite well (I may limit how much I drive while I’m home, or I’ll need to readjust again!). Butter comes in sticks (now I know why some recipes I’ve seen refer to taking a stick of butter… and recipes are in cups/oz, ovens use fahrenheit. I also cease to be amazed at some of the more questionable ‘food’ items which include string cheese and souse (??). Because of their reliance on cars there are also a lot of drive throughs – cash points as well as food and drink options. But I was a little surprised that there is a drive thru Nativity scene nearby! I think all of these adjustments are good for me to expand my horizons. I look forward to being back in North Carolina at the end of December.

Dec 8, 2019

I experienced my first US Thanksgiving this week…and I have a lot to be thankful for. Not just that I was blessed with four Thanksgiving invitations (thank you, you lovely people you know who you are). I am particularly grateful for all those people who have made me feel so part of the Elon University community within a very short period of time. I spent Thanksgiving day at Peter, Sara, Katie and Timothy Felten’s home. It was great that Katie was home from College, so all the family were there.

I stayed in Peter’s home 10 years ago when I first visited Elon, and it has been so lovely to keep in touch with the family over the years as Peter and I have continued to work together on various projects.

The day consisted of Sara’s wonderful organisation to create a traditional feast – organisation that meant each of us knew what jobs we could do in the kitchen to ensure everything would happen on time (but to be fair, Sara had clearly worked super-hard during the week in preparing many elements of the meal).

We had a light snack and played board games (a cool one called Chronology from the Feltens and a slightly less cool one from me called ‘Very British Problems’ based on scenarios and predicting how a British person would react!). We had a walk in the afternoon, bumping into people we knew, before returning to continue cooking, and to start a jigsaw.

The meal was spectacular – apparently because I was there, they felt they were personally representing the US at Thanksgiving, and felt the need to pull all the stops out! There was also a party planned for the next day so, the six deserts were not only for the five of us!! After a wonderful meal, we watched some of the New York Thanksgiving street parade on TV.

The following day, about 20 people came to the Feltens for a Thanksgiving leftovers party. So this involved an opportunity to sample more of the delicious food from the previous day, with some supplemental additions from other people’s leftovers. We considered a lock-down – not allowing anyone to leave until all the food had gone – but I think we realised that people would make themselves ill because there was still so much food left. So we opted for the softer alternative, of encouraging everyone to take some food home with them to reduce the amount finally leftover! What a wonderful couple of days getting to spend time with lovely people and being thankful for so many things. I’ve followed all of the festivities by having a lock-down at home this weekend for two days writing my book manuscript – progress is being made!

Dec 2, 2019

Last weekend I went for a couple of days to Philadelphia, to visit Alison Cook-Sather (with whom I co-wrote a book with Peter Felten). Alison is based at Bryn Mawr College, a women’s liberal arts college in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I arrived on a Saturday morning, and Alison drove me around various famous Philly sites of interest in the centre of the city so I could get a sense of the layout of the city. It’s laid out on a grid system, just like Glasgow, so it’s pretty easy to orientate yourself.

We had lunch at the City tavern – where politicians and leaders such as Thomas Jefferson met for lunch back in the day. Later, we took a walk around the outside of the Museum of Art past the Rocky statue. The iconic scene from Rocky where he runs up the steps is actually on the steps of the Museum of Art. It was pretty busy by the museum because they were getting ready for the Philadelphia marathon which was taking place the following day. We headed back to Alison’s home for a meal and for me to meet her husband Scott and her daughter Morgan again.

The following day, Alison dropped me in central Philly and I visited the Liberty Bell. The bell is considered an international symbol of freedom. It hung in the State House in 1753 and summoned the Pennsylvania Assembly to work. In the 1830s, anti-slavery groups named it the Liberty Bell. The bell cracked in the 1840s and was repaired but cracked again! Very nearby is  the Pennsylvania State House, now called Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were both signed.

I looked around the Portrait Gallery before walking across town (in the sleet!) to the Barnes Foundation. It is a really impressive collection of predominantly impressionist art. This private collection has literally hundreds of Cezanne, Renoir, Picasso, Henri Rousseau, El Greco, Van Gogh and other masterpieces. I had never seen most of the paintings before so it was quite breathtaking. Wonderful to have a whole Sunday afternoon to wander around. In the evening, Scott cooked for us and then we went to see ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood‘ at the local arts cinema in Bryn Mawr. The film starring Tom Hanks focuses on Mr Rogers, an iconic children’s TV presenter who was on the TV in the USA  between 1968-2001.

On Monday, I spent the day at Bryn Mawr College. First meeting student partners who observe faculty members teaching, they then meet with their faculty partners weekly to discuss teaching approaches and student engagement. Alison then showed me around the beautiful Bryn Mawr campus, with buildings all named after Welsh place names.

For someone who holidayed in Wales regularly as a child it seems incredible to me that Alison works in a building named Betys-y-Coed! Bryn Mawr College and the local town were named after the farm owned by Rowland Ellis, who led a group of Quakers, who were suffering persecution in Wales, to settle in Pennsylvania. Alison and I had a chance to discuss a range of work ideas and projects before I then met with Associate Provost and Professor of Chemistry, Bill Malachowski, in the afternoon to discuss the Bryn Mawr curriculum. I then joined a group of new faculty for one of their weekly meetings with Alison, discussing a range of teaching developments. Finally I squeezed in dinner with Maya, a student partner who is working with Alison to provide feedback on the whole student partnership scheme. It was a packed day, and I was pretty exhausted by the time I headed to the airport for a late flight back to Raleigh Durham and a drive back to Elon. It was only 2 and a half days, but it felt like I packed a lot into the visit.

Dec 2, 2019

A couple of weeks ago I travelled to Salt Lake City in Utah. Salt Lake City was established by the Mormons (or Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints) in 1847 when their leader, Brigham Young, led many Mormons away from persecution in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, westwards on an arduous journey towards Utah. Today Salt Lake City is 50% Mormon.

I have met some Mormon missionaries in the UK – usually smartly dressed white American men always operating in pairs – proselytising about the Mormon church. However, I’d never visited Utah before. When I travel to new places I try to read books about the area in order to immerse myself more deeply in learning about somewhere new.

So as I flew to Utah, I was reading with interest, *Jon Krakauer’s book Under the banner of heaven, which is a study of the Mormon Church’s history and practices in Utah and neighboring states. The book is pretty hard-hitting and made me somewhat nervous of my visit to Utah. The book highlights many Mormon beliefs and behaviours at odds with the law, namely: violence metered out against non-believers; white supremacy; gender and sexuality discrimination and oppression; polygamy; incest; and paedophilia.

Jon Krakauer is clear that his book was not received well by the Mormon church – and it’s easy to see why. Krakauer’s book tends to focus on some of the violent episodes in the history of the church and on the minority fundamentalist groups that have broken away from the mainstream church at different stages. Salt Lake City is 50% Mormon.

My first impressions were of a city in a stunning situation surrounded by the Wasatch mountains; it is breathtakingly beautiful. I had a day to explore and I took the opportunity to walk up to the State Capitol Building, as well as to explore the buildings in Temple Square, where the Mormon Church Administration building is, the Tabernacle, the Temple, the Beehive House where Brigham Young lived, and the Lion House where some of Brigham Young’s wives lived (he is alleged to have had 57 wives).

Many of the buildings were not open to visitors, but the tour of the Beehive house was fascinating. The delightful tour guide took a group of 8 of us around the house (I was the only non-Mormon). According to the guide, Brigham Young took 57 wives, not to procreate, but allegedly to be kind, in looking after women who had been widowed – although he did also have 57 children. Those church members I spoke to in Temple Square argued strongly that the list of behaviours I’ve mentioned above that Krakauer focuses on, only apply to fundamentalist Mormons who are outside of the mainstream Mormon church and indeed, one woman spoke of how angry she gets at the bad press the mainstream Mormon church gets because of some of the practices of fundamentalists. Indeed, the distance between fundamentalist Mormon beliefs and US law related to polygamy has led to some fundamentalist groups living over the border in Mexico and Canada.

After visiting Temple Square, later in the afternoon, my colleague Peter Felten arrived and we realised that our hotel was next to a large sports arena where there was an NBA basketball game to be played that evening. So we got hold of some tickets for a game between the Utah Jazz and the Minnesota Timberwolves. It was my first NBA game with a brilliant atmosphere.

Peter’s son, Timothy had recommended we go to the game as the two teams were likely to be well matched. Sure enough it was a very close and exciting game, but to the disappointment of the Utah home crowd, the Minnesota Timberwolves won. We did have the advantage of walking home one block from the game while we watch lots of other people sitting in traffic jams trying to set off home.

The following day we drove through the mountains to Park City, a ski resort in the Wasatch mountains above Salt Lake City. The views were stunning and we enjoyed wandering around the resort, out of season – they are expecting snow for the next 2 weeks and the skiing will soon commence. We met one of Peter’s cousins for lunch before heading to visit Sundance – of Sundance Film Festival fame. Sundance was founded by Robert Redford in 1969 (for his name sake in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – outlaws who roamed around this area of Utah) and he has worked hard to ensure the area has not been over-developed.

We moved on from Sundance to Provo, where we were spending the next few days. Provo (which is 85% Mormon), is the setting for Brigham Young University, a Mormon University where Peter and I were running a couple of workshops on undergraduate research and experiential learning. Over the next few days we were looked after very well by our hosts who were all delightful. We noticed some obvious differences to our campuses, in the lack of coffee (including decaffeinated coffee) being served as Mormon’s don’t usually drink coffee/caffeine.  Also at the restaurants in the evening, you could ask for the alcohol menu, but this wasn’t generally given to you at the table, as Mormon’s don’t usually drink alcohol. Other noticeable differences included prayers before the start of the conference and before conference meals. There was also a good deal of attention by colleagues to embedding Mormon doctrine into the educational developments we were discussing.

We had some excellent conversations with colleagues and our workshops went well. We used the most recent EngagEd in… guide that we produced at the University of Edinburgh – EngagEd in… research led learning and teaching – as the basis of our workshop, and it was very well received. We came away reflecting on many aspects of our time in Utah and the benefits of visiting universities distinctly different from our own.

We were treated very warmly and left with the challenge of trying to align Jon Krakauer’s book to our positive, but short experience of Utah. I didn’t ask anybody about what they thought of Krakauer’s book, but I can imagine many Mormon church members would feel it is unfair and paints an overly negative picture of the mainstream Mormon church, but Krakauer and others might argue that perhaps the mainstream church is keen to put behind them any violence or unpalatable elements of their history. I can’t hope to understand the complexity of history and the Mormon faith in one short visit, and through the reading of one book. Ultimately, we were very glad to have had a chance to get to know more about Brigham Young University, to meet good colleagues there, and to have a short introduction to Utah.

Dec 2, 2019

I have been in Pittsburgh for 5 days for the POD conference. Sometimes at conferences you don’t get a chance to see much of a city, but I managed to fly in slightly early and booked an extra night at the end of the trip to enable me to explore a bit more. Pittsburgh became a key settlement for a number of reasons, but the most important ones are that it has a rich seam of coal nearby and it is at the confluence of 3 rivers – the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River meet to become the Ohio River. You can compare the picture I took with the artist’s impression from the 1700s. Point park, the spit of land on the picture, contains Fort Pitt, built by the British in the 1700s – named after William Pitt the elder – during the French and Indian wars. The lands at the time belonged to the Iroquois, Lenape and Shawnee.

Pittsburgh is known both as The Steel City for its 300 steel related businesses as well as the City of Bridges for its 400+ bridges! You can see the influence of industry everywhere, with large railways running through the city, the large warehouse district known as The Strip District, now a busy area of shops and trendy eating places.

You get great views from opposite Point Park by taking the Duquesne Incline, a funicular on Mount Washington, the steep outcrop of rock opposite downtown Pittsburgh. I went for a lovely walk across Fort Pitt bridge and up the Duquesne Incline and then walked along the top of the escarpment and came back on the Monongahela Incline, another funicular that then enables you to return to downtown by crossing over the Smithfield Street bridge (designed by John A Roebling, who is also famous for designing the Brooklyn Bridge and a large scale cannon!).

The city is also famous for Senator Heinz who founded a food bottling company that became the Heinz we know so well today. I visited the Heinz History Center and was entertained to see that travelling salesmen used to have a leather pouch in which they carried different sizes of pickled cucumber so that shop managers could select which size of pickles they wanted to purchase!

Nov 18, 2019

On Wednesday I flew via New York City (sorry for the slightly hazy ‘through the plane window’ picture of NYC at night), to Pittsburgh, Pennslyvania, for the POD Conference. This is a conference I’ve always been keen to attend – it’s one of the main conferences for US academic developers – similar to the Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) in the UK, and both POD and SEDA are members of the International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED) which has a conference every 2 years. POD is big, and this year they reached the heady heights of 1200 delegates. It was incredibly refreshing to only know a handful of people at POD. At many conferences it’s wonderful to catch up with colleagues I know, but there is something exciting in meeting new people and hearing about new practices in universities across the US. I’ll mention a few highlights.

I attended a session by Emily Gravett, James Madison University, Virginia and Kristin Rudenga, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, entitled Imposter phenomenon in educational developers. It might not be a surprise that the session was very well attended! They defined the features of IP as believing: that you have fooled others into overestimating one’s ability; personal success has been due to luck or an evaluator’s misjudgment; and you will be exposed. They had undertaken a survey of POD members and found that 96% of those surveyed had experienced IP at some point. Importantly, the presenters and audience suggested a range of mechanisms to help overcome IP:

• Accept tasks won’t be done perfectly
• Focus on strengths
• Review your experience and achievements
• Talk with a safe person outside your professional network
• Get comfortable improvising
• Rehearse acting confident
• Shift the focus of self-talk to focus on effort and achievement not work
• Observe and improve self-language
• Ensure you include self-care in terms of health and exercise
• Find supportive networks

The slides from this event are available if you are interested.

Another good session was one given by Katie Walsh from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh and Heather Dwyer, Tufts University, Massachusetts entitled Engaging faculty with the research behind evidence-based practice. They have spent some time and effort translating some key educational research articles into either one page summaries or into interactive summaries, which they use in professional development workshops to get faculty to analyse data or outcomes from the research to predict outcomes or critique the findings and consider how they can be used in their own practice. I am sure we can use these ideas back at the Institute for Academic Development in Edinburgh.

Finally, another session I found helpful was the one from Kris Knorr and Rebecca Taylor from McMaster University, Canada entitled If you build it will they come? This was a critique of the literature and their own practice on the difference between the numbers of faculty signing up to attend workshops and the numbers actually attending. They gave a great overview of many of the reasons for this drop off in attendance including: no time; competing priorities; perception of no need for teaching development; lack of belief that educational development would lead to change; teaching is not valued or evaluated; and psychosocial risks. Colleagues in the group shared a range of similar experiences and then ideas for how we overcome these challenges: build it into promotion criteria; invite external experts; try to align events with interests and needs; email reminders (particularly sent to individual person by name); phone calls one week prior for particularly important events; food!; create a certificate if it is a series of events; invitation from the Chair or Dean to attend; co-present with someone from the Dept where the workshop is taking place; consider charging for no shows; piggy back the event on the back of an existing event staff are already attending; ensure events are contained in any central calendar of events; develop 15-20 minute educational development nuggets that can be given at departmental meetings; ensure the topics are relevant and clearly described.

The conference was also a great excuse to have dinner with Peter Felten and Alison Cook-Sather who were co-authors with me on Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: a guide for faculty, which was published in 2014. Allan, my husband took a picture of the three of us in 2013, so we thought we’d recreate the photo for 2019. See if you can spot which is which! One taken by a professional photographer and one not 😉 and one where we were all younger – and in my case slimmer! 🙂

Nov 18, 2019

Last weekend I was invited by President Connie Book and the Global Education Center at Elon to an early Thanksgiving dinner for international students and scholars. The event was a great way for US colleagues to be able to explain why Thanksgiving is celebrated to many people for whom this celebration is not familiar. Normally celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, this particular dinner party was early, but this worked well for me as I was pleased to be able to attend – I suspect otherwise my US travel would have meant I’d have missed it.

There are lots of variations in the accounts of the first Thanksgiving, but essentially early settlers in Virginia had a good harvest and apparently shared this harvest in a feast with native Americans. There are many critics of this version of events, but modern day Thanksgiving seems to emphasise family getting together to share a turkey dinner and pumpkin pie and articulating what they are thankful for. The picture shows me with my housemates Kristen and Babu at the Elon international thanksgiving dinner. We will see if there are any variations on this explanation of thanksgiving, when I go to Peter and Sara Felten’s for the real thing in a fortnight (…a turn of phrase I have just learned is considered British English in the USA – they don’t use fortnight or fortnightly).

Nov 18, 2019

Last weekend I was invited by the North Carolina Fulbright Chapter (a local organisation of ex Fulbrighters and friends of Fulbrighters who put on events for current, ex, and friends of, Fulbrighters!) to have an historical Trolley bus tour of Raleigh. Charlotte may be the largest city in the state but Raleigh is officially the state capital.

Named after Sir Walter Raleigh, it is a planned city, so has an easy-to-follow grid layout. Raleigh is home to North Carolina State University and forms part of what is called locally, the ‘Research Triangle’ (including Duke University and North Carolina Central University in Durham, and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill). Raleigh has some lovely old houses with a good dose of Southern character, including rocking chairs on the porch, and it gives parts of the city a relaxed feel.

Downtown Raleigh is mainly museums and businesses. There are almost no shops, with the large stores all in out-of-town shopping centres. One of the parts of the tour I found fascinating was that in part of the pavement in Raleigh, the bricks used were made by prisoners in the late 1800s.

The prisoners were required to write their names on the top brick of the pile of bricks they had made each day so that their productivity could be measured. What this means is that some of the bricks in the pavement have prisoners names on them. Our historical tour introduced us to many of the key buildings and sights of Raleigh.

The tour ended with doughnuts and coffee at Krispy Kreme (which apparently originates from Winston-Salem in North Carolina). After the tour, my housemate Babu, and I walked into downtown Raleigh to have a closer look at some of the sights we had seen on the tour and we decided to visit the North Carolina Museum of History.

They had a wonderful exhibition of quilting, which was a nice surprise for me. I learned masses, particularly about the differences between the quilts of poor women versus rich women in North Carolina. Interestingly, although I knew that poor people used recycled flour sacks in the quilts they made, I didn’t know that some of the flour companies realised this and started putting patterns on their flour sacks! It was a reminder of the important place quilts have played in the history of parts of the USA.

This weekend, I decided to drive to Greensboro to a shopping centre with an REI (Recreational Equipment Inc), outdoor equipment cooperative store, that I know through my husband Allan having some old, and still in good use, REI kit from when he cycled across the USA in 1988. It turns out to be one of my husband’s and one of my brother’s favourite shops. So I wanted to have a good look and see if there might be some Christmas presents lurking in there. What a great store, and I particularly love that they close their stores on black Friday each year to encourage people not to shop but instead to spend the day clearing up waste and rubbish from wild places and outdoor areas. I also couldn’t resist a trip to the Greensboro Barnes and Noble to compare notes with the local Burlington store near Elon. I think they are about the same size actually, but any excuse for a look in a bookshop!

I asked my housemate, Kristen for suggestions of local walks, as I am not very aware of where the best nature reserves are and places to get out for walking. The issue I have is that as a newcomer I don’t know the area well and I’m a single female wanting to go walking in the wild. So I have to make some judgments about what is sensible. Anyway, today I found a very nice local nature reserve called Shallow Ford Nature Reserve on the Haw River. It’s only about 10 minutes drive in the car from where I’m living and it looked stunning today.

However, I still wonder whether going for a walk in the woods (not the Bill Bryson, Walk in the Woods – in the Appalachians), on my own is really the smartest idea. I may need to do more walking around campus (which is stunning), and in some local parks that have been suggested (that are slightly nearer habitation), unless I go walking with a friend. Anyway, today’s walk was lovely and it was good to get out into the countryside.

I’m giving two talks at Elon University this week and then I head off to Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania on Wednesday for a conference. I then fly to Salt Lake City in Utah to give a talk and explore a little, and then I go to Philadelphia and Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania after that, so I’ll be on the road for 2 weeks. I’ll try to keep blogging along the way!

Nov 11, 2019

One thing I haven’t mentioned in my blog up to now (in the interests of not worrying my mum!) is that there have been 10 confirmed cases of mumps on the Elon campus over the weeks since I arrived. With my background as a nurse (a long time ago, and as many of my peers would say not a real nurse – I was a mental health nurse!), I understand that mumps is one of those diseases you don’t want on campus. It’s a disease that loves those environments where people live together (particularly university residences) and where you work together. I’ve been impressed with the clear and helpful messages we’ve been receiving from Dr Jon Dooley, Vice President of Student Life and Associate Professor of Education, which have kept everyone up to date and importantly, encouraging those who need to, to get their MMR vaccine.

Just before I went to Atlanta, about four weeks ago, I had a really horrible cold. In the middle of the night when I wasn’t sleeping well and I was feverish, I convinced myself I had mumps! Then my mind starting thinking about all the people I had been in contact with since arriving at Elon who I must have passed it to. I had met with President Connie Book that afternoon, and even though I had suggested we didn’t shake hands as I had a cold, at 3.30am, I knew I would go down in history as the Fulbright Scholar who passed mumps to President Book! Note to self – this is the kind of irrational thinking you do when you are ill in the early hours of the morning. The next day, I reminded myself that I had mumps as a child, which makes it very unusual to get mumps again, and I’d had at least two MMR vaccinations since.

Despite all of this, when Jon Dooley sent a new message to everyone encouraging them to get a third MMR injection if you hadn’t had one, I decided I might as well be absolutely sure I don’t get it – and hey it’s a free MMR – amazing how those of us used to the NHS are motivated by free health care! However, I turned up on the day that another 500+ students, faculty and staff turned up in the alumni gym for their injections, so there was a bit of a wait, but I had some time to read an article and I got to speak to some students and colleagues while I was there.

But importantly, not only do I have the card to show I have had my MMR booster injection, but I have a selfie with Jon Dooley to prove it. Oh, and you will be pleased to know that as far as I know, Dr Connie Book is well and mumps-free.

Nov 7, 2019

I thought I should report on some of my work so far, as I wouldn’t want any of you to think that it’s all extracurricular activity that I’m taking part in! I’m working on quite a number of things.

I’ve agreed to give a workshop for the Center for Teaching and Learning (CATL) in just over a week focused on co-created assignments, so I’ve been meeting with Deandra Little, Director of CATL (and also my driver to Charlotte for those keeping up with the blogs), to discuss the best approach to take to the workshop. Apparently 40 faculty have signed up, which is pretty healthy numbers for a professional development workshop, so I look forward to that. Just a day later, I’m leading a colloquium on ‘How to enhance a sense of belonging at university’ for the Masters in Higher Education students and faculty, so I’ve been corresponding with Smith Jackson (he has a lot of titles – he’s Assistant to the President, Associate Professor of Education, and Vice President Emeritus for Student Life and Dean of Students), who leads the MHE colloquia and I’m excited to explore different approaches to ensuring students develop a sense of belonging at university, particularly black and minority ethnic students.

I’ve been meeting with Jessie Moore, Director of the Center for Engaged Learning and Professor of English and with Peter Felten (who has already starred in previous blogs) as we will be co-teaching a course on student engagement and high impact practices in January. This should be great fun. Jessie and Peter are fantastic individuals and they ran this course for the first time last year. This year we’re tweaking the course a bit to improve on their first version and to include me in the teaching. I know I will learn as much as I’ll be able to contribute teaching this. We’re teaching it in January, in Elon’s ‘January semester’ – that’s right – they have a one month semester in January when many students study abroad. It’s also a chance for students who stay on campus to take quite intensive courses, like our course, which will involve teaching three full mornings a week throughout January.

I am also planning for the second course I’ll be teaching, which is one I’ll be running on my own from the start of February through until mid March. This course is entitled ‘Co-Creation of Learning Environments: Partnerships in and Beyond the Classroom’, and will draw on quite a bit of my own research. It’s being offered to both first and second year students on the Masters programme and it looks like I should have 8-10 students – a lovely number to teach! It’s actually quite encouraging to have this number of students sign up because this is additional credit for these students over and above the required credits they need to complete. I am delighted these students are motivated to do the course, and I’m planning a lot of opportunities for co-creation. So I’m excited to meet the students and see how the course will go.

Some of you know I have a deadline of mid December for a draft of a book I’m writing which has a working title of ‘Co-creating learning and teaching: towards relational pedagogy in higher education’. Because of the deadline, I’ve been taking some time to make progress on the book, and it’s coming along. This means however, I’ve not pressed forward with my Fulbright research project much yet. I’ve been developing some of my ideas, but I’m taking my time to develop them as I plan all the other teaching work and as I’m writing my book – I’m finding my research ideas have been adapting over the time I’ve been here. So I’m treating it as a slow burn of ideas, but I hope to start to draft my firm plan in the coming month, so I can ensure I make good progress with this as well as everything else.

In just over a week I’m off on some more travels – to Pittsburgh to the Professional and Organisational Development (POD) Conference, and then Peter Felten and I have both been invited to Brigham Young University in Utah to speak. That should be an exciting trip to Provo and Salt Lake City, but we need to do some more planning for our workshops before we go! One thing we do know is that we’ll use the new EngagEd in… research led learning and teaching guide that we’ve just released from the IAD in Edinburgh as a key part of our workshops on undergraduate research. Then after Salt Lake City I’m heading to Philadelphia to visit Alison Cook-Sather, a colleague I co-wrote a book with (along with Peter Felten) and who is based at Bryn Mawr College…I’m keeping busy!

Nov 3, 2019