Elections2012

= Election results, November 2012 =

Congratulations to Co-Chairs Lori Goff and Kris Knorr (McMaster University) as well as to  Chair-Elect Celia Popovic (York University)

The Nominating Committee members wish to thank all those who stood for executive positions as well as those who considered but were unable to run at this time. We also appreciate the strong online voter turnout.

See you in 2013!

November 2012 Election Archive:

This year, your Nominating Committee consists of Trevor Holmes (U Waterloo), Jeanette McDonald (WLU), and Mary Wilson (OCAD U).

The Executive of the Council of Ontario Educational Developers consists of a Chair, Chair-Elect and Past Chair. These positions are held for one year and commence and conclude concurrently with the Annual General Meeting in November of each year.

For the 2012-2013 year, the membership is asked to vote on candidates for the position of Chair and for the position of Chair-Elect. The position of Past-Chair for 2012-2013 will be jointly held by Trevor Holmes (University of Waterloo) and Michael Potter (University of Windsor).

We will run the poll until Thursday, November 22 2012 at noon. This way, we will be able to announce results and have the roles filled by the start of our meeting November 23. In the past, we have conducted the vote electronically at the request of members who could not be present at the meeting. Please do vote online as we will not be conducting a vote during the meeting!

Candidate biographies are listed below, alphabetically for each position.

Password: coedvotes12
Please vote only once; the system tracks IP addresses but not individuals.


 * Candidates for the Position of Chair: **


 * 1) ** ** Lori Goff and Kris Knorr (as co-chairs), McMaster University **



Centre for Leadership in Learning McMaster University
 * Lori Goff,** Educational Consultant and **Kris Knorr**, Instructional Designer

Kris and Lori have been engaged in curriculum development and educational development work for a combined fifteen years, within the Faculty of Science and at the Centre for Leadership in Learning at McMaster University. Together, they bring a broad range of experiences and perspectives on teaching and learning.

Kris coordinates nine of Communities of Practice at McMaster which bring together groups of faculty, staff, and graduate students to regularly discuss and engage with a variety of teaching and learning topics (e.g., Accessibility in the Classroom and on Campus, Community Engaged Education, Pedagogy, Teaching with Technology, Research on Teaching and Learning, etc). He has been involved in supporting a large number of teaching and learning research projects and has himself conducted extensive research on faculty development needs. He supports educators across campus as they engage in innovative formats of teaching with technology.

Lori has been supporting program level initiatives at McMaster, working with departments who are developing new programs or who are in the process of reviewing their undergraduate and graduate programs in accordance with the Quality Assurance Framework. Her focus has been on helping programs to identify ideal graduate attributes, to articulate program learning outcomes, and more recently to develop program assessment plans that can be used to assess achievement of learning outcomes. This experience, together with her current research focus on quality assurance, has led to her increased interest and involvement in provincial level initiatives involving the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, and the Council of Ontario’s Quality Council group.

Both Kris and Lori are passionate about their educational development work and are very willing to collaborate and share their experiences with educational developers across the province. Both have been attending STLHE and COED meetings for several years, and have been members of COED working groups, but are looking to become more involved with COED at a leadership level. Together they plan to continue COED’s efforts in promoting and advocating for educational development, teaching, and learning; building upon the strengths and successes of past chairs. They will encourage and enable collaboration and communication within COED while ensuring that members are kept informed of provincial developments that impact higher education (COU, MTCU, etc).


 * 2) ** ** Gavan Watson, University of Guelph **

Teaching Support Services | Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support University of Guelph
 * Gavan Watson**, Educational Developer

Simply put, facilitating others' learning is a core part of my identity. While officially an educational developer since 2010, I have been involved with teaching, learning and facilitation in a professional sense for over fifteen years. First employed as an experiential educator, I worked my way through University in these informal learning settings as an interpretive naturalist, high ropes instructor and program director. This culminated with the opportunity to work with a staff in directing an outdoor centre. In these leadership roles, I came to value a transparent and inclusionary approach to solving dilemmas and challenges. This still holds true.

Throughout my post-secondary student career (which culminated in a PhD in environmental education from York University in 2010), I've been involved with the more formal aspects of teaching and learning. Working as a TA, a course director and an educational development graduate assistant, I built on these experiences and formally moved into educational development as a career. On a personal level, my son was born in May 2010. I've remarked that these past two years has been like starting another graduate program for the breadth of "new things" — both personal and professional — that I have learned.

This is where COED has played a valuable role (perhaps less so in regards to bringing up baby): I believe in the innate sociality of all learning, but especially life-long learning. Communities of practice, such as the one facilitated by COED, connect us and act to feed, support and grow our critical practice as educational developers. I've valued joining the community and look forward to working with others to further its relevance and importance. If you want to know more, feel free to drop my name into your preferred search engine.


 * Candidates for the Position of Chair-Elect: **


 * 1. Nick Baker, University of Windsor **

Centre for Teaching and Learning University of Windsor
 * Nick Baker**, Learning Specialist

My name is Nick Baker and I’m an educational developer in the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Windsor. I am pleased to nominate for the Chair-Elect position and believe that I can make a contribution to COED in this role. I believe that universities in Ontario and across Canada are reaching a crossroads where they must make some difficult decisions to ensure their identity and sustainability are preserved. In the Ontario context, the Provincial Government is recognising this and attempting to drive the discussion around the changes they believe are necessary. They also recognise the crucial role of educational developers and centres for teaching and learning in making pedagogical culture change a reality. It is therefore critical that educational developers have both a seat at the table where such discussions are taking place, and that our voice helps to shape both the discussion and its outcomes. I am asking for the members of the Council to support my nomination as Chair Elect of COED as I believe I can represent the Council’s members in this role and help. Coming from the Australian context (where many of the changes Ontario wants to make have been embedded for several decades) and being very familiar with many of the other higher education systems that the Ontario Government is looking to for inspiration and direction on possible changes, I am keenly aware of the need to help our Government and our colleagues take the hard learned lessons from other jurisdictions and use those to make a stronger and better PSE sector in Ontario. This is an important time in Ontario’s PSE history; as a collective we need to ensure we have a strong voice and I hope you believe I can help that strong voice be heard where and when it needs to be.

Originally from Australia, I first came to Canada to attend the STLHE conference in Windsor in 2008, and stayed on as a Visiting Fellow in Educational Development in the CTL at UWindsor. I moved to Canada permanently in 2009 to work at Windsor, having previously been an educational developer, instructional designer and manager of an educational resources unit at the University of Queensland’s Teaching and Educational Development Institute. I have been a member of HERDSA and STLHE for a number of years, am a former STLHE Member-At-Large/STLHE Board member, and am currently co-editor of the STLHE Green Guides. I also have experience as a member of other professional societies related to my days as an ecologist. I have degrees in journalism, geography, ecology and maths/physics, as well as a postgrad qualification in tertiary education, and am ABD in my PhD (wildlife ecology). I am also a member of COED and EDC, and an Associate Fellow of SEDA. I teach and mentor in the University Teaching Certificate program at Windsor, and am an ISW facilitator. I also have and continue to be involved in a number of large internal and externally funded grants and research projects, and am a former national teaching award winner in Australia. In 2012 I was invited to participate in the MTCU roundtables discussing the future of PSE in Ontario, and have worked with colleagues here at Windsor to draft responses to discussion papers from HEQCO and the MTCU.

I’ve been involved in teaching in universities and educational development for over 10 years, and am passionate about the role educational developers play in driving change in universities. I am excited to be part of the Canadian higher education family in a time when the landscape is changing rapidly. My background and research interests in higher education are in eLearning, distance learning, m-learning, educational technologies, learning space design and evaluation, institutional culture change, international field-based learning, science pedagogies, and assessment of learning.


 * 2. **** Celia Popovic, York University **

Teaching Commons York University
 * Celia Popovic**, Director

I joined York University from the UK in November 2011. In July I took on the role of Director of the newly formed Teaching Commons. This is an exciting and challenging position as I have been tasked with forming a new team of developers, building a faculty engagement structure and generally raising the profile of teaching at York.

Before coming to Canada I was an independent consultant, and worked with a dozen universities across the UK. Prior to that, I was the Head of Educational Development at Birmingham City University (BCU). I have a strong record in course design and delivery, mentorship, facilitation and development with my work in institutions and organizations. I have been deeply engaged with SEDA (Staff and Educational Development Association) for many years where I was Co-Chair of both the Conference Committee and the Scholarship, Research and Evaluation Committee. While at BCU, I was the project lead from a $600,000 HEA (Higher Education Academy) funded project into employability. As secretary for HEDG (Heads of Educational Development Group) I was active in influencing the shape and content of bi-annual meetings. I am an active published researcher, and I contribute to the profession through my involvement as a reviewer for several academic journals and book reviewer for IETI (Innovations in Education and Teaching International). I gained my Masters of Education from Birmingham University in 1995, and my Doctorate also from Birmingham in 2007. My most recent publication was co-authored with David Green – Popovic and Green (2012) Understanding Undergraduates, Routledge, London, and was published as part of the SEDA series.

Since arriving in Canada I have been surprised by the number of parallels between my new home and the UK. I recognize that many of the challenges faced by both countries are similar but there are significant cultural differences. That said I am pleased to be able to bring my experience from elsewhere as a lens for my new context. Ontario is on the cusp of significant changes in education in general and PSE in particular. I am excited by the challenges facing us all, and looking forward to contributing to the wider educational development community through COED.