Teaching Academy Annual Report | 2023

January 27 | Attendance: 9

Facilitators

Description

This 2 hour in-person workshop addressed how to effectively present participants’ contribu-tions to teaching and learning in their promotion packets. Participants learned effective guidelines to follow and began applying these in showcasing their own work.

Workshop topics

• Introduction and Preparing Your Educator’s CV – Dr. Philip Mixter
• Framing Your Teaching Portfolio/Reflective Document – Dr. Steve Lampa
• Writing Your Teaching Portfolio/Educator’s Reflective Document and Appendices – Drs. Susan Matthew and Jeffrey Abbott

Preparing your dossier learning community

The learning community was launched following the workshop. Participants met about every three weeks to discuss and provide feedback on dossier development. An educator’s professional dossier integrates an educator’s CV, a teaching portfolio of highlighted activities, and appendices of data. Taking time to develop an effective dossier is useful to educators at all stages of their careers, including preparing promotion applications, award nominations, teaching development, and career advancement.

February 24 | Attendance: 11

Facilitators

Description

This 4 hour in-person workshop addressed the fundamentals of effective teaching in class-rooms and laboratories.

Workshop topics

• Intentionally Designing for Learning – Dr. Susan Matthew
• Writing Learning Objectives – Drs. Samantha Gizerian and Steve Lampa
• Multiple-Choice Exams as Problem Solving Assessment- What? – Drs. Lynne Nelson and Briedi Gillespie
• Non-MCQ Assessments – Dr. Jeffrey Abbott
• Enhancing Teaching: Active Learning Strategies – Drs. Rachel Halsey and Sarah Guess
• Further Resources and Feedback – Drs. Susan Matthew and Lynne Nelson

March 31 | Attendance: 15

Facilitators

Description

This 2 hour in-person workshop addressed the fundamentals of effective clinical teaching:

• How to create active learning in rounds
• How to maximize case-based clinical teaching and feedback
• How to assess progress in learning

Workshop topics

• Creating Active Learning in Rounds settings – Drs. Jillian Haines and Sarah Guess
• Maximize case-based feedback – Dr. Jeffrey Abbott
• Assessing Progress in Clinical Learning – Dr. Lynne Nelson
• Further Resources and Feedback – Dr. Lynne Nelson

• All sessions were in hybrid fashion (classroom & video conferenced via Zoom)
• There were 6 seminars and 2 panel discussions (2 spring, 6 fall)
• Attendance totaled 103
• Average attendance per session for 2023, 13 people

April 12 | Panel discussion: Peer observation from all sides

Description

This panel focused on the CVM Teaching Academy Peer Observation of Teaching program. Participants heard from four different perspectives on what it was like to be part of the Peer Observation of Teaching program.

Panelists

• Peer Observation Co-Chairs: Drs. Philip Mixter & Jeffrey Abbott
• Observer: Dr. Tania Perez
• Both Observee & Observer: Dr. Sabrina Hoehne
• Observee: Dr. Ryan Baumwart

April 19 | Educational research grant presentations

Description

WriteSTEM: Virtual Tools to Help Stu-dents Improve Their Writing Skills

Primary investigators

• Drs. Philip Mixter, Martina Ederer, & Michael Dunn

August 18 | Fostering inclusive excellence: Building a collaborative learning community

Description

This interactive session introduced participants to “What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching” and explored participants’ intentions and goals for reading the book together in a learning community. Holly Henning and Cameron Peace were both members of the Swantz Teaching and Learning Community within CAHNRS over Summer and enjoyed many connections with CAHNRS colleagues who strived for teaching and learning excellence.

Presenters

• Dr. Holly Henning
• Dr. Cameron Peace

September 19 | Overview of the Access Center & student accommodations

Description

Ever wondered about the process of accommodations for students with disabilities? Understanding the process can be very helpful to instructors and help ensure that accommodations are reasonable and appropriate, which is in everyone’s best interest. In the session, Matthew Jeffries briefly discussed the Americans with Disabilities Act and compliance requirements. He provided an overview of how the process of determining reasonable and appropriate accommodations worked in general and explained how the Access Center existed to support instructors in navigating accommodations in their teaching. A case study was discussed.

Presenter

• Dr Matthew Jeffries

September 28 | Exploring educational research: CVM Teaching Academy educational research grant program panel discussion

Description

Participants were invited to listen to a panel discussion featuring three past recipients of the Educational Research Grant as they discussed their experiences with the grant program and shared more information about their projects.

Panel

• Drs. Sarah Guess, Jillian Haines, & Philip Mixter

October 18 | Highlighting innovation: Presentations from the Regional Teaching Academy Conference

Description

During the seminar, participants heard from three presenters who showcased their innovative teaching strategies at the Biennial Regional Teaching Academy Summer Conference. Participants gained ideas for fostering student engagement, leveraging technology, and enhancing assessment as a learning tool.

• Training the Facilitator: Developing an eLearning module to enhance clinical teaching for a high-fidelity role-playing simulation. Presented by Rachel Halsey, DVM, GCertEd (Research Methods)
• Coupling Science Communication Training with Immunology Content. Presented by Philip Mixter, PhD
• Are students learning for the test? A three-stage process to enhance assessment as a learning tool. Presented by Jeffrey Abbott, DVM, PhD

Our Inclusive Teaching Learning Communities for 2023-2024 are based on “What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching” by Tracie Marcella Abby, et al. The Learning Communities aim to facilitate collaborative, self-directed groups of educators interested in refreshing and reinforcing inclusive teaching within our classrooms or clinical settings.

November 7 | Opportunities to advance clinical assessments using competency-based resources

Description

The seminar started by giving a brief overview of the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) Competency-Based Veterinary Education (CBVE) Model. This was followed by a review of the WSU CVM’s current clinical assessments and a discussion of potential future directions for improving clinical and pre-clinical assessments using the CBVE resources.

Presenters

• Drs. Jessica Bunch & Marcie Logsdon

November 30 | Open book/note examinations in DVM Year 3 VM551 Small Animal Medicine – 3 years’ experience

Description

“For me, COVID-mandated open book/open note examinations in the Fall of 2020. Based on what I’ve experienced and observed since, I don’t see myself returning to closed book/note examinations.” During the session, Dr. Sellon explained how and why he has come to embrace open book/open note examinations.

Presenter

• Dr. Rance Sellon

In the Summer Teaching Toolkit Series, we explored topics intended to assist participants in build their instructional “toolkit” and provide ideas that could be applied during the school year.

The Teaching Toolkit format

• Faculty, residents, and graduate students from the CVM and across WSU are invited to attend these mini-workshops.
• We intend for these workshops to be active learning sessions. Participants will be introduced to each topic/idea and will then engage, interact, and create products (where appropriate).
• Ideally, participants will leave each session with one or two lessons they can apply to their teaching

Total 2023 attendance

Total attendance to all 8 sessions was 131 participants, comprised of 69 individuals. The group included faculty members, graduate students, and staff members.

Teaching Toolkit Series

May 11 | Reinforcing learning: How to incorporate starting pauses

Description

Pausing for 2-3 minutes during a lecture/clinical teaching can significantly increase short-term memory and embed knowledge into students’ long-term memory (Ruhl, et al., 1987; Prince, 2004). Joining this session allowed participants to experience examples of how pausing at the start of teaching provided an opportunity to focus attention, use pre-dictions, and assess previous knowledge.

Objectives

• Discuss the benefits of using opening pauses
• Critique examples of opening pauses
• Develop your starting pauses

Presenters

• Dr. Jane Wardrop, Kathryn Jackson, Lydia Lam, & Dr. Samantha Gizerian

May 17 | Simple! Designing effective multi-media learning resources

Description

Effective multimedia learning resources are simple and follow evidence-based design principles. This session provided participants the opportunity to learn and apply key principles of multimedia learning to create educational resources such as training videos, PowerPoints, or eLearning courses.

Presenter

• Dr. Rachel Halsey

May 24 | Reinforcing learning: How to incorporate closing pauses

Description

Pausing for 2-3 minutes during a lecture/clinical teaching can significantly increase short-term memory and embed knowledge into students’ long-term memory (Ruhl, et al., 1987; Prince, 2004). Joining this session allowed participants to see how closing pauses can provide opportunities to capture learning, review, integrate, apply, and summarize.

Objectives

• Discuss the benefits of using closing pauses
• Critique examples of closing pauses
• Develop your closing pauses

Presenters

• Drs. Jillian Haines, Jeffrey Abbott, & Mara Varvil

May 31 | Dossier dilemmas

Description

A thorough professional dossier is valuable in promotion applications, award nominations, and teaching development. In the session, participants critiqued examples of dossier components and demonstrated how collegial feedback could be used to create effective outcomes.

Objectives

• Describe practical challenges to preparing their dossier
• Critique and provide feedback on sample dossier components
• Discuss characteristics of effective submissions

Presenters

• Dr. Susan Matthew, Dr. Mara Varvil, & Lydia Lam

June 7 | Learning how to incorporate an Audience Response System (ARS), Top Hat in your teaching to improve student engagement

Description

The interactive session was focused on first reminding participants about best practices in constructing multiple-choice questions and then collaborating with others to hone their assessment skills. Participants were encouraged to bring exam questions to the session and share them with colleagues who did not have their content expertise. The goal was for participants to leave with tips, resources to enhance their test writing, and new colleagues to work with in this collaborative process.

Presenters

• Drs. Briedi Gillespie & Lynne Nelson

June 14 | Using Canvas when teaching in-person

Description

What purpose does Canvas serve when you are teaching a face-to-face course? Much of the learning in your class happens outside of the physical classroom, while students study and complete work outside of the scheduled meeting times. Beyond simply hosting all the files you share with students, Canvas has the potential to structure how students learn outside of class. In this training, various module structures were reviewed to demonstrate how intentional course design could improve students’ user experience. Participants reflected on their current Canvas course spaces and brainstormed how different organizational structures might remove some of the administrative burdens of teaching, giving them more time to plan powerful learning experiences.

Presenters

• Brian Malone

June 21 | How do I write effective multiple-choice questions? Answer: E. All of the above

Description

The interactive session was focused on first reminding participants about best practices in constructing multiple-choice questions and then collaborating with others to hone their assessment skills. Participants were encouraged to bring exam questions to the session and share them with colleagues who did not have their content expertise. The goal was for participants to leave with tips, resources to enhance their test writing, and new colleagues to work with in this collaborative process.

Presenters

• Drs. Briedi Gillespie & Lynne Nelson

June 28 | Assessments, oh my! Other tools to promote learning

Description

The interactive session discussed principles and examples of assessment options other than using Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ).

Presenters

• Dr. Jeffrey Abbott

The Summer Program implementation & influences

The CVM Teaching Academy summer program has been going strong for 12 years. The program is based on a book/journal club and/or the Summer Teaching Toolkit series. Data collected over the past 11 years are summarized below.

Our Teaching Toolkit Series was implemented across 2017 – 2023. **For 2022 we incorporated BOTH the Teaching Toolkit series and a book club over the summer

Participants from inside and outside the College of Veterinary Medicine

Our Active Learning Communities for 2022-2023 were based on Hitting Pause, by Gail Taylor Rice. The Learning Communities aim to facilitate collaborative, self-directed groups of educators interested in enhancing and reinforcing teaching and learning in classrooms and clinical settings.

A total of three Learning Communities were formed in 2022 and met approximately every three weeks from September to discuss, plan, and share lessons learned from applying pauses in teaching. Meetings continued through to April 2023.

Each learning community had the opportunity to adjust the suggested schedule and establish facilitators for each of their sessions. The three groups included a total of 19 community members (Tuesday = 8, Wednesday = 8, Thursday = 3). A collaborative space was created in Microsoft Teams to aid collaboration among each group.

Attendance

• September – 17
• October – 12
• November – 12
• December – 11
• January – 11
• February A – 14
• February B – 10
• March – 9
• April A – 3
• April B – 7

Active Learning Community Members

Preparing your dossier learning community

The Preparing Your Dossier Learning Community was launched following the Preparing Your Promotion Packet workshop held in January 2023. The purpose of the Learning Community was to provide a context where those who had teaching as a significant part of their job description and/or professional identity could make progress on developing their dossiers. The Educator’s Professional Dossier integrates an Educator’s CV, Teaching Portfolio of highlighted activities, and Supporting Materials for the portfolio comprised of appendices of detailed data. Taking time to develop an effective dossier is useful to educators at all stages of their careers, including preparing promotion applications, award nominations, teaching development, and career advancement.

Dossier Community Members

Discussions

• Mar 8 (12 noon): Overall Packet Structure
• Mar 29 (12 noon): Teaching Philosophy Statement
• Apr 19 (11 AM): Domain 1A Portfolio Entry
• May 17(11 AM):Preparing for Summer Toolkit
• May 31(11 AM):Preparing for Summer Toolkit
• Jun 20 (3 PM): Domains 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D, bring draft entries for CV, portfolio and/or appendices
• Sept 19 (3 PM): Domain 5, bring draft entries for CV, portfolio and/or appendices
• Oct 10 (3 PM): Domain 6, bring draft entries for CV, portfolio and/or appendices
• Oct 31 (3 PM): Teaching Portfolio Executive Summary, bring draft, plus draft Executive Summary of your overall work activities if you would like to include this in your dossier
• Dec 5 (3 PM): Overall Context Statement, bring draft. You are welcome to bring drafts of additional context statements if recommended by your Chair/Director.

Inclusive teaching learning communities

Inclusive teaching involves any number of teaching approaches that address the needs of students with a variety of backgrounds, learning modalities, and abilities. These strategies contribute to an overall in-clusive learning environment in which all students perceive they are valued and able to succeed.

A total of three Learning Communities were formed in 2023 and have met approximately every three weeks from September to discuss, plan, and share lessons learned from applying pauses in teaching. The three groups include a total of 20 community members (Monday = 6, Tuesday = 7, Wednesday = 7). Each learning community has the opportunity to self-select facilitators for each of their sessions and adjust their schedule to suit the group. A shared space was created in Microsoft Teams for each group to aid collaboration and discussion. Meetings will continue through April 2024.

Attendance

• September – 19
• October A – 6
• October B – 17
• November 9
• December – 11

Inclusive Teaching Community Members

More than 75% of U.S. public school students struggle significantly with writing skills (National Assessment for Educational Progress; NCES, 2017); these challenges can continue into their university education (Artemeva and Fox, 2011; Reiff and Bawarshi, 2011). This study is designed to help upper-division STEM students at Washington State University Pullman (MBioS 304 N=96, each fall and spring; MBioS 430 N=35, fall only) improve their writing skills (e.g., lab reports) through strategy instruction that supports writing transfer and genre awareness specifically. Drs. Mixter, Ederer, and Dunn will create web tools, e.g., 5-7 instructional videos explaining rubrics for writing assignments addressing the writing styles included in the genre of lab reports, supplemented short video about the features of low and high-quality exemplars.

Students in these classes can then apply the writing strategies and techniques to improve their STEM writing skills. The research questions for this study are: What are participants’ perspectives about writing? Do participants improve with respect to writing content and quality with the use of WriteSTEM? How do instructor(s) and students evaluate the WriteSTEM approach?

Dr. Dunn developed a number of creative webtools which pilot tested during spring and fall 2020. A small number of STEM students volunteered to participate. We will develop additional genre-specific webtools and incorporate these WriteSTEM resources into the class curricula. Drs. Mixter, Ederer, and Dunn aim to make WriteSTEM part of the class writing routines for all lab sections . To further incentivize students, we can offer extra credit opportunities to encourage all students to participate . We are planning to present the data and results obtained from this study at a STEM education conference and prepare a manuscript in a STEM education journal. Ultimately, we will use the data from this study to seek additional funding from an external grant agency. All of these efforts will help identify best practices supporting writing skills development in upper division STEM courses.

Dec. 2021 update: The WriteSTEM project’s aim is to explore STEM student’s perspectives about writing and determine what types of webtools could help to improve their skills. These students were surveyed, interviewed and given a list of webtools to employ independently for improvement. During fall 2021 MBioS 430, the survey (N=11; 7 White, 1 Black/African American, 1 Asian, and 1 Multiracial), interviews (N=4), and editor feedback (N=4) were conducted within Dr. Mixter’s class. The survey results indicated that students’ greatest areas of difficulty were in reading assigned texts, drafting their writing assignment, knowing what edits to make, and having a positive perspective in attaining a good grade. The interview data indicated that students have a good sense of themselves as a writer but feel unsure as to how to improve their skills in an efficient manner that would demonstrate noticeable improvement. We provided 13 webtools (e.g., short videos, infographics) for students to access within a Canvas Module. Trish Hartzell, a retired science faculty from the University of Idaho served as the editor. The process for Trish to be added as non-paid WSU personnel took until about Week 10; this resulted in Trish having just a short time to offer students’ feedback on their writing, asynchronously, within OneDrive. The research team is doing a second data collection round with Dr. Ederer’s MBioS 304 students in spring 2022.

Dec. 2022 update: More than 75% of U.S. public school students struggle significantly with writing skills. These challenges continue to affect students into their university education. This study is aimed at helping upper-division STEM students at Washington State University Pullman (MBioS 304 and MBioS 430 N=35 [fall only]; N=12 fall 2021, N=9 spring 2022) improve their writing skills through strategy instruction that supports writing transfer and genre awareness. Drs. Mixter, Ederer, and Dunn used provided writing webtool links posted on the respective LMS for each class as offered students access to an editor, who would offer detailed feedback on students’ drafts. The research questions for this study were: what are participants’ perspectives about writing? Do participants’ writing content and quality improve with use of WriteSTEM? What were the instructor(s) and students’ thoughts about WriteSTEM? The participants demographics were collected. The survey indicated that attaining answers to questions about the writing assignment was the most difficult aspect of writing for students followed by spelling, editing, and finding source texts. A portion of the students (N=8) participated in a 1:1 interview about their writing strengths and weaknesses, what resources they find helpful and how sources could be improved. Most students started a writing assignment near the due date, relied on their own writing skills, may ask for peer feedback, and liked using Grammarly. Analysis of the assignments completed with the editor’s feedback is in progress. We suspect that students’ content and quality will improve during the project.

Dec. 2023 update: The ERG manuscript is currently under review with a journal. Abstract: Many students struggle with writing. The most recent United States National Assessment of Educational Progress-Writing (2011) results indicated that as few as 24% of eighth- and twelfth-grade students could write at a proficient level. Writing challenges such as spelling, organizing ideas, not knowing what edits to make, not reviewing rubrics and not reading high quality exemplars often persist for students into university. This study’s focus on informational texts (e.g., lab report writing) is an example of how students need to learn and review techniques and practice a unique genre to produce a high-quality product. This action research study’s components included an online survey about writing, webtools (e.g., strategy videos, instructor’s discussion of the rubric, high quality exemplars), follow-up interviews to further investigate undergraduate STEM students’ (n=19) perspectives about writing, and asynchronous editing feedback. The results (survey’s descriptive statistics and Spearman correlations; qualitative data’s themes and subthemes) indicated that while students had a
positive perspective on writing, the multi-faceted nature of composing text posed challenges for them.

The Smith project is still in data collection.

The aim of Project ImproveWRITING: Mixed Method Access Tools to Improve Student STEM Writing is to help STEM students at Washington State University and other universities and colleges in the United States with lab report writing. Drs. Mixter, Ederer, Dunn, and undergraduate student Emma Ledbetter have been approaching STEM instructors and students to complete a survey (as of November 18, 2023: 67 student respondents; 11 instructors) about students’ writing skills, engage in a few follow-up interviews (2 students; 2 instructors), and create web tools (e.g., videos detailing rubrics for writing assignments, low and high-quality exemplars of writing assignments with a particular focus on the genre of lab reports) to help improve their text content and quality. Students are also offered 1:1 editing feedback at WSU Pullman or via Zoom. One more student interview and one instructor interview are scheduled for late fall 2023. Our hope is to attain eight of each group for an interview.

• Dunn, M. (2024). Project ImproveWRITING: Undergraduate students and instructors’ perspectives on writing webtools [Poster or multi-presentation session]. Council for Exceptional Children’s 2024 Annual Convention, San Antonio, Texas, United States.
• Dunn, M., Mixter, P., Ederer, M., Ledbetter, E., & Aldousari, A. WriteSTEM: Virtual tools to help students improve their writing skills. Manuscript submitted September 30, 2023, to the Canadian Journal of Action Research.
• Mixter, P., Dunn, M., Ledbetter, E., s & Ederer, M. (2023, March 30). WriteSTEM: Virtual Tools to Help Students Improve Their Writing Skills [poster session]. Washington State University’s (Research) Showcase, Pullman, Washington, United States.
• Dunn, M., Yuan, W., s Gregory, K., s Mixter, P., Alharbi, H., s Aldousari, A. s (2023, March 2). Research-based solutions for struggling writers’ learned helplessness
  [Poster session]. Council for Exceptional Children’s 2023 Annual Convention, Louisville, Kentucky, United States.
• Dunn, M., Olson, W., & Zajic, M. (2022, October 30). SkribaTools: Web tools to help people improve their writing skills for educational and career opportunities. Submitted to the Honda USA Foundation.
• Dunn, M., Yuan, W., Gregory, K., Mixter, P., Alharbi, H., Aldousari, A. (submitted November 9, 2022). Research-based solutions for struggling writers’ learned
  helplessness [Poster session]. Council for Exceptional Children’s 2023 Annual Virtual Convention, Louisville, Kentucky, United States.
• Dunn, M., & Yuan, W. (2022, February 1-4). Integrating writing interventions into classroom practices: Text tools for transition-aged STEM students [Poster session]. Council for Exceptional Children Virtual Conference, Orlando,
  Florida, United States.

April 2022 (WSU): Awarded the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Teaching and Learning Grant from the Vice Provost for Academic Engagement and Student Achievement in the amount of $5,000.00 for your proposal entitled, “ImproveWRITING: Mixed-Method Access Tools to Improve Student STEM Writing.”

WSU committee members: Heloisa Rutigliano, Raelynn Farnsworth, Samantha Gizerian, Briedi Gillespie, Sarah Guess, Susan Matthew

The group comprises the subcommittees below.

Clinical teaching: An accomplishment was the development and successful execution of a full-day clinical teaching workshop before the RTA Biennial Conference. It focused on personal and professional well-being, active learning, and feedback to enhance educators’ clinical teaching effectiveness.

Educator wellbeing: The “Tending to Those Who Teach” Wellbeing Initiative came to an end in the Spring of 2023 with the awarding of 10 Amazon gift cards to participants. The Areas of Worklife Survey and MBI Educators Survey remain open and ideas of how to increase participation are being considered.

VETS Fundamentals and VETS Selective: It is planned to conduct VETS Fundamentals as a 1.5-day workshop at MidWestern University in February 2024, in conjunction with the Winter meeting. This year, VETS Selectives showcased Team-Based Learning (TBL) at the Summer Biennial Pre-Conference Workshop.

WSU committee member: Jillian Haines

The working group developed a teaching effort calculator that was adapted and refined from similar calculators in use at CSU and WSU. The revised teaching effort calculator was presented at the 2023 Biennial Meeting, and attendees tested the calculator, provided feedback and additional modifications were made in response to the feedback. Currently, this calculator is being made available for testing in more detail at member RTA institutions with the plan to provide training, collect feed back from faculty and begin work on a publication in the Journal of Veterinary Medical Education. Parallel to this activity will be learning how institutions assess and credit teaching effort across different formats (lecture, labs, problem-based learning, team-based learning, clinics, etc.), so that this calculator can be adapted to different institutions.

WSU committee members: Jeffrey Abbott, Philip Mixter, Erika Offerdahl, Steve Lampa, Susan Matthew

The committee reviewed promotion/review packets from 5 faculty and generated review letters for promotion actions, which were all ultimately successful. At the Biennial Conference, a summary of the group’s work was presented and a workshop was delivered allowing participants to review redacted submissions (with permissions) to learn more about how to prepare and review packets. Another documentation awareness workshop was presented by select group members at the Veterinary Educator’s

Collaborative meeting at Texas Tech in October. Internationally, Susan Matthew presented a workshop entitled “Showcasing and Evaluating Educator Activities for Career Advancement Decisions” at the VetEd conference at the University of Edinburgh.

Several new working group members were solicited from member colleges and faculty with educational expertise from other colleges were excited to be introduced to our process as invited reviewers.

WSU Committee Members: Samantha Gizerian & Leslie Sprunger

Beginning in 2023, the Membership Committee will accept new fellowship applications each year. Applications are now available on the RTA website and through membership committee members year-round. While applications will be accepted year-round, they will only be reviewed in the fall.

WSU Committee Members: Jillian Haines, Sarah Guess, Rachel Halsey

The theme of the 6th Biennial Conference was “Cultivating Connections & Community.” There was a total of 65 attendees, from all seven member colleges and a representative from AAVMC. Keynote speakers included: Dr. Benjamin Wiggins, Professor of Biology at Shoreline Community College, who spoke about student engagement; and Dr. Marie Holowaychuk, who spoke about wellness. Dr. Andrew McCabe, Chief Executive Officer of the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) was a guest speaker. The conference also included additional workshops, educational scholarship, and teaching innovations presentations. Additionally, in conunction with the conference, the RTA delivered VETS Clinical Teaching and VETS

Selective: Team Based Learning training, each a day-long workshop series.

WSU Committee Members: Samantha Gizerian (Chair) & Susan Matthew

The steering committee is focusing on communication. They are working with an external website developer to improve the flow and function of the current RTA website and adopted the AAVMC Connect platform for membership communication. The committee is drafting a proposal to formalize the process of converting an interest group into a working group.