Relationship-Rich Education with Isis Artze-Vega

Isis Artze-Vega is college provost and vice president for academic affairs at Valencia College, a public college in Florida with over 40,000 students. Isis is also the co-author of a book on relationship-rich education, which was the topic of her closing plenary session at the 2024 POD Network conference in November. That plenary was fantastic and before it was even over, I made plans to invite Isis on the podcast to talk about the value of relationships in learning.

Isis is the co-author of Connections Are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education, which she wrote with Peter Felten, Leo Lambert, and Oscar Miranda Tapia. You might also know her as a co-author, along with Flower Darby, Bryan Dewsbury, and Mays Imad, of The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching. In our conversation, Isis and I talk about the two books and her involvement in them, the value of trusting relationships in the learning context, ways that instructors can help students cultivate relationships in college, and how online learning and generative AI might actually be used to foster relationships. 

Episode Resources

·       Isis Artze-Vega on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/isis-artze-vega-69952418/

·       Connections Are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education, https://press.jhu.edu/books/title/12845/connections-are-everything

·       Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College, https://press.jhu.edu/books/title/12146/relationship-rich-education 

·       The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching, https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393893717 

·       The Liquid Syllabus from Michelle Pacansky-Brock, https://brocansky.com/humanizing/liquidsyllabus 

Podcast Links:

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Transcript

Derek Bruff 0:06
Welcome to the Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. I’m your host, Derek Bruff. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher over time.

Isis Artze-Vega is college provost and vice president for academic affairs at Valencia College, a public college in Florida with over 40,000 students. Isis is also the co-author of a book on relationship-rich education, which was the topic of her closing plenary session at the 2024 POD Network conference in November. That plenary was fantastic and before it was even over, I made plans to invite Isis on the podcast to talk about the value of relationships in learning.

Isis is the co-author of Connections Are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education, which she wrote with Peter Felten, Leo Lambert, and Oscar Miranda Tapia. You might also know her as a co-author, along with Flower Darby, Bryan Dewsbury, and Mays Imad, of The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching. In our conversation, Isis and I talk about the two books and her involvement in them, the value of trusting relationships in the learning context, ways that instructors can help students cultivate relationships in college, and how online learning and generative AI might actually be used to foster relationships. 

Isis is a wealth of knowledge and wisdom in this area, and I’m very excited to share this interview with you! 

Isis, thank you so much for coming on Intentional Teaching. I'm glad to have you on the podcast and talk with you for a little bit today. Thanks for thanks for being here. 

Isis Artze-Vega 1:48
I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Derek Bruff 1:51
And I'd like to ask you my usual opening question. Can you tell us about a time when you realized you wanted to be an educator? 

Isis Artze-Vega 2:02
I had no idea that the journey would lead me to education or to teaching, which some of the people who have known me my whole life would wouldn't believe. But I promise I wouldn't lie to you. And I remember when I had my first experience of teaching my own English composition course at the University of Miami as a graduate student, where I was at once terrified and in love. I had met my husband recently and had a similar experience of like, Oh my goodness, it's taken me this long, but I have finally found someone who I think I could spend my life with. And I similarly was in that classroom with a set of students looking at them again with with fear and recognizing that I was not ready to do right by them. And yet so in love with the profession, I felt a sense of relief and an awe and excitement, and I thought for sure that I would teach and that I would teach English composition forever. 

Derek Bruff 3:01
And yet you have not. 

Isis Artze-Vega 3:03
But that is correct. 

Derek Bruff 3:05
Because I'm also interested in your transition from an instructor of of English and composition to first to educational development. And now I think you've got a broader position because, you know, when I went to grad school, my plan was to be a college math professor and then I worked at a teaching center as a grad fellow, and that kind of changed my professional career path in some pretty significant ways. So I'm curious when... what did that kind of turn look like in your career path towards educational development? 

Isis Artze-Vega 3:37
I think that the much like I didn't anticipate that I would fall in love with teaching, I was really pushed into not teaching for a little bit so that I could fund my doctoral work. And I really fought that. They said, We're going to need you not to teach for a few years. So that we can have another assistantship pay for your doctorate. And I said, Well, I don't think that's possible because I don't want to ever not teach. So I kind of fought it. But then ultimately I realized that the opportunity to earn a doctoral degree at virtually no cost was just such an enormous privilege that I couldn't say no to it. And my job was to support graduate students from across the university, across disciplines, in preparing to teach one day and to be faculty. So I led a program called Preparing Future Faculty and was supporting grad students. And I thought, Well, this is a different kind of lovely, right? I can see them and how scared they are. And I was able to partner with, right, future faculty and all of the students that they were reaching and would reach one day. And that really opened my mind to the possibilities of administration. And just I know sometimes faculty we would get a bad rap for being a little difficult to work with or argumentative, but I have found faculty to just be the most wonderful partners and thought partners and critics and co learners. And I just loved every minute of the work that I got to do as a faculty and educational developer. 

Derek Bruff 5:04
So now you're at Valencia and you have a different kind of position. What what do you do at Valencia? How do you describe that. 

Isis Artze-Vega 5:12
The cheat? When when I cheat, I say I'm the provost and then, you know, people nod. But that's not a real answer to your question, Derek. So I will say that as a teaching focused institution, a lot of my responsibility continues to be educational development, right, to support faculty and to create an institution that values and makes excellent teaching possible for our students. I also, of course, have a great deal of responsibility in our strategic work, right, and our commitment as a community college to ensuring students in our community of all ages and all backgrounds have access and real access to education, that they maintain momentum toward the completion of a degree because that is what will change their lives, that those who want to transfer to university can do so in a relatively seamless way and be successful after they transfer. And likewise that students who want a a more short term credential that go straight to the workforce, that they can do that as well. So really the full portfolio of the mission of a community college is my responsibility. 

Derek Bruff 6:14
That's a big job. 

Isis Artze-Vega 6:15
It's a it's a big and it's a lovely and rewarding job that I get to do with awesome people. 

Derek Bruff 6:20
That's great. That's great. Well, and I love thinking about someone in that kind of role who has a faculty background and a faculty development background. I think that that brings brings a really great skillset to that kind of work. That's really exciting.

Isis Artze-Vega 6:33
Thanks, I hope so. 

Derek Bruff 6:35
Yeah. So you're on the podcast to talk about relationship rich education, so there's a lot we could talk about there, but it seems to be there's a project now. There was a book and now it's bigger than one book. Can you tell us a little bit about that overall project and how you came to be involved with it? 

Isis Artze-Vega 6:54
Absolutely. And first, I have to say that I was and I was not an original part of this project. So I'll clarify. Peter Felten and Leo Lambert both at Elon University had this idea, What if we write a book about relationships and how much they matter and what we can do as practitioners? And I have am good friend of theirs. And so I vetted even their pitch and their proposal. So I was there from the beginning when this wasn't a thing yet. And I said, you know, after some conversation, I think you have something good here. I think you should keep going.

And they did this wonderful research across the country, talked to faculty and students and staff and individuals in a number of roles and gathered this beautiful illustration of what it looks like when institutions are intentional about cultivating relationship rich education. And that is the title of their first book, Relationship Rich Education. And I had the honor of writing co-writing the foreword to that book.

Then, you know, they got a lot of feedback and a lot of appreciation for that work and for this framing of relationship rich education and some individuals said to them, This is what we can do as higher ed practitioners. Students can do so much. I wonder who's telling students this is really important to your success and here are the things that you can do for yourself so that the students aren't simply relying on those of us who work at a college or university to do our part. They, of course, have agency and ability to cultivate their own relationship rich education. So that led to book number two. 

And here I was invited to serve as co-author together with Oscar Miranda Tapia, another... a brilliant young scholar. And so the four of us then spoke to more students to make sure, right, that we weren't relying on older data, especially post COVID. We talked to students from across the country and a number of institutional types, and they told us, in their words, how much of a difference having relationships with each other, with faculty, with staff, with their supervisors made to them. And we get to tell their stories in the book Connections Are Everything: A College Student Guide to Relationship Rich Education, as well as a lot of how to for students to kind of break it down. Right.

So on the one hand, we want them to know that relationships matter and that the research says relationships matter. We want them to hear from their peers so that they don't have to take our word for it is kind of four older people. And then we wanted to say, okay, if you are starting to believe us here are some little things you can do that will make a big difference. And it doesn't have to be an enormous project. Here are small steps that you might take. So that's kind of the genesis and how we got to where we are today. 

Derek Bruff 9:41
Yeah, I love that. About a year ago I had a conversation with Jeff Selingo, the author and former Chronicle journalist, and I was I was going to him for career advice because I was at a career transition. And and one of the things he said because he you know, his last book was about the college admissions process. 

Isis Artze-Vega 10:02
Yes, I know that one. 

Derek Bruff 10:03
He's writing another book on that as well. And I and one of the things he said to me was that there's actually stuff that he's done, but lots of other resources aimed at helping students get to college or pick a college. But there's far less aimed at helping them succeed once they get there. And so it sounds like it sounds like your book is is is targeting that that need out there for students to kind of figure out how can I get the most out of this? How can I make this really work for me? 

Isis Artze-Vega 10:31
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. 

Derek Bruff 10:33
Yeah. Yeah. Well, this podcast is aimed at faculty, and so instead of asking you to to share advice for students, I'd like to I'd like to pick your brain a little bit about how faculty and other instructors might help foster this type of relationship-rich education. And I reached out to you because you gave you led the anchor session, the final plenary session at the POD Network conference in November, focused on relationship rich education. And you you made some arguments about strategies and approaches that faculty can use to do this. And so I'm going to ask you to kind of elaborate on some of those. And and yeah, well, we'll see where this conversation takes us.

One of the things you said is that faculty should teach students about the value of relationships in their education. So why why should faculty do that and how can they go about doing that? 

Isis Artze-Vega 11:27
Great question. And first, I want to say that if I were a faculty member listening to your podcast and I wasn't yet convinced that I want to do this right, why would I want to do this, not how, I would say a couple of quick things there. One is that the research is really well-established and it was long before Peter and Leo's book Relationship Rich Education, that relationships really matter so much to students, short and long term outcomes as students, including their learning. And so this is a big one for me, right, as a faculty member and as an educational developer. And I know my fellow faculty are deeply committed to student learning and learning is relational and is deeper and more powerful when we are entrusting relationships. Stephen Brookfield called Trust the affective glue of educational relationships, and when students trust us and each other and feel safe, they can do harder intellectual things. So I want to want to make sure to frame one of the big picture why's.

The other why that I would share to our with our very busy and overworked faculty, right, as as we know many of us are, is to say, if you teach students to cultivate a network of relationships within and outside of your class, it kind of lowers the stakes for you. I've been hearing faculty say, especially since the pandemic, Oh my gosh, I'm doing all of these things and I'm I'm draining and there's not enough of me and my time. And I so appreciate all the faculty did and continue to do. And yet there really is a limit to how much any one individual faculty member can do right now. I say to my faculty, Please, you have my permission to stop. And so when we help students see that, yes, their faculty and all of them, not just the one that seems nice and friendly, all of their faculty members, their professors are individuals with whom they really should try to cultivate some connection, but they're also staff members and so many non instructional staff and administrators and leaders and supervisors. I think if we are all looking out for our students and helping them and they're doing this for themselves, then as an individual faculty member, I can say, okay, it's not all on me, right? So I wanted to start there with with a little bit of the why.

To answer your actual question about teaching students about the value of relationships, they are not scholars or of higher education, so they don't know. And I don't think it is intuitive, right. On the one hand, we say to students like, oh, what do you think it's going to is going to lead to your success in college? And they might say time management skills, good study skills, going to use the tutoring center, right? But the idea that spending time on something that could seem a little squishy, right, or soft or right to do like relationships isn't really intuitive. And as a society, we haven't talked to students about the power of relationships and or how to how to how to seek them out and generate them for themselves. So I do think being a little meta with students about here's the research and the research says that if you take the time to do this, your college experience will be more worthwhile. As an as an alumnus and as a graduate, you will, you know, think back on these connections and they will serve multiple purposes for you. Right? Some, you know, like networking might help you get a job, but others will be a source of safety, a source of joy, a source of constancy in a changing life. So so the benefits are in many, many categories. And unless we teach students about the value of relationships, then they certainly are not going to to to create the time for themselves to seek them out. 

Derek Bruff 15:24
Hmm. Yeah. And I hear you also draw a distinction between the relationship I might build with my student as as an instructor and, and the value of the relationships the students build, which would include me, but is inclusive of a lot of other people, too. 

Isis Artze-Vega 15:40
Exactly. Exactly. What Leo and Peter in the first book, they call it a constellation, right? You're helping students build this constellation of connections and you might be one star in their constellation, but how wonderful to see that you're a part of it, but you're not the whole thing. And they need individuals of different identities and backgrounds and roles to really cultivate that the rich relationships network or web or constellation, and that the research tells us, will make the biggest difference for them. 

Derek Bruff 16:11
Yeah, yeah. I'm doing a lot of reflecting on my own educational experience. I might share a little bit of that later, but what? Because I don't think I heard the term multiple mentors until I was nearing the end of my graduate work. Right. And the idea that I would need mentors and I would need them in different areas and to be able to offer kind of different perspectives on, on, on my career and my my academic work. 

Isis Artze-Vega 16:36
It's such a great point. Derek, if I may. You're right. I've heard a little bit more of that now in terms of me as a professional or young professionals. So it makes sense that if we think all the way back to to our undergraduate experience, that we likewise would have benefited from that same, right, multiple connections, multiple even forms of... even peers. So one of the points that that we make in Connections Are Everything is that your peers don't only serve one kind of role. They might have seen depicted in television or movies or social media, the kind of your friend as fun, right, source of fun. And also we learn more and better when we're together. We learn from each other. Some of the students describe to us, My peer was the only constant. Right. And in a in a time of so much change that these students had experienced, that knowing that I could have one person was my anchor, psychologically was really, really important. So really, we tried to tease out that even within one category of people, right, your peers, they they can and should serve different roles for you. 

Derek Bruff 17:41
Yeah. Yeah. So what what can an instructor do to try to communicate this value to students or to help them set up this constellation of relationships? 

Isis Artze-Vega 17:51
Yeah, I think carving out a little time to talk about it at minimum right. To especially early in the term and you could be a little meta about how you have done some things inside this class to help them connect to you and to each other, and then use that as an opportunity to kind of zoom out and help them. 

I'm hearing from faculty who are saying, thank you for this book and thank you for making it free, the e-version, which is a really important point to us. And we thank the Gardner Institute for that. And I assigned this chapter to my students because it was so easy for me to do. And then we talked about it. So you don't have to create content as a faculty member. We really hope that we've given you some really good, very short chapters, right? So this isn't a big lift for your students where they can read about it and have a conversation, whether that's in video form, in a discussion post or forum, in a physical classroom with you and with each other. But if you take the time to allocate, if you allocate class time, it signals again to them, well, this really must matter, right? Because class time is so precious and this isn't tangential or optional or soft. Right. Again, this is per my faculty member's expert opinion something valuable and worthy of our time. 

Derek Bruff 19:08
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that brings me to the next thing I wanted to talk to you about. You mentioned the value of trust in relationships and... Can you say more about that? What what role does trust play in a learning relationship and why is that sometimes hard to achieve? 

Isis Artze-Vega 19:29
I'm so glad you asked about trust because I'm kind of fixated on it, if I might confess, here. I don't think we've been talking about it enough in higher education. And I started thinking about trust a while ago, but really dug into the research as part of a different project. I was the lead author and the editor of the Norton Guide to Equity Minded Teaching, and we devoted a whole chapter to this, this idea, not idea, but the research on trust. And then some suggested pedagogical practices for earning and maintaining students' trust. So if I, if I was already sensing in my gut that we needed to do more, when I went into the research, I became just so, so convinced. 

And I'll tell you what, one data point that really stayed with me, the the the theory or the the kind of idea that trust is harder to to earn across difference. I understood that in a in a kind of abstract way. But the research post-COVID that asked young people about their levels of trust and then disaggregated those data showed that individuals whose backgrounds have not been centered or well-represented in higher education, that they are are much less likely to trust their faculty or administrators or just the organizations as a whole. So trust levels are lower than they have been historically, and they vary by students backgrounds and lived experiences.

And then there's another body of research, a really robust one from educational researchers telling us that trust is crucial to learning. And you heard me say that earlier, right? All my roads lead to learning. So so when students don't have the psychological safety that comes with a trusting relationship and environment, they really... we're competing with their brain that's trying to keep them safe. So no matter what we're asking them to do in our assignments, our projects, our groups discussions, right, that we crafted with such care and wanting to to to challenge them intellectually, if they're if they don't trust you or their peers or where they are, then their bandwidth is preoccupied, it's already being utilized for that protective role. And so then they cannot learn as much as we want them to.

So lots and lots of of why we need to to earn and maintain their trust. And if anyone is interested in that research, I would say we did a really good job. I'm proud of the of the research summary that we provide in the Norton Guide, which is also free, so I can share it without having any kind of a paywall there before you. So so a lot of the research on why trust matters.

And then what I also loved is that and faculty are telling me they really appreciate, is that it's doable, right? Like it sounds like how will I earn their trust, like this enormous wall to climb, when in fact the research is showing us that small things can make a really big difference? And and I'll share an example that will just seem so obvious. Well, you can't trust someone when you don't know anything about them, right? And yet... Right?  

Derek Bruff 22:45
A very rational response to not knowing anything about them is to be a little cautious.  

Isis Artze-Vega 22:50
Cautious. And so how many of us take the time to help students get to know us even beyond our role as their professor? And I think many faculty have taken strides and taken important steps here. So I don't want to suggest it's a brand new idea. But demystifying yourself, making yourself a three dimensional human who has hobbies and maybe a life and maybe interests outside of what you do, really goes a long way in in earning students trust, right? So they can trust you if they don't know you.

I found a wonderful study that has stayed with me where students talked about who they trusted the most in educational settings, and they they wanted to know... the questions going through students minds when they meet their their their educator was: Who are you? Here's a set of questions. Why are you here? What do you know about me? And how do you see yourself in relation to me right? So they're kind of scoping us out, Derek. They're kind of looking at us, right, Especially in the beginning. And they're wondering, Can I trust this person? Right? And in if they have no shared background with us, that might be they might be really, really wondering, can Itrust this person?

And so it's up to us to volunteer answers to those questions. To to kind of know that they're in enough of your students minds that it's your job to say, here's why I'm here, Here is how I'm going to work so hard so that you can be successful, here are all my students from the past who have been successful when they did these things and I did my job right, I did my work and they did their work. Here's why I teach. Here is what brings me to you every day to this work. And I know that, right? We probably have lots of things in common and other things that are different. And here's what I learned about you. And here are all the ways I want to get to know you, Right? So we really get ahead of those questions so that students can say, wait a second, maybe I can trust this person. They seem kind of different. They kind of seem to know what's on my mind and that I didn't automatically trust them.

So going through that kind of thought exercise and figuring out where you can intentionally build that into your course. The disclosures of your kind of real personhood, what you how you're going to support them. And then as we write in the Norton Guide, taking steps throughout your term to make sure that you do more of that, I'm still a human being. Here's this ridiculous thing I did or here's how I fell down, or I didn't know how to do this until a couple of years ago, right? We're humans and we're fallible and we make mistakes. And then asking them along the way how they're feeling in these learning environments, whether they think that they can come to you. If nobody is coming to you, that's another important data point that you don't have to collect, right? But when they trust you, they're going to seek out your guidance. They're going to raise their hand even when they're not sure. 

Derek Bruff 25:54
Some of it, it sounds like it's just I may walk in to my classroom with a certain set of assumptions about how students are going to think about me, and I just can't take those assumptions for granted. I have to kind of... even if they're they are, like I walk in and I want my students to do well, I am their their champion, their cheerleader, right? I am their evaluator and assessor, which is an awkward combo. But like I am, I'm rooting for them to learn a lot and to do well. But if I'm not taking active steps to communicate to that, they won't necessarily assume that because they've had plenty of instructors who don't walk in and and convey that in a meaningful way. 

Isis Artze-Vega 26:31
Right, Exactly. I love that so much. And because I have two daughters in high school, I'm also so frustrated by this narrative in their high school that when you get to college, they won't care. Right. I it's it makes me mad right. So so they have no it isn't something that that we have I, I, I worry about faculty members to your point who says of course they will know that I am here for them and I'm a champion of their success. That's why I'm here. It's just so obvious. How could I, Why would I need to say it? When in fact there are so many cultural and kind of societal messages that run counter to that that makes it more important that we are explicit. 

Derek Bruff 27:13
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I remember working with one faculty member who said, well, you know, I've I've got a lot to cover. So I cover it all in class. And if students need help, they they know where my door is, right? I've got office hours and I was like, I don't I don't think that's sufficient, actually. 

Well, and speaking of shifting college realities, let's talk a little bit about online teaching, because one of the things you mentioned at the POD Network session was to centralize relationships in online courses. And, you know, I still... Faculty I think have come a long way in the last four years since the pandemic of kind of viewing online education differently and having kind of a bigger set of tools to do that well. But I still think there is some hesitancy for faculty to think, can I really get to know my students if we're if we're online, especially if it's an asynchronous course? And so what would you say to faculty who are struggling to create relationships in their online courses? 

Isis Artze-Vega 28:12
First, I would say that I hear you, and that had I not had the experience of working so closely with Flower Darby, online guru, I might still be skeptical. And yet, because she shared so much with such a high level of specificity, what she does in her asynchronous online courses, I told her that after I read her case study that she wrote for for the Norton Guide, I thought to myself, I think I could do it. I could I could teach an asynchronous online class. I would have her her her words by me, and I would be using them like a road map, like day by day, practically as a crutch in the first time at least. But so I'll share some some ideas and also some of Flower's thoughts on why it is so crucial.

Even though I do think it can go without saying here that asynchronous online courses can be really lonely. Right? You you are entering a digital space, often with mostly text, perhaps some links and some videos, but not a lot of humans, a lot of text. So even human beings are represented by words that sometimes right can lack that the tonality, the intonation, the expression. And so it can be a somewhat of a of a of an experience that feels sterile. That's the word I was looking for, unfortunately. Right. And so you might have the safety of anonymity, right? Because nobody can see you. That's a different kind of safety. But you don't have the safety of knowing that there is a person guiding this experience and there is a set of peers who are learning with you that that is harder to create.

And so of course, Flower talks about the design and making sure that relationships are centered in the design. And isn't something that you try to superimpose on the courses or in the modules after the fact and offer some really good guidance about that in the in the Norton Guide. But then I really, really loved how she goes out of her way to have her students connect to her as their faculty member. And she tells the story of one day not being able to record a fancy video and edit it. And she grabbed her phone and kind of sent them a message and her kids were around and she was a mess. And she said, and I realized how well they responded to it. And what that taught her is they want to know there's a real person on the other end, right? And even our perfect zoom heads, if we're too polished, makes them question right how real we are and and whether our our life is too perfect to be, to be possible. 

So she said then when I started doing that from from then on. She would read all of their discussion posts or their projects and she would record this unpolished reaction to say, Oh my goodness, I just read all of your this and I noticed this and you've learned so much and you... and how those continual this is a key, a key principle of hers, continual communication was a key to them relating to her and never questioning if someone there on the other end of this black hole that is my online class. So an intentionality in design and then a real intentionality in being continually present for them and continually noticing their academic progress and your faith in their ability to succeed. 

Derek Bruff 31:41
I have to say I was I read Flower's section of that book, too, and I was I took a lot of notes. Like even the things to do a week before your class starts, right. How do you how do you reach out? How do you connect? How do you open your course in a way that helps students see there someone there you have a you have a guide, you have a host. 

Isis Artze-Vega 31:59
Thank you for saying that because it really blew my mind. I was so happy. And I think it's a gift to those of us who haven't taught asynchronous online courses, and I plan on doing that in the near future. So I'm really grateful for that resource. 

Derek Bruff 32:11
Yeah, I, I, I heard a keynote from by Michelle Pacansky Brock, who's done a lot of work in this area, and she showed a couple of examples of this. She just said, look, you know, if you're setting up your online course, take your phone, go someplace that's a little bit meaningful to you. It can be quirky or weird. It doesn't have to be super, you know, foundational to your experience or anything, but something that that it's kind of your place and record your welcome video right there on your phone. And you know and it's it's a simple it's a simple move. But I can imagine how it would help students see, Oh, yes. Okay, here's this person. Here's my person for this course. There is a person there. 

Isis Artze-Vega 32:51
I love that. And Michelle's research and work I find so, so helpful. 

Derek Bruff 32:57
Well, another another argument you made at the POD conference dealt with AI and so I'm curious, I think you said something like, leverage AI tools to free up time to do other things. And I'd love to hear you kind of expand on that. That seems hypothetically possible. But I think a lot of faculty are still wondering, like what what does that actually mean and how might I do that? 

Isis Artze-Vega 33:29
All right. And I won't pretend that I figured this one out at all. I'm happy to share where I was when I wrote that down, and I had attended a great session about AI, so I was inspired to think about the possibilities and the really positive possibilities. I shared that I taught English composition. And, you know, as much as I loved my job, when those mounds of physical papers were stacked on my dining room table, it was overwhelming. And I wonder, I have seen a good number of composition faculty and other faculty who assign writing benefit from... what if awhat if an AI tool generated the first round of feedback? What what wouldn't that even? How much of my time might that have freed up? And then I would be able to offer a different kind of feedback because some of that initial work that often really wasn't that, was pretty common year after year, group after group, could have been articulated by by my technology. So just one concrete example. But I'm hearing about efficiencies in identifying themes in students responses. So I would say let's keep listening for them.

But what I wanted to really share is that when we can use tools, whether publisher materials that have already freed up a good amount of faculty members time and or new generative AI tools, I wanted to offer to faculty that some of that time would be really well spent, both cultivating those meaningful relationships with students and then helping them do the same with others. So that is my real offering. I don't come with the AI expertise of all the hours we will save but I want to be optimistic that brilliant people like you will will guide us in that direction. And I wanted to to to suggest and invite us to think about what do we what will we do with that time or with that time that has already been made possible for you via digital courseware and other tools as such. 

Derek Bruff 35:37
Right. Yes. And you know, and I'm I'm working at the University of Mississippi right now, and I feel like a recurring thing with faculty is I just I have so many students and so little time and so many courses. And so it's hard for me as an educational developer to solve that problem. Some of that is structural, right? We have perhaps teaching responsibilities that are too much. We have classes that are too big. But I do think faculty are pretty savvy and they're looking for ways to be more efficient. And so I appreciate your your encouragement to then say, what do we do with that extra time and how can we how can we use that to make connections with our students?  

Is there is there something we havenm't, something big that we haven't, I mean, we could talk about all kinds of things, but is there some other advice for faculty that you'd like to share as they think about fostering relationship rich educational experiences for their students? 

Isis Artze-Vega 36:35
I think the only thing I would share is that we have been talking primarily about the benefits to students when in fact I just wanted to tell us what what we have have lived and remind us that that we are so enriched and our experience is so much more pleasant and more joyous when we as faculty have those trusting relationships with our students. The benefits are extraordinary for our students. And also we get to love our job's even more. 

Derek Bruff 37:07
Yeah, yeah, that's true. Well, and it's why, as you and I were talking earlier, right, it's why a lot of us went into it is to have those relationships with students and to to to help them in really significant ways.

Well, thank you, Isis, I think we've we've covered all the ground I wanted to. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and and sharing your your your expertise and your experiences in this area. This has been really great. Thank you so much. 

Isis Artze-Vega 37:29
Truly my pleasure. Have a great one. 

Derek Bruff 37:34
That was Isis Artze-Vega, college provost and vice president for academic affairs at Valencia College and co-author, along with Peter Felten, Leo Lambert, and Oscar Miranda Tapia, of the new book Connections Are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education. As she mentioned, that book, along with her other recent book, The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching, are available for free to read online. See the show notes for links to both books, as well as to more information about Isis and her work.

Isn’t is cool that Valencia College has Isis for a provost? I love the idea of someone with so much experience and expertise in teaching and learning taking a position like that!

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association. In the show notes, you’ll find a link to the UPCEA website, where you can find out about their research, networking opportunities, and professional development offerings.

This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced and edited by me, Derek Bruff. See the show notes for links to my website, the Intentional Teaching newsletter, and my Patreon, where you can help support the show for just a few bucks a month. If you’ve found this or any episode of Intentional Teaching useful, would you consider sharing it with a colleague? That would mean a lot.

As always, thanks for listening.