Careers in Educational Development with Leslie Cramblet Alvarez and Chris Hakala

On the show today I talk with Leslie Cramblet Alvarez and Chris Hakala, authors of the new book Understanding Educational Developers: Tales from the Center from Routledge Press. The book blends scholarship and personal narratives to explore the career trajectories of the professionals who work at CTLs. How do academics move into these careers? And what can these careers look like over time? 

Leslie Cramblet Alvarez is assistant vice provost and director of the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Denver. Chris Hakala is director for the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship and professor of psychology at Springfield College. 

I wanted to talk with Chris and Leslie about what they discovered while writing their book. I also wanted to know what advice they had for navigating educational development careers here in the U.S. in 2025, with higher education under attack from the federal government, a looming demographic cliff affecting enrollment and tuition, and a budget situation that for more institutions is not rosy. Leslie and Chris offer advice for faculty considering a move into a faculty development role, as well as for those of us current working at CTLs trying to plan our careers.

Episode Resources

Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (staff page, LinkedIn)

Chris Hakala (faculty page, LinkedIn)

Understanding Educational Developers: Tales from the Center, Leslie Cramblet Alvarez & Chris Hakala, Routledge, 2025.

“An Indirect Journey to Indirect Impact,” Derek Bruff, #alt-academy, April 10, 2015. 

“Teaching Centers Need to Step Up,” Chris Hakala, Inside Higher Ed, July 12, 2022.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:05

Welcome to 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. This episode is for my colleagues who work at Centers for Teaching and Learning, and for faculty who might be considering a move into CTL work, and for any administrators who oversee the work of a CTL. On the show today, I talk with Leslie Cramblett Alvarez and Chris Hackala, authors of the new book Understanding Educational Developers: Tales from the Center from Rutledge Press. The book blends scholarship and personal narratives to explore the career trajectories of the professionals like me who work at Centers for Teaching and Learning. How do academics move into these careers and what can these careers look like over time? I wanted to talk with Chris and Leslie about what they discovered while writing their book. I also wanted to get their take on the challenge of navigating educational development careers here in the U.S. in 2025, with higher education under attack from the federal government, a looming demographic cliff affecting enrollment and tuition, and a budget situation that for most institutions is not rosy. Leslie and Chris offer advice for faculty considering a move into a faculty development role, as well as for those of us currently working at CTLs trying to plan our careers. Leslie Cramblett Alvarez is Assistant Vice Provost and Director of the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Denver. Chris Hackala is Director for the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Scholarship, Professor of Psychology at Springfield College. I started our conversation with my usual opening question, which was especially relevant to their work on pathways into the field of educational development. Leslie, Chris, thank you so much for being on Intentional Teaching. I'm excited to have you on the podcast today to talk about your book and matters of careers in higher education. Thanks so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00: 2:11

Thanks. We're excited to be here. It'll be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02: 2:14

Oh, good. I hope so. I'll start with my usual opening question, which is this Can you tell us about a time when you realized you wanted to be an educator? And I'll start with Leslie on this.

SPEAKER_01: 2:27

And I'll start with telling you that I vehemently did not want to be an educator for most of my life. My grandmother was an elementary school teacher, and my mother was a nurse educator. And so I was surrounded by teachers, which meant I did not want to be one. And in fact, when I was young and I took the SDS, you all know the self-directed search where it tells you what jobs your personality or your or preferences align with. And kindergarten teacher was like the top one. And I was livid. I was not excited about that at all. And but then, you know, I wanted to be a clinical psychologist for many years and ended up choosing an ed psych grad program because I took a break after undergrad and got more interested in education, but still didn't necessarily want to teach. And then that first year of grad school, I was assigned um teaching part of our first year seminar course, and I fell in love. And that was it, right? It wasn't until I actually was thrown into the fire that I decided that that's what I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_02: 3:36

Well, that's great. How did your family react when you finally admitted this?

SPEAKER_01: 3:44

I mean, I, you know, everybody was very supportive with whatever it was that I wanted to do. But I just, you know, it was one of those things where um I've heard many people who have ultimately become university faculty say that, that they didn't realize, you know, they wanted to be a researcher or they were interested in some other aspect of the discipline. But it wasn't until they actually um got into the classroom that they realized that they loved it and they were good at it and that they enjoyed connecting with students and sharing their love for their discipline with those students.

SPEAKER_02: 4:16

Yes, yes. Well, and I asked this question every episode. And yes, I have heard a similar story from many of my guests that um grad school was not gonna be about teaching until they had a chance to teach, and then it it changed their relationship. What about you, Chris? When did you realize you might want to be an educator?

SPEAKER_00: 4:33

So my story is a little different, actually. I went to college a bit under duress. Uh, wasn't sure it's what I wanted to do, but my parents were convinced that I was gonna go. Um, and I was the first one to go. And I went to a small college in Vermont where I was in these very small classes and I got to know the faculty. And it was somewhere around sophomore year, a faculty member said to me, You're pretty good at this. Have you thought about graduate school? And I thought, no, I don't know what that means, actually. As a first gen, I had no idea. And so we had a conversation, and I became very interested in what a career in higher ed could look like and how I could parlay uh my skills into going into a career in higher ed. And so around my junior year, I started to look into what grad school might look like in senior year. I was incredibly intentional about applying to graduate programs that had the uh the ability to teach and that would provide support for teaching. And so I chose the University of New Hampshire and in the 1990s when I started grad school, had one of the first preparing future faculty programs in the country in psychology. And in my third year of graduate school, I was under the tutelage of Victor Banassi, who is uh someone who had run teaching centers for years, and Peter Furnauld, and I took a course, a full-year course on seminar and practical of teaching of psychology, and I taught intro psych. I still have the video and audio recording of a 1992 class I taught, and I was completely hooked. Um I was uh convinced that that's how I wanted to spend my career, and my graduate education was a way for me to parlay that into a college teaching career. Uh I taught my first course in 1992. I've not missed a semester since. Wow. Um I continue to teach. I teach um one or two classes every semester here, and it's something that I still am deeply, deeply committed to uh uh continuing for the rest of my career. And I really value the opportunity to work with students and to work with other educators to find out um things that help improve the kinds of uh educational experiences I give students. That said, I'm still scared every day before I walk into class that they're gonna figure out I'm a fraud, and I still feel like I have to get better. Uh, but it's uh it's a terrific experience, and I I really value it. And Fortis Worth, unlike Leslie, no one in my family was an educator, no one had gone to college. And to this day, my family still doesn't quite know what I do. They're still a little confused about my career. Um, and uh, it's just the sort of thing you deal with in a in a first gen kind of experience.

SPEAKER_02: 7:14

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you, Chris. So you you accelerated rapidly from I'm not sure about college to I would like to be an educator.

SPEAKER_00: 7:21

I know.

SPEAKER_02: 7:22

Over a handful of years.

SPEAKER_00: 7:24

It was a couple of faculty members that uh ironically I took classes with in 87 and 88. I still stay in contact with those two gentlemen. Um they're they're still um deeply important to me, and I I try to have lunch with them once a year.

SPEAKER_02: 7:36

Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, uh, you know, I mentioned I I asked this question of all of my guests, but I think um the stories that we have as we figure out our our careers, our vocations are really at the heart of your book. And so I want to kind of stay on that thread a little bit and ask you about your own stories moving uh into educational development as a career. Um, because being in being an educator and being an educational developer are are those are two different jobs, right? Um they're very connected. But um, so so Leslie, what what what led you to land in a center for teaching kind of role?

SPEAKER_01: 8:16

Yeah, um I I did fall in love with teaching when I was in grad school and the educational psychology program that I was in with at Northern Arizona University, which was housed in a college for education. So I was an undergraduate psychology major and I moved to a college of education for grad school. And we had a center for teaching and learning, and I it was not as intense as what Chris described, but I did have an apprenticeship in learning how to teach as a grad student and worked with a mentor who I'm so close with and meet with weekly actually. Um, but I became aware of what a CTL was in grad school, and I didn't have a fully formed notion of it, but I knew that there were places where faculty could go to talk to one another about teaching and learn to hone their craft and things like that. And so when I became a faculty member, it was in a small psychology department at a teaching-focused institution, and 60% of promotion and tenure had to do with teaching. And I um never really had aspirations to be a researcher necessarily, but still you have to do research, even though the focus was on teaching. So um I'm gonna meander a little bit because very early in my faculty career, pre-tenure, I had a baby, and they still hadn't quite figured out maternity leave on a semester system. So I had a really challenging start to my life as a faculty member, and um also so it was sort of a combination of um I want to continue to learn and grow. I want to um continue being at a university, but if I continue on the path that I'm on of teaching, not doing research, things like that, I'm never gonna have any choices. I'm never gonna be able to go anywhere else. And also, it's really kind of funny that here we are at a teaching-focused school, and there isn't any in-house professional development. People are imagining faculty development as going to conferences, not getting together and talking about teaching and learning. So it was both me trying to fill a gap that I saw and that I felt not having that space, but also saying, I love being a faculty member, but it's gonna be really hard for me to grow in my own career if I don't diversify my skill set. So there was this sort of mutually beneficial opportunity. And one year our faculty Senate said, What are some things you want us to work on this year? And the suggestion that I put in the hat was looking for local professional development, teaching-related opportunities for faculty. I ended up on the inaugural committee, and that led to me being the founding director once we had a Title V brand that the center, the creation of the center was written into. So I was sort of in there on the ground floor, and you know, the it's the sort of the amazing um serendipity, right, that brings us to this work or combination of desire and serendipity that gets most of us here. So that was the pathway for me, wanting to diversify my skill set, but also wanting to make sure that we have these opportunities at the teaching campus that I was on.

SPEAKER_02: 12:03

Which I imagine if you if you had only identified the latter, the need, and you weren't necessarily thinking of your own career, you might have been a little frustrated to get tapped as the director. Like I just said there was a need. I didn't say I wanted to solve the problem. Right. Um, but you were open to the idea of moving into uh to diversifying your skills, as you said, um and taking on these new roles. Well, how about you, Chris? When when did educational development become a part of your your job portfolio?

SPEAKER_00: 12:35

It's interesting. Um I share some overlap with what Leslie said, and then I have some some some other uh uh sort of interesting uh twists and turns. Uh I started, as I said, at the University of New Hampshire interested in this, but there was no center at the time. And in fact, this was in the early 90s. There weren't a ton of centers around uh at that time. We talked about Michigan Center, which is one of the ones that have been around for a while, but and I knew they kind of existed, but they weren't really there. Um I took my first job, my first tenure track job, and I was at a school that had a teaching effectiveness committee. And my first year I'd been identified as a junior faculty who had done a pretty good job in the classroom, and so I said, you should be on the teaching effectiveness committee. So I sat on a committee, we brought in a guest speaker, and I was really interested in what this guest speaker had done. It was someone who had come from um pod, someone who had done some work in educational development, um, and they came in and I was really impressed with how they were able to take some of the skills I had as a cognitive psychologist and translate them into practical pedagogical approaches for faculty. So I became kind of interested in it. And so I chaired the committee, we brought in a couple more people, and then I moved to a new institution, and I was doing the same kind of work there. Again, there was no teaching center. I was at a small school in in Western Mass, um, Western Massachusetts. And then as time went on, I became really interested in ramping up the skills associated with doing this kind of work. And I met some people who were in psychology, and Leslie and I share this uh home discipline of psychology. We also share some people we both know, and I met some of these people, and I had conversations with them, and they had moved into teaching center roles from psychology, and so I started to have that conversation with our provost, who was not particularly receptive to any of this. Um it took some convincing, it took some cajoling, and eventually after being incredibly persistent through a variety of uh slightly backhanded approaches, um, they gave me a small budget and asked me to bring someone in to speak, and that might get things started. And so that started um a tradition at the institution of bringing in people to speak, and then after a year of that, they they appointed me the director and they gave me the grand uh total of$0 and the course release of zero course release for West Center. They let me put director on my business cards, which they thought was a good concession. Um after the first year, they did give me a little bit of money. Um but I uh got things started and got the conversation going. Um, and then I was uh offered an opportunity to interview for a job as a founding director at a bigger institution, and I took that opportunity and I started that center, and then I subsequently came here. Um and so it's been about the last, I'd say, 14 years I've been in teaching center work doing educational development. Um, but as a cognizant psychologist, it's a really sort of nice um overlap. And Leslie and I talk about this in the book in terms of how people come at this from different backgrounds with different experiences. I think my path was a little more direct than others because of the University of New Hampshire, and then my experience in understanding how people learn made the transition um a little bit more direct, but but still windy because of the bizarre world of higher education and how funding comes and goes and how um administration makes decisions based on what they think will get them the next job. Um and I think in in the case of where I was, I had two retiring administrators who didn't have any desire to get a new job. So they were willing to um give me a little bit more support. Uh by the time I left uh the small school in Western Mass, I actually had a decent budget and I did have uh two-course reduction, uh, but they also gave me a lot of things to do. So it was sort of a uh a slow uh uptick and then a really rapid uptick when I went to the new institution. When it became my primary job was running the center. And I will say, and we'll probably talk about this again, but the difference between being a faculty member doing it part-time and a full-time director doing it full-time is an enormous difference. And I think that's really, really something that I thought I was prepared for, but it took a little bit of time for me to really adjust to the change.

SPEAKER_02: 16:58

Okay. Yeah, I want to circle back to that because you also mentioned that you have not missed a semester teaching. I have not. And I know that many who work at teaching centers aren't don't have a chance to teach at all, ironically, um, and that there's not a kind of standard model there. Um, I do want to think about um the not just your stories, but the stories of of folks that you interviewed for your book. Um, I think I have, having been in this field um for 20 plus years now, I um I have in my mind a kind of typology of how people entered this field. I'm thinking of a couple of my colleagues when I was at the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching, um, who had, like you, had had had kind of started on a traditional faculty role, had achieved tenure, and in both of the cases I'm thinking of had started working more broadly at their institutions to kind of affect change and do organizational work. Um and so they didn't immediately jump into a teaching center role, but once they were looking for something new, they they appreciated the ability to have an impact on a whole institution. And so that that that that's something you can do at a teaching center, right? And so they had kind of made that transition. Um but uh, you know, I don't know if my topologies in my head are based on anything other than a bunch of anecdotes. And so I'm curious, what did you find about pathways? How typical is is is your trajectory that we just talked about, the your two trajectories that have some similarities. And what are some other trajectories into this work?

SPEAKER_00: 18:27

I think there's there's lots of different pathways. And that's been really interesting as uh Leslie and I were talking to people, and we continue to talk to people. We've we've we've actually had conversations after the book came out about some of the pathways. And I think that uh the the interesting thing is that there is uh the different pathways bring a diversity of perspectives, voices, and ideas to the job. And it's it's I mean, I could go into some of the different pathways. I mean, some people uh idiosyncratically have found their way in. I mean, we have a colleague who uh took a sabbatical and worked in a center and then ended up staying in the center. And then I know colleagues who um have transitioned into teaching center work and then transitioned back out into faculty positions again uh from traditional faculty perspectives. Uh Leslie and I did a presentation at a psych conference several years ago with some of our colleagues, and it was really interesting because there are a lot of people in psych who think this is a really interesting pathway to go into because of the overlap. But some of the things that I mentioned before I think are challenging. I mean, moving from a faculty to a staff position is different. And I think that there are people who go directly into teaching center work and who go from uh working as a postdoc or as a graduate student in a teaching center and to continue to stay in a teaching center. They've they've not been in the faculty world in the traditional sense, and I think that that has an impact in their perspective as well. So these pathways really are different. And I I will say I think the pathway varies by the type and size of institution. And I'll say this for my institution. I'm at a small college, Springfield College is a small college, we have about 2,500 students. If I did not teach and I hadn't come from faculty rank, I would be considered a suit who didn't understand what happens in the classroom. Because there's that division. I mean, it's really it would be really difficult for me to do that. And the schools I've worked at, that has been traditionally the sense that that someone in the teaching center ought to have some skin in the game. But I know other institutions where they're bigger and they have different setups, it's just a different model. Um and I think it really is, I mean, one of the things Leslie and I found was there's really no one story. It's very idiosyncratic. And I think it's going to continue to be that way as centers try to navigate um what they want their their center staff to do and how they want them to do it. Leslie, do you what what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01: 20:49

Yeah, I I think you hit the nail on the head, Chris, because in both of our situations, we came up from the inside, right? And by the time I was the founding director at Adams State, where I was previously, I was a senior faculty member. There was built-in credibility and trust. And when I came to DU, I left tenure and became a staff member. I now teach as an adjunct. So it really is very idiosyncratic. And I will say, I do think there is a loss of credibility when you give up faculty status, even at a larger institution. I have now experienced the faculty staff divide as a staff member. It's real, even though I attained full professorship and tenure elsewhere. Um, I will say though that our research did mirror what other research has demonstrated, which is people are still by and large coming from the faculty path. And I think that's because this is a field, not a discipline. There is, there are some disciplines um that that do connect um well, but by and large, people who are doing this work are or were at one time faculty, and that was so interesting that there were like a quarter of the people that we spoke to who said, I'm not a faculty anymore, but I used to, indicating that faculty status among educational developers is beyond the decline. So there's the ways that people are coming to it, either what we call the direct path from grad school or the faculty path, but there's also these critical incidents, which we found in the people that we spoke to and is demonstrated in other literature, being mentored, right? Being involved in central work, getting involved and staying, like Chris shared, and love of teaching, realizing I can teach a bunch of students every year, but if I can teach a bunch of faculty, imagine how that, you know, it's it increases.

SPEAKER_02: 23:03

That's me. That's me.

SPEAKER_01: 23:05

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 23:06

I wrote a whole essay years ago on the indirect impact of faculty development work. And I, yes, at you know, at Vanderbilt, I was able to teach one course a year. And so I would have between 15 and 100 students, depending on the course, where I had a direct impact. But the indirect impact I had was on pretty much the entire student body at the university, and that was really motivating for me. So I'm on power, right?

SPEAKER_01: 23:30

Impact the entire school.

SPEAKER_00: 23:32

I have two quick thoughts I want to add. One is that as Leslie said, um, the these positions vary, and I always make clear I'm in a position right now where I was hired as staff, and about four years in, the college in the Senate voted to make my position a faculty position. So I'm a tenured faculty member with most of my time allocated to the center. And that actually is a is a model that many small colleges do. Um so I think that's kind of interesting. The other is my associate director and I collect indirect student contact by every faculty member we talk to. We ask them how many students they teach and we track that every month. We're indirectly contacting 10,000 students, about 2,500 students a month between the two of us. So that's a that is a huge thing, and that's a story we tell all the time so that the administration understands the value that we bring to the institution is not just the fact that I teach a couple classes, but that we're we're hitting all these students with all of the impact we have across all of our faculty. Um so I think that's that that indirect um faculty impact is is huge. And I think that helps faculty who are leaving a tenure-track position recognize that they're still having this huge impact. It just got it looks different, and it's a shift in terms of the way you see your role and um and how you value what you do at the institution. Preach.

SPEAKER_02: 24:56

I could talk a lot about kind of arguing for the value of this kind of work, but I um I want to shift gears again um and kind of bring it to the year 2025, if that's okay. Um, because this is a very challenging year in higher education in the United States for a lot of reasons that we don't have to identify right now. Um I don't have time to list all the reasons. There's just a lot of crap happening. Um, I have never known in my 20 plus years of doing this of so many colleagues who are either losing their positions or leaving positions or looking for new careers. And so um, is this a good time to be in educational development? Is this a good time to move into the field, out of the field? What's your read on the current career environment for educational developers?

SPEAKER_00: 25:50

So I have a lot of thoughts on this. Um in 2022 or 23, I don't remember what, I wrote an article in Inside Higher Ed, and the title was not one I came up with, but it said teaching centers need to step up, and that was not really my intention. The goal was to say teaching centers through the pandemic showed the value they have. And now's the time to continue to do the good work and for administration to recognize the good work of teaching centers and provide the support so they can continue to do the good work across institutions. And I will say this right now teaching centers have done that work, and administration across institutions have looked at budgetary constraints and recognized that they can cut somewhere, and teaching centers are the places that they can cut. And I think that's been a really uh difficult thing to see across the U.S. And I know of many centers where they've scaled back on staff, they've scaled back on budgets, they've scaled back on centers at all. I know of at least three places where the centers have just closed. And I think it's to the detriment of our students, in particular in this really complex time, where teaching requires nuance and understanding and compassion and inclusivity, and we're cutting the very resources that provide faculty with the skills and the abilities to do that. And so I think that right now it's critical that the people in these positions continue to do the good work, and I have hope and we continue to push that that administrations uh of for higher educational institutions recognize that and continue to build centers rather than continue to cut them. I think it's it's it's a really interesting time. There are center jobs open right now, and some of those center jobs are going unfilled. People are not getting hired because they're reevaluating those positions. Les you have any thoughts? I apologize for being so impassioned.

SPEAKER_01: 27:35

No, I but I just don't apologize. Chris, it's nothing new for centers to be vulnerable, right? Like there's so much has been written about that liminal space in the middle, right? Where we're not revenue generating, we're a support office, and we are sometimes viewed as a luxury. Um, and I think that makes us even more important because faculty are really struggling. And I cannot tell you how many conversations I've been in just this year about people worrying about being able to teach their discipline and what they can and can't say in their courses. And I have been involved in um meetings all this year about course-level policies, crafting learning outcomes so that people can connect with their, you know, learning outcomes is something that educational developers might be passionate about, but you know, the rest of the world not so much, but they're critical now. You know, the things that we say in our syllabus, the way we align our work to what students are supposed to be learning, is making or breaking people's jobs at the moment. And we are needed in a way that A, to provide some guidance, and B, that role of a hub to provide a space where people can connect and see that they are struggling in similar ways across disciplines and across classrooms. I think we're even more important than we have been in the past. And and it is true, Chris, what you said. We're vulnerable and we're in the middle. So um it's a it's a tough place to be for me. Um I found transitioning to educational development gave me um more work life balance than it did as a faculty member. There aren't many places to grow in a career in higher education, except for into administration, which of course is panned as the dark side, but that's the the flip side of being in the middle is you're at that sweet spot. Of being able to support faculty and go home at the end of the day and have no papers to grade, right? Um, so it's a really strange space in higher ed that is sometimes characterized as alt-ac. It doesn't feel alt-ac to me. I feel like very much an academic, but it it's hard to say what the future is gonna be because what matters is if you're valued at the local level. Does the administration see value? Does the administration view you as a benefit for faculty, view you as a partner when changes need to be made? Because we are so critical to change management on a campus. And I think sometimes we're still explaining, you know, uh helping people understand what we do and why we're valuable.

SPEAKER_02: 30:58

And I think that's one reason why this current environment where CTLs seem to be vulnerable again feels like a bit of whiplash because of what happened during the pandemic. And because on so many institutions, at so many institutions, the value of a CTL was made very evident to a lot of people, maybe who hadn't noticed before. And so for just a handful of years later to turn around and start cutting budgets and cutting positions, and I, you know, I'm sympathetic to administrators who have to balance the budget. Like I know that's challenging and no one wants to lose their jobs. Um, but that, you know, that value proposition that seemed so clear a couple of years ago seems a little murky. Um I would also maybe point to all the turnover in college and university leadership that seems to happen so often that, you know, maybe the provost in 2020 saw the value in the CTL, but we have a new provost now who wasn't around then and sees things differently. And there's so much turnover in those up those top positions that I think that makes it challenging as well.

SPEAKER_01: 32:00

That's an excellent point. Yes, because you're constantly trying to figure out what's their value proposition, right? And how are you demonstrating that I mean, and here's the tricky part too. I don't think CTLs ever want to be a mouthpiece for upper administration, but you do have to do that balancing act of what are their values and what are their goals, and how do you demonstrate that you can help them meet those?

SPEAKER_02: 32:28

Yeah, yeah. Well, do you have any advice you would give? Let's say, let's say someone who was in a position that that you were both in years ago, tenured, maybe recently tenured, but tenured faculty who has kind of their eye on educational development as a career change. Do you have any advice that you would give them here in the the year 2025?

SPEAKER_01: 32:50

I mean, I do think that um getting involved. And to go back to something that Chris said earlier, depending upon the size of the school, that may look different, right? Joining an advisory board if there is an already existing um center, even just approaching the people at the center and saying, I'd like to do some work with you. And that may start off as service, right? But we are always happy to have faculty partners, particularly at um centers where you're not faculty, right? So being able to partner up with a faculty member and have them not only share their expertise, but serve as an ambassador for their discipline or their area can be really, really fruitful. I think that a mistake people make is that just because they're great at teaching, that they would be a great faculty developer because faculty are very different students from their graduate or graduate students. So I do think you know, learning a bit about what the center folks do and getting involved and talking to people and learning about their roles is a really great place to start. What I found from a director position, because directors are increasingly central to change management and other campus-wide initiatives, what was really impactful for me was being involved in accreditation efforts, being involved in gen ed reform efforts. It allowed me to really learn about the landscape of the institution in a very meaningful way that might not have happened as a faculty member doing service that was really closely connected to my discipline. So trying to really get more involved, not just in the center work, but but larger scale efforts across campus, I think will help you understand if you like the nature of the work and help you understand the campus in a way that's important if you're going to start translating teaching and learning work to a broader audience.

SPEAKER_00: 35:08

Yeah, I agree. I and I I think that it's it's a it's a different job. And Leslie said it before, I thought, really in a in an interesting way, and that it's not it's more of a, you can have more of a balance in some ways. But I also think that going in with the idea that you are going to be asked, if you're in a center, you have to be aware of this. If you're going to be asked for advice, you can give advice and you can have people say, sure, I tried it, it didn't work, but you you don't have control over what they do. Kind of like students once they walk out the door. And so you have to be prepared for the fact that you are there to help them, and they may or may not accept your help, and they may or may not do what you ask them to do or recommend they do. But knowing that you can have an impact and knowing that you're still an educator and knowing that you're still part of the college community in that, and I like how Leslie said it, that limital space in the middle, I think it's really powerful for some people. And I really value the fact that I get a seat at a lot of tables, I get to go to a lot of things, and I get to talk to a lot of people. I, at my small school, I know just about everybody on campus, including custodial staff, all the way up to the president, because I talk to all these people and I I am I'm interested in how they contribute to the student learning experience. And I think that's a really cool thing. And if that's the kind of thing you like, I encourage people to try. But like Leslie said, volunteer. I can say this. I've had three faculty members who've come to the center who've gone on to teaching center jobs after they've left here. And I they've done that because they've come in and they've seen that this is the work they want to do. I've had some faculty members come in and say, Chris, good for you. I'm going back to teaching now because this is not what I want. And that's okay. That's that's that's part of what you get when you get the opportunity to work with people. So I think it's it's one of those things you you got to try it out a little bit to see if you like it.

SPEAKER_02: 36:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 37:03

There's so much more we could talk about, but our time is running short. Um any last bits of advice for folks who are already in educational development roles about kind of what the next year or two how they might think about planning their career? Leslie?

SPEAKER_01: 37:24

I'm not certain, but um I guess one of the things that I really find exciting about this work, as stressful as it is, is that it's sort of our job to keep our eye on the horizon and to think about the way students are changing, to think about the way the higher education environment is changing. And in trying to predict what that is going to look like in the classroom, is can be very stressful, but also can be very exciting and fulfilling work. And it's very different from the sort of work that I did as a faculty member. So I guess if you like that sort of thing, if you like following the trends in higher education and um are we committed to um making sure that we meet the students where they are, and you meet the faculty where they are, then this can be really fulfilling work despite all of the chaos that is surrounding us.

unknown: 38:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 38:29

I I would just tell fac uh faculty, educational developers, stay in it with the faculty. Be there for the faculty, listen to the faculty, respond to the faculty, support the faculty, and recognize that that there are a lot of issues happening that are impacting them in ways that hadn't impacted people five, ten years ago. And be there and and and be aware of those so that you can be prepared, but also be prepared for things that you don't know are coming, but respond and support. And it's the only it's the only thing I can say. I have faculty come and sit in my office and they open their mouth, start talking. I thought, oh no, I don't know what I'm gonna do with this, but let's go. And I think that that's part of the joy of this job is you get to help faculty, but but check in with them. Uh faculty need it. Um, I think the relational aspect of this job is really important, and now is more than ever, it's important to leverage that.

SPEAKER_02: 39:27

Well, thank you. Yeah, I I think, well, and your answers remind me that that the this work involves such intense relationships with faculty and with students. You really need to know both of those groups really well to help faculty make the connections they need to make. So um I mean it's one of the reasons I love the job, certainly. Um, thank you so much for coming on. We'll have to leave it there, but thank you so much for coming on and sharing a little bit. Um point people to your book as well, which is really fantastic. So thanks, thanks for being here. Thank you. Appreciate the time, Derek. That was Leslie Cramblett Alvarez, Assistant Vice Provost and Director of the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Denver. And Chris Hackala, director for the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Scholarship, and professor of psychology at Springfield College. They are the authors of the book Understanding Educational Developers, Tales from the Center, published in 2025 by Rutledge Press. Thanks to Chris and Leslie for taking time to come on the show and to talk about their work and to make such a passion pitch for the value of Centers for Teaching and Learning. If you're facing some tough choices about your career as an educational developer, I would love to hear from you. I don't know that I can help you make those choices, but I can certainly sympathize. You can reach me at derek at derekbref.org, or click the link in the show notes to send me a text message, or message me on LinkedIn. It's a hard time to be working in higher ed, and we should do what we can to support each other. Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPSIA, the Online and Professional Education Association. In the show notes, you'll find a link to the UPSIA 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 Gruff. See the show notes for links to my website and socials, and to the Intentional Teaching newsletter, which goes out most weeks on Thursday or Friday. If you found this or any episode of Intentional Teaching useful, would you consider sharing it with a colleague? As always, thanks for listening.