Understanding Educational Developers at Teaching and Learning Centers with Dr. Chris Hakala and Dr. Leslie Cramblet Alvarez
On today's episode, I'm joined by Dr. Chris Hakala and Dr. Leslie Cramblet Alvarez as we discuss the folks who work at teaching and learning centers. They wrote a tremendous new book called, "Understanding Educational Developers: Tales from the Center." In this book and in our conversation, we explore the diverse pathways into educational development, the role of teaching and learning centers, and the skills necessary for success in this field. They share insights on the impact of AI, the importance of student engagement, and the future of educational development amidst challenges in higher education.
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Transcript:
Luke Hobson (00:00)
Leslie, Chris, welcome to the podcast.
Chris Hakala (00:02)
Thanks, Luke. Thanks for having us.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (00:02)
Thank you.
Luke Hobson (00:04)
Of course, of course, my pleasure. When I first heard about your book, I couldn't wait to dive on in and to read more about this before I get ahead of myself. Would you mind introducing yourself to the audience? Tell us a little bit more about who you are and what is it that you do. And Leslie, I'll start with you first. Cause I know the, need to navigate having multiple guests. Who says what? So Leslie, I'll start with you.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (00:24)
Hi, I'm Leslie Cramlet Alvarez. I'm the assistant vice provost of teaching and learning at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado, which means I also lead our teaching and learning center here. We call it the OTL, the Office of Teaching and Learning. And prior to that, I spent about 14 years as psychology faculty at Adams State University in southern Colorado.
where I started to do a little bit of teaching and learning work and then transitioned to administration full time in 2020, just in time.
Luke Hobson (00:57)
Just a little blip of period of time. It's fine. Nothing happened in 2020. It's no nothing at all at all disruptive. Nope. And then Chris more about yourself.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (01:01)
Nothing major, nothing at all.
Chris Hakala (01:08)
Sure. Chris Hackla. I am currently the director for the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship and professor of psychology at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts. And before that, like Leslie, I was a faculty member for a lot of years. I've been doing this actually in higher ed for over 30 years. And I became interested in teaching and learning very early in my career. And over the last 15 years, I've been involved in teaching and learning centers.
and working with faculty at a number of different institutions. ⁓ so it's actually, writing this book is great because one of the reasons it came up was Leslie and I talked about how we ended up in this sort of career we're in, which is a career we might not have imagined when we first started. So it's great to have the opportunity to talk about this. And ⁓ it's a great way for me to go through the rest of my career.
Luke Hobson (01:56)
There you go. It is wild as far as for how popular our field has become. have to say that when I remember when, when first starting off and saying, want to become like an instructional designer and folks just look at me funny and they're like, I don't know what that is. And then now it's just like, Hey, can you come give a talk about instructional design? I was like, what world am I living in? Like, yes, but like, it's not, this isn't real. So it's, it's pretty cool to see where everything has taken us to at this point in time in 2025, but certainly for why you're here though, is that.
Chris Hakala (02:10)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (02:26)
I was able to read your book, Understanding Educational Developers, Tales from the Center, and I love the concept of the book, of this diving on into more about who these folks are in teaching centers and learning labs and trying to be able to uncover more about them. And I wanted to hear about, and it sounds like you went into this a little bit, Chris, but what was the inspiration behind the book of wanting to be able to learn more about these folks who work at these centers?
And Chris, I'll turn it over to you. You're starting there, so I'll go with you.
Chris Hakala (02:55)
yeah. That's good.
So the inspiration for the book actually started in conversations during pandemic when a number of us who had met previously at ⁓ the pod national conference communicated and decided to get together virtually on a semi-regular basis to talk about some of the things we were dealing with. And it was Leslie, myself and four other educational developers. And we spoke.
I don't know, what would you say, Les, once a month, maybe even more frequently? I mean, we spoke a lot. We cried together a lot. We shared some drinks together and had the opportunity to sort of unpack some of the things we were going through. And over the course of those months and months of chatting, we started to think about how we all came from psychology, but even from psychology, we took different paths into the world of educational development. Les, you have more to add to that?
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (03:50)
Well, and I think one of the things that we noticed was that many of the books, the sort of foundational books in our field, would talk a little bit about pathways to the work, because this field is not professionalized, not like instructional design has become over the past many years. And so there isn't a prescribed path to it.
Chris Hakala (04:04)
Thanks
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (04:13)
And many people come from faculty, but we were very interested in expanding on what was sort of relegated to a brief section of a chapter in other books.
where people were coming from, how they came to this work. And in addition to that, what does it take to be good at it? Because when there's not professionalization of the field, there isn't necessarily agreement in what you need to do to be good at it. And of course, originally... ⁓
we sort of were thinking from the perspective of psychology faculty turned educational developers and thinking about how to give advice to other people in our discipline. And we were thinking about the things that we brought from our graduate programs that linch themselves well to educational development work. But of course, if we were to write a book just for psychology faculty, it would be a very, very limited audience. And we started thinking more broadly, ⁓
Chris Hakala (05:10)
Mm-hmm.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (05:13)
What makes this a fascinating profession is that so many people come from so many different disciplinary areas and they all have something unique about that preparation. And so we were fascinated by the idea of this is a very interdisciplinary field probably
Unlike you see anywhere else in higher ed, the people who are doing this work come from all over the place. Increasingly, they're social scientists, but ⁓ it's a very, very interdisciplinary field, which means that we all bring really interesting interdisciplinary gifts.
Luke Hobson (05:51)
Mm. I mean, it's funny too, because you mentioned about how instructional design now has like a linear pathway and it's still not there yet. It's getting there. But I mean, even thinking about members on my team, I have a former history major. I have a former teacher and then myself, I started off actually in graphic design. So it's just kind of crazy to see like how things morph and where they wanted to be able to actually get there some day. And what I can imagine too, is you were starting this process
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (06:09)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (06:20)
and you're reaching out to these folks is wanting to hear more about just that, about where they're coming from. And something that was very, very impressive with the both of you was how much data that you collected that you sent this out. So it sounds like, like hundreds of people are getting like 115 responses back more about like their backgrounds and where they were coming from. And I was trying to put myself in the shoes of someone saying like,
How much information when I want to go into my story about how I came to be inside of this field and trying to be able, like maybe would I be guarded or embarrassed by the fact that like I started from one pathway and now I kind of went over this way. So what were the responses like when you're trying to be able to learn more about folks and their backgrounds?
Chris Hakala (07:03)
So it's super interesting question, Luke, because the pod organization and a lot of the people that we've gotten to know are pretty open about their pathways. so people were pretty willing to share a lot of their background and the reasons for it, including people who recognized that one of the reasons they went into it was that there were no tenure track jobs available and this seemed like a pathway that would allow them to use their degree. So people were pretty open about it. ⁓ And I think
What helped was that there's this need for, I think people want to know about how you get into this field. mean, Leslie didn't talk about, but we did a session at our psych conference on teaching of psychology, and it was during the virtual days. And we ran this session on what it's like to become an educational developer. And Leslie, how many people were, it was packed on Zoom.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (07:59)
was,
yeah, probably in excess of 100, I think, were at the session.
Chris Hakala (08:02)
Yeah, a hundred people
in psych at that session. Now that's not a huge conference that we're talking about either. There was so much interest. And so people want to know the pathways and people see it as a really interesting kind of alt act, but not really career where they can go into doing things that are adjacent to faculty roles. And I think that it became really interesting when we talked to people because a lot of the opinions people had about it.
helped us understand that there really are differences that are disciplinary based based on the training they might get as graduate students. So people were pretty open about it and people were pretty willing to share. the instructional design sort of group of people who came out of it which like you said many of them didn't come directly out of instructional design they came from other areas. They were really happy to talk about how they found this and how exciting it was to find something that really got them excited about doing this work again.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (08:51)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (08:57)
And then you touched upon to I'm assuming that Chris, you've read Tom Tobin's book because you meant going all back. yes, yes. Cause he's been on the show before to mention about this. It's so fascinating to think about our career pathways, which is why I wanted the two of you on the show with, with writing more about this book. So if we're going from that, Chris, a simple, but not necessarily easy question to be able to try to ask here is who are we? When we say
Chris Hakala (09:03)
yes, yes, and I've had lots of conversations with Tom Tobin about this.
Luke Hobson (09:24)
educational developers, like how do people identify themselves?
Chris Hakala (09:28)
Wow. Okay, that's a really hard question. So ⁓ I think, you know, the genesis of a lot of this came out of the early work of like teaching committees that were looking at how to ameliorate ineffective teaching. And of course you had the Michigan Center that started the CIRLT, which started one of the first centers in the country, that was actually sort of doing scholarship along with teaching. And I think it's morphed into now people who identify as educational developers or people who essentially
define themselves or identify as, we support teaching and learning across different areas in different ways and it really depends. I mean one of the things that came out of the book that Leslie and I said repeatedly was there's such variability in these jobs. Leslie and I have the same sort of job but not really in a lot of ways and some of that's based on the idiosyncratic nature of different institutions but some of it's part of the idiosyncratic nature of what we bring to the table.
Luke Hobson (10:29)
Let's see anything that.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (10:30)
Let me just, I'll be the boring data nerd here and say that what we were able to find is that we're mostly women, mostly white, mostly former faculty, ⁓ only about half of the time are we teaching.
⁓ Only about half of the time do we have faculty status any longer and about 24 % of the people who we talked to had faculty status but lost it. So we're seeing people increasingly in administrative roles that don't have any faculty status but are ⁓ helping people navigate a very important part of faculty life. ⁓ We're middle-aged, which
tends to mean that it was a mid-career shift, right? People have only been in the field for five to 10 years by and large, but identify as middle-aged. And as I shared earlier, social sciences is on the rise. And it attracts people who love teaching and learning, who maybe have gotten awards in teaching and learning, ⁓ or who have been involved with centers on their campus and all of a sudden saw that it was a possible career option.
And in some cases, people who were asked to start centers. So some people had very little experience in the field before they were tapped because it was like, hey, you're a good teacher. Can you start doing this thing for us? So it's a really interesting from a demographic perspective. But also I liked Chris's more philosophical answer. But we do we did learn a thing or two about who we are, what we look like, where we come from, I guess.
Luke Hobson (12:07)
Yeah, it's so what I find fascinating and what I'd be curious about that as you keep on mentioning more about this book and speaking with more people is thinking about the age of which people are now saying I want to work at a center for teaching and learning because one of the things that shocked me was then speaking to high school students about instructional design, which is wild. There's like what
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (12:29)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (12:32)
What do you mean talking to high school kids about learning and development? Like that's not a fit, but they're thinking about that younger and younger about now where they want to go. And then for someone, for folks like yourself, who are saying that like, we got into this field at this point in time that now I'm so curious about from the high school perspective. When we think about education, everyone always thinks about like K through 12 teacher, or they think about university professor, but now what about this other area?
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (12:34)
Yeah.
Thank you.
Luke Hobson (12:56)
We might be going into more and more. So I'm so curious that as this keeps on going on, if you're going to see more of these, what I'm going to call outliers for now of high school students, but maybe it's not that far off that you're going to see the younger generation who want to be able to come into this. Were there any of our themes that emerged from the research about more about from our backgrounds, about our educations, about professional development pathways, like any of our themes that came from that, from like our identities?
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (13:07)
Mm-hmm.
⁓ You mentioned this, think, in your own work, but serendipity has historically been a common theme in what has been written about educational developers and their pathways ⁓ previously, but also we found similar language that people fell into it. It was by accident. They were mentored in. They happened to go to a workshop and it
it seems to be fairly consistent that accidental entry is a theme, is a story. And honestly, Chris and I took a little issue with that because when you think that we're mostly white and mostly women, it means who is being tapped, who is being mentored, who is being given these opportunities. And equity is a big concern of both of ours.
because it's really important to diversify this field, which was one of the things that we talked about taking away. And that's one of, you know, it's interesting what you were saying that people come to instructional design from a variety of backgrounds, but at least you can get a degree in it. And we're not certain that getting a degree in educational development is what we need to do at this point, but it.
There's something nice about professionalizing a career so that everybody knows what the rules are. And the problem is, is that as Chris mentioned, it's so different. The needs of the center, even the jobs are so different from one center to the next that it's hard to have, know, this is the magic bullet, but it is nice to have a level playing field so that people all have an equal chance of entering the field and being mentored in it.
Chris Hakala (15:18)
Yeah, I think, and I've thought about this since ⁓ we finished the book, one of the things that pushed me into this field, and I mentioned it early on, is that I was fortunate to go to a graduate institution where we had, although we didn't have a teaching center, we had a teaching program within our graduate program that provided us with background and some organization. It taught us about scholarship for teaching and learning and all of those things. So I had that sort of foundational background.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (15:25)
day.
Chris Hakala (15:45)
And the people that you're talking about, Luke, who are young, who enter the field, are people who are at schools that have either a preparing future faculty-like program in their grad program, or they've been exposed to a teaching center through the work that maybe they did as maybe a graduate fellow, or maybe it was just something that the department brought to the table. you really, it's raising the awareness of this field, as Leslie said, to equalize it.
and to provide some equity is really important. If all graduate students had some exposure to teaching and learning, you then at least expose all of the graduate student population to this field and give them the opportunity to consider whether or not this is an opportunity that they want to pursue. And I think that you mentioned high school students, and I won't go quite down that far, but I think having those frank conversations with faculty,
who are teaching undergraduates and maybe with undergraduate students about the idea that teaching is a skill you work on and that is valued and that we want to do a better job to increase the probability of learning. I think that conversation, which didn't happen when I was in college, I just sat there and they just talked at me and I took three tests. And I went to a small liberal artsy kind of state school, but that's what we did.
and have those conversations now, think it would be really important so people are aware that this is not something that just happens, but there's something you can work on and there is support. ⁓ One of the benefits of being at a small institution like I am is, and I think Leslie gets this even at DU, which is a bigger place, is I meet every incoming faculty member. So I've been at now at my institution for eight years. I know everybody. I know everybody on campus. Part of that fellowship...
thing that I'm going through. know everybody in their background. I can talk about those things. And that's helped me build rapport. And in my center, that's been really effective for me. That kind of conversation that's happening with our faculty are conversations that don't always happen with faculty at any level. We're getting them early on, but it'd be great if those conversations were happening before they got to me.
Luke Hobson (17:57)
As someone who works at MIT, can confidently tell you that research is like the number one thing that folks think about. And then there is, of course, that teaching thing. But of course, we do have fabulous instructors and professors. But I absolutely know what you mean, Chris, that even when working with faculty on their courses and partnering with them to be able to design these online learning experiences, that when I get into the nerdy weeds about how learning works, that sometimes they're like, wait a second, what? Like, what did you say? And I was like, yeah, like it's a.
Chris Hakala (18:03)
yeah.
Thank
Luke Hobson (18:25)
Learning is never evolving process. It involves change. We had to do this and this and this and like, ⁓ so you could start to be able to see the wheels turning because of course they're thinking about something from the front forward facing perspective that they're in front of the conductors that the facilitators and now I'm like, I'm on the backend here. I have to think about how learning works from behind the scenes. And then I want to mesh it with what you do.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (18:29)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Hakala (18:44)
you heard.
Luke Hobson (18:47)
And then we create something transformative. So it's really interesting to see about how that kind of keeps on changing. And as you mentioned too, I was shocked. I also teach at the university of Miami when I found out that we have a mentorship program available to be able to mentor students one-on-one about, you want to actually go into becoming a professor someday? Like, is this what you want to be able to do? And I had one of my students reached out to me saying, would you be my mentor for this type of program? Cause I want to do what you're doing. It was like.
Chris Hakala (19:13)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (19:14)
I didn't know we had this, but yes, I'm willing to be able to, it was a type of like of a sign off, because there was a multiple courses that she had to take and go through all these different things. But it was fantastic. I had no idea that we had that. And certainly when I was going to school, like I don't recall any of those things. so it's fantastic, but now that's growing. ⁓ So I have to mention about when I read your book, there was one of the chapters about ⁓ what do we do?
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (19:29)
six.
Luke Hobson (19:43)
was a chapter and I'm going to lie. I went to that chapter first. I was like, what do we do? I was like, what, right to there. And I couldn't help but actually laugh out loud when like the number one answer was meetings. I was like, yeah, I am. Uh, so whenever I tell people, like, what do you do? And I'm like, well, first it's zoom and then it's a learning design, collaboration, project management, blah, blah, blah. But it's, it's always is this spend this time for these things. So putting jokes aside, what do people actually spend their most time on?
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (19:46)
you
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (20:12)
when they're working. Weenings is of course gotta be number one, but what do we really, when we're thinking about tales from the centers of learning and teaching, what do they actually do?
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (20:23)
Well, I'll start us out and then Chris jump in. One of the things that was an unintended contribution as we were ⁓ analyzing what we called our work responsibilities survey was the fact that we had part of our sample ⁓ who were staff, what we identified as staff, broadly speaking. So much of the educational development or faculty development research is done on directors of teaching and learning.
that very little is known about the people who are doing the work in the centers that don't identify as directors. And there are places that are so small.
where it's really just a center of one, right? Where the person is the director, but they're also doing all the workshops. I'm in a situation where there are nine folks that report to me. So I don't do as much of the workshop-y thing as Chris gets to do being in a smaller center. So what we do is very different. So we tried to analyze it overall, just like all of the responses together.
Chris Hakala (21:23)
Mm-hmm.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (21:29)
They were small samples, but we are some of the first people, I think, to publish anything differentiating directors from staff.
And again, small samples once we broke it down. And we found that at all levels, people are doing very similar things, meetings, and importantly, meetings is separate from consultations. People weren't calling meetings consultations. Those were separate things. But consultations are very common in our work and doing workshops and ⁓ producing content and things like that. But we found some changes as we looked at directors and as we looked at administrators.
Chris Hakala (21:50)
Mm-hmm.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (22:07)
They're doing all of the same things that center staff are, but they're doing things like overseeing a budget, supervising people, engagement in campus-wide initiatives, which is really important, and then things like navigating politics and some writing and service and things like that. But yeah, at every level, meetings was the number one thing that people are doing.
Chris Hakala (22:32)
And Leslie captured the data really well. I'll just expand just a bit in that one of the things that really surprised me was that you could have two people who do a very similar job, who have vastly different titles, and their amount of work just looks different based on how many people are there. So for example, Leslie and I, we manage similar portfolio of responsibilities.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (22:40)
as the situation was.
Chris Hakala (23:01)
But because DU is much bigger than my place, Leslie is, she has a title of, ⁓ what's your, it's vice provost? Vice provost. And I'm a director.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (23:09)
Assistant Vice Provost. Yeah.
Chris Hakala (23:13)
but we're doing similar things, I do more hands-on stuff than Leslie does, but I also have enormous administrative responsibilities that I deal with in meetings and all of that. And so it really is idiosyncratic. But I love what Leslie said, and I think it's really important, is that a lot of the activities, the consultations, the...
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (23:20)
videos.
Chris Hakala (23:34)
class observations, the course design, a lot of that is done similarly across centers. They're just done differently based on the idiosyncratic nature of the institution. And I'll just say this, I tend to do more
face-to-face kind of events because we're a small institution and people are around. Other people do events that are much more broad-based and they do them on ⁓ virtually and that's because of the nature of that institution. And so I think that it really is this broad spectrum. I do say this Luke and I will probably say this again.
I always believe though that the moral and ethical responsibility of our educational endeavors is to increase the opportunity for students to learn. And I always tell people that's my job, is to help create better learning environments for students by working with the faculty to help them do that. And what that looks like is going to look different on a day-to-day basis. I had a day-to-day where I literally was in meetings, meetings, not consultations Leslie, meetings from eight this morning until when we're done.
And that's just my day to day, but tomorrow, completely different. And that's really one of the things that's so fascinating is how varied our jobs are. By the way, I also, and this is different than the same, I teach, I carry a faculty load and I advise. We just came out of advising session. Boy, am I glad we're done with advising right now. And so that adds a layer to things. And again, it's really idiosyncratic.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (25:01)
Yeah. I would say another way Chris of saying what you said is that it's always student led, but helping faculty grow as educators, like that's the bread and butter of our work.
is supporting them in that journey. And I think a misnomer about teaching and learning centers is that we are there for remediation. And there are part of who we wanted to speak to with this book were the people who oversee these centers and help them understand the power and potential and that we're not a place that if someone is struggling to assign them.
extra homework or to punish them like detention or something like that, but really helping faculty to grow on their journey as educators.
Chris Hakala (25:45)
and serve as a resource for faculty.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (25:47)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (25:48)
So, serving as a resource for faculty, are you finding that if there is a new type of a technique or a technology that enters the classroom, they go to you for advice? It's not like...
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (25:59)
We talking about Luke, I don't know what you might be
Chris Hakala (26:01)
I don't know.
don't know. Is there anything happened in education recently? I don't know.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (26:02)
bringing up.
Luke Hobson (26:05)
A1 steak sauce, that's all I know. ⁓
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (26:07)
That's
Luke Hobson (26:07)
It's
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (26:07)
right, that's
Luke Hobson (26:08)
definitely not AI. ⁓ Because I would imagine that like, hey, if I want to know about how to use gen AI inside of my classroom, hey, here's a center, who knows what to do? Like that would be my go to as a faculty member.
Chris Hakala (26:20)
Yeah.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (26:20)
Well, and I think the pandemic made pretty clear how critical a teaching and learning center can be to just doing business, right? Because I got on the job ⁓ eight weeks before we shut down and we were slammed and we stayed slammed for a long time.
And then as AI was getting out on the scene, it's our job to look out on the horizon and see what's coming. And we did not start off as AI experts and we have people who with growing expertise in AI and we've worked closely with the folks who actually study it among our faculty, but there's a lot of learning together sometimes, but it's our job to be the ones to stay on top of it, see what's coming.
try to help folks adapt to it and learn together sometimes when it's taken us all by surprise like AI did.
Chris Hakala (27:22)
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. the AI thing is an interesting example. And what Leslie said about the pandemic is so important. ⁓ I can't tell you how much.
I felt like teaching centers were then going to launch after the pandemic because any place that had a teaching center recognized the value. Like Leslie, we were slammed. I was running sessions six in the morning, 10 at night to get all the faculty, the part timers. I was so busy. And I thought this was going to give traction to centers. And it has for a lot of centers. It's really helped them establish themselves in different institutions. And with the AI, the initiative came
know, 2022 when we first, it really hit the market. ⁓
That's really been one of those areas where as Leslie said, we've learned together and they have come to us and they've come to us with ⁓ open, like how is this going to work? And they've come to us with anger, make this go away. And it's been our responsibility to try to respond to both sides and help navigate through this new situation, this new world we're dealing with in a way that's positive and again, student centered as Leslie said, trying to improve the situation for students.
Yeah, the A1 has been big on our campus.
Luke Hobson (28:43)
I it's funny because A1 steak sauce is like my favorite sauce. So like when everyone was talking about it online, I was like, happened? Like, then like, I see. Like, well, that's that's on par for the state of the world right now. ⁓ But when reading the book and kind of going off of that, thinking about the skills and the competencies was really interesting. And thinking about this for what folks are kind of bringing to the table. And one of the things that I saw, which actually reminded me a lot of my book was
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (28:50)
What happened? Why is A1 turning?
Hahaha
Luke Hobson (29:13)
What do educational developers wish they knew before they got started? And that's literally very close to the title of my book, but insert instructional design is pretty darn similar to things. And that's so interesting because there is so much advice out there that people are willing to give, but unless if you ask that question, you're never going to hear it. So I'm so glad that you asked that question. So I will now ask the both of you is what if folks say that this is the thing that they wish they knew before started down this path?
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (29:17)
Yeah, that is the title.
Chris Hakala (29:42)
Les, you wanna take that one?
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (29:44)
Gosh, there were so many things. And it ranged from the mundane, because so many people transitioned from faculty to this work of like, I had to request sick time. You know, things that are often not the case in higher ed, particularly for faculty, to I didn't understand how much of the job.
Chris Hakala (29:46)
I know. ⁓
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (30:11)
would be holding space for faculty and giving them permission to do things that they knew in their hearts felt right. So, I mean, day-to-day things were things they wish they'd known when they started, all the way to like very philosophical, poignant, ⁓ heartfelt moments about the work. So we saw variety.
Chris Hakala (30:38)
Yeah, it's a great question, Luke, and I think one of the biggest sort of things that I sort of think about when I think about this question, and we wrote about this, is that it's important for you to understand that this is flexible in a different way than ⁓ a faculty position is. And that is, the faculty position, you can be...
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (30:49)
anyway.
position is.
Chris Hakala (31:04)
pretty intentional in your flexibility and think about how you want to do things. We are much more responsive in these jobs to what comes at us versus having the autonomy of a faculty member. And I think, you know, and I don't think this made the book, but I had a conversation with a faculty member who said they were stunned when they realized they had to be in the office on January 3rd, because he said,
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (31:11)
germs.
Chris Hakala (31:26)
that's my winter break. You're like, no, that's when you go back into the office. And those kinds of things, I think, kind of catch people by surprise. The 12 month year round center director job, which not everyone has, but the people who do, it's a different thing than when you're a faculty member. And I think that does catch people by surprise. And as Leslie said, the taking the hours off and all of that, people don't think about it. They just go home. They don't realize that they can't kind of do that anymore. So it's those kinds of things. But then in terms of skills,
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (31:37)
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
Thank
Chris Hakala (31:56)
I think they're surprised at how much faculty don't know about what to do in the classroom. And when they observe their colleagues, they're often surprised at what their colleagues do and that their colleagues believe that that's education. And I use this distinction, I don't know if we wrote this in the book, I've said it a bunch of times, there's a difference between teaching and presenting. And the faculty sometimes have to recognize that distinction. And that's something I think as a Senate director, you go in and you go, oh, that was a presentation, lovely.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (32:02)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Hakala (32:23)
but it didn't teach the students much because it didn't give students time to do any cognitive effort. So those kinds of things I think are really important for faculty to recognize. And I'll say one more thing, because I'm on a roll and I have had six shots of espresso today. There is in fact this notion of good instructors not recognizing what it is that makes them good instructors. And so although they're good in the classroom, they don't know how to translate that to someone who doesn't have their skillset.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (32:31)
Thank you.
Luke Hobson (32:36)
You
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (32:45)
BIRD.
Chris Hakala (32:50)
And so they have to think and listen and hear that faculty member and have them adapt what will work with that faculty member. And that takes a lot of observation and patience.
Luke Hobson (33:01)
So it was interesting, but you just said that Chris, because I have one of my students the every day, ⁓ and a part of what they need to be able to do is that they have to go out and interview an instructional designer to learn more about what it's actually like to do this job in the real world. And I just like my textbooks, like go actually talk to people. And one of the observations that one of my students made, and then he asked me in one of our workshops was, do you need to be an extrovert to be an instructional designer? Because he saw me and then he interviewed a fellow.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (33:14)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (33:29)
extrovert and he was just like, so everyone's an extrovert. I was like, no, not at all. I say the opposite. Most are introverts and we're kind of weird, but that is something that has been something that you can't, uh, try to be able to bring out to people to say, like, be more confident. Like that's not how this works. You know, like that's kind of what works for me. And that's how, as influenced my teaching style and going about with these things, but trying to be able to then say like, no, like actually having an introvert is like a superpower. So my team members, they're not extroverts.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (33:44)
worse.
is like.
Luke Hobson (33:58)
I intentionally found people who don't think like me because that's what I want. I don't need more me. I need people who would think differently than me. That's what's going to make our team better. So trying to be able to share that with folks, I'm sure is like a different way of thinking that perhaps they haven't thought about before for being in front of a classroom like that.
Chris Hakala (34:01)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. ⁓
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (34:04)
Great, great.
And
Luke, was cheating and just looking through that section just to see if there was anything that I wanted to make sure that we didn't miss. And it's interesting, you know, there's so much about higher ed that's on the job training, right? No one teaches you to be a teacher, which is pretty core, which is partly why centers for teaching and learning exists. But also nobody teaches you the ecosystem of a university, how it's structured.
how to be a leader. I mean, there's a lot of leadership opportunities, but supervising others, if you've spent your career in higher ed and you've spent your career as faculty, those are not skill sets. I mean, it's different to supervise other humans that are peers than students, right? And if you haven't worked outside of higher ed, you may not have that skill set.
Chris Hakala (35:03)
Mm-hmm.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (35:08)
And those were some of the things that people talked about, just like how no one taught them how to be a teacher, no one taught them how to be a leader, so that there were lots of things that were on the job training that ⁓ was unexpected as part of their role.
Chris Hakala (35:22)
Yeah, I think that's a great point, Leslie. And higher ed's really bad at doing that. People get put into positions all the time without any kind of training, and they're expected to do it. And I think that that, remember talking to someone about that case exactly, and it was managing humans. And managing humans in a way that was motivating and encouraging, but not your style. And so like you said, Luke, you don't hire people like you. You want to hire people who think differently. I think that that's...
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (35:27)
Thank you.
It's like...
Chris Hakala (35:51)
That's really important because otherwise it's like an echo chamber. And that makes managing humans easier if they're all like you, but it doesn't make you as effective.
Luke Hobson (36:01)
Yeah. It's a different, cause you're like, wait a what are they thinking? I was like, no, I said it like this, but they interpreted it like that. And I'm like, right. need to put myself in their shoes. And that has been interesting. The, the big thing. And I'm wondering if you folks face this as well too, is trying to be able to either partner or to manage without power. Because they don't report to you. You don't report to them. And then thinking about why, like one of the things that I wish I knew about was playing the political game.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (36:05)
Right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah. Right, right.
Luke Hobson (36:29)
in a sense, which is an awful way of saying it, but it's true.
Chris Hakala (36:35)
One of my favorite comments
a dean said to me was, the dean said, Chris, you have to remember this. You have responsibility without authority, which is a drag. But she said, you also don't have authority, but you have influence. And use that influence. And I think that, to me, was really interesting and useful because I thought, OK, I can't make anybody do anything.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (36:51)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Hakala (36:59)
But if people come and they do things voluntarily because they see value, that's more powerful than me making someone do something. And I think that that's really a soft skill that really benefits center directors.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (37:13)
Yep. Yep.
Luke Hobson (37:14)
Love it.
Fantastic quote. So my next question for you, which is very conveniently named as the last chapter of the book, is what should we take away from all this research, from all this new information? What's the main takeaway?
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (37:28)
Well, we had it we had a few I'll share a couple of them and one that fits in really nicely with what you all were just talking about. We don't have the same type of responsibility, we do have influence. And I think that ⁓ it can be really a great position to be in to be in the middle. Because you
Luke Hobson (37:29)
Please summarize your huge book.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (37:58)
aren't an authority. You're not necessarily a mouthpiece of the administration. You are a partner, but you're different than someone who's going to be evaluating a faculty member, for example. But a problem we run into as we're seeing faculty status on the decline is that there's a risk of othering the people who are in teaching and learning centers.
if there are not people among them who also have faculty status. And I do not have faculty status and I have, there are many, many faculty who trust me and respect me and I feel like I have a very good relationship. But there is that, you know, there's always the coalition of the willing who are going to come to the Teaching and Learning Center no matter what. But then there's the people that are less likely to come.
Chris Hakala (38:29)
Mm-hmm.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (38:52)
that might need some convincing. And part of that convincing is seeing you as a scholar and seeing you as a peer. And that often means you having faculty status. And when we have that less often, ⁓ it's an issue of credibility. And I don't think everybody in a teaching and learning center needs to have faculty status, but I do think it's strategic for some to have it.
But I also think it alienates people who might be in more precarious, more marginalized positions because you often have to give up faculty status to take these roles on full time. So for faculty of color, why on earth would they walk away from tenure, which is what I did for ⁓ this position. I think it makes it even more of a...
a privilege to transition to this role because I was, not that I'm not in a precarious situation, all of us, when financial times are dire can be at risk, but it's a point of privilege to walk away from tenure. And so I'll say that for now about faculty status and Chris, I wonder what you wanna share.
Chris Hakala (40:10)
Yeah, so I mean, I agree with Leslie and I think along with faculty status, one of the
the things that we thought was really important in terms of credibility is we really believe people need to have experience in the classroom in some ways in order to do this work. And there are people who are going through straight through into a teaching center job and providing support but have not a lot of years in the class or no years in the classroom. And I think that your credibility really is contingent upon people understanding that you can do this job and you have a good understanding of what it's like.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (40:20)
is
Peace.
and do this.
Chris Hakala (40:45)
So
we think that that's kind of important. The faculty status is important. I also think that the field is going to evolve. There are people who talk about professionalizing the field, and Leslie and I have made the argument that we really like the diversity of the backgrounds that are in the field right now. We think that that's an added value. You have people from all these different disciplines with different disciplinary traditions coming into the field and having these conversations. Luke, I don't know if you've ever gone to the pod.
National Conference, but you really do meet people from all different areas, all different backgrounds, and all different sets of experiences. And that makes the conversations really rich. We think that that's important. We also, I would argue that...
teaching centers need to be continuously supported in different ways on an institution. Leslie talked about the notion that we don't want teaching centers to be ⁓ where bad teachers go. Well, I think that that needs to be highlighted by administration. think administration and people who want to support the teaching center need to give it the structure support and not just lip service, but the real support so the center can do the job. And I think that as these centers continue to evolve over time and as we continue to see how this works,
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (41:58)
So, this is the.
Chris Hakala (42:01)
is going to impact teaching and learning, we need to make sure that we give lots of voices the opportunity to do it. I Leslie and we both mentioned the notion of equity. One of the biggest failings of our field is that we are so non-diverse in our backgrounds and in our ethnic and educational backgrounds. And so that's caused all kinds of...
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (42:14)
that we are.
And so it's in kind of a, you
Understood.
Chris Hakala (42:26)
singular voices. want to open the field up in lots of ways, have lots of voices contribute. ⁓ And I think that that's, Leslie, you said it really well about the privilege of walking away from a tenured position. That's something that we need to create space for. I think it's incredibly important if the field is going to continue to exist, especially in these times of budgetary constraints, because budgets, when your budget gets tight, you look around and say, who can we cut and who can we not cut?
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (42:28)
in lots of ways.
in the exist.
Chris Hakala (42:55)
And I don't know how much you know about this, Luke, but there have been centers at institutions since pandemic that don't exist anymore because of the budget.
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (42:56)
Mm-hmm.
it.
Luke Hobson (43:04)
There one got
cut from Harvard. You know, it was just like Harvard. It was like, oh, that's yeah. Yeah, it's insane. It's insane to be able to think about what Chris you were mentioning upon this is like a moment ago, but I would love to be able that I know you don't have a crystal ball, but if you did, where are we going as far as your with this field? Hopefully not the bad, especially a bad example of the good. Where are we going with this field for everything?
Leslie Cramblet Alvarez (43:06)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Chris Hakala (43:08)
Yeah.
Where are we going right now?
Luke Hobson (43:31)
Yeah,
I need to be able to think about like a forward future thinking like what is the what is the future of the centers for teaching and learning?
Chris Hakala (43:38)
So I think there's gonna be, at least in my view, the way that...
teaching centers are going to continue to evolve is that they're going to continue to play roles in institutions to support teaching and learning. But I also think as time goes on and administrators begin to realize that this is part of the fabric of the institution, I think they're going to get more seats at more tables to have more impact on curricular decisions as well as in decisions about how the institution structures programs, how delivery models are. I think not using those resources in decisions about whether you're going to
for online programs, how you're going to structure your online program.
How are you going to structure your curricula? How are you going to think about your grad programs? Not having teaching centers at those tables, I think is a mistake and I think over time they're going to recognize that expertise really adds value to those conversations. I think teaching centers are going to include more of the opportunity for students. You see it now increasing with the student voices and some of those pedagogical partnerships that exist in institutions across the country. I those are going to continue to increase. Our students may not be experts in teaching and learning, but our students know what works for them and what doesn't, and those conversations
really help support. So I that's going to continue to happen. also think, and this is not the good,
