This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker, and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci, educated educators talking
education.
Oh, yes it is.
Tim and Johnny Busted Pencils fully-ledded education talk, educated educators talking education.
People joining us on the Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, you can see a feature, yeah, Johnny
Lupinacci, on location, mobile studio, 10 mobile studio.
You look great man, man, it's good to be here with you, it's a Tuesday, it's summer activity,
just one school, you know, anyone out there, you look, yeah, we'll go in the world, who's
got swim lessons, who's got what, so, you know, I'm on location outside the dance school today,
but Tim, I couldn't, Tim, I couldn't miss today, because it's one of my favorite guests
that we've had on in, you know, in recent shows, we've had some great ones, but one of my
favorites, and so, you know, I wouldn't miss it for the world, so here I am.
There you are, and I'll tell you what, though, before we get into that great guest, you
know, one of the things that's awesome, Busted Pencils is sponsored by the Monocle Brewing
Company, who, you know, they went after the state of Wisconsin to end that crazy voucher
system that hurts public schools, Monocle Brewing Company is making Wisconsin great again,
beer at a time, check out Monocle Brewing Company dot com to see where you can buy their progressive
beer, and yeah, he's back, Jonathan Gerkho, president, co-founder, association for college
and university educators, people are like, wait, I remember that name, yeah, Jonathan,
we're talking about your book, Jonathan, publicization, first of all, how's the book
doing? And, you know, I got to see you in Minneapolis, got to see you talking to people,
publicization, love the concept, love the new word, how's the book doing, Jonathan?
Books doing great, and I am thrilled to be back, great to see you guys, and Tim, it was
a while to meet you in person in Minneapolis, just about 10 days ago at our national higher
education teaching conference, nothing else like it out there.
Nothing at all like that, and I say, we are here tonight to really tell that story, the
association of college and university educators. In fact, you know, you know, I'm going to
do the intro that I had set for you, Jonathan, he's the mastermind behind AQ, that's the
association for college and university educators, the rock stars of teaching excellence, their
mission, transform higher education, or the every instructor in higher ed to be a kick-ass
teacher with over 40,000 instructors already amped up by the AQ courses. It's clear, effective
teaching changes everything. Jonathan, GERCO, AQ, busted pencils together, teaching matters
in colleges and universities. Is that what you're here to tell us?
Well, I'm going to dramatically take my glasses off for our YouTube viewers. Tim, Johnny,
we're all professors, and should we share the secret that's not so secret?
I don't know. Of course, of course. The secret that's not so secret is, we've got a million
and a half amazing professors in this country. They're working hard, they're mission-driven,
they're committed to our students. We're trained, we're world-class researchers, we're scholars,
we serve our institutions, but guess what? Very, very few of us were ever taught how to teach.
No, and that's the point, right? You think about that. Now, Johnny and I might have a little bit,
and even you, Jonathan, having background in quote, teaching, but to imagine anybody else,
you're saying I was in college, and let's create the stereotypical image of, I had this
history professor who just talked to us in and up, up and down, dates, names, just kept throwing
them at us, and you're sitting there going, and I was wondering, why, how did this guy quote,
become a teacher? And the reality, though, Jonathan, is that this is something. It's a dirty little
secret, but maybe to the exposure to realizing this and nothing to actually critique the history
professor, but they're training, as you said, to get to the level, to be able to teach history
at the college level, it was doing really great history research, really good production,
putting together, you know, a history book, a history paper. The ability to teach it was just
the assumption that when you became doctor so and so in history, teaching was just given,
and for the longest time, that's been the status quo of preparation for learning to teach in college.
Is that, is that enough over, is that oversimplifying it, Jonathan?
It's really not. I mean, what a, what a flawed assumption, because I know something so well,
I can teach it. You know, you both have lived your lives in K-12 and ed school. It's a,
it's a body of practice. It's got decades of research behind it. Hyeret has its own 40-year
literature that identifies what is effective teaching that motivates, engages, deepens learning,
retention completion, and yet it's absent from way too many classrooms through no fault of the
professor because when you're in your PhD training, I've heard the story, oh, I had to take this
professional development. I didn't tell my advisor because it's taking time away from my
dissertation research. Here's another fact. Studies show for every additional hour a professor
spends on research. That's correlated with an increase in pay. And for every additional hour
spent on teaching and becoming a better teacher, a decrease in pay. How backward is that?
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Johnny, you're nodding the lay on that.
Well, I mean, it makes sense, right? Tim, the example I always share is when working with college
level educators like helping people like Jonathan said here who I always use example like the world's
leading expert in plastic coatings. They spent the last, you know, 25 years being the world's
leading expert in plastic coatings. You know, I've spent 10, you can relate to this Jonathan too.
We spent the last 20 years being experts of how to be a great teacher. So I'm essentially working
with someone who's the world's leading expert now thrown in to the expectation being that they
teach Tim like, like Jonathan, you and I do. And it's just not an expectation that's realistic.
So we're mediating all the time. And Jonathan, you're right because I've yet to meet a professor
who says, I don't really need to be a great teacher. You know, they want to be good teachers,
but it is a lot of practice. They need a lot of support. And it's not part of what you focus on when
you're becoming the world's leading expert in X, Y or Z. I mean, think about like a molecular
biologist. I would hope hasn't spent the last 20 years, you know, dedicated to just the craft
of teaching they have to be in the lab to be an expert on molecular biology. Okay, and we want
those experts. We need those research that keeps America innovating, researching the leader in so
many, arguably every field. And we shouldn't put all the problems of higher ed at the professor's
feet, you know, that that is just wrong. It's, it's, it's, it's, and it happens, happened way too
much in K 12. But it does show in the stats. And let me, let me throw some out. Go for it.
Our national college completion rate of students going there for the first time. These are the
most excited, the most motivated to go is 50%. When you look at community college and baccalaureate
grad rates, we're 14th in the world for college educated USA. We're 14th. We're 14th. What?
That doesn't make any sense. Yeah. And public confidence is at an old time low because you come home
at Thanksgiving. And your drunk uncle says, Hey, how's college? And you say, this guy's brilliant. I
have no idea what he's saying. So we've got a big quality problem, a quality opportunity to tackle.
And that's what my company, AQ has been doing steadily, relentlessly for 10 years now.
It's busted. It's really letted education talk 8557524842. It's the number. Our guest, Jonathan
Gerkoh, he is the co founder and current president of the Association of College and University
Educators, AQ is the acronym there. I'm talking about, you know, where do college professors
learn to teach? And the answer that we're coming up is, well, there is no real where they learn
to teach because the learning to teach at best has been assumed. Potentially is is it as Johnny
said, you know, the foremost expert in was, quote, kind of given the, that was your credential
for being a teacher because you were the foremost expert in plastics, foremost expert in, you know,
linear algebraic equations, foremost expert. But there was no training during that process of
becoming a professor to how do you communicate what you're the biggest expert in so that people
sitting out there who are hopefully not just listening to you because that might be one of the
issues facing you, but that they're comprehending, they're downloading it, they're getting passionate
about it because Jonathan, as you pointed out there, the reality of thinking about that, you know,
so it's like a 5050 shot that if I go to college, I'm going to actually graduate is kind of what
you're saying going like, whoa, wait a minute, that's not good. Is it because college is so so so
hard or can colleges and universities step up to the plate here at this moment like AQ is trying
to do and I'm giving the hand pushing a movement of movement of saying great teaching is what higher
education is about. It is about research, it is about service, but it is about great teaching
because the students who come and sit in front of us, they have, they're there to learn and we
as faculty are there to serve that knowledge quest of families and students and so how we put
that forward, how we articulate and put in action, what it means to be sitting in front of me when
I'm a college professor and you're a student that, you know, that unwritten contract, what are we
going to do over the semester? My job, you know, could be seen as saying, you know, I'm hopefully
communicating knowledge to you. It wasn't a guarantee all this time. It's busted pencils fully
letted our guest, Jonathan Gerkho, AQ, college teaching. Yeah, it can be a lot better and we're
going to get into it when we get back.
There it is, busted pencils fully letted education talk, educated educators talking, education,
and truly tonight educated educators talking, education, our guest, Jonathan Gerkho, co-founder,
and current president of the Association for College and University Educators. Yeah,
there's an association connected to those who are college professors, they're also educators,
they're the ones teaching. Jonathan, AQ though 10 years old only, I think that in its sense,
a young organization, I mean higher education, the whole idea, the professoriate has been around
for a long time. What in the world, 10 years now, a commitment to teaching excellence, tell us
about the founding of AQ and how that came about? Yeah, well, look, it's no accident that we picked
an acronym to just slip our way into the alphabet soup of organization, sounds like we were founded
by John Dewey. And look, 10 years of a startup, it might as well have been founded by John Dewey
a hundred years ago that the years that's taken off my life. But let me answer your question,
and I love how you ended the last segment about a movement around quality excellence in every class.
You know, you turn the clock back 10 years, more than 10 years now, and national completion goals
for college come out, we need him for citizenship, we need him to meet the economic need, and this
whole student success agenda gets launched across higher ed. But here's the thing, it largely has
focused on access, right? Think better placement and trying to get faster, right? And transfer
affordability, think of all the debt relief and scholarships and state action on that and support,
think of advising and tutoring and all this out of class support. Well, we looked at the data
and we were not as a country on trajectories to meet national goals or to simply do right by the
students we enroll in the social contract we make with them. You know, and it was sitting
there right in front of our faces. What about the core? What about teaching and learning? Because
if today's students do one thing, they drive to campus, they park, they run into class,
they get back in their cars, go back to family jobs, other responsibilities, or they log on,
take the online class and log off. So, you know, sometimes I like to call class time as showtime
as to when we can really make a difference. And it's a lever that's in our control, right? If we can
ensure that one thing is the highest quality that it can be, it's the teaching and learning. So
this movement, you know, we've been pushing sometimes up a hill like Sisyphus has been about adding
quality to the higher ed agenda alongside access and affordability. I need to tell you
AQ story. I'll get to that. Let me, let me get you, you've got a question there. No, I did you,
as you put that forward there, it's just good for people to hear again. It's just a nice reminder
of people going, it's like, oh, wait, college professors learning to teach what a concept and
you know, and say not to really make that so light, but to realize that Jonathan AQ 10 years ago,
the ability to to come together and, you know, just remind people, 40,000 professors strong now,
10 years later, it sounds to me like the movement has begun. Well, thank you. And you saw a great
example of it just last week or so at the National Higher Education Teaching Conference, which,
you know, I just thought was motivating and dynamite. When we decided, and the we, I, you know,
blessed by very mission-aligned investors, we're a company and thank goodness we're a company
because in for a penny, in for a pound, we have not had to, you know, sort of navigate the ups
and downs of philanthropy. Mission-aligned investors and advisors like Eduardo Padrone,
who led Miami-Dade College. The College of Democracy is its nickname for decades.
Matt Goldstein, who ran the CUNY system, also another big driver of socioeconomic mobility.
We said, look, we've got to do it differently. There have been past attempts to strengthen
quality teaching. So here's how we did it differently. First, we defined standards.
Tim and Johnny, higher-read, before we did it, had never said, this is what every professor needs
to know and be able to do to teach well. Yeah. So we did it. I mean, we worked with everybody,
the experts, a huge lit review to settle on what we call the effective practice framework.
You know, 10 years ago, you could say, well, I don't know, is this the right set of competencies?
But now, 500 institutions and 40,000 professors can't be wrong. They're saying, yeah,
this is what I need to know and be able to do.
Well, and so putting those numbers like that and say, 10 years, it really is, you're building
a movement. And even to begin with and say, wait a minute, there were no set standards.
So let's give, you know, so chemistry, if you took that, you know, first or second year,
Kamen College, and you went, well, what do you mean there weren't any standards for how my
professor taught chemistry? Yeah, there weren't. There were, quote, textbooks and things, right, John?
Well, that's right. Now, we could have stopped there and just put that out into the world and said,
this is what, you know, good practice looks like, but we knew that wouldn't make change as fast as
we wanted. So we did two more key things. First, we have built and now have a broad catalog of courses
for faculty to take, to develop those skills. These are like the very best methods courses you'd
find at the very best Ed schools, but this is for, for professors. Right. And third, it leads to
a certification. So this means it's getting into promotion and tenure portfolios. It's getting
into rehire consideration. If you're an adjunct faculty, we're seeing in some places that's
getting into collective bargaining where you've got to do continuing ed and this certification counts
toward that rehiring. Last example, we've seen at a flagship out west, the provost writing certification
into job offer letters to make sure the teaching is good. So in other words, the provost and for
people who are thinking, what provost, the principal at a college who is putting in the, to hiring the
next teacher, the next professor, you're saying it's they're going to require some form of certification
with AQ. Okay. Yeah. That's exactly right. And you know, it so blows our mind coming from our
careers, our first careers in K 12 were, of course, you got to be certified. Of course, you have to
have your training. It's a brave new world in higher ed. Yeah. And as you said, though,
too, Jonathan, yeah, in K 12 and continuing, right? It's like, oh, I got to continue to get
professional development. I got to continue to continue to get professional development. Well,
that's what we're talking about here. In a sense, people going, AQ, I don't get it. No,
professional development through courses, through connections that faculty across the country,
across the world, actually, can get together and learn to be better teachers. Our guest, Jonathan
Gerkho, AQ, 855, 7524, 842, man, we got all kind of more questions coming back. Jonathan,
though, we're going to think about this. How do we prepare people for democracy, though? And how
does good teaching contribute to that more when we get back?
We always do that. We talk about our generations, lots of generations,
lots of pencils fully-led education talk, educated educators, talking education, number 855,
7524, 842. Our guest, return guest, Jonathan Gerkho, talking about the association for college
and university educators. Just there is one of those out there. And before we get into more of
the conversation with Jonathan, we've got Joanne on the line, Joanne from Madison. What's
happening, Joanne? Great show. I've got an academic freedom question. Say I'd be teaching,
taking your certification classes and all of that, or you're studying your approaches.
And I'd say, hey, that's not for me. I'd like to go a different direction in my teaching.
How will your organization help me to fulfill my dream, my goals, my insights, and all of that,
while keeping it within the boundaries of good practice in terms of teaching? What
type of process would go on?
Joanne, great to hear your voice again. Thanks for calling last time too. And I love your question.
So we have stayed now in the safe harbor of how to teach, not what to teach, at a very foundational
grain size, meaning regardless of your philosophical or theoretical orientation and your discipline,
this is going to help you teach it better. Now, I recognize the more sophisticated the pedagogy,
pedagogical content knowledge, theoretical points of view in pedagogy. It gets tricky to stay in
that safe harbor, which is why we've stayed at the foundational level. And so far, so good,
we maintain a 95% rate of satisfaction and faculty recommending this to peers and finding it
relevant and helpful. I mean, I think the only time 95% of faculty agree on something is when
it's a vote of no confidence for their president. That's true, so true.
I love this. Jonathan, sorry, can I ask a follow up to the question Joanne asked because I was
really, I loved hearing this. Jonathan, you talked about the way that teaching gets sophisticated,
right, as like the content knowledge gets deeper or maybe more expert level.
You know, we learn a lot about like mentoring at that level and different things. So yeah,
I was wondering, could you just break that down for our listener a little bit more when you talk
about staying at the level of like a grain of sand, right? Break that down. What do you mean entry
level courses? Or do you mean like, let's start with the basics of how you can improve your teaching
and then connecting it to we know you have an expert content level knowledge. Here's how you can
teach that better. Do you mean a level of a grain of the content or of like where you're at with
your teaching? If the grain size of technique, Johnny, the latter, so more often than I wish
faculty have shared, huh? I never thought about preparing a hierarchy of questions.
Bloom's taxonomy. I never thought about limiting my own speech and facilitating student interaction.
I think per share, gosh, I wish that was widely known, it is kind of a breakthrough for some
professors. So, you know, get and look, it proves our core insight that if we were never taught
how to teach, why would we expect to know these things? Now, our foundational courses are at that
grain size of technique. We continue the education with specialty and deeper dives into how to
foster a culture of belonging, how to teach with AI, how to embed career guidance and relevance
into your course, no matter your subject. And look, I know a big concern of civic media and this show
democracy. I'm thrilled to share that we just received a major grant from the Arthur Vining Davis
Foundation to build modules for faculty on how to promote deliberative dialogue, how to get us
talking again in class, not indoctrinating. I don't think a lot of indoctrination goes on. I think
that's a talking point. But what are the technical skills to facilitate deliberative dialogue
and we'll be coming out with that later this year? We think about deliberative dialogue makes me
think, though, I guess what? Presidential debate coming up Thursday, June 27th. Yeah, stay
tuned to your local civic media station following busted pencils that night for the presidential
debate. Civic media news director Terry Bell and host Todd Albaugh will bring you the top tier
coverage of this critical performance for democracy. And I put that in there right now, Jonathan,
because you kind of gave us a nice, nice lead in there deliberative dialogue and democracy.
I'm wondering if this Johnny could be the potential where we might have this time to talk very
specifically about democracy and action. Exactly. This true is the Bell rings, right?
I think you nailed it, Tim. And Jonathan, wow, what an awesome contribution and opportunity to
be an example of democracy and action, right? It's like, we talk all the time about the connection
between public education and democratic citizenship and the strength of democracy. But I think this
is one of those moments that this is bringing it together, deliberative conversation and learning.
Like, that doesn't mean indoctrination. That doesn't mean, hey, I have all the answers. I'm going
to tell them to you, you're going to remember them and you're going to apply them. We know that
that by and large doesn't really work at any level of education. So, and I love that. I love that
because we surveyed so many college students over the past few years, specifically around that
talking point, around how do you feel about like sometimes controversial political topics in
course and your course is taught? Do you feel like it's too liberal? Do you feel like it's too
conservative? Do you feel like, you know, it's one way or the other? And by and large,
both students that identify as as liberal or identified as conservative in in pretty comparative
numbers, both said, they just kind of don't engage. And they don't feel like there's an open space
to have much discussion or to disagree with one another. And that was a little bit interesting
because, you know, oftentimes on one side, we seem to think, you know, well, there's no space like,
I'm not heard or I'm not listened to. But what we learned was by and large is students are just
kind of feeling like the course or the classes that they're in aren't designed in a way to have
much deliberation, to have much healthy disagreement to actually learn. And that was a big aha
because a lot of of the peer groups I'm in would say, you know, well, we have a lot of conservative
students or, you know, sometimes conservative students that I talked to, you know, they would,
they would assume, oh, we have a lot of liberal professors. And we fell into that polarization
when the reality was nobody was really discussing much. It wasn't open ended and it wasn't
opportunity. So I love hearing that because we know even some great teachers struggle with
facilitating deliberative learning conversation. Jonathan, can you break that down a little bit?
What do you mean by deliberation? Yeah, well, look, it is so understandable and so human nature,
if you're going to get canceled by a peer, well, it's not worth it. I'm just not going to talk.
If I'm not going to get, if I'm going to risk tenure, you know, if I'm going to be on,
you know, some kind of watch list, I'm not going to, I'm just not going to go there.
Yeah. So part of the response is actually developing the skills to be able to facilitate,
to create the spaces. You know, it's, it's like John Dewey said, it's our job to help people learn
how to think, not what to think. Well, how to think is a question of technique? How to teach in ways
whether it's foundational, like asking more open-ended questions and facilitating dialogue,
or going deeper into the norms of discourse such that we can go into the hotter topics.
Again, I think this is where AQ is making a really unique contribution to
educated citizenry. And let's, you know, let's not forget. Yes, we go to college to advance
our material well-being, to get a better job. Employers have been consistent for years. They want
employees who can think, who can deliberate, who can collaborate, problem solve, who can handle
difficult situations. So the same deliberative skills that we need for an educated
citizenry employers want. So let's, let's go to it. And, and, you know, the way an institution
can do it is by checking out our website, aq.org, about how to develop a strategic
partnership to really make sure there's excellence in every single class on campus.
I don't know how morally ethically we could commit to anything less.
And an individual can go to that website and start taking certification courses right away.
I'll talk that about that. You know, teaching with AI, Jonathan, I'm a satisfied customer, too,
on that. I did, I did the, the foundational teaching, you know, teaching and learning with
the artificial intelligence through AQ. And, and I feel like I am a good teacher and I know a lot,
but I'm telling you I went through that course and my ability to come out of this and really say,
boy, I think I really have some better ideas and some techniques and some ways to talk about
teaching and learning with AI that I hadn't even thought about. And that's been one of the most
satisfying components of this work. We've looked at our years of data, faculty, by faculty
demographic, new, long tenured, by discipline, by, you name it. And to the last one, faculty
are saying, I learned something. And as you'd expect, new professors learn a lot, but season professors
also report, I'm learning, I'm deepening my craft, I'm reaching students in ways I've never
reached them before. How cool is that? It is absolutely cool on that. It's, yeah,
numbers eight five five seven five two four eight four two one to throw that out there. If you
want to join us and talk with our guest, Jonathan Gerko, a co-founder and president of the association
of college and university educators that's AQ, the acronym, you know, a little democracy in action
they're talking about that. And Jonathan, you know, come, coming up on the break in a little bit here,
but we're, you know, you're always our special guest. We're keeping you over anyway, so we can
continue to talk because the concept to this democracy and deliberation, as we are coming up on
the debate and we're talking about, so Johnny says, you know, students don't even necessarily fill
potentially invited to the conversation of dialogue. The other part of that I also see, though,
too, is that kind of, you know, incredibly hardcore rhetoric of saying, this is my position and I'm
sticking to it, which the whole idea of like, deliberative dialogue and democracy isn't
winning an argument. It's having a dialogue, a discussion, a give and take, a back and forth,
and I'm wondering, boy, doesn't our society and our democracy really need a refresher in that
right now? Well, you're, you're really speaking to, to my heart, you know, I've,
of late been reading a lot of philosophical pragmatism, you know, and it's, and a lot of it is
about how do we keep the democratic conversation going? Instead of how do we, instead of how do we
win and end the conversation? How do we keep it going? How do I listen in a way on the assumption
that someone else has something that I can learn from, that will improve my point of view,
so that we can grow in, in Richard Rurdy's words, the community of unforged agreement. Isn't
that a beautiful expression by, by consent, by, by, uh, growing that community? To me, that's the
democratic project. Mm-hmm. It absolutely is. Busted pencils fully led it, education talk,
educated, educators talking, education, yeah, if you're on Facebook, you're on Twitter,
if you're on YouTube, you're like, Johnny's in his car. He is. That's the dedication that we bring
to the show, uh, the association of college and university educators, our geth Jonathan Gurko,
staying with us over the next break, too, because we got a little bit more to talk about some very
specifically, Jonathan, want to ask you about the effective teaching framework that AQ has, uh,
more effective teaching in college? Yeah, busted pencils. That's what we do here every night,
and in fact, we're going to do it when we get back.
Boy, that was the theme song of all three of us, I think. Busted pencils, educated, educators,
teenage, anarchists. Johnny, we've been odd to talk to Tim Slecker and Jonathan Gurko,
the association of college and university educators, AQ. Got you laughing there a little bit, Jonathan
on that. You weren't a teenage, you weren't a teenage anarchist. Well, Johnny now hold that title,
we'll keep working around with it. We're doing that. Um, so Jonathan, you know, eight,
here we go. It's coming in. Couldn't get enough of it. Yeah, couldn't get enough of it. Um,
you know, we're talking so much great going on with AQ, the whole idea of elevating college teaching
to a movement to say we've got a lot of, you know, people out there we can serve so well.
When you put this together, though, too, there's AQ's effective teaching practice framework,
and you talk about student persistence and retention at higher education. And I think those
are so key to talking about the kind of anger and distrust towards higher education. If students
just persisted longer and graduated more often in the connection to then AQ's effective teaching
practice framework, how does that all work together? Yeah, so the framework itself is 25 core
competencies, uh, is steeped in the literature back by hundreds of citations and a, you know,
a decades-long scholarship of teaching and learning literature. So we know these are the right
practices to help professors develop. We have also, uh, spent years studying our own impact.
What is the impact of AQ certified professors? It's one thing to rest on the existing literature.
It's another to be able to point to it ourselves. And guess what? Great teaching works. We have
rigorous longitudinal studies showing deeper learning, better grades, higher rates of course
completion, fewer D and F grades and withdrawals, higher retention into subsequent semesters,
and as soon as you've got a retention figure, what we've done is be able to compute
conservative return on investment. So invest in your professors, invest, uh, in teaching and guess
what? The advances your mission, teaching and learning. It's also good for your economics of your
institution. But here's the rub guys. It can't all be on the professors. If you're listening and
you're a professor, it's got to be an administrator, a provost, a vice president, a faculty affairs
who says, this has to be a strategic initiative. A, because it's the right thing to do. B, because
we're going to see all of these good benefits as confirmed in the research meta-analyses. We've
done of all of our research. And so like you saw last week, Tim, at the conference, this is about
activating champions who have agency to voice the need for this with their department chair, their
dean to make the formal time for it, to reward it, to recognize it. Otherwise, we're still in that
situation of, I want to do this. I should do this. But everything is pulling me in the direction
of research. That's not going to be transformative, which is why administrators are so key to growing
this issue. Yeah, I mean, I'm, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm interested in this. I mean, I'm a, you know,
and even with being an educator in my, you know, there's always improvement, especially looking at,
you know, I'm a little disease, you know, learning that's different, even then we had in the past,
you know, engagement from our students. And so being a learner that leads learners is always a good
thing. Nuts and bolts, Jonathan. So like, what kind of, how much like, if I talk to my peers or even
myself, how much time and what, like, what's the process here for us to think? So there's different
engagement is learning different pathways. If you want to take a nibble, if you want to get certified,
if you want to take your time, there are the self-paced courses, what we call short courses like
Tim took on AI. You can begin an eight week experience, those eight week experiences stack up to
full certification. We have some provosts and presidents enrolling their faculty in year-long
certification courses. What you, what you can do, Johnny, is help decrease the fear of faculty.
A lot of presidents and provosts are afraid to touch this as some third rail, but guess what?
Professors want to be better teachers. So let's just bust that myth here on busted pencils
and start getting professors the support they want that guess what works really well for students.
Yeah, that's awesome, Jonathan. I love it, man. You know what else Tim, I love and we'll get back
to this because Jonathan, I want to be able to have our listeners have an opportunity to know,
again, where they can find this information because I know I'm interested,
but I have a direct line to you and our listeners, you got a direct line of Jonathan too,
you can either contact us at busted pencils, you can call in or you can go to the
Accu website, www.acu.org, acu.org, that's where I want to start.
Listener, this isn't even like a planned infomercial. This is educated educators here thinking like,
you know, my wheels are spinning. I'm like, man, there's always room to be a better teacher,
right? And so where can I learn to be a better teacher? And you know, I can go to Accu and that's
really great. I can also grow, grab a beer, Monaco Brewing Company FM in Madison,
or if I'm not a Madison, I can visit, you know, Perguisebeard.com and get a Monaco Brew. I can order
it delivered to me unless I live in Idaho. But, you know, there's a way that you could connect with
great beer. There's a way you can connect with great learning. There's a way you can tune in
every night. Listen to us on busted pencils. Join the conversation. You can give us a call
8-5-7-5-2-4-2 and be part of, like Jonathan said, Bustin pencils and Bustin those myths.
It's, you know, we're building the movement, Jonathan. Man, appreciate you coming in and truly,
yeah, Bustin pencils, as you said, building the movement, acu. What's that? Just give that
web address one more time. Sure, it's www.acu.org, which is the acronym for Association of
College and University Educators, acu.org. And there's all different ways to start there if you're
looking as an institutional leader wanting to make an institutional partnership or an individual
wanting to get started. Hmm, there it is. Great guests, great conversation. Jonathan Birko,
man, truly. Thanks for Bustin pencils again. Johnny and Tim, tomorrow night, educators amplified.
Yeah, we'll be back, teacher Helen and teacher Joanna. Good Eels, have a good night,
see y'all tomorrow.