It was in 1981 that a group of us (Mei-Fei Elrick and Don McIntosh from Guelph, Alan Blizzard and Dale Roy from McMaster, Harry Murray and Colin Baird from Western, Ron Sheese from Toronto, and myself) decided to launch STLHE. We had no financial assets, no idea of the potential interest, and only a vaguely formulated set of goals and activities. What we did have was a tradition of annual conferences in Ontario devoted to teaching and learning in higher Education. The latter were excellent social and professional occasions, but were attended primarily by instructional developers, and we felt a real need to involve “rank-and-file” faculty—the university and college teachers who spend a large amount of their working lives in the classroom. Our hope was that the creation of a society like STLHE would provide a focus for those professors who regard teaching as their major commitment, who are anxious to explore ways to enhance teaching and learning and wish to share their own ideas with colleagues.

The Society saw considerable changes during Alan’s presidency, many of which he initiated. These included a considerable increase in membership, establishment of the STLHE listserv, the “new initiatives” program for funding small instructional development projects, the institution of “travelling workshops” in different parts of the country, the encouragement of annual conferences outside Ontario, and the gradual democratization of the Society’s procedures. Alan participated enthusiastically in running the Society, hosting one of the conferences, and publishing the newsletter. Until recently, we were unable to afford any assistance with these tasks, and the President bore the main brunt of the work with help from whatever colleagues he could cajole into volunteering.

Principal among these was Dale Roy, who served as the Society’s Treasurer, unofficial secretary, and general booster throughout Alan’s tenure. Dale also helped plan and run what is perhaps STLHE’s most successful achievement, the 3M Teaching Fellowships Program.

When Alan Blizzard left office, he had already begun the process of expanding the Steering Committee to include representation from all regions across the country. Another step in this inclusion process was taken two years ago when the annual general meeting ratified our first Constitution—one we carefully wrote to reflect current practice while providing enough flexibility to adjust and adapt to changing circumstances. This year we tested a new procedure for electing regional representatives to the Steering Committee, a procedure we hope will make appointment to this body more transparent. As a means for encouraging and supporting local initiatives, and increasing participation from across the country, we also began to hold the annual winter meetings of instructional development officers in different locations each year.

Some of the exciting initiatives undertaken recently by members include: Positive Pedagogy, pre-conference workshops for instructional developers, our listserv, regular meetings of Ontario IDO officers, and an electronic directory of 3M Teaching Fellows.

We have recently initiated the Alan Blizzard Award, a worthy new venture coupled with a promising partnership with McGraw-Hill Ryerson–Higher Education Division. We have produced our own Green Guide series of publications on teaching and learning. Our Ethical Principles in University Teaching has been distributed in both official languages across Canada and has been reprinted in numerous newsletters, journals, and other publications. It is astounding that there are people who still do not know who we are or what we stand for. What strategies then might we pursue to increase our influence and hence our ability to contribute to the improvement of teaching in Canadian higher education?

One of the often-heard buzz phrases when I became President was “national voice,” as in “we must make STLHE a national voice for teaching and learning in higher education.” Thus, we embarked on a Strategic Planning exercise which has taken over two years of work. Over this time, have we become that “national voice” people were talking about? Not yet. However, we are now poised to take this on. We have four strategic goals that define the Society, and we have new structures in place that clearly define the working relationships with such groups as the 3M Teaching Fellows and the Educational Developers Caucus. Representatives from these groups now sit on our Steering Committee, and each is engaged in a range of activities with great potential.

And there is the emergence of the Institute for the Advancement of Teaching in Higher Education, with which STLHE is forging an important new relationship. With careful planning, STLHE will be able to work with the Institute to provide valuable support for effective teaching in Canada and around the world. Another important step has been the establishment of a permanent office for our secretariat. Up to this point in our history, the administrative work of STLHE has been handled on a volunteer basis by some very dedicated people. This will allow us to manage membership-related work more efficiently, as well as our publications and other projects to come.

My survival in this position is attributable to virtually everything else I have talked about—the people who have stepped forward to make a difference—those who have hosted conferences, written articles, made plans and presentations, attended long and demanding meetings, summarized those meetings and written reports, given up countless hours travelling across the country, taken on major positions within the Steering Committee, and on it goes.

It was truly an honor to serve as President of STLHE and to have had the opportunity to work with such an outstanding group of people; members of the Society and colleagues around the world who care deeply about teaching and learning in higher education. Through the efforts of many, and in keeping with our strategic directions, much was accomplished between 2004 and 2007:

We advanced the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Along with the Educational Developers Caucus, we hosted a number of national events bringing clarity to what the SoTL is, why it is important, how it should be assessed and supported, and why increased government funds are needed for this important work. Our annual conference, publications and awards programs provided important opportunities to disseminate and celebrate the SoTL. In support of this, our newsletter—Teaching and Learning in Higher Education—took on a whole new look and focus. We advocated for the improvement of teaching and learning practice. STLHE became much better known on the national stage. Members of the STLHE Board of Directors became increasingly invited to speak on behalf of the Society at national conferences and think tanks, and to comment on noteworthy events and initiatives (such as Ontario Government’s “Rae Review.” Projects by the Council of 3M National Teaching Fellows, such as the publication of Making a Difference/Toute la Différence, helped profile issues of importance to Society members.

We became a more inclusive organization attracting increased numbers of faculty and educational developers from the College sector, as well as students and administrators. Two Special Interest Groups (SIGs) were established; one representing the interests of writing centre professionals and the other the interests of librarians. We also introduced a new portfolio that will champion graduate students and TA development issues. And, we continued to develop ideas to help us better meet the needs of our francophone colleagues.

We strengthened our partnerships. The work of the Society was advanced through our long-standing partnerships with 3M Canada, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, the International Consortium for Educational Developers (ICED) and the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network. We also forged important new relationships with the Institute for the Advancement of Teaching in Higher Education (IATHE), MacLean’s, and Magna Publications.

In addition to all of the above, we made considerable progress on the administration and financial management of the Society. Sylvia Avery accepted a three-year contract as Administrator, all Board members made progress within specified portfolios of responsibility, and our administrative processes became much more transparent (through, for example, open nominations and elections for the Board of Directors). We also made significant progress towards incorporation. These accomplishments were made possible, in part, by our extremely successful institutional membership campaign. Attracting over 50 institutional members in 2007, the Society’s financial position was considerably strengthened.

As I step down as President, I am delighted to be able to pass the baton to Joy Mighty in whose leadership I have every confidence. I look forward to seeing how the Society will continue to evolve in the year’s ahead.

If you read the reflections of STLHE past presidents, you’ll be struck, as I was, by the constant progress of our organization. Over more than 35 years, we have learned and evolved relentlessly. During my time as STLHE president, I hope that we built on that tradition.

We started strategically, with revisions to the Society’s mission, goals and values and we launched our charitable arm, Teaching and Learning Canada. We also made significant changes to increase communication. These included a renewed commitment to bilingualism that involved adding a chair of bilingual advocacy to our Board of Directors, publishing fully bilingual newsletters and annual reports and a complete redesign of the STLHE website.

Our work at the board level wasn’t limited to a single position, however. We converted our board from a regional representation model to a portfolio-based and expertise-driven approach that saw us decentralize our budget structure and add a new vice-president to our leadership mix, along with a student member-at-large to reflect our broad commitment to meaningful student engagement in the work of the Society.

We expanded the reach, influence and impact of the Society by establishing partnerships with like-minded organizations that connect STLHE to the international community of teachers and learners. We have now developed productive and mutually beneficial relationships with Academics Without Borders, the Central and East European Management Development Association, and Higher Education Teaching and Learning.

Closer to home, STLHE founded a regional grants program to support grassroots teaching and learning initiatives across Canada and we enhanced our service to our members by creating a Membership Centre to administer of our membership program and ensure that the Society has more accurate and organized membership data.

Finally, we expanded the STLHE awards program. Having coordinated the 3M National Teaching Fellowships for 10 years it was heartening to see the awards portfolio grow as significantly as it did. We unveiled the College Sector Educators Award and the Brightspace (originally D2L) Innovation Award in Teaching and Learning, along with the TAGSA Award for best conference session led by a graduate student and the 3M National Student Fellowship which builds on the name and reputation of our most successful award. We also presented, for the first time, the Christopher Knapper Outstanding Volunteer Award which is, I think, the perfect place for me to conclude these reflections because STLHE is only as strong as its volunteers.

It has been an honor to serve with my fellow volunteers as we continue to advance the cause of teaching and learning. While it was an incredible privilege to learn from my talented colleagues on the Board, the EDC Caucus and the 3M Council, the secret sauce of the Society is and always will be the STLHE member. Collectively, what our members offer during annual conferences in February and June is what marks the ultimate pilgrimage of sharing, renewal and development of Canada’s educators. I look forward to continuing to work with you as I move on to new roles to serve the Society for teaching and learning in higher education.

To have served STLHE as its President—and before that on its Board of Directors—has been both an honour and a pleasantly unexpected opportunity. Ten years ago I would never have thought it possible that I could take on such a set of volunteer responsibilities. But I discovered (as have many before me) that the STLHE is an organization with an uncanny capacity to nourish personal growth within its rich and unmatched interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, inter-provincial, and cross-sector collaborations. I encourage anyone who is curious about their own untapped capacity for fostering meaningful growth within a consequential organization to consider taking up a leadership position within the “safe space” offered by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education!

None of this would have happened if it had not been for my predecessor, Arshad Ahmad, whose example of how to give back as a 3M Fellow was what got me involved with STLHE Board-work in the first place. I had always thought of STLHE as my “home” organization, having been deeply moved and inspired by the example of Joy Mighty, who was President in the year of my 3M NTF cohort. But it was Arshad’s bewitching smile and STLHE-size bearhug that drew me in to this fascinating work in 2011 and later convinced me to let my name stand for election, and I am proud to count him among my most formative mentors.

What was accomplished during my Presidency between 2014 and 2017 was entirely the result of teamwork and synergy. I felt like a conductor, blessed with an excellent orchestra, whose job it was to draw forth music from many diversely talented people, and to seek—through various challenging passages—the best possible harmonies from amongst their different tones and timbres. Jon Houseman, for example, was the one whose indefatigable attention to detail brought the Society into much-needed compliance with Industry Canada, and who led the complete revision of our By-Laws and a thorough and timely updating of our Policies. Board stalwart Denise Stockley took on the revision of our Conference Manual, making it into a living document that has thoroughly streamlined the complex operation of our signature annual event. Jon and Denise also collaborated to engineer the transferal of our administrative operations to the National Capital where we now have an appropriately bilingual, arm’s-length, industry-informed and sustainable administrative unit, led by the unflappable Tim Howard. Then, to our good fortune, along came STLHE veteran Bob Sproule to fully reform and regularize our financial operations, complete with a fresh approach to accounting and a new auditor.

Meanwhile, Deb Dawson was the inspiring leader of our founding constituency, the EDC, whose annual conference in February became one of the highlights of my year for its atmosphere of energetic commitment and genuine good will. Esther Enns ably led the 3M Council, our second founding constituency, helping to manage the evolution of our relationship with 3M Canada and the adjustment of the eligibility criteria for both of our 3M awards, in particular the extension of the 3M National Teaching Fellowship to College-sector faculty. This achievement, along with re-imagining the College Sector as a full-fledged Constituency of the Society, are the two legacies of this era of which I am most proud, and I was so fortunate to have the visionary commitment of Tim Loblaw, and later Mike Van Bussel, to help lead these changes. One important consequence has been the exponential development of College-sector membership, which is one reason our budgetary problems of 2011-12 were solved. Also growing by leaps and bounds was SoTL Canada under the legendary Nicola Simmons, who together with her successor Janice Miller-Young and a powerful Executive succeeded in building the international reputation of SoTL Canada, due in part to the expansion and flourishing of our flagship publication, CJSoTL. Turning SoTL Canada into a Constituency with a seat on the Board was simply naming what was already the case!

At the same time, Roselynn Verwoord was transforming the Student sector into the fastest-growing area of our membership after the Colleges, leading the necessary changes in attitude and approach within the Society to match that growth. Supporting these successes, and advancing the portfolios of Publications, Partnerships, Awards, and Bilingualism Advocacy, were Dianne Bateman, Jeanette McDonald, Valerie Lopes, and Christine Gaucher, each of whom in their own way taught me so much about the art of volunteer commitment: building energetic vision, remaining steady amidst difficulties, and retaining a consistency of enthusiastic focus on our common goal: advancing the cause of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

And it is still a “cause” after all these years, despite our many successes. Here is where I turn from a tone of celebration to speaking some harsh truths. One of the greatest shocks of my Presidency was the experience of returning home from the heady inspiration of our June Convention or from the EDC Conference to encounter the entrenched skepticism of my faculty colleagues toward learner-centered curriculum design or the practice of SoTL—even in a small undergraduate institution that markets itself as teaching-focused. The term “learning outcomes” was held in particular scorn, tainted as it seemed to be with the Quality-Assurance agenda of neoliberal regimes and a concomitant threat to academic freedom. Somehow, perhaps through the efforts of agencies like HEQCO, the work of Educational Development has become associated in the minds of many tenured faculty and Faculty Unions with the efficiency measures of Administrations intent on measuring the un-measurable in order to rationalize down-sizing. And it is not just entrenched faculty who stand in the way of learner-centered teaching; I encountered a Provost who was dubious about the value of our university’s institutional membership in STLHE and who clearly did not regard SoTL as equivalent in merit to Tri-Council-funded research. Equally shocking is the recent wave of staffing “adjustments” at CTLs across the country, showing that faculty unions are not the only ones affected by neoliberal efficiency measures.

Unfortunately, I don’t see any immediate solution to this situation. I think the Colleges have a major advantage over the Universities in their capacity to introduce the benefit of Educational Development programs at the outset of an instructor’s career. Similarity, we can look to university grad-school teacher-training programs—ideally assessed by the EDC—for an eventual solution, creating a new generation of university faculty with a nuanced understanding of what learner-centred, evidence-based teaching actually means, and who are in the habit of consulting the results of SoTL as a matter of professional course. In the meantime, teaching and learning in higher education remains a “cause,” and there is much work to be done “leading from the middle.”

That is the role of STLHE. If I were to be asked for my advice going forward, I would say that in order to advance its advocacy role, STLHE must have a broader membership base to add demographic clout to its research and experiential expertise. The recent expansion of our membership has shown that there is a huge potential for growth in the College and Student sectors. This, however, will require shifting our concept of the benefits of membership, which are presently focused on reduced fees for the annual convention. An expanded membership means a larger convention, and our annual conference has already grown beyond the capacity of even major universities to host it onsite. One solution, then, is to create value in membership beyond the annual conference: in order to attract a broad base of rank-and-file instructors across all sectors we need to realize the dream of becoming a “go-to” source for front-line teaching resources. We could start by offering members free access to our Green Guides (while still levying a price for non-members), all the while adding a suite of other, shorter, more focused resources as a central benefit of membership. Eventually the STLHE website would be visited routinely as a portal for such member benefits, the same way that a researcher uses an institution’s library subscriptions to access journal resources. Meanwhile, we could gradually introduce a series of regional conferences alongside the annual convention. We know that fuel prices will inevitably rise (when the real costs of carbon emissions are built in), and although one of the principal strengths of STLHE has been the way it brings people together across a far-flung country, we may no longer be able to justify asking people to travel continent-sized distances to get together. We still need to meet, because the real heart of the STLHE experience lies in the improvisational creativity and emotional resonance of face-to-face sharing; we will just need to do this in more local and sustainable ways.

Finally, let me offer two blue-sky visions of the future. Can you imagine a time when learner-centered teaching in higher education is no longer a “cause” but an unquestioned reality? Imagine if each unit of our post-secondary institutions had embedded within it discipline-specific Educational Developers working alongside instructors, collaborating on curriculum design and working with them to build customized, learner-centered containers for the “content” of disciplinary expertise. And perhaps in the meantime, and to build this future, STLHE will find itself able to afford (due to expanded membership) a full-time Executive Director, someone who has the time, expertise, and political authority to lead advocacy at the policy level, who is consulted on major issues and decisions, who is all the while tweeting regularly to a massive following!

Well, such are the dreams of a Past-President! Others will have different visions of STLHE’s future, and indeed one of the great strengths of Denise Stockley’s current Presidency is that by surveying the membership early in 2017, she has a clear data-set of membership perspectives and priorities on which to found her mandate. Thus I am delighted to turn STLHE’s next steps over to Denise and the Board and their successors. All that is left is once again to thank the membership of this remarkable organization for its support over the last few years. I cherish the gift of having been given this golden opportunity to serve, as best I could, the cause of teaching and learning in higher education.