CTI Teaching & Innovations Podcast

The CTI Teaching & Innovations Podcast is a university podcast in the most local sense. Its questions are about teaching at Southern Utah University, and its answers point to people and resources on that campus. Episodes tend to open with a problem a faculty member might actually have. One cold open begins in November, when instructors start wondering what to change in a course for the next semester. Another begins with the host recalling the times he took students out to local businesses and community partners. Then the guest takes over. OER specialist Chris Younkin fills two episodes on affordable learning materials and open educational resources: the first defines the terms and asks how faculty can find quality resources that save students money, and the second turns to a survey he sent SUU faculty about their use of open materials. The small details are the useful part. The library keeps a list of course textbooks, he emails instructors before the semester to check that their books are current, and he wants to hear when an edition changes. He is candid about his limits, too: he can get a search started, but only the faculty member can judge whether the content works. McKenzie replies that course designers give faculty the same caution. Dr. Richard Saunders brings a different background. Before coming to SUU from Tennessee he worked in academic and commercial publishing, including as a project manager for a pre-press outfit, and he is a certified archivist. Across two parts he talks about scholarly books and journals, calls publication evidence of professional ability rather than an end in itself, and notes that SUU is not a publish-or-perish campus. He also argues that no single textbook approach fits every field, and he pushes faculty to reach across disciplines, because scholarship means bringing something new. Amy DeBrianza shifts the frame to outside partners. She describes learning an industry partner's goals and learners first, down to the realities of 12-hour nursing shifts, and then searching the campus for curriculum that already exists. In 'Season 8, Episode 6: Are Teaching Unions Bad? Learning More About AFT at SUU', the host recalls a mother who was an educator and his own union membership before Bree Kramer and Gretchen Ellefson explain the American Federation of Teachers, which is new at SUU. That conversation also touches on teaching the core of a discipline without watering it down when institutional or state support may be thinner than it was. Most closings preview the next episode, so the episodes link into a chain. The Chris Younkin pair is the most practical place to start.