It happens every time. Months ahead of the event, I sign up to attend a teaching conference and essentially commit to spending three days (sometimes more with travel) away from home. Then the semester starts, and I get caught up in the whack-a-mole that is higher education—student emails, course preparation, reviews to do, committee work—all on top of the demands of human life. Going to a professional meeting seems to only add to the already strained cognitive load of life, especially given that it means a lot of catching up to do on my return. But then I go. Without fail, immersing myself in talks on teaching, surrounding myself with passionate teachers, and having the opportunity to discuss solutions to the challenges of the teaching life end up not just nurturing my teaching mind but giving me more energy. How do you get your energy and teaching rejuvenation?
Emotion researcher Lisa Feldman Barrett uses the concept of a body budget, which is useful to consider in the context of preventing teacher burnout. According to Barrett, our brains are always anticipating when our bodies need energy and often nonconsciously allocating resources to prepare us to deal with potential stressors or using energy to cope with ongoing challenges. I have kept the neuroscience out of it; a full read of the relevant research (see Barrett [2018] for a great overview) suggests it is sound. The important part is that we can build our body budget so that we can cope better with stress and experience fewer negative emotions.
Building a body budget in general is a good thing. With more in your reserves, you can cope with more challenges and anticipate and plan to avoid potential stressors; when you do face unexpected challenges, you will experience less distress and be more resilient. The main ways to build your body budget will be familiar—get physical activity, eat well, get enough sleep, do not abuse alcohol or alcoholic substances. But a few items jump out. Practicing mindfulness and doing yoga in particular are major contributors to building a body budget. My favorite? Reading fiction. Apparently, transporting yourself into a fictional story and immersing yourself in different worlds (fantasy and sci-fi, anyone?) can do wonders for coping. As if I needed more justification to buy books!
But what about building your Teaching Mind Budget (TMB)? Surveys of teachers show that most do not have enough resources for pedagogical development and the building of teaching skills. Only about 20 percent of college and university campuses have a center for teaching and learning (Wright, 2023). In one study of close to 1,000 introductory psychology instructors, only 10 percent reported getting release time for teacher development, while only 12 percent got promotion credit for professional development related to teaching (Richmond et al., 2021). On the upside, over half reported that their institutions provided in-house training (56 percent) or stipends for teaching related travel (55 percent), and two-thirds reported attending teaching conferences (64 percent).
The Richmond et al. (2021) survey also provided some key insights into how some faculty may be building their TMBs, with suggestions for us all. Close to three-quarters of respondents (72 percent) reported reading teaching journals to develop their pedagogical skills, with 60 percent making time to read teaching books and 66 percent reading teaching blogs. Again, it may seem difficult to build all these activities into an already busy life, but in the grand scheme of things, creating time to focus on what can make you a more effective and efficient teacher is time well spent. The devil is always in the details. Here are some possible activities to consider.
Let’s start with teaching conferences. Nearly every discipline either has a standalone conference on teaching or features sessions on teaching at the annual conference for the discipline. In psychology, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology puts on an annual conference of teaching. Yes, this is the one that for brief moments prior to the event I dread going to because of all the class emails and teaching activity that I would have to put aside. Getting into the habit of going is one of the best things you can do to build your TMB. Regardless of location, commit to going to one teaching conference per year and arrange to get funding to do it. Online conferences may be great if you’re financially strapped, but “attending” a virtual event while juggling the other routine demands on your time can make it difficult to really soak in all you are getting. Furthermore, you miss out on exchanges where perhaps the most pedagogical growth can take place—over meals and in the hallways outside the meeting rooms. A teaching conference is worth saving, requesting, and applying money for.
There are a few other habits you should try and build into your routine. Try and carve out some time every week (or every two weeks even) to read either a book or a journal article on teaching. I hope you reserve some time every month to read The Teaching Professor “cover to cover.” Subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Thursday teaching newsletter. Both are wonderful ways to immerse yourself in elements of your craft of teaching.
There is one more pragmatic way to build your TMB that capitalizes on the rich research literature on the benefits of community and social support. While annual conferences and regular electronic communiques with teaching friends about the country can be helpful, try and set up regular meetings with someone on your campus. If there are fellow teaching enthusiasts in your department, that’s great, but sitting down with someone outside your department is often even better. I have coffee every two weeks or so with a statistician friend from the business school who cares a lot about teaching. Almost every time we meet, we chance upon some neat teaching strategy or idea, and I leave every meeting with things I want to try or think more about.
So yes, the academic year can be full of challenges, especially if you are teaching multiple classes. Paradoxically, building in more teaching-related activities that are distinct from the core parts of our teaching lives (grading, course preparation) can actually serve to reduce our stress. Find your own ways to build in TMB activities. Your mental health will thank you.
Regan A. R. Gurung, PhD, is professor of psychological science at Oregon State University. His latest books are Study Like a Champ and Thriving in Academia. Follow him on X @ReganARGurung.
This story was produced by The 19th and reprinted with permission.
The mother was just arriving to pick up her girls at their elementary school in Chicago when someone with a bullhorn at the nearby shopping center let everyone know: ICE is here.
The white van screeched to a halt right next to where she was parked, and three Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents piled out. They said something in English that she couldn’t decipher, then arrested her on the spot. Her family later said they never asked about her documentation.
She was only able to get one phone call out before she was taken away. “The girls,” was all she said to her sister. Her daughters, a third grader and a fourth grader, were still waiting for her inside the school.
Luckily, the girls’ child care provider had prepared for this very moment.
Sandra had been taking care of the girls since they were babies, and now watched them after school. She’d been encouraging the family to get American passports for the kids and signed documents detailing their wishes should the mother be detained.
When Sandra got the call that day in September, she headed straight to the school to pick up the girls.
Since President Donald Trump won a second term, Sandra has been prepping the 10 families at her home-based day care, including some who lack permanent legal status, for the possibility that they may be detained. (The 19th is only using Sandra’s first name and not naming the mother to protect their identities.)
She’s worked with families to get temporary guardianship papers sorted and put a plan in place in case they were detained and their kids were left behind. She even had a psychologist come and speak to the families about the events that had been unfolding across the country to help the children understand that there are certain situations their parents can’t control, and give them the opportunity to talk through their fears that, one day, mamá and papá might not be there to pick them up.
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And for two elementary school kids, that day did come. Sandra met them outside the school.
“When they saw me, they knew something wasn’t right,” Sandra said in Spanish. “Are we never going to see our mom again?” they asked.
For all her planning, she was speechless.
“One prepares for these things, but still doesn’t have the words on what to say,” Sandra said.
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
After that day, Sandra worked with the mother’s sister to get the girls situated to fly to Texas, where their mother, who had full custody of them, was being detained, and then eventually to Mexico. She hasn’t heard from them in over a month. The girls were born in the United States and know nothing of Mexico.
“I think about them in a strange country,” Sandra said. “‘Who is going to care for them like I do?’ Now with this situation I get sad because I think they are the ones who are going to suffer.”
In this year of immigration raids, child care providers have stepped up to keep families unified amid incredible uncertainty. Some are agreeing to be temporary guardians for kids should something happen to their parents. The workers themselves are also under threat — 1 in 5 child care workers are immigrant women, most of them Latinas, who are also having to prepare in case they are detained, particularly while children are in their care. Already, child care workers across the country have been detained and deported.
“The immigration and the child care movements, they are one in the same now,” said Anali Alegria, the director of federal advocacy and media relations at the Child Care for Every Family Network, a national child care advocacy group. “Child care is not just something that keeps the economy going, while it does. It’s also really integral to people’s community and family lives. And so when you’re destabilizing it, you’re also destabilizing something much more fundamental and very tender to that child and that family’s life.”
A loose network of resistance has emerged, with detailed protection plans, ICE lookout patrols, and Signal or Whatsapp chats. Home-based providers like Sandra have been especially involved in that effort because their work often means their lives are even more intertwined with the families they care for.
“All the families we have in our program, I consider them family. We arrive in this country and we don’t have family, and when we get support, advice or the simple act of caring for kids, as child care providers we are essential in many of these families — even more in these times,” said Sandra, who has been caring for children in the United States for 25 years. All the families she cares for are Latinx, 70 percent without permanent legal status.
According to advocacy groups, child care providers are increasingly being asked to look after kids in case they are detained, typically because they are the only trusted person the family knows with U.S. citizenship or legal permanent residence. Parents are asking child care workers to be emergency contacts, short-term guardians and, in some cases, even long-term guardians.
“We heard this under the first Trump administration, and we’re hearing it much more now. It’s not so much a matter of if, but when, right now, and it used to be the other way around,” said Wendy Cervantes, the director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy, an anti-poverty nonprofit. “It adds just additional stress and trauma because they deeply care about these kids. Many of them have kids of their own and obviously have modest incomes, so as much as they want to say, ‘yes’, they can’t in some cases.”
The question was posed to Claudia Pellecer a couple weeks ago. A home-based child care provider in Chicago for 17 years, Pellecer cares for numerous Latinx families, at least one of whom doesn’t have permanent legal status.
In October, one of those moms was due to appear before ICE for a regular check-in as part of her ongoing asylum case. But she knew that many have been detained at those appointments this year.
The mother asked Pellecer to be her 1-year-old son’s legal guardian should she be taken away.
“I couldn’t say no because I am human, I am a mother,” Pellecer said.
Claudia Pellecer, who runs a small daycare for young children out of her home, stands for a portrait outside her house. Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th
They got to work getting the baby a passport and filling out the necessary guardianship paperwork. Pellecer kept the originals and copies. The mother closed her bank account, cleaned out her apartment and prepped two bags, one for her and one for the baby. If the mother was deported, Pellecer would fly with him to meet her in Ecuador, they agreed.
The day of the appointment, she dropped the baby off with Pellecer and set the final plan. Her appointment was at 1 p.m. “If at 6 p.m. you haven’t heard from me, that means I was detained,” she told Pellecer, who cried and wished her luck.
At the appointment, the judge asked her three sets of questions:
“Why are you here?”
“Are you working? Do you have a family?”
“Do you have proof of what happened to you in your country?”
Claudia Pellecer plays games with children in the living room of her home daycare, where she cares for up to eight young children a day. Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th
The judge agreed to let her stay and told her to continue working. The mother won’t have a court date again until 2027.
“We learned our lesson,” Pellecer said. “We had to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”
But their relief was short-lived. Recent events in Chicago have sent child care workers and families into panic, as the people who have tried to keep families together are now being targeted.
Resistance networks have sprung up rapidly in Chicago in recent weeks after a child care worker was followed to Spanish immersion day care Rayito de Sol on the city’s North Side and arrested in front of children and other teachers. The arrest was caught on camera and has sparked demonstrations across the city.
Erin Horetski, whose son, Harrison, was cared for by the worker who was arrested at Rayito de Sol in early November, said parents there had been worried ICE might one day target them because the center specifically hired Spanish-speaking staff.
The morning of the arrest, parents were texting each other once they heard ICE was in the shopping center where the day care is located.
Children crawl on a colorful rug while playing educational games at Claudia Pellecer’s home daycare. Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th
Her husband was just arriving to drop off their boys as ICE was leaving. The first thing out of his mouth when he called her: “They took Miss Diana.”
Agents entered the school without a warrant to arrest infant class teacher Diana Patricia Santillana Galeano, an immigrant from Colombia. DHS said part of the reason for her arrest was because she helped bring her two teenage children across the southern U.S. border this year. “Facilitating human smuggling is a crime,” DHS said. Santillana Galeano fled Colombia fearing for her safety in 2023, filed for asylum and was given a work permit through November 2029, according to court documents. She has no known criminal record. After her arrest, a federal judge ruled that her detention without access to a bond hearing was illegal and she was released November 12.
Horetski said the incident, the first known ICE arrest inside a day care, has spurred the community to action. A GoFundMe account set up by Horetski to support Santillana Galeano, has raised more than $150,000.
Horetski said what’s been lost in the story of what happened at Rayito is the humanity of the person at the center of it, someone she said was “like a second mother” to her son.
“At the end of the day, she was a person and a friend and a mother and provider to our kids — I think we need to remember that,” Horetski said.
Now, the parents are the ones coming together to put in place a safety plan for the teachers, most of whom have continued to come to the school and care for their children.
They are working on establishing a safe passage patrol, setting up parents with whistles at the front of the school to stand guard during arrival and dismissal time to ensure teachers can come and go to their cars or to public transit safely. Parents are also establishing escorts for teachers who may need a ride to work or someone to accompany them on the bus or the train. A meal train set up by the parents is helping to send food to the teachers through Thanksgiving, and two local restaurants have pitched in with discounts. Some of the parents are also lawyers who are considering setting up a legal clinic to ensure workers know their rights, Horetski said.
A young child watches an educational TV show in the living room of Claudia Pellecer’s home daycare in Chicago. Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th
Figuring out how to come together to support teachers and the children who now have questions about safety is something that “continues to circle in all of our minds and brains,” Horeski said. “It’s hard to not have the answers or know how to best move forward. We’re in such uncharted territory that you’re like, ‘Where do you go from here?’ So we’re kind of paving that because this is the first time that something like this has happened.”
Prep is top of mind now for organizers including at the Service Employees International Union, where Sandra and Pellecer are members,who are convening emergency child care worker trainings to set up procedures, such as posted signs that say ICE cannot enter without a warrant, showing them what the warrants must include to be binding, helping them set a designated person to speak to ICE should they enter and talking to their families to offer support.
Cervantes has been doing this work since Trump’s first term, when it was clear immigration was going to be a key focus for the president. This year has been different, though. Child care centers were previously protected under a “sensitive locations” directive that advised ICE to not conduct enforcement in places like schools and day cares. But Trump removed that protection on his first day in office this year, signaling a more aggressive approach to ICE enforcement was coming.
Cervantes and her team are currently in the midst of a research project about child care workers across the country, conversations that are also illuminating for them just how dire the situation has become for providers.
“We are asking providers to make protocols for what is basically a man-made disaster,” she said. “They shouldn’t have to worry about protecting children and staff from the government.”
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Higher education leaders face a constant balancing act. Shifting enrollment, tightening budgets, and rapidly evolving technology create pressure to stay nimble while maintaining operational excellence. In this environment, procurement teams are playing a new strategic role, moving beyond cost-cutting to become enablers of institutional agility.
The most agile institutions understand that procurement agility isn’t just about faster purchasing. It means building systems that anticipate needs, optimize every dollar in real time, and empower campus-wide decision-making. When procurement teams can redirect spending toward emerging priorities while maintaining compliance and transparency, they create institutional resilience: the ability to respond confidently to whatever comes next.
Closing higher ed’s agility gap
Traditional procurement creates bottlenecks precisely when agility is needed most: lengthy approval cycles that delay critical purchases, fragmented systems that prevent comprehensive spend analysis, and limited visibility that leaves leaders making decisions without complete financial data.
The stakes are significant. With 25% of operating budgets flowing through procurement—possibly more for institutions with extensive outsourcing—efficiency directly impacts your ability to respond quickly to changing circumstances.[1]
There’s encouraging momentum, though. In a survey of nearly 3,500 procurement and organizational leaders, 24% of senior leaders identified “becoming more agile or resilient” as a priority above reducing spend (19%).[2] This signals growing recognition that adaptability drives long-term institutional success more than cost-cutting alone.
Five pillars of agile procurement
So how can institutions actually close this agility gap? Many procurement leaders are turning to technology solutions, and for good reason. The right tools can magnify agility across campus operations, but only when they address the right fundamentals. These five pillars provide a framework for building procurement systems that enhance rather than hinder institutional responsiveness:
Unified systems: Consolidated purchasing transforms how campuses operate, improving user experience, spend transparency, and analytics. Administrators should be able to track campus-wide purchasing patterns, identify savings opportunities, and make data-driven decisions across all departments. When the University of Washington (UW) consolidated purchasing across its numerous academic departments through a single master account, it gained the visibility and simplified management that had previously been impossible.
Streamlined interfaces: A centralized purchasing interface removes manual work and complexity, allowing staff to focus on higher-impact activities while maintaining oversight. Ray Hsu, executive director of procurement services at the University of Washington, explains: “Imagine you’re managing the drama department and your scene shop needs to find ten different things to outfit your next production. Imagine how many different sources you visit to find costumes, supplies, and other items for that use case. Centralize that.”
Aligned purchasing: The right tools enable alignment with shifting institutional priorities—sustainability goals, minority-owned businesses, compliance requirements—through preferred vendor selection in a way that’s frictionless for buyers. Hsu describes how this works at UW: “When people search for items, they don’t even know they’re searching for a sustainable product. It just comes up in their search results, supporting our policy without them having to be mindful of it.”
Smart comparison: Pricing, delivery, and vendor comparison mechanisms help buyers to easily identify their most cost-effective options without searching multiple sources or juggling spreadsheets. Time saved on research translates to faster response when priorities shift.
Real-time monitoring: Proactive systems flag overspending or policy compliance issues before they become problems, giving administrators the breathing room to focus on strategic opportunities.
Real-world impact
The University of Washington example illustrates how these pillars work together in practice. Beyond the streamlined purchasing process described earlier, the transformation also revealed deeper lessons about building sustainable agility.
When UW decided to modernize its procurement, it faced a familiar challenge: staff were already purchasing from multiple vendors without central oversight. Instead of changing staff behavior, the university introduced a centralized system that preserved the flexibility departments valued while adding the visibility and control the university needed.
“There’s a saying, ‘I want an Amazon-like experience.’ We thought, let’s just go get the real thing and bring Amazon to our campus,” Hsu recalls.[3]
The shift delivered more than operational efficiency. “With Amazon Business Analytics, I can visualize information on an intuitive dashboard and have a conversation with my boss: ‘Here’s how we’re doing at a glance,’” says Hsu. That visibility changes how procurement conversations happen, moving from reactive problem-solving to proactive strategic discussions.
Perhaps most importantly, UW discovered that agility doesn’t require forcing behavior change. When the right systems build compliance and best practices into everyday workflows, adoption happens naturally. The drama department gets what it needs faster. Sustainability goals are met through preferred policies. And procurement leaders gain the strategic insights they need to guide institutional priorities.
Building sustainable agility
Building more agility into your procurement operations starts with a few key fundamentals:
Start with visibility into spend. Understand where your money goes. With 25% of operating budgets spent on goods and services, visibility is essential for agile resource allocation.[4]
Centralize for control. As Hsu notes, “Chances are your internal customers are already buying from Amazon in a decentralized and unmanaged fashion. My suggestion is to centralize that management into a unified system.”
Simplify user experience. Make compliance and best practices seamless. “Make it easy so it’s not a conscious decision—just part of their everyday buying experience,” advises Hsu.
Focus on consolidation. Look for opportunities to consolidate processes. Listen to solution providers who are experts in this area and implement their suggestions when they make sense to your organization, Hsu adds.
Agility as an institutional advantage
Agile procurement enables both resource optimization and faster response to opportunities. The goal isn’t just efficient purchasing, but procurement that enhances decision-making.
When procurement teams can redirect resources quickly, spot savings in real time, and adhere to campus purchasing policies, they free their institutions to focus on mission and seize opportunities as they arise.
It is tempting to regard AI as a panacea for addressing our most urgent global challenges, from climate change to resource scarcity. Yet the truth is more complex: unless we pair innovation with responsibility, the very tools designed to accelerate sustainability may exacerbate its contradictions.
A transformative potential
Let us first acknowledge how AI is already reshaping sustainable development. By mapping patterns in vast datasets, AI enables us to anticipate environmental risks, optimise resource flows and strengthen supply chains. Evidence suggests that by 2030, AI systems will touch the lives of more than 8.5 billion people and influence the health of both human and natural ecosystems in ways we have never seen before. Research published in Nature indicates that AI could support progress towards 79% of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), helping advance 134 specific targets. Yet the same research also cautions that AI may impede 59 of those targets if deployed without care or control.
In practice, this means smarter energy grids that balance load and demand, precision agriculture that reduces fertiliser waste and environmental monitoring systems that detect deforestation or pollution in real time. For a planet under pressure, these scenarios offer hope to do less harm and build more resilience.
The hidden costs
Even so, we must confront the shadows cast by AI’s advancements. An investigation published earlier this year warns that AI systems could account for nearly half of global data-centre power consumption before the decade’s end. Consider the sheer scale: vast server arrays, intensive cooling systems, rare-earth mining and water-consuming infrastructure all underpin generative AI’s ubiquity. Worse still, indirect carbon emissions tied to major AI-capable firms reportedly rose by 150% between 2020 and 2023. In short, innovation meant to serve sustainability imposes a growing ecological burden.
Navigating trade-offs
This tension presents an essential question: how can we reconcile AI’s promise with its cost? Scholars warn that we must move beyond the assumption that ‘AI for good’ is always good enough. The moment demands a new discipline of ‘sustainable AI’: a framework that treats resource use, algorithmic bias, lifecycle impact and societal equity as first-order concerns.
Practitioners must ask not only what AI can do, but how it is built, powered, governed and retired. Efficiency gains that drive consumption higher will not deliver sustainability; they may merely escalate resource demands in disguise.
A moral and strategic imperative
For educators, policymakers and business leaders, this is more than a technical issue; it is a moral and strategic one. To realise AI’s true potential in advancing sustainable development, we must commit to three priorities:
Energy and resource transparency: Organisations must measure and report the footprint of their AI models, including data-centre use, water cooling, e-waste and supply-chain impacts. Transparency is foundational to accountability.
Ethical alignment and fairness: AI must be trained and deployed with due regard to bias, social impact and inclusivity. Its benefits must not reinforce inequality or externalise environmental harms onto vulnerable communities.
Integrative education and collaboration: We need multidisciplinary expertise, engineers fluent in ecology, ethicists fluent in algorithms and managers fluent in sustainability. Institutions must upskill young learners and working professionals to orient AI within the broader context of planetary boundaries and human flourishing.
MLA College’s focus and contribution
At MLA College, we recognise our role in equipping professionals at this exact intersection. Our programs emphasise the interrelationship between technology, sustainability and leadership. Graduates of distance-learning and part-time formats engage with the complexities of AI, maritime operations, global sustainable development and marine engineering by bringing insight to sectors vital to the planet’s future.
When responsibly guided, AI becomes an amplifier of purpose rather than a contraption of risk. Our challenge is to ensure that every algorithm, model and deployment contributes to regenerative systems, not extractive ones.
The promise of AI is compelling: more accurate climate modelling, smarter cities, adaptive infrastructure and just-in-time supply chains. But the challenge is equally formidable: rising energy demands, resource-intensive infrastructures and ungoverned expansion.
When responsibly guided, AI becomes an amplifier of purpose rather than a contraption of risk
Our collective role, as educators and practitioners, is to shape the ethical architecture of this era. We must ask whether our technologies will serve humanity and the environment or simply accelerate old dynamics under new wrappers.
The verdict will not be written on lines of code or boardroom decisions alone. It will be inscribed in the fields that fail to regenerate, in the communities excluded from progress, in the data centres humming with waste and in the next generation seeking meaning in technology’s promise.
About the author: Professor Mohammad Dastbaz is the principal and CEO of MLA College, an international leader in distance and sustainability-focused higher education. With over three decades in academia, he has held senior positions including deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Suffolk and pro vice-chancellor at Leeds Beckett University.
A Fellow of the British Computer Society, the Higher Education Academy, and the Royal Society of Arts, Professor Dastbaz is a prominent researcher and author in the fields of sustainable development, smart cities, and digital innovation in education.
His latest publication, Decarbonization or Demise – Sustainable Solutions for Resilient Communities (Springer, 2025), brings together cutting-edge global research on sustainability, climate resilience, and the urgent need for decarbonisation. The book builds on his ongoing commitment to advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals through education and research.
At MLA College, Professor Dastbaz continues to lead transformative learning initiatives that combine academic excellence with real-world impact, empowering students to shape a sustainable future.
One of my quietest students once came up to me after class and said, “I’ve never felt comfortable speaking in English before this course.” That single sentence reminded me that what we build in the classroom goes far beyond lectures or grading. It’s the atmosphere we create that allows learning to happen. For this student, the turning point wasn’t grammar drills or vocabulary tests. It was trust.
As educators, we often focus on the what and how of teaching. But who the student in front of us matters just as much. In my experience, building genuine rapport is one of the most overlooked yet powerful strategies for helping students feel safe enough to participate, take risks, and grow.
What Rapport Really Means
Rapport is not about being the “fun” professor or trying to be everyone’s favorite. It’s about creating a space where students feel respected, seen, and supported not just academically, but as people.
In my classrooms, especially with my work with adult ESL learners in Kuwait, rapport means:
Greeting students by name and with warmth
Encouraging participation without pressure
Acknowledging their challenges as second-language users
Listening actively to their concerns and ideas
When students feel this kind of connection, they are far more willing to ask questions, attempt difficult tasks, and take ownership of their learning.
How I Build Rapport (and How You Can Too)
Here are five practical habits I’ve developed that have made a noticeable difference in student engagement and classroom climate.
1. Be Present Beyond the Podium
I make time before and after class for informal conversations, even brief ones. A simple, “How’s your week going?” can open doors. Students need to know we are not just grading machines. We are humans too.
2. Learn Names Quickly
It seems like a small detail, but using students’ names early in the semester changes everything. When I call on “Fatima” instead of “you in the third row,” I signal that her presence matters.
3. Use Encouragement Thoughtfully
When a student takes a risk, especially with speaking, I make sure to acknowledge the effort. Saying, “That was a great attempt,” helps build confidence and normalizes the learning process.
4. Normalize Mistakes
Learning is full of errors. I often point out my own slips and laugh with the class. This sets the tone that mistakes are part of the process, not something to fear.
5. Ask for Feedback and Act on It
I regularly ask students what’s helping and what’s not. If I change something based on their feedback, I let them know. This builds trust and shows them that their voices shape the learning experience too.
A Moment I’ll Never Forget
I remember one student, Yousef, who barely spoke during the first few weeks of class. He sat near the back, avoided eye contact, and never volunteered. I made a point to greet him by name each class, ask simple follow-up questions, and check in privately after group work. Slowly, he started opening up. First, he answered yes-no questions. Then, short phrases. By the end of the semester, he stood up and gave a short presentation in English. It wasn’t perfect, but it was powerful. Afterward, he told me, “You made me feel like I could do it.” That comment stays with me to this day.
How Rapport Transforms Feedback
One area where rapport makes a real difference is in how students receive feedback. Constructive feedback is essential for improvement, but it only works if students feel it comes from a place of support.
Once, I had to correct a student’s repeated grammatical mistake. It could have felt embarrassing, but because we had already built trust, she laughed and said, “I knew you would catch that.” She didn’t feel attacked. She knew the correction was about helping her grow.
This kind of response isn’t automatic. It comes from creating a consistent environment where feedback is expected, respected, and grounded in care.
The Ripple Effect of Strong Rapport
The impact of strong rapport is not limited to one assignment or one semester. I have seen students who once hesitated to speak now take initiative in group discussions, volunteer for peer mentoring, or continue English practice long after the course ends.
Rapport also builds community. When students see the teacher modeling kindness, encouragement, and open communication, they begin to do the same with each other. This shifts the classroom from a silent space to one that is collaborative and supportive.
What You Can Try This Week
If you’re looking to build rapport in your own classroom, here are three simple practices you can try immediately:
Learn and use student names within the first two weeks. Use name tents if needed. If you’re at mid-semester, consistent use of student names shows you care and value their presence which helps strengthen classroom connections.
Ask for anonymous feedback midway through the term. Just two questions: “What’s helping you learn?” and “What would you change?”
Set aside two minutes at the end of class to praise a risk taken, a great question asked, or a quiet win. This reinforces the kind of behavior you want to see more of.
These small actions compound over time. They send a clear message to students that they matter and that their growth is the shared goal of the classroom.
Final Thoughts: What They’ll Remember
As educators, we hope students walk away from our courses remembering the material. But what they often remember most is how we made them feel. Did they feel respected? Encouraged? Safe enough to take a risk?
If the answer is yes, then we have done more than teach. We have helped them build confidence, resilience, and the courage to use their voice.
That is the kind of learning that stays with them long after the final exam.
Fahad Ameen is a PhD researcher in Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham and an English language instructor at Kuwait University’s College of Education. His work focuses on student motivation, gamified learning, and building meaningful teacher–student relationships in Arab ESL contexts.
One of my quietest students once came up to me after class and said, “I’ve never felt comfortable speaking in English before this course.” That single sentence reminded me that what we build in the classroom goes far beyond lectures or grading. It’s the atmosphere we create that allows learning to happen. For this student, the turning point wasn’t grammar drills or vocabulary tests. It was trust.
As educators, we often focus on the what and how of teaching. But who the student in front of us matters just as much. In my experience, building genuine rapport is one of the most overlooked yet powerful strategies for helping students feel safe enough to participate, take risks, and grow.
What Rapport Really Means
Rapport is not about being the “fun” professor or trying to be everyone’s favorite. It’s about creating a space where students feel respected, seen, and supported not just academically, but as people.
In my classrooms, especially with my work with adult ESL learners in Kuwait, rapport means:
Greeting students by name and with warmth
Encouraging participation without pressure
Acknowledging their challenges as second-language users
Listening actively to their concerns and ideas
When students feel this kind of connection, they are far more willing to ask questions, attempt difficult tasks, and take ownership of their learning.
How I Build Rapport (and How You Can Too)
Here are five practical habits I’ve developed that have made a noticeable difference in student engagement and classroom climate.
1. Be Present Beyond the Podium
I make time before and after class for informal conversations, even brief ones. A simple, “How’s your week going?” can open doors. Students need to know we are not just grading machines. We are humans too.
2. Learn Names Quickly
It seems like a small detail, but using students’ names early in the semester changes everything. When I call on “Fatima” instead of “you in the third row,” I signal that her presence matters.
3. Use Encouragement Thoughtfully
When a student takes a risk, especially with speaking, I make sure to acknowledge the effort. Saying, “That was a great attempt,” helps build confidence and normalizes the learning process.
4. Normalize Mistakes
Learning is full of errors. I often point out my own slips and laugh with the class. This sets the tone that mistakes are part of the process, not something to fear.
5. Ask for Feedback and Act on It
I regularly ask students what’s helping and what’s not. If I change something based on their feedback, I let them know. This builds trust and shows them that their voices shape the learning experience too.
A Moment I’ll Never Forget
I remember one student, Yousef, who barely spoke during the first few weeks of class. He sat near the back, avoided eye contact, and never volunteered. I made a point to greet him by name each class, ask simple follow-up questions, and check in privately after group work. Slowly, he started opening up. First, he answered yes-no questions. Then, short phrases. By the end of the semester, he stood up and gave a short presentation in English. It wasn’t perfect, but it was powerful. Afterward, he told me, “You made me feel like I could do it.” That comment stays with me to this day.
How Rapport Transforms Feedback
One area where rapport makes a real difference is in how students receive feedback. Constructive feedback is essential for improvement, but it only works if students feel it comes from a place of support.
Once, I had to correct a student’s repeated grammatical mistake. It could have felt embarrassing, but because we had already built trust, she laughed and said, “I knew you would catch that.” She didn’t feel attacked. She knew the correction was about helping her grow.
This kind of response isn’t automatic. It comes from creating a consistent environment where feedback is expected, respected, and grounded in care.
The Ripple Effect of Strong Rapport
The impact of strong rapport is not limited to one assignment or one semester. I have seen students who once hesitated to speak now take initiative in group discussions, volunteer for peer mentoring, or continue English practice long after the course ends.
Rapport also builds community. When students see the teacher modeling kindness, encouragement, and open communication, they begin to do the same with each other. This shifts the classroom from a silent space to one that is collaborative and supportive.
What You Can Try This Week
If you’re looking to build rapport in your own classroom, here are three simple practices you can try immediately:
Learn and use student names within the first two weeks. Use name tents if needed. If you’re at mid-semester, consistent use of student names shows you care and value their presence which helps strengthen classroom connections.
Ask for anonymous feedback midway through the term. Just two questions: “What’s helping you learn?” and “What would you change?”
Set aside two minutes at the end of class to praise a risk taken, a great question asked, or a quiet win. This reinforces the kind of behavior you want to see more of.
These small actions compound over time. They send a clear message to students that they matter and that their growth is the shared goal of the classroom.
Final Thoughts: What They’ll Remember
As educators, we hope students walk away from our courses remembering the material. But what they often remember most is how we made them feel. Did they feel respected? Encouraged? Safe enough to take a risk?
If the answer is yes, then we have done more than teach. We have helped them build confidence, resilience, and the courage to use their voice.
That is the kind of learning that stays with them long after the final exam.
Fahad Ameen is a PhD researcher in Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham and an English language instructor at Kuwait University’s College of Education. His work focuses on student motivation, gamified learning, and building meaningful teacher–student relationships in Arab ESL contexts.
For early-career researchers (ECRs), building a digital research space can feel like another burden piled onto an already demanding schedule. The idea of online professional networking often evokes images of overwhelming social media feeds and self-promoting influencers.
Yet ECRs face a significant risk by solely relying on institutional platforms for their digital footprint: information portability. While university websites offer high visibility as trusted sources, most ECRs on short-term contracts lose web and email access as soon as their contracts expire. This often forces a hasty rebuild of their online presence precisely when they need to navigate critical career transitions.
Having worked with doctoral and postdoctoral candidates across Europe, common initial hesitations to establishing a digital research space include: uncertainty about how and where to start, discouragement from senior researchers who dismiss digital networks as not “real” work, fears of appearing boastful and/or the paralyzing grip of impostor syndrome. Understanding these hesitations, I emphasize in my coaching the ways that building a digital research space is a natural extension of ECRs’ professional growth.
Why a Strategic Digital Research Space Matters
A proactive, professional digital strategy offers several key advantages.
Enhancing visibility and discoverability: A well-curated, current, consistent and coherent digital presence significantly improves discoverability for peers, potential collaborators, future employers, funders, journal editors and the media.
Networking: Strategically using digital platforms transcends institutional and geographical boundaries, enabling connections with specific individuals, research groups and relevant industry contacts globally.
Showcasing expertise and impact: Your digital space allows you to present a holistic view of your contributions beyond publications, including skills, ongoing projects, presentations, teaching, outreach and broader impacts.
Meeting communication expectations: As research advances, particularly with public funding, the demand to communicate findings beyond academic circles increases. Funders, institutions and the public expect researchers to demonstrate broader impact and societal relevance and a strategic digital presence provides effective channels for these crucial communications.
Controlling your narrative: Actively shape your professional identity and how your expertise is perceived, rather than relying on fragmented institutional profiles or database entries.
Ensuring information portability and longevity: Platforms like LinkedIn, ORCID, Google Scholar or a personal website ensure your professional identity, network and achievements remain consistent, accessible and under your control throughout your career.
Getting Started: Choosing Your Digital Network Combination
The goal isn’t to be online everywhere, but to be online strategically. Select a platform combination and engagement style aligned with your specific objectives and target audience, considering the time you have available.
Different platforms serve distinct strategic aims and audiences at various research stages. Categorizing digital platforms into three subspaces helps map the landscape and can help you develop a more balanced presence across the research cycle.
First, identify the primary strategic goal(s): public dissemination, professional networking expansion or deeper engagement within your academic niche? Your answer will guide your platform selection, as you aim for eventual presence in each space.
Figure 1: Align your digital platform choices with your strategic goals and target audience.
Next, consider your audience spectrum. Effective research communication depends on understanding your target audience and their needs.
Scholarly discourse: At the outset of your career, specialized academic platforms like ResearchGate, Academia.edu, institutional repositories and reference managers with social features (e.g., Mendeley) are key for engaging directly with peers. Foundational permanent identifiers like ORCID are crucial for tracking outputs across systems.
Professional network: As you seek to develop your career, LinkedIn, Google (including Google Scholar) and X (formerly Twitter) are vital hubs across academia, industry and related sectors.
Share for impact: TikTok, Facebook and Instagram excel for broader dissemination. Do adjust style and tone: While academics can process jargon and complex concepts, a broader audience will engage more in plain English.
A strong, time-efficient and pragmatic starting point is to create a free and unique researcher identifier number like an ORCID, develop a professional LinkedIn profile and engage with a relevant academic platform (this would be in addition to your presence on a university or lab website). Because the ORCID requires no upkeep and a LinkedIn profile can leverage existing institutional and biographical information, with this combination ECRs can quickly establish a solid foundation for gradual digital expansion over the medium term.
Make It Manageable: Time, Engagement and Content
Once the platform combination is in place, effective digital management requires balancing three core elements: time, engagement and content.
Figure 2. Key considerations for a sustainable digital networking strategy: balancing realistic time investment, meaningful engagement and appropriate content types.
Time Investment
Key message: Prioritize consistency over quantity.
Focused engagement: Allocate short, regular blocks (e.g., 15 to 30 minutes weekly) for specific activities like checking discussions, sharing updates or thoughtful commenting between periods of focused research.
Platform nuance: Invest strategically, recognizing that platforms have different tempos and life spans (e.g., a LinkedIn post typically has a longer life span than an X post).
Campaign bursts: Plan ahead to strategically increase activity around key events like publications or conferences, utilizing scheduling tools for automated posting.
Content cadence: Consistency beats constant noise, so plan a realistic posting schedule such as once a month.
Engagement
Key message: Focus on short but regular efforts.
Active participation: Move beyond passive consumption by commenting, sharing relevant work and asking insightful questions.
Build relationships: Genuine interaction fosters trust and meaningful connections.
Monitor your impact (optional): Use platform analytics to understand what resonates and refine your strategy.
Content Type
Key message: Your hard work should work hard online.
Written: Summaries, insights, blog posts, threads, articles.
Visual: Infographics, diagrams, cleared research images, presentation slides.
Multimedia: Short explanatory videos, audio clips, recorded talks.
Cross-post: Share content across all relevant platforms (e.g., post your YouTube video on LinkedIn and ResearchGate).
Overcoming Reluctance
If you’re hesitant, consider these starting points:
Start small, stay focused: Choose one or two platforms aligned with your top priority. Master these before expanding.
Embrace learning: Your initial digital content may not be perfect, but consistent practice leads to significant improvement. Give yourself permission to progress.
Integrate, don’t isolate: Weave digital engagement into your research workflow. Share insights from webinars or interesting papers with your network.
Give and take: Focus on offering value by sharing insights, asking stimulating questions and amplifying others’ work. Reciprocity fuels networking.
Set boundaries: Protect your deep work time. Schedule dedicated slots for digital engagement during lower-energy periods and manage notifications wisely.
Be patient: Recognize that building meaningful networks and visibility is a long-term career investment.
Your Digital Research Space: A Career Asset
A strategic digital research space is essential for navigating and succeeding in a modern research career. A thoughtful approach empowers you to control your professional narrative, build lasting networks, meet communication expectations and ensure your valuable contributions are both visible and portable.
Maura Hannon is based in Switzerland and has more than two decades of expertise in strategic communication and thought leadership positioning. She has worked extensively for the last 10 years with doctoral and postdoctoral candidates across Europe to help them build strategies that harness digital networks to enhance their research visibility and impact.
Sensemaking is an essential part of one’s personal knowledge mastery, so vital that it ought to be a regular practice for any human, particularly those who desire to be taken seriously and be able to add value in workplaces, communities, and societies. Sensemaking centers on a desire to solve problems and gets fueled by curiosity.
Jarche shares that there’s a whole spectrum of potential sensemaking approaches, everything from filtering information (making a list), or contributing to new information (writing a thesis). Sensemaking requires practice and vulnerability. We aren’t always going to get things right the first time we come to a conclusion.
Half-Baked Ideas
In introducing the idea of “half-baked ideas,” Jarche writes:
If you don’t make sense of the world for yourself, then you’re stuck with someone else’s world view.
As I reflect on my own ability to come up with half-baked ideas, it all depends on how controversial whatever idea I might be having at the time is as to whether I’m inclined to share it in a social space. I find myself thinking about what hashtags or even words might attract people looking for an internet fight, or wanting to troll a stranger.
If a half-baked idea I might share is related to teaching and learning, I am less concerned about who may desire to publicly disagree with something, but it it is about politics, I just don’t see the value in “thinking aloud,” in relation to what internet riff raff may decide to come at me, metaphorically speaking. Part of that is that I’m not an expert, while another aspect of this resistance is that I would rather do this kind of sensemaking offline. This is at least in terms of me trying out ideas about various policies, political candidates, and issues of the day.
Committing to Practice
I just launched a sensemaking practice involving books about teaching and learning. Usually, I read upwards of 95% of the authors’ books that I interview for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. However, I would like to both find other ways to surface my own learning from all that reading, along with cultivating a set of skills to get better at video.
The series is called Between the Lines: Books that Shape Teaching and Learning and I anticipate eventually getting up to producing an average of one video per week. I won’t hold myself to quite as high of expectations as I do for the podcast, since for that, I’ve been going strong, airing a podcast every single week since June 2014 and I don’t want to have that kind of self-imposed pressure for this experimentation, skill-building, and sensemaking practice.
This blog was kindly authored by Professor Paul Marshall, Vice-President (Global Campus) and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Careers & Enterprise), University of East London.
As the UK Government prepares its long-awaited White Paper on the future of higher education, it is timely to reflect on the purpose and impact of our universities. At their best, they are not simply sites of knowledge creation – they are instruments of national capability. Few challenges illustrate that more vividly than cybersecurity.
When I joined a panel at the CyberBay Cybersecurity Conference in Tampa earlier this month, Dr Richard Munassi, Managing Director of Tampa Bay Wave, opened with a warning that set the tone for the discussion:
We are in a cyber war – a war waged by well-financed, state-backed criminal organisations so sophisticated that they have their own HR divisions.
He was right. Earlier this year, Jaguar Land Rover was forced to suspend production after a ransomware attack that rippled across its global supply chain. The UK Government’s intervention – with a support package approaching £1.5 billion – made clear that cybersecurity is not an IT issue; it is economic infrastructure.
As the sector awaits the Government’s vision for the future, one truth already stands out: higher education must not only prepare individuals for work – it must prepare the nation for risk.
At the University of East London (UEL), that challenge sits at the heart of our institutional strategy, Vision 2028, which seeks to transform lives through education, innovation, and enterprise. The strategy’s organising principle – Careers-First – redefines employability as capability.
Rather than positioning careers as an outcome of study, it embeds professional practice, enterprise, and resilience into every degree and partnership. The test for every programme is simple: does it equip our students to adapt, contribute, and lead in industries defined by constant change?
Nowhere is this approach more tangible than in cybersecurity. Our BSc Cyber Security & Networks, MSc Information Security & Digital Forensics, and Cyber Security Technical Professional Degree Apprenticeship all combine rigorous academic study with live, industry-based application.
Students work directly with BT, IBM, Fujitsu, and Ford, tackling real-time challenges in threat analysis, data forensics, and network defence. By the time they graduate, they are not simply work-ready — they are work-proven, having contributed to the resilience of the very sectors they will soon join.
The results speak for themselves:
With Siemens UK, students tested firmware vulnerabilities in industrial systems, informing Siemens’ internal training programmes.
With Barclays Eagle Labs, they created a fraud-analysis dashboard now in pilot testing.
With NHS Digital, they developed a ransomware-simulation tool to train hospital teams in incident response.
Each collaboration demonstrates a single idea: learning is most powerful when it changes the world beyond the classroom.
UEL’s Institute for Connected Communities (ICC), led by Professor Julia Davidson OBE, anchors this model in research excellence and policy leadership. The ICC brings together computing, criminology, psychology, and social science to examine the human, technical, and organisational dimensions of online safety.
Its research informs the UK Council for Internet Safety, Ofcom, UNICEF, and multiple international governments. Through projects such as Global Kids Online, ICC research directly shapes teaching, ensuring that our graduates understand not only how to secure systems, but why digital trust matters to society.
As policymakers consider the future role of universities in the forthcoming White Paper, the ICC already provides a working example of how academic research translates into practical and regulatory impact.
The White Paper will also need to consider how global collaboration strengthens national capability. UEL’s Global Campus model demonstrates how this can work in practice — connecting students and employers across India, Greece, Egypt, and the United States to create shared pathways for study, innovation, and employment.
Our developing partnership with Tampa Bay Wave, framed within the UK–Florida Memorandum of Understanding (2023), offers one illustration. We are building both virtual and physical experiences that will enable UEL students to engage with Florida’s growing cybersecurity and fintech ecosystem through mentoring, live projects, and placements, while providing a London base for US start-ups entering the UK market.
A genuine transatlantic bridge is being constructed – designed for movement in both directions, connecting students, researchers, and entrepreneurs to co-create secure-by-design technologies and governance frameworks. It is the Careers-First model, scaled globally.
The next phase of cybersecurity will occur where AI, data, and physical systems converge. Attacks will target intelligent infrastructure – transport grids, hospitals and manufacturing. UEL is already embedding these challenges into its curriculum, guided by ICC research. Students design adversarial-AI tests, examine supply-chain vulnerabilities, and develop frameworks for organisational resilience.
This approach recognises that technology evolves faster than any static syllabus. Students are therefore treated as co-creators, working alongside academics and employers to design the solutions industry will need next.
As the UK Government prepares its White Paper, one principle should underpin the national conversation: universities are not peripheral to resilience – they are central to it. They educate the workforce, generate the research, and sustain the partnerships that keep the nation secure.
UEL’s Careers-First model, aligned to Vision 2028, embodies that principle. It fuses employability, enterprise, and global engagement into one coherent system of capability. Our collaboration with Tampa Bay Wave is a single, tangible expression of this – connecting East London’s lecture theatres to innovation ecosystems across the Atlantic.
In a global cyber war, the question is not whether universities should respond, but how fast they can. At UEL, that response is already underway – this is what Careers-First looks like.
As colleges and universities reconsider their long-term online program management (OPM) strategies, many are opting to bring services back in-house. But taking that leap from a traditional OPM model to a more autonomous, self-directed approach requires more than good intentions. It demands a deep, institutional understanding of your operational readiness.
That’s where this discovery workbook comes in.
Designed for higher ed leaders who are exploring the feasibility of an internal OPM model, this interactive guide walks you through the foundational questions, functional assessments, and strategic planning tools you need to make informed decisions and set your institution up for long-term success.
You’ll explore your institution’s current capabilities and uncover critical gaps across data, tech, and talent — while equipping your teams to take aligned, strategic action.
What’s Inside?
Strategic readiness prompts to evaluate your institution’s vision, leadership alignment, and change management culture
Functional deep-dives into five core operational areas: market research, marketing, enrollment, retention, and academic services
A robust gap analysis rubric to assess capabilities across data, technology, and talent
Planning tools including a RACI matrix and a rose-thorn-bud exercise to turn insights into action
Guidance on identifying the right support partners and what to look for in a modern, DIY OPM model
Whether you’re just beginning to evaluate your current OPM contract or actively planning for transition, this workbook offers a practical path forward.
Use this interactive workbook to explore what it takes to manage your online programs in-house.
Our mission is to enable impact in higher education. We help our partners achieve more, deliver superior experiences, and drive impact across the entire student lifecycle by leveraging and aligning data, technology, and talent.
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