More Than a Login: Humanizing Online Adjunct Support at Villanova

In this episode of The Adjunct Files, John and Maggie sit down with Marissa Caldwell, Assistant Director of Instructional Support at Villanova University’s College of Professional Studies. They dig into what it really takes to support more than 180 online adjunct faculty—from one-on-one onboarding conversations to low‑stakes discussion groups and a newly built asynchronous orientation hub.

Marissa shares her journey from K–12 English teacher to faculty developer, the realities of online teaching support, and why personal connection matters just as much as LMS training. This episode shines a light on scalable, human-centered practices that help adjuncts feel prepared, supported, and seen—no matter where they’re logging in from.

Theme music composed, performed and produced by James Husni.

Adjunct Nation is a collaborative podcast under the auspices of The Lucas Center for Faculty Development at FGCU. You can learn more by clicking on this link:

https://www.fgcu.edu/lucascenter/

Transcript

Welcome to the Adjunct Files.

We're a growing, diverse community who face challenging work in an ever-changing, higher

education landscape.

Your co-hosts for this podcast are with you in this.

I'm John Roth, adjunct since 2015 and now a coordinator for Adjunct Faculty at Florida Gulf Coast University.

I'm Maggie Hohne, adjunct since 2022 and currently work in the Office of First Year Seminars.

Together we hope to have conversations to empower, support, and elevate Adjunct faculty.

This conversation today is one to do just that.

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Adjunct Files.

John, how are you?

Doing well at the beginning of another semester.

Yes, it is.

It's kind of weird because our semester started on a Wednesday, so at the time of

recording it's officially Monday.

It gets the back half of the first week.

It's still the first week, but it's in the second week.

Yes.

Yeah, that's about how I'm feeling.

Kind of that weird dislocation.

Yes, agreed.

Well, Maggie, you didn't get to go to this.

Maybe this next year, the pod professional something developers.

I can't remember.

Professional development conference that I went to this fall did a presentation at in

November.

We met a number of amazing people there.

One being Marissa Caldwell from Villanova University and she's our guest today.

I'm excited to have her here.

She was great to talk with in San Diego at the pod network.

And loved.

Thanks for coming in with us, Marissa and joining the mayhem called the adjunct files.

Please introduce yourself and describe your role at Villanova University and how it relates

to adjunct faculty or whatever contingent faculty title you give them.

Thank you so much for having me.

So my official title is that I am the assistant director of instructional support in the College

of Professional Studies at Villanova University.

That's such a mouthful.

But essentially what that means is rather than being in a teaching and learning center,

like a lot of my fellow faculty developers are, I am within a particular college, the

College of Professional Studies.

And so we work with folks who are returning to school and working on degrees or we also

do professional education for folks who are maybe already out in the workforce and

are looking for a certificate or something like that to help them continue in their career

or switch careers.

So in my particular role in instructional support, I essentially do whatever I can to

help faculty in any way that they need that.

So a typical day for me can look anywhere from meeting with faculty one on one to answer

questions that they have or talk through teaching concerns, doing some learning management

system trainings, verifying that everything is set on our learning management system for

upcoming courses that are going to launch.

And just like I said, essentially anything that our faculty or adjunct faculty, that's

what we call them here at Villanova, anything that they need in order to be successful.

So I'm kind of behind the scenes supporting in any way that I can.

How large is Villanova?

It's got to be pretty big as a university.

Yeah, Villanova itself is a pretty large university.

We are a smaller college within the university.

We have a smaller student population, especially on our credit side with our degree programs,

because we really work with students who are coming back to finish their degree and work

with kind of what would be considered a quote unquote non-traditional population.

So in my role, I don't have the exact numbers on like our student enrollment, but in terms

of faculty, I work with about 180 faculty directly.

Oh, wow.

Okay, that's enough.

We have three full timers in the college as a whole and then 180, roughly adjunct faculty.

Would those adjunct faculty only specifically teaching those non-traditional students who

are coming back and enrolling in those programs within your college or are you any adjunct

faculty?

So we have a number of programs we have.

I believe it's about seven degree programs that we have.

We have over a dozen different programs that are professional education that are just the

certificate programs and within each of those programs, we sometimes have multiple certificates

and then we have some other special programs.

But they're just teaching within the College of Professional Studies, but they're teaching

different disciplines.

So Marissa, before we started the podcast, you mentioned you were from rural or central

Pennsylvania.

Now you're in the Philadelphia area.

Quite a change.

How did you end up at Villanova as well as in this role?

I'd love to hear a little more about your journey.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I did live from about middle school age on in South Central Pennsylvania, very rural

area, but I kind of knew throughout going to middle school and high school there that

I wasn't kind of planning to stay there forever.

That's where my dad had wanted to end up, but it wasn't for me.

I wanted to end up in the suburbs or in a city.

So I ended up in the Philadelphia suburbs when I went to school for my bachelor's degree

at Westchester University, and I kind of fell in love with this area.

So I was originally in my past life.

I was a middle school and high school English teacher.

Oh, wow.

And yeah, yeah, a little known fact about me.

So I was doing that.

I did that for about five years while I was working on my master's degree part time.

And I decided during that time to pursue my PhD in communication.

And I got into my PhD program.

And at the time, I thought perhaps I wanted to be a full time professor.

I knew I at least wanted to be an adjunct faculty member.

So I remember asking my colleagues, my fellow students and also the professors I worked

with, when am I going to take the class that talks about how to teach?

Oh, that is so funny.

I was the PhD major.

My whole bachelor's degree and even my master's degree, I took classes in English, and you

know, where I was practicing my reading and writing skills and all of that.

But then I also took classes about how to teach.

And I got into my PhD program and I looked through my handbook that told me what classes

I was going to take.

And I thought, where are the classes about pedagogy and about what it's like to teach

at the college level.

And I was told, oh, we don't have that in our program.

And being someone who has always been passionate about education, I started to seek out those

opportunities and found some classes that you could take that weren't for credit.

They just showed up as like satisfactory on your transcript that we're focused on college

teaching.

And I got connected with our teaching center at Rutgers and started to do some workshops

about teaching and different technologies and things like that.

And before I knew it, I was working for what Rutgers called the Teaching Assistive Project,

which was focused on helping working with graduate students who were paid to be teaching

assistants to learn how to teach at the college level.

And then I started working part time at Teaching Center and I realized this was how I could

combine my love of education and always educating people and also working in higher education.

So I got into faculty development.

And then I ended up here at Villanova.

I saw this opening for an assistant director of instructional support.

It was in the area that I wanted to end up in.

Villanova is a wonderful school.

I had a colleague actually who taught for the College of Professional Studies, who I

knew from Rutgers, which is such a random thing.

And I talked to him about the work environment and everything and applied for the job got

it.

And here I am.

All of that is like a really long way of saying I wanted to address the fact that there weren't

these built-in opportunities for either graduate students or faculty to learn how to teach

at the college level.

And I started to get really passionate about that that was maybe the direction I wanted

to go with my career was to work at a Teaching and Learning Center and really work with faculty

and workshops and things like that to do faculty development.

And so here I am today.

It's amazing how we back into these things and we find what we thought should be just

basic, foundational at a university.

We go like, what?

This is missing.

Like, right?

And the more people I talk to, and I have this conversation with my freshman students

all the time, they're like, everybody has a doctorate.

They should know what they're talking about.

I'm like, yes, discipline wise.

They know what they're talking about.

Subject matter.

Yes.

But it is that they never had that pedagogy class.

Right?

Like how many programs have this is how you teach what you're learning to people who have

no idea what you're talking about.

I was just genuinely so surprised that that wasn't the case at the PhD level because

and this was me.

I had been in just the small little part of the world as an education major and English

major where they were always, it was essentially like being a double major.

You took your pedagogy classes.

You took English classes and you had to combine them.

And so maybe it was really naive of me, but I just assumed that when I got into my PhD

program, I would have to take classes like that and that was not the case.

Yeah, I know.

It is kind of like a no brainer and yet it's just common.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So just thinking of the 120 or more adjunct faculty that you're working with, what are

some of the common challenges they bring to you?

I'm wondering if they aren't similar to what we see here at FGCU, but I'd love to hear

about that and how do you work with them on that?

Yeah, that's a great question.

You know, it kind of falls into buckets.

I get a lot of questions about like the learning management system.

We are in the midst of transitioning from Blackboard to Bright Space right now.

So as we transition our programs, a lot of what I'm providing is some LMS support to

our faculty.

But then also questions such as I've come across this particular situation with the

student, how should I handle it?

You know, double checking that what the faculty member thinks is the right thing to do.

We'll not go against any of our policies and just kind of, you know, making sure that

they have our support in moving forward with an option.

And then we have a lot of faculty who are actually really just interested in more

opportunities to build community and to get to know each other.

And so that's been something that we have been focused on kind of over the past year,

really trying to provide opportunities for our faculty members to meet each other,

to have kind of low stakes sort of interactions where we've been doing what we call kind

of faculty discussion groups, where we'll have a particular topic.

And then we'll send an invitation to all 180 of our faculty, like, you know, come

and meet on Zoom at this time if you want to talk about this topic.

And so we've been having some success with that.

Can you give us an example of a topic that you've used?

What you found a number of people found engaging.

We held a couple of them in the fall.

One was about providing meaningful feedback to students that was pretty well attended.

And I should say that these discussion groups we provide a chapter from a book or like an article

to read or something to kind of have the faculty think about that and then come to the group

and be prepared to discuss.

And we've had mixed reviews about that.

Some people really like having something to kind of base the discussion around and other folks

are kind of like, I don't necessarily have the bandwidth to read this article.

And we've encouraged them to just kind of show up and talk about the topic as well.

But that has been successful for us.

And we have been really trying to build these opportunities for faculty, not just to get together

with people that are within their same program, but across all of our CPS programs

and get to share what's worked for them as far as teaching strategies go.

Kind of ask for advice from each other.

So we have brought that into like kind of our practices based on some of the things

that have faculty have expressed to us in terms of what they would like to see from our office.

Since you're located specifically within the College of Professional Studies, is there

a like your position like a you in every college at the university?

Or is it just you all exist specifically within this college?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So our college is a little bit unique.

And perhaps I should have mentioned this when I was talking about the College of Professional Studies.

We are primarily online rather than in person, which is a little unique to Villanova.

And it's because of the student populations that we serve, especially with our professional.

So my team, we're considered the teaching learning and assessment team.

We're specific to our college.

There may be other sort of versions in the other colleges.

We do have a teaching and learning center that is Villanova wide.

OK, and they do great work and they offer workshops for faculty and all of that.

And things that some of our adjunct faculty and our full-time faculty do take part in.

We have just found because we have compared to other colleges, such a, you know, large number of adjunct faculty,

that it's really helpful that we can provide this support kind of in-house because it would be a bit

overwhelming to our teaching and learning center to then address 180 all online adjunct faculty,

while also meeting the needs of all the other faculty on campus.

That makes sense.

So, Marissa, from your perspective, where do institutions like our universities,

so it's not specific just to Villanova or FGCU, but where do we often fall short in supporting our adjunct faculty?

What have you heard or what have you seen that we're just not supporting them as much as we could?

Yeah, I don't know that this is necessarily like a part that's a failure on the part of the institution,

but one of the struggles of engaging adjunct faculty can be how busy they are outside of working for the university that they're at.

And I mean, unfortunately, I don't know that there's one easy answer to that.

I think that that's a problem that many of us who work with adjunct faculty are grappling with.

The particular faculty I work with mostly hold full-time jobs in their profession still.

So, a lot of times they're busy nine to five, and we have folks who have the type of job where they can't take a meeting

or something for Villanova, even if they wanted to, which we completely understand.

But then it becomes a question of how can we meet their need while also trying to preserve some sense of work-life balance ourselves?

Yeah.

I don't mind doing evening meetings on occasion, absolutely, but I have to also be in the office essentially nine to five,

and then to do evening meetings.

That's just a challenge.

And I think, again, something that institutions struggle with is figuring out how to engage faculty and even start that relationship.

We are unique a little bit. I mean, I don't want to say unique as I'm like, we're super special, but I don't know that every college has the bandwidth for this.

But we, my team, the teaching, learning, and assessment team, we meet on Zoom one-on-one or a small group with our team with every new adjunct that we hire.

Wow.

And we start the conversation where I'm on Zoom and I talk a little bit about myself, provide some resources, but I think it goes a long way in starting that connection with a faculty member,

where I'm not just a face behind an email.

They have now met me.

We've had some casual unscripted conversation where I've just talked a little bit about ways that I can help them.

I've opened up, you know, the Florida questions and things like that.

And unfortunately, I think with larger universities with just one teaching center, especially a small teaching center serving all of the faculty,

that's obviously not feasible.

And so I think, you know, something that we're constantly thinking about as faculty developers is how to even start that conversation and start to build that rapport with adjunct faculty so that they come to us when they have questions or concerns or need support.

Have you found those initial meetings to be beneficial? Have you received good feedback from adjuncts who have kind of gone through your whole process of onboarding and learning about the culture of the institution?

Yeah, I think it's really valuable. And we frame them as we call them orientations, but we frame it as starting the conversation and we say that explicitly to faculty, we're going to provide you with some basic information.

And we're going to send you a bunch of resources and then please do reach out to us. And I do think there's something to be said for having met a person.

It makes it easier for me to email them because I'm like, hey, they know who I am.

They recognize, hopefully my name when I send them an email. And I do think that potentially it makes them feel more comfortable reaching out to me, knowing that.

Oh, hey, I remember Marissa, we had that random conversation and orientation about, you know, whatever it was.

I love that. I think that's something that.

I know here at FGCU and across the board from who we've interviewed is how do you really translate that culture in an online environment when you're not here.

And it sounds like your whole college is online. Right. So how.

Is there anything that you do to kind of talk about the culture and tradition of the school. Is that kind of within your orientation at all or is it more focused on like student success pedagogy and resources.

I'm just curious for myself.

Yeah. So that initial.

Meeting like face to face as face to face as you get in an online setting is really focused on here's some contact information. We're going to send this all to you. And we always do.

Because we, you know, we have a slide deck and we go through it to kind of keep ourselves on track. But then like I'm going to send this to you afterwards. You have all these emails and you're not copying them down.

So that's kind of focused on more of the rapport building and some really, really basic information like here's how you log on to the LMS and get into your course for the first time to poke around and things like that.

And then something that we've done this year.

Is we created these asynchronous orientation and resource sites is what we call them.

So we add all our new faculty into that and that's where we have more information about here's information about our university as a whole. Here's information about the college of professional studies and the types of students that we serve.

Here's again the contact information and then we have some videos that my colleagues and I have recorded about different things related to pedagogy addressing students with accommodations teaching online if you've never taught online before.

And then as well as like some LMS trainings and things like that.

So we try to focus because we've now built this asynchronous orientation and resource site that we're hoping to kind of always be tweaking and adding things to.

We really feel that in that initial zoom orientation we can focus on just kind of being casual and starting the conversation as we say. And so we don't as much.

We don't have as many things that we have to get through. It's kind of like, Hey, let's talk through what your experiences what questions you might have. Have you taught before. Have you taught online before.

Are you familiar with black or things like that? Like just getting to know them and kind of getting a sense of where they're at and how we might be able to help them in the future.

So are you Marissa part of the hiring process for people as well or how does that work or do you just get here. Here are some new adjuncts.

How does that work?

My team is part of the hiring process. My supervisor directly supervisors are adjunct faculty.

So we're a three person team. My colleague Nadine is the one who handles the hiring process along with my supervisor.

So I actually I used to do some of the hiring, but we shifted some responsibilities around.

And so I have kept myself as part of the orientation process because I do think, especially now that I'm not contacting candidates or scheduling interviews or anything like that.

It's really helpful for me to have that initial meeting before I start emailing them things like I don't want them to be like, who's this Marissa person.

I'm telling me to do X, Y and Z or like inviting me to this meeting in the calendar. You know, I think that's, that's weird. No one wants to get a calendar invite from someone. They're like, who is this person?

Is this important? Is it not right? Exactly.

I love that.

So I think another question I have is you sound like you are like a pedagogy expert, but also an instructional designer working a lot with the LMS and I can only imagine the transition from Blackboard to bright space.

I've never heard of a space before.

So are you also do you also have background in that kind of tech and platforms as well? Like, are you helping adjuncts design their course within Blackboard in terms of how does it look? How does it flow?

Are you communicating enough? Is that does that align with your role at all? Or is that a different area?

So I do some instructional technology sort of support work, but mostly at a pretty basic level. Okay, we do at our university wide technology services.

We have a team that focuses on instructional technologies and they are the true instructional designers who are really experts.

I have no formal training other than having been an adjunct myself. I adjunct still as well. And then just learning as I go along. So I can do some of the basics of course design.

I have a lot of digital accessibility work and inclusive teaching in my past role at Rutgers and that's something I'm really passionate about and I'm always really happy to talk to instructors about.

And I do help with course design and things like that anytime that they do ask when it gets down to really technical things. That's when I reach out to my colleagues at technology services and ask if they can tap in because they can do it so much faster than I can.

Here we are.

answer, I'll find it. But I end up getting requests that I'm like, this is beyond me,

let me forward to my colleague Rich or Michelle or something and they're going to help out in

a moment.

What you're doing at Villanova, what do you think could be adapted or adopted towards some of the

rest of us? Yeah, so it's very new to us, but that asynchronous orientation and resource site

that I talked about previously, I think has been effective so far and we're really hopeful that it

will be a really good resource to our instructors moving forward. I actually had done something

similar in my role working with teaching assistants at Rutgers where we had this asynchronous orientation

in the LMS and that was a very effective way of doing it. So I do think kind of building out a

resource site and building it out in the LMS that your university uses if possible can be really

helpful because one of the things that hopefully faculty are getting out of it while they're going

on and accessing the resources and everything is they're also learning how to better navigate this

system that we're in in bright space. So we very intentionally built it in the new system,

hoping that that would help familiarize themselves. So I think that has been successful so far.

And then in terms of faculty development workshops, we have found that these kind of one-off

faculty discussion groups, pretty low stakes in terms of preparation involved,

you know, on the side of the faculty member, those sort of home worker ongoing commitment

has really worked for the type of faculty, the adjunct faculty that we work with who are busy

working professionals. They'll come to one if they can, but they don't have to commit to, you know,

for Wednesdays in a row, you know, during their lunchtime or anything like that. But I we have

had some success with that and have gotten some good feedback in terms of doing those quick

sort of one-off workshops. When you do have those workshops, do you ever record those

and send them out to all adjuncts afterwards or even post them, like on that repository you've

been describing? That way everybody can access it or is it you come, you get the information,

we'll send you the article, but you got to kind of come for the convo. Because they're what we're

calling discussion groups and we really are relying on the faculty to come and share their

opinions and potentially their personal experiences. We haven't recorded these particular, this particular

series of workshops that we're doing. We've had requests and my colleague and I feel that just

based on the nature of it, it's meant to be a discussion. It's not as helpful to record it.

And then we also really want our faculty to feel open to say, hey, this made me think about

this issue that occurred in my class that I'd love some feedback on. Other workshops that we do

that are focused on, are maybe more like heavily presented by us, we would definitely be open to

recording and putting online for faculty who can't attend to do it. I think it just kind of depends

on what type of workshop we're running. Cool. So you are an adjunct faculty member as well as,

I know it's kind of meta, I think. You're running, you're working with adjunct faculty

and you're teaching as adjunct faculty. How's your work-life balance girl?

Yeah, I have to say, I am someone who works really hard to preserve my work-life balance.

Good for you. In terms of really trying to stick to boundaries.

Just because I find that if it's okay to break the boundaries on occasion, but if you make too

much of a habit of it, then it's not even that other people will take advantage of it. It's that

it becomes kind of the norm to me and I don't want that to be the case. So I really try to stick to

working my scheduled work hours in terms of being a staff member here. And obviously, like I said,

we sometimes do evening commitments and I'm open to that. I know we have faculty who, for a number

of reasons, cannot meet during the day. And so there's always exceptions to the group, but I try

to generally stick to, you know, when I'm in the office, I'm working, when I'm not in the office,

I'm not working. And I have a team that is very committed to making that happen for each other,

where we are not going to be contacting each other unless it's like a true emergency, which

you know, doesn't really happen in my athletic work. Not too much. No. No.

No. As my supervisor says, we are not surgeons. So like our emergencies are not true. You know,

they're not like really serious emergencies. So the most part, we can handle it if someone's out.

So yeah. And so I try to kind of set aside then for my teaching certain times where this is,

you know, obviously this is when I'm teaching, if it's a live class, I have, I teach asynchronously

as well. But you know, this is the time I'm setting aside in the evening or on the weekends to work

on it. And I try to stick to a schedule for the sake of my sanity and having some semblance of

a social life. Yeah. What is that? Yeah. No, but that's good. And I think then you're modeling for

the other the adjuncts that you're working with that there is, there needs to be that kind of

balance just for sustainability. As I'm with my cohost here, who I think probably does, I mean,

she's just a worker. So you tell me, Maggie, how does that work for you?

Um, it doesn't. Yeah. But because I'm a staff adjunct, I'm staff staff adjunct, but I'm also

in a doctorate program as well. So talk about talk about meta. Oh, you're doing a doctorate again,

another one? Oh, still, you're still working. Oh my gosh. So you get the triangle. I'm like,

who am I in this room right now? Am I a student? Am I the one in charge? Where am I? That's what

it feels like. I will say, sadly, right now, my dissertation is losing the battle in terms of my

focus. Yep. And I unfortunately don't have any great advice for that. Well, is your research?

But sorry, I interrupted you. No, no, no, no. It's complicated. It is. But I think my

the biggest saving grace is everything is within my wheelhouse. Like I'm not getting a doctorate

in some subject I know nothing about. Like it helps that I work in higher ed and my degree is in

education and higher ed leadership. So a lot of what I can research and write about is what I'm

actively doing for my job. So I think there's a lot of alignment. I wouldn't really call it time

management. I just got everything I did just kind of goes hand in hand so I can work it out that way.

But time management, I need to work on. So you're at the dissertation stage, Marissa.

I am. Yeah, that's the hardest stage, I think, at least from my experience.

That's what I'm most nervous for. Yeah, it that's when I was ready to quit and

it's like an open an open deadline of like, yeah, just got to finish before we want to graduate.

And I'm like, well, I wanted to graduate a year ago. Yeah, how it didn't happen.

You're closer than I did a shake. So. But we we feel for you. Yeah, it's just I mean, yeah, it's

I am not good with the self. Impose deadlines I am learning throughout this process. I am very

good at doing things like for my job and things like that for my class where it's like someone

would notice if I didn't go for eight assignments.

Semester, guess who notices when I don't write my dissertation? No one. Not yet. Just me.

It feels to me also like somebody said it's like the higher ed version of hazing.

I had to go through this and therefore you have to go through that. Yeah, well, in every semester,

I feel like it's the finish line changes because I'm writing to how each faculty member wants me to

write. They're like, I don't like how you said this. Just rewrite it to what you wanted to say.

I'm writing to you not to the actual topic at this point.

All right. And you were saying it feels like such a roller coaster too. Yeah. Sometimes I'm so excited

and I'm so into it and I'm like, oh, I could work on this for eight hours straight and other

videos. I'm like, I can't even think about it. Let alone type a word related to it. So yeah,

anyway, we've gotten off topic. But really because it's the holistic life of any adjunct faculty

member and anyone in higher ed that I don't think everybody outside of it realizes human beings

we're trying to handle it all and it's not always fitting together. So well, I think there's a lot

of people that think we are in this wonderfully in a bubble. Well, and also kind of a privilege

of, oh man, you just get to read books and you just get to do a little research and you just

it's like, seriously, you have no idea. All the students, all the issues, all the complexity of

things that fly your way. And then having people who are full time professionals trying to do this on

the top, right? It's still it's a lot. Well, this has been fun so far. I don't know if you've got

any other thoughts. Marissa, when we talked about doing this,

one of the things that I just think is really important and one of the reasons that I have

enjoyed joining the adjunct faculty at POD. I think it's just having these conversations

about how to best serve our adjunct faculty and to continue to have them and to share what has

worked and what hasn't worked just in the hopes that we're all going to continue to get better

at supporting our adjunct faculty. And so I just think, I was excited to come on the podcast and

talk to you because I just think keeping the conversation going is so important. I think that's

one of the ways that we continue to get better in anything. And this is something I am really

passionate about. And so I really enjoy the opportunity to just talk, talk, talk your ear off.

Yeah, that's great. And you know what amazed me, I think at POD was, I didn't, I thought we were,

I was going into it my first conference at being the person who doesn't know what, you know,

even what's what and what's the next step and everything. And when you come, you find everybody

struggling with many of the same issues. And everybody struggling with adjunct faculty having

not enough time, you know, they're working all of these things, the resources that we're lacking,

how higher ed is changing and the challenges. So not to be happy other people are struggling

with the same things, but at least. But there's a sense of solidarity. Exactly. And I felt that

with you just in meeting you in person for the first time at that and just being on the SIG

together. And just for people to know SIG stands for special interest group. Okay. So it's a focus

on the fact that this is now becoming the faculty majority in many places, like your program.

We're not going away. No. Well, all right. Well, thank you so much, Melissa. It's been great.

Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it was great meeting you. Thank you. Bye bye.

The music composed performed and produced by James Husney.