#SenecaProud

Pat Perdue (00:00): 

Hey, I'm Pat Perdue and I'd like to welcome you to season five of the Seneca Proud Podcast. So much change. And now we're post pandemic. Are we though kind of maybe <laugh>? What's absolutely true is that the last few years have seen dramatic changes at Seneca College as well. The massive scope of the large project, which has been underway for a few years now, has been transforming Seneca into a college that embraces the highest standards of equity, diversity, and inclusion, as well as sustainability and flexibility. And this entire initiative is to ensure Seneca College is ready for the demands of the future. And with the popularity of AI and other new technologies, the future is becoming the present really quickly. And Senecas are leading the way in this brave new world, which brings us to season five. In this season, like all of our seasons, we have some amazing guests who are putting their Seneca one skills to work and are making a real splash in their career and in the world. 

(01:05): Our guests join the pod to talk about their careers today, their experiences at Seneca and their future in this brave new kind of post pandemic. Yeah, everything's normal now, <laugh> kind of world. So stick around because the next episode of Seneca Proud starts now. And welcome to another episode of the Seneca Proud Podcast. 

(01:26): I'm Pat Perdue, and as always, I'm honored that you are spending some time with me today. I'm so excited about today's show, and of course I'm excited about all the shows. But the reason I'm excited about today's show is that we get to feature three amazing professors who have recognized a need among their peers and for themselves and just sort of did something pretty great about it. And this has to do with how things changed during Covid. If you can cast your mind back to when lockdown was in full swing and all the classes were fully online and with the exception of essential cleaning staff and President Agnew <laugh>, who didn't miss a day even in the worst of it, I just love that story. 

(02:10): Other than those people, no one was coming to campus. And what we really lost in those days was the opportunity to hang out, to have those random drive by conversations that are so valuable. They help create new ideas. They help us validate our perception of what we're experiencing. So many good things, those random, let's call it on-purpose driven meetups, <laugh> are really important. And not just to the quality of the work that we do, but to our mental health. Our guests in today's show recognized that and created an informal online weekly roundtable to help give professors a chance to get together over Microsoft Teams in a relatively unstructured way and just hang out. And the thing about Microsoft Teams and Zoom or any of those platforms, they kind of force a context and aren't terribly good at facilitating randomness and spontaneity. The online round table that our guests created sort of fixed that and allowed for some magical conversational, spontaneous chaos that makes just hanging out so fun. 

(03:22): And this was during the Lockdowns days of Covid. And now that things have opened up, these forums are still going strong. And what we're going to learn about these forums is how do they pull it off? What do they talk about? And how you might wanna set up one such forum for your workplace, your department, or for whatever group you have in mind. And fun fact, our guests today are each bronze recipients of the cen that's Colleges and Institutes Canada Leadership Excellence Award for faculty as a result of the positive contribution their roundtables have provided. 

(03:58): Okay, so let me tell you about today's guests, Erin Dolmage, Mary Trant and Jamie Zeppa. Erin Dolmage is a professor in the Seneca@York School of English and Liberal Studies Faculty of Arts and a PhD candidate in history at York University in Toronto. She has done extensive work with the Metis in British Columbia, working with elders and family history researchers, and she co-authored a chapter in the edited collection of contours of a People. 

(04:28): She also collaborated on bodies of water, not bodies of women, Canadian media images in the idle, no more movement in active history. Fort Seneca Press alongside her students, she collaborated on a celebration of indigenous culture at Seneca. Another one of our guests today, Mary Trant, has been faculty at Seneca College since 1990, and currently teaches general education courses in the School of English and Liberal studies at Newnham campus. Her favorite Gen-ed courses to teach are the psychology of creativity, the psychology of happiness, group dynamics and brain and behavior. And our third guest, Jamie Zeppa, has taught writing and literature at Seneca College since 2004. During her time at the college, she worked with colleagues to develop curriculum for the University of Central Asia. Before Seneca, she worked as a freelance writer and editor and taught corporate communications. She has written a memoir Beyond the Sky and the Earth, a journey into Bhutan and a novel every time We Say Goodbye. Both published by Penguin Random House Canada. 

(05:36): I'm thrilled to share with you my conversation with Erin Dolmage, Mary Trant and Jamie Zeppa, professors in the arts department of Seneca@York, and founders of the weekly Roundtables. We get started with Mary walking us through what the Roundtables are, and from there, Erin and Jamie share some specific ways Roundtables can be kept and a safe place for people to bring their authentic selves. Okay, here's Mary Trant. 

 

Mary Trant (06:06): 

I would say Roundtables are a chance for faculty to get together to talk about teaching, and then of course it explodes because we don't just have faculty. Our admin often comes, so our chairs and and our dean often come in cuz they're, they're curious. They're very open conversations, they're informal chats. We often get people kind of jumping in and sharing. But it's definitely a an open, comfortable space for people to to talk. And I think it's, it's a cool space too. One of the things is it's for everybody, regardless of the course that they teach, I think everybody kind of comes away with like, Hey, that's new. That's interesting. I need to think about that, or I can do that. So it's a, it's a great way to meet 

 

Pat Perdue (06:48): 

And what kind of response have you had to this initiative? Are a few people showing up or tons of people? 

 

Erin Dolmage (06:56): 

It really depends on the week we've had, and sometimes it depends on the topic too and where we are in the semester. So there's a lot of variables, but we have anywhere from 10 to, I think we've come close to a hundred people on a couple of occasions. Yeah. So it really, it really depends. And there's also, we do it on teams. So there are faculty that follow the teams chat, just offline, just watching sort of what conversation is happening. So there's people who aren't on the, the video call that are also following this sort of on the side as well. So anywhere from 10 to a hundred I think 

 

Pat Perdue (07:32): 

And how do you get the topics? Do you collect suggestions from participants or what's that process look like? 

 

Jamie Zeppa (07:39): 

It seems to come up naturally. So often faculty will propose something. Sometimes there's a big change coming, like the move to Ultra. So we know we need round tables on that. We always have something on academic integrity because that seems to be an ongoing issue. So every semester there's at least one. And faculty I think also have proposed things. 

 

Pat Perdue (07:58): 

Does something come to mind as something that you've, that you've talked about that has really, really drawn a big crowd? 

 

Mary Trant (08:06): 

Chat GPT, 

 

Pat Perdue (08:07): 

<Laugh>, <laugh>. Why did I not see that coming? <Laugh>? Yeah. 

 

Erin Dolmage (08:11): 

Academic integrity, student conduct, often in, in indigenous studies sort of discussion, indigenous pedagogy integrity, academic integrity tends to really bring out a lot of folks 

 

Pat Perdue (08:22): 

Because it's tricky, right? And it's something that all faculty face and are challenged with and communicating what is academic integrity, you know, can be, can be sometimes really tricky. So any surprises that come to mind when you consider, how many round tables have you had so far? 

 

Jamie Zeppa (08:39): 

We're 30 

 

Erin Dolmage (08:39): 

30, 30, 35, 40. 

(08:42): You almost, we'll probably have 40 by the end of the year. 

 

Mary Trant (08:45): 

Yeah, it's, it's been an interesting process, I think because we have morphed, as you mentioned, we started with the whole like emergency remote teaching, what do we do tomorrow? So what do we do next week to also looking around and saying, okay, what else do we wanna know about? And I think that's when we started inviting guests to come in to talk to the round tables. So having people from First Peoples come in and talk to us about incorporating Indigenous elements into our courses and Indigenous pedagogy or having someone from teaching and learning come in and help us with a particular A O D A standards and things like that. But also I mean bigger picture guests from student conduct or having someone come in from Student Services to talk to us about that. So it's, it's neat that we can get a lot of support from around the college. And it's also really neat that a lot of our round tables the one we had this week are all from us and it's internal and it's faculty sharing with faculty here, here's something I use, here's something that works for me. So it's, it's hard. I think when you ask that question, it's hard to pin down exactly what we're doing and how we're doing it because there's several different kind of streams of stuff going on and that's very organic. 

 

Pat Perdue (09:55): 

Is there, and thank you for that overview. Is there a distinction between a meeting and a round table? 

 

Erin Dolmage (10:00): 

Yes. 

 

Jamie Zeppa (10:01): 

I, I think 

 

Erin Dolmage (10:03): 

<Laugh> meeting... 

 

Jamie Zeppa (10:03): 

Just gives me a bad... 

 

Pat Perdue (10:05): 

I know, right? I know, right? Is it just a different is, and I don't wanna diminish it, but I do want our folks who are listening to understand the difference, right? Because you get a meeting request like, oh really, but this is, and I was lucky enough to have attended one of your round tables. They're really engaging. There's a ton of participation. You know, I'm gonna say it's not a meeting. I would love to be able to pin down the difference of what about your round tables make it a round table and not a meeting. 

 

Jamie Zeppa (10:29): 

I think a meeting is often top down, right? You get called to a meeting and someone's going to present something. Whereas this is like, it's like the old lunch and learn, like let's show up to a space and talk about whatever we're gonna talk about. I think people feel that they can gain something with a meeting. You go in, you have to stay for the whole thing. People come in and out of round tables, they have to leave early. There's a fluidity and a flexibility that I think makes it much more inviting, 

 

Pat Perdue (10:55): 

I think so, yeah. I would totally share that. And the one that I was able to attend, you know, the conversation did ebb and flow to different topics depending on, you know, where the conversation happened to be at that time, which was really, really interesting. There was, there was things to talk about, but maybe there wasn't a specific agenda that was so rigid that it just felt like a good place to hang out with colleagues. 

 

Erin Dolmage (11:17): 

One of the things we tried to call it was sort of the hallway chat that we used to have. You know, when we shared a hallway where you'd be walking down the hallway, you'd stop and you'd talk to a colleague about, I'm having an issue with this. Or what do you do when you're trying to apply this in a class? And we've tried to sort of expand that a little bit. We've also really tried to avoid presentations and yeah, 

 

Pat Perdue (11:41): 

<Laugh> 

 

Erin Dolmage (11:43): 

Mary, I'll let you go with that one. 

 

Mary Trant (11:45): 

<Laugh> in, in my head. That's exactly where I was going Erin cuz one of the things when we invite guests is we said we don't want them to compare a presentation now and then they bring couple of slides at the beginning, but immediately, almost immediately we kind of ditch them. Sometimes we do some screen sharing for how to do something, but it's really not a presentation. It's really about the people who are there for that round table, that particular session. What do they wanna know? What are their questions? So we use the chat a lot. People unmute themselves and interject sometimes they put up their hands. Yeah. It's a really, really interactive process. And I think that's how people be comfortable participating cuz they can ask those questions or they can lurk and watch. They can do whatever they're most comfortable with. 

 

Pat Perdue (12:26): 

I love that. Yeah. And I think it, it was that comfort level that people don't feel pressured to say something. They can just be themselves. Or if, if a topic should present itself that causes someone to lean forward a little bit and want to jump in and contribute, then it's a very safe space to do that. So so how did you make such a welcoming alchemy? If that's even a thing, but I'm kind of considering those who are listening, if they want to do a round table themselves, what are some things that they can do to help ensure that it's, that it is that kind of environment that is a bit free flowing and people feel comfortable to contribute or to attend in any way they wanna attend? Jamie, do you have a thought on that? 

 

Jamie Zeppa (13:08): 

I would say the first thing is, is what Mary and Erin both touched on no presentations, right? That's the last thing people wanna do when they come to a meeting is sit through a 20 minute presentation. So I think by emphasizing that it's an open discussion. That's the first thing I would say. I mean, it's, they're in the title, right? A round table. Everyone is equally an expert and equally someone who can bring a question. I think that equality helps to create that atmosphere 

 

Erin Dolmage (13:32): 

And it's really fun. One of the things that you probably didn't notice from the round table that you attended is a lot of the people who presented in that round table showed their work, did not know how to teach online two years ago. They, they've now become experts, which is really neat to see. And now we're calling on them to show us. And, and many of them are re very reluctant to, to teach online. And now they're, you know, teaching us Jamboard. It's really cool. 

 

Mary Trant (13:59): 

I'm thinking about some of the faculty that we had at the beginning too, where they, they didn't come to participate. They, they didn't even come because they wanted to learn anything. They were comfortable with the topic. They just wanted to be with the other people from our, from our schools, from our faculties. So people from both schools of English and liberal studies, but also from across the faculty of arts were showing up just to see some familiar faces because we were very isolated in the early parts of the pandemic. We didn't know how to do this stuff. So some of them were just popping in to say hi, you know, how are you? And I think that really helped us build long-term, build around tables into a place where people were comfortable just kind of showing up and talking or not talking or side conversations sometimes happen. I think it is a very comfortable place. 

 

Pat Perdue (14:44): 

Well congratulations on, on creating that. So you've been nominated for a CICan Award. Congratulations. 

 

Mary Trant (14:50): 

Thank you. Thank you. I think we're, we're totally just excited, happy to be nominated. We really appreciate the nomination. We understand just after digging that it came from our chairs. So thank you to Irene and Amanda and also to our theme Cuz is amazing. We, we really appreciate being being noticed for what we've been doing. 

 

Pat Perdue (15:10): 

Yeah. And Jamie, you have something to say. 

 

Jamie Zeppa (15:12): 

It was really great to be nominated and as part of the nomination process, some faculty were asked to, you know, write like a, a letter of support or an email of support. And those were so encouraging to see how faculty perceived the round tables, how they felt supported and how what they got out of them that was thrilling for us. 

 

Pat Perdue (15:30): 

It must have been super gratifying. 

 

Erin Dolmage (15:32): 

It really was. 

 

Pat Perdue (15:32): 

And I'd love to talk a little bit about some of the topics that you've touched on because you know, you don't shy away from the contentious topics. You sort of dive right into the, to the thing that everybody's talking about. And the thing that everybody seems to be talking about these days is Chat, GPT. And you've had a round table on that, correct? We 

 

Erin Dolmage (15:51): 

Did, yeah. It was the first one we, we did this year. 

 

Pat Perdue (15:54): 

How was that? 

 

Erin Dolmage (15:55): 

It's, it's quite a topic. We brought in some, some faculty who have been looking at open ai. Open AI is the company chat, E b T is the, the text creator. And then there's Dolly, which is the image creator. So just to be clear, we had some faculty come in to talk about what they've learned about these sort of artificial intelligence, language production or synthetic language production pieces. We talked about some of the ethics about using them. There are some pretty questionable ethics regarding the company itself as well as some of the material it produces. And we, we talked about things that, you know, it is a shiny toy, but what are the, some of the deeper issues, things like that. It makes up information that's just invented. It's actually called a hallucination. That's what they call it. And, and I think, and this is sort of an issue where people believe that, well it couldn't possibly, you know, reproduce an authentic assessment. Well it, it absolutely can. It couldn't reproduce a, a personal narrative. It absolutely can. Now there are hallmarks that you can sort of use to, to find of something synthetic things like an overuse of commas. There is some transition phrases. It tends to be very repetitive. It loves to give definitions, 

 

Mary Trant (17:16): 

Citations. 

 

Erin Dolmage (17:17): 

Yeah. Can oh doesn't do citations. Although apparently the Google version of it is going to, which is great. And there's also questions about, you know, who should be using it. There's some privacy issues about the data that it creates. So for example they will give it to law enforcement. It's in the terms of use. They do not want people under the age of 18 using it. That's in the terms of use. But these are sort of things that people haven't really, really deeply dived into. They've, they've played with it, you know, I made it do a poem in the voice of Lord Byron complaining about cheating. 

 

Pat Perdue (17:54): 

<Laugh>. And how was it? 

 

Mary Trant (17:55): 

It was good. 

 

Jamie Zeppa (17:56): 

It was good. It, that was, you know, the fun thing about that round table on ChatGPT was that people were some, you know, people like a few colleagues had it open and people were throwing questions into the chat. Can it do this? Can it do that? Tell it to do this? And people were posting the answers. And so it was really an engaging session. It was terrifying in some ways to see how quickly the bot could write something. But it was also very, very funny. Some of the answers that it gave. 

 

Mary Trant (18:23): 

I thought that it was a great session as well, just because of the dynamic of it. Because is there, I mentioned, we were talking about the tool, we were talking about the ethics of the tool. We were talking about the academic integrity, the other AI and students using this tool to complete their work for them and how we find that or what we do about it. We were talking about it as a teaching tool cuz a couple of people said, well hey, I could actually use this to teach. And we were talking about issues and concerns around that. There's, there's just so much about some of these topics and I think the round tables are a great place for everybody to check, start throwing 'em out. Cuz I mean, I, I read, I watch the news, but I love the round table cause I can pop in and hear what my colleagues are thinking about these same issues and concerns and think about things that suddenly I, that never occurred to me. 

 

Erin Dolmage (19:08): 

One of the things that we did was I mostly banned the chat during that particular round table and I only answered with GPT generated answers. And lots of faculty know me, lots of faculty have seen me in the chat, you know, for 30 plus round tables and they didn't know it wasn't me. 

 

Pat Perdue (19:27): 

How did you feel about that 

 

Erin Dolmage (19:28): 

<Laugh>? Well, I, I thought the lack of typos were going to give it away 

 

Pat Perdue (19:31): 

<Laugh>, 

 

Erin Dolmage (19:32): 

But just because we're always going really quickly. But no, it was, it, I, people were quite surprised when partway through the, the round table I outed myself as as chat g p t three cuz they were asking about, you know, can you, you can tell. And I was like, guys, I've been a chatbot this entire time. 

 

Pat Perdue (19:51): 

And how did they respond? Were they, they had to 

(19:54): Be chat. Lots of shocked faces. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, <laugh>, lots of shocked face emojis, I think are what we got in the chat at that moment. And the interesting thing is, after that I didn't use it. I, I just responded as myself. 

 

Mary Trant (20:06): 

I think all, all the faculty are hoping that they do their assessments in a way that couldn't possibly be answered by chat G P T. And that seems to be the common phrases. Well my assessments are authentic so they can't do that. Or I use case studies so G P T can't do that and we all really, really, really wanna think that this isn't as scary as it is and I think this is another topic we're gonna come up with with round tables cuz we've already been talking about like the, the ChatGPT checkers. So these new checkers that are supposed to be able to detect this and all the ways around it. So I think again, round tables, it's gonna come back and we've got a lot of topics that pop up regularly as we move through the different semesters for how we deal with stuff, what we use or what we don't use. And it's, it's, it's a great format for doing that 

 

Pat Perdue (20:51): 

For sure. And how far in advance do you plan the round table topics? 

 

Jamie Zeppa (20:55): 

Sometimes far in advance. For example, the open AI one was planned well in advance and we asked specific faculty who had been experimenting to be prepared to demonstrate and answer questions. But sometimes it's the week before 

 

Pat Perdue (21:08): 

And what goes into it, you know, it's, it feels like the way you're talking about it, you're all so calm and everything, but it feels like there's more work than one would assume. It's more than just, not even just, but sending out an email saying this is what we're talking about. There's probably work behind the scenes in terms of planning or even organizing in advance. Jamie, you had mentioned reaching out to people who might be maybe subject matter experts or, or maybe more versed in the topic. So what goes on behind the scenes to make things happen? 

 

Mary Trant (21:37): 

I think he kind of answered that and then it totally depends on the session. The the open AI session. Aaron did a ton of work behind and Aaron was already kind of into it and knew who was working on it and knew who to ask. I didn't do so much on that session cuz it was a real introduction for me to the topic. Other times when we've asked an expert, someone has met with that person and just talked to them a little bit about the round table and what it is and what it looks like. So there's definitely some time there. But I think it's, again, it's not like I sit down and, and plan this. It's a, it's a, Hey, we need to do this. What can we do about this? And it's, it's nice actually. It's not work. 

 

Pat Perdue (22:13): 

Well. What do you see in the future? Are there any hot topics that, other than OpenAI, is there any other hot topics that you see in, in the future that you wanna have round tables about? 

 

Jamie Zeppa (22:22): 

Ultra is definitely coming back to the to the forefront. Once we're really sort of waiting to see once we get our shells or, or some of our, our courses moved over, we're definitely gonna come back to it and see what, what faculty think once they have their hands actually in the l m s we've done some work re-looking at Ultra, you know, talking about trying to do something differently than what, you know, we're, what teaching and learning is doing with, with their teaching Ultra. That's, that's really important. But we're just trying to sort of discuss, okay, so here's what I used to do. How can I move this over to this new l m s? Will it work if I can't use blogs anymore? Does anyone have suggestions on other things that we can use? That kind of thing. But I think Ultra's probably going to be the next big one. We have also one coming up that Mary's working on empathy and burnout. Yes. Which I think is going to be a really good 

 

Mary Trant (23:16): 

One. I honestly, I've been wanting to do this in some format for, for a long time. We have a wonderful internal guest from the social service worker program who's gonna come and talk to the faculty. So again, our, our our local internal expert. But I think the issue of burnout is big, especially with emergency remote teaching and the pandemic. And if we can do things to help people, help them feel supported, but also just get people comfortable with the idea of talking about, Hey, I'm stressed, Hey, I'm feeling burnt out and we've even talked about this before, but compassion fatigue, right? How many pre males do I get from my students and how do I react to, you know, the, the 10th time somebody says that they have covid or they've had covid six times this semester. How, how do I deal with that and how do I stay happy and functioning as a professor? Anything that underlies a lot of the stuff that we're doing because it's about helping you, you know, deal with a lot of the stuff that's going on. But I'm looking forward to that session just as again, opening a conversation and getting people talking about stuff. 

 

Pat Perdue (24:16): 

Sounds great. And it feels like your round tables are a big part of helping that whole topic. It's almost like, you know, it, it answers its own question where an opportunity to gather together and feel validated in all the things that they're, that they're experiencing and feeling. Especially with so much change that we've all gone through over the past couple of years. 

 

Erin Dolmage (24:35): 

And amazingly they've been incredibly positive even when we're talking about really hard things. And a lot of us, you know, people do get tired and they want to have a moment to complain and that's never really happened at the round tables. It doesn't become that space. 

 

Mary Trant (24:52): 

Thank you Erin, you're, yeah, that's, I think that's really important because we've had a couple of guests we had someone come in from student conduct, this is an example, and we were thinking, okay, we don't want this person to get kind of pounced on, we don't want all the faculty complaining about the student. It wasn't like that at all. It was really a an a good conversation about how we can help each other and what we need to do. And they've all been really, really positive. Even the academic integrity ones have been pretty positive 

 

Erin Dolmage (25:16): 

Yeah. And we try, and also too, if we do have a, a topic that's student conduct or we did have Mark Solomon come in and talk about his role at the time, we sometimes choose the Indigenous pedagogy. We sometimes choose not to record them in order to sort of maintain that space as a safe area for people. We also put things in into place if you are a a precarious staff member, faculty member, that you don't have to ask the question. So we create lots of back channels so we can ask those questions for you, but then you can still get, you know, the answer from student conduct or whatnot. So we're really cognizant though that asking hard questions is really important and having hard topics is really important, but it's also really important to protect the people in the room and make sure that they feel safe and taken care of, but still getting their answer. 

 

Pat Perdue (26:06): 

Right. Right 

 

Erin Dolmage (26:07): 

So that's, you know, and that I'm, we're gonna be definitely, you know, setting something like that up. When we talk about the burnout round table, we will have, what was it we were gonna use? Guys? 

 

Mary Trant (26:16): 

We're gonna use Jamboard. Jamboard, that's it. We just had that at this week's session, so we thought we would try it out. Jamie's already tried it out. 

 

Jamie Zeppa (26:23): 

I did, I went straight from the round table into my classroom and used Jamboard, which we just had a round table on. It was great. 

 

Erin Dolmage (26:29): 

Which is huge. So we're gonna use that as a place for faculty to anonymously ask questions. We'll be monitoring it. And then as you know, as the facilitators, we can feed those questions in for faculty so they do get heard. But they're not, they don't have to put themselves out there in a way that they're uncomfortable with. 

 

Pat Perdue (26:46): 

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And well, for those who are listening who are interested in setting up their own round table, it sounds like this has been a bit of a masterclass on how to do it. And it's, it's a real subtle thing. So you've done, all three of you have done a great job of articulating how special that space is. And in earlier in our conversation, we were talking about the difference between the round tables and a meeting <laugh>, it's like fully opposite. So so that's great. So thank you Jamie, Erin and Mary for joining the podcast. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you wanted to bring forward? I, 

 

Jamie Zeppa (27:21): 

I have a suggestion for people that wanna start their own. So we try and flip the dates. So we, we try and have like a, a date that they can expect, like this semester it's Wednesdays at 10 30, but after study week, we'll probably flip it because all the people who are teaching Wednesdays at 10 30 would also like a chance to attend in person. So it is hard to schedule a time that everyone can attend. That's why we record the meetings. But it's also good to have some flexibility. 

 

Erin Dolmage (27:45): 

The other sort of rule that we've gone by when we invite people, whether it's it's an internal guest or, or someone from another faculty or department, is what's the most important thing you want faculty to know about what you do? So not your job description, but what do you want faculty to understand about your job? And that's one of the things that's been a really not always a question that people get asked. They, they often talk about what students need to know or what the Seneca proper needs to know. But in this case it's faculty. And one of the things about cells and faculty of arts that's kind of unusual or special is we teach everyone from all faculties in the college. So we have a really wide experience base with students, unlike individual faculties who teach, you know, their, their students. So we really try and bring in as much as we can to make these really viable and, and useful for faculty. Cause that's really the goal. But it's amazing now that we are not post pandemic, but post ish remote te you know, emergency teaching that these are still happening and they're, they've, they've grown and they've become valuable in other ways. So that's really gratifying. 

 

Pat Perdue (28:56): 

Oh, go ahead, Mary. 

 

Mary Trant (28:57): 

Oh, I was gonna say, and there we, we once again appreciate the support from our chairs for giving us some time to, to do this, to, to talk with faculty, to bring common issues into round tables, supporting what we do. It's it's greatly appreciated 

 

Jamie Zeppa (29:12): 

And we're grateful to the faculty who show up. Right. They are the experts. They're the ones who drive the round tables. 

 

Erin Dolmage (29:18): 

Absolutely. 

 

Pat Perdue (29:18): 

That's great. Well, thank you again, Jamie, Mary, and Erin for joining the SenecaProud podcast. And I'm sure on behalf of all the faculty and from the one that I attended, it was great. It would be great if something like this could sort of become a template in other departments within Seneca College. So thank you again for joining the podcast. 

 

Jamie Zeppa (29:37): 

Thank you, pat. 

(29:39): Thanks so much. Thanks, 

 

Pat Perdue (29:39): 

Pat. Bye. Bye. Bye. But don't go away yet, <laugh>. So that was it. We're done. 

 

Jamie Zeppa (29:48): 

Is figuring it. That was good. 

 

Pat Perdue (29:52): 

And that was my conversation with Seneca @York, professors Erin Dolmage, Jamie Zeppa, and Mary Trant. I have to share that the round table I attended was super fun, tons of participation and really helpful. And you don't have to take my word, they actually won an award for it. If this is something that you are thinking of doing, why not? Go for it. If the round table be discussed in today's show is any indication, I'm sure yours will be both successful and appreciated. And speaking of appreciation, I'd like to thank our guests today, professors Erin Dolmage,, Jamie Zeppa, and Mary Trant. I'd also like to thank Courtney Rheaume for editing today's episode. And as always, I'd like to thank you for listening. I'm Pat Perdue. Until next time, stay proud, Seneca.