WELCOME and THANK YOU for reading! This newsletter covers what happened in October and will give you a heads up on what to look for in the months following.

In this issue (please note the links below will only work when viewing this newsletter in a browser):

The next board meeting is November 12, 2025

6:00 to 7:30pm Eastern

(23:00 to 00:30 UTC)

As always, ALL board members and directors are welcome!

Zoom information is available on the Member’s site

The Transformative Power of Becoming a Member of the Academy!

A recent post from a former student—whom I taught during my early years (2007–2009)—serves as the inspiration for this message. At that time, I was not yet familiar with the philosophy or practice of Process Education. I was known as a rather stern educator, often challenged by this student for being “too demanding.”

Years later, after graduating and returning home to New York, she sent me an email expressing gratitude for being an impactful educator. The very challenges that once caused her stress had become valuable life lessons—lessons she credited for her success. Since then, she has continued on a path of professional and personal growth, now celebrating six years of service in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In those early years, I extended what I now recognize as instinctive mentoring—rooted in my experience as a parent. It wasn’t until I joined the Academy several years later that I came to understand the dynamic being not merely supportive, but as a transformative learning partnership. What I continue to appreciate is that being a member of the Academy is a shared journey of growth, discovery, scholarship, and service.

As a member of the Academy, you join a vibrant network of educators and professionals dedicated to growth through Process Education philosophy and practice. Whether you’re an experienced mentor or seeking guidance, the Academy serves as a network to access valuable tools and resources beyond academics—to a transformative journey.

The Academy invites you to share and synergize this experience by encouraging others to join.

As we enter this season of gratitude, I invite you to reflect on the mentors who have shaped your journey—and the lives you have touched through your own mentoring. May this Thanksgiving bring warmth, reflection, and renewed purpose in your commitment to transformative learning.

The 2026 PE Conference will be hosted by West Coast University, La Palma campus (Anaheim) June 1 - 4, 2026.

The PE Conference website IS NOW AVAILABLE!

Click below or visit www.processeducation.org/peconf

Theme

From Teaching-Centered to
Learning-Centered Education

Sub-themes

1. Active Learning: From Coverage to Competence
2. Assessment for Growth
3. Personalized Learning in the Age of AI
4. Building Academic Cultures for Student Success
5. Designing Quality Learning Environments
6. Emerging Perspectives [Open Track]

You can now submit a session proposal! Either visit the conference website or click the image below. Deadline: February 1, 2026.

Choose where you'd like to listen...

Join us for an extensive discussion on the importance of aligning one's life with individual values and passions as a foundation for personal fulfillment and life vision. It highlights the potential for regret when people live according to the expectations of others, citing the work of nurse Bronnie Ware, and emphasizes that true happiness stems from making decisions consistent with personal and professional values. The text contrasts intrinsic motivation, driven by personal beliefs and interests, with extrinsic motivation, which relies on external rewards and punishments, such as the "carrot and stick" model. Crucially, the source argues that while extrinsic factors can initiate behavior, only self-motivation and alignment with core values can sustain long-term commitment and persistence in achieving goals, reinforcing the need for self-reflection and self-regulation.

This episode is based on Learn to Learn for Success from Pacific Crest. Denna Hintze generated this podcast with Google's Notebook LM, checking and approving its content and quality.

 You're Invited:

Be Part of Designing the Academy’s Future

Event: Designing for Growth – Strategic Innovation for Academy Engagement

Date: Tuesday, Dec 3

Time: 6:00 PM ET

Where: Zoom (link provided upon registration)

Are you passionate about the future of the Academy—or perhaps looking for a meaningful way to re-engage? Join us for an energizing 75-minute session where members will collaborate in small groups to design innovative strategies for increasing membership and conference participation.

Whether you're a longtime contributor or just curious about getting more involved, your voice matters. This is your chance to shape where we go next—while building connections and walking away with one practical action you can take in the next 30 days.

Prep work: study the IAPE home page and create a draft of your own answer to the question “What does the International Academy of Process Educators do?”

Proceedings from the 2025 PE Conference are now (finally) available. Click here or the image below.

A related note from:

The delay in creating the 2025 PE Conference proceedings was due to several factors:

• The ease with which AI content can be generated and copy-pasted to forum topics
• The preference for several facilitators to host content, including forms and slideshows, on their personal/professional/school systems
• Participants choosing to attach documents to forum posts

This means that the amount of content individuals generate is now greater but less accessible. With AI, participants can now effortlessly generate dozens, if not hundreds of pages of content, posting them to a forum with copy & paste. Remotely hosted session materials are also problematic, as they don’t stay available and in some instances, were not available beyond the session in which they were used. So those can’t be part of conference proceedings. Individuals attaching documents to forum posts necessitates manually downloading and formatting/including that content separately.

It was a real challenge this year and there are very conspicuous holes in the proceedings.

I would like to recommend that someone take careful notes at the Academy Awards session, as that content has had to be pieced together after-the-fact for two years now. I would also like to recommend that a President’s Address to the Academy be furnished as a document that can be included in the proceedings so we have a record of it. And finally, the Academy board needs to make some decisions with respect to where/how content is hosted for the PE Conference. Does the Academy have the right to a copy of what a session facilitator uses? Is the Academy comfortable with a session facilitator revoking access to resources once the session is finished?

There are some real issues and questions to be confronted.

“Workslop is AI-generated content that masquerades as finished work but fails to meaningfully advance any actual task.”

(Source article: Forbes)

Or as I think of it, workslop passes along the job of dealing with content from the person who generates it to the person who receives it.

I have had more than a couple brushes with workslop this past while. With respect to AI use by participants at the PE Conference, I wonder:

If you used AI as a participant and posted the results
to a forum, do you recall what you posted?

Do you remember what you generated? Or why?

How much cognitive effort was there on your part?

Did the resulting AI work you posted give you something you value and still carry with you?

My wondering has called to mind something a professor friend used to tell his students. During the course where he taught Dante’s Inferno, he’d draw special attention to the scene where Virgil and Dante encounter Cerberus, the 3-headed dog guarding the 3^rd circle of hell. (Cerberus is angry appetite personified, hungrily attacking the souls in the 3^rd circle and tearing them apart, repeatedly.)

In order to get past Cerberus, Virgil bends down and scoops up a double handful of the muck and mud they’re walking through. He balls it up and throws it. Cerberus, like any dog, chases after it. When Cerberus (who is not a good boy) gets the ball, his three heads go at it crazily, tearing into it for any edible bits.

My friend called this “The Cerberus Maneuver”. He said it was what most students did each semester when their research papers were due. They’d ball up their research, holding it together with badly argued original content, big words, and numerous questionable citations and references, throwing it for the professor to run after it.

When explaining The Cerberus Maneuver to his students in light of their having just read that section of Dante, he finished with:

“It is your hope that I am so busy trying to find value in what you’ve thrown to me, that you’re able to run past me and make it to the end of the semester before I figure out it's just mud and muck.”

“What you don’t realize,” he’d continue, “is that I am not Cerberus; I am a creature of intellect and good judgment. And you are not the first student to try and confuse me with what looks like a nice and yummy ball to chase.”

The fiscal year for the International Academy of Process Educators starts on October 1 and ends on September 30. That means we just finished up the fiscal year for 2024-2025. While Treasurer reports are published quarterly in the Academy forum [Link to forum], the report for the complete fiscal year provides the best summary of our financial progress. The completed report is provided here and all members are encouraged to review it. You can send any questions to your Treasurer at matthew.watts@rrcc.edu.

Summary of the October 8 Board Meeting

. . .

Key Discussions

• Academy FormSite Update: The board agreed to pay annually to save $5/month. Everyone also agreed they're happy with the podcast.
• Conference Planning:
  • A theme was tentatively decided (From Teaching Centered to Learning Centered Education).
  • Parking is solidifed and catering is confirmed.
  • Conference rooms are being worked out.
  • Discussion of fees: Keep regular fee the same, increase host fees to $200 and Yuqin will discuss with Will and Randy.
  • Josh asked "At the ICETL conference last week they offered CIC members a significant discount. Would we want to offer a discount to ICETL or CIC members to encourage them to attend our conference?" Further discussion and questions about caps and capacity.
• Outreach: The group affirmed its focus on using its LinkedIn page for outreach, with Bickkie using Facebook on behalf of the Academy. Denna suggested Bickkie use past newsletter content for FB posts. 
• Budget Report: The budget is posted here. It's also on the Academy Forum. The Treasurer's Report is here.

Announcements & Deadlines

• Newsletter Articles: Due to Denna by October 20.
• Winter Meeting: An online meeting is scheduled for January 3, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM ET.
• Summer Conference: The conference will take place from June 2-4, with a pre-conference institute on June 1.

The DRAFT minutes from the October 8 Board Meeting are available HERE.

In order to act effectively, we need to be informed. What follows are several sources and resources I've found, read, and recommend. Please use what you can and stay safe.

"What would you do if democracy was being dismantled before your eyes? Whatever you’re doing right now" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/31/democracy-california-life-donald-trump-resistance

Advisory to Academic Workers https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/2025-09/AAUP-Advisory-to-Academic-Workers-9-30-25.pdf

Nov 7 Day of Action for Higher Ed https://www.aaup.org/event/nov-7-day-action-higher-ed and https://www.aft.org/HigherEdBenefitsEveryone/dayofaction

If you have not yet subscribed to Letters from an American by History Professor and author Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, I absolutely recommend it: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

Finally, from Dr. Timothy Snyder (click to learn about him), American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust, we share the Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. 

Let us know:

• What have you achieved (WHO and WHAT)
• Suggest someone for an open board position (give us a NAME and POSITION)
• Request a workshop (please let us know the TOPIC, WHY you would find it valuable/useful, and CONTACT information so we can follow up with you)
• Pretty much anything else!