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Welcome to season two of the Poggle Podcast. I'm Matt Targa, producer of the Poggle Podcast

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for the Poggle Project. Poggle stands for Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning,

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a student-centered approach that guides students in constructing their own understanding of

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content and helps them develop important skills such as teamwork, communication, critical

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thinking, and problem solving. The Poggle Podcast is an ongoing conversation from the Poggle

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Project that celebrates innovative educators both in and out of the classroom. During season two,

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we will feature a total of nine episodes focusing on the project's strategic plan. In our first

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episode, we focus on the historical context of Poggle's strategic plan, specifically,

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how did the project create its plan and why is it so important? Today, co-host Alex Grushow,

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who was a professor of chemistry at Rider University and chair of the Department of

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Chemistry and Biochemistry, interviews Dr. Richard S. Moog, professor in the Department

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of Chemistry at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the executive

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director of the Poggle Project, as well as Susan Schadl, vice provost for undergraduate studies

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and distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry and the founder of the Center for

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Teaching and Learning at Boise State University in Idaho. Alex, Rick, and Susan, thank you for

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being here today to kick off season two of the Poggle Podcast. And Alex, I will now pass the

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baton over to you.

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In today's episode, we begin the second season of the Poggle Podcast. In our first season, we

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introduced you to a number of interesting people connected with the Poggle Project and had them

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describe their academic journey and how they got connected with Poggle and how they now use it in

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their educational setting. This season, we will explore the inner workings of the Poggle Project.

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The project, it turns out, is not just about creating materials and disseminating to the

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broader educational community. There are many other activities that people in the organization

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undertake to promote the mission of the Poggle Project. We'll talk with educators around the

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country who have worked to steer and shape various aspects of the project. And through different

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episodes this season, listeners will learn about the many opportunities to participate in the

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workings of the Poggle Project. Later in this second season of the Poggle Podcast, we will talk

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with people associated with the various working groups to describe their work with the Poggle

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Project. Please tune in to more Poggle Podcasts this season for details on all the activities of

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the Poggle Project and how you can become involved with this community of practitioners.

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So we'll begin this season discussing something that most organizations like the Poggle Project

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have but don't often utilize to their fullest extent, the strategic plan. Now, many of us in

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higher education hear those words and do anything we can to not be anywhere near a committee

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associated with developing a strategic plan. It is often felt that these documents are developed

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and then filed away to be examined at some later date. However, for those people who are working

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closely with the Poggle Project, it is actually the opposite case. The development of the strategic

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plan for the Poggle Project has been a community-based effort and its periodic revision has also been

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performed by as much of the community as possible. To describe these efforts today, I have Rick

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Mueh, the Executive Director of the Poggle Project, and Susan Schadl of Boise State University,

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who was one of the early architects of the strategic plan for the Poggle Project. Rick, Susan,

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welcome to the Poggle Podcast. Happy to be here. Thanks, Alex. Thank you. So Rick, I want to start

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with you. You know, we're going to go outline some behind-the-scenes activities of the Poggle

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Project this season, and our reason for doing this is we want to make these activities more visible

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and invite others in our community to participate. But I think it's fair to say that most of these

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activities that we engage in stem from the strategic plan. Can you tell us a little bit about

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how this plan is used to guide our activities of the larger Poggle community? Sure, Alex. I'm happy

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to do that. Before I do, I just want to thank you again for the invitation and to thank Susan

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for being here. I would say that she was more or at least different than one of the architects

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of the strategic plan. Susan was actually on the steering committee at the time, and she was

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the leader of our strategic plan efforts. So she's an excellent choice as somebody to

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be talking to about this. You know, I think the thing that we do is we treat strategic plans

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the way they actually should be treated, which is as both strategic and a plan. And the idea is

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that we use the strategic plan as a basis for making decisions about resource allocation. I mean,

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that's essentially what we do. The process involves deciding what are, from a strategic perspective,

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the goals we want to accomplish in the next five or so years, and then articulate those,

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and then act on them in a planned way to try to achieve those goals for the project. So

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when something is in our strategic plan, it means that we've decided that this is something that

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if there's a decision about resource allocations that we have to make, the things that are in our

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plan are the things that we're going to give priority to. It doesn't mean that other activities

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aren't of value, right, or don't contribute to the project. But, you know, we have limited resources,

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as does any organization, and we need a plan for how to make decisions about allocating those

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resources. Human resources, financial resources, time resources, that's how we think about our

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strategic plan. Okay, thanks. So now, early in the development of the POGLE project, there was no

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strategic plan. I mean, as we talked about last season, you know, it stemmed from some grants

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from the National Science Foundation. So what prompted the leadership within the POGLE project

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to actually say, oh, you know what, we need a strategic plan? Because it's not like people

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wake up in the morning and say, I think I need a strategic plan. Right, right. Well, so there's a

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couple of things, right. The first thing is that, as you mentioned, when we started on this endeavor,

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and at that time, when we started, it wasn't even called the POGLE project. But when we started on

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this endeavor, it was from a large grant from the National Science Foundation. And we had two

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consecutive large, you know, grants from the NSF that funded the project starting in 2003,

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up through 2011 or 2012 is basically when that major funding ran out. And when we were funded

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by the National Science Foundation, we didn't have a strategic plan because our plan was,

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we're doing what we said we were going to do in our grant application, right, in our proposal.

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So that really, the goals of the funded proposals really defined what our strategic plan was,

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because that's what we said we were going to do. Of course, there were some deviations from that

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as things evolved, but that was essentially the nature of the strategic plan. It was the goals as

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articulated in our National Science Foundation proposals that had been funded. In fall of 2010

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is when we actually incorporated as independent 501c3 nonprofit organization. Well, as a

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nonprofit organization, we actually got our 501c3 status in June of 2011. And at that time, we,

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as a corporation, had a board of directors. And we had a steering committee that made up of

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practitioners. And it was really a combined perspective from those leadership teams,

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that it would make sense for us to have a strategic plan as we were now stepping into our next phase

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as an independent corporation. So that was really the motivation. And I think the people

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in leadership on the steering committee, on the board, all agreed that we needed to establish

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some principles for making decisions about resource allocation. And also bringing the

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community together to agree on where were we going and what did we want to do, what were our

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priorities. So it was really a combination of those two things. Okay. So it was decided that

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we need a strategic plan for, as you say, resource allocation. So how does one go about doing that,

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you know, from scratch? So you mentioned the steering committee, and we're going to talk a

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little bit more about the steering committee in a later episode and, you know, bringing community

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together. So how do you go about doing that? And so you said that Susan was part of the steering

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committee back then. So how did you get started? Let me jump in here. I also want to thank you for

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the invitation to talk about this. It's fun. It has been fun to kind of go back and unearth a

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bunch of documents from 2012 to remind myself about what happened. So I think it has always

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been true that on the steering committee, different people play particular different roles and move

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particular projects forward. And at that time, Rick asked me the idea that we needed a strategic plan

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had emerged. And Rick said, Hey, would you lead this effort? And I said, Sure. But I hadn't led

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a strategic planning effort ever. And so I went to someone on my campus that regularly worked

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at the department or the college level on strategic planning and said, Hey, are there, you know,

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resources I should look at? And she recommended a book to me. And I actually looked up what it was.

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It was called Collaborative Strategic Planning in Higher Education by Patrick Sanaghan. And I can

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give it to you so you can put it in the show notes. And she recommended a few things, particular

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things out of the book. I don't think I read the whole book. But what it had in it was a bunch of

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really good ideas for activities that could help an organization or a group of people orient

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themselves towards the process of planning. And as we know, the the Pogo project and the folks who

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are in it care a lot about process when it comes to our pedagogy and in the classroom. And it turns

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out we also care about process when it comes to moving something like a strategic plan forward.

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And so that's really how I got started. And I'm happy to talk about some of the specific things.

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But we we ended up using the Pogo National Meeting as the kind of nucleating gathering

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to engage a smaller smaller group of people, not the entire community, but the folks who

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who came to the PNM that year, which was probably about 60 folks in in a series of activities

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designed to lead us to a set of goals, which as Rick said, then served as the priorities

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for the project for the next five years. So this idea of community development is really stem from

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just your research on, okay, how do we do this? So this is not like you had any prior experience.

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But I think it's interesting that you point out process. And this is something that those people

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who are new to Poggle, you know, they'll hear about process skills and trying to make sure that

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everything goes well in the class. But those people who are who've been around the Poggle

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project for a little while realize that nothing ever happens by chance at a Poggle meeting or,

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you know, Poggle activity. Everything is well orchestrated. And so so can you tell us a little

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bit about how this was orchestrated? Absolutely. So one of the activities that came out of that book

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was an invitation to think about both the history of an organization, as well as what were the

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factors that were going to be shaping the organization and its activities going forward.

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So one of the first things we did, so each year at the Poggle National Meeting, the steering

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committee meets for a day or a day and a half before everyone else comes in. And we used a

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portion of that time, maybe even the whole part, I don't remember how much time it took, but to

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conduct a to create a timeline. And to put together, you know, we were in classic in person

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fashion with big Post-it notes and small Post-it notes and markers and brainstorming, asking about

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what had the phases of the Poggle project been, right? What did it look like pre-funding? What did

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it look like during that period of time when it was funded by the National Science Foundation?

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And we mapped out who were the players, what was going on? What did being involved in the project

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look like at that time? What were the highs, the lows, the burning issues? What significant changes

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moved the project forward to the place that it was at that moment, which that was made for?

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That moment, which that was May of 2012. And I mean, it was fascinating for the steering

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committee at the time to kind of pull together all those ideas, because of course, any organization

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is going to be influenced by its past. And it's going to shape how people in the organization

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think about moving forward. And so that was the very first thing we did. And then once everyone

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who came to the, and we did a bunch of reflection activities around that, we used a framework called

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ORID, which is Observation, Reflect, Imagine. And now I don't remember what the D is, but I can look

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it up. We did a bunch of reflection activities around it, which again, for those of us in the

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Poggle project, that makes perfect sense, right? We think about being metacognitive, helping our

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students reflect on their learning. And so that kind of process piece fit right in with our

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community culture. Anyway, once we got to the point where folks were, had come together in the PNM,

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we shared some of the history in a kind of encapsulated form. And then we did an activity

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with everyone where we thought about what the future timeline was. And again, this was big

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Post-it notes on the wall, little Post-it notes, markers, et cetera. And we were thinking about

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future events that might occur, issues that might influence the direction of the project

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and its activities, trends, which included, for example, trends in higher education.

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And we together did a bunch of intentionally designed activities around mapping out how people

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in the room saw that. And we again used this ORID framework and the D is for decision. Thank you,

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Rick. And we generated this kind of messy picture of what the future would be. And

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in between that activity and then the next, there was a small group of us that were

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kind of making sense of what was going on. The next step was to pull together the really

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brainstorming about, okay, so what are the things we could do in this space? And I can go into more

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detail, but suffice it to say that we ended up doing a lot of brainstorming about what we could do.

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And again, lots of big Post-it notes, lots of people walking around, gallery walks.

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And what we ended up with is a lot of ideas that emerged into a number of themes. And so by the

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time we finished the Poland National Meeting that year, we had a set of themes and a kind of,

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and we had a lot of discussion around it. And so one of the things that I think happened is we

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engaged the larger community in thinking about what is going to be important to the community.

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From there, and I'm going to kind of gloss over a lot of detail here, but what we did with those

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themes is the steering committee then over the next few months, shaped them into goals. And those

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goals went out for feedback to the larger community by survey. And then that following fall,

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which would have been October of 2012, we ended up shaping those themes into, I think it was six

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goals that essentially became the strategic plan that was going to guide things for the next

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five years. Right. So one of the things that I'm getting out of this is not only was it looking

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back and seeing, okay, what are we doing? What are we doing well? But also where do we want to go?

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There were some directions that the POGO project at that point had decided we're going to take on

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this piece that we really haven't thought about before, but it seemed like everyone in the

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community wanted the project to go in that direction. Rick, would you just sort of say

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that that's one of the things that comes out of the strategic planning?

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Yes. I think that the way I look at it is, because we've done this twice now, is that

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there are some things that are not surprises at all. There are some things that we've been doing,

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it's clear we need to continue doing, and there's a community consensus that yes,

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that's important to continue to focus on. And I think that's probably not surprising for any

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organization that's been around for a little while and does a strategic plan. It's generally

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the case that there are some things that are important that you continue to do and that you've

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done and you're going to continue to do into the future, perhaps modified slightly. I think the

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other thing that's interesting is, as you point out, Alex, this idea that out of this process,

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which is really a bottom-up process rather than a top-down process, out of this process,

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that some interesting things emerge that are coming from the community as new ideas.

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And I'll just tell you one of them that I think is interesting, and that is that early on,

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the Poggle project was exclusively focused on STEM fields. And in the first strategic plan,

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when we were doing it, there was some sentiment about stating in the strategic plan that we were

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going to expand outside of the STEM fields as a strategic objective. And in the end,

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in the end, we decided not to do that. That is, of course, that didn't mean that we weren't

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welcoming to people from the arts and the humanities and so forth, but that we weren't

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going to have a strategic priority be looking toward how to support those people in those fields.

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That was not part of the initial strategic plan. When we went through the process the second time,

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we ended up deciding that that actually was part of the strategic plan. And so our current strategic

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plan has as part of it the, I don't remember exactly how it's articulated, but looking for

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ways to support and expand the implementation and use of Poggle beyond the sciences and math.

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And I was just going to say that's something that grew out of a community response. It was

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not something that was decided from the top deck. Right. So yeah, I was part of that second pass at

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the steering, at the strategic plan. And I found it interesting how things changed. Like some of

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the directions of the Poggle project either became more articulated or people within the community

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said we really ought to do this. So one of the characteristics of the Poggle project is we have

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these specific working groups that again some people are familiar with and they've heard about

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in these working groups target specific activities that have been identified typically by the

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strategic plan as we should work on this. We should develop this. Now can either of you explain how

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these working groups arose? Was this something that existed before the strategic plan or did they come

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out of the strategic plan? Because it seems like most of the working groups have some connection

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to the strategic plan. So it seems like a chicken and egg question. And I was wondering which was

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which? So maybe I'll try to address that first. During the pre-strategic plan days, during the

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NSF funded days, we, the leadership of those grants, tried a couple of different ways of

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engaging members of the community more broadly in working group-like activities. And I don't think

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the project was really mature enough in those first in that first decade to support that. We tried. It

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didn't, it just didn't work. The approach now, I will just tell you that, and I had to look this up

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because I wanted to remember the history also, and that is that we adopted the first strategic plan

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in January of 2013. And so the 2013 national meeting in end of May, early June, was the first

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one that took place under the auspices of a strategic plan. And some of the effort at that

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meeting, and I don't recall, but I imagine Susan was responsible for kind of getting the people

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at the national meeting to start thinking about how we're going to engage with the strategic plan.

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At that one, things were not quite as organized as they became in the next year, because the

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following year in 2014, we essentially began what are now our working groups. Those are

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groups of people who are focused on some particular aspect, narrow or broad, that is

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reflected in our strategic plan. Because as I said, we use it for making resource allocation

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decisions. So we don't have a strategic plan about every single sort of bullet point underneath our

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currently five strategic plan goals, but based on the interest in the community and what we think

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makes sense in terms of working on them with groups of community members, our working groups

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are aligned with the strategic plan, and there's a member of the steering committee who is sort of

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responsible for as a liaison broadly to make sure that we collectively on the steering committee

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know what's going on in all of those working groups. I don't know if Susan has anything to add.

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Yeah, let me add a couple of things. So my recollection is similar to Rick's. One thing I

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think is that after we did all this work to generate the goals which initially were adopted

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in January of 2013, I think we felt like that had been really good work, right? That not only

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were the goals useful, but that there had been a lot of engagement across the Poggle community,

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and we didn't want to just say, okay, that's good, and we'll put it on a shelf and let's

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continue on and never look at it. I mean, I think that's the problem with many strategic plans

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is even if the plan itself is good, people don't use it as a touchstone. And so in that PNM,

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the Poggle National Meeting in spring of 2013, we really wanted to use the strategic plan as

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an anchor. And I don't think at the time that we had a grand vision for like, this is how

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we're going to engage the community going forward. We're going to create these working groups.

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But because the Poggle National Meeting had always, at least since I had been attending,

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had always been a time where work got done for the project. And so the thought was, we've got

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these strategic ideas now, let's use the Poggle National Meeting to identify what work could be

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done initially at the PNM. But I think we even thought, but you can't get everything done in

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four or five days at the PNM. So maybe we can find some ways to have some projects get traction that

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can go forward. And that's really what emerged into working groups. I don't even think we were,

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like we didn't come into that PNM saying, we're going to form working groups associated with each

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of the, each of the goals. It wasn't that structured in part because as, as Rick mentioned, prior to,

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to this, we had tried a number of things to have activity that would go on kind of regionally or

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in other kinds of ways that it just had never gotten much traction. And so we didn't know whether

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this was, we didn't go in knowing that this is what it was going to look like. But it turned out,

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I think that knowing that you were working on something that had a strategic component to it

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was a really important way for people to engage and contribute to the project.

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And I'll say one more thing about this. I think really up until the strategic plan,

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a lot of what was happening was kind of operational, right? How do we know whether a

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Poggle activity is a Poggle activity? Well, I guess we need to make a rubric. How are we going

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to run workshops and how are we going to make sure workshops are consistent, whether you go in

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to workshop in Boston or in Florida or in Idaho. And the project had matured enough by around

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2013 that those operational things kind of weren't necessary anymore, or not that they weren't

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necessary, but they didn't take as much time and attention. And so we were able to pivot to

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these questions about what is of strategic importance because the baseline kind of

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operations for the project were established. Yeah, Alex, let me just, I want to just,

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if you don't mind, I want to follow up on that just with one other comment, which is that

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I think that for me, this evolution that the project went through from grant funded

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to independent to establishing a strategic plan to actually treating the strategic plan

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seriously as a way of prioritizing our resource allocation actually demonstrates the power of a

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strategic plan as a guiding light for organizing work and getting really interesting and exciting

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things done. If you take it seriously and treat it as what it's supposed to be, because to me,

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in the last, over the last roughly eight years since this strategic plan was first implemented,

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the result of treating it as a serious document that is a consensus of the community's view

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of what is really important to accomplish has resulted in some of the most amazing progress

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progress transformation ideas that one could imagine. And it's just the work that our current

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and past working groups have done is truly remarkable. As I say all the time, the people

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in the Polgol project are really great and they work really hard. Those two things are true,

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but the community also is just remarkable in its ability to think about important things

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and act on them in ways that are really productive. So I'm just a big fan of strategic plans

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when they are actually used the way that they're intended.

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Susan, go ahead.

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And I want to jump in one more time to add to that. So amen to Rick. People think that

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people find me very odd when I say I love strategic plans, but it's this kind of strategic

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plan that is really valuable. The other thing I would say is that I think the strategic plan

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in the Polgol project context serves not just as a list of things, right? As Rick said, it animates

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great ideas, good work, et cetera, but it also serves as a framework and a context for meaning

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making within the community. Why is this the thing that's important? So each time that the

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strategic plan first in its original creation and then in its being updated forces the community

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to grapple with how do we frame what's important. And I think the example of constraining things

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to STEM, which wasn't really a constraint, but deciding this is where we're going to focus

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on STEM disciplines versus more broadly was a really important conversation to be had around

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where do we think we can make the most impact? Where do we have people who are ready to move

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on things? What is the larger higher ed community ready for? It serves as a platform for that kind

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of meaning making that then makes it easier for the working groups to dig in and get work done

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going forward. Yeah, I would agree that one of the, I want to add one thing to that is that it is

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the community that sort of looks at the strategic plan and, you know, having been part of working on

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the strategic plan, I sort of look at it and say, yeah, these are all things that are important.

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They sort of are things that we all value to some degree. Some of them are things that I can

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really wrap my head around and I can work for the project in this way where I feel like I can

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contribute. And so this is one of the things, you know, we've mentioned this idea of working groups

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and we're going to talk more about what some of the working groups do in later episodes, but really

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the key here is that these working groups sort of, now I understand, stemmed from the strategic plan

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and, you know, if you find a working group that is doing something that's a, yeah, I can contribute

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to that. Yeah, I can be a part of that. That's how I get brought into the larger Poggle community,

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to do more than just be a Poggle practitioner and sort of help move the project forward. You know,

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as we've talked about, adding more than just STEM fields to our umbrella, you know, is something that

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some people felt really strongly about. And so that is something that the project has been

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actively working on. So, you know, we're going to do a little bit of reflection now. Susan, it's been

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a couple of years since your initial work with the project and, you know, you haven't, has been as

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closely tied to the project as you used to be, but in helping us develop that first strategic plan,

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looking back on it, you've already said a few of these things, but what really strikes you about

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how the Poggle community continues to embrace a strategic plan when so many other organizations

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do not seem to have such a connection with their organizational documents? So what about the

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project seems to make it work? I mean, Rick touched on this, but I want to hear your thoughts too.

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Yeah, well, I think I'm going to go back to something you said at the very beginning,

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which is nothing happens in the Poggle project that's not intentional. I mean, and that's maybe

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an exaggeration, but almost everything that happens in the Poggle project is very, very intentional.

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And I think that what is exciting about that work is it reflects that commitment to saying we want

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to make a difference to the students in our classes, to the way teaching is conducted in

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higher education, and we're going to be able to do that more effectively and more purposefully

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if we have a framework like a strategic plan. I also think that, as I've already said,

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the process that we use to create it was then consistent with the kind of thinking that folks

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who use Poggle in their classrooms already bring to their teaching, right? What do we do when we're

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together? What's most valuable when we're together in a classroom? What can be done independently?

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How do those processes go together so that our course designs are effective for students?

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The same thing happens, I think, within the Poggle project around the strategic plan.

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What do we do when we're together or when we bring smaller groups together, like in the working groups?

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And how do we leverage, for example, the Poggle National Meeting to catapult things forward?

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What kind of things can happen independently? And it's just really a great way of anchoring the work.

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And I mean, I just have to say, when I was going back through and looking at some older documents,

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in the last decade, there's kind of two big projects I've been involved in that I thought,

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wow, that was just amazing. And this, the original strategic planning for the Poggle project

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was one of them. It just felt like these are people who have a shared mission. We've been

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described as a community of transformation, and I think that that is important in this case.

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The fact that we've been able to leverage a strategic plan is because we do have a shared

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mission, as well as some shared kind of assumptions about how intentional should we be when we spend

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our time together. Thank you. Rick, do you have any other final sort of recollections or musings

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after we've been here? Yeah, I think that one of the reasons many strategic plans in organizations

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either fail or are put on a shelf has to do with the way the leadership of the organization

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views their role vis-a-vis the rest of their community. And one of the things that our good

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colleague Cliff Kussmaul repeatedly said during his time on the steering committee was,

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the steering committee is named the steering committee because we're supposed to be steering,

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right? We're not supposed to be doing all of the work. We're supposed to be steering. We're

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supposed to be providing context to make sure the boat is headed in the right direction and making

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sure that the other people in the organization are able to achieve more than they ever could have

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imagined they were achieving heading in this direction. And I think that perspective,

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the leadership of the organization as reflected in the board, as reflected in the steering committee,

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which is made up of community members, is really one of the other things that has enabled our

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strategic plan to be so successful, right? It's that we view the leadership of the organization

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as sort of sitting in the back, holding the rudder and steering, right? And then we're

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the rudder and steering, right? And the community has decided where we're supposed to go and

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trusting them that they're going to get us there and just making sure we stay on that path. And

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I think that's another great asset of an organization to have leadership that views leadership in that

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way as a steering of an organization. And as I said before, just amazing community members

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who are willing to put in the work and generate fantastic ideas and get things done.

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Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I mean, it's definitely, it's interesting because people think

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of a steering committee as a leadership committee that sort of tells everybody else what to do.

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But within the Pogal project, that is not, you know, the steering committee, as you said,

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guides and sort of provides support, but really a lot of the work gets done by

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people within the community. And the steering committee is just there to make sure, you know,

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we're not heading off the cliff or into the iceberg. So anyway, I really want to thank

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Susan Shadel from Boise State and Rick Moog from the Pogal project for sharing your thoughts and

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recollections and insights into this important structural piece of the Pogal project. You can't

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say that about too many organizations. Thanks, Alex. It's been great. Thank you. This was fun.

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Thank you. Thank you both. So later on in this second season of the Pogal podcast, we will talk

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with other people associated with various of the working groups that we talked about today to

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describe their work with the project. Please tune in to more of the Pogal podcast this season for

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details on all the activities that the project undertakes and how you can become involved

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in this community of practitioners. Thanks to all of you for listening to today's conversation

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on the Pogal podcast. Intro and outro music of our podcast is produced by Pogal practitioner,

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Wayne Pearson. Please join us next time when we discuss the importance of Pogal's national meeting

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and how it helps move the project's strategic plan forward. Enjoy your week.