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Author: Bart Everson

Creative Generalist in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana

About Bart Everson

Creative Generalist in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana

Published on Leave a comment on A Climate Action Plan for Xavier

Friends, as we all know, New Orleans is on the front lines of the climate crisis. And you may have noted that Xavier University is located in New Orleans. Therefore, it's essential for Xavier to formulate a Climate Action Plan, building on the current vision.

Dr. Asem Abdulahad of the Chemistry Department was recently authorized to form a committee with this goal in mind. However, as Dr. Abdulahad notes, "Ultimately, climate action is everyone's problem, and I would like for own plan to reflect that!"

In other words, this work must not be siloed. It requires broad participation in order to succeed — faculty, staff, and students. Given CAT+FD's role in faculty development, it's our goal to have every academic department represented. Beyond that, we need help getting the word out to every unit and office on campus.

The inaugural meeting was held on Monday, but the work is just getting started. If you are willing and able, please reach out to Dr. Abdulahad, or Dr. Billie Castle of Public Health Sciences, or Ms. Helena Robinson of XULA Green (Facility Planning & Management). Let them know you're on board. Our future might just depend on it.

Published on Leave a comment on Gumbo Garden Celebration

Our friends at the Urban Conservancy have been working with several Xavier departments to revitalize an unused part of the Gumbo Garden as community space. Well, the work is nearly done! And the progress will be celebrated next Thursday at 10:00 AM with some cookies and warm drinks in the garden.

Part of the revitalization effort involves getting community members to adopt plots to nurture. We're sharing this here because we'd love to see some of our faculty there.

Published on Leave a comment on CAT+FD Event Information, Served Up Your Way

If you're like me, you live and die by your electronic calendar. I've got one calendar for my personal stuff, one for my work stuff, one for my daughter's school, and so on. Wouldn't it be nice if you could get all the faculty development opportunities from CAT+FD in your calendar too?

Well, you can. Keep in mind, this isn't the same as actually registering for any event, but it's pretty handy. All our CAT+FD events are stored in LibCal. (Many thanks to Xavier Library for sharing LibCal access.) So just head on over there and look for the iCal icon.

Don't be fooled, this isn't just for iCal users. It will work for Outlook, Google, and just about any app that supports the iCal format. Click the icon to reveal the super-secret link, but don't follow that link — just copy it. Then paste it into the appropriate field of your preferred calendar app.

For example, in Outlook, choose "Add calendar > Subscribe from web" to get there.

That should import all CAT+FD events into a discrete calendar that you can toggle on and off, to show or hide as you see fit. And the best part is, the calendar is updated automatically to reflect any changes.

Again, you haven't signed up for any of these events. If you want to attend, just visit our website to register. That's essential — and it's the only way to get the Zoom link for our hybrid events.

Not ready to go the calendar route? You might want to check out the portal. That's right, the good old Xavier portal at my.xula.edu now has CAT+FD event listings. They might be on your dashboard already, or hit the Events & Calendars tab. You can customize your view to show the calendars that are most relevant for you.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I failed to mention our CAT+FD events newsletter. Don't forget to subscribe in order to receive updates in your inbox, approximately once per week.

Published on Leave a comment on Podcast Mania

Faculty development legend Derek Bruff says that "higher ed podcasting is having a moment," and we couldn't agree more. Here are a few recent episodes of Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else, just in case you missed 'em. These are all from 2025. Our pace has slowed, but we're still plugging!

Published on Leave a comment on What’s All This About “A Quarter of Quiet”?

Meditation Room

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development invites you to join us for a regular silent meeting. We'll meet each Wednesday afternoon throughout the 2025-2026 academic year. Drop in when you can.

What to expect?

As the Meditation Room of the Chapel is located directly beneath the bell tower, we are using the bells in our timer. They chime quarterly, so our period of silence begins at 2:00 and ends at 2:15.

But I've never done this before!

You needn't have any experience with meditating; just stop by and give it a try. There's no commitment and no pressure.

Why bother?

Try it and see. Sitting quietly has numerous well-documented benefits, including stress management, improved emotional balance, increased focus and awareness and increased responsiveness to student needs.

All welcome

This is open for everyone in the Xavier community, for people of any faith or no faith.

  • Date: Wednesdays during the school year (whenever classes are in session)
  • Time: 2 - 2:15 PM
  • Location: Meditation Room, St. Katharine Drexel Chapel
  • Sponsor: CAT+FD

Photo credit: Bart Everson

Published on Leave a comment on This April: Take the Take 5 Challenge!

CAT+FD would like to invite the Xavier community to participate in the "Take 5 Challenge" this April. The idea is just to take five minutes each workday for a simple mindful breathing exercise. It's only for one month and you get the weekends off! Details below; please shoot an email to Bart Everson if you want to participate. No pressure, no obligation, but we will make an email thread to include all participants so we can feel a sense of group commitment. We'll probably schedule a check-in for the end of April or beginning of May, but attendance is optional.

...continue reading "This April: Take the Take 5 Challenge!"

Published on Leave a comment on Meet Your New Creative Generalist

OK, OK, after being here for 25 years I'm not actually new. I got a new job title, though! Doesn't that count for something? Well, to be honest, even the title isn't new. It became official four years ago last month. But for very complicated reasons, I never got around to announcing it... until now.

[video, 7:48]

When I introduce myself as a "Creative Generalist" in a professional context, I always feel compelled to add that, yes, that's my official job title. In part, that's because it was a long time coming. It took years of advocacy to get my job title changed. But mainly it's because I relish the title itself, and what it means. I feel it's just about the perfect descriptor for who I am and what I do.

...continue reading "Meet Your New Creative Generalist"

Published on Leave a comment on Now More than Ever: A Quarter of Quiet

Meditation Room

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development invites you to join us for a regular silent meeting. We'll meet each Wednesday afternoon throughout the 2024-2025 academic year. Drop in when you can.

What to expect?

As the Meditation Room of the Chapel is located directly beneath the bell tower, we are using the bells in our timer. They chime quarterly, so our period of silence begins at 2:00 and ends at 2:15.

But I've never done this before!

You needn't have any experience with meditating; just stop by and give it a try. There's no commitment and no pressure.

Why meditate?

Meditation has numerous well-documented benefits, including stress management, improved emotional balance, increased focus and awareness and increased responsiveness to student needs.

All welcome

This is open for everyone in the Xavier community, for people of any faith or no faith.

  • Date: all school year (whenever classes are in session)
  • Time: 2 - 2:15 PM
  • Location: Meditation Room, St. Katharine Drexel Chapel
  • Sponsor: CAT+FD

Photo credit: Bart Everson

Published on Leave a comment on Student Essay Contest: How Is AI Changing What It Means to Learn?

We wanted to share an essay contest from AI Consensus, about the question “How is AI changing what it means to learn?”

Leo Wu is a senior at Minerva University and the president of AI Consensus, a student organization working to responsibly integrate AI into education. He writes that "the goal of the contest is to publish a series of short (400 word) student essays in an education journal to empower the student voice in education. Students are the ones with the most experience using these tools for learning and are able to bring out unique perspectives, yet are also often neglected within conversations." Through this contest, AI Consensus hopes to both advance the conversation around AI and learning, and empower students to speak up more.

The ask to students is simple: share a single idea (400 words is not a lot!) about how AI will impact learning for the chance to be published and win a $200 stipend. Please consider sharing this opportunity with your students. Here again is the submission link.

Published on Leave a comment on Time to Jet
Cover of Jet Magazine, February 27, 1964

Heads up, folks. It's time to Jet.

No, I'm not referring to the legendary Jet magazine, founded in 1951 by John H. Johnson. That would be cool and interesting and educational in its own right, but I'm afraid I'm talking about something much more mundane.


As we announced back in December, we're moving our "CAT FooD" newsletter to the JetPack platform. That's transition is almost complete. Your receipt of this message indicates success — assuming it came to your email.

Yes, our inboxes are clogged these days, but email remains the best way to stay in touch for certain things. We hope timely info from CAT+FD is one of those things!

Jetpack Logo

We didn't make this change lightly, but it should offer several advantages. For one thing, it gives you more power to customize exactly how often you get your newsletter delivered. Also, it integrates more seamlessly with our publishing platform, WordPress.

What do you have to do? Nothing! If you were subscribed to the old newsletter, we've already added you directly to the new newsletter. In fact, an email version of this post should come directly to your inbox. You should get it twice, actually: once via the new system, instantaneously using JetPack, and once via the old system, overnight using MailChimp. We'll shut the automated MailChimp newsletter down after this one last post. It will be strictly JetPack after that.

Having said all that, there are a couple things you could do to make sure you continue to get the newsletter smoothly.

  • The new newsletter comes at you from CAT FooD <donotreply@wordpress.com>, so you could add that address to your contacts, in order to keep it from getting flagged as spam.
  • Speaking of which, if you didn't already get this post via email, that may have happened. Please check your spam filters and folders, and if you find the CAT FooD newsletter languishing there, please be sure to mark it as legitimate.
  • If you're using the "Focused Inbox" in Outlook, you may find the newsletter in your "Other" tab. And maybe that's just where you want it. I mean, that's entirely up to you. If you'd rather see our newsletter in your "Focused" tab, you can move it by selecting Move > Always move to Focused inbox, so that our future messages land in the Focused tab. Read more about this from Microsoft.

Again, those steps are optional. We envision a smooth transition. The only potentially confusing issue that we foresee might arise if you already subscribe to some other WordPress.com newsletters. That scenarios probably only applies to a handful of subscribers. We're happy to work with you to resolve anything that comes up on a case-by-case basis.