You may recall that back in April we began the search for the next cohort of Active and Collaborative Engagement for Students (ACES) Fellows. This year's program attracted a large number of applicants who submitted their ideas on how best to redesign their core course. The ACES program is an integral part of the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) at LU. We are pleased to announce that cohort 3 of the ACES Fellows has been chosen. Working together for academic year 2011-12 will be the following: Sara Gubala, Instructor, Department of Political Science, Michelle Ozmun, Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre and Dance, Dr. Amy Smith, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Modern Languages, Dr. Julie Wilhelm, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Modern Languages, and Golden Wright, Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre and Dance. Take a look at the ACES website for more information. You might have read the announcement this morning about Blackboard adding partnerships with publishers. In addition to its existing agreement with McGraw-Hill, they added Pearson, Wiley, Macmillan and Cengage for various content offerings. LU Center for Distance Education Director Johnny Jarrell thinks that these additional resources will be beneficial to our faculty and students. There will be a Blackboard track at the Faculty Development Fall 2011 Blastoff event on August 16 where you can learn more about this new initiative. Philip A. Titus and Dwayne D. Gremler write in their article Guiding Reflective Practice: An Auditing Framework to Assess Teaching Philosophy and Style, "A fundamental goal for every educator should be to grow continually as a teaching professional. Such instructional growth requires hard work and commitment. Specifically, serious growth requires an educator to engage regularly in an objective self-examination of his or her instructional beliefs and behaviors." Get a jump start on learning how to begin a self-examination program at the journaling session of the Blastoff. This method has been proven to help faculty members improve their teaching abilities and increase student learning.