My name is Alisa Baniasad. I am the Acting Academic Director for CTLT. The normally academic Director for CTLT is also here off-camera. Christina, I could see you in the list of people. So welcome to you too. And we are incredibly thrilled to be hosting this discussion around this profound way of celebrating excellence in teaching, which is recognizing people for their amazing teaching work. So I want to begin though by acknowledging that I am joining you today from the unceded traditional lands of the Musqueam people as located. I'm located on UBC Vancouver campus right now, which is on Musqueam traditional territory that is unceded land and also to acknowledge that we have folks joining us from UBC Okanagan, who will be located on the Silks community. This looks nation land. And I also invite everybody to reflect on where they are currently joining us from and the profound ways in which our location affects our approach to teaching and learning, the way that it inspires us and the opportunities for inspiration, and also to remind us about the continual process of decolonization, of looking at those myths around why we do the things we do and that they are good ways of doing things. So just to remind everybody about our joint mission for decolonization across this institution. So thank you everyone for joining. So I just want to also thank everybody for being here from the panel. Thank you to Michael Lee, to David Oliver, to Laura Bult, to Mowgli Luger, and to Celeste Leander in no particular order, other than the fact that I think that's the presentation order for going over these awards. So thank you all so much. You're all joining because you are recipients of these awards. You're all amazing, excellent instructors. You have been recognized as such. We have a lot of unrecognized instructors who are amazing at their jobs, and that is actually why we're here. So I'm really excited that you're here, Willie, to spread the wealth about how we can broaden and deepen the impact of of the recognition around our incredible instructional team here at UBC. So we've already done a couple of, you know, and I want to welcome everybody here. I also want to say, you know, these panelists are definitely you know, wisdom keepers in in these areas. There may be contributors from the room as well who can speak to some of these points. So just want to make sure that everybody feels like this is a really conversational space and that it's not the case that we're going to be going through a series of presentations. This is into webinar. This is definitely a conversation and we'll be trying to keep up also with the chat. Apologies that I haven't yet been reading out things that are happening in the chat, but but we will be keeping up with the chat and and hopefully keeping this a really dynamic space of contribution so that people can feel inspired and empowered to put themselves and others forward for recognition in this area. So we're going to go through several several different prizes specifically. This is not the exhaustive list of things that you can put people forward for but this is kind of the order of events. So we're going to be looking at the Kilim teaching prize with Moberly and David. We're going to be looking at the West Coast excellence prize with Celeste. And I think Christina, you know a lot about that one too. So I think I might rope you into that one. 3M national teaching fellow, which is Michael, and the D2L innovation, which is actually a new one for me before us. So thank you so much for for all of your insights there. And then we'll have questions and answers. Maybe I think Judy, in terms of process here, we are hoping folks can put questions into the chat so that we can kind of keep a log and keep that discussion going. Is that the idea? Okay, amazing. Thank you. Thank you. That's great. So now we're going to kind of go through each of the prizes and or awards or whatever, you know, the word is that encompasses the grouping of these things and I just kind of do a quick overview of what each of them is so that we can then have a more fulsome discussion. So the Kilim teaching prize, so looking at looking at Moe Burley and David for this one, the Kilim teaching prize is something that is awarded, I believe, within UBC. The criteria is to look at sustained teaching excellence, the ability to motivate students. Awards are given out by faculties, I believe you guys can maybe chime in on this and something to keep in mind is the deadline. So the nomination deadlines around February and March. So so do you want to quickly kind of go over the sort of bird's-eye view for this? Moe Burley and David. Calling on one of you first Moe Burley, you're at the top of my screen. We have, you know, a couple of quick, quick hit questions around this. Can you, would you like to speak to either of these points? Sure, I can speak to the sort of general arc of the nomination process in arts. I am in the faculty of arts, and I have won the prize this year, but I also sort of led a nomination because I'm the chair of a small program and we put someone forward two years ago. So I sort of saw from both ends, but it was also very much process where we worked with staff. So some of the really maybe gritty we should have had our administrator here to tell us those. But the nomination process, there's a nomination. I also sort of have an irregular experience because I'm in a very small unit. So I think larger units have committees that decide on who they're going to nominate every year in our unit. We wrote in nominations. You could, and there's only a few of us. And you need a form that's signed by three people and that then gets submitted. I actually thought it was January, but maybe it's more like early February. And then at that point, the nominee finds out that they are in fact going forward and they start working on the package. That that is due about a month or two later. So that's just sort of a kind of very, very high level. I don't know. The eligibility is also any rank. And you need to have been a UBC for three years and you can't have won the prize in those three years. Or sorry, you can't just win it every year. I guess that's what I'd say. So, yeah, I don't know. David, do you want to fill in any, anything? I don't know how different it is in science. But I have a, this is from my experience. Yeah, I can comment a little bit from the science angle. So I've been on the committee for six years, two years as a committee member and four years as the chair. So some of my experiences anecdotal and sort of statistically accumulating so I can comment anecdotally, but I'm getting a sense as to what the, the sort of statistics are starting to look like. So in science, the nominations come in from faculty, department heads, and I would say 75% come from undergraduate students themselves. Faculty of science has a Qualtrics survey that they put out there for these nominations to come in through. And the, the, the, the person nominating the, the faculty member has to justify their, their nomination in a short couple sentences, a little paragraph. So not an extensive justification. And so I'd say about 75% of those come in from, from students. The similar to arts, you cannot, the criteria for nomination, you can't have won the prize in the last three years. You need to be a science instructor. So in our, in our faculty, something like biochemistry falls under medicine. So the instructors there are awarded prizes through medicine, for example. And you must have taught it within science for the last three years at the time of evaluation. So those are the three eligibility criteria. A couple of comments on, on some of, you know, I think at least I mentioned at the beginning, how do we get more people eligible or nominated at least and into the, into the game. One of the things I've noticed with science is that fourth year instructors, because the students graduate and leave UBC in around April May as graduation rolls through, they, they sometimes don't get nominated. So the fourth year instructors, there seems to be a little bit of a, a toxicity of some of those nominations. So maybe the faculty could step up there.  So some departments like chemistry is quite proactive at getting their, their instructors nominated, whereas other departments are less, less proactive and they rely on the students. So there is a little bit of, a little bit of a difference there between departments. So I'll stop there. Maybe pass it back to Elisa. Yeah, can I just ask if you can self nominate? I don't think so. I don't think it's ever, I'm not sure it hasn't happened in my, in my tenure as, as chair or committee member. I'm not sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I just, I was just thinking about, you know, sometimes. Yeah, I just thought it would be a good thing to kind of keep track of like, you know, do you, if you feel like you've been meritorious and you're teaching, are you, are you able to move forward and, and put yourself forward in it for certain things. Sometimes you are. Stephen, do you have a question? I think it would be reasonable to ask the department head to put your name forward. I think that would be a totally, a totally reasonable way to, to advance your name and into the kill him competition. Yeah. I think that's a really good point or co-opting a colleague or something. But yeah, I like the idea of putting it forward through the department head because that also raises to their attention that you have done something that's award worthy. So it's a nice, you know, a nice conversation to have. Stephen, do you want to go ahead? Not a question. Just a clarifying comment on the Okanagan campus. The killing teaching prize is at a slightly different level. We only have one for the entire campus and we've only been offering it since 2018. So we've actually included specifically in the criteria for the Okanagan campus killing teaching prize.  And if you haven't already received some kind of prior recognition, there's no way you're going to be in the running. We've only given five of them away on a campus of 700 faculty. So, so the, the nature of sort of the, the, the level of achievement that you needed to have, that you needed to have met to be to be eligible or in the running for the killing on the Okanagan campus is quite a different thing. That's a really good point. And I think, you know, maybe we could, in when we are sort of sharing this as recording or whatever as a resource later, maybe we could put a note about that and update the materials around that too. That would be really great. Okay, great. So I think let's, let's just keep moving through our sweep of the prizes. We're doing a kind of overview right now. So I'm going to call on Celeste. Or I'm going to move on to the West Coast Teaching Excellence Award and slash that's you. So the West Coast Teaching Excellence Award, if you can advance the slide one more time, Judy, and I apologize if I should be the one advancing the slide through some sort of zoom magic, magicalness. So this one I have only recently learned about through Christina's involvement in it as well. So I'm just going to basically read what's written here. It's about in a commitment to enhanced student engagement and learning. Again, it looks like it celebrates a depth of teaching practice and reflection and also in this case engages with that reconciliation, indigenization, decolonization aspect of teaching learning. So Celeste, do you want to, you know, just to speak to some of the points on this slide, including deadlines and things like that? And then I think there are a couple of questions on the next slide that are more about application packages and how to get those going. Sure. Thank you very much. Yeah, I didn't know actually know much about this award either it is fairly new. I think this is that Christina probably knows but I think this is just the second or third year or something of this award. It is modeled after the National 3M and the application is similar, which I didn't know going into it, although I haven't actually looked at the 3M application, but I've been told that they're that they're pretty similar. So it is a pretty hefty package. It's two stages. So the internal UBC when I think the deadline for that was November. And that one's pretty straightforward and then the full package is due in February and that goes via the provost into the BC Teaching and Learning Council. And so I'm thinking about what makes a good package for one of these things. I mean, so I didn't ask that about the Killam. I think, you know, actually we should come back to that about Killam as well. What is the recipe for success for someone with the Killam prize? But with this one, yeah, what were the strengths? What do you think? Yeah, over the edge. So the first part, the internal part to UBC is very straightforward. It's a four page letter. It was actually really fun for me to write that it's sort of free form, although there are some criteria. The big package that goes forward from UBC is mine ended up being larger than my promotion and tenure packages. It's really hefty, very detailed, I would say. And my brain doesn't function like that. So it was actually really challenging for me that part of it. So there are, for example, there'll be criteria that, you know, you have to write one paragraph on a specific thing. So it's not free form at all. It's very, very detailed how they want, how they want to piece together. I, because I'm a nonlinear thinker and not detail oriented, I started early on this package because of that. And the first thing I did was flag anything that I couldn't do myself. There are a lot of pieces to the package that needed to come from outside sources. So one example that turned out to be a lot more difficult than I imagined it would be was to get a blank copy in an appendix. You have to include a blank copy of the student evaluation forms that students fill out, which seems like a kind of straightforward thing, but it was actually not trivial to get a blank copy of that. So things like that. So I flagged all the things that I needed help with. It started on those right away. This package includes up to six support letters, and I was advised to include all six I initially had only had I had four. Initially, because the consequence of that is the more support letters you have the less you can put in for teaching artifacts. I initially had four and I was advised to include all six Christina actually pointed out to me that I didn't have any letters from colleagues I had taught with. So I sort of cheated on that actually because I had four colleagues that I teach with in my department jointly write a letter and they did that together. That seems to be okay, since it worked. So six support letters I requested those early on so that kind of thing. And then I just kind of broke it into sections and just slowly built built each section as I went through. Mm hmm. So, you know, I know that we're, you know, moving through time but killing people and West Coast teaching award people. Is there like a, and you know just for people trying to ideate themselves into the space of applying for one of these. Something that feels like a winning combination for these prizes. And then I'll ask the same from Laura and Michael for their for the prizes that are going to speak to, like is there a classic kill him award.  Is there is a certain like, or is there are there certain aspects that you feel like those awarding bodies are really looking for that would not having would mean when probably won't be successful. One thing that I made the decision to do is to go for breadth instead of depth. And I think that's generally true for the kill him as well from what I remember. So because there it is space constrained even though it's a big package. I took just the landing page for artifact so either the abstract for a paper or something or just an overview rather than the depth of an entire thing. And I think that I, that's one piece that I would suggest for nice people putting together these packages. Yeah, that's a really good comment. Steven evidence of the impacts. You know, we've all got a lot of stuff in our teaching dossiers we can all present a lot of course materials but you need something to demonstrate that it's having a disproportionate effect. And, and so yeah, if you whatever, if you can find that evidence you should, you know, and that's going to be true for anybody in the edge lead stream who's going up for tenure promotion that's going to be true for any, any higher award I think the specifically the West Coast teaching excellence I think that's a bit of a mystery, because it's only been running two years we'd never submitted one before this year so we really had no idea what they were looking for. But, but I think a common piece of advice for all these things is include anything you've got that demonstrates that you're having those impacts either on with with your own students are beyond your own classroom. That doesn't have to be, you know, the results of 14 research papers on the outcomes of a study or something but but something some data that says something other than I thought this was cool and my students are still standing is probably helpful. Yeah, that makes sense the last you unmuted do you have something to add. Oh, I was just going to say that I totally agree with that I had most of my support letters were actually from students. And it can be that straightforward. Don't take my word for it here are three students who loved it as well. Right. Okay, so next prize on the list is the 3M national. Oh, sorry. I see David unmuted himself so maybe he has something to share. Yeah, sorry David go. Yeah, I was just going to briefly comment on that the kill them process you see in science per se. In particular, because I think each faculty has slightly different approaches, but in science we, we, of course, we have a diverse teaching coming across multiple from different departments and so when we evaluate 40 different nominees. We tend to lead what we do lead with classroom observations and so the committee visits two or three classrooms collects observations and then goes to the package. Subsequently to match it up with the evidence of impact and and the teaching evaluations and those sorts of those sorts of pieces of evidence. So, in terms of the, I guess that's the advantage of having an award that's on campus that we can visit classrooms that we do lead with classroom observation. Nice. Yeah. And that in class piece is really important in that kill them adjudication as well. I think that it's very classroom or at least for science, which is what I've been involved with. Okay, thanks, David. That was, that was really great. Okay, so next up is the 3M national teaching fellow prize, which, you know, it's interesting to hear that the West Coast teaching award prize is sort of similar in scale in terms of application and so Michael really interesting to hear from you about about actually, but it is I've just been told that but I haven't actually felt like that. Okay. So the 3M national teaching fellow prize is, and I didn't actually know this, this is new information to me as well and I need to like educate myself this is me educating myself on all these prizes. But the ST LHE and 3M Canada, I guess came together to recognize very top tier teaching and it's, it's very, very seldom award like or not seldom or is very it's very elite like it's only 10 or awarded each year. It goes through the provost office is another one of these centralized processes where you don't send in your application process directly to the grant to the awarding body. And it looks at educational leadership teaching excellence and innovation in education. So, Michael, do you want to talk about the process of applying and, and, you know, what you think it takes to become a 3M fellow and this is a very, very impressive, impressive accomplishment. Thank you for the opportunity to share my two cents. I'm so glad that I'm speaking after David and Melissa. Actually, I can piggyback on what you've been saying and mobility as well that you've been saying earlier. This is a very challenging task to put together the whole dossier for the application. However, at the same time, I'm very, very thankful and grateful for the huge support that I received from the administrative folks as well as from UBC overall. I have a very casual conversation with Simon Bate before he start his sabbatical and I was told actually UBC is proudly one of the very few institution around whole country receiving many, many 3M awards. So, that speaks volume to the high caliber of our education leadership faculty. So, it should be a very prestigious status for the whole university. But back to the questions. Yes, it is a hefty process. They try to put together application. As far as you've been saying, there's even more demanding putting a P&T package. You can bring whatever you want to bring and highlight whatever you want to highlight and put the stories in your P&T package. But in your 3M application, you have to be very mindful of the only allows you 30 pages and that's it. So, you have to be very mindful of what do I want to say, what are things that will be redundant, what are things that doesn't need to be there and how can really shine on things that I really want to reveal committee to know about. One lesson I learned through the process is think it through thoroughly and decide what story you want to tell your audience. What's the most impressive story that you want to say? I'm sure many of us have many, many outstanding work that we have done already. They're worth presenting. But pick and choose the most shining points that you want to shine on. Make sure that it's a very unique and impressive story that the review committee will say, whoa, this is interesting. I really want to read on. And then the more they read on to say, whoa, this is impressive. Ah, I really want to know more about should I go to the website? Ah, this is the worthwhile candidate. So let's kind of put this one out. That's what you should be doing. So you need to do a lot of brain searching. Look for what's the really important message I want to bring out. Likewise, for your for your letter of support as well, similar to the West Coast application, you can have a maximum six letters. To this right, you have very wise. You have like multiple people writing the same letter. That's a very good approach. Likewise, I mean, you want to make sure that you have a comprehensive view on everything. I have a letter from my colleagues. I have a letter from my previous peer reviewer. I have a letter from students. I have a little letter from my teaching team partners. And I also have a letter from the administrator as well. So you want to make sure that you have like a very comprehensive viewpoint to justify and to speak to things that you cannot really speak about in your in your dossier. They are the people who give you lots of evidence to what you claimed earlier. Yet you don't have enough space to expand. So instead of expanding on like how my peer reviewer will remain my teaching, I let the peer reviewers who write it on the letter. Likewise, instead of me writing about like students' impression and about like the student learning experience, I invite students to speak about it. So you need to be very, very mindful of how much room you have or how little room you have actually and to be very concise and focused. That being said, I have to say in front of me and I'm very grateful to the whole support team getting that all together. Try to collect everything, doing everything and make sure that it flows well. It's another piece of art as well. As long as it flows really well smoothly, a strong story, that's all that you need to have. Yeah, that's really amazing both you and Celeste mentioned about the amount of support that you received in preparing these huge information packages and being able to draw together all of these materials. And I also heard about some sort of just hearing about some sequencing from Steven as well around when you're even eligible to really apply for these awards. So Moverly, you mentioned anybody who's been teaching for three years or who's been around for three years at UBC, Moverly and David, about the kill-em teaching, anybody can apply. This can be your first teaching award, right? Like you can have received no awards before, not even departmental awards, no commendations at all. You can get a kill-em. Is that true for the West Coast teaching and 3M? For the West Coast teaching, you have to have had a kill-em previously. I feel like there were requirements around teaching length, but I can't remember. Christina, do you remember? I'm just looking it up. I don't know that you have to have had a teaching award previously, but you know, it doesn't hurt. I'm just giving the requirements for the BC teaching and learning council West Coast teaching. You have to have had a kill-em, I know, but I think that's the only award. And that might be an internal UBC piece. Michael, do you know about for 3M while Christina is doing homework? Maybe I can tag on to the earlier conversation. Christina, I do not recall the West Coast's request any primary awards. As long as the candidate really shine well in particular, I think it's about the ingenuity as well as the colonization. That is one of the very important piece that focuses on the West Coast. I was going to say, I wonder if it was your department, maybe? Maybe it's different departments, different departments or universities? I don't know. I'm looking right now. Yeah, it's worth it for us to chase that down so that we can be really clear in our communications about this. Just to make sure, because we want to make people aware of when they are eligible for stuff and when they're not. And for 3M, is there a requirement or is it strongly encouraged that you already have another teaching award? No, HS3M doesn't require that. Instead, actually they encourage people at the slightly earlier stage of the career life to start applying for it. They emphasize that this is not a life achievement award. Rather, this is like you've been shining well and it's a promising career that you continue to shine well. Honestly, I'm very surprised that they would choose me as an old fart to come to this award ceremony. Honestly, I mean, they actually focus on raising up younger people and really have a profile there. I mean, if they want to shine further well, they'll grow in the future as well. Okay, that's fantastic. I want to go now to Laura and the D2L Innovation Award in Teaching and Learning. So this one's really interesting to me because it's specifically about innovation and sort of transformative approaches to teaching and learning. So they seem to have their kind of wheelhouse in terms of what they are specializing in. So I guess when considering which award to put yourself forward for to ask your colleague to put you forward for, this would be a consideration, right? So again, this looks like a very elite award. Only five are awarded per year. Congratulations to all of those who get them. That's amazing. And Laura, you're able to share your experience and what does this application process look like and who is eligible and who should put themselves forward? Who would you encourage? That's a good question. I would have to look again at the website because it's been a little while. But I think something that's really helpful about this one is that it is so focused. So as Michael Lee talked about, it's helpful to tell a focused story in all these different applications. And with this one, you kind of have to because it's about one innovation and the impact that it had. So I think if there is like one innovation that has been particularly impactful, I encourage people to consider applying. And I think something that was helpful for us is that we're a team who came to design and deliver this innovation. Actually, Michael Lee was part of the starting of this theatrical endeavor. And so I think drawing on the team was really helpful. We also had a lot of nomination letters or support letters. And one of the unique things about the innovation that we had is it wasn't just about students. There were many learners coming from different sectors. So we were able to draw on learners from a variety of perspectives, which was also helpful. Something about this innovation is also that we built and changed it over years. We're still doing it. We're performing it next week and it's a whole new version that we've never done before. So based on learner feedback and the needs in particular context, we were able to show how it evolved and changed and continue to have an impact. As was alluded to before as well, showing the impact is really important. And so those quotations that gave me goosebumps when I first read the learner feedback forms, those kinds of things were, I think, really powerful and helpful. Not necessarily to put in our portion of the package, but to ask some of our nominators or support letter people to put those quotations in and that kind of thing. So I think, and as has been said, drawing on our fantastic staff and faculty colleagues is really important and helpful. And then I think for this one, giving a taste, but the tastiest bite of the dish that makes people think, oh, I want to have more, was really helpful. And then providing links so that they can experience more or learn more about it. Those are some of my thoughts. I was saying earlier to my colleague, I'm glad everyone else goes first because then I can just say, oh yeah, you know, I agree with what you said. Yeah, amazing. I think, yeah, there are some definite themes forming it sounds like with all of the awards it seems like there's, you know, a kind of identity of the educator that really comes through and that having that narrative and that personality really shine through so that a reviewer can almost latch on and imagine the whole person behind the application. It feels like that's a really important component of crafting these nominations. Different a little bit from maybe the kill them because actually the kill the the nominated person does some work but it's nothing like the amount of work that goes into this sort of dossier that's described in these more multi phase awards. And just to clarify for the D2L is that also something that goes through the provost office is something that you need. Or can you put yourself directly forward to it Judy you're the expert here. How does that one work. No, I don't think we have an internal process here at UBC. Okay, great. So if people are interested in applying for this one, they can just do it. Yes. Fantastic. Okay, so those are our, all of our, you know, main points that we wanted to hit on about each of these awards. I wanted, you know, I have a couple of general questions that I have but I'd like to open it up for questions to the room, or any comments or things that have sprung to mind for anybody while folks were going over these awards. And like we said, you can, you could put some things in chat or just, you know, all of our, sorry, David Oliver, go ahead. Just a quick comment related to teaching innovation and the Kilim awards because the Kilim awards and science lead through classroom observations and then we work back back to the documentation. As a committee in adjudication. One of the things that's happening as teaching modes change hybrid teaching online teaching laboratory teaching, the committee is always looking for ways to make sure that we recognize these new forms of teaching and so if the nominee does a good job of presenting that work in alternative forms, it makes it easier for the committee to recognize their innovation. And so, historically, it's been lecture based teaching that Kilim awards have observed, but we've gotten out in the last few years to like get good looks at lab teaching. But hybrid teaching and online teaching we need to do more. It came with the pandemic a little bit, but the nominee is it's in their best interest to make sure that if they're doing a good job of that that they've highlighted themselves effectively. I don't know if people I think Michael might have alluded to the idea of having a website that was linked to the 3M package. I don't know if that was what Michael was suggesting, but I'm just wondering if people have used those sorts of tools to expand their packages. They're kind of delivering that. Oh, we did. This is Laura speaking. So they loan in the ring team. Like I said, giving we gave a taste of the innovation and then provided a link to where they find more stuff online. Yeah. Very good point. David, actually, the application package does allow you to hyperlink to a website. However, they do not go pages because once when you can create a web page or link to a web page, they kind of as part of your dosage pages.  So you need to be very mindful as to what you put in if you're creating a web page and what you put into your dosage as well. Yeah. I was just going to add well in arts. We don't know when comes to see your teaching that's not something they do sort of as an official part of the process but kind of like, you know, getting four letter writers sneaking into one letter. I had some of my, I had, you know, you're sort of as a candidate you're at arm's length. And my head say, you know, someone wants to come and see your teaching. And it was someone, you know, who we who is writing a letter for me. So they were able to kind of do a very recent observation and put that in the letter. So that kind of kind of folks up the, the letters and the and the package. And it all is based on the dossier and the nominator letter. There's no other way to. I'm just showcasing it in that to do the live, the live classroom like, like David was saying. I have. So speaking of, of those kinds of things have lecture recordings started sneaking into this space at all. I mean, this was something that didn't happen at all. And now we all have tens of hours of ourselves giving lectures. Is that, is there a place for a particular, like a favorite lecture somewhere in your dossier or is it, is it not really a thing. It's with the Kilham science Kilham awards in the final stages when we get down to the top top 10. If we can get a couple of videos that the entire committee can watch all of the videos it's really helpful. So we get out to, to live classrooms, but the videos are helpful at the end of the process for us. How about for the other ones to those and in those larger dossiers today. Can you link to a video or is it not helpful. So part of the, this is going to be sort of a no answer answer but technically in the, in the application page for the West Coast teaching award. There's a state that you cannot list links. However, they do a meeting of the previous award winners where you can ask questions and someone there who had won the previous year said that he did put links in there. So from my packet from the feedback I got on my package, I did not put links in there but as I'd mentioned before I put sort of landing pages of things that are online and I know that at least some of them did go to those on their own. Though we technically were not supposed to put links and so I didn't put links in but I know that from the specific feedback that I got that at least some of the, the folks did go and look them up themselves. Right. So there, there seem to be, you know, awardees in different stages of, of development in their teaching practice.  What would you advise them around how to move forward? Like, would you, would you say go for the 3M at once? Newer people now or would you say start with the kill em or what would you, what would you say? This kind of to anybody who wants to unmute, including anyone in the room who knows about these things. But I'll call on somebody if they don't know. So I don't. So maybe Moverly, if have you had to mentor or had the opportunity to mentor junior faculty and what would you tell somebody if they came to you and said, what should I do? Well, I am pre tenure and I'm basically just super grateful to the director of my unit put me up this year so I can get it into my package, which I just submitted two weeks ago. So I don't know if I'm the best person.  And I, yeah, I don't, I don't, I think that it, I don't think that I would just, I would just encourage. I think the idea of, of talking, I mean the reality is that even though there are formal nomination processes, there's also a lot of chat about the kill em and, you know, I who's going to go and talk to this person. So, you know, if you can have some of those conversations and advocate for yourself in that informal context, then yeah, it's good. It's not a very helpful answer, but Oh, we have a great question in the chat. What about the relative importance of graduate versus undergraduate teaching for maybe each of the awards, maybe we could go around the table. I can speak to that quickly because I do know graduate teaching in my position. I primarily teach in first year and Yeah, and David for science. I think it's out of bounds graduate teaching right for killer. We do, we do observe, we do observe some graduate teaching, but it's, I don't, we've never had a winner that hasn't taught any undergraduate courses during winter session. So, we do, we do observe the graduate classes, but they tend to be quite small. And, and which is, which is interesting because you get to see seminar style classrooms, but typically those instructors teach larger undergraduate classes in different settings as well. So, they, we see it in both in both contexts. Yeah. Stephen, what about for your, the sort of UBCO awards. What's the, what's the mix there. Yeah, there's two major campus awards. One's the award for teaching excellence and innovation, and that usually goes to two people a year.  Some faculties have their own teaching awards with a varying degree of formalism in terms of what that process looks like. So, so the first thing is, is, I think, be aware of what is out there and what, and what you're eligible for your department might have teaching awards, your faculty might have teaching awards and then, and then you could be thinking about campus level stuff. And then, of course, we've all got our own academic societies in our own disciplines. And, and so for example, you know, the chemical Institute of Canada has has two teaching awards, one of which is specifically for early career faculty. So, get a sense of the landscape of what's out there what's available. I think if you are somebody that's won a teaching award, it's probably because you have a over surplus of empathy and you're willing to help other people cold call those people and say, can I look at your nomination package because I think I want to go up for this in two years. A big part of what can be a struggle and a frustration is if you have no idea what a winning package looks like you don't know what you're what you're trying to what you're trying to craft in terms of the narrative or the type of information that's there. But no people who are around who have won these things and, and I think I think probably those people would be happy to send you whatever documents they've got it's just like well this is what we're for me. And don't be afraid to ask those questions. I think, you know, formally or informally I think there probably is at least a perception of a progression.  That's probably an easier thing to look at first than six awards at the faculty level or 10 awards at the national level. Right. And, and at each of those stages. If you can check some boxes and say well somebody thought I was good at this somebody thought that this was already award worthy. Then that helps the next application and and so yeah there's nothing that there's nothing says you can't just swing for the fences and go for the 3m and you know when you're pre tenured but I would, I would think the odds of that would be pretty low and oh my God it's a lot of work. All these things are not ours are not zero work. But the flip side of that is that it's it's work well spent because this is all this stuff that's going to go your teaching to see anyway right. I've I've found whenever I've gone up for an award it's been an opportunity for me to look at my teaching philosophy statement and go.  So it keeps it keeps your educational portfolio up to date and and putting that time and energy into crafting these documents sort of forces you to reflect on stuff that you might not otherwise. But yeah I think I think look around and sort of mentally. You know this one and then this one and then this one and ask others who will want it for their advice and to look at their documentation. Yeah, for sure. Are all of you nodding because you are willing to share your application packages with everybody. I think that's a, it's a really good point I mean that's how we all work in terms of, you know, we all read papers before we write a paper we, most of us are looking at tenure and promotion documentation before we apply for those. And then I think going in blind to one of these awards, especially those big ones seems like a, you know, just a time think I mean you just, it won't be successful I think there is definitely an art to writing these kinds of applications and actually getting those forward. The applications are actually more work for the nominator. So I was recently nominated for, you know, a computer science award, and I did nothing and this poor person who was nominating. You know, shout out to read for the tens of hours he spent pulling all this together, or maybe I was supposed to be doing it but he saved saved me from doing it I'm not sure that now I feel bad. So, all of these are a lot of work right. Oh and Judy, but Judy, you wanted to mention about the West Coast support options. Yes, so it's a lot of work and West Coast 20 pages, 3 m is 30 pages d2l because it's a team collaborative teaching so it will involve a whole team and many drafts. Before you start, you may also want to get in touch with the communication person in your faculty and as they offer a fresh look. Sometimes we, we love our teaching and we start talking so much about one area, but it may get a little bit boring for a late person. So having someone in the communication department or area to help you will be useful. So I'm also the CTLT support person on the West Coast 3 m award. So for those of you who is looking into submitting the four page internal letter, contact me. I'm happy to help you review your letter the 3 m that that line is coming up. We only have like two and a half months to prepare that maybe for next year. I also want to say that usually for many 3 m fellow recipient, it often take them more than one try. I know that one one person from UBC actually tried three times. So please they they sometimes get give you very good feedback to help you improve your, your letter. For the D2L, I've been under adjudication committee for a few years. So I've been wanting to see more UBC teams. Please, please UBC team, we need to get together we need to try to get three, four, five nomination because some university they have a machine going. Yes. It's really good to know. That is actually really good to know we should probably, you know, keep talking all of us and try and get a get a bit of a nominations business going. I think, you know, my home department computer science has a has a committee that just talks about awards and all the awards we shall be nominating ourselves for all the time. I don't know that that's present in every department. So it might not be. And so, you know, David, you mentioned that some departments are much more proactive about getting people's names out there. And there's a lot of talent that's being not recognized and celebrated because not every department has those kinds of things. I was so moverly. Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to speak in the thought that I was going to mention earlier about this idea of, you know, looking at examples. When I was leading the nomination for my colleague, that was something I worked with the letter writers on, because I think often these things are really built on letters that particularly by undergraduates who don't know how to write these letters or haven't seen them so much before and were really grateful for the help. I said, I sent examples and I said, you know, I can look at it with you and a lot of them took me up on it and it did add the nominator work for sure. But I think that that's really another dimension is like all the people that are working on it giving them that that precedent of like what is this kind of what does this genre look like. That was something that I think, yeah, with with helpful. Thank you. That's yeah, I think that's a really that's a nice natural way to bring in that collaboration and expertise as well so that's that's really great. I also wanted to double back to that apply multiple times. I've gone up for teaching awards and not gotten them. It is depressing. I think you know there is a certain you feel a bit like oh that's when you don't don't get something that you applied for have any of you had that experience and what would you say to people who, you know, who who are facing this and maybe are a bit risk averse about not feeling rejected. David go for it. Oh, I sorry you were unmuted so I thought but I will comment on it I mean in the kill them the kill them competition. There's a lot of nominees each year so so 25 to 35 probably in science alone. And so not everybody's going to win the top five awards, but we rank everybody on a good great wow scale, as we're going through the observations because everybody is excellent. They're they're really strong and exciting teachers to watch and and very interesting and I and I think you know the kill them awards I'm it's a lot of time to adjudicate these and I do it because I think it's great for our students to have our teachers focused on quality teaching each year and enhancing their teaching each year and I can see my colleagues in the department, when they're nominated they're focused and they're and they're really working on their craft for the, for the full season. So I think there's good reasons to do it other than winning. And I think it benefits the whole institution and our students, you know, to the most. Yeah, I think, I think that's right I do. I do think it's worth it to remember for faculty that that you might not be successful but that, but that you can try again and that you should try again and as you said David like getting into the top five I think, you know, there's sort of. The perception has always been it's kind of a cloud of really excellent excellent people that are all WoWs. And then, and then it's like a moment of almost random choice at the very end or it's like, I guess these five WoWs. And then you'll notice that some of the five or some of the few that didn't get named one year end up being the ones named the subsequent year because you're like yeah we needed more more tokens than that for these amazing people. I think if you only put yourself up once then you is statistically likely that you won't be that you won't that it won't be your turn even though it should be your turn and it should be everybody's turn who's doing this excellent work. So, yeah, I think. But in terms of that, sort of I think one of the things that you know when Judy and I were talking about this session and Judy I just wanted to take a minute and say thank you so much for putting this together. And you know this sort of very carefully thought out session and really amazing people here. You know you had said that you wanted to help people frame how much work it was to do these nominations. But also you had an interesting question which was, how does one kind of plan for success and you know Celeste and others have already touched on like you want to embody yourself into these documents and make sure that you're really putting yourself forward well but I think there's you know so so far I've heard you know make sure that you have good examples of your work make sure that your impact is is really well characterized in your nomination package. You know Michael you mentioned telling an excellent story that people can really dive into and Laura as well just make people really really engaged. So are there any other other thoughts around like if somebody's asking am I someone who could apply for one of these. How would they know to feel the confidence to have all of these things I think people are often quite humble they might not necessarily see themselves in your amazing stories. Celeste you want to speak to that. I would say my first reaction to that is to really ask for help and have people look over your package, especially me knowing that I'm going to for sure was going to miss details in the criteria because that's how I work. And so thank you to Christina and Judy who both looked over my package more than once and caught things that I had not touched on or had suggestions that were really helpful. Especially with the bigger packages I would say don't try to do it in a silo like definitely ask for people to to go over go over the criteria and sort of match your documents and have and have suggestions for you. So once I was doing a kill him observation and the person I was observing said oh no I didn't do any active learning today. And, and they did end up end up winning the awards that year. I think there are some things that people imagine you have to be doing to be eligible. In any case, are there some things that could write you off as not being somebody who should even bother applying for these awards or is it really very open. What do you think about that, the narrowness of the criteria. Maybe Laura Michael, or, or, yeah, Judy go for it. And also with the D2L award that I adjudicated in the past, we, the committee really look into the impact. So gathering informations quotation from students from your community partners from everyone like and then they also wanted to see a long term impact. Not just this year, but what about the student from three years ago. So they really so start gathering your evidence and impact. And, and yeah, so it's something that we look at in the adjudication committee. And we also have a question. Yeah, that's right. Sorry. Thanks, Judy. Sorry, do you want me to read? I can read it or read it. I can, I can read it. Okay, so this is actually a great question. How do students know about these awards? How does, I mean, this is a really good point, actually. David, you spoke to this that fourth year students often have like it's drifted past them and then they're out the door. They're not nominating anybody. So how do students find out about these awards, such that they can then nominate the instructor such that we can drive that nomination. Should someone initiate the nomination on behalf of the instructor. We've mentioned that if someone wants to self nominate they can co-op somebody into doing it or talk to their head of department but, but yeah what are these pathways how does how does one get nominated for, for each of these awards who does the, who starts this process. So for kill them students and, and others colleagues, Celeste, do you know Celeste, Michael Laura, do you guys know who nominated you and what their role was. I got a message from the Dean's office encouraging me to apply. And that's the first I've ever heard of this award, but that sounds more like a self nomination. Oh, I see. Well, the official nomination comes from the provost that writes it. I see. And so you apply to the provost to say hey I'd like to put myself up for this and then the provost office does the official nomination and send the package and Christina you have a wise hand up to you. Can you speak to this. That's fine. Yeah, so anyway the way it's been happening at ABC Vancouver the last couple of years is, is there's a call that goes out and I think the Celeste this is how it came to you. And I think to deans and associate deans and I'm not sure where else saying anybody who's interested so this is the self nomination part anybody who's interested. Here's the process for for applying for the internal process and then there's a committee that selects two people, because you can only have two from each institutions for the West Coast, sorry. And then the people put together their nomination packages and the provost writes a letter. That's the sort of official nomination. And then for the D2L and 3M how do those ones work. Yeah, yeah, Laura go ahead. I was gonna say I'm not sure I totally remember. I'm pretty sure Michael he shouted over to the office the door hey tell maybe you should apply for the D2L with the alone in the ring team. And we met and we thought oh yeah this could be good. And so I think it yeah I think that's how it happened for us. And we got a lot of support from people writing letters from the dean over there and the chair over there and someone from an external organization and students and other learners. Yeah. If I can add on to what Laura been saying I think one of the biggest advantage for working in UBC at least is that we tend to be a very collegial team in here. So I mean quite true actually I was shouting at one of my colleagues say hey you should be nominated for Taiwan should I nominate you. You know I would self nominate myself that's okay. And then a few months after we should turn on I say hey my colleague should I nominate you for another award. And that's how all these things happen. So to answer the questions I think it's often times it either like your department head or someone kind of in the leadership position or someone kind of mixed up you kind of naturally say hey let's go for it. We're working on one right now. That like I saw it now it's like oh this name of calling we should nominate them and and kind of I'm quite junior in my role. So I asked some people who have been around it longer. How does this work. And they said we should ask her because she's going to have to do a lot of work to do it. So yeah. Yeah I mean I think that that sort of collegial nomination thing I think that's a that's a really wonderful avenue. In terms of students I feel like what I'm hearing from the room is that students often don't know to do it. And sometimes you have an upstart student who does know to do it but it's rare. And that's what I've noticed. I my personal concern also with waiting for students to nominate or even with waiting for someone else to nominate you is that all kinds of biases around who people think will probably win awards and people who should really be nominated for awards but don't necessarily look traditional in their roles don't necessarily get nominated as aggressively so if you're thinking about if you're here as a person who's thinking about nominating others. I would I would look at you know colleagues of color. You know of non binary gender or you know just people who are not the typical person who sits in those roles. Because yeah I think I personally started an initiative of nominating people of color and women for certain computer science awards and they they all win. I'm I but 100% hit rate for all my nominees. It's just they're not they're and that these are for awards that nobody had no woman at one in years or really ever. So I think it's yeah I think it's important to keep that in mind when thinking through who to nominate and also if you're someone who is diverse in some way or non traditional in some way. I'm not seeing a recipient who looks like you I mean that is kind of the the experience of somebody who is different in a situation but that's okay it doesn't mean that you can't be the first person who looks like you to witness award. And, and, and actually when people are looking at these accomplishments, all of that falls away and so it's really just about getting the nomination in it's and then your excellence will shine through. And, yeah, a little thought in here in yeah I'm thinking back in my in my previous nominations. I actually have been very mindful of not including or not asking my current student to write my letter of support. As I mean I personally feel like that could be a potential conflict of interest. And I intentionally mentioned that I am keeping an arm's length for any of my nomination. So, even if I will approaching my students per se, I mean, I tend to approach my former student who graduated to mention that I'm I do not have any influence on them or they like whatever that kind of potential conflict of interest. Yeah, that's a really, really good point. I think sometimes those relationship lines when you have such great relationships that you built up with your current students can get very blurred and you could say oh geez it would be really great if somebody would nominate me for a killer or something. But you're absolutely right that it places there's of course a power differential while you're currently holding their great in your hands. And, and it presents a very clear conflict of interest around around current students. But former students. Yeah, as you to thank you for asking this in the chat. I think former students, one could go talk to right and say hey I need a student letter for this and Celeste you mentioned you had student letters with those I'm guessing were former students who you were talking to about those kinds of accounts. Yeah, former students for support letters, and I think to specifically answer as he does question I, I think student former students can nominate you definitely for a killing but I think they still have to be students enrolled at the institution. So previous took your class previously they could nominate you the next year. And that's why there's a barrier around the fourth year student, because none of your former student or the fourth year instructor because none of your students will still be students, but and they have to be to nominate you for the kill. So yeah, so that's a blind spot that I think departments can maybe mitigate that and also you as a fourth year instructor can mitigate that to by talking to your colleagues to help elevate that. I'm mindful of time we've been we've been chatting for a while and I think we were slated to end sort of around this time. I hope that people got a lot of useful information out of this session we're going to be posting this on the CTLT website as a resource for people to to revisit and we look forward to keeping in touch with everybody in your awards journey. So thanks everybody for joining us. Thank you Judy for designing the session this is really wonderful thank you and all the panelists. Thank you everyone. Yeah, thank you for your wise wise words. Thank you for joining us this is great.


Distinguished guests, my family and friends, fellow veterans, soldiers, sailors, airmen and women, Marines. Thank you for being with me on this very special day. I'm deeply humbled. Before I get into these prepared remarks, I would like to remind you, boys, that I gave you a good glow in the dark, counter-salt coin. Hopefully that still takes priority over any of the other ones. But as I said yesterday at the White House, this medal represents the great work of the team and all those men who are sitting with me today. We work together as a tight-knit family. We trusted one another and we share a bond that's far greater than words can describe. We're truly brothers, whether we speak every day or not for months or years. At any time we know, we can just pick right up, right where we left off. To this day, there's still nothing we wouldn't do for each other. This Medal of Honor is for those who didn't make it in past and present battles. Those who are still out there confronting the enemy and building partnerships and my teammates who persevered on April 6th, 2008. For me, like many others, joining America's fighting force in response to the 9-11 attacks was the right thing to do. It's hard to believe that it's been 17 years since that the evil had struck our land. But we stood up together and we made a difference. That's why I joined to try and make a difference. I'm so proud that my parents, grandfather and great-grandfather would serve before me and they taught me the value of service before self. So I was actually born on December 7th, and so growing up I learned a lot about Pearl Harbor. Probably too much, you guys should have done less. But never imagining that I would see another direct attack on America. As a man, I couldn't believe what I was watching on TV. I was in graduate school at Washington State University. And like so many others, I was angry watching the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and the downplane in Pennsylvania. I could not believe what was happening. It was my duty to join the military to help. Eventually, Don and the Green Beret eventually becoming their medic. So before every battle or mission that we would go out on, unfortunately he couldn't be here today, but one of the guys with us, Ryan, he would always take his commando squad and he would bring them over to me and he would say, if something happens to me, find Ron. Little did I know that the calls for Ron in April 6th, 2008 would come from all around me. Special Forces Operational Attachment Alpha 3336 was a strong family overcoming the odds. The ODA was on a mission to capture and kill the high-value target in Shock Valley, Afghanistan. For over six hours we fought together and it seemed like an eternity, but we never stopped working together. Everyone knew their job and was ready to do it. From the moment we got off the helicopters, we were surrounded by a harsh terrain and a well-prepared enemy who had the stronghold. As we navigated through the valley, insurgent sniper fire, rocket propelled grenades, small arms and machine gun fire forced us into defensive fighting positions. Within the first few moments of the fight, I heard the first calls for help and I moved to a wounded Afghan commando. As I finished helping him, I remember looking over the valley and seeing an RPG land near some of the defending troops quickly followed by calls for Ron coming down the line. So I knew immediately who had been hurt. I didn't have long to help treat Ryan's shrapnel wounds before hearing radio calls that the forward assault element had been pinned down and more casualties needed help. All I remember is working to get to my brothers. I don't remember gunfire, I don't remember obstacles. Over the course of the battle, the casualties continued to mount both Afghan and American and I relied on my training and I tried to focus on one thing at a time, one problem at a time. It worked as long as I could. I'll always be grateful to have served alongside you guys. It was tough, but I was glad I could be there for you on that day. Two amazing warriors did lose their lives that day. An Afghan commando named Bahrain, became close-blade. And one of our interpreters, Idris CK Han, they died that day fighting to make the world a better place. We're always close with our interpreters and rely on them to accomplish every mission. Two of them were here with us today. Like them, CK always dreamed of making it to America.   There's nothing more sacred than family and my brothers from that battle and alongside with them, their families that are here today as well. My family gave me great values. And for my wife and sons, Cameron, Tyler, Miranda, I love you guys. Your constant support over the years has kept me going. You've given me many home front celebrations with every soccer game, with every T-ball game, with every school event. We always get stronger and better together. This family reunion with our extended military family is a reminder of how strong and resilient we all are when it comes to God and country. I wear this uniform so proudly. Adorned with a medal of honor for those who didn't make it, for those who are still out there fighting, and especially for the men of ODA 3336. God bless America. Thank you.


What's the word, y'all? I still do not know who I'm giving my MVP award to. And I think that's completely fine. I do want to say I take these things very, very seriously from MVP to coach it a year. I take a lot of time to give my official votes. I mean, I don't have an official vote. My vote doesn't count for anything. I'm just a dude with a YouTube channel. But I take it as serious as if I did have an official vote. Because I made up this dream scenario in my mind that eventually I'll get the notice of Adam Silver and I'll be able to give him my resume and also showcase every single person I voted for over the last couple of seasons. And he can say to himself, okay, you know what he's talking about. So I take it seriously. Because there's some people that got real votes that don't take it seriously. Look, I'm so happy there's public information eventually because there are some people I look at who they vote out to at the history and I'm saying either you don't watch ball or you just don't care. We watch ball and we care. And the MVP award is still up in the air for me. The more I think about it, there are a lot of awards still up in the year. The only one that I say that I feel confident that it's gonna stay the same at the end of the season is Palo Benchero's Rookie of the Year. I do love the progression of Jaylen Williams, but like overall, I think it still is Palo. And you know what? Even my most improved player feels very safe in Larry Market. And even though like Shay Guz, Alexander or some other people have some conversations, I still feel pretty good about Larry and I still feel pretty good about Palo, but like MVP, which is what we're gonna talk about a lot today, DPOY, Six-Manded Year, even Coach of the Year is still up in the air. And I feel like around this time in previous years, I kind of had an idea which way I was leaning. But with MVP, there are three candidates. We all know them. It's Yanta DeCumpo. It is Joel Labeed. It is Nikoli Okic. And usually around this time, I have an idea where I'm going and I still do not know. It has fluctuated so much throughout the season. And I think that makes it for a good year. So the other day, Joel Labeed hit a game winner in what a 21 point comeback versus the Portland Trailblazers. And I tweeted something along the lines of that this might be my MVP. I got a lot of responses like, oh my God, it's recency by is what do you do?  Even Nikoli Okic's in the same thing with Yanta DeCumpo. So I think individual moments this season could play more of a part than any other season. Because I think it should be a recipe of the eye test, plus some statistics, plus advanced stats, plus team success. I think it's got to be so many different factors. And they are factors that go in Okic's favor and in Veed's favor and in Yanta's favor. At the beginning of the season, I don't remember who I had as my MVP prediction. And let's be real, I'm never right on predictions other than me predicting John Marek was going most improved player a year ago. But I did say in that video, I didn't think that the NBA award voters would give Okic the MVP even if he deserved it because he'd be one of what, three players in history to win three consecutive MVPs. Personally, I don't think that's fair. I don't think the last two years should play any part on who you vote for this year. But I'm seeing something very weird, and this is not from the official voters, but I'm seeing the tides turn on Nikoli Okic over the past week or so. And yeah, in this video, we're talking about the MVP race. I don't want to talk about anything attached to it. I know there's been people on TV talking about the exterior factors of biases and things like that. That's not what this video is about. We strictly talking about the basketball portion because that's what we do on this channel. When I say that things have changed against Nikoli Okic, it's kind of charm because over the course of his career, he's kind of been like someone that we all knew and loved. And I think partially it's because he's a dude that's gonna complain basketball. He not gonna do no interviews. He don't care about no all-star. We just appreciate it how great he was to the game of basketball and how different he played the game compared to other players across the league. I can't say he was the media darling because I think that has a different meaning to it, but I do believe that he didn't get a ton of criticism and I'm not saying that he deserved to, but like in the last week or so, that has changed. If I go to the front print page of NBA Reddit, the most upvoted thing over the past day is a highlight compilation of the Raptors going at Nikoli Okic in the paint.  In the last couple of games, they have it, not just the last couple of games, I guess in the season entirely, they may kind of get a decimated in the paint, but it's been magnified over the last couple of days, especially when you consider the loss against the Spurs. It was like, there's like Zach Hollins. Zach Hollins? You know what I'm saying? Like if I type in Yolkic's name on Reddit and I say in the last week, let's see what type of posts. The Spurs attacking Yolkic on defense. Zach Lowe quote from his recent podcast. Another Zach Lowe quote from a previous podcast, but a lot of it is about Nikoli Yolkic and his lack of defense. But this is not nothing new. We've known Yolkic's not to be an extreme plus defender. I think the best you can say about Yolkic is he might be okay, but that's the furthest it goes, you know what I'm saying? But that's been the case for the Tiber's career. But over the last week or so, there's been a lot of posts and a lot of conversation talking about his lack of defense when it seemed like over the last couple of years, it was nothing that we even cared about. And that might be due to a couple different reasons. The first one being that because this MVP race is so close, we have to start, I don't want to use the word nitpicking, but we have to start pointing out that the inefficiencies in players' games in order to say like, okay, this is my MVP over Yolkic because look at him defensively. Or it might just be as simple as defensively as a unit. This is the worst they've looked in a couple of years. Like just going down to the numbers. They haven't been this porous on the defensive side of the box. Not like they've been the top of the league, but they've always set around nine to 12. And this season, they're all the way down to 19th for the season.  Yesterday, I guess it's around the Raptors. The Raptors put up so many points and then a single recorder and they have the 26-ring defense in this timeframe. So it's a combination of people trying to use whatever they can in order to determine their MVP. And that might be in some biases because you want Joel Labeed to win it. Do you want Yanis to win it? Or it could be as simple as the team doesn't play defense as good as they used to. And the interior defense is a good reason for that. I mean, I'm still going through these posts. One of the most outvoted things this week is Nikolay Yolkens missing a game winner the same night that Joel Labeed hit one.  Another two months ago, I think Yolkens was better than a beat. I think Joel has proven over the last two months he's the better player. So like it is a lot of the bad side of Yolkens conversation. But even without that being said, he is still towards the top of the conversation for me when I'm thinking about my MVP. Every single one of these players have a case and it's undeniable. You might lean one way or another. I'm not trying to convince anybody because I don't even know. But every single one of these players have a case and it's a good case. And almost any other season, these dudes will be the front runner for the MVP award. But because they're fighting with each other, it's like who do we lean towards? This might be the closest MVP race we've seen in a long time. But then again, I say that and this is a strong poll that Tim Bonsams does a couple times a year. This was just in February. Nikolay Yolkens got 77 votes out of 100 for first place. And if I'm not mistaken, the people that he poll are people that actually have votes. So again, anything is changing, everything is changing. But this was about a month ago where Nikolay Yolkens was running away with the award. But if you look at the previous when it was previously asked, Tatum was in first. And Yolkens was in fifth. So things are evolving. Let's use some time to kind of look at these three candidates and try to pull out some plus of why they're in the conversation. And it might help us lean one way or another starting off with Yanis at the Cumpo. Funny enough, efficiency wise, this was a season that's worse than his last. But the impact is something you see on a United basis. I feel like we've grown so accustomed to Yanis doing the things that Yanis has do that it doesn't even become big story. So we don't even see the highlights anymore. We've kind of just grown accustomed to him just being a bully on the court and being amazing. I was just watching them versus Sacramento Kings where he ended up having 40 something points going into the fourth quarter and steering a comeback against one of the best teams in the league, the Sacramento Kings. And I'm just watching and saying like, man, he's the MVP, right? Then I'm watching Nikolay Yolkens game or I watch a Joellen B game. Like, okay, I'm not sure just yet. Yanis is like sometimes and boils down to best player on best team. The Bucks right now are by far the best team in basketball, sitting at 50 and 17 or 19. I think they're the first team that completely clicks a playoff spot and it's happening relatively early in the season. And since he came back from those five games that he missed at the beginning of January, the dude has been on an absolute tear. And then he misses some time, he misses those five games.  And that's not accounting for the 18 rebounds or the 11 assists, the triple double.  And of course they have been the best team in basketball. And even if you just look at the 15 game win streak that they went on, he was averaging 32 points per game, 12 rebounds, five assists, shooting 38% from three in that time on three attempts. And we're talking about elite level defense on top of that. They ain't gotten the advanced numbers because the advanced numbers are skewed Yolkens' way. But like the conversation is there. And I feel like some people have it as a two man race between the two dominant centers. Yannis has become so good that we just kind of thrown him to the side as like we know you're the best player in the world, but we kind of got bored with it because you already got your two, which is something that happens to our history. Like LeBron got his MVP awards and everybody recognized that LeBron was the best player in the league. And a lot of times he was the best player in the league on one of the best teams, but he never was in the bigger overarching conversations because we were, ah, we've seen that before. Let's go give it to somebody that's new, one of the newer faces of basketball when Yannis shouldn't be in this conversation because he is the most dominant player in basketball. Simple as that. One of the reasons why Nikola Yolkens had been over Joe LeB, throughout the course of the season, of course, again, the advanced stats go heavily on Yolkens' way, but also because the nuggets have been so good and being the one seed out west. With their current losing streak right now, the 76ers have a higher win percentage. Does that matter? Maybe when the conversation is this close, maybe that does matter. So the 76ers are 45 and 22, five game streak currently. They play against him nice. So who knows what that's gonna look like. And Joe LeB is leading the league and scoring. Again, he's doing it for the second time. Like, this shouldn't be overlooked. He's a seven foot center with some of the best footwork I have ever seen. He's also giving you good defense and he's leading the league and scoring, but it's deeper than just looking at the points. I mean, the points are dope though. He scored 35 plus points and 23 games so far this year. 23 games, he said, 35 plus. And he also gave us, I know we got the 71 piece from Dame and Don Bimichu, but he also gave us one of the greatest games in history that's kind of looked over now because it was in November when he scored 59.7 blocks, eight assists and 11 rebounds against the Jazz. That's one of the greatest individual games we've ever seen. But since we also saw some 70 pieces, it seems like the third most important game of the year as far as individual stats go. One thing that I like about Joel and Bied's case is out of the three candidates, he has hit the most go ahead and game winning shots this season. And for a guy that is seven foot, you would think a lot of these game winners are in the posts, drop step, slam dunk, nah. It's like, I'm gonna look like a seven foot version of Kobe and I'm gonna do a turnaround fading mid-range jumper and it's gonna be cash. Every single one of these candidates have a really, really good chance of winning or equal chance if you ask me. And having these conversations should be fun. It should be. This is what we've watched the sport for. This is what we want. We want it to be a year where there are so many candidates for individual awards but it seems like the dialogue around it is like, hey, I'm on this island and if you not on this with me, then we gotta fight to the death. I must hate on this player and this player because I think my guy is the guy when that shouldn't be the case. So let me know what you think.  If you think, yeah, honestly MVP, you know what I'm saying, that's your guy. But like everybody else on the outside of us being the 27 teams, it's not associated with the award right now. I would just say use these last couple of weeks. Let's see the moments to see the records and all of these before we finally say this is my MVP. I appreciate you watching. Let me know what you think and I'll see y'all tomorrow.


Wow. Gracias, Adrián. Sus palabras lindas. My name is Rogi Uyama, and I've been with Right Now group for three years now, and I really want to extend my thanks to Shizue for giving a voice to us as writers and to allow us to open up and share stories that have been hidden for a long time. My piece, I'm going to read a couple of excerpts from Midnight Shift, my piece in this anthology, and it's from a time coming of age 21 when I was back in San Francisco trying to find out who I was in myself and growing up, you know, atypically, not a typical Japanese-American, but being more of a heretic, slacker, and you know, that's the kind of thing. So, here we go, a couple of pieces. I looked at City Light's bookstore in North Beach and also drove a cab from midnight to dawn after that. The summer fog was coming off the bay like a sinuous white serpent winding its way through the streets and alleys of North Beach. My dispatch radio was silent. It looked as if it was going to be a quiet night. I drove up to the top of Montgomery Street and parked at the top of the hill to take in the view of the Bay Bridge. I flipped open the glovebox to find her stash of bourbon and palmel cigarettes. Gazing out at the night, my only company was a great late night jazz on the radio. Sonny Rollins was taking me to a nice place with his horn. Pickup needed at Lombard and Columbus. The dispatcher voice jolted me awake. I took another swig of bourbon and made my way over the hill. As I approached Columbus Avenue, I saw an apparition flaning its arms. As I got closer, a tall woman in a dazzling skin tight evening gown and some kind of fur wrap. Her hair was a mile high. The sparkling sequins made her appear as some kind of exotic mermaid in a night. She flung open the door and jumped in. I was waiting forever in a day. Where were you? She reeked a booze perfume and sweat. Where to? She flipped on the dome light to adjust a false eyelash and started to apply powder to what appeared to be a five o'clock shadow. She had Mason Street and step on it. I called myself staring at her. What? Want to take a picture? Her exaggerated eyebrows gave her a look of constant excitement. I was just admiring how beautiful you look tonight. She smiled. You're sweet. I need to hear that. Got a Fairytale 60 Taylor. He's waiting outside and around the block, Chet Baker was pulling sweetness from the radio, putting a smile on my face as I approached. Where do you want me to take you? Where do you want me to take you? Take me to the Golden Gate Bridge a place where you can see the whole city. I was here last night just over there on the path up to the bridge. I was on my way to the end. The early glow of dawn lightened the sky as a lone maintenance guy started to sweep the walkway in the front. We sat silent, each of us thinking of our own waywardness. You can take me home now. It was a road quietly back to the tenderline. I glanced back at him. He seemed so serene and content that I was a bit envious. I was still shadowboxing with my own personal turmoil. That'll be 20 bucks. He disappeared into his drab apartment. I parked for a moment to reflect on our conversation.  In the silence I felt the new sense of calm and renewed courage. The need to keep running for something subsided. For once, it was enough to be in my own skin. Thank you very much.