Welcome to the October edition of the PAIS Newsletter. As newly appointed editors, we took time to review past issues to familiarize ourselves with previous topics of interest. What we discovered was that in the past five years, there are many references to “challenging times.” We are certain that many of us agree that the past 20 months have been a particularly challenging time for our field. In the past few months, many of us may have felt hope that we were on the upside of the pandemic and some aspects of our professional lives would return to normal. With the rise in cases due to the Delta variant, uncertainty creeps back in as to the possibility of sustaining a return to face-to-face class instruction and collaboration with colleagues.

In this issue, you will find examples of how colleagues took this challenging time as an opportunity to reflect on and review their current program practices. You will read how three programs addressed three different areas to improve programmatic practices: faculty evaluations, student services, and adaptation of in-person instruction to delivering classes online.

Christian Gomez

Laura Shier

PAIS Newsletter Editors