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This year's Creating Welcoming Spaces-themed Showcase honors faculty who intentionally design their courses to welcome all students, setting the stage for deep engagement and investment in learning. These practices may also serve our students well by motivating participation, creating connections, and developing a sense of community and belonging—the very things so many still struggle with post-pandemic.

How do instructors warmly welcome students, provide them the agency to contribute and demonstrate their knowledge, and invite them to connect with the class, their peers, professors, and the university? How do instructors balance creating welcoming spaces for students while managing everyone's safety and well-being? How do instructors create welcoming spaces for students while also communicating high expectations and establishing a rigorous learning environment?

"The primary responsibility of creating this environment lies with you. You have to convey to your students that you designed the course to foster their learning and care very much not only about their learning the material but also about their development as human beings. Therefore, you will listen to them, honor their voices, seek and respond to their questions and feedback, adapt to their individual and cultural differences, encourage their participation and best thinking, relate to them with honesty and empathy, and convey our enthusiasm about teaching them" ~Linda Nilson, Teaching at its Best, 2019.