Thanks for Everything, Emily (Especially the Teaching Toolbox)

May 8, 2025

Today you received Emily Gravett’s last Teaching Toolbox in her role as Assistant Director of the Teaching Area for the Center for Faculty Innovation. Emily launched the Teaching Toolbox nine years ago and since then has been the editor, publisher, archivist, curator, and champion of nearly every Toolbox that has gone out. 

Those of us who’ve been lucky enough to write Toolboxes know how much Emily has been a part of each and every one–and how much effort and care she invests. She not only supports faculty (and students!) as they write their own Toolboxes, she also regularly solicits new ideas and authors for the Toolboxes. We cannot count the number of times she manages to shift any conversation to “Hey, why don’t you write a Toolbox about that?” (and sometimes the conversation becomes the Toolbox). It's impossible to track the millions of ways her many Toolboxes (and time in the CFI) have impacted faculty, students, and our campus community–and beyond. Indeed, she has supported us all in our personal and professional growth over the last nine years in profound ways.

So, a group of fans, friends, and frolleagues of Emily went rogue and got together to generate an unofficial companion to her goodbye Toolbox. We wanted to highlight and celebrate Emily’s substantial accomplishments; to wish her well in her new pursuits; to express our gratitude and appreciation; and to offer you, dear readers, a highlight reel of Emily’s many contributions. Along the way, you may be reminded of resources that you might want to revisit (or discover for the first time).

Andreas: In our nine years as fellow assistant directors at CFI, it was a delight, nay: a joy, to work with Emily. I appreciated Emily’s experience as a teacher and as an educational developer (at UVA and Trinity University before joining JMU) when she joined us, a rising star in the educational development world with a number of highly regarded publications out (and more to come). What I quickly found out was that her publication record was not just based on smarts, discipline, and organizational acumen but also on real writing chops in a range of styles and voices. Her feedback and edits on my own writing were invaluable–and a treat. And one of the things that I came to particularly appreciate about the Teaching Toolbox project was that the short essays that she sent out every other week (most of them authored by her) over time turned into a unique type of genre, with a unique voice and genre conventions, that combined introduction to a literature, hands-on tips for teaching, and a type of creative nonfiction writing that could veer into personal essays (I remember one about her experience on academic leave, for example). These essays remind us that academia is not just planning, structure, and technique, but also a very personal experience of teachers and students (learners altogether), and that we can learn a lot from just listening to (or reading) what someone like Emily has to say about her own experience.

Daisy: I remember exactly where I was when Emily's powerful Toolbox on humility came out over five years ago: in the Godwin parking lot. Instead of getting out of my car to go to my office, I stayed and read the entire Toolbox on my phone, because it floored me with its honesty, courage, and authenticity. With how consistent it was with Emily as a person, and the ways she models humility, taking and giving feedback in productive ways. With her kindness and generosity, and the way she centers others’ needs in her work. 

Emily serves as a catalyst for me and others: she helps us learn more, grow more, offers challenge and support, offers new ways of looking at things. Over the years I’ve worked with Emily in various capacities, and always her core values guide her–and inspire me. From the very first Toolbox I wrote years ago, on disability disclosure, which I was able to write solely because of Emily’s encouragement and guidance, to this very Toolbox I’m writing now, Emily’s voice, her crack editorial skills, and her caring presence are always there with me as I write. While I’ve officially co-authored two academic articles with Emily, I feel like she’s an unnamed, but influential, collaborator on all my work. 

Her Toolboxes over the years have provided us all with valuable resources, tools, and strategies for teaching. But I also want to speak beyond the work–to the ways that Emily makes us laugh, makes us pause, offers us ideas and inspiration for self-care. In her Toolbox on scaffolding, she introduced us to porcupine eating an apple, which is really all one needs in life. (Seriously, Emily, how do you always have the perfect video, song, quote, meme, picture, etc., for any given moment?) Throughout the years, Emily has reminded us of the importance of joy, especially in tough times. Through it all, Emily is there, reminding us to care, not only about our profession but also about ourselves. Emily, I hope I’ve said these words enough over the years, but just in case, here’s one more: THANK YOU.

Dayna: I immediately joined the Teaching Toolbox Listserv when I came to JMU in 2016. How great to have someone regularly email me teaching ideas? In fact, the CFI was one of the reasons I left my previous faculty position and started again here. Having a holistic center to support faculty spoke volumes to me. I looked forward to receiving the Toolboxes in my email and thinking through how I could make the ideas work in my courses. One that has stuck with me over the years is the Toolbox she wrote on creating a “warm” syllabus. She came to talk about it at the Libraries institute for Online and Hybrid teaching when I attended in Spring of my first year. And let’s not forget the many helpful Toolboxes the teaching team put out during the pandemic, at a time when they themselves were experiencing the collective trauma. I particularly appreciated the ones on getting feedback from your students. Noticing the faculty-developing-faculty ethos in the many different authors and perspectives only made me appreciate them more. I aspired to join the CFI after I earned tenure, specifically on the teaching team, where my love for teaching could grow under Emily. Little did I know what would actually happen.

I ended up joining the CFI through the Scholarship Area in 2018, but didn’t have many opportunities to work with Emily until she interviewed me for the assistant director position four years later. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Emily would not only become a mentor for my role as a faculty developer, but also an authentic, supportive, and close friend through a very challenging time in my personal life. Despite her being on leave my first semester as assistant director, Emily was available as a confidant, suggesting books (how does she make time to read so much?), articles, and ideas for both my personal and professional growth. Her wisdom, insights, passion, and experience have helped me grow into my role. She is a fierce advocate for equity and inclusion, showing appreciation, always a supportive listener, and raises points to consider that push the bounds of my own thinking. I can only hope that in these past three years, she’s felt even a small part of the love, support, and inspiration she’s given me. I’m sad about the loss to the CFI, but also grateful that whatever comes our way professionally, we have a strong friendship built on mutual admiration and love.

Kayla: Emily was the first JMU colleague I met outside of my department. I went to her session at Faculty Welcome, and I remember admiring her poise as she addressed our group of new, big-eyed faculty. She offered practical suggestions for the syllabi I was scrambling to finish and ideas for pre-course questionnaires that helped me concretely plan out my first classes. More than that, she modeled an ethos of care in a nervous space (...just me?) and made me feel like the CFI was a place for me.

A few years later I was thrilled to officially join the CFI’s teaching team. To this day, it remains the most cherished professional and personal community I’ve had the privilege to co-build. I say co-build because that is how Emily leads: by curating a culture where each individual can thrive and also shape, reimagine, and change course of the group’s processes and accomplishments. It was a true team, and a model for how to team. And the Toolboxes! When I think about all I’ve learned from her writing and editorial endeavors over the years… she facilitated difficult conversations around critical events like elections and wrote about new phenomena like online etiquette during trying times. She inspired our team to have fun, even letting us write once about dogs. She helped us to encourage and be accountable to feedback we get and give in the classroom, showing us that pedagogy can be a big, circuitous journey. But she also regularly took us back to the teaching basics, reminding us of simple strategies like the first five minutes of class or learning students’ names. Most importantly, I think, she reminded us that we are whole humans outside of our professional identities, ones who need sleep and movement and who might value thinking about gratitude.

Emily has pushed me, sometimes gently, and sometimes when I needed it!, with stronger nudges, always centered in mutual respect and a deep belief in my capacity for efficacy and authenticity. As I think about the hats I’ve worn across campus, I know my time with her in the CFI strengthened my confidence and made me a better teacher, writer, contributor, and leader in all the other spaces in which I work. Thanks to Emily, I’m a much better faculty member; I’m also just a better human. And I (we!) know there are many, many others who can say the same.