Tag Archives: Development

Development on a Dime

18 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Higher Education, Student Affairs

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The spring semester is packed with all types of conferences, most notably ACPA and NASPA (see my thoughts on attending NASPA last year here). As you are no doubt aware, the conference registration fees for the national conferences is no small chunk of change. There are benefits to attending these conferences because of the concentration of professionals in one place and the knowledge imparted during the sessions, however the cost is a significant barrier to many persons especially new professionals.

In this spirit, I wanted to create a list of opportunities for professional development that could leave less of a crater in your bank account. I, personally, have benefited from some of these opportunities and that has influenced why I recommend them.

  • Student Affairs Collective
    • Well known for its weekly Twitter discussion #sachat the Student Affairs Collective is a group of student affairs practitioners who write/blog/vlog/podcast about the field. I find that most of what is written is a little too brief for me. Therefore, I recommend this resource with an additional caveat of reaching out to the authors of pieces that strike you and asking questions.
  •  Blogs
    • Yes, the Student Affairs Collective has bloggers, but some of these bloggers have their own websites where they create and curate content for all to see. Find subjects you are interested in and use search engines to find someone who is posting about it. Comment on their posts, ask questions, ask for emails to correspond.
  • Drive-in Conferences
    • These one day conferences can range from a wide variety of subjects to one functional area. No hotel costs, lower registration fees, and you are likely to see persons from within your region for networking purposes. These can occasionally be offered by national, state, or regional associations.
  • State Annual Conferences
    • My first introduction to student affairs was through a state association that offered a Careers in Student Affairs and an annual conference boasting similar presentations found at national conferences. There are great opportunities serving on committees and executive boards for these organizations.
  • Regional Conferences
    • National organizations may have regional conferences as well. These will likely be linked to geographic areas larger than the audience than a Drive-in Conference thus giving you greater opportunity for networking.
  • Mentorships/Learning Partnerships
    • Most of this list has involved connecting with people. Sure, I can learn from simply reading a manual but I am more likely to learn from someone who has had the experience I am seeking. Is there someone that you respect and strive to be like? Ask them if you can talk to them regularly about job/life related things. You can also become a mentor because there is much to be learned from those being mentored. Or work with your colleagues to create a learning partnership where you both want to learn a similar skill/topic and regularly meet to discuss/teach what you have learned on your own.
  • Read
    • Many institutions of higher education enable access to journals electronically. Take some time every now and again to read through some of the articles. There is always interesting research occurring or position papers. Perhaps a book review may help you find a book to add to your library. The best part of reading post-graduate education? You can choose what you read and it is not assigned to you to be read by a certain date.

This list is not exhaustive. There are many additional opportunities for professional development that I have not touched on (or thought about myself). I believe the most important takeaway from this brief post is that there are opportunities out there, probably posted on a listserv in an inbox. Take a deep breath, start small, and consider the possibilities.

Do you have other examples of Development on a Dime? Post in the comments below! 

Conference Contemplations [TPE & NASPA 2016]

31 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by in Student Affairs

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Conference

Over the past month I had my own version of March Madness; instead of basketball mine was filled with professional development and job searching. From Wednesday the 9th to Wednesday the 16th I lived in a hotel room in Indianapolis as I participated in The Placement Exchange and then attended the 2016 NASPA Annual Conference. This was my first time going out of state for professional development and attending a national conference. But, as an emerging student affairs professional I have learned that no experience is complete until one has had the time for . . .  REFLECTION!

placeexchange_logo__largeThe Placement Exchange

TPE is much more terrifying in name and reputation than in person. Before on site candidate orientation I felt overwhelmed. But after I arrived and especially after my first two interviews I fell into a routine. Some other bloggers are writing longer posts including perspectives from a variety of other TPE attendees. Check @hannahetorrance  post here and @RockyTM7 post here  (and follow them on Twitter!)

What made you decide to go to TPE?

I am searching nationally and what better time was there to search nationally than right before a national conference?

Do you feel like TPE is worth it? Why/why not?

If measured only by my placement in a job then “worth it” would be pretty simple to measure, but it is never that simple. I may or may not obtain a job from the conversations I had, but I certainly met many student affairs professionals from around the country (hooray networking). I progressively got better at interviewing throughout the process. In one of my last interviews I utilized scholarly research two or three times. Fit is really important in student affairs and I most certainly had a red flag or two during my interviews. By interviewing with so many different types of institutions, I believe I am better able to identify what fits me.

NASPA2016NASPA

I was superbly impressed with the NASPA conference. My registration was seamless and the registration area looked superbly official. Every facet of the convention center had the theme and logo (except the part where there was a cheerleading competition happening on the other side of the center).  At no time would I have not known that it was a NASPA conference. My first national conference really put it into perspective for me that it was at a completely different level than anything I had ever attended before.

There were easily fifteen or more choices for each session, making it difficult for me to choose. I had two or three sessions chosen and waited until the last moment to decide. I felt there was a pretty wide variety: I attended sessions focusing on diversity, residence life, and student activities. There was a lot that I returned and shared with my colleagues at Notre Dame College. I learned about fundraising for my department’s events, a think-tank’s thoughts on learning communities, how to discuss privilege with privileged groups, and about a resilience development program for first year students amongst many other topics.

One thing that stood out to me, more than anything else, was the camaraderie of the persons at the conference. I attended the Region IV East general meeting and I felt that it was more of a family. Everyone may not have known one another, but they were willing to introduce themselves and talk to me about the beginning of my student affairs journey. I met with my first time attendee mentor and had a really good chat about my journey as well as their journey too. Writing this post reminds me that I need to reach out to them to set up some time to chat outside of the NASPA conference too! At a later social, I met with and spoke with senior student affairs officers, including NASPA board member about their journeys. It was a wonderful experience and I learned so much from a wide variety of different persons. In the midst of all these awesome happenings, I knew that I wanted to become more involved. After a successful #sasearch I want to become more involved with NASPA. I joined several knowledge communities already and hope to be more engaged with them after graduation. I am excited for this next stage of my life.

A friend and colleague of mine made a very good point in the midst of the conference. She felt refreshed and reaffirmed that her choice to go into student affairs was the correct one. Attending NASPA and meeting with dozens of student affairs professionals, seeing colleagues excitedly discussing their own contexts; it was a motivational experience itself. Despite having undergone TPE and barely slept, I too felt refreshed and reaffirmed. No matter all the discouragement from struggling to balance coursework, commuting, and assistantship I knew that I was talking the right path. I may not know what direction I am going nor my destination but it just feels right.

Conference Contemplations [OCPA Annual Conference]

01 Monday Feb 2016

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Annual Conference

Although I missed some sessions that I was very interested in, I still managed to attend some great ones!

Students helping Students: What is Peer Mentoring?

Jessica Hall, Devan Obey, and Andy White – Ohio Dominican University

I attended this session because this year I was asked to develop, implement, manage, and assess a peer mentoring program… and was not successful. After attending this program, I understand why. The support given to the peer mentors in this program was great. These students were offered leadership development that benefitted them directly, given clear expectations, and quality supervision. It was some of these factors which has led to the success of the program and to the lack of success of mine. For future peer mentoring program experiences, I now know what questions to ask in advance.

High Stakes Planning: Connecting Communities to Create Campus Events

Alison Doehring & Dave Vale – University of Akron

As an event planner, I felt that I was professionally required to attend this session and I am glad that I did! Alison and Dave presented their six steps to High Stakes planning. I plan to utilize these six steps to assist in the training of the student programming board at Notre Dame College. They are pretty self-explanatory, but if you comment I can provide additional clarifications:

  1. Creating the Why
  2. Leveraging Buy In
  3. Formulating the Budget
  4. Protecting Liability
  5. Finalizing Logistics
  6. Post Event Management

Student Affairs Has a Student Er… Staff Retention Issue

Christopher Tyner – Franklin University

Student Affairs knows that it has a burnout problem, but too often we focus so heavily on student retention that we do not think of staff retention. 50-60% of new professionals leave by their 5th year and the cost of that professional leaving is 50-200% of that employee’s salary. Professionals leave for a variety of reasons including:

Personal

  • Disconnection with institution
  • Fit
  • Balance

Professional Factors

  • Lack of job opportunities
  • Organizational politics
  • Lack of synergistic supervision

Towards the end of the session, we turned our eyes towards the question: What can we do? Some of our discussion pointed to having intentional conversations with student leaders about burnout (before they become future #SApros), graduate programs need to directly address these pitfalls of the field, focusing on the “why” during the hiring process (as opposed to “what can you do” or “how you can help us”), provide flexibility, and supervising synergistically. Overall, I think we agreed that we can do better and we should.

This concludes my two part series about the OCPA Annual Conference. This year I felt more like a professional attending a conference than a graduate student. I felt like I had purpose and was less awestruck. I challenged my introverted tendencies spoke with other professionals. It was the best way to start off my final semester as a #SAGrad.

I look forward to blogging about NASPA in the future!

It’s a Grad School Life: A Chat with ACPA President Gavin Henning

21 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by in Education, Higher Education, Student Affairs

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After my morning coffee on Wednesday September 9th I had the opportunity to test out Google Hangout with American College Personnel Association president, Gavin Henning. Gavin and I spoke for about 28 minutes about some topics that I thought were relevant to graduate students. Gavin had a great many of insights that he shared and I wanted to share these with the world!

Gavin and I talked about three main topics: Future Trends in Higher Education and Grad Students, Grad Students and Professional Organization Involvement, and the Job Search and Marketing.

Future Trends in Higher Education and Grad Students

Gavin sees several trends for the future of higher education. In the next five years, he believes the financial aid process will become easier. Lamar Alexander, chair of the U.S.  Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is working to do just that Gavin says. And it seems like it is happening. Below you will see several Tweets regarding potential changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) that support Gavin’s hypothesis.

Gavin, however, did note that he does not believe that there will be a deregulation of Higher Education overall “because the current Congress, actually a lot of folks are concerned about the cost of higher education and the return on investment on taxpayer dollars. I think there will be the continued push for accountability, but I’m not sure how that process is going to look.”

Gavin is unsure of what its eventual impact will be, but believes that technology will continue to be a trend in higher education. We already do quite a lot with technology, Gavin admits. “Right now we’re able to identify students who may be at risk based on their coursework, incoming GPA and variables”, but points that there is more to come. [Students] can customize their phones and Spotify accounts; everything that they do they customize in the way they want” and higher education will need to do this. What’s the catch? We need to be able to do this without a significant stress on human resources.

Connected to the trend regarding accountability, higher education is going to need to demonstrate the return on investment for student services. There have been instances of student affairs being dismantled and relabeled as a student service under the supervision of Business and Finance. In connection with the increasing push towards accountability there needs to be an equally effective push to assessment and ensuring that student affairs can demonstrate our positive effect on retention, graduation, and persistence.

Gavin Henning also has some ideas on how graduate programs and students can begin preparing for that future he described. Odds are that graduate programs may be more likely to use the ACPA/NASPA Professional Competencies, which have been recently updated, to craft their curriculum and as competencies for the programs. “When I look back at my grad program that I was in 91-93 and all the content that I learned then is not applicable today. The theories I learned are not applicable today” Gavin admits. In the New England College program, Gavin focuses on developing skills such as critical and reflective thinking, problem solving, and team skills with his students by using content as a vehicle.

Overall, President Henning is very positive about the future of higher education and student affairs. There are some challenges ahead and the field may need to make some changes, but we are heading in the right direction.

Grad Students and Professional Organization Involvement

ACPA Logo

Networking and professional development are the two main reasons that Gavin believes graduate students should become involved in professional organizations. Gavin recalled his initial involvement in ACPA stating “When I think back to my involvement in ACPA, I got involved in order to meet assessment professionals. This was at the beginning of the assessment movement. Now I feel like I know everyone in assessment because I got connected to a few people who were connected to others.” Through his engagement with professional organizations Gavin has met many close personal and professional friends. By being involved we are making connections with people who have similar interests of know persons with similar interests. Later in the interview Gavin mentions how it can help with the job search too, so stay tuned for my next section of this post on the Search!

When it comes to professional development there is no better way to obtain and develop skills than through practical application, right? That’s what Gavin has done in his years as a professional and he is still learning today. Right now, because of the ACPA 2016 Montréal conference Gavin is learning more about First Nation people, international travel for Trans identified persons, and undocumented students and professionals. In his work as a commission chair, Gavin has developed skills in motivating volunteers, and coordinating difficult schedules (five time zones!).

Ultimately, President Henning recommends that graduate students and their mentors or supervisors have the conversation about professional development and plan for how to become involved. The supervisors have a lot of knowledge just waiting to be shared with someone, but maybe they need a catalyst- an eager graduate student asking “What opportunities exist here?” And do not forget the impact of technology too! On the ACPA website, there are ample resources for professionals across the country that can be used to find other ways to become involved, even if it is just as a volunteer at a national conference.

Job Search and Marketing

job search image

Brandi Hoffman, a colleague of mine and another student in my program, gets credit for this question, but I was intensely curious about being split between different interests when job searching. I know that I have passions for a lot of different function areas (See the header image on my website? That’s a VERY narrow list) and I always struggle wondering if I have to pick one when I do my upcoming search. Gavin was 100% supporting of applying for multiple functional areas, but with one caveat: you have to have passion! “If you’re passionate about Residence Life it will show through when you apply for Residence Life jobs. But if you’re not passionate about Academic Advising and you apply to Academic Advising jobs- it won’t come through” Gavin explains.

I knew some of what Gavin was going to say due to having a collateral assignment in Career Services last year, but he spoke about the need of new professionals and graduate students to customize their application materials.  Gavin’s advises to make sure that each cover letter and resume is designed to complement the type of position one is applying for. Even deeper, he would recommend adding another level of customization based on the institution. If you have experience in an area, such as living learning communities, and the institution has a focus on those then it would be a good way to demonstrate that you would be a good fit. If the institution has different strengths- try to find ways to demonstrate that you have similar or complementary abilities and skills.

Gavin had recently spoken to his graduate students about the job search so it was fresh on his mind! He advises that graduate students find ways to differentiate themselves from other candidates. Blogging, being active on Twitter, doing an extra practicum, or helping with a research project, and otherwise creating content that can be shared with the world and potential employers.

Other advice that Gavin has for those about to or already engaged in the job search included being willing to go out of your geographic comfort zone. Narrowing your search area too much can be negative because you could experience a lot of competition in a densely college populated area or missing out on great opportunities elsewhere. He advises us to remember that our first job is not the one we are going to have for the rest of our lives, but maybe three to five years at the most. Once the first job is over, there is nothing to bar a professional from returning to their roots.

It is also possible that we may not find a job, but we should not let that defeat us. Gavin details his frustrations in his job search in his blog post From Serendipity to Intentionality in Student Learning, but he had a backup plan. He was going to work at J. Crew as a manger and there is nothing wrong with that. If his goal was to get into higher education, he would have to have found ways to continue his skill development in the meantime to ensure success in his next search process. What does that look like? Well, involvement in professional development organizations is one way or even taking additional classes.

The last piece of the job search puzzle is networking! Knowing someone may not get guarantee you an interview or a job, but the more people you know, the more you can learn about a job that you are interested in. Having these connections will help getting to know the institution one is applying for a lot easier than any Google search. Networking now also helps prepare for the future. Gavin’s recommendation for moving into the mid and senior level position is connected to who you know and who might recommend you to their hiring manager or supervisor when a job becomes available. I personally think these are good things to keep in mind for the future!

Overall I had a lot of fun speaking with Gavin Henning about lots of topics that graduate students might be interested. It was a wonderful opportunity for me professionally to help spread the wise words awesome and successful student affairs professionals! You can definitely look forward to me interview more student affairs professionals and sharing their insights! Thanks for reading!

A full transcript of my interview with Gavin can be found here.