After a full day of toting boxes and bags of clothes up three flights of stairs, the Sheldon family was finally done with helping their daughter Rachel move in to her new residence hall room.  It was interesting to figure out how to have Mom, Dad, young brother and younger sister all in the room along with her roommate’s family and all of their stuff, but they made it.  When all the beds were made and all of the clothes were away, Rachel realized it was time for her to say goodbye.  Mom and Dad had the same realization too and the conversation went something like this,

“Rachel, you have to get to a floor meeting now.  This is it, honey. We have to go.”

 “Ok mom.  Text you later.  Roommate, let’s go there together?”

Then there were hugs, a couple of tears and….a long, silent, reflective walk back to the car for Rachel’s parents and back to the room for Rachel.  They had no idea, but mom, dad and Rachel all simultaneously had a sigh of acknowledgement that things would be different from that point forward.

Today marks my seventeenth year of helping support some aspect of “move-in day” at a campus as a campus activities professional.  Regardless of which schools I have worked at, the formula is pretty similar. There are friendly smiles from staff (sometimes masking stress), hopeful faces on incoming students (sometimes masking fear or anxiety) and proud faces on their families (sometimes masking fear, anxiety, stress, frustration…there’s a long list).  The family members dutifully assist their incoming student with trying to move their treasured possessions into the world’s tiniest living spaces, wonder about the uncomfortable moment of when it’s “time to leave,” and exchange goodbyes.  The family makes that walk out to the car and the student makes that walk over to their floor meetings and a new chapter begins.

I’ve been learning a lot about organizational culture in my classes this semester and this process is a good example of an acculturation process that occurs on many campuses as many new members join our campus communities.  However, at some institutions it only tells part of the story.

I’m thinking about the comparable experience for a commuter.  We’ll call him Joseph.

That conversation sounds more like this,

 “Mom and Dad, I have to be on campus for some Welcome Week events.  See you later!’

“Joseph, what time will you be home? Will you be home for dinner?  Can you drop off your sister at her friend’s house on the way? We also need more milk from the store since you’re going out anyway.”

The parents’ thought process while Joseph is on campus isn’t likely about his transition to college, what a special time this is, or whether he will grow and change as a college student. It’s actually about the milk needed to make tonight’s dinner and hoping he’s not out late. That mom and dad can probably think about that other stuff…later.

As campus leaders, we need to start thinking about the point of transition into our campus culture for our commuter students as well as their families. Orientation programs are typically the point where we try to get students and their families to have that “things are going to be different” realization.  However, at some campuses there is a full two months between Orientation and the first day of classes.

Even if your campus has the best possible New Student Convocation right before the start of school, our resident students seem to still start a little ahead of the game because we have structured that transition point to happen at move-in day.

Given so many students are commuting to campus this year and that our profession has placed a priority on enhancing campus culture, let’s start rethinking campus rituals, symbols and traditions.  What can we do to give our commuters and their families that reflective moment of “things are going to be different?”

Please share your best ideas!

I was cheering when I read the announcement of the ACPA Credentialing Implementation Team. After spending a long time this year in my doctoral program reading the literature about “student affairs as a profession” and the quest for legitimacy, it’s about time that someone took the lead on either making credentialing a reality or forcing its death.

I have big dreams about the role that credentialing can play in our field and rather than spend these 550 words criticizing a process that hasn’t even started yet, please indulge me for a minute in exploration of three questions that are on my mind when considering the credentials idea.

Is the master’s degree in student affairs/development/administration the only route into our field?

My answer is no, but my answer is also based on my belief that if our profession seeks to advance its identity as a discipline and set of core competencies we need to reconcile conversation.  A credentialing program will never replace the level of inquiry expected of graduate study, but it could add to the knowledge of someone with an M.B.A. who arrives to our field with a strong content understanding of leadership development from a business program.  With credentialing, that person can pursue a credential in student leadership education through a curriculum endorsed by our profession and arrive with both the content and the context needed to work in a leadership office.  In absence of the credential, I’m not as confident that this candidate understands working with college students.

Is the pre-service educational preparation supposed to last a lifetime?

A couple of projects so far in my doctoral program have explored professional education and the attempts at the scholar/practitioner balance as well as the attempts at creating professional development experiences on campuses in light of travel funding cuts.  Long story and long papers short – we haven’t figured this out yet.  I think a credentialing program will be an opportunity for us to pick up where our graduate programs leave off.

Given multiple points of entry into the field, some of our educational backgrounds have nothing in common. With a new set of core competencies for our field we now have a viable “road map” to our standards on the job.  There now needs to be a common framework for how to get from the standards for entry into the field to the standards for mastery of the competencies that can be consistent across campuses.

Could credentialing support those who want to change functional areas?

As our field becomes more and more specialized, it seems harder and harder to switch functional areas after you have accumulated some level of experience.  I envision a technology credential for someone working in a residence life position or a diversity education credential for someone working in a campus center management position.  In both of these scenarios, there is relevance for skills in both the current and future areas of work. On the resume, the addition of the credential tells me as a hiring manager that the content of that person’s background is more than just a passing interest or a short-term committee role.

As ACPA’s team begins its exploration of the idea, what questions do you have regarding the process?

One of the things I love about working at a public institution is the open nature of the student organization recognition process.  Framed by an obligation to ensure student freedoms to associate, the array of requests that come through our office are truly creative and the points of common interest among our students seems limitless.

Yet, even with this open approach we still hear conflicting reviews over whether our campus has “enough” to offer students with clubs and organizations or whether there are too many.

Since the difference between “too many” and “not enough” seemed all over the map, I wanted to utilize the power of the Twitterverse to collect some information from campuses about their numbers.  Feel free to visit the document (oh, and add your information while you are there!).

Now that we have all of this great information from so many campuses, it’s time to dig in! We are going to start some discussion as a department about what we want to take away from this information and I wanted all of you to join the conversation. Here are some questions we will be discussing.

1.    Is there meaning behind the number of organizations on a campus? 

We want to offer a broad variety of involvement opportunities to our students, right?   Let’s acknowledge the fact that it speaks well to a prospective student when we can say “we have something for everyone here.”  The logical next question should be whether they are all quality opportunities? Given we emphasize that student groups are, indeed, student groups, what’s the right “institutional” role if students are truly driving the process?

2.    How do we design a recognition process for groups that keeps the doors as open as possible for our public institution, but use what we know about what contributes to groups that will last?

Putting up unnecessary hurdles isn’t how we want to operate, so what steps are truly necessary and lead to establishing groups with “staying power?”  Some say our process is too easy and it leads to “too many” new groups.  We have a variety of steps required to gain campus recognition, but what is the justification for adding process hurdles when we don’t know they lead to lasting success?

3.    Staff isn’t getting any bigger and space for events, meetings and programs is limited. Is there ever a cap to how many groups a campus can accommodate? 

If the opportunities are limitless and our staffing and resources are not, could there be a point where there are “too many” groups for us to accommodate on campus?  Even a group that doesn’t do much programming will demand time and resources from student involvement staff as well as other service providers that support their events and organizational business.

On the hunt for the magic formula, we talked about the idea of looking at a ratio of enrolled students to the number of organizations.  If there’s a ratio of 1200 students per one organization, I’d say that indicates more groups are needed.  But, what is the optimum ratio?  Does it change if the campus is public or private? Regardless of our obligations or policies, we all want to give students optimum learning experiences so I’m not sure it does.

I know that there are a lot more questions than answers in this post, but even some basic questions I posted via Twitter on the #sachat hashtag generated some good discussion so I thought you all needed to get in on this conversation.

Any magic formula information to share? Please post your comments! I’m curious about thoughts from the creative and resourceful readers of our blog!

Wow, the opening of school season is pretty interesting.  From about the middle of August, the panic of preparing for the new academic year sets in in a variety of forms.  Some seem like they are preparing for opening of school the minute the graduates cross the stage.  Others make it seem like no work gets done over the summer and we cram it all in two weeks before semester classes begin.

The dialogue during busy seasons on campus is always fascinating to me.  It always seems to twist back to a comparison of who is working hard versus who seems to have nothing going on. I see the “Busy Card” get played left and right in various interactions and I cringe every time I observe the “one up-ing” that seems to emerge when people talk about workload.  We’ve all been tempted to play the Busy Card before. I’m guilty of it too.

I’d like to alter the dialogue during the next round of Busy and focus on how to make the campus environment a kinder place for collegial relationships.  To do this, these are three things I’m going to try to remember when Busy comes around again and I hope you will join me!

1. Busy is an explanation, not an excuse.

If you fall short on something you said you would do, nothing about Busy excuses dropping the ball.  If you figure out that you missed something, just be honest that you have fallen short on something and either renegotiate a new deadline or just take care of it.  The busy pace of the opening of school wasn’t really a surprise, was it?

2. Busy is relative.

All of us have varied degrees of ability to balance multiple projects and handle multiple tasks.  When the person you believe has four things to do all year plays the Busy Card, I know it’s hard to swallow when you are tearing your hair out at the idea of another 15 hour day.  Temptation may be to try to “one up” this person, but we have to understand that the comparison game means nothing.  This person who chooses to share frustration with you is also struggling and struggling in their own way with their own definition of being overwhelmed.

3. Busy is our situation to manage.

Depending on our roles and functions on campus, workload may emerge as much from our own creation as it is from our institutions.  My colleague Michael Miller and I surveyed SSAO’s and campus activities professionals for a workshop presentation about work/life balance.  We found that SSAO’s and activities professionals have a difference of opinion on where the source of responsibility for workload might be.  Our SSAO’s were citing the individual activities professional as primarily responsible for their own workload and the activities professionals were more frequently citing supervisors and institutional expectations.

If we are honest with ourselves, we do get to make a lot of decisions about our work.  Whether our zones of responsibility are broad or very specific, it’s a rare case where a student affairs professional makes absolutely no decisions. Did you really need the hand-tied ribbons on the Convocation programs?  Did you really need that new outdoor concert you added this year to Move In Weekend?

Let’s think about what kind of campuses we could create if we instead focused on managing our own lives instead of critiquing what others are doing (or not doing!).  If we could focus on being the best versions of ourselves and our own departments, I think a more balanced work life may be closer within reach.

Can you share anything you’ll do differently next time “Busy” rears its ugly head?

I had the great opportunity to present with my friend and colleague Michael Miller of Fun Enterprises at the NACA Northeast Regional Conference about a topic that was near and dear to both of our hearts.  It emerged from a conversation one day about how it took major life events to give us both perspective on the idea of balance.  For him, it was a goal of losing 100 pounds and for me it was becoming a parent.  For both of us, we talked about how we hoped that our colleagues and the newer professionals we both mentored wouldn’t ever get to the point where only a major life event would be what would get life’s priorities in check.

We prepared a session on the dreaded “Work/Life Balance” topic. We decided that the NACA public probably didn’t only want to hear our stories and that we had had just about enough of the hundreds of “here’s how I did it” panel sessions about work/life balance.  We also decided that we wanted to have some “tough love” conversations about some conditions facing campus activities professionals.  We were curious about whether the state of the union was because of “the field” or whether it was something we were creating ourselves.

The answer… survey time!

We created a survey that yielded information from 59 respondents who were campus activities professionals at varying levels of experience as well as senior student affairs officers.  We asked them to answer a survey that listed conditions that campus activities professionals believe challenge the idea of work/life balance.  Each statement asked a respondent to assign a “source of responsibility” for that challenge.  For example, for a statement of “I miss family commitments due to work obligations,” a respondent had to choose whether the cause of this condition was from the individual, the supervisor, the institution, the campus activities profession, or the student affairs profession as a whole.

The survey taught us a few things about work/life balance, but it also showed us a few things about “managing up.”  Talking to supervisors about work/life balance challenges is something that truly takes a knowledge of communication as well as a knowledge of your supervisor’s ideas about you and your workload.  Over the course of my next few blog posts, I’m excited to share the survey results with you and talk more about what we discussed in our session.

To start, let’s talk about managing our calendars.

For those of you who find your calendars nearly overflowing with one-on-one meetings with student leaders, we asked for assignment of responsibility for the condition of “I need to have weekly one-on-one meetings with the student leaders that I advise.”

56% of the overall respondent group said that the individual is responsible for that condition.  This means that many in our survey group believe that you are the one who decides that this is necessary.  When the senior student affairs officers were looked at separately, 65% of them assigned responsibility to the individual, with the rest responding for the campus activities profession or the student affairs profession as a whole.  Some campus activities professionals believed their supervisors were the ones responsible for determining the need for the 1 on 1 meetings, but none of the SSAO’s believed the supervisors or the institution had this expectation of campus activities staff.

When participants were asked what work/life balance issues were within campus activities professionals’ ability to change, one of our top four themes across response groups was “intentional use of time.”  From the outside looking in, many believe that we could do a better job with choices we make about how we spend our time.

What can we do with this information?

If you’re at your wits’ end with your calendar, talking to your boss about your large number of required 1 on 1 meetings may not be the best start as they may not agree with you that it is a required part of your work week. Instead, it’s time to take control.

Summer is a great time to think about planning your calendar for the fall.  If you’re feeling like there’s no time to get any work done because of meetings, start examining your standing meetings. Are these standing meetings needed weekly?  Are you the right person to be involved in these meetings?   This should inspire some critical thought about whether you really have to have that student group meeting at 9 pm on Sunday nights.  Sometimes you really do, but only after long and detailed discussion of every other possibility I hope.

So, do you feel you can take control of your calendar?  Or, do you let your calendar manage you?

I read the discussion around Rutgers University’s decision to bring Snooki on campus with great interest based on my programming roles with our Student Government Association’s lecture series.  For those who may not have heard about the discussion, it compares the latest two high profile speakers brought to campus and how much they are being paid for their speaking engagements.  Toni Morrison is being paid to speak at Commencement for $30K and Snooki is being paid $32K for a speaking engagement sponsored by the Rutgers College Programming Association.  I’m not really interested in the comparison conversation, as I’m sure that the processes that brought both women to their campus are pretty disconnected. (and yes, that’s a whole other post!)  However, there are some other great conversations connected to this and it’s easy to imagine that this could easily happen to any one of us who works with students who are in a position to make programming decisions.

What typically happens when your students are interested in something that gives you “pause?”  My first step is always to ask questions. “So, what kind of image will this portray of your organization and its’ priorities?” or “Look back at your goals you set for the year, does this fit?”  I’m really lucky that in 9 times out of 10 there is at least one of my students in the room that might stop and think and at very least have a critical dialogue with their peers about the potential concerns.

But then, what happens if the idea is still alive?

If you use my six year old’s kindergarten class’ rule of thumb, you only act drastically under conditions of “D and D” (damage and destruction). I apply this to the “advisor veto” as well.  When I see students going down a road that will lead to damage and destruction, I would definitely step in and tell them that whatever choice they are about to make just isn’t going to happen.  This would be in cases of risk management, policy violation, or other forms of impending doom.  The level of “intrusive” advising definitely increases depending on the funding source.

I want to send a serious kudos to the Rutgers administration for not canceling this event. I’m confident that emails are flying and lots of hindsight and reflection happening and I’ll bet those discussions are challenging. By letting this event happen, they affirmed the students’ ability to make decisions and I’m confident they are now supporting those students through the consequences of their choices as their story goes more public.

There are other ways we can reflect on our business practices in working with entertainers, speakers and agencies after this debate:

• When you put students in decision making roles, do you really mean it? Do they have full reign over choices or are there limits and how does funding source play in? Have you ever had the conversation with the “powers that be” about what would happen if you were in Rutgers’ situation?
• Is the issue here really about paying Snooki too much or paying Toni Morrison not enough? What is your definition of a “fair price” for a lecture or comedy show when you get into that realm of compensation?
• If you were the Vice President for Student Affairs and the critique was flowing about programming decisions made by your student programming board, how would you respond? How do you respond to your President and how do you respond to your students?

I’m grateful for the chance to discuss this with my students and also grateful to the Rutgers administrators for standing behind their students and the good work they have done to date.  I hope we can use this experience to highlight the scope of roles our leaders of programming groups on campus take. I’m also hoping that the RUPA student leaders will get some credit for the large responsibility they shoulder for the campus and won’t lose momentum or commitment after all of this controversy.

I would have never thought I’d learn anything from Snooki, but from her presence at Rutgers I hope we learn things that will help our student leaders learn even more.

…but I’m still not watching “Jersey Shore.”

I have recently confronted the realization that it has been twenty years since I participated in sorority recruitment as a student at Lafayette College.  Given most of the readers on this blog probably assume I am 24, you know my secret of graduating from college at 5 years old.

Our campus recently finished our sorority recruitment events and being there with them helped me to recall some great memories with my sisters in Alpha Gamma Delta.  When I was in college I spent a lot of time on recruitment activities with the chapter through various leadership roles, so sorority recruitment time always reminds me of the good, bad and YIKES! times we spent together.  As a sorority member it’s easy to understand the recruitment process after it happens once, but I can only imagine how odd it must be to those not connected with sorority life to observe these events in action.  What in the world could all that clapping, singing, intense discussion and matching clothing have to do with student learning?

When I reflect on my co-curricular learning as a college student, I realize now that the preparation and implementation of recruitment programs had a huge impact.  I wanted to share some of my learning lessons:

• There’s nothing quite like a sincere welcome to a group.  Since my sorority days, I have been part of enough meetings and committees where I have felt like an outsider or “new person” and haven’t been brought in.  I don’t care how old you are.  It’s so valuable to have someone willing to “bring you in” and educate you about the standards, history and culture of a group. I appreciate those who have mastered it and use it to bring others into the fold.
• Remembering names is a skill you can work on.  When you are meeting hundreds of women at lightning speed, you have to learn to remember names and details about people.  Tricks for remembering names have paid off immensely in my work life and in my personal life as well. Even though I’m an extrovert by nature, sorority recruitment taught me to focus on the individuals just one at a time and the value of remembering names and details for the next conversation.
• Tasks and vision must connect. Motivating peers to do most anything is tough as a student leader, but experience as recruitment chair taught me how to clarify the “big picture” and help groups to work with the vision at the forefront.  Writing hundreds of names on index cards wasn’t all that much fun, but I learned how to help others focus on the fact that each step along that process would bring us closer to a great group of new women for our organization.  I think this experience gave me great preparation for supervision roles today.
• Diversity is a pay-it-forward value.  Our advisors and chapter leaders taught us the impact that diversity has on a group.  They made this intentional membership education so that our voting decisions would be as open as possible to allow for the broadest possible diversity in our organization.  Their intentional education set a great example of how important it is to educate.  Today, I am better equipped to teach where it is needed rather than losing patience with people who may lack information or who may still be searching for positive role modeling.
• We all answer to someone. Back then, we were given recruitment rules from the Panhellenic, rules from our national organization, instructions from our faculty advisor, tips from our alumni and directives from any traveling consultants that may have visited campus. It seemed then as if everyone was telling us what had to be done and that we answered to about twelve different “bosses.”  Life is still that way, as I’m taking direction from just as many places with even more “high stakes” involved.  I remember thinking it would get easier “in the real world.”  Now I realize that accountability is everywhere and that everyone answers to someone.

Sorority recruitment was a whirlwind, but when I think back on all of the “life lessons” I gained from that experience these are my most used today.  When I was a potential new member back then, it looked like all kinds of fun that might teach me something in the end.  Today, I look back and realize that the 18 year old woman who made the decision to get involved during all that craziness made one of the best educational decisions for life and leadership in the future.

I’d love to hear from both sorority members and everyone else too.  Let’s talk about recruitment!

I had the pleasure of teaching an online special topics course in the counselor education program at Bridgewater State University last semester.  As part of this course, I assigned a task to locate a “technology resource” that would be helpful to those who serve as student organization advisors.  I didn’t give them much more than that for direction and was pleased to see one of the students post about the SA Collaborative.  At the recommendation of one of our editors, I’m happy to post this review from the student in my course, Steve Gianquitti. Steve is one of our new graduate assistants in my office and actually didn’t have prior knowledge of my connection with this community.  Great to see new folks stumbling upon this great resource!

The Student Affairs Collaborative is an online blog where student affairs professionals can share knowledge and insight, post questions, and raise awareness on certain topics. This facilitates discussion about various student affairs topics and strategies. It is beneficial to student organizational advisors because they have an entire network of student affairs professionals that they can reach out to.

The Student Affairs Collaborative website can be found at http://thesabloggers.org/.  It was created in 2006 as a peer-to-peer informal learning community. In the about section of the website, it mentions this site as a platform for student affairs professionals to connect, share, and learn from each other. These attributes provide a large online resource for education. They cover a wide variety of topics in relation to students’ leadership and development. The advising role and entailed responsibilities are often written about.

To mention the significance of what an advisor can learn from this website, I am going to tell you about my own experience with using the website. There were a few posts that I learned a lot from. If you look into the September, 2010 archive, there is a post by Licinda labeled “The Leadership Challenge re-read.” She talks about Kouzes and Posner’s book, “The Leadership Challenge” (2007).  Licinda mentions how the main message she got from the book was how leadership should come from the heart and participatory leadership should be the focus, not positional leadership. From this post, other professionals then commented with their reactions. It motivated others to read the book, reinstated others philosophies, and other peers demonstrated how they could relate and connect to how Licinda is feeling. This demonstrates the beauty of this technology and what the website was intended for. I also read other inspiring posts, such as “The Unwritten Rules of Student Affairs,” which I encourage every emerging student affairs professional to read. (http://thesabloggers.org/2010/10/the-unwritten-rules-of-student-affairs/)

The site also provides the group’s twitter and facebook accounts as well as a student affairs directory. Speaking of twitter, a weekly student affairs chat is facilitated through their website. They have weekly daytime and evening sessions where there is a welcome session, followed by several questions, and then ending with a final thoughts and wrap up section. While researching this, I found many topics interesting to me. One week’s session from October 14, 2010, highlighted “Best Practices in Developing Grad Students.”  I was interested in this topic considering I am a graduate assistant in the Office of Student Involvement and Leadership at Bridgewater State University. I stumbled across my director’s post regarding question 2, “What is the best “assignment” or “task” that you give to GA’s to understand and learn your work?”  Cindy Kane, my director, mentioned informational interviewing and providing a graduate assistant with an advising experience from the beginning were important. She also mentioned how she treats her GA staff like professionals and questioned whether other professionals did the same as well as their institutions as a whole. While I am grateful for Cindy’s thinking and how it has positively affected my graduate assistant experience, this example was to prove the point of how this web site is designed to facilitate discussion and for student affairs professionals to connect, share, and grow from each other’s experiences and beliefs.

As emerging or current student affairs or other professional educators, I urge you to view this website. It is a great online resource and a good way to connect with other professionals nationwide. If interested, you can also become a writer on the website. Under the more section, click “Be a Writer.” It will give you the information to have a trial account on the website. In my opinion, more professionals need to utilize this tool. This technological tool is extremely fascinating, innovative, and a must have online tool for all student affairs professionals.

What aspects of the SA Collaborative to you feel are most important to share with new graduate students in our field?  Post your comments and I will share them with my class!

Steve Gianquitti can be reached at sgianquitti@student.bridgew.edu.

Over the past twelve years in my current job I have had the great fortune to work with some great people who have moved on.  These folks have moved out for many reasons and all of them were great reasons including love, money, promotion, new challenges or a better institutional fit.  (note: none, so far, have left with the “royal flush” of change to all of these things!).

Regardless of the circumstances, Liz Gross’ post reminded me of how important the idea of letting people “leave with grace” is from the supervisor’s perspective as well.  As a supervisor you are definitely impacted by the departure of one of your staff, so let’s talk about the role you play in letting a staff member leave.

A graceful exit for your staff member may start with you, or it may not.  I hope for your sake that your staff member has told you they were on the job market before the point where they resign.  If you are the first person with the news, be sure that the news stays just with you.  You may need to share it with your supervisor depending on the circumstances, but be sure that you’re not the one sharing it with anyone on your staff.  If the person considering leaving shares it, that is their decision.  You, as a supervisor, need to maintain the trust that the staff has in you as the potential keeper of their career news someday.

When a staff member informs you they are leaving, an honest and balanced response is the goal. No one expects you to be a robot, but overly emotional reactions at this point aren’t helpful either. As far as notifying people, we know that news of resignations travels fast. Work to determine the best approach for informing those who need first-hand information and gently urge your staff member to do it quickly. As an aside, be sure to respect the need for your students to hear news first hand information just as we expect for our colleagues.  In many cases, they will be hit harder with the impact of the person’s departure.

For the group, your role is to slow down the “what happens next” questions. You may not have answers and shouldn’t feel pressured to respond.  You also don’t want to miss the chance to assessment of roles and responsibilities.  Sadly, in our field it typically takes someone’s departure to really allow us to change things up. Don’t forget to look for opportunity in all of this.

For the individual, work to negotiate realistic departure time frames. Some may disagree, but I think the “new” institution has the upper hand here. Expecting someone who has just accepted a new job to be excessively pushy in negotiating an extremely long time frame is just unreasonable.  Granted, there will be unique circumstances like major events or the end of a semester that may factor in.  If it does, try to get creative if you have to, but know that extended departures are difficult for all involved.  After you know someone is leaving, everyone just needs to get started on the next steps.

For the individual leaving, talk about a plan for transfer of knowledge. You have even more responsibility to assure that things are left “well” than the departing employee. I know many supervisors who just leave it up to the departing staff member, but then the supervisor gets stuck with results that may not meet expectations. Talk to your staffer about what meetings you want them to stop attending and why, just so you can lessen the awkwardness of involvement in future planning.  Do this with kindness and respect for their prior contribution and know that it will make their departure easier if they don’t have to ask your permission to skip meetings.

Speaking of goodbyes, ask the staff member what kind of farewell celebration they are comfortable with.  Not everyone wants a big hoopla and not everyone is comfortable with combination student/staff gatherings.  You may want to avoid the awkward farewell cake in the conference room in the name of a group of close coworkers meeting after work for a dinner. Or, you could go with hoopla and I have a great, long list of fun ideas to share for that too.

On the last day of work, be sure that you expect nothing other than transfer of files, changing of passwords, and goodbyes.  In addition, for your staff member’s sake, I hope that this is the last day of your work related conversation with your staff member.  So many student affairs people are so kind to offer help after they leave, but out of respect for their transition to the new job it’s a good idea to work to avoid it except in emergency situations.  This day is when your relationship with your employee can be unburdened by supervisory roles and shift into one of those great friendships rooted in professional connections or… not. (awkward silence).

I am proud to have seen many great staff members pass through our department during my time at my institution and know that so many of them are at new places doing great things.  I am lucky to stay in touch with most of them, I believe in part to a focus on letting them leave on the best possible note.  (and also partially thanks to Facebook, let’s be honest!)

What did I forget on this list?  What other things should supervisors do to help staff members make graceful exits?

Inspired by some recent Twitter exchanges with the fantastic Kristen Rothfeld (@kmrothfeld), I spent some time reflecting on my own job search experiences during my last year of graduate school.  I remember the panicked excitement I felt about the idea of “going through placement” at the ACPA Convention and thinking about how exciting it would be to travel with my New York University classmates as we all started the journey of the job search together.

When I was having this internal dialogue with myself, it was 1994. Traveling to the convention was a crucial step in my job search, as missing out on the placement opportunity would mean that I would miss out on numerous position listings and pass the job of my dreams to someone else who got there first.

Fast forward to 2010. There are graduate students all over the country who are stressing about how to pay for travel to TPE and ACPA’s C3 and I sympathize with the challenging task of finding money for travel, hotel and registration on a graduate student’s stipend. During these days of limited travel budgets on my campus, the thought of shelling out convention costs for me is a little frightening, let alone on a graduate student’s salary.

I know I am probably about to get unpopular in some circles.  Ready, set….

I don’t think going to national placement centers is as important as it used to be.

Here are a few of my reasons…

• The “Domino” theory – For the job of your dreams to be available in March, someone has to already have given notice that they are leaving.  This kind of notice has to happen with enough time for the institution to get approval to post the position, unless the institution has multiple positions available in that area each year. Placement is the beginning of the job search cycle, not the end.

• My institution requires me to only treat the interview at placement as “informational” in nature, as all candidates would not have access to the conference opportunity to meet with us.  Therefore, we’re not using the conference as a screening opportunity.  I doubt we are the only institution approaching it this way.  While it helps me to get to know the candidate, a person not attending placement has an equal chance to access our process.

• Related to this, I’m doubtful that we’ll find a campus that will only post their position at the placement center and won’t post it on sites like HigherEdJobs.Com.

• To all of my non-res life colleagues out there, we have to face it.  For every campus that has one “student activities coordinator” they have more residence hall directors.  Sheer numbers of positions per campus will dictate that there will be a majority of residence life positions.  It’s not a knock on the placement centers… it’s just reality.

• This fancy thing called the Internet brings job postings to your desktop every day. Seriously. Make the most of it by exploring the RSS feed options available so you can get the latest and greatest.  For more information on RSS, check out this post from Eric Stoller (@ericstoller).

I’m not saying that Placement doesn’t offer a great opportunity, because it certainly can offer that to a small part of the population. You’ll get “face to face” access to professionals from around the country all under one roof and get the chance to see a broad perspective of some great opportunities.

With this post, I’m just asking my graduate student colleagues out there to take a deep breath and realize that the world of placement reaches far beyond the walls of that Convention Center. If you can’t afford to take the trip, then rest assured that you will still be in the loop.  Keep in mind that the Placement Center is just the beginning of a job search season that lasts from March through opening of the school year.

So, SA Collaborative… do you think placement still serves the same role as it used to in our profession?