On April 12, 2013, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) released results of their latest survey detailing social media use by colleges and universities. More than 1,000 institutions participated in the survey that solicited responses on several topics including, how professionals incorporate social media in their communication strategies, goals for social media, and current best practices.

The survey provides several interesting responses for consideration. I encourage you to read the results if you have the time. I found the following intriguing.

• 84 percent of respondents indicated that there are 0-1 full-time individuals at their institution 100 percent dedicated to social media efforts as it relates to their position responsibilities.
• Only 31 percent of respondents indicated that there were training resources provided for staff to focus on engagement strategies through social media and only 34 percent indicated there were training resources on content development.
• The largest identified barrier to the successful use of social media was staffing for day-to-day content management.

Certainly, there are several ways to interrupt data. Yet,  it appears there is still reluctance on the part of many to  invest in social media as tools to achieve institutional goals. This is despite 2010 results that found over 97 percent of college students were on Facebook and a 93 percent growth in students using Twitter from the last year.

Also, somewhat surprisingly, 76 percent of respondents affirmed that “Social media have great potential for achieving important goals in my unit.”

Certainly, the impact of Facebook and Twitter on college students is apparent. Furthermore, we are able to identify that social media has great potential in achieving institutional goals. Yet, there still appears to be reluctance on the part of administrators to commit staff to social media efforts, implement social media strategies, and provide essential training to staff members.

Why?

Is there a stigma associated with social media use at the institutional level? Are there a lack of best practices to utilize when developing strategies? Are the necessary resources allocated to other priorities? Do we believe that social media is a fad that will leave as quickly as it arrived?

Perhaps all. Perhaps none.

We have been too slow adopting social media as strategies for success. I find this concerning, not because we are neglecting social media, but it illustrates our lack of ability to be robust. Often, we discuss concern with the growing privatization of higher education. Often, I hear we must prove our worth, defend our expertise, and convince stakeholders that our specialization is value-added. Social media came quickly and we failed to keep pace. I’m not concerned about social media – we’ll catch up. But, with the rising pressures on higher education, I am  concerned about our ability to react when the next things comes. As departments and institutions, we have to find ways to be more adaptable to the trends that impact our field and our students. Businesses are far better at doing so and there is too much money in higher education for them not to recognize the potential.

I’m curious what you found interesting in the report. Utilize those comments below!

Indiana University (IU) has a long history with basketball.  This March Madness was different not because IU was a contender, but because of the spotlight put on the academic advisors.  It’s a tradition that on Senior Night, every single senior thanked their academic advisors for helping them do well in their studies and getting them to graduation and this year was no exception.  Also, one of the juniors, Victor Oladipo, and his advisor were interviewed by the Indianapolis Star.  Click here to read the article (there is a video, but the article tells the advising story).

I sent this article to an advisor/colleague and she emailed me saying “How cool would it be to advise those guys?” to which I responded, “I feel the same about the guys I advise”.  I advise mostly males in the Engineering and Technology programs on my campus.  I honestly look forward to going to work each day and being around such bright, intelligent, focused young men is inspiring and rewarding.  My students won’t be joining the NBA like Oladipo, but I have no doubt that some will leave their mark on the world as they have on my life.  Shouldn’t we all feel blessed to be difference-makers and academic supports to the students we serve?  I think so.

Image borrowed from here.

One of the trends I’ve noticed recently with my student groups is an increased desire in hosting small and medium sized conferences and meetings of peer institutions to discuss a wide breadth of topics. Most recently, this trend led to my involvement in a topical conference that would not generally be directly affiliated with our office…Sexual Assault. In the past, our office had been seen as the housing and activities office, not necessarily the office you go to, to work on such a meaty and heavy issue. Needless to say…I was elated!

To think that the cultural shift on campus now provided us the opportunity to have a hand in addressing this very serious issue, which impacts all of our institutions in one way or another, was very exciting to me. Working collaboratively with two stellar students, we coordinated a small regional conference, who’s topic became the issue of consensual relationships…thus…ConsentFest was planned.

Students from 6 colleges, from as far away as Chicago, invaded campus for a 24 hour conference, conversation, and critique on the issue of consent. The products? Hopeful, inspirational, inviting, and above all, meaningful to both those in attendance, and the campus population in general.

This topic is something that touches the lives of all students, whether they know someone who is a survivor of sexual assault, or if they themselves don’t really know the meaning of “consent”. Consent in itself is by no means the end all be all of developing a campus culture with no sexual assaults. As those of us working in student affairs know, it’s an uphill battle that requires immense resources, structured policy and protocol, and a shift in the psyche of the entire student population. But what this small taste of a conference did do is help begin to frame the conversation for the people in the room. It gave a construct from which a seed can be planted on each individuals’ campus. From there, with appropriate nurturing and attention, who knows what can grow?!

So why write a blog post about this? Well, in the process of entering into this meaty world of meaningful mini-conferences, I learned some very important logistical and developmental tidbits, and I want others to both learn from my mistakes and successes so that you too can feel increasingly comfortable tackling these sorts of issues in a similar fashion.

1. Develop the most thorough outline and check list you ever have! With all events we do we have a plan of attack most likely, but when you begin to envelop these very direct, sensitive, and necessary conversations and dialogues into the system, making sure it all goes off without a hitch is even more important. Stumbles and trips along the way can lead to a more significant impact in a more negative way than when it’s a fun and games sort of event.
2. Extend your timeline to an unconventional level. Along with your checklist/plan of attack, think beyond your normal timeline, beyond your assessment forms at the end. Think 6 months out; a year out. What is the goal impact of you helping to coordinate this conference? Is your hope that this will be a one-off or perhaps a recurring annual event? Do you plan to follow up in a reflective manner with the participants? Should you help to facilitate an ongoing dialogue via the use of a website or listserv? Obviously the ultimate goal of a topical conference is to impact a broader issue in a positive way, and although steps can be taken on a short timeline, true action and sustainability needs to be tracked and provided administrative traction. Keeping that bug in people’s ears alive can do more than you may suspect.
3. Imagine you have $0. I have used this mentality since I can remember, because many times I did have $0. It was matter of arguing a point and fighting for my cause to get money from others. In this, I don’t mean that you should be underhanded and not pay your keynote, or that you shouldn’t feed participants; rather, think of what is most valuable for this conference. It’s most likely the inter-group dialogue and exchange of ideas among participants, which in reality is free. It’s the peripheral niceties that help to collect these people in a place, at a given point in time, with a powerful presenter. So focus on the priceless core of the program, and fight for the money to build the layers that hold it together.
4. Tap those who have come before you. I’ll admit I went a little over zealous initially with this one, and I learned from that mistake. Although this event hadn’t happened at my institution before, it HAD happened in various incarnations at other places. Plus, there are INCREDIBLE folks working in higher education who have been tackling the issues at hand for decades. This is where networking year-round comes to your rescue. Build relationships with all types of people in all types of places, because it’s to your advantage and theirs to have a working relationship before either one of you needs to tap it as a resource. Consult the experts who have been doing this longer than you.

All in all, these new-fangled mini conferences I’m becoming increasingly familiar with are teaching me a lot about my own abilities, limitations, passions and values. I’m sure many of you are experiencing the same sort of process, and I only hope that these tidbits offer a glimmer of something new, different, and valuable for you.

Does your campus have student run conferences? What best practices would you share? 

Image by PhotoLab XL

Breathe.

I was having a pretty stressful day with a student group I was advising. There were some interpersonal issues going on, and try as I may, the students were still having conflict. All the counseling methods I tried didn’t work, and the arguments between students didn’t fit any theories I learned in graduate school. It was a good old fashioned “I just don’t like you” conflict, minus the rationalization most people use on a daily basis.

In times like these, I run to a trusted person for advice. As an introvert with anxiety and depression, I don’t have very many people who truly understand how my mind works and appreciate that I seek their counsel when I’m in a jam. So, I took a casual stroll downstairs to see my direct supervisor at the time.

In my mind, part of having a good relationship with anybody means getting great advice when you desperately need it, and sometimes when you don’t realize you need it. Getting to this point takes a lot of work, some arguing, maybe a little anger. But, ultimately you get to the level where there are very few untouchable topics. Now, this hasn’t been easy. We’ve had our share of arguments and disagreements, but never to the point of getting personal. The most important thing to come out of this process is the sharing of wisdom and advice that provides comfort and provokes thought.

With the above situation, I started telling her what happened and my steps. I was going to confer with other colleagues within the Dean of Students office that could provide guidance. Most importantly, I was going to meet with the students individually to make sure their concerns were being heard. As soon as I was done talking, she simply said breathe. Just a quick reminder to focus and remember that everything was going to be alright. I was doing my job to the best of my ability, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t control the issues students come to campus with.

This advice was reminiscent of my time at the Social Justice Training Institute one summer, where I was triggered at a comment and I just kept talking about my feelings. One of the facilitators was in my talking circle,  just looked at me and calmly said shut up. That was it! He pulled me aside and told me shut up wasn’t his way of exerting power; it was a gesture to allow a frustrated person to have a moment of clarity. A simple statement made me take a deep breath, calm my mind, and focus on the larger issues at hand. It also allowed me to listen to others in the group and learn from their perspectives. Sometimes the invaluable things we need to hear are so simple.

Breathe. It sounds so easy to do. To somebody else, it sounds dismissive, without care or concern about the situation. But, given who I was talking to and the value that simple word had on me, it was incredibly powerful. Lest we all be hopeful to have such wisdom grace us when we need it.

I was involved in a discussion about use of the “go-to” privilege article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh for a RA Class. There was debate on if this material, along with a step in the circle exercise, was the best direction for the class. During the discussion someone mentioned that step in the circle experiences often impacted students negatively, and had a tendency to take a bad turn regardless of facilitator skill level. The response to this person’s experience was that they should re-examine the questions that were developed for the class, and that most of the existing questions were not about race or socioeconomic status. I then heard myself say “Isn’t everything about race and socioeconomic status?” I can’t think of a time that I was talking about privilege when you could separate race or talk about the topic without talking about socioeconomic status. This discussion/debate made me think about how we at times get too wrapped up in teaching others that we ourselves forget to do the work that we are teaching about. There is an assumption that when you work in student affairs that you come with a built in appreciation, and beyond surface level understanding of diversity, and today that has been transferred over to social justice. If you are in the field long enough people assume that you are well-versed enough to start teaching others. These assumptions become problematic as you have some that are speaking and supporting topics that they are no longer taking steps to grow and develop in. Just listening to issues or concerns of social justice presented by students does not make us any more socially just. It makes us people who live vicariously through other people’s experiences. It allows us to live in a bubble that says that racism exists but not within our teams, our departments—we are the ones in the white hats as Olivia Pope says on the TV show Scandal. We assume that we are the good guys who support and challenge the inequity and actively try to stomp out its existence. There are times that we in students affairs need to burst our own bubble and get down and do the work again.

I am proud to say that I worked in an environment that worked hard to burst that bubble for me every day and encouraged me to burst others’ bubbles. Twice a month there were social justice in-services provided by the Student Affairs division and my own residence life department for both staff and students. In the course of my time at this institution the value and importance of social justice was clear. It was also clear that if you could not actively engage in your own development then it might not be the best fit-this was something that was a standard for staff and student leaders within the department. As residence life professionals the team of 15 graduate and full time professionals took a full day to do our own unpacking of knapsacks through a facilitated workshop where we talked about our own privileges and biases. If we don’t start with ourselves then how could we expect our RAs or residents to engage in their own journey?

This consistent development has put me in a position to be mindful not to go too long without doing a self-check in, and not to wait for a training to come around so that I can check it off of my beginning of the year to do list. As we are actively engaging in the recruitment and selection process of our colleagues I ask us to think about the social justice questions we are asking and the answers that we are looking for. Is the person really talking about an experience that they were actively engaged with or are they sharing someone else’s story? Talking about issues of social justice is hard, especially when we do self-reflection, but it’s a topic that we as professionals need to continue to discuss in order to push ourselves to grow. We have to talk so that we can continue to challenge and support our students in their ever changing understanding and engagement on this topic.

I imagine I was not the only one who scrambled to the Department of Education website the morning after the #SOTU to check out the new College Scorecard. Here’s how it works, you can select a specific school, or other category like location, size, campus setting, etc. (Note: I found searching by the categories to be a bit unintuitive as far as interface is concerned. I don’t think the Dept. of Ed will be winning any UX/UI awards any time soon.) You then get a screen of results that look like this:

So, you get some fancy gas gauges and some bar graphs with percentages — and that is it. From these (not highly informative) boxes, the student is supposed to glean enough information to put a college on their “list” or remove a college from said list. I say no ma’am.

I understand what the Department of Education is trying to do with the Scorecard, and I do think that we need to do a better job of educating prospective students and their families when it comes to options for higher education. My concern is that while some students will use the scorecard as just one of many sources, others will use it as their only source (I will argue that it will most often be the students who are historically underserved that end up in this situation), which may lead to them selecting a school, or ruling out a school, without gathering all important information. Short story, there is more to selecting a college than data that can be presented in a Kindergarten infographic.

There are some good discussions going on around the scorecard. Mallory Bower shares her thoughts on Career Development and the scorecard here, and the #AcAdv Chat from Tuesday 2/19 discussed the College Scorecard and advising.

What are your thoughts? Has your office discussed the scorecard? What positives do you see in the scorecard? Negatives? 

What’s the most difficult thing you learned in Oakland?

During a teambuilding activity, one of my colleagues asked me this question. It caught me off guard, but it was a very impactful question. After four years in an urban school district, with time spent as a tutor, teacher, and administrator, I learned many skills and life lessons. But, I really had to reflect upon the lesson that impacted me as a person and as an educational professional. So, I answered her with:

The reward for suffering is experience.

As student affairs professionals, we deal with a multitude of crises students will face. Issues like sexual assault, mental illness, alcoholism, abusive relationships, financial concerns, and cultural pressures are some of the things students bring to the table. Unfortunately, we may have (or already have) to deal with real threats of on-campus shootings and other acts of violence. It is a part of the culture we exist in, and being in a helping profession, we have a front seat to the world students are coming from.

To explain my quote, I told my colleagues a story of a student I worked with during my graduate school assistantship. He was very intelligent, soft spoken, insightful, and creative. However, he was facing strong family pressure to move and study closer to home. He truly enjoyed his time on campus; he was involved in many leadership programs and was doing well academically. We talked often about the stress he was facing and the strategies he could use to manage his situation. It was the first time I was able to see the connection between theory and practice. It seemed that he was doing better and finding a path towards creating a future for himself and explaining his feelings to his family. Sadly, right after I graduated and moved to my first job, a friend called to tell me that he committed suicide during summer school. When I heard that news, it was an absolute shock to my system. It was the first time in my life I felt like an utter failure that I couldn’t help him, and I truly felt like I had abandoned him.

From that experience, I learned that I had to give myself grace and remember that despite my feelings, there was a family that was grieving a loss of its only son. I had to keep things in perspective; I did what I could, I provided him with the resources at my disposal, and I communicated through my chain of command what was happening. There are some situations I can’t solve, and I need to understand that. I had to allow myself to question, to grieve, and eventually move forward with his memory forever in my mind.

Those lessons were put to the test in Oakland, where I was dealing with students in gangs, writing child abuse reports, watching students get arrested in the middle of class and working with homeless families to secure stable housing. I wasn’t satisfied in saying “that’s not my problem”; I referred to outside partners and organizations that had the skills and knowledge to help. I would assist in follow through and guide people through paperwork and other arduous processes. And, I would continue dialogue with colleagues and friends who understood the stress and trauma I was enduring. Don’t get me wrong; these situations took an immense mental and physical toll on me (calling Child Protective Services to report abuse cases is something that will trouble me forever), but I had to remember that I can’t solve every situation. I can only do what I can, and I need to do what I can to the maximum.

In the transition back to student affairs, I found that my experiences in crisis situations has helped me become a better professional, and to some extent a better person. I have developed into a humanistic and resourceful professional, willing to work hard to help someone yet remember that I can’t solve every problem. It has taken going through some very traumatic situations to learn this, but there are lessons that can’t be learned from a textbook or cited in a journal article. It has been through these many challenges I feel that I am growing into the student affairs professional I hoped to become.

Two years ago, colleagues and I started facilitating a series of campus dialogues on the topic of socioeconomic class and the culture of our campus. The three of us felt strongly that class, as a social identity, was not salient in conversations about student experiences at our institution. Each dialogue has attracted a significant amount of students, many of whom have claimed that conversations about socioeconomic class are largely absent from their college experience. Every dialogue has brought nuanced differences and topics have ranged from personal narrative to more academic small group discussions. The consistent thought, however, has been the acknowledgement that these students appreciate the opportunity to talk about something so significant, so personal, and so often neglected in day-to-day conversation.

One of the ideas we have discussed is the prospect of creating a campus identity center that is focused on socioeconomic class experience and education. This center would join our other various identity centers as spaces staffed by students and professionals providing resources and support to campus community members who would benefit from having them. A center like this one would also bring attention to the discourse of socioeconomic class, which is one that is not always so common in higher education and student affairs.

Some of the resource possibilities that have arisen in brainstorming this project include:

First-Generation Student Resources. Often, though not always, there is a correlation between first-generation student status and socioeconomic background. More affluent students with parents who went to college might not need as much help navigating higher education. Students whose parents did not go to college frequently face struggles ranging from culture shock to tension with parents who do not identify with the implicit and explicit pulling away from family. Offering first-generation students resources via a center could be helpful to those who need it.

Education About Socioeconomic Class. This could be done through programming, through trainings, through literature, and through collaborations with staff and faculty. If the discourse of socioeconomic class on any college campuses is insufficient, this would be a great opportunity to be a conduit for education. Possible topics could include cultural capital, socioeconomic class history, socioeconomic class cultural differences, and ways in which socioeconomic class intersects with various other identities to form peoples’ experiences.

Peer Support. One of the most powerful components of identity centers is the solidarity students may feel with one another. Offering a space for students who might come from similar backgrounds to bond with one another could be particularly helpful for those students who come from historically marginalized class backgrounds.

Institutional Support. If this center was staffed with professionals who were educated about and invested in socioeconomic class issues, they could also serve as advocates on a wider campus level. Ideally these professionals would be positive allies who could help students mobilize when they need to and be their advocate voice when the occasion calls for it.

No socioeconomic class center could, however, exist without complexities. The reasons for this are numerous, but immediate ones I imagine are:

-Socioeconomic class is often nebulous and differences can be difficult to define.
-Many people do not have a full understanding of their socioeconomic class background or have significant misconceptions of how socioeconomic class functions in the U.S.
-Class can be a shame-inducing, taboo topic that people do not want to talk about.

Despite these complexities, however, I feel that any movement forward to support students in their respective socioeconomic class journeys would be helpful in illuminating effective ways to do so. I also feel that the reality of socioeconomic class experiences in higher education would mean that a center like this one would most benefit first-generation students and students who come from poor and working class backgrounds. As a first generation student with virtually no cultural capital in college, I certainly would have benefitted from such a space.

What do you think of this idea? Are there additional resources that a socioeconomic class center could provide? What are some more complexities? Has your campus ever attempted something similar to this idea?

Image borrowed from Chaoscomedy.com

Nobody likes failure. But in the world of student affairs, and in the “real” world in general, it’s a fact of life that we need to engage, appreciate, and learn from. It’s imperative that we work to create well-rounded, holistically educated citizens, part of which, is failing. So what is our role then when it comes to helping our students to embrace their failures, and the lesson’s learned from them?  Intentionally integrating failure!

Don’t get me wrong. We shouldn’t push our students to fail, rather, we should let them stumble and fail from time to time. As role models, we need to learn to hold ourselves back from holding their hands every time a fail is on the horizon, but actually increase our presence post-fail to help them utilize the experience for developmental value. Assessing situations with them, letting them take the lessons learned forth into a repeat program, or even just offering up a level of expertise to help them understand what could have been done (and thus can be done in the future) to better ensure success. We need to provide these support elements to make it obvious that failure isn’t something to fear; it’s a tool for us to learn from. Understanding that encountering an epic fail has more value than succeeding in a mediocre, bland toast way.

The fact of the matter is, failure helps student’s brains become more flexible to adversity. It engages portions of the brain that need to be plastic as one moves through the developmental stages of life. Those who are highly successful in the world, have regularly experienced more failure than those who have had all of their potential failures prevented. So as you work with your students, encourage them to take on challenges that have the potential to fall through. Let them take the lead on projects that might lead to a discouraging result. Above all else though, when that fail hits the fan, be there, support them, engage that teachable moment, and be their fail safe, so that they can safely and comfortably fail successfully in their future.

Photo via Centre College Special Collections

As student affairs professionals we are aware of the various differences between two year and four year schools, but while sitting and relaxing during my holiday break I began to wonder what my students were up to during their time off. Indeed, it is no secret that many of our students stay in our main building from when it opens to when it closes. Sometimes they stay by choice but others stay out of necessity. Necessity in this case is defined in multiple ways. Undoubtedly, many don’t want to go home, many avoid other responsibilities, and many even avoid going to class all together.

Needless to say I always think of the ones who prefer not to be at home due to what’s going on at home. My mind begins to wonder what they are avoiding and how this week, which may seem never ending to some, is affecting them. Moreover, I automatically think, am I doing enough to help these students? Do they know of all the resources available to them inside and outside of school, if they need them? Have they tried reaching out to me and I’ve missed the cue? Certainly the what if’s, should haves, and ought to’s plague my mind.

It is at this moment that I reassure myself that I have done all I can, but underneath I believe that I can always do more.

My question for all of you is, do these thoughts cross your mind during long term school breaks? If yes, how do you reassure yourself that you have done enough? And what have you done that may helpful to others?

Juhi Bhatt works as a Career/Transfer Counselor and Coordinator of Judicial Affairs at Bergen Community College.