The SA Blog - Archive - Technology and Programming

Where Are They Now?

Its hard to believe, but two years ago I wrote a post here on the SA Blog about some then outstanding Student Affairs Graduate Students. Joe Ginese encouraged me to gather information and write a follow up to showcase where exactly those folks are now as working professionals. Besides asking them what has happened over the last two years, I also asked them share their best advice for those who will be job searching this spring. I’m thrilled (and proud) to share their stories!

Constanza (Connie) Cabello

“In August I accepted a position at Bryant University (Smithfield, RI). I was hired as the Program Advisor in the Center for Student Involvement. My main responsibilities were overseeing the Community Service Office and the Late Night Program (Bryant@Night). Due to various staffing changes in my first semester I took on more responsibilities like overseeing the Program Board and working closely with the Orientation Leaders. Although the staffing changes left us down two professional staff members, it allowed me to work with more students and programs. I was even promoted to Assistant Director after 8 months, which was exciting. After about a year of working in Student Involvement I realized that while my interests were programming and advising, my passion is multicultural education and diversity training. I am passionate about providing services and programs for underrepresented students and providing opportunities for all students to become more culturally aware. This past November I accepted the Assistant Director of Multicultural Affairs position at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. So far, so good! I am working directly with heritage awareness programs and piloting a Diversity Peer Educator program. I enjoy that I get to work collaboratively with a variety of offices and departments on campus. I am even supervising a graduate student and our student worker staff.” Follow me on Twitter!

Meghan Harr

“I’m happy to report that my job search process landed me at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia and I’m still here! I serve as the Coordinator for Activities and Programs in the Office of Student Activities and Leadership. In this role, I advise the university programming board (called Student Activities Council here), the Monarch Maniac athletic spirit organization, oversee Homecoming at the university, supervise the graduate assistant for programming, coordinate the “Programs All Weekend” calendar for the division (a late night & weekend programming effort), manage some other programming and assessment initiatives for our office, and serve on a variety of other projects and committees. I’m also passionate about being involved with the National Association of Campus Activities (NACA) and am so happy to be at an institution that is so supportive of that. Currently, I’m serving in a variety of volunteer roles with conference and institute planning, as well as presenting a number of sessions at the upcoming NACA National Conference in Charlotte.” Follow me on Twitter!

Julia Duhan

“I was able to gain experience in both academic advising and admission and develop a love for creating meaning in my experiences and personal reflection. Currently, I am searching for a full time position in student affairs, but am able to fulfill my desire to work in education by working as a substitute teacher in my community. It is fun and challenging and is certainly developing my ability to work “on the fly.” Two years ago, I shied away from using social media for professional purposes but have since seen the light. I became active in the #SAChat community about a year ago and have grown my personal and professional network by leaps and bounds. Through social media, I’ve stayed engaged in what’s happening in the field and created a method of personal reflection by starting a blog in which I share some of my experiences as a “future” professional. I would definitely say that social media is an essential part of my professional life! In the last two years my commitment to students has not wavered, but grown stronger. It has also become more focused in that I am committed to helping students define and create success for themselves both in college and beyond.” Follow me on Twitter!

Emily Clare Sharples

“I’m currently working at Duke University School of Law, in the Career & Professional Development Center. My official title is Office Coordinator, so I tend to do a little bit of a lot of things. I’ve ramped up our use of Twitter and our blog to reach our students; I also spearheaded an overhaul of our website this summer. Its more user-friendly and more user-driven now, and seems to have been successful since its launch (www.law.duke.edu/career). I haven’t tried to do more Social Media outreach in the form of facebook, as I learned in graduate school that post-grad students aren’t as likely to engage that way.”

Stephen “Gavin” Weiser

“I am now working in the same office that I was in grad school, but left for a year and a half working elsewhere. Both that job and this one I got the word about through contacts on twitter! I am now the Assistant Director for the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs at the University of South Carolina. I truly feel that my technological bend has helped my career. My colleagues know that I am an understanding ally and educator of these mediums which is very helpful to them, particularly when they have no idea what a twitter or a Facebook is. I think using social media to connect with other professionals using active hashtags is almost a necessity anymore. Posting articles that you learned something from, as well as partaking in the dialogue to the sign of someone who is driven to learn.” Follow me on Twitter!

Shannon Healy

“I’m currently a Living Center Director at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, where I completed my graduate program back in 2010. Since graduating and starting a full-time position I have stayed active on Twitter and Facebook, and it is now part of my job responsibilities to help run the social media pages for the Housing department here. Social Media played a huge part in my Student Affairs career, from the initial job search, to idea sharing in my first job, to finally meeting some long-time Twitter friends in real life at various conferences.” Follow me on Twitter!

Becca (Fick) Obergefell

“I am the Assistant Director of Student Involvement and Leadership at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. My work includes advising the campus programming board, developing and implementing leadership curriculum through a Leadership Living Learning Community, certificate programs, training, and development opportunities. I also oversee the implementation and planning of evening and weekend programming, including welcome weeks and a summer programming calendar. Social Media continues to open doors for me in Student Affairs. I am the Social Media chair for the NACA South Regional Conference Planning Committee and have helped create a strategic Social Media plan for my office and the programming board. I’ve presented with my supervisor, Mike Severy about utilizing Social Media in the job search at ACPA, NACA, NACA South, and campus-based leadership conferences. My use of Twitter as a networking tool also connected me with the Women’s Leadership Institute and gave me the opportunity to serve on the faculty for that conference in December. Connect with me on my blog, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn!”

Zack Ford

“Well, it turns out I found a job that utilizes all the strengths I highlighted two years ago — it just isn’t in student affairs! 2009-2010 was a tough time to be a new professional looking for work in the niche of LGBT affairs and social justice education, and during my unemployment, I tried to stay connected to the issues I cared about by blogging about them. It turns out that blogging suits me very well and my unemployment hobby has become my new career. I started at ThinkProgress.org in March 2011 and my days are now filled with generating content about LGBT politics. I love that I get to be a daily advocate for social justice and that my primary responsibility is educating the public, and I would encourage future graduates to keep in mind that the passion that led you to student affairs could still take you other places! Nevertheless, I still miss the campus and classroom environments. Hopefully, someday I can find a way to bring my work and expertise back to higher education to have the kind of intense student dialogues I cherish. In the mean time, I’ve got blog posts to write and legislative hearings to livetweet!” Follow me on Twitter!

Jon Tingley

“I ended up working as a Graduate Hall Director for Minnesota State University, Mankato and I’m about to finish my Master’s degree in Counseling & Student Personnel: College Student Affairs track. As part of my program I’ve done my practicum and internship work with the LGBT Center on our campus, which has allowed me to lead a student group and create an LGBT roommate matching service for on-campus residents. Two years ago, I didn’t have any experience working in Residential Life, now I feel like a full-fledged ResLifer ready to pursue my first professional hall director position. When looking back at the person I was when I submitted my information for the original post, I can’t believe how fast the time has gone and how much I’ve grown as a professional. Part of that growth is because of the professional connections I’ve made through #SAChat and with my #SAGrow mentor Laurie Berry. Liz Gross was the person who first got me interested in #SAChat and she inspired me to present on social media and my LGBT research at conferences and on my campus. Professionals I’ve met through social media have helped me narrow a research topic and have helped me find research on LGBT Campus Climate, eventually leading me to do my own primary research. The professionals who participate in this online community have helped me in so many ways that it’s hard to mention them all here and they continue to provide guidance as I search for my first professional position.” Follow me on Twitter!

Laura Rogalski

“I am currently the Program Coordinator for the Office of Student Activities & Leadership Development at Western New England University in Springfield, MA. What my position consists of is: advising clubs/organizations; coordinating the student events calendar; marketing and advertising for our office and for all student events; event planning support for clubs/organizations; contracting and purchasing for clubs/organizations; coordinating and running the “Late Night at the Rock” program; supervising four (4) student Marketing Specialists and four (4) Rock Café Coordinators; serving on the Diversity Task Force Committee on campus; assisting in the planning of Homecoming Weekend and Family & Friends Weekend; coordinating the Student Activities EXPO; assisting in summer and winter orientations; and many other duties as assigned. Social media has been a large influence and asset to my professional career thus far. I use it every day to promote student events, get information out to the campus community and to further advance my professional development. I was a little hesitant at the start of my career to use it both in my professional and personal life but have learned the positive impacts that each can have so I now find that I use social media interchangeably between both personal and work environments. It is an incredible professional development tool as you are able to get to know colleagues from across the country and access information on a variety of student affairs topics at all times. While social media is still a tool that I am developing, I don’t think my professional experiences thus far in my career would be quite as impactful without it.” Follow me on Twitter!

Congratulations to everyone above on all their fantastic professional progress! These are just some of the many Student Affairs Graduate stories out there. To all those searching, continue to connect with those in person and online to help propel your career forward!

What is your story? How did you get into the Student Affairs field? What advice would you add to prospective Student Affairs Professionals?

#sachat, #sagrad, #sagrow, Advice, graduate to professional, Student Affairs

Pass The #WLSalt

November 16th, 2011 | Posted by Lisa Endersby in #sachat | Technology and Programming - (0 Comments)

It’s time for dinner. We call everyone to the table. We’ve set a place just for you. We’ve cooked your favourite meal. Come and dine with us.

After watching “Women Talk Tech” with Kristen Abell, Cindy Kane and Jennifer Keegin at the #NASPATech conference, I was struck by the number of references made to ‘bringing us to the table’. Given that this was a session on women in tech, the ‘us’ was almost always defined as women actively engaged in the use of technology and/or social media, within higher education or anywhere outside it. One concern seemed to be that there were far too few guests at this dinner party – too few women were at the table . While we could argue that the meal isn’t appetizing, or that the directions to the venue are difficult to follow, or even that the table and the utensils we set it with aren’t easily accessible, I am more interested in the guests themselves. Is it possible that our dinner guests, our colleagues, our friends, are already at the table? Why can’t we see them? Why aren’t they being heard?

I had the pleasure of viewing and externally processing this NASPAtech session with the brilliant Laura Pasquini. As I consider her someone who, I would argue, is very well versed and deeply immersed in the use of technology in student affairs, I was surprised to hear Laura say that she didn’t even know that there was a table. Through further discussion, we came to realize that perhaps the challenge isn’t that we aren’t at the table, or that there might not be a table at all, but rather that the table many of us are seated at is so big, not all of our voices are heard.

Making a metaphorical leap and likening this table to a community, I am reminded of many conversations I’ve had about the building and nurturing of community -groups of people who share common values, goals and interests. With the introduction and subsequent explosion of social media and the Internet, the ties that bind extend their reach even further, seemingly connecting far flung colleagues around a closer, more intimate dining room table. These same advances that bring us closer together, however, can just as easily keep us apart. Geographical distance aside, online communication removes many of the subtle cues and behaviours we often take for granted. In an increasingly large and multi-layered community, it often becomes easier, not more difficult, to get lost in the crowd.

The “Women Talk Tech” session also heavily referenced the #WLSalt community, a space for women to Support, Affirm, Lift and Transform. While ‘lurking and learning’ in and around this community, I have quietly watched and received support and inspiration from some amazing women. Lurking and learning, however, still only gives me a snapshot of the conversations that occur every day. I don’t often get around to meeting everyone at the table.

So while I still encourage you to send invitations to new friends for dinner, don’t forget to seek out, engage with and really listen to those over at the other end of the table. Will you pass the the #WLSalt?

Lisa Endersby is a Student Experience Advisor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) in Toronto, Canada.

EDUCAUSE

October 24th, 2011 | Posted by The SA Team in Technology and Programming - (2 Comments)

I just attended the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference here in Philadelphia. EDUCAUSE is the leading conference for higher education IT professionals. From teaching and learning, to new technology such as cloud and mobile applications, this conference has renewed and excited me for the potential technology has in enhancing learning. Some of it was way over my head and other sessions were right in tune with my philosophy and approach to education. The opening speaker was Seth Godin. He challenged us to think differently regarding our impact on the future and our profession. We are artists and must create and have the freedom to do so. I now have a long reading list with Seth’s books at the top. I enjoyed listening to Keith McIntosh, who talked about growing your staff, developing your staff and loving your staff. This theme came through other sessions as well such as one by Linda Cureton, the CIO of NASA. She spoke of failing. Not once, but over and over. The message? Take a risk and encourage your staff to do so.

Another great aspect of this conference was the exhibition hall. I have never seen a conference display like this one. 3D technology was everywhere, plus great food. Nearly every vendor had a drawing for an iPad. I didn’t win, but I think it says something about where we are headed as educators. It was great to learn about new technology and systems, but almost overwhelming for my mind. I spent most of the conference reflecting and mulling on the impact of technology, not only in my work but also in my life. EDUCAUSE has opened new doors and concepts to me and has shown me really what is necessary to truly impact learning.

I don’t know if I’ll get another chance to attend EDUCAUSE in the future, as it’s not the typical conference for student affairs professionals to attend, but I think everyone needs to attend a conference not directly related to their work. It allows you to be exposed to new thought processes and opens new ideas and possibilities. I surely got this and have new thoughts and methods on how to achieve my goals and aspirations.

Educause, professional development, technology

CoolTool: Booshaka – Discover Your Facebook Page SuperFans

October 17th, 2011 | Posted by Tom Krieglstein in Myspace/Facebook Best Practices | Social Networks | Technology and Programming - (1 Comments)

NAME:
Booshaka

URL:
http://www.booshaka.com

WHAT IT DOES:
Attaches a point-scoring system to the activity of your Facebook Fans to help you discover your Top Fans through an engagement dashboard.

MY TAKE:
Long time readers will know that I’m a fan of the 90-9-1 rule when it comes to community engagement, so to have a tool that really brings this rule to life is a big deal and something I’ve been waiting for. It’s not perfect yet as it seems to only track month-to-month, but I’m sure in due time, they’ll have a full data dashboard.

The actionable outcomes of having a visualization of your Fan’s engagement will be huge. You’ll be able to identify your trending leaders. You’ll be able to reward the top engaged users every month. You’ll build a game layer ontop of engagement. You’ll be able to…what else? How do you see this being valuable to your work?

SCREEN SHOTS:

90-9-1 rule, booshaka, cooltool, engagement dashboard, facebook, facebook fans, Game theory, online engagement, Student Engagement, swift kick, trending leaders

Millennials and Email: A Telling Sign [IMAGE]

August 23rd, 2011 | Posted by Tom Krieglstein in Online Tools | Technology and Programming - (3 Comments)

Facebook status update from my 18 year old cousin.

communication, Emails, inbox, Millennials

Refining and exploring lead to progress

January 24th, 2011 | Posted by Lisa Tetzloff in Books | Leadership Training | Technology and Programming | Uncategorized - (5 Comments)

As both a leadership educator and the director of a department, I keep an eye out for new resources on leadership. One of the books I read recently is Transforming Leaders into Progressmakers: Leadership for the 21st Century by Phillip Clampitt and Robert DeKoch.

Some leadership literature seems to lend itself better to higher education and student affairs than others. I found the key concepts in Progressmakers to be a good fit for a daylong, mid-year retreat I had been planning for the Student Life staff. My intent was for us to evaluate our programs and services based on their reach, impact, and connection to our mission. What was lacking or missing?

Our goal is always progress. We want to make changes that result in something better. In Progressmakers, Clampitt and DeKoch (2011) suggest that improvement requires two separate but equally important activities: “exploring” and “refining.” They define refining as tweaking to optimize what we already offer, and exploring as creating bigger, more revolutionary change. Exploring results in leaps, such as from newspapers to news on the Internet, or from the printed Sears catalog to amazon.com. (The authors contend that Sears could have preempted amazon if it had chosen to leap rather than tweak.)

According to Clampitt and DeKoch, “The most fundamental leadership judgment is determining when the organization needs to explore new opportunities and when it needs to improve (or refine) current practices” (p. 6). My experience in student affairs has been that we tend to favor refining rather than venturing into the risky unknown.

So how might these concepts relate to Student Life? A simple example: A few years ago we decided to temper our “bigger is better” approach to programming by planning some intentionally small, more intimate activities that we thought might be more appealing to some students. We then took the fairly unusual step of initiating a series of informal book discussions. We saw this activity as a tool for facilitating self-awareness, for increasing students’ comfort with conversing, and for promoting reading. For us, this was a leap—and it worked. Today our book discussions draw students, faculty, staff, and community members, and they remain capped at 12. We have since refined our book discussions by offering some via Skype (with the authors joining in!).

Another example: We are constantly fine-tuning our fall leadership conference, which typically draws highly engaged, on-campus students. We are now exploring ways to address the leadership needs and interests of our non-traditional students, who spend very little time, if any, on campus. What topics are relevant to their experiences? What methods and technologies would appeal to them? We want to leap. Ideas?

In what ways are you, your department, and/or your campus refining and exploring? Would you describe yourself as more of a refiner or as an explorer? Does your organization have both (and does it value both)?

Clampitt, P. G. & DeKoch, R. J. (2011). Transforming Leaders into Progressmakers: Leadership for the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

leadership, leadership development

Blog Reflections: Student Leader Development

I always hope for that perfect storm of aligned experiences when sending a small group of organization representatives to a conference. In my mind, the students will be empowered with questions and ideas to pursue upon the return home; their energy ignites a new sense of motivation in their group; and they begin to pursue their new definition of the future.

Sound great?

Hasn’t happened for me yet, either.

Sure, our students had some great presentations and excellent experiences but nearly always my student groups struggle to accurately communicate the true picture of what they experienced. They struggle to not use too many “inside jokes” when describing their time at the conference and nearly always ended up engaged in a conversation about “why can’t we send more people next year?” Given that our travel funds are not likely to increase anytime in the near future, we needed a new plan.

So, my insanely talented staff member (that’s you, Matt!) says, let’s try blogging.

Our office now requires any students traveling to conferences sponsored by our department to blog each day while they are there. We create a blogging site for the group’s travels and make each of them the authors. I love the fact that those of us not attending the conference can keep track of their experiences and that we can comment and have dialogue while they are there. We also send the site around to our student affairs colleagues and division leadership so that they can get some insight into student experiences.

This has enabled us to document these travel experiences and now see, in writing, what we already knew about the impact of spending time with other students who are similarly committed to common goals. As one of our student orientation coordinators posted, “I don’t think I ever got completely used to everyone actually understanding ‘Orientation Speak’ and being able to have in-depth conversations about different aspects of their programs.”

The use of blogs has enabled our students to do more active reflection on these conference experiences and has allowed us to use the sites to help other students understand what the experience might be like the next time around. We get pretty active commentary from participants about what they like and don’t like about the conferences and, when warranted, our structured reflection topics allow for some time for them to pause during a busy conference and make meaning of this experience that the university has offered to them.

For our department, we reported themes communicated in these blogs as part of our annual report in hope of illustrating the impact that off-campus professional travel has on our student leaders. Themes of increased pride in our university, increased confidence in their own leadership efficacy, and enhanced sense of community with other student leaders certainly made this student affairs professional proud.

If you’d like to take a look at one of them, here’s a link to the blog from our delegates at the National Greek Leadership Association conference in Hartford, CT this year.

http://bscgreeksgotongla.blogspot.com/

And just for fun…check out the Wordle the blog for our Student Orientation Coordinators’ trip to the regional NODA Conference (at the top of this post) and the Wordle for our Program Committee’s travels to the NACA regional conference (2) pasted below. Looks to me like they had a good experience…and had some fun along the way!

So, how do you facilitate reflection when your students travel? Any interested in blogging? If you are, let’s correspond and if our students attend the same conferences we can cross-promote their sites!

Campus Center iPad Functionality

September 15th, 2010 | Posted by Ed Cabellon in Technology and Programming - (0 Comments)

Over the last three weeks, I have truly enjoyed getting to know my iPad and seeing how it can be used both personally and professionally. One of the things I wanted to know was if I could leverage the device to use it as a Campus Center technology tool for our student Building Managers. Yesterday, I got a resounding confirmation!

Let me give you a quick back story. I have used FileMaker Pro to create and maintain databases since graduate school at Central Connecticut State University and continued to use it in my Campus Center administrative roles. It does effective information management functions such as recording duty logs, space usage statistics, equipment inventory, lost and found records, and even an employee time clock just to name a few. Up until today, this system was only accessible via the computer stations that my students were sitting at, as they logged on to the main database on a centralized University server.

Now, this information is completely mobile thanks to the magic of the iPad and the FileMaker Go app! Students can access the database via the Campus Center WiFi signal and input statics, logs and other information while doing their rounds! This will enable the staff to have real time Campus Center information on the go and teach students how to professionally utilize the iPad. When you couple this with Social Media brand monitoring of our Twitter and Facebook pages and our Blog and YouTube Channel, it is a complete win-win!

If you use FileMaker Pro and want a copy of our On-Duty database, click here and use the userame/password: “sachat/sachat” to access it!

Does your office/department plan on purchasing an iPad yet? If so, what will you be using it for?

ACUI, Campus Center, Databases, FileMaker Pro, iPad, Student Affairs, Student Center, Student Union

Pass The #WLSalt

EDUCAUSE

Millennials and Email: A Telling Sign [IMAGE]

Refining and exploring lead to progress

Blog Reflections: Student Leader Development

Campus Center iPad Functionality

Connect Online

Tags

Archives

Categories