Curious what Student Affairs folks read about the most in March? Below are the top 5 posts for last month:
1) Social Justice in Student Affairs-How do you unpack your knapsack?
2) Ten Ways to Support Multiracial Students
3) Where All My Introverts At?
It’s no April Fool’s Day joke, after 195 people submitted 1,560 votes, we’ve finally finished counting all the hanging chads and are ready to announce the winners!
Thank you to everyone for nominating some awesome individuals from our #SAChat community for the 2013 #SAChat awards. We’ve tallied your votes, and are pleased as punch to announce the winners. The #SAChat community continues to thrive due to the participation of these individuals, and everyone who took the time to share, vote, and tweet with the hashtag. We celebrate you all!
And now onward with the winners…
Ed introduced me to twitter & how to learn outside my personal circles. He’s innovative in the way he engages people & technologies he uses.” – @ErinMorrell11From supporting new professionals (#sagrow) to sharing the latest tech trends in higher ed, @edcabellon is innovative, encouraging & genuine” – @KateMCGK
Stacy has the ability to balance her quick wit with thought provoking questions in ways that are unparalleled. Makes me laugh and think!” – @KMaguraHer blog posts and tweets challenge me daily to rethink my actions and work ethically as a professional.” – @lindsayrite
Kristen exudes a quiet strength and touches the lives of so many with whom she interacts. Her blog demonstrates vulnerability and humor. She has touched my life in direct and indirect ways and finds points of intersection that make our connections so meaningful. Just love her.” – @DSchmidtRogers@kristendom’s words induce great self-reflection & by starting the #sareads group, she has brought #sapros together for the love of learning” - @njrobichaud
Posts by @saproblems are so funny because so many of us relate. And sometimes we have to find the humor in it to keep from going insane!” - @DMarie2484“@SAProblems keeps it blunt!” – @BluntSAPro
@ericstoller challenges me to think outside of student affairs norms. As an #sagrad he invests in my future and keeps me informed of trends.” – @DanaRMcNulty
She manages to convey genuine kindness and heart all while sharing AND creating great content for the #sachat community.” - @NotAnniebutanne@oberbecca actively engages w/ folks to make them feel welcome and that their contribution to the discussion matters.” - @marthakcompton
@ammamarfo deserves her award because of her positivity, erudite insight into #SAChat issues, and a charming wit that could win over anyone.” – @thebigbabooski
Thanks to everyone who participated in our #SAchat focused on Why I am in Student Affairs. This week’s topic produced over 600 tweets from several student affairs professionals, graduate students and undergraduates interested or working in the Student Affairs field! Check out this blog post from Dana McNulty which prompted this topic.
View transcript on Storify.
What are some other topics you would like to see us cover? Please let us know your ideas and feedback to keep #sachat growing strong. Until next week, (if you haven’t already done so) please make sure to LIKE our Facebook Page. Thanks for your continued support!
Photo via ogimogi
“Isn’t your major in ice breakers?”
Believe it. I was asked that question. By a student that I’d advised for 4 months already. I think she was kidding but either way…. really?
I know better now. I open a new student advisee relationship with a two-prong approach: relationship and education. Educate at the beginning so she\he understand my role, the role of 1-on-1s, and what this relationship will look like. For me, the education piece encompasses the following:
Take a peak at some of the files I’ve created for these topics
These items are important but can’t trump the relationship piece of it all. If I follow just the bullet points above then I’m not doing justice to the individuality and wonderfulness that a new student-advisee relationship offers. The first few 1-on-1s are for relationship building. Sometimes that looks like me buying lunch for a student and hearing their story, other times its finding out their silly facts like favorite candy or life aspirations. I can’t help a student develop if I don’t understand the path walked up until this point.
I also have to remind myself that by asking a student to disclose I need to be willing to do the same. If I never share who I am then it never becomes a relationship. On the contrary, not sharing solidifies my status as an administrator and not an advisor. I do believe there is a difference between the two. An administrator know a student, an advisor understands a student. I have to share some of my own struggles and experiences. It humanizes me, brings me down from my 2nd floor office into the overcrowded tables of the common areas.
I’ve laid this out like a step-by-step but we know better. Building relationships with students is just like building relationships with anyone else. It’s hard. It takes time. It relies on mutual respect and that can only be earned when you have a common struggle, a common fight you can be teammates for.
Help me understand how you build relationships with advisees? Do you have any stories of times where it went well and times where it didn’t?
The Multiracial Network (MRN) is a group of student affairs professionals organized within ACPA’s Commission for Multicultural Affairs. MRN’s goals include increasing the discourse on multiracial issues in higher education and providing resources to practitioners who are invested in multiracial student support. This year, to celebrate our network’s 10th anniversary at ACPA, we assembled a list of ten ways to support multiracial students. These are by no means comprehensive, but we felt that this would be a good starting point for practitioners who seek to provide support to a population whose racial identity is both varied and oftentimes complex.
1) When designing surveys that require demographic data, allow respondents to “Check all that apply” and include a “bi/multiracial” or “mixed” option (or explain why you cannot).
2) Ensure that multiracial students feel that they have a space that they fit in on campus, whether that is a student organization or location.
3) When engaging in racial social justice work, make sure to include spaces for conversations about multiracial people.
4) Build your multicultural competence in the field of multiracial identity development. Understanding and embracing the complexities of how environments affect racial identity development for multiracial college students is key to identifying ways in which to support multiracial students at your institution.
5) Be mindful about language and your own biases. It is common to use monoracial language and/or even the term “students of color” when speaking about students who identity with one or more marginalized and/or underrepresented racial identities.
6) It’s all about relationships! Bottom line, work to build relationships with students across multiple social identities that can foster a supportive environment where students see you as an advocate around a plethora of matters.
7) Understand that multiracial students can racially identify in different ways based on their experiences and situations. It is important that we do not make assumptions based on how a student looks or put them in positions where they may feel obligated to represent a specific racial identity.
8) Explore your own background as well as resources, writing, scholarship dealing with multiracial experiences, histories of people of color and issues of social, economic and racial justice.
9) Advocate for Multiracial students in your higher education institution and educational policies. Give them a voice!
10) Stay connected to national mixed race/multiracial resources like MRN and the National Association of Mixed Student Organizations (NAMSO) to be informed about ongoing multiracial student needs.
Thanks to everyone who participated in our #SAchat focused on Breaking through Blanket Statements in #SA. This week’s topic produced over 600 tweets from several student affairs professionals, graduate students and undergraduates interested or working in the Student Affairs field!
View transcript on Storify <—- SORRY IT’S A BROKEN LINK RIGHT NOW. WORKING ON IT.
What are some other topics you would like to see us cover? Please let us know your ideas and feedback to keep #sachat growing strong. Until next week, (if you haven’t already done so) please make sure to LIKE our Facebook Page. Thanks for your continued support!
Image Borrowed From Here
Something that I’ve come to appreciate during my time in higher ed is the value of face recognition. Whether it’s someone you’ve seen a dozen or more times or someone you just happen to randomly bump into 5 years ago in a stop and shop parking lot. Remembering the times and places we’ve met individuals along the road of life can be a hugely beneficial tool when we find ourselves diving headfirst into large national conventions.
My problem is, names. I have one of the best image memories of anyone I know, but when it comes to connecting that face to an actual name, title, etc. I am more often than not at a loss. Why won’t my brain just store everything nice and neatly in a filing cabinet format so I can connect these important details?
I know this is an area of weakness of mine. So recently I tested things out to see how I may still be able to take full utilization of my memories of interactions, and the product thus far has been quite fruitful. As I interact with folks either on campus, at small conferences, or at enormous conventions, there are 3 things I do.
Although it’s only been a few short months now, taking these actions have really advanced my ability to retain a face AND name connection with folks I’ve met. As we leap into our various conferences and conventions in the coming weeks and months, my hope is that the masses of folks I encounter will become new colleagues, connections and friends. For all of you, I wish the same! Figure out what works best for you to make connections that last both mentally and physically, and you will surely win big
Everyday the #sachat feed is full of great resources, professional musings, and important questions that have been posed to the community. Here is a highlight of some of the tweets from the stream during the last week. We know this list is only scratching the surface, but we hope it will encourage you to keep the conversation going. Chat on!
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.
