In the spirit of sharing information as widely as possible (just like this blog!) here is a 25 minute video from the recent APCA National conference. The session was about Facebook, Orientation, and reviewing opportunities to help the students.

Facebook and Orientaiton Ed Session at APCA Nationals 2009 from Red Rover on Vimeo.

If you are interested in the subject, please join us for a free webinar tomorrow (Tuesday, April 7th). You can register for the event by clicking here.

I will be moderating the panel, and we will hear from:

Beth Oakley, M.Ed. | Director, Educational Development Centre | University of Windsor
Creating your college’s entering class Facebook group.

Jennifer Sherry, Ph.D. |Secondary Advisor and Recruitment Coordinator | Virginia Commonwealth University
Communicating campus culture, events, and key information using Facebook.

Debra Sanborn, M.A. | Director, Hixson Opportunity Awards | Iowa State University
Increasing engagement by creating targeted groups.

Come join us!

Legend
says that famed bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at a
crossroads in Mississipi, so that he could acquire the mastery of guitar that
made him famous. Afterward, he enjoyed success as a traveling blues musician,
before dying mysteriously at the age of 27, near yet another crossroad in
Mississipi. His music and legend live on to this day, and he has been widely covered
by aspiring and successful musicians, including Cream’s famous take on his signature song.

While
there is a certain allure to the legend, it’s not lost on me that Johnson’s
choice ultimately led to his ruination and untimely death. A friend recently posted an interesting article
on her blog, exploring the broader dilemma that higher education faces in
responding to this era of new technology and non-linear thinking, communication
and learning.

It
got me thinking about how our field can respond to the challenges of what isn’t
merely a change in technology, but a huge paradigm shift, not unlike that seen
after the invention of the printing press. Woody Allen once said “More than any
other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair
and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the
wisdom to choose correctly.”

My
friend’s post, and others it references, examine the failure of the newspaper
industry to understand the new paradigm, and posits that higher education is at
a similarly critical juncture. She is an instructional designer, so her
thoughts are very much centered on how to use technology to remain relevant,
but I encourage you to read what she posted, and some of the links she refers
to, and to post your comments on how Student Affairs professionals can choose
the right path at the crossroads, rather than “sinking down.”

I supervise and network with many graduate students in higher education who leave campus in a few short weeks. The theme in most of our conversations is the competitive job market in student affairs. An admissions job in Chicago with 3,500 applicants? Residence hall director positions with more than 200 applications? And these are not random candidates, but cream of the crop, qualified folks all struggling to land a position in a compromised higher ed economy.

Gone are the days of the articulate cover letter and flashy resume. Many candidates are utilizing social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to establish new connections. But is it enough? Not by a long shot says Kerry Sandberg Scott.

Just being signed up, though, isn’t going to get you anywhere, because the point is that you have to connect with humans. The reason Twitter and other social networking tools are valuable is because they help you connect with humans. They have no inherent value; it’s all about giving you the means to connect with humans. No one is going randomly check out your weather-and-lunch tweets and say, “You!  I want you!  Take this job, please!” You need to build relationships with actual human beings.

Case in point, a colleague recently had a new hire that didn't work out. I knew of a grad student applying for similar positions, so I encouraged her to send a note using me as a reference. A few days later, I had an opportunity to check-in with the colleague and he mentioned the grad student had contacted him. Although the position will be reopened with a position seach, he does plan to meet with the individual I recommended prior to the search. Connection made via the human network. Lessons that we need to share with our students.

The best paragraph I've read in a few weeks comes from the introduction of Paul Loeb's Soul of a Citizen.

The dream of sanctuary is an illusion. It erodes our souls by eroding our sense of larger connection, whether to our fellow human beings or to that force that many of us call God. The walls we're building around ourselves, around those closest to us, and ultimately around our hearts may provide a temporary feeling of security. But they can't prevent the world from affecting us. Quite the opposite. The more we construct such barriers, the more private life, for most of us, will grow steadily more insecure. (pg. 7)

In applying Loeb's writing to my experience on a college campus, the first thing I think of is walking past those students who simply can't walk on campus without earphones on or a cell phone held to their ear. My sightings of these students have skyrocketed over the past three years, with iPods commonplace and cell phones becoming a staple. Each time I see a student say goodbye to a group of friends and then pull out a cell phone to call someone else, I wonder about the connection between this behavior and self-confidence.

The idea of a "larger connection," as Loeb labels it, seems lost on many of today's college students. Many students would seemingly rather keep listening to their music than say thank you to those holding a door open for them. It seems like they'd do anything possible to avoid having to decide whether or not to make eye contact with a stranger and utter one syllable. So what do they do? Whip out the cell phone to talk to someone that's within their "walls."

We've accomplished quite a bit last year, speaking in terms of civic engagement. College students showed an incredible amount of enthusiasm all over the country for the political process, and service-learning is playing a larger role in education across the nation. But perhaps we're looking too much at the forest instead of zeroing in on the trees.

I've resisted the notion that just because youth today engage in activism online and plan it online, the Millennial brand of activism is of a diminished quality. However, I do think that youth today can improve their efforts to create positive change by challenging themselves to tear down some of those walls so they can be expanded. A face-to-face interaction with a stranger isn't going to lead to a scolding anymore like it might if we Millennials were still trapped in your childhood. Loeb gets it right — the more we erect walls, the more insecure we get; the less walls we have surrounding us, the more confident we are.

We’ve been discussing our college website for months with our IT department and as a result a continual theme has surfaced; our website is difficult to navigate and lacks evidence of life on campus.  Being a committed student affairs professional who strives to create a vibrant campus environment for students, I did not like the idea that “evidence of life on campus” was non-existent through our website.  

So, we decided that we would begin 2 web-based projects to address this concern. They are student created videos and students blogs on our website.  I have to say, this has been one of the most rewarding adventures I’ve undertaken in a long time. We purchased two flip cameras for students to record campus events as well as set 8 students up with blogging capabilities on our website.  

After much discussion, we let our students loose to vlog and blog!  The results are an amazing journey of self-discovery for our students and the best PR for evidence of life on campus that we could have never scripted!  Your students have a lot to say about their lives and their campus and if given the platform — they will inspire and impress you!  Check out our bloggers at:  www.elgin.edu/eccbloggers 

Alexa Harrington wrote an interesting and thought-provoking post at her blog called Educated Nation, discussing the RA position and its increased popularity due to the great compensation in today's poor economy:

It’s amazing what starts to look enticing when the economy is sucking. Nationwide, colleges and universities have reported phenomenal increases in the number of applicants for RA positions. RAs (resident advisors) are the long-suffering, non-freshmen, adult(ish) folks who agree to live in vomit-splattered, high-volume dorms in exchange for free room and board at their institution of higher education.
[...]
During my freshman-year stint in the dorms, it was widely considered among the resident hall population that only an upperclassman with an extreme lack of tuition money would ever consider putting themselves in harm’s way (that would be in the way of a pack of newly-liberated-from-parental-control freshmen) for what is basically a non-paying job that totally wrecks your sleeping and studying schedules.
However, it was also considered by the lot of us that only someone with a higher degree of motivation to become educated than any of us college-fund-having kiddos had would accept such a job. So, while on the one hand we thought of our RAs as an especially cranky variety of fun-hating babysitter, we also had to admit that out of all of us, they were the most willing to do whatever it was going to take to earn a college degree—even put up with our played-out antics (which we thought were phenomenally original, but which the RAs and the janitors always knew exactly how to clean up, thereby calling into question our actual level of inventiveness).

From an insider's perspective, I find it interesting how outsiders — those college students who never contemplated the RA gig — view the position. I think with everything, there are always going to be a variety of opinions based on the personality of your RA. If your RA was a jerk, you're probably not going to think they're particularly valuable in on-campus living communities. On the other hand, if you had a high-energy, motivated RA, you're probably going to have a generally high opinion of the role. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing Alexa (at Educated Nation) wasn't one that had a life-changing relationship with her RA.

Alexa's description of the position is actually more hyperbole than it is fact. Some RAs are initially attracted to the position because of its financial benefits, and perhaps there are more candidates for the positions because of that interest. But as a residence life professional, it's very easy for us to sort out those who are solely motivated by material benefits from those who want to make a difference.

As the housing officer notes in Alexa's post, the RA is grossly underpaid in that the position's extensive compensation will be earned by the middle of the fall semester. It's not just vomit, either. Mediating roommate conflicts, confronting their peers' violations of policy, and the famous "other duties as assigned" are staples of the job, and if someone was hired only interested in reaping the financial reward, we know they'd probably walk out immediately.

One thing Alexa noted that I wholeheartedly agree with is the notion of grudging respect for RAs among students living in residence halls. A student might detest an RA for dispersing two of his/her parties in a semester and turning his/her name into the campus's judicial officer, but I find in my conversations with the student (which follows this referral process), most of these students acknowledge that the RA "was just doing their job," and we have a conversation about what that job entails. I usually come away from the conversation believing that while that student still might not have come to terms with his/her responsibility in a particular incident, he/she does grudgingly respect the RA for dealing with the "drama" that can accompany the gig.

One more comment regarding the output of the position — it's not just drama. Many candidates interviewing for the position, if not there for the room and board, naively proclaim they're there to "help people." (As someone respected in the higher ed field notes, "You can help people at a 7-11.") This is a better answer, though, than the material benefits line. Eventually, successful RAs do help people, but each does it a bit differently. They fine-tune their role with the help of residence life professionals, seizing the aspects of the position that amplify strengths, and challenging themselves to grow in areas of weakness. There are strong event-planners, and those strong with administrative tasks. They will understand at some point, though, that if they're particularly successful, they don't just help people; they change lives. They're the figurative (sometimes literal) arbiters of millions of minutes of life stories that intersect on a common hallway or wing. It might be automatic to focus on the negative aspects of that — illness, conflict, etc. But think about the potential there. The RA that recognizes the influence and opportunity they possess in that setting is the one who is the most successful, and the person who gets all that they can out of the position — not just the room and board.

Last week I had the opportunity to shadow our college president for a day as part of a professional development program on campus.  I've been starting a few blog posts since then in hope of using that experience to talk about some things, but I'm still struggling with the right issues to highlight.  Hopefully it will come to me!

Well, after recovering from the realization that I felt like a complete loser following him around all day…we got down to business.  Here are some take away messages that I took from a most interesting time!

1. Even the college president only has 24 hours in a day available.

Campus activities staff… we like to lament our workload because, let's face it, it's pretty ridiculous.  I'm equally guilty of this and learned a lot from understanding how the president tackles his workload.  Granted, our level of responsibility in campus activities is much more narrow in scope and much less serious in consequence.  However, he does use some techniques I am going to try to utilize.  First, he meets every morning for 15 minutes with his administrative assistant.  Second, he has a 15 minute follow up with his executive assistant at the end of the day. 

2.  Journaling and notes go a long way

He writes for about fifteen minutes at the end of the day to record observations, information he learns about people, etc. and has a good contact file with these notes.  This file is accessible to him and his administrative assistant for future meeting preparation.  This way, when he is likely to reconnect with the same person he can be reminded of details.

3.  Give some thought to meetings and what you can contribute

He shared a focus on looking at how he spends his time in meetings and whether he's there for symbolic reasons (because the president should be there to make it important) or whether he's the best person to personally contribute to the conversation. 

4.  Be "in the moment" when you are spending time with people.

It was amazing to watch how much respect for his time was offered to him because of his position of leadership.  Yet, I meet so many people who are very willing to sap my time into oblivion. I'm going to find ways to focus on making the most of small amounts of time by being more "in the moment" when conversations are happening.  I think when we schedule 1 hour meetings for something that may take 15 minutes, there is a tendency to waste some time.

There are a lot of struggles we face in campus activities to balance it all.  Managing the balance of administrative and student advising roles, trying to be a contributing "college citizen" and supporting other campus events, demands of supervision, managing crisis of the day.. it's all a big puzzle.  But, I figure if the president can do it, then I can too.  I'll post more about my "principal for a day" experience, but I'm interested first in time management strategies.

During this busy time of the academic year, what do you think we all can learn from those who manage executive positions?  We all don't have battalions of staff at our beck and call, but there are ways to translate the executive lifestyle into snippets that can be useful in our world.

Any tips to share?

“April is the Cruelest Month”-T.S. Eliot

Interview Etiquette

Every April, as interview and placement season gets into full swing,
candidates brush up their resumes and cover letters, practice their talking points, and dig into the position listings, while those of us on
the hiring side of the table are busy again trying to figure out how to clear
our calendars and put our game faces on, as we settle in for yet another flurry
of dark suits, and shined shoes, filled by candidates eager to impress. It's a whirl of activity, no matter which side of the table you sit on, and at times, you get lost in it. It's important, though, that when you do, you don't forget your manners.

Having been on the interviewer side of the table somewhere
in the neighborhood of a thousand times, I’ve seen many approaches to the
interview, both good and bad.  Over the
past few years, though, I have noticed more lapses in candidate etiquette. The
following article from the Vault, a respected job search site, shows that other
employers are having this impression as well.

http://www.vault.com/surveys/manners/index.jsp

Having flubbed several interviews in my lifetime, I know
what it is like to be on that end of the equation as well, so I’d like to offer
some good links to articles about interview etiquette. Good luck with interview
season!

General Interview Etiquette:

http://www.getahead-direct.com/gwin08-interview-etiquette.htm

Dining Etiquette:

http://jobsearch.about.com/cs/interviews/a/interviewdining.htm
 

What advice could you offer today’s candidates on how to be
successful in their interviews? Please consider sharing your perspectives by
commenting on this post.

This is our logo for Student Life.  We love it!

Like most higher education institutions, Elgin Community College has seen an increase in enrollment this semester and as a Student Affairs professional this translates to an increase in activities and participation on campus.  That’s a good thing right…well, yes, sort of!  Yes, we love students to be involved and engaged in campus life but it also brings with it some concerns.

For example, in the 10 years I’ve been at ECC, many clubs have organized dances on campus, and 90% of the time, attendance is very low! So this semester when over 150 people showed up to a dance we were shocked and unprepared. The Dean of Students and I reflected on this and how unexpected it was to have so many students attend a dance that usually has 25 students in attendance. My dean made an interesting observation.  She said that with the increase in enrollment at our community college, many of the students are reverse transfers.  Furthermore, these students have spent a semester or in some cases longer on a residential campus, and now they’ve come to our community college and are expecting similar activities and experience on a residential campus.  

Her thought really hit me and I began to think how can my staff and I anticipate this growth spurt with the resources and staff we currently have.  I’ll post some thoughts later.