We’re trying something new with the #sachat. Knowing the conversations and questions don’t begin and end every Thursday at 12pm CST, we’ve replaced the Final Thought (FT) with a Final Question (FQ). MOD has been asking our awesome chat participants to tweet us their FQs at the end of the chat and choosing a couple that seem intriguing. These tweeters are then given some homework – with the help of our #sachat network they get their question answered and send us a blog post to be feature right here on the SA Blog. Let’s keep the conversation going friends!.

Our first post comes from Juan Martinez who shared his FQ during the October 11th #SAChat on Prepping Conference Proposals and Presentations.

Photo via Xtreme Xhibits

Last week I asked as my final question from #SAchat: What are good measures to use for proposals besides those listed by the organization/conference?

Institutional program proposal submission systems do a great job at providing parameters and expectations that make assessment of quality “on conference” submissions convenient and rank-able compared to their peers. When our submissions get selected, we assume that they ‘made the cut’ and are worth presenting, discussing, showcasing at the big event. I have come to ask, is that always the case?

Rather than attempt to evaluate what others individually do in preparation for their proposal’s success, I decided to ask questions about what should be asked from any given presentation/proposal that can broadly translate to organization/conference model proposals. The answers I received from the community varied from designing a 10pg description from beginning to end of what their presentation looks like, looking at how others reacted to pretested work and how it aims to impact their conference/organization, and those who believed the need was for a basic foundation which allowed room for creative minds to venture out into a wide range of ideas. Between all of these answers, I submit the following findings:

Point 1: Terminological inexactitude can confuse and dismay presenters. It is highly important to provide explanations in the guides of program proposals for any and all jargon-like terms.

Point 2: Proposal submissions should allow for questions to be asked to the presenter prior to selection. In the few times I took the opportunity to evaluate presentation submissions, I wanted to ask the submitters about their ideas, and decipher if and how it would or would not fit in the overall structure of the conference.

Point 3: Co-authored submissions can create stronger proposals. Proposals get submitted in various time frames—often days before deadlines while a few are made the day the
announcement is made. Taking the opportunity to have someone else help in the design of a submission alleviates individualized stress, catches complexities of ideas and can help translate for reviewers, and can help round out the whole experience in a few pages.

To submitters: create your own rigorous submission station that all proposal submissions in your office/department/cohort funnel through. Take into account measures like audience engagement, time presenting vs. time interacting, and technological usage. When submission time comes, if you come across an unanswered question or measure, add it to your station!

To submission requesters: When asking about presentation dimensions and impacts, what do you use to gauge them and do your submitters know about it? Be as clear as possible in asking from all potential presenters what you would like to see submitted and why it matters. Creating a space for ‘additional’ comments/file submissions can create a venue that differentiates a proposal idea from a proposed presentation.

Agree? Disagree? Both. After all, only the program requesters can create their submission guidelines. Great ones can attract great proposals. Misunderstood ones might create conference dissonance.

I was not able to attend ACPA this year, and on Tuesday morning I started to feel rather bummed that I was missing out on all the fun. As a Twitter user, I was following the conference to the best of my ability via the #ACPA12 hashtag, but at points it began to feel cumbersome. I didn’t have a good way to keep track of the information I was seeing, I wanted to be able to group tweets that seemed to have similar content, and I wanted a way to keep track of the new voices I saw via the hashtag search. Yes, you can favorite tweets (which I admittedly rarely go back and read), or bookmark articles that are shared (I find delicious rather gross aesthetically), but neither of these options seemed like the right fit.

I first heard about Storify from a faculty member on my campus, Kim Knight. She used it to create a story which combined information from her undergraduate and graduate courses during the Spring 2011 semester. I was then reminded about the service recently by Joe Ginese when he used it to create a story about a recent Nichols College Alternative Spring Break trip to New Orleans. Gathering a few tweets from #ACPA12 seemed like a great way for me to try out the system for the first time. You can read the story here: http://storify.com/julieclarsen/acpa12-round-up

Now, we have talked about Storify before on the The SA Blog, but I wanted to also offer a few pros and cons about the service.

Pros:

• It’s fun. I loved being able to move the tweets around and add photos that related to my various categories. I felt that I was creating a mini “conference experience” for myself by selecting important information from sessions, group ideas, and following new folks.
• You truly can create a story. I liked the ability to group tweets regardless of the time or day they were originally sent. Now, I realize this feature could be questionable in some situations, but in this case, it allowed me to group pieces of information in a way that was meaningful to me. You are also able to add text within the story. I chose to add simple headings, while Kim used longer paragraphs to give context of class assignments.
• You can reply and retweet from the service. If you use your Twitter account as a log in, you can reply directly to folks from the tweets in the story. This will also work for stories that you are reading. An easy and quick way to make connections with someone who may share your interests/functional area.

Cons:

• The search function is a bit clunky, and for an event like ACPA where there are thousands of tweets per day for the hashtag, it was tedious at points. (This is why most of the tweets I gathered are actually from rather limited time frames.)
• I would love more control over the visual representation of the story, and be able to really group tweets according to headings/categories.

Overall, I think it’s a great service that I see myself using again. Enjoy reading my #ACPA12 story!

 The elephant is in the room and now we can tiptoe around it carefully, mouths agape, or we can  acknowledge its presence.

I hate organized mentoring programs.

There, I said it.

Student affairs, as a field, has a storied culture of mentoring. We mentor student leaders who  express an interest in pursuing a career in the field. We mentor young professionals as they earn  their stripes and join the ranks. We continue to validate the need for effective mentoring  throughout careers.

Often this validation appears in the form of mentoring programs offered through professional organizations and formal outlets. It feels oddly like a dating service, filling out a vague, brief questionnaire and then being paired with someone with whom I’m supposed to develop a relationship of mutual learning and sharing. Worse yet, the mentoring programs often work under the assumption that one must be of a higher professional level to mentor someone else.

But is that how mentoring relationships that persist really develop? Can our development as professionals – as people – actually be reduced to six questions and an anonymous matchmaker?

I think about the mentoring programs for which I’ve signed up, both as a mentor and a mentee, and realize none has successfully produced a pairing where I felt sustained support or felt as though I could provide that to another person. Worse yet is having only 15 or 20 minutes laid out for us at a conference to even begin to navigate the waters of that conversation and then having the onus of finding a mutually acceptable communication plan for the duration.

Instead I reflect on my mentors and the variety of ways they’ve appeared in my life and how we’ve connected — the traditional routes such as jobs and internships; the soon-to-traditional routes of social media platforms. I reflect on the people who have told me I’ve served them as a mentor, identifying connection we shared that aided in their growth (and mine, too!).

In May, I asked the #SAchat community to share thoughts on mentoring in the comments of a blog post. As I reflected on what was shared, it validated my non-scientific believe that rarely have organized mentoring programs produced an actual mentoring relationship.

And so, as we start another year, this is my call to arms for our field:

Let’s stop forcing mentorship. Let’s stop creating false expectations of mentoring relationships and how they’re formed. Let’s stop using verbiage that makes it sound as though finding a mentor is as easy as completing an eHarmony dating survey. Let’s stop saying we need a mentor in a specific area or field and be open to mentors who are not what we expect.

Let’s focus on the tangible benefits of mentoring. Let’s replace the 30 minute faux mentoring at a conference with a brief session on intentional networking. Let’s better define mentoring and stop using the word so flippantly that it loses its meaning. Let’s be honest about who our true mentors are and not only how we connected the first time, but how we sustain those relationships.

‘tis the season for fall conferencing.  With limited budgets for professional development, I believe student affairs professionals are being more strategic and mindful of their professional development opportunities. Some professionals may think they have to go to the large national conferences such as ACPA and NASPA, but I think you’re missing an opportunity if you don’t take advantage of your regional conferences. One great regional conference I recently attended was MACUHO 2010, held at Penn State.

Held over three days, the conference focused on the theme of “Quality is our Keystone”. And truly this conference was quality.  The keynote speaker was Tom Segar, the Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs at Shepherd University. His speech focused on finding balance as a professional and finding those mentors that can help you reach your goals. He provided the right tone for the conference. The second element that was “quality” was the consultant-in-residence, Julie Payne Kirchmeier. A scholar- practitioner who focuses on women equity, Dr. JPK inspired several of us to really examine our lives and how gender plays a role in our work (check out her blog The Feminist Lattice).  Thanks Tom and Julie for the amazing support and guidance you gave to many attendees, including myself.

The conference was packed with excellent programs, ranging from crisis management to green housing. I have served on the MACUHO programming committee for the past few years and we are always amazed at the innovative and interesting programs that are submitted. But we also wonder about those who didn’t think they could present at MACUHO, therefore never submitted a program. I encourage everyone to submit programs at any conference, small or large, when you think you have something worth sharing. You might surprise yourself and get accepted into the programming slate. This is a great professional development opportunity that will not only boost your resume but help you make connections with other professionals.

There were also lots of fun and social activities at MACUHO. There was a campus tour, bowling, karaoke, the Common Round, and a walk/run. Another fun and interactive component of MACUHO was the Vendor Bingo. After the vendor luncheon in which they are recognized for their support, delegates (that’s us) had a chance to walk around and meet different vendors and fill out a BINGO sheet. Many young professionals may shy from doing this type of activity because they may not have any decision-making influence back at their home school. I know that’s what I thought earlier in my career.  But this event is not about solicitation but about making relationships. I see these vendors at different events throughout the year and though currently I may not have the opportunity to influence decisions, in the near future I will be in such a position. Relationships are the foundation of our professions and how we are successful in our work with students. We have great social skills in connecting students together, so simply use those skills during an event like meeting the vendors.

Lastly, the conference provided many mentoring opportunities. The Lisa Pierce Volunteer Incentive Program (VIP) program sponsors several undergraduate students to attend the conference. Their youthfulness, excitement, and passion for student life was contagious. Another great mentoring experience was the LINKs program, pairing up seasoned professionals with a new MACUHO attendee. I had two wonderful LINKS that provided some insight in what they were looking for in the conference. But the best case of mentoring were those informal connections you make with other attendees. I met so many wonderful people and one I now call a “mentor” (thanks @JPKirchmeier).

I believe professional development doesn’t only come from attending conferences but participating in other offerings on campus and now the internet. I challenge you to look around your campus for those development opportunities that would expand a skill set, or engage in an online discussion on a topic you are passionate about. No matter how much money you have for professional development, it shouldn’t define the level of growth you can have. Go out and get “devo-ed’.

Licinia “Lulu” Barrueco Kaliher, Ed.D., is a Ray Street Complex Director at the University of Delaware.

What I’m about to propose may sound a bit sacrilegious, in a challenging-the-sacred-in-student-affairs kind of way: Have you ever attended a conference outside student affairs…or even, gasp, outside higher education?

We in student affairs are provided an extensive slate of career-related development opportunities. The acronyms of our state, regional, and national conferences and meetings are a large part of the language of our professional culture. And though we love all of them, we each have our personal favorites. (You know you do.)

And yet here I am, encouraging us all to attend a conference or class outside higher ed. And here’s why. The most impactful conference I’ve attended in 25 years in student affairs was “Leadership: Beyond Management,” a weeklong Executive Education seminar offered by the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. But wait, this program sounds kind of higher ed-ish, doesn’t it? In fact, UW-Green Bay was the only educational institution represented. Other participants worked for insurance companies, architectural firms, manufacturers, financial institutions…you get the picture.

As a leadership educator, I was familiar with some of the content of this program, like Kouzes and Posner’s Leadership Practices Inventory. However, the LPI was used more extensively than I had ever seen it used before. This seminar is about strategy and business goals, the “entrepreneurial spirit,” and project teams. We discussed impulse control, communication norms, candor, positive influence, power, persuasion, and credibility. And when we weren’t in “class,” we did homework.

One particularly useful assignment for me was developing a vision statement for my work area. We were asked to put in writing: 1) where we wanted to go, 2) why this change was necessary, and 3) what success would look like. The document, which was to be shared with my department, had to be clear and concise, supported by facts, and inspiring. . . . I participated in this seminar in 2007 and introduced my vision statement almost immediately when I returned to campus. Several years later, it continues to guide our work. Student Life staff members call it “the manifesto” (affectionately, I think). I created the framework, and together we’ve made it come alive.

In all of the classes I’ve taken and all of the student affairs conferences I’ve attended, I had never before learned to express a vision. And having my document-in-progress evaluated by non-higher ed people at the seminar was amazing! Managers in banking, engineering, insurance, and technology don’t think or work like we do. They were intrigued by the peculiarities of university administration.

Really, some of the things we do are very unusual! If we want to improve higher education, we need to look for ideas in other types of institutions. What can we learn from, say, the health-care industry, amusement parks, or the local farmer’s market? How can we, as insiders, learn to examine ourselves from the outside…from beyond the usual university lingo, culture, and systems?

Higher education needs change; it needs transformation. Therefore, we must generate new models for our work. It’s so much more than whether we say “dorm” or “residence hall.” To take that example a step farther, it’s whether we should offer housing (or activities or leadership development or…) in a vastly different way or, perhaps, at all.

Like the business seminar I attended, Twitter provides opportunities for student affairs professionals to connect with people in completely different fields, and this experience similarly can stretch our thinking. What are we learning from them (and they from us)? How else can we connect with and learn from people outside higher education? Has your campus implemented an idea borrowed from another type of institution? What if we invited non-higher ed people to some of our brainstorming and planning meetings? What if . . .

In my last post, I gave somewhat of an overview of major placement conferences for candidates in Student Affairs. In this post I hope to share a few tips for all you Higher Education/Student Affairs job searchers out there who are attending a placement conference this season.

During my 15-year career in Student Affairs, I was on both sides of the interview table at placement conferences, and can offer you some perspectives that will hopefully set you at ease and help you be more confident, and more prepared.

Save your money now. These things can get expensive!

• Ask your employer if professional development funds can be spent to attend a placement conference. For many institutions, the answer will be “no,” and you shouldn’t be surprised or offended by this. It’s just where many employers draw the line in the sand. Institutions give PD money to help their employees learn new skills and enhance their skills sets, but it’s not realistic to expect your current employer to help you find a new or better job.
• Find a roommate (or two or three) to share lodging expenses. The nightly rates at convention hotels are usually pretty moderate. (For example, nightly rates at preferred hotels for this year’s ACPA convention range from $199/night for a single room to $259 a night for a quad.) And don’t forget about parking, which will probably be in the $35/$40 per night range, or taxis and shuttle service to and from the airport if you are not driving in.
• If you have your own transportation, and can find a less expensive non-conference hotel near public transit, then drive in, or take the bus, and save some money.
• Take advantage of free in-room coffee and free continental breakfasts (if your hotel has them). It’s also easier than you might think to find yourself skipping breakfasts, or unwilling to fight the teeming throngs trying to get breakfast at the same time. It’s also a good idea to bring snacks to your room, in case you are pressed for time and need to eat and run.
• Bring a water bottle and refill it when you can rather than buying drinks at hotel/convention center prices.

Have all your ducks in a row before you get there.

• Make sure your resume is impeccably written, targeted toward the positions you hope to apply for, grammatically correct, well laid-out, and easy to read. Placement centers will give you a candidate number. Make sure it is on your resume and that all pages stay together. Staples are fine at a placement center. Take a stapler and use it. When an interviewer has a huge pile of resumes and interview forms and brochures and giveaways to deal with, the last thing they want to do is spend their time searching a pile of loose papers for one errant page of your resume that got separated from the rest, because your paper clip slipped off.
• Speaking of candidate numbers, many candidates these days make personalized message to employer forms that give a brief statement of interest, and leave room for the candidate to write in the employer number and the posting number on the form. If you do make your own, consider using colored paper. It stands out. As a conference interviewer, I always liked these, as long as messages were brief and concise. They also helped me find a candidate’s packet more easily.
• Make contact ahead of time with potential employers about listings posted before the conference. Ask to pre-arrange an interview for your position of interest. Many employers pre-arrange a significant number of their interviews when possible.
• Make sure all your references have been prepped about your goals for the placement exchange, any positions you are planning to apply for, and your reasons for applying for certain types of positions.

Be on Your Best Behavior. At All Times!

• It won’t matter how you are dressed or how you interview if you make an ass out of yourself in some other way. Some do’s and don’ts:

• Do:
  • Come prepared for each interview
  • Be friendly to the interviewers and to other candidates
  • Stay positive
  • Thank your interviewers for their time at the end of the interview
  • Network with other candidates and encourage them in their job search
  • Use the preparation table areas to organize your thoughts and your materials
  • Wait a few minutes if the interviewer is running late. Since most interviews run about 30 minutes, you should feel free to go after 10 minutes. But these are very busy days and people do get off-course. If you have back-to-back interviews, let the interviewer know.

  Don’t:

  • Schedule back-to-back interviews (if you can help it). You’ll need time to get from one place to another and you will periodically need a break.
  • Badmouth, make fun of, or make rude comments about an interviewer, a university, another candidate, your boss, your current employer, or basically, anyone. This means in the placement center, the hotel, the lobby bar, the McDonald’s across the street…wherever. If you need to vent or talk out frustrations, go to your hotel room and talk with your conference roommates or call a friend or family member on the phone. For everyone else, act like it’s raining daisies and nothing could be finer.
  • Stay in the placement center all day (especially if you are not especially busy at some given time with interviews.) This can lead you to think too much, stress out, and get down on yourself. You will need fresh air and walking-around time. Take it.
  • Flirt with your interviewer or other candidates, make inappropriate jokes or off-color comments, or go on and on and on about how many top scholars you know in the field. It’s boorish behavior and it will count against you in the eyes of many employers.
  • Expect to leave the placement center with a job in hand. Most universities just don’t work that way. There are human resource guidelines to follow, and many student-services positions really like to involve students, colleagues in related departments, and upper administrators in their selection processes, and it’s unlikely that all of these parties will be represented on the interview team.

Learn Something!

• If the placement center is part of a longer conference with professional development sessions, go to some! They are great places to network, you might learn something new that leads you to explore additional opportunities, and you will need a break from the placement center.
• If you have the option of talking about your career or some topic of interest with more experienced professionals, do it. Sometimes, these opportunities come up in sessions. Sometimes, they come up on the sidewalk, in a restaurant or at a volunteer post.

Volunteer!

• Volunteering is a great way to get informal opportunities for networking, to learn how the conference is organized, and to be of service to other candidates.
• It’s also fun. Did I mention that you are likely to need a break from interviewing? This is one way to take a break but depending on what you volunteer for, you may end up volunteering in the placement center. Just be sure that you are doing it during an actual opening in your interview schedule!

Best of luck to everyone interviewing this season!

Thanks again to @tomkrieglstein and @DebraSanborn for allowing me to moderate this week’s #sachat!  I had a great time and gained a new appreciation for what goes into managing this fantastic weekly #studentaffairs conversation!

Tonight’s #sachat on “Making the Most of Conferences” was a fantastic discussion!  The one hour conversation produced 608 comments from 54 student affairs professionals! We are continuing our strong 2010 start to #sachat.  We hope those of you who participated, enjoyed it and will share the information you learned with others!