This past Friday night we held our annual Club Leadership Awards.

For this event each Club advisor nominates one student to receive an award for outstanding leadership displayed through their role within the executive board throughout their term.

The assumption sometimes can be that the President of the Club wins the award 99.9% of the time, however, there are times where the vice president, treasurer, and/or secretary can even win the award. Why you ask? Well that’s simple to answer because sometimes the leader is only as strong as its team.

Undoubtedly, there were many awards given to various position holders from clubs however even when the President of the Club won he or she took the time to thank and call up their other executive board members to showcase the power of a team.

This award ceremony is always special to me, my fellow co-workers and my supervisor, but this year was extra special for me. Indeed, this years award winners held many of the students I have helped transition and guide through Bergen. These are the students I first began working with when I began my internship at Bergen. They have impacted my role at Bergen from intern to full time staff as much as I hope to say I’ve impacted them. This graduating class holds a special place in my heart as they are my first true graduating class.

I am not afraid to say that I will shed a tear or two of happiness and sadness, for me, on May 16th when they graduate.

However, as these students transition on I look forward to the next group of students that I get the honor and privilege to work with at Bergen.

How do you celebrate your students on campus?

I’m sure the title of this blog will throw readers considering that I recently just graduated with my own Masters in Counseling. However, when I say my first commencement, I mean the very first commencement that I helped organize and run for the students at my current job.

The entire experience is so different. As a graduate you come to the location excited, anxious, overwhelmed, and overjoyed. But you as the student do not notice the amount of work which goes into planning, organizing, and implementing the ceremony which lasts no more than 2 or 3 hours at most. Here’s the secret of it all. If you, the graduate, do not notice the labor that goes into the ceremony itself then the ceremony was a great success. Indeed, the graduates are not supposed to know how much work is involved but rather get on the stage to get their diploma while smiling for copious amounts of pictures.

If everything is done correctly then the graduates do not know that you, the staff, have spent months planning the ceremony. They will never know that you arrived at the facility numerous times to discuss the details for the event. The students do not know that you, the staff along with student workers, arrived at the location the night before to set up for the big day. They do not know that you arrived at the location at 6 am the day of to finish setting up while running on maybe 3 hours of sleep which to most is a cat nap. They do not know that during the event you, the staff, are running around trying to look calm while solving every possible problem before it occurs. They never know that when it ends this overwhelming sense of relief hits you and you feel the great weight of how tired you really are both physically and emotionally.

Instead, they, the students, come to you right after to hug you, thank you and take pictures with you because they regard you with respect and admiration. In those pictures you feel as though you look so tired even though you are smiling from ear to ear. You congratulate those students and then set off to clean up. The irony being that planning the event takes months while cleaning up takes about a 1/2 hour. Ultimately, during that clean up time you, the staff, begin to plan for the next commencement ceremony by going over what could have gone better and thus developing a new plan then and there for the following year.

Yes, the students never see you sweat. Instead, they bask in the glory of their big day with no complications and you the staff let them have their day.

I am proud to say that, that was exactly how my first commencement went, and I was especially proud of my team that day.

As a resident of tornado alley, there is a summer tradition of dusting off the Twister DVD while scanning the afternoon skies for possible wall clouds. The film takes place in Oklahoma, but was filmed near my current home in central Iowa. The story follows a team of meteorological students and scientists as they attempt to place weather sensors in the path of a tornado to measure readings inside of the storm. After many failed attempts, injuries, and even fatalities, our protagonists successfully launch the sensors and save humanity. Err, save their research. As the flick can also be caught at least three times a week on cable during the summer, I catch up on all of my favorite lines.

Jo: [cow flies by in the storm) Cow.
[cow flies by in the storm]
Jo: ‘Nother cow.
Bill: Actually, I think it was the same one.

Watching the segment as the sensors rise into the F-5 tornado and begin generating data, I am reminded of our students, particularly those in the first-year. If we could read their minds and extrapolate the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, surely we could develop better methods for student success and retention. Fortunately, there are a variety of assessments to assist in this process.

The College Student Inventory™ (CSI) from Noel-Levitz allows students to answer questions regarding their strengths and challenges before they even arrive on campus. I ask my incoming students to complete this assessment after summer orientation and use the information to frame our beginning of the year 1:1 appointments. The student and advisor reports are handy for discussion and the group summary reports provide great information for planning our first-year seminar course and programming topics.

MAP-Works® offers a similar tool to discover student transition issues early in the semester. Students develop a personal profile based on their initial campus experience that is measured for potential barriers to success. A web-based report is generated immediately for students and faculty or staff advisors that compares with all first-year students on our campus. Campus resource services are suggested where needed.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) helps demonstrate theory that there are distinct patterns to individual psychological types even though persons exhibit these patterns in different ways. Helping students to understand their type preferences and how they affect personal learning styles provides a common ground for understanding differences and the transition to college. I provide an MBTI learning styles assessment for each student in our first-year seminar each fall. Students do not always grasp the type concept, but do find meaning from discussion of the transition to university style learning.

It is common knowledge among student affairs practitioners that students enter the college or university with varying degrees of emotional intelligence. Additionally, those familiar with retention issues will cite non-academic challenges as the frequent impetus for student attrition. Assessing emotional intelligence using the EQ-i® allows students to see potential areas for growth that may enhance adaptation and coping skills leading to academic achievement. I find the EQ-i particularly helpful for students seeking direction in their academic or life plan.

While no assessment tool can foresee every difficulty faced by our students on the path to graduation, I have found these tools to be helpful for communication, planning, and advising. Not a certified MBTI or EQ-i user? Check with your human resources office for recommendations.

Have you tried these assessments? Other tools you suggest?

Enjoyed Twister and need a good summer read? Check out The Stormchasers.

As a resident of tornado alley, there is a summer tradition of dusting off the Twister DVD while scanning the afternoon skies for possible wall clouds. The film takes place in Oklahoma, but was filmed near my current home in central Iowa. The story follows a team of meteorological students and scientists as they attempt to place weather sensors in the path of a tornado to measure readings inside of the storm. After many failed attempts, injuries, and even fatalities, our protagonists successfully launch the sensors and save humanity. Err, save their research. As the flick can also be caught at least three times a week on cable during the summer, I catch up on all of my favorite lines.

Jo: [cow flies by in the storm) Cow.

[cow flies by in the storm]

Jo: ‘Nother cow.

Bill: Actually, I think it was the same one.