Thanks to everyone who participated in our #SAchat focused on Getting Involved with Professional Organizations. This week’s topic produced over 450 tweets from several student affairs professionals, graduate students and undergraduates interested or working in the Student Affairs field!

View transcript as a Google doc.

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!

My first student affairs association conference was the 2006 NASPA held in Washington, D.C. I was graduating from my master’s program that spring, and several of us were heading East to participate in The Placement Exchange.

As graduate students, we had taken the time to figure out many cost saving measures. We flew into the cheaper airport, fit nine of us in a shuttle into downtown, and me and my three closest cohort friends shared a $99/night room in the Days Inn. (No, it was not one of the conference hotels.) The room was “non-smoking” yet we all had a slight stale smoke smell to our interview clothes, and I am still not sure if something of a questionable nature was rolled up in the carpet that sat at the end of the hall all week.

I forgot pajamas, packed uncomfortable shoes, and spent more time agonizing over what sessions I should go to instead of actually attending the sessions. I can honestly say, my conference experiences have only gotten better as I have spent more time in the field. As I started planning my conference season, I thought it would be useful to solicit advice from others in the profession to share with those attending their first conference this year. Thank you to all who shared, I think we have a great collection of wisdom to pass along. If you didn’t get a chance to share your tips, please feel free to add them to the list!

My own advice from the D.C. conference years ago? 1) If you are able to, splurge on a conference hotel. Being in a comfortable space really makes the conference more enjoyable, and being in the midst of all the happenings gives you a chance to make some great connections. 2) Pack snacks and bring a reusable water bottle. 3) Take some time to explore the city and sights around the conference location. It’s a good mental break, and a great way to find good restaurants and unique souvenirs. 4) Everyone around you may be a potential colleague or supervisor. Be kind, be courteous, and don’t get too crazy at the regional receptions.

I wish you all a successful and fulfilling conference season!

Conducting a successful student affairs job search requires patience, networking, and technology. That’s right, technology. One particular tech tool that is extremely useful for conducting a search is RSS. Job postings delivered to your feed reader via RSS means that new job announcements are efficiently delivered to your virtual doorstep.

If you aren’t familiar with using RSS, please watch this video for more information:

If you need an RSS feed reader, I would highly recommend using Google Reader:

There are a few student affairs websites that offer job postings via RSS feeds, including:

• ASCA
• HigherEdJobs.com
• Inside Higher Ed
• NAFSA
• NACAS
• NACUBO

Remember to look for the RSS symbol – – or for a link to RSS data. Ideally, all student affairs job sites will offer RSS feeds in the near future as this makes conducting a search ultra-convenient.

An alternative to RSS feeds for job postings is the “Email Alert.” Several sites offer email alerts based on a variety of search queries. ACPA, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Placement Exchange, and the Higher Education Recruitment Consortium all offer student affairs job search updates via email alerts.

In addition to the RSS and Email solutions mentioned above, most student affairs associations / higher education news sites offer job listings on their websites. Here are direct links to the student affairs job listings for the following associations / resource sites.

Student Affairs jobs via professional associations:

• American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO)
• American College Personnel Association (ACPA)
• Association of College Unions International (ACUI)
• Association for Student Conduct Administration (ASCA)
• Consortium of Higher Education Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Professionals
• National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC)
• National Academic Advising Association (NACADA)
• National Association of College Auxiliary Services (NACAS)
• National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)
• NAFSA: Association of International Educators
• National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA)
• The Placement Exchange (NASPA, ACUHO-I, NACA, NODA, ASCA and AFA)

Student Affairs jobs via higher education publications / job sites:

• The Chronicle of Higher Education
• HigherEdJobs.com
• Higher Education Recruitment Consortium
• Inside Higher Ed
• The Spelman & Johnson Group (SPG)
• StudentAffairs.com

NACADA Tech in Advising Recommendations for Use of Online Social Communication in Academic Advising

The purpose of these recommendations is to provide guidance to Academic Advisors contemplating the inclusion of on-line social communication tools in their personal or programmatic advising design.

For the purposes of this discussion, Online Social Communications will be understood as externally hosted Web environments, sometimes referred to as Social Media Environments, in which information is aggregated, presented and shared. Further, where functionality exist, the environments allow you to document and filter connections between individuals, maintain profiles, support multimedia, and facilitate communication with a time shift supporting response at user-defined times. On-Line Social Communication environments include Facebook and other Online Social Networks, Twitter, YouTube, personal blogs and wiki pages. Since Facebook’s introduction in 2004, an ever-increasing number of advisors, student services specialists, academic units and universities have been leveraging the benefits of an on-line presence.

The expanding use of on-line social communication by advisors and advising offices, evidenced by numerous publications and presentations over the past five years, encouraged the NACADA Commission for Technology in Advising to proffer the following recommendations when considering inclusion of Social Communication tools in the delivery of advising information:

1. First and foremost, one should appreciate the importance of face-to-face communication in academic advising and view any forays into Social Media Environments as supplemental to advising in brick-and-mortar environments.
2. As is the case with all communication taking place at a distance, the recipient of the information cannot be verified when posting information in Social Media Environments. Advisors should be familiar with your institution’s FERPA compliance or other student records standards and technology use policies, and as is the case with email and telephone, refrain from discussing these topics in uncontrolled, on-line environments.
3. Advisors should remember that Social Media Environments do not represent the university to most students. This being the case, allowing your students the option of interacting with you in these spaces and regularly surveying your populations to ascertain their continuing level of comfort is recommended.
4. By accepting that Social Media Environments do not represent the university to our students and that we’re reaping great benefit from students’ willingness to engage us in these spaces, care should always be taken to not “clog the drain” with information. Note how likely students are to delete university-generated emails without reading them. Likewise, if one pushes too much information into Social Media Environments, students will stop paying attention and disengage.
5. Finally, Advisors should also bear in mind that these are public sites and as such care should be taken to ensure you are playing the role of the professional–even on personal profiles.

Thanks to Art Esposito, Berdie Eubank, Ned Donnelly, Jennifer Joslin, Sharon Loschiavo, Scott Roberts, and Terry Duncan for creating these recommendations.

The NACADA Technology Seminar at the NACADA Region 8 Conference resulted in a lot of Twitter activity. As the lead faculty at the technology seminar I was very pleased with the level of professional engagement that occurred on Twitter. Participants used Twitter hashtags (#NACADATech or #NACADAR8) to create a back channel of connectivity. It was inspiring to see so many of the technology seminar participants using their Twitter skills during the conference. Hundreds of NACADA-related tweets were generated!

Here are the top contributors:

#NACADATECH:
@ericstoller (24)
@oakvich (23)
@UOAdvDir (15)
@sally_garner (14)
@laurapasquini (13)
@mavet (7)
@yojpoj (5)
@OSUMary (4)
@tbump (4)
@dmmoos (3)
@OSU_UESP (3)
@stephaniehambli (3)

#NACADAR8:
@ericstoller (25)
@kurtxyst (23)
@cschwenn (15)
@oakvich (15)
@sally_garner (13)
@UOAdvDir (7)
@ReaAdvising (5)
@laurapasquini (3)
@OSU_UESP (3)
@AdvisorLoftis (2)
@BilOregon (2)
@carmenincalgary (2)
@OGPY (2)

PS: Thanks to Julie Meloni for providing me with the NACADA hashtag stats.

Tags: academic advising, hashtag, Higher Education, nacada, NACADA Tech, sachat, seattle, social media, social networking, student affairs, student affairs technology, technology, twitter

The Student Affairs Collaborative blog is a popular multi-author Student Affairs site. The SA Blog, as it’s popularly referred to on Twitter, contains a lot of relevant student affairs reflections, polls and information from a variety of student affairs professionals. Yesterday, I was invited to be a member of the Student Affairs Collaborative blog. From now on, all of my posts that are tagged with “sachat” (short for Student Affairs Chat) will be auto-aggregated via RSS into the SA blog. This will be similar to how my current “higher-education” tagged posts get auto-magically posted to the Blog High Ed site.

Note, content repurposing via RSS will be a featured topic at the NACADA Technology Seminar in Seattle on January 24th.

Tags: aggregation, Higher Education, nacada, NACADA Tech, RSS, sachat, student affairs, student affairs technology