Thanks to everyone who participated in our #SAchat focused on Creative Orientation Programming. This week’s topic produced over 350 tweets from several student affairs professionals, graduate students and undergraduates interested or working in the Student Affairs field!

View transcript here (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!

After a full day of toting boxes and bags of clothes up three flights of stairs, the Sheldon family was finally done with helping their daughter Rachel move in to her new residence hall room.  It was interesting to figure out how to have Mom, Dad, young brother and younger sister all in the room along with her roommate’s family and all of their stuff, but they made it.  When all the beds were made and all of the clothes were away, Rachel realized it was time for her to say goodbye.  Mom and Dad had the same realization too and the conversation went something like this,

“Rachel, you have to get to a floor meeting now.  This is it, honey. We have to go.”

 “Ok mom.  Text you later.  Roommate, let’s go there together?”

Then there were hugs, a couple of tears and….a long, silent, reflective walk back to the car for Rachel’s parents and back to the room for Rachel.  They had no idea, but mom, dad and Rachel all simultaneously had a sigh of acknowledgement that things would be different from that point forward.

Today marks my seventeenth year of helping support some aspect of “move-in day” at a campus as a campus activities professional.  Regardless of which schools I have worked at, the formula is pretty similar. There are friendly smiles from staff (sometimes masking stress), hopeful faces on incoming students (sometimes masking fear or anxiety) and proud faces on their families (sometimes masking fear, anxiety, stress, frustration…there’s a long list).  The family members dutifully assist their incoming student with trying to move their treasured possessions into the world’s tiniest living spaces, wonder about the uncomfortable moment of when it’s “time to leave,” and exchange goodbyes.  The family makes that walk out to the car and the student makes that walk over to their floor meetings and a new chapter begins.

I’ve been learning a lot about organizational culture in my classes this semester and this process is a good example of an acculturation process that occurs on many campuses as many new members join our campus communities.  However, at some institutions it only tells part of the story.

I’m thinking about the comparable experience for a commuter.  We’ll call him Joseph.

That conversation sounds more like this,

 “Mom and Dad, I have to be on campus for some Welcome Week events.  See you later!’

“Joseph, what time will you be home? Will you be home for dinner?  Can you drop off your sister at her friend’s house on the way? We also need more milk from the store since you’re going out anyway.”

The parents’ thought process while Joseph is on campus isn’t likely about his transition to college, what a special time this is, or whether he will grow and change as a college student. It’s actually about the milk needed to make tonight’s dinner and hoping he’s not out late. That mom and dad can probably think about that other stuff…later.

As campus leaders, we need to start thinking about the point of transition into our campus culture for our commuter students as well as their families. Orientation programs are typically the point where we try to get students and their families to have that “things are going to be different” realization.  However, at some campuses there is a full two months between Orientation and the first day of classes.

Even if your campus has the best possible New Student Convocation right before the start of school, our resident students seem to still start a little ahead of the game because we have structured that transition point to happen at move-in day.

Given so many students are commuting to campus this year and that our profession has placed a priority on enhancing campus culture, let’s start rethinking campus rituals, symbols and traditions.  What can we do to give our commuters and their families that reflective moment of “things are going to be different?”

Please share your best ideas!

Luggage Porter by ColbyBluth

The day before Hurricane Irene made landfall along the Eastern Seaboard, a friend asked my wife and I to help volunteer setting up an evacuation center in NYC. While helping out, I was trying to be as nice as possible to the people coming in seeking shelter. I’d stop my work to help people carry luggage up stairs, answer questions, and clean up water spills. All of which I thought was part of my job as a volunteer.

After helping a family carry their luggage up some stairs, a supervisor stopped me and said…

“You shouldn’t be helping the evacuees as much because we need to train them to know that this is a self-help facility. They need to do things on their own. Training them that we will help them with everything is just setting us up for failure because there will soon be a lot more of them then there are of us and we won’t be able to help everyone.”

As soon as she said that, I flashbacked to the day before when I was doing an orientation training at a school and the president spoke before me. In his closing remarks to the orientation leaders, he said…

“No matter what, make sure to never, ever, ever let a parent pick up any luggage.”

Then a couple days later on Twitter I saw this Tweet…

So my questions are, are we doing too much for our new students? Are we training them that no matter what they need, we are going to make it happen for them? Are we turning college into a daycare facility verses a place where you are expected to carry your own bag because after all, it’s your life?

A few weeks ago I was driving home from staff training for our orientation leaders and I noticed that there was a grasshopper on my windshield.  A large grasshopper.  Clinging to the glass. for. dear. life.  As I drove to my house, this intrepid insect stayed with me – even as I exceeded 50 mph.

As I pulled into my driveway and shut off the ignition, I watched as the grasshopper leapt off my car into my wife’s flowers and went about his business – five miles from where he had started.  Now, five miles for me is no big deal – I could walk it if I had to.  But this grasshopper, while large, was still only two inches long and now was over 317,000 inches from where he had started.  He was, essentially, in a brand new environment, and was there because he hung on as I made my way to my house.  He appeared happy, jumping through the lilies and daisies, but he was in a brand new place, vaguely aware of where he was, with little knowledge of how to get back to where he started… much less where to go from there.

Jump back to new student orientation.

Last week we welcomed over 5,200 students to campus for orientation (our first-year class will be closer to 6,400 when all is said and done).  While our student leaders were exceptionally trained by my colleagues, I get the sense that many of the new students in their groups ended up being along for the ride, despite the best efforts of the leaders to teach students to fend for themselves.  The university where I work is a large, land grant institution that enrolls students from all 50 states and over 120 countries.  Many of our students are far more than 5 miles from home, and, as such, it is easy to get here and simply be along for the ride.

So it got me thinking.  How often do I work with students or colleagues and bring them along for a ride versus letting them get to the same destination on their own?

I get asked a lot of questions, and most of the time I answer them outright… essentially driving someone to their answer.  But could I have helped that student or colleague get to that answer on their own?  Guide them, rather than drive them?  Probably.  The end result being that if I can teach them to find the answers on their own I can be the consultant/guidance they need, not necessary the driver/provider that they currently see me as.

My goal this year is to help people get themselves to where they’re going, rather than just get them there with a simple answer.

It’s going to be an adjustment – for me because I’m used to providing answers, and for them because they’re used to me just giving them the answer. But lest they become like my grasshopper passenger and end up a long way from where they started with no map in hand, it’s an adjustment I have to make.

What adjustments do you have to make to ensure that folks just aren’t along for your ride?

Matt Pistilli coordinates evaluation and adminstration for Student Access, Transition and Success Programs at Purdue University.

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.

I remember being a grad student and thinking about areas I wanted to pursue in student affairs. I thought “wow, being an OL was a great in college. Being in charge of the program would be really amazing.” That was back when my view of Orientation was like a pause in the great time/space continuum. Everything just switched on in June when my fellow OL’s and I moved on campus and everything switched off when we left. It was all matching shirts and name games in my head and all the life-changing opportunities came with it just arrived on campus like turning on a faucet.  I also remember thinking I “knew Orientation” when I was just a supporting staff member who was on the committee.

Over the years, my roles with orientation have progressed from OL to graduate assistant to the “person who presents the getting involved session and helps with training” to the person in charge of it to today. Now I am the person who supervises the person in charge of it, so I have a little more of an objective eye on this phenomenon we see every summer than I used to. I’m writing today to tell you that even after 15 years in the field there is still no experience quite like directing Orientation. What’s so unique about it? Here’s my two cents:

• If you really want someone with broad campus knowledge and perspective, ask someone who coordinates Orientation.
There’s a reason why my Assistant Director for New Student Programs can quote what placement scores will get a student into Writing II and what types of health forms are required for immunizations. It’s because she is responsible for an important conduit of communication for the new students to get this information. Every orientation professional I’ve ever worked with has a great knack for taking a wide view of the incoming student experience. How can we get the rest of campus to see even parts of that wide view to understand the college transition from outside their own areas? It’s such a great skill.

• “Other duties as assigned” is the rule, not the exception!
My staff members have filled roles in place of colleagues from areas like Counseling Services, Information Technology, Transit… you name it. We’ve set up rooms, consulted on dining support for those with severe food allergies and had to deliver news of family tragedy to a student who was with us at orientation.  Most duties that we would never be expected to handle during the year.  When the campus is on “skeleton staff” in the summer you find yourself in an array of situations needing your quick attention when your colleagues might be on other projects or on vacation. You have a choice. You can lament this situation, or you can use it to let the campus see you and your team shine.

• If you want some experience in navigating campus politics, direct Orientation.
Part of coordinating orientation means taking a lot of moving parts and trying to get them to move without hurting each other in the process. We struggle to get these parts to collaborate all year long, but somehow they have to make it work during Orientation. If you’re running Orientation you likely don’t supervise all of these parts all year long, but suddenly you’re in a position to dictate where and how these areas will contribute to the new student experience. So, when one of these parts messes up royally…how do you address it? The political savvy needed in these situations is not for the faint of heart.

• Most of your campus believes “if I had five minutes at Orientation” that they would get automatic success in their major, program or organization. They may not say it out loud, but the number of people who agree that just five minutes of talking head stardom with the incoming students would change everything is staggering. It’s a compliment to what they believe is the impact of Orientation, but also can be difficult. What we can do is to help them understand that there’s some important time to be engaging students between the time they get their acceptance letter and their first day of classes. As we who preach social media opportunity know, there’s ways to engage people that don’t require sitting in a room together!

• Orientation is a process, not an event.
This is my mantra to every colleague who campaigns for “just five minutes.” Students begin their transition to college from the first moment they consider what college might be like through their entire early time period on campus. As institutions, we miss out on so many opportunities with new students by not being intentional about how our messages are communicated. As an example, even my own department promotes a “Get Involved” message at Orientation without recruiting students for the SGA or program board. We show them how to find this information, but if we get them thinking about specific organizations too early they will miss the point of emphasis on the impact of involvement on campus.

• Group development – on fast forward!
I’ve been advising student leaders for my whole career, but group development in an Orientation setting is just not the same. It’s a great study in group development because they are with each other 24/7 and their sole focus on campus is this program. During the year, they have a billion other things going on, but we ask them to work together on one giant project all month long.

I always enjoy watching groups progress through stages of group development, but as my Orientation colleagues know, the intensity of this group experience makes each stage come and go quickly! When you don’t have a whole year together to patiently await self-actualization, the urgency factor makes things much more dramatic. Small problems can’t just be brushed aside in hope of them “working out eventually.” There’s just no time. On the bright side, the great moments are magnified too. That’s just incredible to watch.

Oh, but what do I know. We’re just the people who play name games, right?

I’m going to go write my staff member a card now that it’s finally over. I know what she’s been through!

What do you think? I know that every campus has its own unique dynamics around their program format, timing, structure and responsibilities, but is your experience anything like mine?

We had a very successful live webinar panel on “Facebook and Orientation” yesterday afternoon. We maxed out the available slots with almost 50 schools in attendance.

Thank you again to our wonderful panelists:

Debra Sanborn, Iowa State University (find her on twitter: @debrasanborn)

Dr. Jennifer Sherry, VCU School of Education

Beth Oakley, University of Windsor

This webinar was intended as an experiment in live, distance, collaborative learning for student affairs. The feedback from the participants and the panelists was enthusiastic. We’ll definitely be doing more.

Unfortunately, however, we learned (the hard way) one limitation of our webinar software: it does not record the conference call on the VoIP bridge.

This means that I won’t be able to post the recording of the webinar as I had hoped. My apologies to everyone for this. We will figure out a work around next time to make sure that the information is captured and shared.

I can, however, share some interesting tidbits from the seminar, and Debra will be doing her own recap shortly.

We ran a quick poll of the attendees on the wiki page for the seminar, and here were the results (26 respondents):

1. Do you have a personal Facebook account?

Yep 96.00%
Nope 4.00%

2. Did you officially start your class of 2013 Facebook group?

No 88.46%
Not Sure 7.69%
Yes 3.85%

3. If you didn’t start your 2013 Facebook group, are you in contact with the person who did?

No 64.00%
Yes 16.00%
Not Sure 16.00%
I started the group 4.00%

4. Would you accept a Facebook friend request from a student?

Yep 50.00%
Undecided 26.92%
Nope 23.08%

So, if you haven’t yet, reach out to your 2013 group leaders!

As always, there was some discussion about appropriateness of friending students and the challenges of blending the social and academic context. I’m looking forward to continuing the conversation around these topics.

Here are few follow up resources:

Dr. Sherry participated in a podcast on using Facebook in education. It’s available here.

Faculty on Facebook: Confirm or Deny? available here.

The main Facebook page of VCU school of education is here.

Here are my slides from the APCA National Conference. The first half is Orientation and Facebook, the second half is an overview of the Red Rover pilot program of last fall. (I did not present during the webinar.)

More resources are coming in now. I’ll post them up here as I receive them.

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!

In my last post, I mentioned that I had Facebooked Jack, who started a huge class of 2012 group for the University of Pittsburgh.

Despite the fact that Jack is in High School, and, if he’s on East Coast time, he should probably have been in class, he responded in 20 minutes.

I copied my questions and indented his answers under each question:

————–

1) Are you working for the university in any way? Or did you just do all of this work on your own?

I am not a part of the university in any way. I live in a suburb of Philadelphia. I did this on my own after being accepted as I was seeking other people who were also accepted.

2) If you did it all on your own, why? You found and posted a lot of great pictures, it must have taken some time. What motivated you?

At first, it was for me to find others in the same situation I was, then as the group became progressively bigger, I did some research about the school and added a few updates on some important events for accepted students. Most of the pictures are actually provided by the members of the group.

3) What are your plans with the group?

Just a place where people can get to know each other before actually going. I am not very certain whether I will even be attending Pitt, but I am glad a lot of people in this group are finding friends ahead of time.

4) Do you have history of student leadership in high school? Do you plan to be a student leader in college?

In high school, I am the president of a couple of clubs and participate in numerous others. When I go to college, I plan to continue being involved.

——-

Dear University of Pittsburgh,

Jack, despite possibly skipping 5th period to Facebook a random higher education guy, is a doer. He’s responsible and proven himself extremely capable as a 21st century leader.

It would be a real shame to let him slip away.

Send him a fruit basket at the very least. Better yet, send him a friendly little “thanks for running our 2012 class on Facebook” scholarship.

He can be reached here.

My Best,

Kevin Prentiss

—–

UPDATE: Jack wants everyone to know that he’s not skipping class, he’s on spring break. My apologies for being suspicious : )