SA Voices From the Field

In recent years, the landscape of substance use and recovery on college campuses has witnessed transformative shifts, urging a nuanced approach that combines compassion, education, and empowerment. In a revealing conversation on the "Student Affairs Voices from the Field" podcast, experts Dylan Dunn and Sydney Chifetz from the SAFE Project delve into their experiences and strategies in collegiate harm reduction and recovery, providing invaluable insights for higher education professionals.

Prioritizing Student Autonomy and Education

Dylan and Sydney emphasize the significance of placing students at the forefront of harm reduction efforts. Encouraging students to take charge of their health decisions, the duo highlights the importance of respecting student autonomy. By adopting motivational interviewing techniques and fostering open dialogue, professionals can aid students in discerning their relationship with substances and empower them to make informed choices.

Education emerges as a key pillar in this process. Students often lack essential knowledge about the substances they encounter, making educational initiatives crucial. Clear, unbiased information equips students to navigate their substance use responsibly and safely.

Navigating Stigma and Compliance

Addressing stigma in the context of substance use is paramount. Dylan points out that stigmatizing perceptions create an "us versus them" mentality, hampering open discussions and effective interventions. By cultivating an environment rooted in dignity and understanding, campus professionals can bridge the gap between students and necessary support systems.

Simultaneously, the conversation underscores the challenge of aligning harm reduction strategies with compliance requirements, such as the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act. The speakers advocate for an approach that balances legal mandates with empathetic, realistic support mechanisms, ensuring students' holistic well-being and safety.

Leveraging Community and Resources

The SAFE Project team underscores the power of community collaboration. By engaging with partners beyond campus boundaries, colleges can tap into external resources and expertise, enriching their support systems. This collaborative approach not only enhances the available resources but also fosters a sense of belonging and support for students navigating recovery journeys.

Paving the Way Forward

In envisioning the future, Dylan and Sydney advocate for a student affairs approach steeped in curiosity, care, and judgment-free zones. Authentic engagement with students' lived experiences can lead to meaningful change, paving the way for healthier campus environments.

As student affairs professionals, embracing these principles can reshape how campuses address substance use, fostering environments where students feel heard, supported, and empowered to overcome challenges. Through intentional, compassionate actions, higher education institutions can truly become beacons of hope and healing for students in recovery.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:01]: Welcome to Student Affairs Voices from the Field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. Brought to you by NASPA, we curate free and accessible professional development for higher ed professionals wherever you happen to be. This is season 12, continuing our journey through the past, present, and future of student affairs. I'm doctor Jill Creighton, she, her, hers, your essay voices from the field host. Today on Essay Voices, we bring you an episode that talks about recovery and addiction with college students with two colleagues that are higher ed adjacent working at the SAFE project. Our first guest is Dylan Dunn, hehim. Dylan has dedicated his career to transforming cultures, systems, and programs to empower individuals in recovery and those impacted by addiction and overdose. Throughout his time at Safe Project and in his current professional role as the senior director of Safe Campuses, Dylan has worked with students, faculty, and staff at over 550 campuses and in all 50 states to implement holistic student support, harm reduction and recovery programs, and provide professional development opportunities.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:02]: Prior to his work at the SAFE project, Dylan has served as the collegiate recovery program coordinator at the University of Denver where he developed and launched recovery support, stigma reduction, and naloxone availability programs in the memory of Jonathan Winifield. From this work, Dylan has been the recipient of the 2019 NASPA Now Award for Innovation in the Field of Student Affairs. Before his work at the University of Denver, Dylan was a founding advisor for the recovery support community at Colorado State University as well as a residence hall director, student conduct hearing officer, and case manager. Dylan's work is informed by his experience growing up in rural Ohio, the youngest child of a large family involved in the drug trade, and later through the journey of helping his parent along their recovery journey. Dylan holds a master of science in student affairs in higher education from Colorado State University, as well as a bachelor of arts in philosophy and a bachelor of arts in criminology and criminal justice from The Ohio State University. Our second guest is Sydney Chifetz, Miles per hour, deputy director of Safe Campuses, who brings ten years of experience in global health, collegiate recovery, disease prevention, and health education to the field. Currently, Chifetz builds and oversees Safe Projects student development programs, providing learning, advocacy, and leadership opportunities to students nationwide rooted in equity, empowerment, and public health principles. Before joining SAFE Project in 2022, Trifetz led alcohol and other drug prevention, harm reduction, and recovery programs at Gonzaga University.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:21]: Additionally, she served in the field of global health and education in Southern Brazil and on the Polio Eradication Initiative in Northern Nigeria. Sydney holds a master of public health from Oregon State University and is certified in motivational interviewing, recovery coaching, and ethical public health research. She was the recipient of the Oregon State University twenty eighteen Global Consciousness Award and Gonzaga University's twenty twenty one Outstanding New Student Affairs Professional Award. Welcome to the show, Sydney.

Sydney Chifetz [00:02:47]: Hey, Jill. How are you today?

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:49]: I'm doing great. Thank you so much. And Dylan, welcome.

Dylan Dunn [00:02:51]: Hey. Thanks for having

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:52]: us. This is a bit of an unusual episode for us here at SA Voices because normally we're featuring the voices of student affairs professionals. But today, we're thrilled to bring you both in from the SAFE project, which is a nonprofit organization that works with what I would call student affairs adjacent work. So we're in the health promotion space using student affairs language. And the safe project was founded in November of twenty seventeen by admiral James and Mary Winifield following the loss of their 19 year old son, Jonathan, to an accidental opioid overdose. And this family immediately channeled the grief into action, hoping to save more families from the pain of loss, whether it was seeking treatment, getting answers or understanding the nature of the diseases. They, they knew that they needed to be a different solution to helping other families facing the same journey with substance use disorders. And so therefore SAFE Project was created and they're working towards meaningful action through programs and leading efforts that are unifying, nonpartisan and evidence based.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:03:45]: SAFE seeks meaningful metrics that are strengthening our independent six lines of operation and ultimately aim to achieve safe communities, campuses, workplaces, and veterans across the nation. So today we're focusing on the campuses element. Why don't we get started with asking you both how you got to your current seat in your work with this nonprofit?

Dylan Dunn [00:04:02]: Sure. So, again, my name is Dylan. I'm the senior director of our campuses team, which is, as you said, one arm of the safe project team. And I am a student affairs professional by trade. I'm a graduate of the CSU SAHE program. And when I was at Colorado State University, that was when Jonathan Munafald passed away. So I was just 40 miles, 50 miles up the road. And when I graduated from CSU after doing collegiate recovery work there while also working in housing, I got hired at University of Denver to start the program in Jonathan's memory.

Dylan Dunn [00:04:29]: And so after a year of working at DU, establishing an collegiate recovery program doing opioid overdose prevention work, I knew it was time for me to go. So I ended up getting hired at Safe Project to help however I could. And then after a a couple months, they realized that I was a student affairs professional, and it would make sense for me to be on the campuses team. And so I've been on the team ever since, and it's been a heck of a journey.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:04:47]: Sydney, how about you?

Sydney Chifetz [00:04:48]: Yeah. So I got started in public health. I was living for a time in Brazil and saw the impacts of infectious diseases there, so decided to get my master's degree and was very fortunate to accept a student a graduate teaching assistantship at Oregon State University where I worked with the collegiate recovery community. I'm a person whose family has been deeply impacted by addiction, so I was grateful for that opportunity while I studied infectious disease and my master's in public health. I graduated and took a position at Gonzaga University where I was a health educator and then later a health promotion specialist. So I no longer work in the field of infectious diseases, and I'm, as you said, higher education or I'm sorry, student affairs adjacent now. But what I liked most kind of shifting into this role is college is such a transformative time for so many folks, and it's a really important time when we think about kind of developing lifelong skills and particularly discerning health behaviors and education, particularly around substance use. It's been a really great opportunity.

Sydney Chifetz [00:05:40]: So when I came about at Safe Project, I love doing this work on a national scale and then also in the work that we do now, empowering students to kind of lead the charge on their own campuses. So a roundabout way, but I got here eventually.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:05:53]: This work is something that has been important for colleges and universities for the last several decades. I feel like when the opioid epidemic was first becoming part of the consciousness of collegiate prevention work, that was probably about twenty years ago at this point in time, and it was very, very focused on for a while. And that has quieted over time, and I I believe we're starting to see that work kind of come back into the consciousness more than it has in the past. But what are the the top things that you're focusing on right now in the prevention and recovery space for campuses?

Dylan Dunn [00:06:24]: I think it often breaks into two pieces for us. One is collegiate recovery. We do a lot of work with students around recovery, and I'll defer Sydney on that here in a second. But we do a lot of work also with opioid overdose prevention and response. Some of that work is directly with NASPA also. And so we help campuses build the systems, the infrastructure, the readiness, and then find the resources to do things like naloxone distribution and education, naloxone being the drug that folks use to, reverse an overdose. But that is kind of our technical work that we do, I would say, where we're doing a lot of, like, if this, then that, and if this, then that over and over again to help people build these programs. But Sydney does some really great work around empowering students in recovery and helping students be a part of this work.

Dylan Dunn [00:07:02]: So I wanna pass it to her for that.

Sydney Chifetz [00:07:03]: Yeah. So thanks, Dylan. As it pertains to collegiate recovery communities, a lot of our work focuses on ensuring that students are kind of leading the charge there, knowing that they are the ones most impacted and they are really the ones that should be the biggest stakeholder in this work. So we bring on a cohort of fellows each year that do the boots on the ground work and just we provide some of that coaching and guidance as they do the work. A key focus of ours now, as Dylan has said, is the prevention, a lot of harm reduction because that's where the focus of students has been over the past couple years. And then as it pertains to recovery, ensuring that collegiate recovery communities are more inclusive, we've certainly seen a change over time. And what does it mean to identify as a person in recovery? What does a person need to have in order to be part of a collegiate recovery community? And then are some of those barriers that are placed onto these programs ensuring that all students feel like they are part of that and can seek those resources? And then to the point of prevention, we're having these conversations about how can we ensure that our prevention approach focuses on public health so it's much more holistic, shifting away as I'm sure, you know, everybody is now from this just say no message or even just this, like, education is all that folks need to what calls a person to use or overuse alcohol or other drugs? What are the conditions in their life? Whether that's a lack of emotional intelligence or hope healthy coping strategies or, for college students, right, support systems or outlets that they might have. So thinking about holistic health and and taking that public health approach to prevention nowadays.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:08:38]: That public health approach to prevention, I feel like, has been really strong in higher education in the last several years. And I think one of the things that we struggle with is where should we be focusing our efforts? I think harm reduction related to alcohol has been a primary focus of higher ed administrators for a long time, largely because it's prevalent in the culture of American collegiate society in ways that we don't see in other countries. And then we add in these elements of harm reduction related to cannabis use, harm reduction related to substances that for lack of a better term, come in and out of fashion almost where we see certain substances being more popular in different eras over time than kind of falling by the wayside and new substances coming into the community and things like that. So when we think about the work that you're doing, how do you recommend campuses approach this harm reduction effort knowing that it's not just one substance that we're trying to help students figure out how to reduce their harm against or to stop usage or to do whatever they need to do to help someone else recover.

Dylan Dunn [00:09:38]: We have professionals who talk to us a lot about, like, the new substance on the block. Like, oh, we had we a parent reached out because we heard that some student or somebody got injured by a substance that they'd never heard of before, and the fear of that will then cause a lot of stir. The thing that makes our job easy in those moments is we're not actually chasing the substances anymore. We're chasing the principles of this work so that it's about education. It's about empowerment. It's about making sure that students feel like they have what they need. Yes. Sometimes that is substance dependent, but sometimes making sure they have what they need to navigate their own wants and needs well.

Dylan Dunn [00:10:13]: Sometimes that means they got in trouble and we figure out how do we stop that, or how do we kind of navigate the realities of the world around them. But our goal is to stay principled enough in public health principles and harm reduction principles and all of that so that we can stay balanced. And, like, we're not gonna be so surprised by a new substance that we're kind of knocked off kilter and don't know what to do next. And so it's about us being informed by trends, but not trying to be trendy is the way that I explain it a lot. Because the trendiness makes our job harder because we're always chasing, and we're trying not to do that.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:10:41]: I like that because what it shows is that the abuse of substances is likely related to other conditions, not necessarily related to whether a substance is most popular at the moment. You mentioned the principles of harm reduction and public health being core to the work. Can you talk a little bit about what those are?

Sydney Chifetz [00:10:57]: Yeah. So a couple that come to mind and particularly pertaining to this conversation, autonomy. So when working with college students, we recognize that these are adults that can and should be making their own decisions, and it's not it is our responsibility to work with them, you know, using some of the principles in motivational interviewing and and public health, right, to understand what are what are these person's desires as we've been talking about? Like, what are the reasons why they're choosing to consume substances at at whatever rate that they are. So really respecting a person's autonomy. Education, there are some students that we work with that don't know some of the basics of particular substances, especially as we've noted, like, there seems to be every couple years or a couple months a new substance in the field, that students are intentionally or unintentionally having relationships with. So education around what is this doing, and then I think working with students to discern what would they like their relationship with that substance to be and and how can they reduce their risk of harm. But I think what I always come back to in the work that we do is that people have choices, and we can work to empower them to make more informed choices. And then if they're going to make a certain choice, the ways that they can reduce their risk of harm.

Sydney Chifetz [00:12:05]: I don't know how much you want me to go into like, this is the casual part, like basic public health principles, basic harm reduction principles. I don't know.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:12:12]: I think anything that you can share that might be helpful for our audience to narrow their foci into. I know that a lot of our listeners are also graduate students. They love learning theory. We also have, listeners who are teaching in higher ed master's programs, and also a number of professionals who maybe don't go into this work on a day to day basis.

Sydney Chifetz [00:12:30]: So one of the concepts which we use a lot in our work and particularly health promotion professionals are using all the time within a motivational interviewing framework is the idea of stages of change. And so I don't know how prevalent that was as part of the conversation twenty years ago of it's not as easy as, a, just saying no or, b, making a change. Right? Most of us are ambivalent about many aspects of our experience, particularly as it pertains to our health. So working with people to recognize that change can happen, change takes time, and, also, it's about many aspects of our life that sometimes need to change in order for our relationship with alcohol and other drugs to, be changed. So that's one of the things. Dylan, I'm gonna pass it to you.

Dylan Dunn [00:13:13]: The most fun part, I think, about this work as a student affairs professional is that this work is really just student student development theory over and over and over and over again. I think sometimes student affairs professionals will get kind of in our own way thinking that our subject matter expertise is not the specifics of substance use, and therefore, we must defer. I think important deferring is important when it's useful, but so much of our work is empowering students and empowering the development of students as they're in their stage of emerging adulthood, trying to figure out where they are in this world, what rules they wanna follow, what their rules for themselves are. And if we the moment we go into that with students, they're shocked. Like, oh, I thought that was the substance use is exempt from that conversation, I thought. And if we're saying no, like, sub your relationship to substances can be rooted in dignity and can be rooted in empowerment and education and you figuring out what your own approach is gonna be for the rest of your life, suddenly it's so much easier. It's when we wanna be the police in the conversation, which I understand there's reason for that on college campuses. There's plenty of reasons why, but we can both keep campuses safe and keep campuses compliant while also empowering students through the basics of how we know we need to develop students even if that includes substances.

Dylan Dunn [00:14:22]: And we can talk in at length about the role of stigma and all of that and the role of judgment, but I find this work if you let it be simple, it can be simple. And it can be really fun, but we often are afraid to do that, I think.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:14:32]: I wanna revisit something you mentioned, Sydney, about motivational interviewing being really hot at the moment as a as a style of working with students in the harm reduction conversation. Such an important tool. So if you're listening and you've never heard of motivational interviewing, it's actually a a style of conversation. A lot of people think of motivational interviewing as a counseling technique, but it's not really. It's a way of having a conversation with someone that allows them to elucidate their own thoughts and feelings about a a change that they're thinking about making in their life. There's a good book out there called Motivational Engineering for College Students, something like that. I'll have to go find the type the exact title, but it's a good way to start. And I know when we were using that on the team that I was working with, actually in Colorado as well, we were able to see almost like a a 33% drop in recidivism for students that were having conversations about their alcohol use through the motivational interviewing context when in comparison to students who went through a traditional conduct process.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:15:25]: So there's so much empowerment available as long as you have the right training and tools to have the conversation. So it's an exciting time. But Dylan, I also wanted to go back to something that you had mentioned around stigma. So let's talk a little bit about stigma in substance use and abuse and what we're seeing with the collegiate environment.

Dylan Dunn [00:15:41]: It's a big question. I think the hard part for our work and for the anybody doing substance use work on campus is we don't get to exempt ourselves from stigma that is off campus because all of our students are bringing with them everything that they've experienced throughout their life and up until this point and then what they expect to see once they leave. And then then there's also this unique stigma that exists exists on campus in in different senses. But in general, I think the bottom line of it all is that when we talk about substances, there tends to be this us versus them conversation that quickly emerges because people are afraid of being in us in this con or they're afraid of being in them in this conversation is a better way to say it. Them being people who use drugs. And so then the way we either bifurcate that or start to outline that depends on the culture of the university. And so there are some campuses where an us is someone who uses alcohol. People on our campus, people may say, our students drink, but they don't do those other things.

Dylan Dunn [00:16:32]: And then when we say we don't do those other things, the kind of mythologies we'll create about why that is or what those other things must be like often are rooted in almost zero reality. They're kind of just like these assumptions that we make about, oh, people use drugs are this way or that way. And, again, we can go through lists and lists of what those stigmatizing beliefs look like, but we spent a lot of time focusing on language when it comes to stigma, but we've also now been breaching a lot of conversations around just underlying beliefs that get us to this defensiveness around substance use out of judgment, not even really about safety, but about judgment and lack of understanding.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:17:06]: That stigma space is is so interesting because we also are balancing compliance. Right? And so the reality of the conversations that we need to be having on our campuses are what is the prevalence of usage related to some of these substances? How are these substance use situations affecting students' ability to show up every day and do what they need to do to learn in their academic space? How is that impacting their well-being overall? And then on the other side, we have the tension of the Direct Free Schools and Communities Act and the Controlled Substances Act pushing against effectively what is zero tolerance. And so our campus policies always have to be zero tolerance to receive that federal funding. But the way that we respond to those doesn't necessarily have to be that dichotomous. It can be more nuanced. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the universities that you're seeing do this work the best or at least, most progressively are aligning with both the demands of what we need to do for compliance alongside what we actually need to do to care for the humanity for our students. And you don't necessarily need to name a university, but wondering what those practices look like in terms of how is this support work coming out and really looking effective.

Sydney Chifetz [00:18:09]: Yeah. So I think a big piece of it is helping universities understand what aspects of the work that they do and the approach that they take is up to them and the work that they do with students and how much of that has guidelines outlined in the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act. So a lot of what we see, particularly around conference season, right, is there's always a lot of sessions that talk about what is required of you and what approach can you take as it pertains to, harm reduction, for example, under the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act. And a piece of that, right, is so what is required of us? We are required to be drug free. We are required to provide this, this, and this. And what do we have control over? Right? So what are we communicating? What is that style? What do our conduct meetings look like? Right? Are we providing a a space where students can really talk through their experience? And we have all probably been there. Those of us that have done basics in k six or motivational interviewing meetings. Right? Like, when a student comes in and they grasp for the first time that you are there to support them and you are there to hear them out and work with them to figure out what a solution is gonna be to where the university feels comfortable.

Sydney Chifetz [00:19:14]: I feel like I did my job as a whatever, and the universe and the student has kind of tools that they can move forward with. So I think a lot of that is to what extent are we communicating, what is required, but then what extent are we choosing an approach that is on top of that? The word that comes to mind is rigid. Right? Like, can we see the humanity in some of these? Certainly, the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act is meant to protect students, and it is meant to create spaces of learning. And how can we also see the human experience and in what students are experiencing and the approach that we take to that often in whether that's conduct meetings or basics meetings, it can be a lot less rigid. It can be a lot more of, let me hear how this is going for you. And nobody wants to be thrown rules at. But when students understand where is that coming from, it's often that students don't understand the Drug Free Schools and Community Act because we haven't done a good job of outlining to them where is this coming from and why is this important. And then what is my role as a university staff member in not only enforcing this, but also making sure that students feel heard and they have the resources they need, etcetera.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:20:28]: You've mentioned the board basics a couple of times, so I just wanna clarify what that is for our audience. It stands for brief alcohol screening intervention for college students, and it's a a style of sitting with a student for harm reduction with relationship with alcohol, usually done with visual feedback, such that the student can have a personalized conversation about their own relationship with alcohol, and then the administrator can use that opportunity to use the motivational interviewing style to talk about any changes they wanna make in their relationship with alcohol. It's a really great way of being with students. The the training can be a little bit extensive, but you you pretty much only need to do it once and you pretty much get the hang of of what you're doing. But, Dylan, what did you wanna add?

Dylan Dunn [00:21:05]: The thing that we are often surprised about is the amount of folks who so, obviously, in a student affairs program, you're gonna learn about the drugs free schools and communities act. It's gonna be a part of your education. I mean, I assume, and I I hope so. But I would say we're at a fifty fifty point maybe. I don't have the data behind this, but it seems this way. Like, for example, the NASPA strategies conference that about half of the people doing alcohol and drug work on college campuses don't have a student affairs background. And that's a really cool tool for us to have in this field of the difference of backgrounds and education and all of that. But what it does sometimes when it comes to DFSCA, the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act, is we in our presentations a lot, will show the parts of the DFSCA, and a lot of folks in the audience have actually never read the DFSCA.

Dylan Dunn [00:21:44]: And so I encourage everyone who's listening to go and read the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act if you would like because we it is titled the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act, but the part and soul of it is that you can't break the law. And it's really that long and that that's as difficult as it is to understand, but it is not breaking the law to do principled legal harm reduction work or to have really meaningful, tactful, direct conversations with students about alcohol and other drugs. And but I think sometimes people will hear the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act, and they assume they're gonna be violating it by doing this work directly. And we had there was, someone from the Department of Education, of course, last year that came to NASPA and clarified for everybody that like, fentanyl testing strips, for example. Fentanyl testing strips require us to acknowledge that students may be using drugs, but that is protecting students. And so to there have been schools we've worked with who have said, well, fentanyl testing strips cannot fall off in the DFSCA, but that can't be true. If fentanyl testing strips are legal somewhere and it's also us keeping our students safe, the order of operations there of safety and lawfulness outweigh the stigma of, well, we don't want those students here as often with the underlying messages if we're talking about stigma here. And that's a really hard place.

Dylan Dunn [00:22:50]: We have to navigate that a lot is what I'll say. And often with that, yes, knowledge is power and clarity is power there and just being willing to have the hard conversation.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:22:57]: So while we're talking about fentanyl testing strips and you previously mentioned Narcan is what most people know it know it as, How are you seeing these two tools being utilized on college campuses effectively to protect students?

Dylan Dunn [00:23:08]: When I was at University of Denver in 2018, I think there were maybe 12 schools in the country who were utilizing naloxone or having naloxone as part of their programming or a tool that was available to students. That as of NASPA strategies this year, I think the data was shared that about half of schools in the across the country have Naloxone available to students. So it's a huge shift in seven years, but it also reflects the importance of the opioid crisis over the past over that time period. But the there are many schools who are doing it really well, and I think all of them that what they have in common is that they both train folks openly, and they train them often. They have naloxone available for distribution so that folks can grab it and take it with them throughout their daily lives, and they also have it available as permanently set on campus like an AED kit, for example, and if they have clarity around their policies. Good Samaritan policies, medical amnesty policies, things like that. As I mentioned earlier, we've worked with NASPA on this problem and this need specifically, and we've created a checklist alongside NASPA and the higher ed center at Ohio State. A checklist of 10 things that campuses should be at least attempting to accomplish in order to say that they are addressing opioid overdose response on their campus.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:24:10]: Can you tell us the brief version of what those 10 things are?

Dylan Dunn [00:24:12]: There's two halves of it. The first half is what I was just saying. Having naloxone available for an emergency response. The part about that that we focus on is it's not just, oh, we have naloxone in a drawer somewhere. It's that you have it available within five minutes of someone experiencing an overdose. I know on many campuses, a five minute response time is very, very quick. I've also been on campuses where a five minute response time would be seen as unacceptable. And so that's something maybe as a reminder to folks that if someone is experiencing an overdose, they have five minutes or less before this is not reversible.

Dylan Dunn [00:24:42]: And so that's why we use that five minute number. Having naloxone available for distribution for on and off campus emergencies, recurring trainings, having Good Samaritan responsible exemption policies for so that students know they should prioritize response over fearing getting in trouble. Everything below those first ones is very technical and policy and procedure focused, like having policies and procedures for response, for responding to community impacts, for internal tracking, publicly available overviews, so DFSCA stuff there, and then, again, continued tracking and then data sharing with important groups in their community. So it's not meant to be a if you don't have all 10 of these, you're not doing anything. It's more of here are the 10 goals we would set for you if you are intending to keep your students safe if this were to happen.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:25:23]: You mentioned Good Samaritan medical amnesty policies. I know that there has been a dialogue in higher ed for a while about whether those amnesty policies should include alcohol and other drugs. That has been kind of something that's been circling around, particularly related to the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act. Where are you seeing the best practice go?

Sydney Chifetz [00:25:41]: I think something that students were always hyper mindful of when I was directly on campuses is when universities take a different approach to what substances are involved, there's inherent judgment in that. Right? So certain universities that might have a higher fine for cannabis, say, than they have for alcohol or the number of brief motivational interventions is higher for one over another. So what does that do? Right? It increases stigma. It honestly makes students more cautious, not necessarily around how they're partaking in the substance, but how they're interacting with the university. Right? If we if students perceive that the university is more comfortable with them having a relationship with alcohol than them having relationship with cannabis, students are then just gonna gravitate towards one substance over another or get better at hiding use of one substance over another and also not then being forthcoming when it comes to having conversations with professionals on campus that want to have open dialogues with them to help them get to a spot that is more reduced risk of that use. Right? If students are pulled through messaging that they shouldn't be upfront about the substance that they're engaging in, then the health promotion professionals can't do their best work. So I think, right, there are different ways that certain substances impact the body, and there are certainly substances that have different impacts and different, health outcomes to be mindful of. But when we you know, we've seen this throughout time.

Sydney Chifetz [00:27:04]: Right? Illicit drug versus not illicit drug or hard drugs versus whatever. Right? So we are so conditioned to put substances into boxes, and I think a lot of that comes from the stigma of who uses certain substances and then what types of people, quote, unquote, use other sorts of substances. But if we want to take kind of a a holistic approach to it, it is that students are using substances for a certain outcome. And when we put a line in the sand, the consequences of this is going to be different than the consequences of this. What are we saying about substance use? And, ultimately, what are we teaching unconsciously often students to do when they're engaging in certain substances over other other substances.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:27:42]: That's such an important point and a hard conversation for university administrators to have because you have to have that conversation with yourself first about what are your own biases in this situation and how are those biases creeping into policy, administration of policy, as well as response. I do wanna get down to a little bit of nitty gritty detail as well and just ask, what are we seeing in terms of prevalence on college campuses these days around substance use related to alcohol and other drugs?

Sydney Chifetz [00:28:09]: Yeah. You know, it it really depends on the data and how what timeline we are looking at the data. Right? And so we saw alcohol kinda take a dip in the first periods of the pandemic, and it's kind of spikes back up. We also very much hear about this sober curious movement. Right? So a lot of Gen Z and Generation Alpha are questioning the relationship they want to have with alcohol. I know that the most recent university that I I served at, I engaged in a cannabis research initiative because I was seeing in a lot of my motivational interventions that students were using cannabis at a at a on a daily basis, and yet that was not being reflected in the data that we were seeing. And And I think we can talk for a long time about what sort of students are taking these hour long surveys that we're collecting data from, and are those the type of students that are engaging in daily cannabis practices. Right? But so I definitely think that something that this is not new.

Sydney Chifetz [00:29:01]: Right? But the use of alcohol twenty years ago, blacking out was an unintended consequence of alcohol use. And now in certain circles and in certain communities, we are hearing that blacking out is the goal. We can have long conversations about boards or blackout rage gallons or whatever that were a hot topic, particularly among higher ed administrators to be discussing a couple years ago. Right? But the ways that students are engaging in alcohol and what the outcomes that they would like to be look different now. And then there are also emerging pockets of students saying alcohol isn't serving it's not the substance that I want to be using, or I don't wanna be using substances. Right? So that's a really beautiful movement that has spiked up and students being really steadfast in their in their view of that. And I think in many of the universities that I've served at and the situationally, this is in the Pacific Northwest, but cannabis use. Like, cannabis is something that can use more easily on campus, particularly in certain pockets of the country culturally.

Sydney Chifetz [00:30:03]: Alcohol might look down upon, but cannabis is perceived as this way that we can be more creative and be more authentic. And and I'm not applying judgment to that at all, but I am saying that when we take this approach of comparing the ways that students used to use alcohol to what they might be using now, I, for one, have looked a lot at the cannabis rates and and talking to students about what is your experience, particularly post pandemic? Why are students using cannabis? What does this mean? Are they self medicating to an extent? Are they using it as a tool for connection? But I do think that's something that I have seen become much more normalized, not just this, I use cannabis on a Saturday night to hang out with my friends to, no, I I wake up and I use cannabis because it helps me do x, y, or z better, and I need it also in order to fall asleep. And then also, why not just go home in the middle of the day too to get a little bit of a serotonin spike? So that's something that I've been observing over time.

Dylan Dunn [00:30:58]: We see in the data that some of us may have never ever seen this coming until legalization was happening, but cannabis and alcohol are starting to culturally line up more as alcohol rates are beginning to fall, I think, most significantly for the first time in my lifetime. Alcohol is kind of the thing that never changed. We would just do our best to navigate it. I think we are seeing that change as of recently, but that change is being then replaced or influenced by cannabis. Students grew up seeing the outcomes of alcohol use, and they were not thrilled. But they have not seen that with cannabis, so why that would make more sense. The other thing that has to do with our work is most schools will see opioid use as declining. It was never more than two and a half, 3%, but it is still declining.

Dylan Dunn [00:31:37]: The challenge with that is we are seeing often cocaine use rates are increasing, and even, like, methamphetamine rates are either the same or increasing around the country. Why I bring that up is that we often hear administrators go point at the opioid rates declining and be really excited that that means overdose response can relax. The problem is fentanyl, most often the cause of overdose, is found in pills and powders. And so it's anytime we're having conversations around cocaine as a powder or any sort of pill, whether it's especially or and only if it's illicit as what we're talking about here, illicit pills. So counterfeit pills, press pills, those are likely to cause opioid overdose even if they're not intended to be used as opioids. That's a distinction that I know can be tricky for, many of us who don't do this work every day, but fentanyl is found throughout the drug supply. And so if pills, powders are being used, pills and or powders are being used, we still need to be thoughtful about opioid overdose response because that's where and when it happens.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:32:31]: Then that is using that that pill may not know that there's fentanyl present in that medication as well. So as we look at the whole picture here, most student affairs professionals don't interact with harm reduction on a day to day basis as part of their work, but we all work with the same students. So if I am a student affairs professional, what should I be looking for or thinking about as I interact with the student population that I'm serving, in order to equip myself to have either a difficult conversation or make a referral?

Dylan Dunn [00:33:01]: I love the question because I think the answer is a bit more maybe interesting than some folks are expecting. And because for me, the tools you need are curiosity and care. The I it's that often then offsets this look for students whose eyes look a certain way or who are acting a certain way. In my experience, both on and off campus, students people use substances for reasons. And those reasons, we can dig into those and understand those, and especially college students are using for very simple reasons either to belong or to cope in some way. And so if you understand that a student is going through something difficult, there's never a wrong time to ask, how are you dealing with that? The challenge is do they perceive you as someone who would be nonjudgmental? And so folks on campus who are doing alcohol and other drug work well often are seen as the cool staff or the, like, the folks on campus that students can really trust as long as the university has set them up to be that way. Some campuses require, quote, unquote, the cool staff to hide in corners because they don't want them to be known because then that would maybe send a a message that that is okay to participate in substance using behaviors rather than it's okay to have people on our staff who are equipped and well skilled in helping students navigate the challenges of life. There's, like, those kind of stigma based and culturally based reframes that I think are really important.

Dylan Dunn [00:34:11]: But I know Sydney used to do far more direct services work on campus than I was doing since I was doing more, again, housing and things like that.

Sydney Chifetz [00:34:17]: I think to your point, Dylan, first and foremost is listening to your students. And I think sometimes the mistake that offices of health promotion make is the students that we're listening to aren't the students that have the experiences that we can best learn from. So I think listening to students, listening to students that come in through the conduct process, listening to our student interns. And we want the student interns that know the vibe on campus. Right? So that we can have an understanding of what's truly happening and also those cultural shifts, the trend shifts as are happening. We don't wanna be, this has been happening on our campus for a year, and we weren't listening to understand it as it started to emerge. So I think listening to students. Second is taking a reality based approach to the work that we do.

Sydney Chifetz [00:35:02]: And I think most of us are doing this now. Right? But we can pretend like something isn't happening, or we can apply judgment to something and and not talk about it upfront, or we can recognize that there are some humans that are going to partake in certain substances and certain behaviors. And what approach should we take to ensure that these folks are reducing their risk of harm if they're choosing to engage in a certain behavior, have the education that they need so that they can make informed decisions, have the resources that they do decide, you know, this isn't working for me anymore, or I'm ready to make a change that might be more sustainable. Right? So using reality based education, reality based approaches to how we're doing the work now. And then I think as it pertains to directly working with students, just not dancing around it. Right? It's okay to point out to students, hey, friend. Here's what I've noticed. Or, like, hey, do you mind if I'm real with you for a second? And I think if we could take judgment out of that conversation, but really point out to folks like, hey, here's what I've noticed.

Sydney Chifetz [00:36:04]: I'm just checking in. Is everything okay? Or, hey, You used to, I don't know, come to my office once a week, and now I I only see you every couple months. Is everything okay? Or, you know, I think it's also okay too when we see students what is an appropriate way of pointing out to a student, like, kinda takes one to know one. When a student would show up to my office and have, like, they had clearly been partaking in a substance that day, how can I without judgment, but also point out, like, hey? And not calling a student out, but, like, making there are ways that you can point something out without making it a very serious, like, hey. I noticed that you're showing up to this k six, so basics but applied to cannabis. I know that you're showing up to this k six conversation under the influence of cannabis. No. But, hey.

Sydney Chifetz [00:36:47]: I'm noticing that some of the students show up to my office under the influence of cannabis. Why do you think that is? Right? So you can kinda pull students into the conversation, but also make students aware that you are not unaware of what's happening. But also, I would so much rather be the type of person on campus that has the approach of, like, whatever's going on, whatever state you're in or or wherever you're at, come on by my office, and we'll figure it out together, especially if you don't know where to turn rather than let me stay away at this time because I'm fear of judgment, fear of consequences, whatever.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:37:20]: Any other thoughts for student affairs professionals on working through any challenges that they might be having on their campus related to substance overdose or learning about health promotion practices themselves or anything else in this topic that you think that might be interesting or valuable?

Dylan Dunn [00:37:35]: Not to I mean, yes, to plug ourselves. I think Sydney and I both in our campuses team, we're always available. Like, our jobs at the end of the day, if we had do nothing else, is to make sure that student affairs professionals and folks on campus don't feel like they're doing this work alone. And so if someone is sitting in their office, they're the only person in their health promotion office who's doing this work, and they're just not sure where to turn, often, yes, Google can be helpful. But often, you're gonna find less information less helpful information just by googling something than you would by asking a peer and then engaging in a dialogue with them. And both Sydney and I are available. Our calendars are available to folks. We'll share our website at the end.

Dylan Dunn [00:38:09]: But, yeah, we're here to make sure that folks feel like they can have the real conversation with peers in the field first as opposed to using a student as the first time you've had this conversation well. Or if you're not sure if your supervisor is the best person to have this conversation with, I understand. I know what that's like. And so if we wanna have conversations together first, we're available for that. We're more than glad to do it. And just I was thinking as Sydney was speaking of we are very intentional and purposeful in student affairs about being reflective practitioners. And the best way to do that often is to get out of our own heads. And we have some tools to use at SAFE to help people do that, but just look for good podcasts or books.

Dylan Dunn [00:38:44]: We can recommend them maybe in the description or something later. But there are so many great opportunities to engage with the experience of people who do use drugs or have used drugs or in recovery or not. And understanding those perspectives colors our experience as professionals so much more vibrantly than just trying to stop something. I say a lot, you can't do it, don't. And so rather than being the person who's trying to help people to stop doing something, what if I have another option for them? What if I have a more deep conversation with them? Then would you please stop? You're causing problems. But I know that takes effort, and it's hard to, do when all of us are often overworked and underpaid, truthfully. And so I know how that feels, but a lot of a lot there. But, Sydney, you may have some, extra stuff too.

Sydney Chifetz [00:39:23]: No. Dylan, I think to your point, like, obviously, we are always here and eager to have conversations with folks and help them understand how does this relate to what others in the country might be seeing. I also think that something that excites me the most is where the ways that we get to engage with students. Some of the students that we have as part of our fellowship now are some of the brightest people that I get to have conversations with right now, and they are very much leading the charge. So I think, like, it when we're, as Dylan said, overworked and underpaid on campus, we tend to kind of put our head down and go at it alone without recognizing that there are students on our campus that are very passionate. They want to help, but they need to be engaged in a way that's gonna work for them. Right? So we're not tokenizing their experience, but we are walking alongside them as we're figuring this out. Dylan's gonna laugh at this, but I am a big proponent of focus groups on campus.

Sydney Chifetz [00:40:13]: Right? I think we get so much data from really wonderful surveys, and how often are those occurring, how long do they take students to take, and therefore, who is taking them sorts of thing. And we could just get better at talking to our students. Some of the best, data, quote, unquote, that I had at my previous institution was, hey. I'll give you a $15 DoorDash gift card, and I recognize that that takes resources that some universities might have or not have. But I'll give you $15 at DoorDash. If you come and talk to me for an hour, I'm gonna ask you four questions. I'm not gonna write down your contact information unless you wanna be involved with me, but I just wanna hear authentically your thoughts on this. Because I think students, so often we are conditioned to talk to our supervisor.

Sydney Chifetz [00:40:55]: We're conditioned to talk to one of the listening sessions that multiple institutions are having. And that is great for what is happening kind of upper level or at the national level. But so often, it's what is the culture of our campus? What is the culture of this particular community? What have our students chosen to do about it? How normalized is x, y, or z? So bringing the right students in that want to be part of the solution with us and asking them their authentic, hey. What's really going on? And if I wanna be the best in service to you all as a health promotion professional as possible, what approach do I need to take? Recognizing, right, that there are certain aspects of my role, and as we talked about with the Drugs Free Skills and Communities Act, that I can or cannot do. But what am I missing here, or what is impacting you the most, or what is your why? Our students aren't just gravitating towards substances for no reason. There is a why. And can we get deeper as to of what are other ways that we can bring in other campus professionals to ensure that their mental health needs are being met on campus and they're not having to wait a month for an appointment, or disability access is well staffed and well resourced, and they all have safe and stable places to live and x, y, and z. Right? So working with students to take a much more holistic approach.

Dylan Dunn [00:42:07]: It's indeed said that I would laugh at the focus groups thing. I wanna point out why that is for folks because I don't know a single person who got into student affairs because they didn't wanna hear what students had to say or they didn't find that valuable when they were a student to be heard and seen by a professional. Many of us had changed their lives, had changed the entire trajectory of our lives to be seen and heard by someone who we perceive to be there for us on a college campus. And yet when we work with professionals, I understand that focus groups take time and they take effort, but the amount of folks that we get in these deep conversations with pause and go, have you actually talked to students about this? And the answer is most often no. We're I think and that comes often, at least in the way I perceive it as as professionals, we're almost afraid to be seen as naive or afraid to be seen as wrong. But when you're working with students, sometimes that's the best thing you can do is say, help me understand this. I am just a person who hasn't been in college for ten, fifteen, twenty years. I wanna understand your experience.

Dylan Dunn [00:42:56]: I want you to be the expert in this room right now. But for some reason, a lot of us as we do this work and it gets buried by the bureaucracy of it and the daily work of it, we lose touch with the student experience. And I think that's something that, again, we laugh about because it's the reason so much of it so many of us do this work, but it's sometimes the first thing that gets thrown to the wayside.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:43:14]: We're gonna transition now to talking about our theme questions for the season. Again, we're talking about the past, present, and future of student affairs. And, because you're adjacent, we'll shift it just a little bit. But what's one component of the history of the student affairs profession that you think should be carried forward or alternatively let go of? And you could focus this more on health promotion if that's more useful.

Sydney Chifetz [00:43:34]: I think the first thing that comes to mind, and I have convinced myself that this no longer happens, and then you talk to folks that this might still be a part of their practice. So it's kind of this idea of, like, if we can just bestow knowledge onto students, they will do different. Right? Or that we are the keepers of good resources or we are the keepers of good behaviors and that we can then teach students how to do these things. These are the principles of what I think most health promotion practitioners are using nowadays, but it doesn't come from me. It doesn't come from me, the university staff member. It comes from the student, and it is just my job to help them understand that and utilize it in an appropriate way. But it's obviously not just saying no, that we're gonna get ourselves out of this overdose crisis or get ourselves out of this place that we're at where students would rather engage in life under the influence of something or or feel the need to engage in life under the influence of something. And often, it's not just that students don't know, and it's not that we need to be the ones to enlighten students to this.

Sydney Chifetz [00:44:34]: It's that the students already have what they need within them, and it's our job to help them to kinda pull that pull that out a little bit. What do you you have the choice here. You are an adult, and I know it feels right now as an 18, 19, 20 year old, like, everyone is telling you what to do and what box you need to fit in. But outside of the four years or however long you're in an institution of higher education, you have autonomy and you get to live your life the way you want to. And so if we can start instilling those practices and getting students aware that they have choice, they have autonomy, and it is also a responsibility to how do we care for ourselves, how do we care for our community. And and so I think if we can as we're working with students and institutions of learning, how can we get them to already start thinking about this rather than we need to protect our students while they're here? It's like, no. We can educate students on, yes, what is the BAC of certain substances. Right? And that is important, but it's also empowering students to know that they are in the driver's seat of their experience, and we are all here to help and guide them when it makes sense for us to do so while they're on campus.

Dylan Dunn [00:45:39]: The phrase en loco parentis that a lot of us learn and navigate all day long on, college campuses of we're here to serve in place of the parent. That, I think, is actually a really interesting history and also something that needs to change. Because what we have to if we're that is our job legally is to be in place of the parent. We have to also understand what parenting looks like right now in The United States and what our students are bringing in with them or not bringing with them in terms of parental relationships or the conversation students have or have not had about substances coming into campuses. And so if we are when we hear the word parent, what do we think of? I could think of my experience of we don't talk about that here or we ignore the hard stuff. But what I would like that to mean is we talk about the hard things and we really prepare ourselves for a sustainable life and that beautiful relationship that it can be. And so I that has always been a good both reframe and accountability piece for me is what do I want my job as in place of the parent to mean and be direct about that with yourself and be reflective about it.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:34]: Looking at the present, what's happening in the field right now that's going well for student affairs slash health promotion?

Dylan Dunn [00:46:40]: And so I work mostly with our professionals at the at the at the moment, professionals that reach out to us. There's a lot of care, I will say. And there has always been care in the field, but there maybe the older I get or the more I work with just professionals, the more I am gaining an appreciation for how much staff care and how much of an opportunity that is. And I so I know, especially in today's age of threats to higher education and budgeting and all of that, how hard how easy it can be to be, like, nihilistic and cynical about all of this. But we we need to continue to do is just care and care for each other also as professionals and reach out and connect and not burnout is gonna be the enemy of the next rev of higher education. It already has been. There's a reason that we always speak joke or whether the data still shows us or not that the average student affairs professional stays for five years. I would like to see us really continue to dig into that because I think the care and the compassion has always been there, but I see it.

Dylan Dunn [00:47:29]: It feels different now. It feels more realistic as opposed to just sunshine and rainbows. It feels like it feels more like what I would like to see love look like within four students.

Sydney Chifetz [00:47:38]: I think for me, it's realness. So I don't know if this is coming post pandemic or just the place that we're all at now. But I think from what I've seen, folks are much more willing and comfortable having the tough conversations. So not only with folks in their office, not only with students, but also with administrators of this is what's actually happening. And we see this a lot, right, because of the work that we do with overdose. You can't sugarcoat the overdose prices. You have to be real in how we're talking about it because we need people to take us seriously. Right? And so I think seeing that happen and being much more real with the circumstances that we're in.

Sydney Chifetz [00:48:14]: But I think with that too is authenticity. So folks just being more authentic about what their experience is, whether that's folks in recovery being more authentic with that and and sharing their experience more broadly. And then I think to Dylan's point is that idea of community. I know that belonging is the biggest buzzword in 2024, '20 '20 '5, whatever, with student affairs. But I think we understand the importance of community, not only for student affairs professionals. Right? Because it can feel like we are in the trenches together, but also for students because they're having a much more similar experience than I think sometimes they recognize. But if nobody's talking about the fact that many students are feeling the same way, and obviously, all of our lived experiences is different, but it's when they start to talk about their experiences, they recognize they have more in common than they don't have in common. So I think the authenticity that is being increasingly brought into these conversations, the willingness to say the hard but real thing, and then also the community that is not only evident of staff members on campus and doing this work together, but also that we are kind of upholding within the student community, recognizing that they can and should be there for each other and and help each other out and, you know, that this experience is not we can convince ourselves that we are going through this experience alone when in reality, most college students are having similar thoughts or similar challenges.

Sydney Chifetz [00:49:36]: Right? Recognizing that they happen in very different ways. But it's when we talk about them and we can see that we are not different, we are not isolated, that this is sometimes a very normal part of the human experience that we just need a way and words to be able to talk about it.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:49:50]: And finally, looking towards the future, in an ideal world, what does the field need to be doing to thrive towards the future?

Sydney Chifetz [00:49:55]: Okay. Yeah. Two things come to mind for me. First thing is a judgment free zone, and I know that we say we do that well sometimes. And I wanna acknowledge that to be human, it's to have judgmental thoughts, but we have control over the way that we let those thoughts impact our actions and and what it is that we choose to say out loud. So I think if we can recognize if we can see the humanity in this situation, the best thing I ever did for working with students is kind of settle into, like, if I can see the humanness in the student that I am working with, I can then fully understand why they are choosing to make the decisions they are choosing to. So I think if we can slip into compassion and putting ourselves in students' shoes over judgment, a, And then, b, in a perfect world, resources. So I think there is so much resource scarcity happening on campuses, either because that's a problem for the campus as a whole or the way that it's being distributed.

Sydney Chifetz [00:50:53]: And I think that students are very attuned to that as well. And I know that I am preaching to the choir because most student affairs professionals are hyper aware of this. But I worked in an institution where we had a wonderful and very successful basketball team, and yet students were waiting three weeks, four weeks for a counseling appointment. And students were very aware of that. Staff was very aware of that. And I recognize that there is no button that I can push to fix that. But I do think that in an ideal world, the resources are more equitable, and they're also provided to along with that line of thinking and equity, what do our students need now, and who needs that first? And how are we gonna take a public health and equity minded approach to getting our students what they need, when they need it, and how they need it?

Dylan Dunn [00:51:38]: I think there's two parts of, like, a pragmatic answer to this for me, and one is that campuses realize we're we've never been doing this alone. We've only ever chosen to do it alone with, like, town and gown relationships, for example. If you are a land grant school and you don't see yourself working with the community around you, that's a problem. So I think, like, as we do this work, I don't mean to just, like, throw shade there, but we often are working with big state entities or big community entities who are just waiting to give universities resources and support, but they felt shut out for a long time. I felt like they've been not trusted or the university sees themselves as separate from the community around them. And I both see it as an admission of higher education and student affairs to be really beautiful stewards of the community campus relationship because our students are impacting the community. The community is impacting us. Just because we can pretend that's not a thing doesn't mean that we should, even though it's hard.

Dylan Dunn [00:52:25]: And that requires a lot of hard conversations and a lot of hard collaborations. But some of the most beautiful parts of my work have been bridging those gaps in a really cool way that I would like to see the field utilized more often because there are some really brilliant people across the street from your campus that you don't know yet. And it'd be really great if you did.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:52:42]: It's time to take a quick break and toss it over to producer Chris to learn what's going on in the NASPA world.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:52:48]: Thanks, Jill. So excited to be back in the NASPA world, and there are a ton of things happening in NASPA. Well, it was a great annual conference, overwhelming in some ways, but always exciting to be able to see all of our student affairs friends at the conference. And I know that I personally left very inspired and motivated to go back to my campus to put things into action and to look at what we are doing and what we can do to be able to impact our students in so many different ways. That being said, there's still a ton of things that are coming up even after the conference. First and foremost, there is a webinar coming up on April 29 from the policy division of NASPA entitled Policy Insights for Higher Education in the First one hundred Days. At this webinar, you can join public policy leaders for a discussion centered on federal policy updates, implications for student affairs professionals, and reflections on how to move forward in the current policy environment. Panelists will share perspectives on how student affairs professionals can stay up to date on federal and state policy changes and discuss ways they can advocate for both their institution and the field more broadly.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:53:57]: This will be an important webinar to be able to stay in the know about all of the changing dynamics that are surrounding our campuses today and how those will impact our students. So I highly encourage you to sign up to be able to get even more information about this. Go to learning.NASPA.org to register today. The twenty twenty five NASPA virtual conference is coming up April, and this is an amazing opportunity for you to be able to delve into professional development that is professional development that will be at your fingertips and available to anyone on your campus. With over 70 sessions spread across three dynamic days, whether you're looking to enhance, whether you're looking to enhance your professional skills, discover innovative strategies, or connect with peers, these sessions are designed to inspire and empower you. Also, with every session being recorded, you can catch up on anything that you miss and continue your professional development throughout the year. All of the recordings are available for three hundred and sixty five days. So your registration includes full access to both live and on demand content.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:55:05]: Even if you attended the NASPA annual conference, the virtual conference will have additional rate professional development that will allow for you and other colleagues to be able to professional development that will allow for you and other colleagues to be able to learn throughout the year. I highly encourage you to check this conference out for yourself at learning.NASPA.org. Another professional development event that is coming up is the nineteenth annual Manasa and NASPA conference. That's happening April coming up is the nineteenth annual Manassa NASPA conference that's happening April 27 through April 30 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Manassa NASPA conference provides student affairs practitioners with the knowledge and skills to effectively address and support college students. At this conference, the Manassa area, which is the Middle East, North Africa, and South, and NYU Abu Dhabi, invites you to the nineteenth annual Manassa NASPA conference that's going to be held that's going to be held in The United Arab Emirates on Sunday, April 27 through Wednesday, April 30. This three day conference is an opportunity to connect with colleagues regionally and abroad, and its theme is Beyond Borders, Exploring Global and Local Perspectives on Student Experience. It is not too late to register for this conference to attend and be able to learn from your global colleagues and be able to learn and grow with them at this amazing learning opportunity.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:56:22]: You can find out more on the NASPA website. Every spring, it's a great time to be able to go into your NASPA profile and make sure that your profile is up to date. It is important to make sure that as you are thinking about your own professional development, you're also updating your profile to allow for you to be able to stay in the know of what's happening in the association, but also to allow for you to be able to get involved in a way that makes sense for you. Updating your profile is very easy. By just going to NASPA.org and clicking on my NASPA, you can log in and then you can first edit your profile. By editing your profile, you can make sure that all of your information is accurate. You can also then look at my NASPA engagement under my profile and look at what divisions and groups, journals, and knowledge communities that you want to stay connected with. Just like just like your role at your institution may change over time, your interests in the field may change over time.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:57:27]: So I always encourage people to go back in and make sure that what is here is up to date. Once you have added things in, click save to make sure that you are getting the information that you want, and you will start to hear from knowledge communities, groups, etcetera, about ways to get involved. There are definite other ways to be able to step up that volunteering. If you want to be able to do that, you can go to volunteer central on the NASPA website to be able to raise your hand to be able to raise your hand and get even more information about ways in which you can volunteer your time to be able to impact the association and the profession. I highly encourage you to take some time to be able to look at that today and try and find a new way, be able to get engaged on a new level. Every week, we're going to be sharing some amazing things that are happening within the association. So we are going to be able to try and keep you up to date on everything that's happening and allow for you to be able to get involved in different ways because the association is as strong as its members. And for all of us, we have to find our place within the association, whether it be getting involved with the knowledge community, giving back within one of the the centers or the divisions of the association.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:58:45]: And as you're doing that, it's important to be able to identify for yourself, where do you fit. Where do you wanna give back? Each week, we're hoping that we will share some things that might encourage you, might allow for you to be able to get some ideas that will provide you with an opportunity to be able to say, hey, I see myself in that knowledge community. I see myself doing something like that. Or encourage you in other ways that allow for you to be able to think beyond what's available right now to offer other things to the association, to bring your gifts, your talents to the association and to all of the members within the association. Because through doing that, all of us are stronger and the association is better. Tune in again next week as we find out more about what is happening in NASPA.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:59:40]: Chris, thank you so much for keeping us informed on what's going on in and around NASPA. And we are now back with our lightning round. I've got seven questions for you both to answer in ninety seconds. Ready to go?

Sydney Chifetz [00:59:52]: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:59:53]: Okay. Question one. If you were a conference keynote speaker, what would your entrance music be?

Sydney Chifetz [00:59:58]: Oh my goodness. Selfishly, I think, like, some Grateful Dead, maybe? I don't know. Some good friend of the devil? Come on. Everyone would like that.

Dylan Dunn [01:00:06]: This is so bad. The first thing that came to mind, which I have not heard this song in a decade, is Survivor by Destiny Strong.

Dr. Jill Creighton [01:00:11]: Number two, when you were five years old, what did you wanna be when you grew up?

Sydney Chifetz [01:00:14]: An artist. I was creative.

Dylan Dunn [01:00:16]: Yep. A comic book artist for me.

Dr. Jill Creighton [01:00:18]: Number three, who's your most influential professional mentor?

Sydney Chifetz [01:00:21]: You know, probably a epidemiology professor I had in grad school. The way that he empowered us as as people doing the work and taught us about diseases, but also apply that to the world, doctor Bethel was a really cool professor.

Dylan Dunn [01:00:33]: Mine is actually outside of this field of student affairs, which is MJ Jorgensen, who is a director of statewide addiction work here in Colorado.

Dr. Jill Creighton [01:00:39]: Number four, your essential higher education read.

Sydney Chifetz [01:00:42]: Yeah. So actually, Jill, it's the book that you were referencing earlier, which is Basics Alcohol Program, the brief alcohol screening and intervention for college students. That book tells you everything you need to know about how to host those meetings, but also what are the fundamentals of motivational interviewing. And I think applied to the work, it not only teaches you how to have basics meetings, but also how to treat students, how to treat humans sort of thing.

Dr. Jill Creighton [01:01:02]: And

Dylan Dunn [01:01:02]: mine is The Invisible Leader by Zach Mercurio.

Dr. Jill Creighton [01:01:05]: Number five, the best TV show you've been binging lately.

Sydney Chifetz [01:01:07]: I am late to this, but I just started watching Severance, and it's been pretty good. Spooky, but good.

Dylan Dunn [01:01:13]: I'm rewatching Breaking Bad right now.

Dr. Jill Creighton [01:01:14]: Number six, the podcast you've spent the most hours listening to in the last year.

Sydney Chifetz [01:01:18]: Definitely Science Versus. It's really cool. It's all about science. Give it a look see because it's awesome, but Science Versus.

Dylan Dunn [01:01:25]: Armchair expert because I'm one of those people, I guess.

Dr. Jill Creighton [01:01:27]: And finally, number seven. Any shout outs you'd like to give, personal or professional?

Sydney Chifetz [01:01:31]: I think I had a really great supervisor at my previous role, Jenna Parisi. She was really cool and and really passionate about doing basics work and really empowered me to kind of step into the role of running the programs exactly how I wanted to run them. So I'll shout out Jenna. Jody

Dylan Dunn [01:01:43]: Donovan was a mentor of mine at Colorado State University. She's still there, and she's still kicking butt and taking names and doing great things. But she inspired me a lot, in the student affairs program there.

Dr. Jill Creighton [01:01:52]: Been a wonderful conversation with you both today. I know I learned a lot from you. And if any of our listeners would like to connect with you or the Safe Project after this episode airs, how can they find you?

Dylan Dunn [01:02:00]: Our website is, www.safeproject.us, and we're on the campus' page. So feel free to reach out via that.

Dr. Jill Creighton [01:02:06]: Thank you both so much for sharing your voices with us today.

Sydney Chifetz [01:02:09]: Thanks, Jill.

Dr. Jill Creighton [01:02:11]: Thank you. This has been an episode of SA Voices from the Field, a podcast brought to you by NASPA. This show is made possible because of you, the listeners, and we continue to be grateful that you spend your time with us. If you'd like to reach the show, you can always email us at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn by searching for doctor Jill L. Creighton. We always welcome your feedback and your topic and guest suggestions. We'd love it if you take a moment to tell a colleague about the show, and please leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It really helps other student affairs professionals find our show and helps us to become more visible in the larger podcasting community.

Dr. Jill Creighton [01:02:51]: This episode was produced and hosted by Dr. Jill Creighton. That's me. Produced and audio engineered by Dr. Chris Lewis. Special thanks to the University of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next time.

This week we will be taking a break while Dr. Jill Creighton and Dr. Christopher Lewis will be attending the NASPA Conference. They look forward to seeing you at the conference and will be back after the conference!

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:01]: Welcome to Student Affairs Voices from the Field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. Brought to you by NASPA, we curate free and accessible professional development for higher ed professionals wherever you happen to be. This is season 12, continuing our journey through the past, present, and future of student affairs. I'm doctor Jill Creighton, she, her, hers, your essay voices from the field host. Hey, SA Voices listeners. Again, for those of you who are able to join us in New Orleans, we hope that we have gotten to see you this week. For those of you who are listening from elsewhere on planet Earth, thank you so much for bearing with us this week as we take our annual week off in order to produce content for the conference. When we come back, we'll bring you the episodes that we've recorded down there as well as bring you the episodes from our fellow colleagues who were able to share their voices with us.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:51]: Thanks so much, and we'll see you again real soon. This has been an episode of SA Voices from the Field, a podcast brought to you by NASPA. This show is made possible because of you, the listeners, and we continue to be grateful that you spend your time with us. If you'd like to reach the show, you can always email us at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn by searching for doctor Jill L. Creighton. We always welcome your feedback and your topic and guest suggestions. We'd love it if you take a moment to tell a colleague about the show, and please leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It really helps other student affairs professionals find our show and helps us to become more visible in the larger podcasting community.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:34]: This episode was produced and hosted by doctor Jill Creighton. That's me. Produced and audio engineered by doctor Chris Lewis. Special thanks to the University of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next time.

In today's rapidly evolving educational landscape, the intersection of technology and student affairs is more significant than ever. In a recent discussion on the SA Voices from the Field podcast, guests James Quisenberry and David Chao, both seasoned professionals in student affairs technology, shared insights into their work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Pittsburgh. They highlighted the essential role of technology in enhancing student experiences and the ongoing efforts to integrate innovative solutions within student affairs.

The Journey into Student Affairs Technology

Both Quisenberry and Chao entered the realm of student affairs through unique pathways. Quisenberry transitioned from the private sector back into higher education, finding his niche in IT leadership for housing divisions. Similarly, Chao moved from the business world to higher education, recognizing the impact student affairs professionals had on his own college experience. Their experiences underscore the diverse backgrounds that contribute to the field, bringing fresh perspectives that help bridge the gap between technology and student affairs.

The Role of Technology in Student Affairs

In their conversation, Quisenberry and Chao emphasized the importance of technology as a tool to support student affairs work. They discussed the varying organizational models of IT within universities, whether centralized or more distributed, and how each affects the implementation of tech solutions. A critical point raised was the necessity of creating a collaborative environment where student affairs professionals and IT teams work together to design technology that meets the holistic needs of students. This approach ensures that tech solutions are user-centric and support the diverse aspects of student life.

Inclusion and the Future of Technology in Higher Education

A key theme that emerged was the role of technology in fostering inclusion. Technology, if leveraged correctly, serves as a great equalizer by providing access to resources and support for all students. Quisenberry and Chao highlighted ongoing efforts to develop competency standards for technology in student affairs, working towards frameworks that guide the ethical and effective use of data and digital tools. They stressed the importance of preparing for future challenges by collaborating across disciplines, ensuring that technology enhances, rather than hinders, the student experience.

Conclusion

As higher education continues to evolve, the integration of technology into student affairs will be crucial for addressing the needs of new generations of students. Leaders like Quisenberry and Chao are paving the way for a future where technological advancements not only support but elevate the student experience, ensuring that universities remain places of growth, inclusion, and innovation.

Questions We Are Asking At the Conference

Theme 1: Well-being and Healthy Excellence in Student Affairs

How can student affairs professionals model healthy excellence in their own lives and institutional cultures while supporting students' well-being?

Theme 2: Changing the Student Affairs Profession

How can we better leverage technology to meet the evolving needs of students and higher education institutions?

Theme 3: Sustaining and Celebrating the Student Affairs Profession

Can you share a moment or experience in student affairs that you feel embodies the spirit of this profession?

If you would like to share your voice and we cannot record it at the conference, you can send an audio recording to [email protected] by March 28, 2025.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:01]: Welcome to Student Affairs Voices from the Field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. Brought to you by NASPA, we curate free and accessible professional development for higher ed professionals wherever you happen to be. This is season 12, continuing our journey through the past, present, and future of student affairs. I'm doctor Jill Creighton, she, her, hers, your essay voices from the field host. Today on SA Voices, we're visiting with our technology knowledge community or Tech KC with David Chow and James Quisenberry. David Chow started his career in the business world with a degree in computer science before transitioning to higher ed. He spent the last fifteen years working for the University of Pittsburgh where he currently serves as the director of IT for student affairs. He's been active in the NASPA community for over ten years and currently serves as the chair of the Tech KC.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:50]: His mission is with fifteen years of knowledge, experience, and engagement in student affairs, he believes that he can help bridge the gap between tech and student affairs pros so that together we can enhance the student experience and facilitate their growth in an open and collaborative environment. Navigating the complexities of tech and student affairs requires a holistic approach to the technology itself, how it's utilized in practice, and understanding the data and outcomes. Higher ed is being challenged to adapt and evolve, and often intimidating pace of changes requires greater innovation than ever before. James Quisenberry is currently the executive director for student affairs tech and chief information officer for student affairs at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. In his previous role on campus, he served as associate director for the university housing department in tech services. Before joining the Urbana campus, he worked in the private sector with online learning systems focusing on curriculum and student information systems products in k 12 with Pearson Education, NCS, and Nova Net Learning. Mister Quisenberry holds both a BA and MS degree in computer science, both of which he received from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He's an active professional in organizations including NASPA, EDUCAUSE, and Akuho Ai.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:56]: He's currently serving as a member of the NASPA Tech KC representing Region 4 East. Mister Quisenberry is also a founding facilitator for the Illinois IT leadership Workshop where he served for over fifteen years to graduate over 375 emerging leaders from all three University of Illinois campuses and the University of Illinois system. He has over thirty five years of experience using technology to support education and focuses on building strong teams in all areas of technology support and invest strongly in leadership and development for all staff so they can lead from where they are. David and James, welcome to SA Voices.

James Quisenberry [00:02:28]: Hey, Jill.

David Chao [00:02:29]: Thank you for having us.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:30]: And we are featuring you today as the current knowledge community co chairs for the NASA technology KC. We love to have our KC chairs on to tell us what's going on in your focus area of student affairs. So I'd love to start us off. Normally, we ask you how you got to your current seat, but I'd love to know first how you two met each other and decided to run as co chairs for the KC.

David Chao [00:02:49]: So we met at NASPA, I think it was 2017. I think it was San Antonio at the national conference at one of the TKC group meetings. And we've been connected ever since then. I've enjoyed working. James has a lot of experience, and I've been able to really learn from him. And and he served as a mentor and a friend to me, as well as a colleague.

James Quisenberry [00:03:06]: Yeah. We got together because technology folks that are focused on technology and student affairs, there's some of us, but there's not a lot of us. And so David and I and a few other people would run into each other at NASPA and at EDUCAUSE, which is the professional association for higher ed IT folks. And we knew we had things to work on, things that we could collaborate with.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:03:28]: You all approach the work in a little bit of a different way than those of us who have trained as a master's in higher ed. Tell us how you ended up using your IT background and skills in student affairs. And, James, let's start with you.

James Quisenberry [00:03:40]: Yeah. Well, it was, I'll say, a little bit by accident. I started out in higher education in technology, but moved into the private sector for a while and decided I wanted to get back to higher education. And the opportunity that I found was leading IT IT for the housing division here at the University of Illinois, which is a a large operation, you know, 9,500 beds and about 1,200 apartments. And so I got into student affairs because they needed an IT leader because cause they had a complex IT environment. And I had a lot of background. I had spent some time in higher education, so it wasn't too big of a stretch for me. And so that's how I got into it.

James Quisenberry [00:04:16]: And I spent a lot of time working with Akuho early on because I was in housing. And then as I moved into a more student affairs breadth role, I started getting involved with NASPA.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:04:27]: And David, how about yourself?

David Chao [00:04:28]: So I had a bit of a roundabout journey to student affairs. I was in the business world for about ten years, and I don't have the business mentality. And I wanted to look for something, a little different, and I turned to higher education. And so I'm actually a Pitt alumni. So I came back to the University of Pittsburgh and and got a job here. I did not know what student affairs was before I started working for Pitt, but in hindsight, I had a challenging college experience. And as I look back on that experience, I realized how many student affairs professionals I interacted with, even if I didn't fully understand who they were or what they were. And that really kind of inspired me as I worked for Pitt student affairs, just wanting to use my technology skills to help the people that were helping kids like me and providing guidance and mentoring and, and, just helping them develop.

David Chao [00:05:13]: So it, it was interesting how it ended up. It wasn't intentional in any means, but here I am. And I'm, I'm grateful for that.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:05:19]: You're both in unique situations in which you are working directly with the division of student affairs as an IT leader. Some universities are organized with a completely centralized IT model and some are more hub and spoke models. Some of them also have completely unrelated IT departments across large complex organizations. Can you talk to us a little bit about what it means to work directly with student affairs and student affairs professionals in the IT world versus if you were in a more centralized model?

David Chao [00:05:46]: So interestingly, I report to both central IT and to student affairs. So I I do work full time for student affairs, but I'm connected with Pitt IT central IT. So we have a model that that varies depending on the departments. So that allows us to have a good connection with central IT and the resources they have, while staying connected with student affairs and the specific things that they need.

James Quisenberry [00:06:05]: Yeah. And I would say I have something similar in that I'm really active with campus IT, and so I have been tapped many times to lead campus level initiatives even though I'm embedded in student affairs. One of the things, we created shared service for technology and student affairs just about seven years ago. And one of the founding principles of that was you can do IT in many different places. You can do it many ways on campus, but we wanted to create an environment where individuals who are interested in the mission of student affairs that wanted to practice IT and higher ed would come to our unit because that's our focus. Our focus is supporting staff who support students either directly or indirectly. And so I think that's important. I've seen all of the different types of organizations.

James Quisenberry [00:06:54]: Like my big 10 peers, we talk a lot about how we do things differently, and some of them have strong IT organizations like we do in student affairs, and some of them are very small but mighty and have to leverage everything out of the central IT group. And that's the challenge because their focus is not always on the student experience. They may have a focus on teaching and learning, which is faculty centric, or they may have a focus on research, which is, again, not very focused on the student experience or the weird things we have to run-in student affairs and housing and dining and recreation and all of these different places. So I think it's a challenge for those organizations that don't have some technology resources in their student affairs area because they don't get that same kind of focus on serving students.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:07:42]: I think the typical listener to SA Voices has technology embedded in their career on a daily basis regardless of their personal level of comfort with tools, with databases, with technological spaces beyond the Microsoft Office suite, things like that. How do you approach the work for student affairs professionals who haven't maybe been raised in a collegiate environment where tech was a focus versus professionals who are maybe in lockstep with you and and figuring out the latest and greatest?

David Chao [00:08:10]: I think here at Pitt, you know, our focus has been making sure that we're working with we don't wanna be an on demand service. We wanna be engaged as part of the process. I think I've really been trying to promote a multi discipline approach to our technology that, yes, there's a technical part to it that you have to have a skill set and experience to do. But so much of technology is well, really almost all of it that we do is is user facing, whether it's our students or faculty or staff. And so that kind of design doesn't just happen purely without interacting with the people who are working with them. So just making sure that we're kind of holistic in our way. So it's just not just, Hey, we need technology and you go do it on your own and then come back. It's like we have to develop it together.

David Chao [00:08:49]: And I think that is something that we try to, it's important for us to try to understand student affairs and their goals, what they're working towards, and also share what our IT needs are and what we need from them to help understand the technology. So I think it's really finding that bridge between the two.

James Quisenberry [00:09:06]: Yeah. David, you you stated so succinctly, but, you know, there's a certain amount of chasing after some of the folks we support, and there's a little bit of coaxing them along. It's interesting because I was just actually part of a review for University of Illinois Chicago, their student affairs technology team. And one of the things we focus on, because we were using the CAST standards, is inclusion. And that's a dimension of inclusion that we get to see that's not talked about a lot, which is we have a workforce who may or may not have technology skills. It may not be important to their particular role. And so we have to be providers who are inclusive in being able to support people where they're at with their comfort level with technology. Sometimes that means we we have to go steps further.

James Quisenberry [00:09:52]: Sometimes it means we have to understand that we have a person we're supporting that can do more without us having to get in their way. Right? So that's an unusual nuance to inclusion that is on our minds from a technology standpoint. It harkens to, like, the digital divide conversations from twenty years ago. You you gotta be able to serve everyone with technology in a way that is supportive of them.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:10:14]: I love that you brought up inclusion as a value in tech, particularly from the tech KC perspective, because it is one of the great equalizers if we're doing it well. We're allowing people to access information through technology, or, support their learning through technology. What are you all thinking about from a KC perspective in terms of inclusion and tech as they come together in student affairs right now?

David Chao [00:10:37]: We have a couple of things that we are focusing on through the TKC. One of them is the ACP and NASPA tech competency. And that was going through revision now. I believe all the competencies are up for review, and we participated in the focus group for the technology competency. And I think there's gonna be a draft to be reviewing in the next couple months. The other area is, as James mentioned, is CAS. There is no standard for technology in CAS currently. And so I believe those last November or so, CAS made an announcement about how they are doing a strategic review about their approach and and long term.

David Chao [00:11:09]: And we reached out to them, offering the TKC and and our assistance in developing a technology standard. And we participated in our focus group, in December as well.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:11:18]: I think that one's probably a long time coming for us in student affairs and higher education. As that works through development, do we know a timeline or an anticipated next step in how that might get developed?

David Chao [00:11:28]: Doctor. Not right now. I think they're still evaluating the overall strategy for CAS, but we did engage the assessment and Casey as well, because they have their assessment specific things about, you know, how do you create surveys? How do you word questions to avoid bias? But then they also have the technical side to them too. I mean, you have the Tableaus, you have alterics and the tools that kind of are siblings to the technology, Casey. So we've actually been talking about partnering to work with CAS to make sure those elements are included as well. But no, there's no firm timeline right now.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:11:55]: When I think about the tech, Casey, I think you all play such an important role in what NASPA is doing to keep us all up to date. If I am a student affairs professional, but I'm not in my IT department, how can I participate or find space within the TKC for me?

James Quisenberry [00:12:09]: Well, we're always looking for people to join us. There's not a test. You don't have to, have a certain level of competency with technology that If you're just interested, we're always happy to have people join us. And I don't know, David, what's our our current interest level based on the tools we have

David Chao [00:12:25]: About 400 right now.

James Quisenberry [00:12:26]: That had expressed interest in the KC. So they're they're getting our our direct, emails and things that we share about what's going on. I always like one of the things that we really appreciate is that NASPA brought back the knowledge community area at the national conference where people can kind of wander around and talk to the different KCs and find their alignments. That's always a good place to do that. Not everybody can travel to NASPA, but if you're interested, our information is on the NASPA website.

David Chao [00:12:56]: Yeah. I would add to that that, you know, we're also trying to bring in a really wide range in terms of inclusion, in terms of of of who our audience is because we we serve everyone. And while James and I have an IT background, we also have faculty. We have deans, we have project managers. We have all aspects of, of student affairs professionals who are involved in technology. And that's important to us. So whether it's our annual awards or sponsored programs or a technology journal, we want to have all aspects from the practical to the research.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:13:22]: What's on the current priority list for the TKC?

David Chao [00:13:25]: I think just the tech competencies and the CAS standard would be our highest priority, as well as our journal. We are working to publish a new volume of our journal of technology in higher education. And we haven't published since 2021. COVID did a number on all of us, of course. So that's really our focus right now. And just continued outreach and figuring out how we can, we can partner. I think we are all challenged with our resources right now in terms of our time. We all have our day jobs and the outreach.

David Chao [00:13:49]: And I think I think working with NASPA to find ways to increase our engagement and contribute to the overall student affairs profession.

James Quisenberry [00:13:55]: And one of the things we've been looking at for a couple of years is how to provide a resource to student affairs leaders to do external program reviews of how they use technology. That's something that I got interested in because some of my colleagues got me involved in their with their need for program review. And without a specific CAS standard to follow, we've had to kind of build that based on some components of CAS and some components of what we consider to be the guiding lights for higher ed IT service. And that's something we'd like to be in a place where the KC can be a resource where leader and student affairs could come to and say, hey. I'm I'm trying to figure out what's going on with how I use technology. Can you provide a couple of people that could come and help with an external review? So that that's a goal for us to make that that's something that, is ready and available to anyone who needs it.

David Chao [00:14:52]: Yeah. And I would add to that. In addition, the CAS standard is obviously very important when it's pinned on that. But then also having just even self assessment tools so that, you know, institutions can start out on their own just to get a sense of where they're at, before going to a program review. But I do, to echo James, I think the reviews are really important. I think in higher education, you know, we're not we're very collaborative by nature. I mean, yeah, in some cases, we're competing for the same students and and for admission purposes, but the reality is we're all about learning and educating. And chances are whatever issue one institution is dealing with, another institution has been dealing with it too.

David Chao [00:15:25]: So why don't we find ways to try to standardize it? There's no never gonna be one right answer, but maybe we can find ways to narrow it down and at least have a certain range so we're not completely all over the map.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:15:36]: Let's talk about that self assessment potential tool that's coming forward. What are we, asking institutions or divisions of student affairs to be looking at for doing well in the tech area or being maybe more on the forefront of technological technological development, given that we don't have the standards yet to measure against?

James Quisenberry [00:15:56]: Yeah. I think you have to start with the competency to look at that because even though it's under review, it's it's been there for a little while, and it can be used to see where your staff is at, which helps determine what kind of resources you have to ask these questions. One of one of the really challenging things, and you hit on this earlier, Jill, is that how we use technology in student affairs varies widely how it's organized. And so it's it's kind of hard to build a one size fits all kind of standard because some places have their own staff or maybe even doing their own software development, which is unusual these days, but still happens. Or they might be completely dependent on a third party central IT or other parts of the campus to do this work. So it has to be kind of abstract, the question about how you're using technology. And I think it centers I would like to say it centers around student experience and staff needs, which are kind of highly variable from campus to campus.

David Chao [00:16:57]: I would ask kind of tangentially about skillset regarding the competency. You know, I think understanding what our staff and their technology skills and what their needs are and what we can help them with, or can they, you know, kind of run with them on their own or just guiding them? I think that's an important sense to understand what we can deliver. I think that one of our colleagues, Erica Eckert at Kent State University, she teaches a course that James and I have actually, she's invited us to be guest speakers. It's a technology systems and data and higher education administration. And I was very excited to hear that she was teaching that course, because administration. And I was very excited to hear that she was teaching that course because I was talking to her and she hasn't found a lot of courses like that at other graduate programs, but that's an important exposure. I mean, obviously we're not expecting a student affairs professionals to have a degree in information science to work with technology, but having some foundational skills to understand that and be able to build from. So when we're talking and working with them, we're able, you know, we have that, again, that bridge again, kind of getting a little closer, I think is very helpful.

David Chao [00:17:51]: And, and Joe wanted to ask you about the technology module you're teaching in your master's program well along the lines of Erica's class.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:17:57]: Absolutely. So I'm working with NASPA and EUCA, which is the European Association that works with student affairs professionals. And NASPA and EUCA have partnered together to create a master's program through LUNA University in Rome. So for our listeners, if you go back to the first episode of this season, we featured seven or eight of the graduate students that are currently in that class, sharing their perspectives on global student affairs and what they're learning. And actually part part of what we did for their class, because one of the things that they asked me about learning was podcasting skills, was we went in straight to lab and said, Hey, you know what? We're gonna talk about production, and we're gonna feature you on the show if you want to be, if you wanna appear. And so it was a a lovely way of integrating theory to practice really quickly in the same four hour block. But we're focused a lot on AI. We're focused a lot on technological tools to support students with disabilities.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:18:47]: We're gonna be looking at how universities are using technology for recruitment purposes. For example, there's a university in the Southwest who recreated their campus in Minecraft, the video game, as a way of introducing their students to a campus tour. Because, you know, we've we've, I I think, all seen the campus tour where you can kind of click forward and stand on the circle and and look around. But that is a very real estate y kind of way to look at a campus. Whereas what a 17 year old or 18 year old high school senior might be looking for is can I move around the campus in Minecraft? Like it's a very interesting way of approaching the same type of problems. I'm curious how campuses are meeting the needs of Gen Z and quicker than we're ready for meeting the needs of Gen Alpha because we're moving away from a generation of people who tinker to a generation of people for whom things have just always worked. And that's interesting. I read a study about millennials being the only generation that have had to teach both their parents and their children how to fix a printer, which I think is really funny.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:19:47]: But I think it's interesting because millennials came of age, modern technology, the iPhone, internet came of age and that created a tinkering mindset for that particular generation. Whereas that looks a little different for Boomer, X or Z and Alpha. So I think those are some things that I'm thinking about. Doctor. Jason Perry (3five '30

James Quisenberry [00:20:04]: three): Yeah.

David Chao [00:20:04]: And I I would add to that for sure. I mean, today, this generation, they are the most tech savvy generation ever, and the next generation will be even more so. They're being exposed to technology and have expectations that people didn't have before. And they're used to being on their phone, downloading an app. Do they like it? If they don't, they get rid of it. They get another one. And then as apps become more popular, they kind of almost crowd sources itself. But when we deliver technology, in higher education, you know, we can't move so quickly.

David Chao [00:20:30]: We can't just be, you know, when we're, whether it's academic side or on the student affairs side, you know, we have to put a little more design and thought into our apps. You know, we don't, we can't afford to be putting out version one point zero one point one, one point two, two, one point three. We have to have a little bit more stability because ultimately these services impact our students. So I think for sure that the need to, to design, to lay out your processes before you even get to the technical side, to understand what you're trying to do. That's something I think we really try to work on with our staff to understand there's a process behind this that will be translated. But if the process isn't clearly defined, it will not necessarily translate more to technology. And that despite all the hype about AI, we don't have a magic button right now that just makes everything work if we press it. So I think that's an important part in understanding how we can deliver the technology that our students need.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:21:13]: I remember when I was at the University of Oregon in the late 2010s, '1 of my favorite uses of technology we did was utilize the GIS mapping service that had been developed by our tech team in conjunction with our food security task force to build kind of a system to text message students when there was free leftover food on campus. And it was an amazing collaboration between GIS mapping, the information technology team, the food security task force and university dining, as well as anyone who was purchasing catering for, for campus events. We all know how much food waste there is on college campuses because of these types of events. And also because of food safety handling reasons, we can't always donate what, is unused, but we could send that information to students who could go get it. And so there's some very cool things happening like that. I'm also wondering if you can share with us any very interesting or new tech trends that are coming down the pike that may or may not be related to AI.

James Quisenberry [00:22:04]: We can't have this conversation without talking about AI. And the trend that is that I'm observing is the idea that you can have an agent for anything, essentially a chatbot that is programmed to answer questions and and solve, I'll call them, simple problems for information gathering because it extends the reach of a lot of our offices want to be able to serve students all the time. Right? But they we can't staff to be there all the time. So that's an important, interesting trend. But, well, a lot of people don't have a good understanding of are the weaknesses of the large language model design and how its goal is not to necessarily give you the most accurate information. Its goal is to give you the information it thinks you want and organize in a way that's pleasing to you. And that's how we get hallucinations or things that come out of those kinds of agents that seem right, but on further review aren't based in fact. So I participated in a higher ed AI conference at Notre Dame back in November, and it was just groups coming together and talking about what they were doing.

James Quisenberry [00:23:09]: And it that seemed to be the the thing that was most popular was talking about building agents and having agents serve in different areas. One thing that I saw that was both creepy and really cool at the same time was a digital doppelganger that a campus had created, which essentially the person who was giving the presentation had a digital image, a deep fake, I guess, of himself that he played. And it went through giving his presentation and shifted to Spanish, and then it shifted to French, and then it shifted to Mandarin. I mean and it was him, and his facial expressions and, you know, mouth movements fit the language that he was delivering. Of course, I don't speak some of those languages, so I don't know how well it was translating. But the idea of when you think about building community, you think about maybe the chancellor of your campus giving a welcome message to international students that comes to them in their language. And it looks like the chancellor, and it sounds but it's delivered in a way that's very comfortable for them to take in. Even though it's creepy, it's very powerful.

James Quisenberry [00:24:11]: And those kinds of capabilities, I know they're they're talking about that in a way to extend how some professors can teach more courses rather than having to have the energy to do that, like, five times, many times, or have it be on demand. That's one of the things that's so concerned about how that kind of technology can be used to spread misinformation and make it look like people who are important or recognize are saying things that they're not they're not really saying. Still, the the benefits of those kinds of capabilities are, I think, apparent.

David Chao [00:24:44]: I

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:24:45]: think coming down soon, we're gonna have to be having a conversation on how we're developing curriculum for students on recognizing what is AI produced and what is not because that's going to get harder and harder to tell. For now, we can do things like look for uncanny uncanny valley kind of images or AI really is garbage at producing hands and feet for some reason at the moment. So we can look at those things. There's a meme that's always like chat gpt can't tell you how many Rs are in strawberry because of the way that the algorithm works and things like that. So we have this technology now that is doing certain things and it's easier to recognize, but it's going to get more sophisticated. And as it gets more sophisticated, it will be harder for us to tell what's real and what's generated. So I think that's gonna be an interesting thing to watch TKC tackle and lead on the forefront for NASPA coming soon.

David Chao [00:25:28]: Yeah. And I just wanted to add to James, we see that trend here at Pitt in terms of using AI and more focused use cases to learn. I mean, the chat, chat gbt, and all those tools are really fun to play with. But as you mentioned, we find issues with them and we can't afford to be putting out chats to try to provide our students with information and have that kind of variance. But having very specific chatbots that have specific, that are trained to do answer specific questions and narrow it down, it helps us learn from them and be more focused and takes out that variance. And I think that's important. And these are things that we're trying to do at Pitt with some of the chatbots we're playing with as well.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:26:00]: With those large language models, it's garbage in, garbage out is what I like to teach. So if we if we put in a garbage prompt, we're gonna get a garbage answer, meaning nonspecific or maybe not quite related to what we're looking at. But it also is a good reminder to us that these language models are crawling our websites for how they're generating our data. So if our website information is not accurate, then their the model will not be able to spit out accurate information back to the user. But if we're looking at specific models for our campuses, we can also then know what our, our audiences are asking for the most. Like what keywords are being input the most? What questions are hardest for people to find? But I will say the one use that we're seeing from Gen Z that terrifies me the most personally is using ChatGPT for therapy. We're seeing young people put in their life situations into ChatGPT and asking for advice that way. And I know that there are some AI counseling based models that are coming out.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:26:55]: I do think it's a little bit scarier to know that someone who might be having a mental health crisis is turning to an AI service rather than a human that could help them through that difficult situation because there are some things that technology can do really well. But I just don't I just don't know personally that a mental health intervention will ever be done better by machine than by a person.

James Quisenberry [00:27:15]: Yeah. It it's interesting. I think we we kinda actually went through this when with early online education. There there was a conversation about how can we go this route, how can a computer teach students, how we can't lose the human touch and and the value of teachers. That's all true. But one of the things we learned in that process were certain individuals, particularly individuals who were might be in a minority or an underrepresented area, had an opinion of the computer that it was unbiased. And that may not be a safe opinion, by the way, in the world of AI. But the idea of being able AI as a space to try out ideas and to explore things, maybe not mental health, but explore things in a non judgmental place, does have does have some merit and does create a space where sometimes students can ask questions that they wouldn't feel comfortable asking to the TA or the professor because they don't wanna look stupid.

James Quisenberry [00:28:17]: And so while you're concerned about can it do therapy successfully, very valid question, we don't know that in the long term. It does provide a a place where you can interact where some of the stakes are lower from a personal standpoint.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:28:31]: Absolutely. That is an incredible value that these LLMs can can give our students or the faculty and staff on a campus. And especially because there's no limitation to the hours in which you can ask a question to an LLM, whereas there, you know, there is a limitation to when we can staff our departments. I wanna ask if there's anything in particular that you wish the typical student affairs professional knew about technology that maybe you're seeing, a learning gap for or something in the skill set that you find particularly helpful, when you center technology in the work.

James Quisenberry [00:29:03]: One of the things I've been thinking about a lot is we are a technology team that has been created to support operations. And so we're staffed I won't say we're understaffed, but we're staffed pretty lean because we're student affairs. We have what we need to get by. And one of the things that continues to happen is individuals come to us questions about new ideas or new directions and so forth, but we've never invested in technology and student affairs from an r and d or innovation perspective. It's always been, what do we need to do the operations to get this data load for students this fall and those kinds of things. And we have to think about that because and this is one of the the promises of of AI is that if we can take some of the busy work off of people's plates to create a little more space, then we can think about innovation. Then we can go down that path. And I love it when people ask us if we can do things that are beyond what we're doing, but we have to have this understanding that to invest, you have to have time to think, Right? To innovate, you have to have time to think.

James Quisenberry [00:30:10]: You can't be in constant firefighting mode, which we know we are in a lot of the time. And so that's what I would ask as student affairs professionals to consider is, how are we making space for innovation from a mental capability standpoint? How do we create that space? I know we're doing that. Just about every department of Sioux Fairs can talk about how they're creating space for their staff to for their own health, for their well-being, and such. But that's something I I feel like is an assumption that is made and and needs to be thought through a little bit.

David Chao [00:30:40]: Yeah. And I'd like to echo that, James. I think that we in my experience within student affairs, not just here at Pitt, but at interacting with other institutions, we tend to be very reactive. Higher education doesn't move that fast. And so that ends up putting us always leaving something on the table by being reactive instead of proactive, trying to get ahead of some things. Obviously technology moves very quickly, so you're never going to ever truly be ahead, but we don't need to be often as behind as we are. And I think just trying to shift that a little bit. So we're not just doing the firefighting, the day to day stuff, and just responding that we are getting and we're designing and recreating, which ultimately will allow us to breathe and think and provide better solutions.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:31:19]: I think that that plight of being in constant reaction mode is the plight of pretty much every student affairs department who wants to be serving our students in new and more robust ways. And it's such an intense thing to think about how do you carve out that time, and also still manage to do what you need to do in a given week. So if you all find that magic solution, we'll have you back on the show to tell us how you did it. I do wanna bring us into our theme questions for the season. We are talking about the past, present, and future of student affairs. So I have a question for each of those areas. And our first question is on the past. What's one component of the history of the student affairs profession that you think we should continue to carry forward or alternatively to let go of?

David Chao [00:32:05]: I would just say that we're here for our students. We're here to care for them. Times may change. Technology changes. The world changes, but our ability to help them grow and develop and be a resource for them is is never gonna change from

James Quisenberry [00:32:16]: And I plus one on that, but I I would add the culture of assessment, the the ability of student affairs to take a look at what they're doing and compare it to what their expectations are and what other people may be doing in this space, is a continuous improvement mindset, which is we don't call it that, but that's what it is. And that's how we move things forward, both being introspective about what we're doing and looking outward around us to see if somebody has figured it out in a way that we haven't.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:32:45]: Into the present, what's happening right now in the field of student affairs that's going well for us?

David Chao [00:32:50]: I would say that we are started with COVID and it's continuing now. We're learning to adapt, to be resourceful, and to be resilient. And, you know, these are the things that we teach our students. And so, you know, we should be doing practicing what we preach. Right? And so I think that's something in the present that we really need to focus on.

James Quisenberry [00:33:06]: Yeah. The trend on health and well-being for our students and our and our staff is at a strong point. We just signed on at the University of Illinois to the Okanagan Charter of, being a health promoting university. And and I I think that's built in the recent years, and I think it's a good a good trend.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:33:23]: And finally, looking towards the future, in an ideal world, what does student affairs need to be doing right now to thrive towards the future?

David Chao [00:33:30]: I think collaboration across professional disciplines, whether it's student affairs professionals, technology professionals, business professionals, you know, ultimately, that holistic, multidiscipline approach will serve our students better in what we do by having that.

James Quisenberry [00:33:44]: Yeah. I'd reinforce that by saying, you know, we're tearing down the silos between the different areas in our student affairs, division, and that's that's getting that's getting collaborative opportunities. And that is also better for our students because we're less a bunch of different departments trying to serve them and more a student affairs division who serves them through different paths. I came into student affairs as a technology professional learning student affairs. I wanna be thinking thought of as a student affairs professional practicing technology, and I'm doing that through an EdD program. Because what I found when I've done reviews of other technology teams is that the leader may have come from industry like David and I have, and but and they haven't invested as much in learning the practice of student affairs, either by getting a master's degree or working on an advanced degree. And that that's important because technology folks have a mindset. Student affairs folks have a mindset.

James Quisenberry [00:34:42]: We need to have a balance between those. We have to bring them together as leaders of technology in student affairs.

David Chao [00:34:50]: Yeah. I would add to that. You know, when I I've been in student affairs for almost fifteen years. And when I started, obviously, just learning, it's a pretty big place, right? So really all the different departments, the disciplines, the different goals, but I always found myself drawn to understanding what they do. What are their goals? Things that are specific to student affairs that from an IT professional, you might think, well, that's not technical. So why do I care about that? That? But I think it helps me understand better what they need so I can help deliver that technology. And to James's point, you know, student affairs and IT are, they're two different professionals, professions. They have different education experience, skill sets, and languages.

David Chao [00:35:24]: And so being able to bridge that is is really important. And rather than just sitting on one side of it, I think it's important to learn both sides.

James Quisenberry [00:35:30]: Oh, yes. I could go into that in-depth, but it's something I've been thinking about for years, which is how we use student data in predicting student success, particularly from non academic data. So the stuff that we actually hold in a lot of our student affairs and auxiliaries are are starting to be used into these black boxes that label students as being successful successful or not successful. And it's not being done with a good eye towards the ethical and other implications of making those choices. How you're defining success matters. And you may be labeling something, someone is not successful because they behave in a certain way, say how they use their meal plan, how they use campus recreation, but it's not part of their experience to use it the way the other 90% of the population at the campus think of that. So that's a concern that I have is that leaders at the institution are making these choices about these data inputs and not having a privacy and ethical conversations about they're thinking about, can we do this as opposed to, should we do this, and what are the unintended consequences of those choices?

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:36:38]: It's time to take a quick break and toss it over to producer Chris to learn what's going on in the NASPA world.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:36:44]: Thanks, Jill. So excited to be back in the NASPA world, and there's a ton of things happening in NASPA. NASPA has joined over 60 higher education associations and organizations who urged the US Department of Education to rescind its recent guidance outlined in the February 14 dear colleague letter. You can view the dear colleague letter and its subsequent facts in NASPA's public policy hub. If you've never visited the hub before, go to learning.NASPA.org to learn more about many of the policies that NASPA is following currently with updates on a regular basis. There is a new NASPA VPSA and AVP colleague conversation that is happening on 04/17/2025 at 4PM Eastern Standard Time entitled Beyond the Pilot, Leading Large Scale AI Transformation in Student Affairs. Successful AI integration requires more than an isolated pilot program or departmental initiative. This colleague conversation will leverage the transformational potential of AI and student affairs, recommendations for student affairs leaders report, and the four phase framework to empower senior leaders with the tools to develop and scale strategic AI initiatives.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:38:00]: Participants will explore practical approaches to leading AI implement to leading AI implementation, fostering collaboration, and influencing decision making and influencing decision making. You can sign up today on the learning portal at the NASPA website, again, by going to learning.nasa.org. There is an ongoing partnership with IUCAA, which is the European University College Association and Universita LUMSa on a one year certificate program that is designed to on a one year certificate program entitled the training of experts in student affairs and campus life, first level university master's degree. This certificate is designed to develop key competencies for professionals in universities and in halls of residents who deal with all extra academic matters or student affairs issues on their campus that concern university students and their soft skills development. This course, the course combines interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary actions, providing a professional training model in which experts will work in teams with different policies with different profiles, including psychological, pedagogical, organizational, and legal. You can find out more about this certificate program at luumsa, l u m s a, dot I t. One final plug from the episode earlier this week, Jill and I will be at the NASPA annual conference in New Orleans. And if you are planning to attend the conference, we are so excited to be able to meet you, and we would love to be able to have your voices on an upcoming episode.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:39:39]: At the conference, as usual, we will have three questions that we typically we will have three questions that we will be asking individuals. And even if you are not attending, we would love your voice. We would love your voice for these episodes. The three questions that we are planning to ask include, first, how can student affairs professionals model healthy excellence in their own lives and institutional cultures while supporting students' well-being? Second, how can we better leverage technology to meet the evolving needs of students and higher education institutions? And third, can you share a moment or experience in student affairs that you feel embodies the spirit of this profession? These are the three questions that we plan to ask at the conference. And if you are unable to meet with Jill or I to have your answers recorded, or if you can't attend the conference and would like your voice included, please record an audio recording of your answers to all three of these questions and send that audio file to [email protected]. Each one of these questions will be used for an upcoming episode. For upcoming episodes that will happen this season, I do ask that all responses are sent in by 03/28/2025. Every week, we're going to be sharing some amazing things that are happening within the association.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:41:03]: So we are going to be able to try and keep you up to date on everything that's happening and allow for you to be able to get involved in different ways because the association is as strong as its members. And for all of us, we have to find our place within the association, whether it be getting involved with a knowledge community, giving back within one of the the centers or the divisions of the association. And as you're doing that, it's important to be able to identify for yourself. Where do you fit? Where do you wanna give back? Each week, we're hoping that we will share some things that might encourage you, might allow for you to be able to get some ideas that will provide you with an opportunity to be able to say, hey, I see myself in that knowledge community. I see myself doing something like that. Or encourage you in other ways that allow for you to be able to think beyond what's available right now to offer other things to the association, to bring your gifts, your talents to the association and to all of the members within the association. Because through doing that, all of us are stronger and the association is better. Tune in again next week as we find out more about what is happening in NASPA.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:42:24]: Chris, thank you so much for this week's NASPA world. We always appreciate learning from you on what's going on in and around NASPA. And, James and David, we have reached our lightning round. We have seven questions for you to answer in about ninety seconds. I think, David, we're gonna have you go first and, James, you'll answer second. So number one, if you were a conference keynote speaker, what would your entrance music be?

David Chao [00:42:46]: Oh my gosh. I have no idea.

James Quisenberry [00:42:48]: I'll go with George Thurgood, Bad to the Bone.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:42:50]: Number two, when you were five years old, what would you wanna be when you grew up?

David Chao [00:42:54]: I think a fireman.

James Quisenberry [00:42:54]: I wanted to be my dad.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:42:56]: Number three, who's your most influential professional mentor?

David Chao [00:42:59]: I would say Karen Ashford, assistant dean here at Pitt.

James Quisenberry [00:43:01]: I would say, actually, my mom who retired as dean of the College of Education at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:43:07]: Number four, your essential student affairs read.

David Chao [00:43:09]: The journal of technology in higher education.

James Quisenberry [00:43:11]: I'm gonna go with five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Guinzione. I think that's good for everyone, not just student affairs.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:43:17]: Number five, the best TV show you've been binging lately.

David Chao [00:43:20]: I don't watch a lot of television, so that's not a good question. I'm sorry.

James Quisenberry [00:43:23]: Right now, we're on with my wife. We're doing only murders in the building.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:43:27]: Number six, the podcast you've spent the most hours listening to in the last year.

David Chao [00:43:31]: SA voices from the field.

James Quisenberry [00:43:32]: I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to say smart

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:43:34]: And finally, number seven. Any shout outs you'd like to give personal or professional?

David Chao [00:43:39]: Yeah. Just wanna shout out to Paul Shantz who is our colleague at Cal State Northridge. He's another one of our long term student affairs IT colleagues.

James Quisenberry [00:43:46]: Yeah. I'm gonna give David a shout out for being our chair last couple of years. He's really done a great job and appreciate his leadership.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:43:52]: It's been a pleasure to learn from you all today and also learn specifically what's going on in the tech KC. If any of our listeners would like to reach you after the show, how can they find you?

David Chao [00:44:02]: So I'm on LinkedIn. University of Pittsburgh. That's the fastest way to contact me.

James Quisenberry [00:44:07]: Yeah. And you can reach me at my University of Illinois address, which is [email protected], and I'm on LinkedIn too.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:44:17]: Thank you both so much for sharing your voices with us today.

James Quisenberry [00:44:20]: Thank you, Jill. Thank you.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:44:27]: This has been an episode of SA Voices from the Field, a podcast brought to you by NASPA. This show is made possible because of you, the listeners, and we continue to be grateful that you spend your time with us. If you'd like to reach the show, you can always email us at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn by searching for doctor Jill L. Creighton. We always welcome your feedback and your topic and guest suggestions. We'd love it if you take a moment to tell a colleague about the show and please leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It really helps other student affairs professionals find our show and helps us to become more visible in the larger podcasting community. This episode was produced and hosted by doctor Jill Creighton.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:05]: That's me. Produced and audio engineered by doctor Chris Lewis. Special thanks to the University of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next time.

The annual NASPA conference is a cherished opportunity for student affairs professionals to converge, connect, and collaborate. Hosts Dr. Jill Creighton and Producer Dr. Christopher Lewis express their enthusiasm for the New Orleans venue, where they aim to engage with colleagues, break bread, and create new podcast episodes. The conference serves as a hub for sharing knowledge, nurturing professional relationships, and embracing the vibrant culture of student affairs.

Bringing Your Voices to Life

Following in the path of previous seasons, Dr. Creighton and Dr. Lewis are eager to capture the voices of their peers. They'll roam the conference floors with recording devices, ready to engage attendees on themes of the past, present, and future of student affairs. The hosts encourage participants to bravely share their insights, promising that each voice is valued for the richness it adds to the profession.

Live Episodes: Join the Conversation

An exciting highlight of the conference will be the recording of two live episodes with distinguished NASPA award winners. Attendees are invited to join these sessions at the Marriott Warehouse Arts District, where they can witness in-depth discussions and possibly contribute their own questions. This dynamic platform amplifies the stories of professionals who have dedicated their careers to student affairs, offering inspiration and guidance to others in the field.

Continuing the Dialogue

Dr. Creighton and Dr. Lewis extend an open invitation to all attendees to approach them during the conference. The podcast thrives on listener engagement, and the hosts are eager to collaborate with fellow professionals. Whether through unexpected encounters or scheduled live sessions, the podcast aims to capture the heart of student affairs, one voice at a time.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:01]: Welcome to Student Affairs Voices from the Field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. Brought to you by NASPA, we curate free and accessible professional development for higher ed professionals wherever you happen to be. This is season 12, continuing our journey through the past, present, and future of student affairs. I'm doctor Jill Creighton, sheherhers, your essay Voices from the Field host. Chris, I am so excited to head back to The United States just for a minute to get to New Orleans.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:33]: I am so excited to go back down to New Orleans again this year to be able to meet up with all of our NASPA friends and be able to see you again as we always do every year at the conference and be able to break some bread, but also to record some episodes and and have a ton of fun.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:49]: So like we have in previous seasons, look for Chris and I roaming around the conference because we're going to be looking for your voices. We're gonna be seeking out you to ask you some questions on our theme of the past, present, and future of student affairs, and we've been so thrilled to have almost a hundred of you featured on the show over the last couple of years.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:07]: It is always exciting to be able to talk to people. Don't be weirded out. If we come up to you and ask you if you will be willing to answer some questions, just know that it's because we value your voice and value your, what you are providing to the profession. So we definitely want you to be a part of these upcoming episodes. So watch for us and definitely say yes when we ask.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:33]: And also I'm gonna own that it's kind of awkward for me to just walk up to a stranger, even though I know you're my colleague, to say, Hey, would you mind answering answering some questions into this little recording device I'm carrying? So please know that if we're approaching you, it's because we value your voice and and we're excited to hear from you. But if we don't approach you, please approach us. That's also completely fine, and we'll probably have our recording devices in our bags as we move about the conference.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:56]: You know, the other thing that I'm really excited about is we're going to be recording two live episodes at the conference. We got two great professionals that that you're gonna be talking with at the conference, and we're gonna be sitting down. And any of you have the opportunity to be able to be a part of that recording.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:14]: Both NASPA award winners, we're excited for you to get to know their stories a little bit more in-depth. And to find us, it's going to be Tuesday morning at 08:30 in the morning. The room is escaping me off the top of my head, but you'll be able to find it inside of the conference app. So please come join us if you'd like to hear essay voices recorded live. And if there's time and space, you may even be able to ask your own question.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:35]: Well, Jill, we're actually gonna be in the Marriott Warehouse Arts District in the Graveyor Sea Room.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:41]: Alright.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:42]: So just like Jill said, I encourage you, come on out. Take some time. Come meet us. But also hear some amazing award winners, people that have been in NASPA for quite some time talk about their professional journey.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:53]: Looking forward to seeing everyone in New Orleans.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:56]: See you soon.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:03:02]: This has been an episode of SA Voices from the Field, a podcast brought to you by NASPA. This show is made possible because of you, the listeners, and we continue to be grateful that you spend your time with us. If you'd like to reach the show, you can always email us at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn by searching for doctor Jill L. Creighton. We always welcome your feedback and your topic and guest suggestions. We'd love it if you take a moment to tell a colleague about the show and please leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It really helps other student affairs professionals find our show and helps us to become more visible in the larger podcasting community. This episode was produced and hosted by doctor Jill Creighton.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:03:41]: That's me. Produced and audio engineered by Dr. Chris Lewis. Special thanks to the University of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next time.

Student affairs professionals often encounter interim leadership positions, which can significantly impact a university's trajectory. This podcast episode from "Student Affairs Voices from the Field" explores the nuances of interim leadership with insights from Dr. Jen Myers Pickard and Dr. Leanna Fenneberg.

What is Interim Leadership?

Interim leadership occurs when a temporary leader steps into a role during a transition period at a higher education institution. As Dr. Jen Myers Pickard explains, there are typically two types of interim leaders: those who come from within the institution and those brought in externally. Internal interims can offer continuity, while external interims bring fresh perspectives and prevent internal disruption.

The Purpose of Interim Leadership

Dr. Pickard and Dr. Fenneberg articulate the goals of interim leadership. Universities may choose interim leaders to maintain momentum on strategic priorities, provide specific expertise, or mentor existing teams. Interim roles can also facilitate necessary changes without long-term commitments, allowing institutions to address pressing issues such as restructuring or leadership challenges.

Inherent Challenges and Considerations

For many institutions, the decision to bring in an external interim leader raises questions about its impact on current staff. Concerns exist that an interim leader might delay significant initiatives or focus solely on maintaining existing processes. Dr. Fenneberg shares her experiences, emphasizing the importance of addressing such concerns through active engagement and transparent communication with all campus stakeholders.

Transitioning from Interim to Permanent Roles

Some interim leaders see their positions as stepping stones to permanent roles. Dr. Pickard advises having candid conversations with supervisors about potential long-term opportunities. Understanding the contractual terms of interim placements can also influence whether one can be considered for the permanent position.

Deciding on Interim Leadership

Choosing interim leadership as a career step can be strategic. Dr. Fenneberg discusses her decision-making process, which involved balancing the need for employment and her commitment to family. She underscores the role of networking in finding interim positions, while Dr. Pickard emphasizes reaching out to placement firms to explore opportunities.

Embracing the Interim Role Fully

Dr. Fenneberg and Dr. Pickard agree on the importance of fully engaging with interim roles. By adopting a proactive approach, interim leaders can make meaningful contributions to their institutions. This includes mentoring teams, sustaining strategic initiatives, and exploring opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Interim leadership in higher education presents unique challenges and opportunities for growth. By engaging fully and understanding the context of their roles, interim leaders can significantly impact their institutions while setting the stage for future success.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:01]: Welcome to Student Affairs Voices from the Field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. Brought to you by NASPA, we curate free and accessible professional development for higher ed professionals wherever you happen to be. This is season 12, continuing our journey through the past, present, and future of student affairs. I'm Dr. Jill Creighton, she, her, hers, your essay voices from the field host. Today on essay voices, we're exploring the topic of interim leadership with two wonderful colleagues, Dr. Jen Myers Pickard and Dr. Leanna Fenneberg. Based in Tucson, Arizona, Jen brought her skills to Whit Kiefer after nearly two decades in academic and student affairs roles at AAU institutions, first at Northwest University and the University of Maryland and later at the University of Arizona. Jen has a broad insight into the inner workings of higher education institutions and is driven by passion to find the right leaders for specific client needs. Her search expertise includes presidents, provosts, deans, and leaders in a wide variety of administrative units, including student affairs, student success, research and innovation, and finance and administration.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:05]: Jen joined Whitkey for after nineteen years in higher ed, most recently serving as the AVP for divisional initiatives and planning within student affairs and enrollment management, academic initiatives, and student success at the University of Arizona. In this role, Jen functioned in a chief of staff capacity, extending the vision and capacity of senior institutional leadership through work on change management initiatives, executive level talent acquisition, oversight of institution wide assessment efforts, and leadership of faculty student engagement and success programs. Jen is very proud of her leadership and administrative roots within the field of education. As such, she's deeply committed to the cultivation of emerging higher education professionals, continuing to develop and facilitate leadership institutes and conference sessions, and being active in NASPA along with other higher ed organizations. Additionally, Jen joined the board of the International School of Tucson in January of twenty twenty and was named board chair in June of twenty twenty one. Dr. Leanna Fenneberg is a recent NASPA pillar of the profession and has dedicated over twenty five years in higher education and student affairs. Committed to advancing the potential of all students, Dr. Feeneberg's leadership focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusion, holistic student success and well-being, and the role of campus partnerships in transformational learning. A servant leader, colleagues describe her as a source of energy and purpose, driven by integrity, care for others, and an unwavering work ethic.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:19]: Dr. Fenenberg serves as senior vice president for student life at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, following a career spanning functional areas, including housing, first year experience, and student success, earning early recognition as an astounding first year student advocate by the National Resource Center for the First Year Experience and Students in Transition. NASPA has been a primary professional place of inspiration and connection. She's served on the NASPA board of directors as director of knowledge communities, as cochair for the Women in Student Affairs WISA, and the student affairs partnering with academic affairs SAPA knowledge communities, and recently the director for the Alice Manaker Symposium. Her expertise is evidenced through peer reviewed articles, countless national presentations, and instruction in masters and Dr.al programs in higher education administration. As a first generation college graduate, Dr. Fenneberg holds a PhD in higher education administration from Saint Louis University, an MEd in student personnel services from the University of South Carolina, and a BA in communication from Marquette. She's a devoted wife, mom of two sons, and two cats, and finds joy in travel and reading. Welcome to Essay Voices. Today, we have Jen.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:03:20]: Hi, Jen. Hi. How are you? And Liana. Hello. So glad to be featuring you both, and I love it when we get to do episodes where we can get two perspectives on the same topic, which is what we're gonna be doing today, talking all about interim leadership placement processes in higher ed leadership. I think this is an area of higher ed leadership that has a little bit of mysticism around it. So I'm looking forward to demystifying how we get into interim leadership placements through formalities and search versus maybe informal interim placements and what it's like to be in that interim seat, which I know has both pros and cons to it. But before we get into the topic, we'd love to get to know you both a little bit better.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:04:00]: So, Jen, let's start with you. How did you get to your current seat at WKiefer?

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:04:03]: Sure. Very happy to share that briefly. Well, so my name is Jen Pickard. It's great to see you all or be with you here today. I actually came to my seat at Wake Kiefer via twenty years of being on campuses. So I actually started in sort of the in the traditional student affairs manner, thought I wanted to be a Dean of Students when I grew up, was heading into my Dr.ate, doing all that work in assessment and research actually at that time, and then moved into a position at the University of Arizona. It was a chief of of staff type of role at a very large division that oversaw student affairs, enrollment management, academic initiatives, and student success. Say that fast a few times.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:04:39]: And it was a great and wonderful role because I with Kiefer, just a very right moment in time, I decided to jump on the search bandwagon that was in the summer of twenty eighteen. Six and a half years later, I'm now a senior partner and the head of our student affairs practice.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:05:05]: And, Liana, you are in a new role right now, but you also have gone through the Kiefer process through interim placement. But how did you get to your current VPSA seat?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:05:14]: Yes. Absolutely. Hello, everyone. Liana Fetterberg. I serve as the senior vice president for student life at Duquesne University. I'm in my ninth month here on campus, so it is a newer role. I've been in student affairs for this my twenty sixth year, I start to feel old and feel I earned my gray hair. But to say this is my eighth year as a vice president.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:05:33]: And after my vice president position at Rider University was eliminated as a cost savings measure, I started a national search. And as a part of that search, ended up in an interim placement situation for one academic year before coming here to Duquesne. And, actually, I ended up getting that position kind of through relationships. So an informal route. There are certainly coordinated, placement services through WhitKiefer and others, but mine ended up through my network, through relationships where people knew that I was without a position, and there was an institution and there was an institution and colleagues that had a need and, ended up filling that role. And it was a great experience. So I look forward to this conversation.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:06:12]: As we move forward in this conversation, let's talk about first, what is interim leadership? What does that mean to you?

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:06:18]: Well, I think that interim leadership, people think of it from two different ways. I think the one is an interim leader who is currently serving at that institution who's been asked or tapped on the shoulder when leadership departs or there's a transition of some sort to sit in that seat for x amount of time. Sometimes that's very defined, sometimes it's not, and sometimes that leads to new job for them, and sometimes it doesn't. So there's a lot of different parameters in that way. The other kind of interim that we think about and certainly what we obviously are supporting it with Kiefer is interim leadership where the university says we definitely wanna have some sort of external person. And often, that is because they want to be able to support and make sure that internally, right, we're not we're not messing up the apple cart, if you will, by pulling someone out of their day to day role or asking them to do double duty in their role, but rather wanna bring an external person in who maybe has that experience expertise skills or or obviously will have those expertise and skills in whichever space they're in, but they're also probably bringing a different perspective, right, to the role, to the work, and to the support it. So, again, those things can have very defined parameters, or it can be something that continues to be ongoing or, you know, is renegotiated after x amount of time. So I would consider those as sort of the two kind of leadership or interim types or definition of.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:07:40]: I'm glad you mentioned this possibility of bringing an external leadership not to disrupt the day to day operations of what's going on internally to an institution or to a student affairs division. Because I think if you're a person who is on the receiving end of new interim leadership, it can be kind of scary. It can also be a question of, like, well, why wasn't somebody that's already at the university selected to do this role? So what are you hearing when universities come to, your agency or any other agency? Just side note, we are not sponsored by WhitKiefer. This is not an ad episode.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:08:12]: Not an ad for WhitKiefer. And I'll talk about other firms too, right, and what I know of them as well where I can. Yeah. We're just glad to have Jen's expertise on the topic. So I just wanna make sure we put that out there. But I am wondering what you hear from universities when the decision is made to bring in that external perspective rather than, promote someone within for that interim period of time. Right. So I think that so we actually I did some looking in some of our Wake Kiefer team.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:08:37]: I asked in preparation for this to do a little of a deep dive, some of the motivations around interim leadership, etcetera, etcetera. And some of the things that they pulled back that we've learned from very much from our presidential placements in this space, but also this applies to other vice presidential levels or even other places in the organization. A lot of times why they're bringing folks in from outside is, you know, they really want to keep the momentum of key strategic priorities moving, right, in operational goals, objectives, things like that. Also, wanna pull in specific expertise areas. So, for example, if there's a division who is really trying to lean in on health and wellness initiatives, right, they might decide to find an interim who really has specialty or an expertise and in that space to try and do that work and help move the division forward in that work. Sometimes it is the way that it's helped out. It's helping to mentor other leaders on campus. And so they want this person as a really strong advocate for these individuals, for the team, especially in helping them prepare for their next permanent leader.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:09:46]: I've definitely seen that happening. And then sometimes it's around the making and deploying change engine. Right? Who can make some tough decisions, who can do an analysis of the space, and maybe they might have them making some of those initial changes and different things that have to happen. That might be a structural change. It might be leadership change or or team change or or rearrangement there and so on. But, yeah, I think those are some of the major areas that we definitely see. I don't know, Liana, if there's other things that you've sort of heard and seen in your time now engaging more in the interim in that.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:10:18]: Honestly, Jen, that was a great recap of the different categories of why institutions that I'm hearing are considering or implementing interim leaders. I'll just add kind of a personal caveat based on my situation. So I was a vice provost for student life at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. And it was a very unique and sensitive situation in that their incumbent vice president was battling cancer and was undergoing an intensive cancer treatment. And they needed an on the ground leader to help with healing as well as the day to day work and leadership. And so there may be more personalized situations as well as kind of the institutional structural situations that folks who are making decisions are navigating. And then it was really tragic that she and this is Tanya Weingard, beloved student affairs leader, passed away within two months of my time on campus. And so in this instance, you know, a presence of an outside leader to be able to attend to the day to day as well as attend to the emotions and the realities of the community and the staff and students during a difficult time in addition to doing the work, I think was a really astute decision for them and added some additional support to the community.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:11:32]: Leah, you moved into an extremely sensitive situation. And in not only approaching a position from the perspective of you're not their permanent leader, but also you're someone who has to provide care quickly for a staff that you don't know well. How did you approach that process?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:11:49]: Well, thanks. I hope I did it well, Jill. But I'll tell you, I reread my email that I first sent to all of the staff in student life before I had arrived on campus. And so I wanted to do an introduction, like, hey. You just heard I'm arriving on your campus in a minute. This is who I am and and what I hope to achieve while I'm there. And I led in that. So in the it was a Jesuit Catholic campus, and part of the values tradition is cura personalis, care for the person.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:12:15]: And so, you know, I led with that and said, you know, my yes. I'll be doing some work. I'll be doing some things. I'll be making some decisions. You know? But my primary goal of being there is cura personalis, care for staff, care for students. Like, that's what I'm gonna lead with, and that's what we need to do to heal the community, to come together as a community, and continue to do the work with students in mind.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:12:36]: Knowing that you were only going to be there for this one year placement, how did you approach the work differently than what you're doing at your current institution where you know that you're going to be in that seat for a little while?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:12:47]: Yeah. Well, it's interesting, Jill. I feel like the approach, at least for me, is not that different, but the timing and the interactions are different. So, you know, you in any organization, any leader, you still wanna build the relationships, identify, you know, the needs and priorities and goals, and then be able to, like, leverage the group towards working towards those goals. Right? If we're looking at leadership super simplistically. Simplistically. So when you're in an interim role, I feel like you just have a shorter time frame to do that. And so let me give you an example.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:13:21]: You know, when I came in, there was a need to establish a strategic plan, but, of course, that wasn't my role. My my role wasn't to envision the future of the organization. So I worked with the group to identify more immediate needs and opportunities and priorities, and then we worked on an operational plan so we could still document, like, these are the things we're working towards as a group, but holding off the strategy for the future leader and setting the stage that the future leader still has the opportunity and responsibility to do that with the group. So working quickly to identify what can we do this year, what can we do during x time frame that will meaningfully move the organization forward while being conscious of there's still a future to be defined. I do think there are sensitivities to being an interim leader in general, sensitivities of I'm not the in group. I'm the person on the outside coming in right and not wanting to push too far, but being able to provide that external expertise and perspective and a mirror to people to say, did you know that you're doing this or did you know that other institutions are doing it this way? And being able to question things in a respectful, and appropriate way. So I think that that is something a sensitivity, if you will, in the approach to leadership. And then that was only exemplified even more during a sensitive emotional situation that I was facing.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:14:42]: That's really great advice, Lianna, that if you're coming in and saying, hey. You know what? My time is x amount of months or x amount of years, and what is achievable and realistic in a one year time frame in student affairs is really a fascinating question because a lot of us don't necessarily approach the work that way, right, we're looking at really long term trajectories, we're looking at three or five years, or we're looking semester by semester, or moment by moment, but it's it's I don't think that common in student affairs from a strategic planning perspective to say what is this very specific time limit, and this limitation providing us both an opportunity and a challenge to do? I appreciate that approach.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:15:18]: I was just thinking as well that the role of an interim, you have this opportunity to kind of be an external reviewer or a consultant in a sense that you're there for a period and you have fresh eyes towards everything. And so while you're you're trying to identify what work can be done or should be done at the time, for me, I was also kind of continuously having a running list of recommendations for the future. What are my observations? What are strengths? What are opportunities? What are recommendations for the future that I would hand off both to my provost who is the supervisor as well as the next leader so that all my observations could still be seen or heard, if you will.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:15:55]: What I was gonna add is so depending on, you know, who your supervisor is, right, if it's the president or the provost, and what they're hoping for, whether you are an internal interim or an external interim, that's really gonna also guide what you're doing and how you're approaching. I imagine Lianna had a conversation prior but probably a lot of conversation around what it was they were hoping you were there to do. Obviously, you were there to care for the team and so on and so forth. But I think one of the biggest things that people get nervous about, right, and I think the limited data or research or what we hear on the street, right, bears this out, is that folks get nervous and an interim is gonna come in and basically just be a placeholder. Right? They're gonna continue to just keep the trains running on time, help make decisions, do those different things, which is a very important thing to do. Don't get me wrong. Right? But it is like, are you the one who ultimately is, you know, is it a situation if we are keeping the seat warm? Are we delaying those bigger, more strategic priorities, those big decisions, and so on? Are we just delaying that, and that's what frustrates people, makes them nervous about an interim position at all? Is that it? Or are you what I kinda call, like, the full steam ahead kind of interim? And Liana, in it sounds like her charge was sort of be to be a little bit of the in the middle there of that. And then doing that extra work, which I a % agree, is as an external in particular, you become that consultant and someone who's offering an analysis for the next future leader as well as the supervisors.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:17:29]: Right? But that idea of of am I am I keeping keep am I a placeholder with a very specific for a very specific reason in helping the team to continue forward and really be successful versus a full team ahead leader. And I think that that is a spot in particular for those who are internal interims. They stop and they say, what is being asked of me? And and sometimes they ask, and then they're still not sure if they really truly have the blessing to go forward in that manner. And I was just, you know, having a conversation with somebody the other day where they gave advice to the interim person to make sure just do it, like, do the job, do the job. If they told you to do the job, go do the job as if it is your permanent role. And that's where people become happiest with the interim placement can be particularly in those moments, right, where it's like we've still continue to feel that we're full steam ahead. We know not everything can be that way, but we're trying to really make continuous gains and so on in that respect. So I

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:18:34]: think that also brings up kind of this third element of interim leadership, which is some interim leaders are, in fact, auditioning for the first for the full time position as they're in their interim process. Some of them know that they are, and some of them don't. So, Jen, in particular, I'm wondering if you have any observations or advice for those that are hoping to transition from that interim to the permanent position, whether it be through competitive search or placement.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:19:00]: I think number one is having a very honest and upfront conversation with the hiring authority, right, or the boss to make at the very beginning, to make sure that you know, will you be considered for that role, should you decide to raise your hand for it? And when I say should you will you be considered, I mean truly, truly considered for that opportunity. Right? That is sometimes a very hard answer for a sitting leader to give. They give the standard, absolutely, I would welcome your engagement in this process when let's just be really honest, there are times where they're saying that out loud and at the end of the day, they probably really don't mean that. And so it's important, I think, to revisit that conversation throughout the process and to be as transparent as you can be with that leader, particularly if your mind shifts. Right? Like, I've seen a lot of folks where they'll say, initially, I have zero interest in doing this job full time. I absolutely do not wanna be the senior student affairs officer or whatever the role is. Right? And so I wanna go back to my gig. And then they get a taste of the gig, and they're like, actually, I do wanna do that.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:20:14]: Right? And so as your mind changes and shifts and so on, again, transparency there with your leader and then continuing to know, is this something that you actually think that you might seriously consider me for? Because there's a it's a lot to think about. I mean, as folks are beginning to really enjoy you as a leader, if something were to shift and change where maybe you didn't think you were gonna do it and now you are gonna go for it. But for whatever reason, leadership might have other needs where they do need an external person even though you're doing an amazing job. You wanna be able to think about how are you gonna exit out of this with grace and a plow and all those good things. So, yeah, that I think is my best advice in that seat. But I'm always pleasantly surprised at how many individuals come back and say, I didn't think I wanted to do this and now I love it. It's sort of like our faculty colleagues where they're like, I'm happy doing my research and I love it and all of a sudden they get bit by the administrative bug and they're like, I had no no idea I was really good at this. Right? So I always encourage people to take the opportunity.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:21:17]: It's a new, interesting, wonderful thing. Anytime you get to even if it's only temporary to pull in another area or layer or role or whatever it might be into your portfolio and expertise.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:21:28]: One additional thing to consider, Jen, might be that some placement search firms also prohibit you from being a candidate for the position. So as as you said, like, connecting with your supervisor, am I a viable candidate to be considered? Also, if you're doing an interim placement situation that you'll wanna know whether you could be a candidate for it or not.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:21:48]: Exactly. Really great point there. Yeah. There's some of the firms, the placement firms out there who do interims. You're exactly right. They were require they actually it's part of the contract, right, that you are not going to be considered because there's pros to that. Right? There's pros to that sort of framework framing for them and so on. And then there's others where and Whitkiefer is one of the others where if you want to be considered for the role, it is possible that you could be considered within our our framing and contracts work.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:22:15]: So, yeah, it's a that's a really great point, Liana. Thank you.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:22:18]: Liana, can you talk a little bit about the process of deciding that interim leadership was the right next step in your career as opposed to launching full into a permanent job search?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:22:29]: Oh, sure. Thank you. Well, as I mentioned, my position was eliminated, so I was on the market for any kind of job that would pay me and use my skills. So I cast a very wide net in considering I connected with a couple of search firms for placement opportunities and considered, like, should I do an interim role as well as launched straight into a full time job search. So I was kinda doing both simultaneously and considering and weighing all my possibilities. And at the time that interim placement that I accepted at Creighton surfaced, I was very in much in the infancy of a national search. So I had barely had any applications out, but knew that my primary goal as a mother of a teenage boy was to have full time employment as soon as possible and figure out what was going on with my life, if my family was relocating, everything. So full time employment was definitely what I was heading for, what my primary goal was, but the interim option was intriguing twofold.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:23:25]: One, in that, you know, I would be employed immediately and be able to, you know, pour into an institution after kind of a heartbreak from one. And two, I was really drawn to the institution and to my colleagues. So I had a personal connection through the Jesuit network, to Creighton University and the staff there. And so knowing that there was a need where it felt like my personality and my skills and my background were a fit, kind of felt like a compelling heart tug, if you will, to that position. So the biggest, decision for me was I would have to relocate and leave my family, for the period of the interim placement. I originally communicated with them that I was comfortable with a six month placement because I didn't wanna thwart my long term job search by putting off potential positions and searches that would be hiring during the academic year. And then all the stars aligned in terms of my search and the needs on the campus that I was able to stay for the academic year, and I think that that was rewarding and fulfilling both for me and for the campus to be able to see that through for the year. So the hardest part was, you know, deciding to leave my family and navigating and negotiating that.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:24:36]: One of the biggest one of the biggest needs that the campus had or at least how I perceived it was to have presence. They had a leader who was sick and was working virtually for about the year prior. And so I knew that physical presence was really important to the role and what would what I would bring for the year. And so I didn't go home a lot. I didn't work virtually at all except over Christmas break. So I knew that that was a commitment that I was gonna be on campus and be present most of the time. And I spent, say, three to four days a month traveling back home to my family. So that was the biggest challenge of, making the decision and navigating.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:25:12]: But I had a supportive family and supportive campus, and it all worked out.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:25:16]: And I have to give a shout out to Creighton University just because it's a namesake of my family. We have no affiliation with the university, but many of us have purchased things things from the bookstore over the years.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:25:29]: Right. With your name.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:25:31]: Yeah. I got my mom a shirt that says Creighton Mom. She loves it. So

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:25:33]: But it's adorable.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:25:37]: Leanna, you mentioned not being able to travel home. But, Jen, I'm aware that a lot of interim placement contracts do afford going home on the regular basis as part of the agreement for the position. Can you tell us what that typically looks like?

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:25:50]: You know, I don't know all the details of that, to be honest, what that would look like. And, honestly, what I was thinking of was that I think it's negotiated as Leanna was saying as she was talking, like, I was thinking about it. I'm like, it's really negotiated on a situation by situation basis. Like, there are some interims where they're that they maybe don't need as much active participation. So there's more of a hybrid model in place. There are some just like Liana's where it's like, we need that person to be there that is very, very important, as part of it and so on. So it really is based on the current needs of that institution, what they're willing to negotiate or not negotiate. The other thing I that caught my attention when Liana was speaking was saying the time of the engagement.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:26:39]: And so there was, like you said, six months, and I'm gonna make sure during that time, like, I'm not out searching. So dependent on and I think most of the ones that are negotiated within a firm probably are not hoping you're not gonna be out there looking simultaneously because you've made this commitment. But if you go and make that, have that connection point and do the conversation on a on a one on one basis, right, without the support of a firm, they might, you know, be fully in favor of saying go ahead and continue your search and we will be fully supportive and you can, you know, assuming you're doing great work here, we're gonna put you on the reference list, and we're happy to do that for you and so on. So, right, it just depends on what the needs of that institution are, the length of it, and so on, and and the type of leader that they're looking for, what they may or may not be able to negotiate for the particular circumstance. And I think based on Leanna and I's conversations with other colleagues, there's no one way to do it in every again, every institution is very different.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:27:42]: So let's ask the big question, which is how do I find an interim placement if I think that might be right for me? Liana, you mentioned yours was kind of networking and word-of-mouth, and we've talked that there are some formal opportunities to throw your name in. But where do I even begin to look?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:27:56]: I'm happy to start with the, networking approach because I also have some colleagues who are doing the same thing right now in similar situations, and they're just, you know, leveraging their network and saying, hey. I'm it's almost like on LinkedIn, open to work. Whatever that is within your close circle and or more broadly on social media to own your narrative and and tell people what you're open to and what you're looking for and leverage your network to find opportunities. And so that's how I found my opportunity. And, again, I have another colleague who just got placed in an interim role similarly. So, I think that that's certainly one informal or or, more personalized way outside of a search firm, but Jen can probably highlight that strategy.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:28:37]: Yeah. So as far as working with firms who do placement, like, the names the the name that most people know is the registry in this space, but then, obviously, Whit Kiefer is working in this area too. And, again, different firms approach it in different ways as far as, like, will you be available to apply for the role long haul or not. Right? So different people because of that framing will will maybe go to different firms at different times because of just where their career is and what they wanna do. But for us, and and I know for the registry, right, it's a matter of simply reaching out and looking for the interim space and saying, I wanna be a part of your interim pool, if you will. At Wake Kiefer, often I'll have colleagues reach out and say, hey, I'm thinking of this down the line or maybe not even down the line, like, right, just sort of exploring it and putting my name out there. And I'll say, well, go ahead and fill out the form online, and I'm gonna definitely let our colleagues know that, you know, we had connected about this and and what it turns into is having just an informational interview, right, where we learn more. We, as with Kiefer, learn more about you as a leader and what you're looking for.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:29:39]: And then you're sort of part of the big Rolodex, if you will, right, as to who when a certain opportunity comes our way, who might we tap on the shoulder just the same way we do in search, say, who would potentially be a really, a good match at this moment in time for this opportunity. And then that's sort of how it moves forward from there. And, usually, what happens is, right, like, the firm will identify a number of candidates who are interested, who are free during whatever the and and interested in the parameters that the institution sets up for the work. They will reach out to them and and the candidates will apply, if you will. And then often that leads to conversation with hiring authorities and so on, and they make a decision very quickly. So that's the thing is it moves rapidly, and you need to be sort of prepared to if this moment isn't the right moment, then step out of that process or say it, not not this one quite yet. Right? Because they need to make sure that those who they're tapping on the shoulder for this opportunity really are ready and able to go because it is a very, very quick and much more quick process than obviously what we do in regular search, which could be months long in process. Any final thoughts on interim leadership or things that you'd love our listeners to know

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:30:52]: that we haven't talked about?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:30:54]: I'll share one thing that I think I went into the role a little tentative, like, sensitive to the nature of the situation and the role, but I found over time that I regretted not going in more fully. So I feel like sometimes people feel like, well, I'm just here as an interim, and so I don't know what I should do or not do. But, really, you know, you're hired in that role for your expertise, for your role, for your leadership. Enter it fully. Enter, like, with the full heart and full work. And I'll give you an example, Jill, because I kinda felt like I was probably in 70% into student events and, like, my level of presence with students than when I would be on a permanent campus, if you will. And so I felt like, well, I don't know. These students probably don't want me to

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:31:38]: invest in them. I'm only here for a minute,

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:31:38]: and then I'm leaving. But after conversations with students at events, especially events with underrepresented students where they saw me there, they did value it. They I was a new face. Yes. But they valued me and my role being there and being present and fully immersed. And so, like, as I continued to get that affirmation that, like, oh, okay. I do have a presence or a role here beyond, like, my inhibitions. I think I was able to lean in a little more fully.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:32:04]: So that would be my advice if someone enters the role to just go on in and do it fully.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:32:09]: Full steam ahead. Right? Totally.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:32:10]: Yeah. I mean, I fell so in love with my campus community and with my students, with my colleagues there. You know, like, I absolutely loved my time, and I feel like I absolutely loved my time. And I feel like I fell, so much in love that it was, like, as much as you've been at a campus for five or ten or twenty years that you can do that in a quick time frame.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:32:28]: Well, and Liana is so wonderful her social media. I loved watching her in that role, really engaging. It was it was just fantastic to see her, you know, thriving in that environment and so on. So, I think my advice is very similar. Lean in. Full steam ahead. Go for it. Do it.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:32:44]: It's your JOB. Let's go. Right? You know, like, I think that it's yours. This is not you are not a placeholder. I think I think people who don't jump in and really make it their own and help to help to leave even a little bit of a mark like that that's a mistake. And I'm talking both, you know, as if you're coming externally and if you're coming, from the internal space. Use it as a time to continue to obviously share all the great knowledge and experience that you've had over your career, but also to pick up the new pieces that you've never been able to do before maybe in your previous roles. Right? We're always trying to build our own toolkit of skills and abilities and and experiences and so on.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:33:27]: So, you know, really think about those and leverage them as much as you can because why not in this moment? Right? Like, it's it's it's probably only gonna be a win at the end of the day. So I think that for sure. And then I just think also that the experience and knowledge, the way that you can help your colleagues to see something from a different lens, to experience it's okay for us to maybe change the way we've always done things, right, and bring that voice from the outside that's really inquisitive. But really, you know the answer, but you're asking questions because you're trying to help them get to the same realization about sync and that that it is okay to change. It is okay to you know, that change management and leadership part in that way, I think can be really, really impactful and empowering to, a division or, you know, a group of whoever your teammate, whatever type of interim role that you're doing. So be super inquisitive, ask a lot of questions that maybe seem obvious, but you're asking them not so much for yourself, but for them to help them as as Leanna said, to get that mirror and see themselves back and to help them improve.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:34:35]: Let's move into our theme questions for the season. Again, we're talking about the past, present, and future of student affairs. And I have one question on each area. So let's start with the past. What's one component of the history of student affairs that you think we should continue to carry forward or alternatively to let go of?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:34:51]: I'll start with the foundation of the field that has, like, a foundational developmental perspective on students. I mean, I feel like that's going to be an evergreen component of, like, who we are as a field and where we go. Of course, it has evolved. So if you talk about things that we're getting rid of, like, yes, much of the research originally was on, you know, white men, and it's evolved existentially to involve the diversity of our students, and will continue to do so. But the framework of, you know, taking student affairs from a developmental holistic student success perspective, I think, needs to continue to be centered.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:35:28]: I would agree with that and also maybe add on a little bit. So the interweaving of student affairs and student success looks different on every campus. Yet, at the end of the day, it all comes down to the holistic development of student. And so that, I think we need to be better experts at what that looks like too and how you're how we're supporting students on both the student affairs and student success sides of things. So that is something I've thought about very much during my University of Arizona days and all the way through now. And I think, you know, some campuses do it much better than others. And some campuses lean into what that work looks like and how it shifts in different places and then others, let it become a barrier between them in the same way that we, you know, have barriers between our perhaps faculty colleagues at times. Right? And it's it it makes me sad when I see that, those barriers coming up when we're all trying to really do our best for students.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:36:25]: So I think that that as well. Moving into the present, what's happening

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:36:29]: in the field right now that's going well for student affairs?

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:36:32]: I would say that our increased visibility after COVID or during COVID has sustained at majority of places that I work with, the majority of our colleges and institutions that I work with. And so, again, that partnership has been actualized in a new way is that voice is staying stronger at the table.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:36:53]: Yeah. I would agree with that, Jen. I mean, I think student affairs professionals often feel like, their work is minimized, right, in comparison with other areas of the university and certainly academics, which is central. But fundamentally, I believe that campuses see the value of student affairs work and the contributions. It doesn't always feel it in everyday moments, I mean, every meeting, but the value of student affairs, if you look at the emerging strategic plans at the university levels and you look at commitments to student success, I think it's there.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:37:27]: And looking towards the future, in an ideal world, what does the field need to do to thrive towards the future?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:37:33]: Wow. Well, Jill, I thought you were gonna ask about the present, like, current challenges. Right? So I think that the in my mind, the current challenges are what we need to get a handle on for the future. You know? And a couple of those challenges that come to mind most fervently are cost containment being our fiscal situations at the university, which are ever present, and the current sociopolitical moment, anti DEI legislation and dismantling of DEI, which is so core to the work of student affairs and serving a diverse student body and helping them thrive. And I think both of those, as we look towards the future, those are things we need to be able to manage and continue to create vision around and lead through the challenges so that we can continue to support and thrive in the core of our work and our purpose.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:38:22]: And I would say the building our pipeline. Right? How are we continuing to build the pipeline? How how are we preparing students in our or sorry. Not students, but young professionals and mid level professionals in their preparation programs, in their Dr.al programs, or EDD programs. How are we keeping excitement going around the field even in these difficult times? And so there's a lot of options out there for people these days. And we know how much churn has happened in recent years within student affairs and so on. So we really need to keep our eye on that development of the pipeline, and I think that we're doing a good job or at least I feel like we're doing a good job from where from my seat. Right? As I see folks moving into the AVP level and then above or even even honestly the director, executive director level. But I worry about will that keep coming at the rate if that pipeline is not carefully attended to at the early level, you know, newer professional and mid level areas.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:39:28]: It's time to take a quick break and toss it over to producer Chris to learn what's going on in the NASPA world.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:39:34]: Thanks, Jill. So excited to be back in the NASPA world, and there's so much happening in NASPA. Thank you to everyone who voted in the annual NASPA leadership elections, which closed on February 11. NASPA is thrilled to announce that we have new leaders that will be joining us in the near future that will be joining our NASPA board of directors. Our board chair elect is Darryl Holliman, vice president for student affairs at Spelman College. Region one director, Will Johnson, associate vice president and dean of students at Fairfield University. Region three director, Juan Guardia. Vice president for student affairs at Texas a and m San Antonio.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:40:13]: Region four WEST director, Cassie Gerhardt, senior associate vice president for student affairs at the University of North Dakota, and region six director, Derek Vergara, dean of students, Orange Coast College. Congratulations to all of our incoming directors that will be starting their terms in 2026. And we are really looking forward to your leadership and voices at the board table. As we prepare for the NASPA annual conference, NASPA is always looking to honor those individuals who may have retired from the profession or those who have passed at the NASPA annual business meeting during the annual conference. To do this, we need your help to ensure that we include student affairs educators who have made an impact on the profession from entering individuals, assisting students, and making a difference in higher education. NASPA would also like to recognize any NASPA volunteer roles in which these individuals participated and or and or leadership positions that they might have held. Over the last few weekly updates that you have been emailed as a NASPA member, you will have seen a link where you can honor a colleague. I highly encourage you to take the time to fill fill out that form and let us know more about these people so that we can recognize them accordingly.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:41:32]: In an earlier episode this season, Claire Brady was a guest on our show, and she mentioned and talked about the new NASPA report entitled The Transformative Potential of Artificial Intelligence, Recommendations for Student Affairs Leaders. This report examines the transformative role of artificial intelligence in student affairs, demonstrating its potential to personalize student interactions, automate routine processes, and leverage data insights for informed decision making. AI presents unprecedented opportunities to enhance the student experience. The report emphasizes essential ethical principles such as transparency, equity, and data stewardship, guiding leaders toward responsible AI adoption. With real world examples and a phased implementation framework, it provides actionable strategies for integrating AI as a strategic partner in promoting student success while honoring the human connections central to meaningful educational experiences. Designed to support student affairs leaders, this report serves as a guide for implementing AI in ways that advance institutional effectiveness without compromising core educational values. Beginning with an exploration of ethical considerations and the alignment of AI initiatives with strategic goals, it underscores a human centered approach and the importance of professional development. The report also offers a structured framework for AI integration, highlighting current use cases that demonstrate early success and forecasting applications set to impact the future of student affairs.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:43:09]: This practical phased approach balances innovation with ethical stewardship, fostering a sustainable path for impactful AI adoption in higher education. If you have not yet downloaded this powerful guide, I highly encourage you to do so. It is available on the NASPA website under white papers, and you have an opportunity to be able to learn so much by delving into this report. Every week, we're going to be sharing some amazing things that are happening within the association. So we are going to be able to try and keep you up to date on everything that's happening and allow for you to be able to get involved in different ways because the association is as strong as its members. And for all of us, we have to find our place within the association, whether it be getting involved with a knowledge community, giving back within one of the the centers or the divisions of the association. And as you're doing that, it's important to be able to identify for yourself where do you fit, where do you wanna give back. Each week, we're hoping that we will share some things that might encourage you, might allow for you to be able to get some ideas that will provide you with an opportunity to be able to say, hey, I see myself in that knowledge community.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:44:27]: I see myself doing something like that, or encourage you in other ways that allow for you to be able to think beyond what's available right now to offer other things to the association, to bring your gifts, your talents to the association, and to all of the members within the association. Because through doing that, all of us are stronger and the association is better. Tune in again next week as we find out more about what is happening in NASPA.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:44:57]: Chris, thank you so much for keeping us informed on what's going on in and around NASPA, and we have finally reached our lightning round part of the show. I have seven questions for you to answer in ninety seconds. Ready to go?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:45:11]: Yes. Alrighty.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:12]: Question one. If you were a conference keynote speaker,

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:45:14]: what would your entrance music be? Walking on Sunshine.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:45:17]: Mine would be Don't Stop Me Now by Queen.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:19]: Number two, when you were five years old, what did you wanna be when you grew up? Teacher. A nun. Number three, who's your most influential professional mentor?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:45:28]: I'm gonna go with Kent Porterfield, who is the VP at Gonzaga University, but was my VP when I decided to explore the SSAO role.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:45:37]: I would say the fabulous Dr. Susan Komovest, Melissa Vito, and Patty Perilla.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:43]: Number four, your essential student affairs read.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:45:45]: I'm gonna say multicultural competence and student affairs.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:45:48]: Okay. Because I'm a dork, and I love organizational structure and stuff like that. Mine has always been the ADP book, by, Jason Pena and Amy Hackt. AVP leading from the unique role of the associate and assistant vice president. And now they have their new book, which I still need to read is The Next Act, Realigning Your Mindset, Purpose, and Career.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:10]: Number five, the best TV show you've been binging lately. Wait, Lotus?

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:46:13]: Oh, I've heard about that one. Mine would be Dairy Girls and eighteen eighty three.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:19]: Number six, the podcast you've spent the most hours listening to in the last year.

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:46:22]: Well, this one. Yeah.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:26]: We always appreciate that. And finally, number seven. Any shout outs you'd like to give personal or professional?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:46:32]: I'll shout out to my husband who makes my role in student affairs be able to be maintained because he carries the weight at home.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:46:41]: I will give a shout out just to my fabulous colleagues at Wit Kiefer. We have a wonderful, wonderful group of folks who are a a number of student affairs professionals originally, and I just love having those individuals around me all the time.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:55]: This has been such an incredible conversation on interim leadership. I'm sure our listeners would love to follow-up with you with questions. If they would like to reach you, how can they find you?

Dr. Leanna Fenneberg [00:47:04]: You can find me on LinkedIn, Liana Fenenberg.

Dr. Jen Myers Pickard [00:47:06]: Same for me, Jen Pickard on LinkedIn as well as anyone who's welcome to reach out to me directly at [email protected]. Liana and Jen, thank you both so much for sharing your voice with us today. Thanks. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:47:25]: This has been an episode of SA Voices from the Field, a podcast brought to you by NASPA. This show is made possible because of you, the listeners, and we continue to be grateful that you spend your time with us. If you'd like to reach the show, you can always email us at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn by searching for Dr. Jill L. Creighton. We always welcome your feedback and your topic and guest suggestions. We'd love it if you take a moment to tell a colleague about the show and please leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever students affairs professionals find our show and helps us to become more visible in the larger podcasting community. This episode was produced and hosted by Dr. Jill Creighton. That's me.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:48:04]: Produced and audio engineered by Dr. Chris Lewis. Special thanks to the University of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next time.

Harnessing Professional Longevity and Growth

Dr. Michael N. Christakis's remarkable twenty-six-year journey at the University at Albany showcases a rare career longevity within a single institution in the realm of student affairs. From his early beginnings in housing and residence life to becoming the Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, Dr. Christakis exemplifies staying power through adaptability and curiosity. He credits his mentors, diverse professional opportunities, and openness to roles outside his comfort zone—such as spearheading student learning assessment initiatives—for his upward trajectory.

For student affairs professionals aspiring for growth within one institution, Dr. Christakis recommends saying yes to new challenges, pursuing intentional professional development, and embracing adaptability in the face of the ever-evolving needs of the student body and higher education. Maintaining a strong connection to institutional community and family priorities was also key to his decision to stay.

A Vision for NASPA Leadership

As the incoming NASPA board chair, Dr. Christakis aims to redefine how the field communicates its value. His focus? Ensuring student affairs professionals are positioned as pivotal leaders across crucial domains such as student health and well-being, belonging, diversity, equity, inclusion, career readiness, and social justice.

Reflecting on the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, he underscores the importance of advocating for student mental health and well-being. Yet, he voices concern about the profession's tendency to take on an ever-expanding workload without prioritizing its own balance. Dr. Christakis encourages leaders to use data and strategic thinking to demonstrate their impact effectively, ensuring critical student success metrics, like retention and graduation rates, tie back to student affairs.

Future Challenges: Balancing Policy and Wellness

In light of turbulent political shifts, including policies affecting diversity efforts and marginalized communities, NASPA must remain proactive and informed. Dr. Christakis highlights NASPA's commitment to equipping professionals with the tools and knowledge to navigate these volatile times.

Additionally, he believes the profession must address its own sustainability by centering the health and well-being of student affairs practitioners. With professionals at the forefront of addressing wide societal challenges, their mental and emotional wellness becomes essential to their ability to support students.

Conclusion: A Call for Strategic Advocacy

Dr. Christakis's leadership philosophy emphasizes the opportunity to reframe student affairs as a transformational force within higher education. Through intentional data-informed storytelling, commitment to personal and collective health, and adaptive leadership, he invites the field to seize its moment to lead. As he steps into his new role, the NASPA community can expect a purposeful and forward-thinking year ahead under his guidance.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:01]: Welcome to Student Affairs Voices from the Field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. Brought to you by NASPA, we curate free and accessible professional development for higher ed professionals wherever you happen to be. This is season 12, continuing our journey through the past, present, and future of student affairs. I'm doctor Jill Creighton, sheherhers, your essay voices from the field host. Today on Essay Voices, we're pleased to bring you our annual episode with the incoming NASPA board chair. This year's board chair will be doctor Michael N. Christakis, and he is the vice president for student affairs and enrollment management at the University of Albany. Christakis was named VP in May of twenty fifteen.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:42]: And since his arrival to the university in 1999, he served in numerous positions in student affairs, having served as AVP for student affairs prior to his appointments as VP. As a member of the vice president's staff since 02/2007, Christakis developed assessment and evaluation practices, improved the effectiveness of divisional planning, professional development, communications, and risk management, and provided oversight to critical campus life areas. He was elected to be our NASPA board chair in spring twenty twenty four, and we'll assume his full role as NASPA board chair in New Orleans at our annual conference this March. Additionally, he's most recently served as chair of the Association for Public and Land Grant Universities, APLU's, Council on Student Affairs. Previously, he served as regional director for NASPA region two, while concurrently serving on NASPA's board of directors. He's a past national president of Omicron Delta Kappa's National Leadership Honor Society and past national cochair of NASPA's assessment evaluation and research knowledge community. He currently serves as the president of the board for the University of Auxiliary Services at University of Albany. A fellow of the State Academy for Public Administration, he was appointed for public service professor in 2013 and teaches undergraduate courses in public policy, public administration, and political science for which he was honored with Rockefeller College's Outstanding Teacher Award in 2010 and the University of Albany's student association's outstanding teacher in 2014.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:59]: Mike, welcome to SA Voices.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:02:02]: Hello, Jill. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:03]: Good to see you again. It's been a minute probably since last annual.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:02:06]: Annual is always a reunion for me. So getting a chance to see you and so many others at the annual meeting is is always a treat.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:12]: Yes. And we are recording this in early February. By the time listeners do hear this, you might be on a plane on the way to New Orleans or

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:02:20]: Heading to NOA.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:21]: Or watching through virtual sessions or however you're accessing conference content this year. But, Mike, we're thrilled to talk to you today about your role as incoming NASPA board chair. You will take over the gavel, in just a couple of weeks here. We know you've been preparing thoroughly for this as the year has gone by as the chair elect seat. But we always like to start our shows by asking our guests, how did you get to your current seat at Albany as well as your seat in the NASPA board?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:02:46]: Yeah. What a ride it's been. So to the seat that I'm in now, I've been at the university at Albany. I'm actually in my twenty sixth year, celebrated twenty five years in the fall. I got to UAlbany as a grad student in the fall of ninety nine studying public policy and did not think then that I would be in the VP for student affairs seat here, but things happen. And so Albany has been very good to me and my family, and and I'm a two time alum having my master's degree and my PhD here. But I started in housing. I was a housing guy through my undergraduate time.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:03:19]: I was an RA for three years. My undergraduate institution, I did my undergraduate work at Alfred University, which is really where I got first exposed to student affairs or to understanding that student affairs was a thing. I'm a first gen college student. My parents are both immigrants from Greece, and so I was the first of my family to go to college. Didn't think working at a college was something you could do in this kind of way. And so had some really great mentors at Alfred University, including the vice president for student affairs and dean of students, Jerry Brody, at the the time, who mentored me throughout. And had residence hall directors who were supervisors of mine, had mentors in student activities. Shout out to Trish DeBertelis, who was very instrumental in her role as director of the campus center at the time at at Alfred in exposing me to what you could do in student affairs.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:04:03]: And so when I was about to graduate, was looking at grad programs, but was also sort of conscientious to the fact that I could maybe work in student affairs as a graduate assistant in this case and help pay for school, quite honestly. And so that's how I sort of entered the field, for lack of a better way of framing it. And then one thing led to another. I was a graduate hall director for a couple of years here, got my master's degree, ended up becoming a full time hall director for a year, led our first year experience program in the early 2000s, which feels like forever ago. In some ways, maybe before it was a thing. And then transitioned to leaving our apartment housing and actually building a 1,200 bed apartment complex in 02/2001, '2 thousand and '2. Did that for about five or six years, and then there were some transitions in the vice president's office in terms of leadership and was called by, at the time, the interim vice president on a Friday afternoon, I remember fairly vividly, inviting me to come to the office. And I remember my assistant at the time, Linda Rogers, says to me, you're gonna get an opportunity.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:05:06]: And I was like, I don't know I don't know why you're thinking that. And she was like, well, you know, why would they call you on a Friday afternoon to go to the VP's office?

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:05:12]: There's really only two reasons there.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:05:14]: Yeah. I know. I know. It's I something's with the promotional opportunity. But, you know, Linda was right. And Chris Bouchard, who I'm I'm continue to be grateful for, offered me an opportunity to come to the VP's Office as assistant vice president. She was about to become interim VP, and she asked me to sort of lead couple of initiatives. One was assessment, which is really when I got sort of cut my teeth on assessment and student affairs at the time.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:05:33]: This was in 02/2007. One was risk management, and the other one was in communications. And so made the move to the VP's office in 02/2007. And then, you know, one thing sort of led to another and was assistant to the VP for a while, became an assistant VP. And then we had some retirements, and I was asked to take on the associate VP role, which I did for, I think, maybe two months before Chris announced she was retiring. And Robert Jones, at the time, who was president at the University of Albany, invited me to serve as interim VP, which I happily accepted. You know, at that point, I was completely drinking the purple and gold Kool Aid here at U Albany and was deeply committed to our students and our team in student affairs. And so did that on an interim basis for a few months, and then fairly quickly, Robert was gracious enough to to offer me the full time opportunity, and that was in 02/2015.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:06:19]: And so I've been in the c for ten years now, which is also a little bit like, is it really ten years? Because a lot's happened in ten years at UAlbany, but in higher education in general. That's sort of the the student affairs, UAlbany path. My next path actually replicates some of that because in o seven so before I actually moved to the VP's office when I was in housing, I had approached Betty Simmons and Charlie Fay at the time, both who are leaders in Region 2. And at the time, I think they were still regional VPs. This this goes back to previous governance models. But I had approached them both during the annual conference in Washington, DC, which I think was in o six, and had said to them, hey. You know, I'm Mike. I'm an assistant director of housing at UAlbany.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:07:06]: I'd love to be the two thousand seven region two conference chair. And they're both like

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:07:13]: Whole noob.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:07:13]: Like, who is this guy? And so they didn't accept the offer immediately to their credit, but I made a case. We made a proposal. I had a couple of colleagues here at Albany who I was working with. We had a team of of four or five newish professionals who were into getting involved with NASPA. We were, I think, hungry for that connection for the field outside of just the University of Albany. And Charlie Fay, who ultimately ended up being the the incoming regional VP or regional director, was like, yeah. Let's do this. And so my opening salvo into NASPA work was as chair of the regional conference, which I I don't necessarily recommend as the place to start.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:07:50]: I think there's other ways to get into this without having to go to be the regional chair of the conference, but it was a great way to sort of expose to get exposed to everything that the region was doing and the regional board and the programs we were doing for mid level mid level managers and NASPA undergraduate fellows and SSAOs. And we had a very successful conference, I'm proud to say, in Albany, Two Hundred plus participants, and it continues to be a highlight of my career. And so that was how I got into the NASPA sort of ecosystem as a volunteer. And then I stayed on the board after I rolled off as as NASPA regional two conference chair, did corporate relations for a little bit in terms of getting sponsorship for the conference, was the regional NUF coordinator. So was was very committed to the NUF program, continue to be. Look. I've got a NUF fellow again, this semester, and then we're hosting three NUF interns again this summer. That's been a big part of what we do at UAlbany.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:08:47]: And then had eased into a couple of other roles, including MMI, the Mid Managers Institute, which I helped co facilitate with Lynette Cook Francis at the time, who was a colleague, and then became regional director, which was also just a real highlight for me. And then, you know, sort of eased out of it was past regional director, SSAO liaison for the region for a period of time. And then the NASPA board chair sort of arose and was really honored to be considered and thrilled to have been elected to this. I'm deeply, deeply humbled by the opportunity. So that's sort of the story. They're they're sort of concurrent tracks, though, I think, in a lot of ways.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:09:19]: I think it's pretty rare in student affairs to spend your whole career at one institution, maybe within one region or within the same state or major metropolitan area, but same institution, we really don't see that often. Can you tell us why and how you were able to choose to stay? Because I think a lot of us in the field have kind of adopted the mantra of to move up, you have to move. Yeah. But you were a bit of an anomaly that you didn't have to do that in some ways. Sounds like you said yes to a lot of things. But what do you have in terms of advice for people who want to have that longevity of career with also growth elements attached to it?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:09:53]: Yeah. Great question. And it's funny. There was a book that is coming out or just came out that Jason Pena and Amy Hecht were editors for. And one of the chapters I wrote with a number of colleagues, including Pat Whiteley, who's also a long term serving VPSA at Miami. And when Jason had reached out Jason is a friend. He reached out about me writing the chapter. He's like, hey.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:10:17]: You know, Mike, I'd like you to work on this chapter about being a long term VPSA at your institution. And I'm like, long term VPSA? Like, how am I long term? I guess I've not been anywhere. You know, it's worth me like, when you're in it, I don't know if you fully realize it. And then somebody points it out, and then you're putting the same sort of Pat Whiteley, who I have tremendous amount of respect for. I'm like, I'm running with Pat. I mean, Pat's like an institution. Right? And Shannon Ellis was was a coauthor as well. I mean and as I was writing that portion of the chapter, it allowed me to reflect on it.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:10:47]: And I think a lot of it is what you sort of suggested. It's trying to sort of take advantage of opportunities at the institution. And I am very fortunate in that since I got here, there have been mentors and supervisors who have provided these opportunities that I may not have otherwise have gotten. And I think some of it is my own desire to learn and to experience things that really are outside of my comfort zone. I noted during my sort of professional journey cutting my teeth on assessment. Assessment was not something that I had really even considered doing as a career element. Although, you know, in retrospect now, I think that, you know, in as much as I introduce myself as a housing guy, because I I do believe that's where I started, I think that there's also a a a portion of my career that really is a student affairs assessment person, and I take tremendous pride in that. I had a conversation couple months ago with the NASPA assessment evaluation research knowledge community of which I co led for a period of time as national cochair.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:11:51]: And I think that that experience in leading student affairs assessment at UAlbany was very developmental for me, but I wouldn't have had it had my vice president at the time not said, there's a need the division has because we were coming up on a reaccreditation, and I'd like you to be the one to guide us through that. And I think in that moment, I could have been like, well, you know, Chris, I I don't know the first thing about it. Right? So I'm out. And I didn't. You know, I was like, alright. Let me try to take in as much as I can about an area that I'm not familiar with. And so, you know, I was quite literally building the bike as I was riding it. And, you know, it was one of these things where I thought we were making more progress than we actually were.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:12:34]: I remember three or four years worth of me putting forward annual conference program proposals, underscoring how Albany had really transformed the assessment space. And every every gear, I I would get turned down. Because the reality was we actually in as much as I in my little bubble, I thought we were making inroads. I think, you know, the reviewers were like, oh, not really. I mean, you know, where where are you really at? And by the fourth year, when we actually did start to get looked at, you know, for precons at the I remember we would do a number of precons at the annual conference with a number of our team at UAlbany. We would go and sort of talk about how you do student learning outcomes and KPIs and the like. It did take some time to get us there, But I think that was also reflecting on it. That was my own development in in that space.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:13:18]: But it was, again, it was sort of saying yes to those to those opportunities. And so I like to learn. It sounds a little bit cliche, but I'm I'm a curious person. I I like to sort of know how things come to be. I remember we were dealing with was it an h one n one flu, something or other? And at the time, I was supervising the the student health center at Albany. And we had a tremendous medical director, doctor Pete Ballas. He this guy was he knew how to explain very technical medical things in the most easily understandable way. And I was like his wing person, quite honestly.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:13:58]: Like, you know, we would go and meet with the faculty senate or the deans to talk about how we were trying to manage what an outbreak might look like. And he would be able to say it in such a way, and then I would just be able to to do sort of the administrative stuff around it. I didn't know the first thing about it.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:14:13]: Writing the playbook or how to respond to COVID. Correct.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:14:16]: Yeah. Exactly right. Yeah. Little do we know. Right? But I didn't know the first thing about medical or anything. And I never thought I'd be in that role, but the vice president at the time had asked me to sort of take on risk, which again, I didn't know what that meant exactly. And this was one of these things that she wanted me to work with Pete on. And so we did.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:14:33]: And it's those kinds of varied experiences that I think have kept me here, have allowed me to contribute to student life and to campus life more broadly at UAlbany to help, I think, continue to to grow the institution and support our students. And so, you know, could I have gone someplace else? You know, maybe I could've. I mean, at some point, I'll also acknowledge that my partner, Krista, and I have got three daughters. And, you know, it's important for us that we're in a really great community, here in Albany, and we really wanted to to stay here. And so was it was was it something where there was a job that was so great that I'd wanna go there and uproot, you know, where our three kids are involved in a great school and soccer and dance and girl scouts? Yeah. Not really. And so those are all intentional decisions that we made, and I've got no regrets on any of it. Like I said, I've grown professionally at UAlbany.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:15:22]: I was I was a grad assistant in in the fall of ninety nine. And talking to you now, and I'm I'm the VP for student affairs and enrollment, which which is pretty cool, which is pretty cool as a first gen college grad. So, you know, I'll take it.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:15:32]: Let's switch over to NASPA. You're the incoming board chair. You will be at the helm of the board for the coming year ahead. The NASPA year is March to March. Annual conferences are shift over time. And can you tell us what does it mean to be the board chair in 2025?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:15:48]: When I was running for the you know, you do the board chair elect and then the board chair. So when I was running for the position, I feel like the higher ed landscape looked a little bit different than it does today. And that's not to say we weren't gonna be confronted with challenges. I think we certainly were. I just don't again, probably like your crystal ball. My crystal ball has not been working all that great, you know, these days. But I do think that even when I was making the case for my candidacy, I'm very interested And what I mean by And what I mean by that is we're reflecting a bit on where we were, let's say, five years ago at this time as we were coming on to a global pandemic in COVID. There was clearly on most college campuses, there was clearly a role student affairs staff were playing in helping support our students, their their health, their well-being, their academic success.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:16:49]: And at the time, there were ACE reports, the American Council of Education, the interviews they do with presidents that said, you know, what are the what are your top concerns or priorities? And at that time, probably during that six month period between the outbreak and and when we were getting a vaccine, it was it was student mental health was item number one, which I don't really think up to that point, college presidents were calling out student mental health as the number one priority. Now, if we reflect on the work that we were doing in student affairs, and again, I think that you all were waiting for two plus decades, student health and well-being has always been a priority for us. That's not new. And I think you could probably go across the country and talk to student affairs professionals at small private institutions, large public, and anything in between. And mental health, student health and well-being was always something that we were trying to prioritize. At that particular moment, as we were dealing with with the pandemic, it was made a priority by institutional leaders. And so we had an opportunity in student affairs to lean in on that. Think some of the challenge quite honestly, though, Jill, was that we were also, in a lot of ways, doing so many other things at the institution.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:17:59]: We were I'm just gonna say, you know, what we were doing at UAlbany. Right? I I still remember Thanksgiving getting my PPE on and going and delivering Thanksgiving meals to 200 some odd students that we had in isolation housing at the time, because that's what we were doing. We were trying to figure out when the vaccine was gonna roll out, how we were gonna deliver vaccinations to students. We were still sort of trying to figure out when we were gonna come back that following fall, what masking looked like. So, yeah, in as much as it would have been great if we could just exclusively really double down on, yeah, let's really talk about mental health because this is something that we really think is critical to a student's success and well-being, not just now during a pandemic, but in general, we were being pulled as we often are in student affairs in many different directions. And so for me, as I was thinking about my candidacy and my service to the association as board chair, was how do we how do we get to a place where on our campuses, student affairs is viewed as the leader in a handful of areas that I think we are uniquely positioned to lead in. And health and well-being is among them. Health and well-being is among them.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:19:05]: Issues around belonging, DI, social justice are among them. Right? And and I get, you know, we've got we at UAlbany, and I know that DI is under attack across the country right now. But, you know, UAlbany, I'm fortunate to have a chief diversity officer who is an important, partner in what we do. And and it's not, you know, what the the CDO does versus what the senior student affairs officer does. It's what we do together in this space. Right? I mean, we can probably sit here and talk about twenty some odd years ago when I was an assistant hall director. I was doing DEI work in the residence halls. At a time before, we actually had a a sort of a a dedicated CDO in in the way we do now.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:19:42]: So student affairs have long been doing this kind of work. Career readiness and preparation is an area. Right? And I know that we can get into sort of the nuances of where career development offices sit, and it's one of these areas that is sometimes in student affairs and sometimes it's in academic affairs and sometimes it's in advancement. But if it is in a position where it sits in or close to student affairs, we really should try to double down in that space. How are what are we doing to prepare students for career? And it goes beyond just sort of the resume prep. It's critical thinking and and sort of the kinds of things that that we are positioned to do in the work we support outside of the classroom as well. And so that's where I really wanna get our members confident in being able to make the case on their campuses that I've got this. I'm a student affairs professional, and I've got this.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:20:28]: You gotta trust me on this one. And I don't know if that's where we're at everywhere that that we are. And I think that NASPA is uniquely positioned to provide resources and support at all levels of our association, whether it's the new professional or senior student affairs officer or faculty members who are teaching in the student affairs space to sort of crystallize the impact that student affairs has on a college student's trajectory. And we need to call that out probably more assertively than we have before because there is tremendous value in what we do as professionals, that help support that help support students. And I think short of us calling it out, I'm not sure I don't know if others are going to. And so that's where I think, certainly together with with, Amelia Parnell, who's our who's our new NASPA president and and the board, we're we're in a good position to to do that.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:21:25]: I was having a conversation on the pod last season with, doctor Mexagawa, who was a distinguished pillar recently. He and I were having the same conversation that student affairs, because we're so admired in the day to day work of actually supporting and helping students and doing the student success initiatives and literally just getting through our days, that we often don't have the capacity to tell our story. And that is something that we need to figure out. And so Mike's advice was to tell our story, not just on our campuses, but in our communities and beyond. And I thought that was a really interesting take because we don't necessarily do that well. And so telling our story not only to our communities within the campus, but also beyond the campus. Do you have any colleagues that you'd like to shout out who are doing this particularly well?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:22:07]: I'll call out Lamar Hilton, who's the current he's a regional director. He's at Indiana University. You know, he's he's done, I think, great work. I'm biased. Lars, a a very good friend of mine, but I think he's done amazing work in leading the division there. But I think he's also done amazing work in championing the work that his the student life does at Indiana as a transformational partner. And I say that both in my sort of conversations with Lamar, but I think also just in in sort of watching him on on Instagram, if you follow him. I think you see the he's out in the community.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:22:36]: He's on campus. He's at athletic events. He's underscoring the impact that student affairs can have in student life and student success. And I think that's really critically important. But I really appreciate the comment you made that Mike had referenced about sort of the narrative and the story. And I think that's where we're challenged by that. I mean, I think that in my twenty five, twenty six years in student affairs, and I and I say this to our team here all the time, we're not inclined to ever stop doing something. We're always inclined to do something more.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:23:05]: And the reality is we only have so much capacity. I think that's a comment you made, Jill. Right? There's only so many things we can actually reasonably do, and there's only so many things we can actually reasonably do well. And, you know, that's that's where I've challenged our team here at at UAlbany. We're going through a strategic planning process now for the division. And I've said to them, we cannot continue to be doing more with less. We've really got to be thinking about ways that identify impact programs that really do tie to metrics that are of importance in the national landscape. And student success is an area that I think increasingly higher ed associations are zeroed in, not as I think we should be.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:23:49]: I think issues around retention, persistence, graduation, and outcomes are. In this particular climate now, when you're talking about whether it's return on investment or impact or the value of higher education, we've got to be able to point to where we are having an impact on these these national these are national metrics. Right? Retention is not new. It's been around for a very long time. But I think how does our work positively impact student retention and persistence and graduation rates? And And this is where I then revert back into the the assessment role, which I and when given the opportunity, I didn't fully understand it. But having now done it for fifteen, almost twenty years, this is where data does matter for us. And this is where I really do think that having Amelia Parnell in the president's state puts NASPA in a very strong position. If anybody my first interactions with Amelia were in the the assessment space.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:24:50]: She was VP at NASPA. I was the the the co chair for the assessment evaluation research KC with Gina Masterdecasa was my co chair from Florida. But that's where we began to sort of interact on these issues around data and calling out impact. And so I think what I'm excited about is in as much as higher education is under the microscope and in some ways maybe under attack and there's questioning the value of it, I think what we have is data we can point to. And it's trying to get our colleagues to know what that data is and how to present it to get at the very narrative. I think, that that, Mike Sagawa was talking about when you guys had the conversation. Data is an important part to the narrative. Yeah.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:25:37]: The anecdotal stories are really great. Right? And they can they can they can really, I think, make a compelling argument. But when you really begin to call out impact on again, I keep on sort of saying retention, persistence, graduation, because those are national metrics that we all know exist. But particularly how student affairs units are pouring into that, that I think is where the rubber meets the road. I'll also point out Danita Brown Young, who's the vice chancellor student affairs at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Just to the question before Jill about folks who have, I think, done a nice job on making the case. Danita's division does impact college, which they call college impact reports. And what these reports do or for the multiple colleges that that exist at Illinois or Urbana Champaign, and I don't know the exact number.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:26:22]: Danita's division puts together an impact report that calls out data points as it relates to students from that respective college. And Danita then works with her team to engage the deans and the the school and college leadership on an annual basis to talk about those impact points. Right? That to me is a great way of calling out impact across the units that are under Danita's leadership at at Illinois. And so we're trying to do the same thing at Albany. Right? Full credits to Danita. Right? But we're trying to do the same thing here. We're trying to do college impact reports where our assessment team and student affairs are looking through the units that we've got and are pulling data impact points that we can then that I can go and meet with the Dean of Arts and Sciences and say, hey, well, if you're the largest academic unit at UAlbany, here's some information about how many students we house, how many students participate in career programming, how many students are involved in in student clubs and organizations, and here's how we've tracked their retention, persistence, graduation. Right? That is demonstrating the impact that that student affairs has.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:27:27]: And so, again, the example at Illinois that Danita has done, I think, is one worth replicating. And I think that's an important part of telling our story.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:27:34]: If you'd like to learn more from Danita, she was our NASPA board chair. I believe it was two cycles ago now. And her episode is going to be in whatever two seasons ago is for our podcast. If you'd like to go check that out, please do. Mike, I do wanna kind of name the elephant in the room because we're recording this in the February. We've been navigating the transition of a new political administration in The US. And regardless of what side of the aisle you're on, if you're working in The United States, your job is going to be affected by this new administration's policies. We're also hearing some rumors and we don't know again what will happen by the time this episode is released, that there is some plans to dismantle parts of the Department of Education or the entirety of it.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:28:14]: We're really not sure what that looks like yet. So my question for you here is what is NASPA's plan for how to support our members as we move forward in what is, you know, pretty volatile policy time?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:28:26]: Great question, Jill, and important and timely. So, you know, for us, for NASPA, and credit to Amelia Parnell, who's our president, it's about staying informed. There has been already a flurry of actions largely through executive order out of the current administration. Like you said, I'm not gonna make this about whether we agree or disagree with a particular policy stamp. There have been a number of actions that do impact our students and do impact our college campuses. And I think that what we have found in the first couple of weeks of this is being able to quickly be sort of aware of what those EOs are or what those actions are, whether they're EOs or or other kinds of statements. What the impact is on the populations that we serve, whether it's it's students, our employees, or international students, queer trans students. It's sort of understanding the impact.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:29:18]: But it's also, I think, it's also, I think, trying to figure out what the next immediate step would be. So and and what I mean by this is I was sitting with a handful of students on Friday. Friday is a I try to doesn't mean Friday is my office hours day. It's open office hours. Any student can come and meet with me on Friday. And so I had a number of students come through on Friday, most last week, and they were interested in sort of the impacts on some of these actions that were taken by the administration. And for me, it was underscoring that at the University of Albany, we are still committed to values that I think are very core to who we are in the space of inclusion and diversity and that we remain steadfast behind that. I think the other part though in speaking with the students was what happens on Tuesday morning could shift by Tuesday afternoon and could be reversed by Wednesday morning.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:30:10]: And the example I was giving on Friday, and again, some of this is timing, right, in terms of the listeners, is there was an there's the OMB memo that in effect froze, funding. There was a provision in the OMB memo. This is gonna I'm gonna get a little bit technical here that said that the freeze would not impact individual award programs, so to speak. So out of the gate, you would think that, let's say, title four funding, so Pell work study, would not be impacted. The problem is there are some nuances to the way those grant programs run. Right? So Pell is is in effect given to the institution. The institution disperses it. That was an evolving issue over, like, forty eight hours.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:30:51]: And so what started it as something on Tuesday morning became something very different on Wednesday afternoon. And so and then I think we're seeing that with a number of these issues. So long way of getting at for NASPA and the work that our staff is doing and the work that the board of directors is currently doing, which is actually being very attentive on an ongoing basis. So beyond sort of just our regular board meetings, right, Amelia and her team have been very good about convening the board on a more regular basis to take up issues so we are informed about what is going on and to consider what an appropriate response may be. But it's almost not knee jerk. I'm not probably using the right terminology because if you are sort of responding in the moment, you may not be actually offering that be completely accurate response. And as much as we want to respond now, what is happening now might be different tomorrow. And that's something that can be a little bit jarring to sort of lead through, and it does take a little bit of just a deep breath to sort of see what the landscape looks like.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:31:51]: And I'll say that NASPA, I think, is is fortunate in that we have leadership, both staff leadership in Emilia and board leadership that is keyed into what is best for our members and trying to message that when appropriate in such a way to provide members on campuses with resources to support to support them, each other, but also, I think importantly, our students. And so I think we're gonna be engaged in that for at least the next couple of years. And I think that there's been a a pretty significant flurry in the first couple of weeks of the administration. And I think the future of of the Department of Education is is certainly one that we're gonna track very, very closely because there's obviously some impact there. That that will impact students and quite honestly, some of the most sort of minoritized and marginalized students in terms of the populations that the Department of Education serves.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:32:41]: I think this is a good approach. It sounds like NASPA in general is gonna be maybe a bit more reactive in the next couple of months just because we don't really know what this is going to look like. It is fairly unprecedented for an administration to move in this particular way. My doctorate's in public administration. I know you studied public policy, so it's it's fascinating to see structures being used in ways that we haven't seen them used before from from a scholarly perspective. But I understand that the feeling of being inside of it can be really unsettling as well. So I just encourage our members to take care of yourselves and make space for your well-being. Because I know our work is being affected, and for some of us, it can feel really scary because our direct work is what is being questioned right now.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:33:21]: And we don't know what the future is going to hold in terms of what the federal end is gonna decide to do. We know that a lot of our states are affirming the work that we do and some are not, and we've seen that already. Our colleagues in specific states trying to navigate care for students while also being prohibited from engaging in specific types of sport. A lot ahead and and, Mike, we hope to continue to talk to you about this should things really, really change the next couple of months. And on that note, we are still in our theme of the past, present, and future of student affairs. So I have three questions for you. One each on the past, present and future about our profession. So starting in the past, what's one component of the history of student affairs that you think we should continue to carry forward or alternatively let go of? I think

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:34:02]: it'd be great if I could find something we can get rid of. You know, I say it'd be great if I could think of something we could get rid of because it goes to the point I was sort of alluding to earlier, is we continue to take it on. We continue to take everything on and feeling in some ways that just reflects the role that student affairs has played in sort of the more contemporary history in higher education that we outside of the classroom in particular, there has been so much more that we are able to do. And as I sit with our team, they're tired. And I think the pandemic in particular also underscored, like, where's the balance? And I I'm gonna try to draw this sort of ping pong here, but I continue to be concerned about sort of the future of the profession in terms of where where our next professionals coming from. And if they're seeing those of us who are in it spending hours at a time in these spaces, morning, noon, and night, is that appealing to rising professionals? I mean, I don't have an answer to that. Right? I've I've got a NASPA fellow who actually think is really into student affairs. And Juan's been completely exposed to what I've done over the last two years.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:35:07]: He's been my fellow. So I I don't know. He's been turned off by it. I do try to glean some balance in what I do, and I do try to underscore that with with Juan. But I don't think, you know, this notion if if I was to say that in some ways student affairs has been everywhere all the time historically, I do wonder if maybe that's something we need to reconsider in a lot of ways. And I'll fully acknowledge, Joe, that's a mic take. There's clearly folks out there that might be like, well, no. We've not been everywhere all the time, and maybe that's true.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:35:31]: But I think there's there's a pretty stark shift that's happened certainly since 2020 in the pandemic. In the pandemic, I'd say George Floyd, quite honestly, there was a significant racial reckoning that took place that for me was there was an evolution in my own thinking on issues around race and equity that I hadn't experienced previous to that. And a lot of that had to do with quite honestly being on a Zoom call. And it was May, June of the pandemic with black colleagues who were visibly exhausted on the screen. And that had a pretty significant impact on me in watching them and hearing them talk about George Floyd's murder. And so, you know, that to me was another example of how much more of this can we sort of take on? And we're all approaching it from very different ways. So I do think it's it's trying to truly glean some balance there. But I think it's that also goes to the point I was making earlier about how do we carve out what our explicit role is on college campuses as the the authority in student health, in student belonging, in issues around equity.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:36:34]: So that's sort of a a meandering answer to that, but I think there's gotta be some more balance there.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:36:38]: Moving into the present, what's happening in the field right now that's going well for student affairs? I

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:36:43]: was in Boston a couple weeks ago at the NASPA Strategies Conference, and there were 1,400 people there. And I think we're zeroing in and maybe using some sharp elbows to sort of demonstrate to people that we are the folks that are interested in issues around student health, well-being. There was some significant energy in Boston in January around, topics related to health and well-being. And I was so impressed by the presentations, by the poster sessions. We brought a small team of our own peer educators there. We had about 10 of them. The Middle Earth Peer Assistance Program at UAlbany is over five decades old now. But to see these students, these young people, who I think in a lot of ways, if they wanted to, any one of those 10 students could be very successful student affairs professionals in their life and career.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:37:32]: But having them there with 1,400 people, professionals, with a focus on how student mental health is sort of key to student success, I think, was just a tremendous, tremendous opportunity for them. And they said as much. They dropped off a note the other day because we went out to dinner after their poster session. But I think that's actually something that we are doing right. And I think that UAlbany and a number of other institutions are really trying to lean in heavily as health promoting universities. And I think NASPA has been supportive of the US Health Promoting College Network. There was a meeting that happened in Boston there. There's a lot to be said about not just sort of heralding the importance of health, but actually demonstrating how we're positively impacting this through our work.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:38:15]: And that was on full display in Boston in January. So I think among probably many things, that's one area that I think I'm tremendously proud of.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:38:22]: Looking towards the future, in an ideal world, what does the field need to do to thrive towards our future?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:38:27]: I think we need to center our people. I think we need to center our staff, our colleagues. And I think that, I mean, as much as we are prioritizing student health and well-being, I think we also need to be prioritizing our own health and well-being. And that's one of these other realizations that I think I've had in the last probably five years, certainly since the pandemic. And I've said this to our team here at UAlbany, and I and I've shared it with NASPA colleagues as well. If we are not in a position to support our staff, our employees, our professionals, and our grad students so that they feel supported and seen and heard and taken care of, how would we expect them to do that for our students? And I think and then I've said with a number of colleagues, I think, oh, this is not rocket science. I mean, this is not oh, this is an amazing idea. But it's easier said than done, I think, is the challenge.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:39:16]: I say to first year students, every summer, you need to prioritize your health. If you're not eating well, if you're not exercising, if you're not sleeping, you're gonna struggle in the class room. You have to be healthy in order to be successful, and there's lots of ways we can unpack success. But I think that one's health is key to that, and I'd say the same thing with student affairs practitioners. How are we centering their health and well-being? And I don't know to the extent that we have really tackled it head on. And that is something that I am hopeful in the next year or so that we can begin to unpack a little bit more. The concept isn't rocket science. Science.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:39:54]: I think delivering on it was gonna take some minds to come together and say, you know, let's let's pause for a second and see how we can, in fact, prioritize student affairs practitioners' health and well-being. And it's it's for members across our association. I mean, it's I know everybody's got maybe different needs. What the challenges that a senior student affairs officer might be confronted are probably very different than what a new professional is confronting. That and then acknowledging the intersectionality of various identities and experiences, also very different. So it's a challenge to unpack it. But if we wanna try to sustain the profession going forward, I think we have to prioritize our health in doing that. And I would certainly for those that are listening, if you've got ideas, I would be very open to hearing them because I I really do think that it's gonna take all of us to really tackle this issue of our profession's health.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:40:47]: It starts with our own health, how we get there. I wish I had a good sense, but I'm hoping there's folks that are there that are listening that can chime in on this one.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:40:53]: It's time to take a quick break and toss it over to producer Chris to learn what's going on in the NASPA world.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:40:59]: Thanks, Jill. So excited to be back in the NASPA world, and there's so much happening in NASPA. The twenty twenty five NASPA virtual conference is happening April 9 to April 11. You can now sign up for the twenty twenty five NASPA virtual conference. You can sign up today and block off your calendar for a three day interactive educational experience. Attendees will engage in high quality live virtual sessions focused on individual and team growth. All of the sessions will remain accessible to attendees on demand for a full three hundred and sixty five days after the conference. This is a perfect way to encourage ongoing development.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:41:42]: Find out more on the NASPA website. There is a brand new public policy hub that has been developed by NASPA to help institutions and individuals navigate the evolving public policy landscape. NASPA is pleased to announce a brand new public policy resource hub. This is a free member resource to stay informed about key policy developments affecting student affairs. The public policy resource hub consists of a compilation of policy research, coalition work, and resources. You can find tools to track state legislation and federal policy changes. And NASPO will work to keep the information updated to help you stay abreast of emerging developments. The twenty twenty five cannabis and opioid prevention virtual summit is coming up on March 24.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:42:36]: The twenty twenty five cannabis and opioid prevention virtual summit will equip you with targeted strategies to address cannabis and opioid misuse on your campuses. Through expert led sessions and evidence based approaches, you will gain insights into prevention, intervention, and support frameworks that enhance student health and safety. This one day virtual summit features a keynote session, research policy and best practice presentations, and tangible resources to help you and student leaders on your campus develop or enhance their programming and services to prevent substance misuse on campus. NASPA invites you to connect with colleagues, participate in engaging sessions, and learn from dynamic plenary sessions. Again, this virtual summit is on 03/24/2025, and you can find out more on the NASPA website. Another virtual summit that's coming up is a part of the Culture of Respect series, and this is a new webinar called A Is Not for Ally, Asexuality, Erasure, and Sexual Violence in the queer community. In this webinar, the speakers will examine the unique challenges faced by asexual individuals, particularly regarding sexual and interpersonal violence. They will highlight how asexuality is often erased or even ostracized within queer communities, leading to misconceptions and a lack of visibility that can leave survivors without adequate support.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:44:08]: By addressing these intersections, they aim to foster a more inclusive conversation around consent, trauma, and identity, ultimately advocating for a more supportive environment for all members of the LGBTQ plus community. This session is on March 12 online and is being hosted by Stephanie Foran, assistant director of care at Kansas State University. You can find out more in the learning hub on the NASPA website. Every week, we're going to be sharing some amazing things that are happening within the association. So we are going to be able to try and keep you up to date on everything that's happening and allow for you to be able to get involved in different ways because the association is as strong as its members. And for all of us, we have to find our place within the association, whether it be getting involved with a knowledge community, giving back within one of the the centers or the divisions of the association. And as you're doing that, it's important to be able to identify for yourself, Where do you fit? Where do you wanna give back? Each week, we're hoping that we will share some things that might encourage you, might allow for you to be able to get some ideas that will provide you with an opportunity to be able to say, Hey, I see myself in that knowledge community. I see myself doing something like that.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:45:34]: Or encourage you in other ways that allow for you to be able to think beyond what's available right now, to offer other things to the association, to bring your gifts, your talents to the association and to all of the members within the association. Because through doing that, all of us are stronger and the association is better. Tune in again next week as we find out more about what is happening in NASPA.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:02]: Chris, thank you so much as always for keeping us informed on what's going on in and around NASPA. And, Mike, we are at our lightning round, so I have seven questions for you to answer in ninety seconds. Are you ready to go?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:46:13]: Oh, boy. Here we go. Let's go.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:15]: Alright. Question one. If you were a conference keynote speaker, what would your entrance music be?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:46:20]: Pretty fly for a white guy.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:21]: Number two. When you were five years old, what did you wanna be when you grew up?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:46:24]: Oh, when I was five, I wanted to be a school bus driver.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:26]: Number three. Who's your most influential professional mentor?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:46:29]: Probably Steve Bicessi, formerly at the University of Richmond.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:32]: Number four. Your essential student affairs read.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:46:34]: It's not really a student affairs read, but I like Y by Simon Sinek.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:38]: Number five, the best TV show you binged lately.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:46:41]: I've done the Gilded Age.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:42]: Number six, the podcast you spent the most hours listening to in the last year.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:46:45]: I'm a big Buffalo Bills fan, so I've been doing one Bills live.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:48]: And finally, number seven, any shout outs you'd like to give, personal or professional?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:46:52]: Just a quick shout out to my RDs for life. These were the team of regional directors that we were together a couple years back. So shout out to RDs for life who are out there. Big supporters.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:47:01]: Well, Mike, we wish you all of the best for your year ahead in the board chair seats. And if NASPA members would like to get a hold of you after the show, how can they find you?

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:47:09]: An email at [email protected]. Always the easiest way to go. You can find me on the albany.edu website as well or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:47:17]: Thank you so much for sharing your voice with us today, and we look forward to your leadership.

Dr. Michael N. Christakis [00:47:21]: Thanks, Jill. Appreciate the opportunity.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:47:28]: This has been an episode of SA Voices from the Field, a podcast brought to you by NASPA. This show is made possible because of you, the listeners, and we continue to be grateful that you spend your time with us. If you'd like to reach the show, you can always email us at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn by searching for doctor Jill L. Creighton. We always welcome your feedback and your topic and guest suggestions. We'd love it if you take a moment to tell a colleague about the show, and please leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It really helps other student affairs professionals find our show and helps us to become more visible in the larger podcasting community. This episode was produced and and hosted by doctor Jill Creighton.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:48:06]: That's me. Produced and audio engineered by Dr. Chris Lewis. Special thanks to the University of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next time.

Bridging the Past, Present, and Future of Student Affairs with AI

In the constantly evolving landscape of higher education, artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a potent tool for student affairs professionals. In the latest episode of the "Student Affairs Voices from the Field" podcast, Dr. Jill Creighton spoke with Dr. Claire Brady as she shared her insights on how AI can be harnessed to streamline operations, free up time for deeper human connections, and enhance student success. Anchoring her discourse around the recently published NASPA AI report, Dr. Brady provides a roadmap for AI integration, framed through four crucial phases.

Rapid Implementation: Where to Start Starting Small for Immediate Impact

Dr. Brady emphasizes the importance of initiating AI integration through readily available solutions that address immediate challenges with minimal disruption. This phase centers around adopting free and low-cost tools that can yield quick wins. For instance, Kellogg Community College began using a CRM with embedded AI tools in their admissions department, which gradually expanded across the institution. This approach allowed them to showcase the value of AI incrementally while building momentum for broader adoption.

Resource and Capacity Building: Strengthening Foundations Enhancing AI Literacy and Competence

The second phase involves building the necessary infrastructure and expertise for more sophisticated AI applications. Nashville State Community College serves as a model, implementing a year-long AI training program funded by a state grant. This comprehensive program combines interactive learning with critical analysis of AI's practical applications, helping to foster a campus-wide culture of AI literacy and competence. Such initiatives are crucial for developing the foundational knowledge and skills required for future AI endeavors.

Scaling Solutions: Expanding AI's Reach From Departmental Pilots to Institutional Integration

Scaling successful AI initiatives across various departments and functions forms the core of the third phase. Georgia State University's chatbot, Pounce, exemplifies this phase. Originally designed to reduce summer melt, Pounce has evolved into a comprehensive student support system. By leveraging AI to improve engagement with first-generation and underserved students, Georgia State demonstrates how a focused pilot project can scale into a broad institutional strategy that significantly enhances student experiences.

Strategic Transformation: Towards Comprehensive Integration Aligning AI with Institutional Goals

The final phase, strategic transformation, envisions a comprehensive integration of AI fully aligned with broader institutional goals. This phase anticipates creating an ecosystem where all technological components work synergistically. The University of Florida's "Building an AI University" initiative exemplifies this stage. By embedding AI education across disciplines and emphasizing ethical guidelines and accessibility, the university ensures that AI integration supports their mission holistically.

Moving Forward: Centering the Human Element Enhancing, Not Replacing Human Interaction

Dr. Brady highlights the essential role of human-centered AI integration, stressing that AI should augment rather than replace human interactions. AI can alleviate the laborious aspects of administrative tasks, allowing student affairs professionals to focus more on meaningful, human-centric activities. This perspective is crucial as the field navigates the integration of emerging technologies.

Conclusion: Embracing the AI Frontier

The transformational potential of AI in student affairs is vast, and as Dr. Brady emphasizes, now is the time for institutions to start exploring and implementing these tools. By following the structured phases of AI integration outlined in the NASPA report, student affairs professionals can strategically harness AI to enhance their work, support students, and ultimately drive institutional success. As we embrace this new frontier, continuous learning, ethical considerations, and a commitment to human-centered practices will be key to thriving in the future.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:01]: Welcome to Student Affairs Voices from the Field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. Brought to you by NASPA, we curate free and accessible professional development for higher ed professionals wherever you happen to be. This is season 12, continuing our journey through the past, present, and future of student affairs. I'm doctor Jill Creighton, she, her, hers, your essay voices from the field host. Today on essay voices, we're bringing the conversation back to artificial intelligence in student affairs. We welcome Claire Brady, who is a first generation American and first generation college graduate who has built a distinguished career at the intersection of digital transformation, organizational excellence, and higher educational leadership. A seasoned executive consultant and national thought leader in AI adoption, Claire specializes in helping organizations harness AI not just to streamline operations, but to free up time for deeper, more meaningful human connections. Through glass half full consulting, Claire helps organizations scale their AI integrations strategically and substantially.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:02]: Sorry, Chris. Starting that, paragraph over. Through glass half full consulting, Claire helps organizations scale their AI integrations strategically and sustainably, enabling teams to amplify their impact while staying true to their core mission and values. The firm specializes in creating customized AI adoption road maps that align with organizational goals, ensuring technology serves as a catalyst for meaningful growth and enhanced human connections. As a sought after speaker and trainer, Claire is dedicated to equipping professionals with the knowledge and tools they need to thrive in an AI enhanced world. She is the author of The Transformative Potential of AI and Student Affairs, Recommendations for Student Affairs Leader, a national report developed in partnership with NASPA and the Strata Educational Foundation, which is also the topic of our episode today. Claire has held executive leadership roles as vice president for student affairs at Lake Sumter State College and Anna G. Mendez University, serving both Florida and Puerto Rico.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:55]: Her career also includes leadership and teaching roles at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Michigan State University, and Alma College. A committed mentor and thought leader in higher education, she's contributed to NASBA as a faculty member and co director of the Institute for Aspiring BPSAs and New Professionals Institute, as well as a frequent contributor to Leadership Exchange and Colleague Conversations. Beyond her professional work, Claire is an active member of regional and national associations and serves on various community boards in Central Florida. She and her partner, Ben, and their son live in Orlando where life is filled with Lego builds, Minecraft discussions, and Broadway show tunes. When she's not exploring new AI tools or traveling, she enjoys reading, great TV, and time with family and friends. Claire, welcome to SA Voices.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:02:37]: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:38]: Lovely to see you again with many connections in NASPA. I always like to clue our listeners in. Claire was one of my faculty members at the NASPA AVP Institute. Oh, gosh. I think that was five years ago now.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:02:51]: A time ago.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:53]: And and so it's lovely to reconnect. We're gonna be spending most of our conversation today talking about the authorship of the AI report, which was just released by NASPA just before the winter break. So if you haven't had a chance to check that out, it is freely available actually with or without your NASPA membership. If you're just a higher ed community member and wanna check it out, it's, freely available on the Internet. But Claire, you're off and running into the consulting world now after have having spent a long time, as a senior student affairs officer at VPSA. We always like to ask our guests how you got to your current seat, and I'm so curious about your journey.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:03:27]: As you can imagine, a lot of people have questions about moving from full time staff into consulting. So I'll I'll definitely share some of that as well. So I'm a very traditional higher ed student affairs. I mean, my twenty fifth year, I started as a student leader. Most folks know my origin story. I immigrated to The US when I was in high school, and I'm a first generation college student. I was absolutely in love with the college experience at Michigan State University, very involved student leader, and applied for graduate school and got denied. And it was actually the best thing that could have happened to me.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:04:00]: I went and worked full time at a small liberal arts college, Alma College in Michigan, and really honed my craft and really figured out quickly that this was the profession I wanted to pursue. Went on to graduate school, went on to some great positions at Michigan State, the University of Illinois and Lake Sumter State College and eventually Ana G. Mendez University. So I've worked at Big Ten, I've worked at community college, I've worked at a Hispanic serving bilingual institution, and I really started off in generalist, roles. Then I moved to some specialist roles, eventually into AVP, Dean of Students and Vice President of Student Affairs. And all throughout that process, I always was a regular good human in the professional association space. I did a lot of speaking and presenting, and then eventually I did some consulting on the side. And in 2023, kind of the stars aligned for me.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:04:49]: I was about to renew my contract as a vice chancellor of student affairs. My chancellor announced he was leaving to go to a different presidency. And I saw an opportunity to really throw my hat into the ring and become a full time consultant and start to really pour into myself instead of into an institution or into a system. And I had been doing a lot of work around strategic planning and other areas, but artificial intelligence wasn't even something that I was doing professionally. It was just something that I was doing personally. I was really interested and curious about it. I love anything that helps me save time and do things more effectively, faster, that that frees up time for me to do the things I really love to do. And I had a client who said, I really don't understand this entire world.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:05:34]: Can you help me? Can you coach me? And that was a launching point for me and I have been full time consulting with my firm, Glass Hospital Consulting ever since. And about 70% of my business now is completely focused in the area of AI. It's really wild.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:05:47]: What a shift. We weren't even talking about this in higher ed, like, eighteen months ago.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:05:51]: Absolutely. And when I say consulting with AI, it's everything from I do about 10 to 12 keynotes kind of keynote speeches a month, either in person or virtually. But the bulk of my business around AI is actually really focused in the actual AI integration, helping institutions scale, how to take that individual person in admissions or advising or career services who's using a tool like ChatGPT or insert whatever your favorite tool is, to taking it and actually scaling it at the division or departmental or institutional level. How to do the governance work, how to do the policy work, how to increase AI literacy. So it's really layered. It's really interesting. It's different every day. And I'm on about 30 campuses a year.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:06:33]: That's about the max that I can do at this point. So I get to see lots of great campuses all around the country. I have, many wardrobes, and I spent a lot of time on planes and in airports. But wherever I go, I have this incredible community of student affairs folks, either with the institution I'm working with or in the surrounding area. So that's also been a really great way that I've stayed connected in the field while kind of working mostly from home.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:06:56]: I appreciate you sharing what that consulting actually looks like. I think it's such an enigma that we see senior leaders move into their own consulting space all the time, but I think a lot of people don't really know what that means. So it's great to hear.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:07:07]: I feel like it's like the celebrity or the actor who, like, finally wins the Academy Award at the end and everyone's like, oh, you were like an overnight success. I really think two things really helped me be successful in the space. I was a really good professional for twenty five years. Right? And I built up this network of people who trust me and know me and know that I give up my time and my effort. I'm also a mentor and a sponsor to a lot of people, but I've also been mentored and sponsored by a lot of people. And from that, I was able to grow a business. So a lot of times I have folks asking me, like, what's your best advice for becoming a consultant? It's to be a really great professional and to be really engaged and and invested in our field. And then also, I have kept up all of those professional volunteer association work roles.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:07:50]: I was a co director with my friend Jose Rivera for the aspiring vice president's institute. I continue to do all kinds I I review programs and I review awards and I do all the things. Right? And then also, the second piece was I'm an opportunist. And AI right now, there's just not a lot of folks doing this work in higher ed. And here I am saying, I'm gonna plant my flag along in this case with the report with NASPA, and we're gonna help you. Because no one knows what they're doing and everyone is a novice. And I will tell you that our field as a whole are not used to being a novice at anything. And so this has been a really, transformational moment for a lot of folks to have members of cabinet come to me and say, I don't know how to lead in this area.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:08:35]: What do I need to know to build my basic competence, let alone my confidence? Right? So that's been a really interesting space to be. And I'm not a super techie person. I often need help with my slide deck. So that's also helped a little bit that I'm relatable and approachable, and then I'm learning alongside all my clients as well.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:08:53]: This is a really important component of this AI learning space, which is that we're all learning together. I'm teaching European master's course. I'm teaching the technology module. We did a whole four hour session on AI integration. And what I said to the students in the class is I'm not an AI expert, but what I am is a dabbler and a tinkerer. And I think that's what you really need in order to experiment with how does AI actually serve you in your day to day work. Whether it be something simple like Microsoft Copilot, which a lot of universities have for free with their Microsoft Office licenses or three sixty five or whatever the heck it's called now. ChatGPT, which is free, Omni, all these AI generated imagery components.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:09:32]: And there's even some really great tools that will help you create a PowerPoint deck from couple of bullet points and things like that. So what we did was just went through tools and played with them together and talked about, well, how do we use this to create emails? How do we use this to write something down that's difficult? But also how do we do this in a way that doesn't violate FERPA or whatever privacy law your GDPR here over in the European Union area. But all of these things, because we're putting sensitive data in a lot of places if we're misusing these tools. So a lot to talk about on this topic, but why don't we center first with what is the NASPA AI report?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:10:08]: So last spring, NASPA approached me. They knew I was doing this work at AI, and they said to me, we wanna be one of the first associations that plants our flag in this area, that provides resources for our members. We're hearing that we know they need it. They know they want it. And so they came to me and asked me whether I would be willing to partner with them and Strata Educational Foundation to put out some resources. But beyond that, we didn't really know where it was gonna land. Right? What it was gonna look like. And so I spent about six months in the field talking to folks, and I started out really using my networks and saying, who's doing something vanguard? Who's doing something advanced? Who's doing something who has an emerging best practice? Not a single response because no one thinks they're doing anything that is ahead of everybody else because every everyone thinks they're behind.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:10:55]: So emerging practice, but not emerging best practice.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:10:58]: Exactly. Exactly. Right? So if they're tinkering if I asked who's tinkering, I think I would have gotten a very different set of responses. So I had to keep refining. I had to really keep working my network. And from that came this report that really highlights not just what is AI and what are the key terminologies, but what's the current state in student affairs? Where are we now? Where do I see the horizon kind of leading to us and where's around the corner? And that's really important because we're all talking about tools, mostly generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. What we're not really talking about is all the data work that's ahead of us. We're not really talking about student consent.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:11:34]: We're talking about privacy and cybersecurity. We need to be talking about those things. We're not talking about things like student consent. So the really kind of nuanced work that we need to be doing, there is no framework that existed to integrate, how to scale, so we created that as part of the report. And then I think the two pieces that are most exciting to me, one are the emerging use cases. There are 14 of them. Those are use cases that are are in their one or more cycles, in many cases, six or seven cycles where we know they're collecting data, where they're actually measuring impact, where they can be replicated by other institutions and explained in a way that's not just theoretical. And then there's 50 plus forecasted use cases in the report.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:12:14]: And those are really either coming from we just know that they're coming based on where the technology is evolving or they're coming from other areas outside of higher education that we know that we will be able to apply that same concept within higher education. And then there's a charge to leaders. What do you need to do next? How do you need to be a bold leader in this area? And that really comes down to this very unsexy idea of developing AI literacy amongst everybody at your institution, including students. Right? And then iterating, practicing, trying, tinkering, whatever the word might be. And so we probably have enough content to make three more reports, really collected such just rich information and data, but we had to figure out what what folks need right now. And what folks right need right now, I think, is really encapsulated in this report. And then what we're finding is the folks in the 14 emerging use cases are getting contacted every week since the report came out from institutions saying, tell me how you did that. Or sometimes it's an in house product, sometimes it's a vendor product.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:13:15]: And so we're seeing this really kind of interesting community forming around these 14 use cases. And I'm hoping that we'll start to see my next set of use cases will be some of those forecasted use cases that come to life.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:13:26]: So in the report, there are four phases of AI integration and development that are brought up as a way of kind of framing how to approach it. Because I think where we are as a field is this notion that we all know that we need to do better with AI. We all know we need to do something with AI. And I think everyone is a little bit overwhelmed by what that means or where to start because at the end of the day, as student affairs professionals, we are the end user case of AI. We're not usually the developers. Maybe we have IT teams that are internal to student affairs. Maybe we're working with a university central IT department. But there are so many things that can be done.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:14:02]: There's some use cases around chat GPT like components for your university. Forever, we've been talking about one stop shop answers for students, and we can do that online. We can do it better than the big chat GPT or other LLMs, meaning large language models because we can feed data in in faster real time, all of those things. But we again, we're going back to these four phases that really tell us, hey. Here's how we begin because beginning might actually be the scariest part here. So talk to us about phase one, which is rapid implementation.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:14:34]: So phase one is really focused on readily available AI solutions that address immediate challenges but have minimal disruption. So the example I love to give for this one is a manager who's really struggling to have consistency maybe in their performance reviews for their team. They could use an AI tool, anonymize, obviously, not putting any kind of personal information into the tool, And they can really use that as a way to improve in that particular case in their particular department a process or a written, output. Right? Kellogg Community College has a a great example of this. So they started using a CRM, a customer relationship management platform that has embedded AI tools, and they started simply in admission. And then they began expanding across all departments that have any piece of the new student student communications process. Right? And so by really focusing on rapid implementation and then scaling in a logical organic way, it allowed them to demonstrate value quickly while building momentum for this broader adoption. And from my interviews with them, they really don't think it would have been as successful as if they had kind of done a huge project that was really focused on the entire communications process.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:15:48]: Right? So they were able to start in admissions and then kind of build from there. So that's a great example of phase one.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:15:54]: So we now have phase two, which is resource and capacity building. This is taking us to the next step. What does this mean?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:16:01]: So phase two really focuses on moving institutions beyond quick wins to developing the infrastructure and expertise needed for more sophisticated applications. So the examples that I like to give in this one are really focused on AI literacy in particular and data readiness. Those are two areas that we know. Once we have kind of the basics, folks understand what the tools are, they are given a right a a a tech stack really that they can play in. How do you move your institutional capacity in terms of resources, but also in terms of knowledge, confidence, and competence. So Nashville State Community College really exemplifies this phase for me. They are doing a year long AI training program monthly, which combines interactive learning with critical analysis of AI's practical applications. So imagine the entire institution is undergoing some similar AI literacy training, And then each month, different populations within the faculty and staff are doing intensive AI training for that whole day on a Friday, let's say, just looking at accessibility tools, just looking at research and writing tools, just looking at the power of AI in the advising space.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:17:10]: And so they're a great example of one that's kind of taken this idea. They, sought out a grant from the state of Tennessee. So the state of Tennessee is actually paying for this pilot program at Nashville State, and it's really a proof of concept for the other community colleges within the system. So that's a great example of a way to build resource and capacity code.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:17:30]: And then phase three, we have scaling solutions, which I think is one of the scarier things, about AI integration personally. Probably because it comes with assigning dollar resources, but also policy frameworks kind of kick in, I think, at this point.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:17:45]: This is the one where folks think things are gonna break, usually. But this is actually the dream stage that everybody wants to get to. We don't really only want one department or one person. It's a single source of failure. So scaling solution shifts the focus to expanding successful AI initiatives across either departments, divisions, functions, and or institutions. So Georgia State is a great example of this. They're really the powerhouse as it relates to chatbots and virtual assistants. They started with a chatbot called Pounce in their enrollment services area that demonstrates really the power of scaling.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:18:20]: So it began as a tool to reduce summer melts, and it's actually evolved into a comprehensive student support system with particularly strong engagement of among first generation and traditionally underserved students. So imagine a chatbot, really, that's focused on the new student and making sure that we get them through to the first day of class. So there's nudges along the way. There's ways to engage the student. There's ways to prompt them and nudge them into doing specific behaviors, pay your bill, check your financial aid email, you know, whatever that might look like. But in that process, in that back and forth with the students, they really discovered many of the roadblocks students were encountering, many of the issues, many of the questions. And so from that, they've been able to scale this one chatbot into this comprehensive way that they communicate with students across the student experience. So they were able to to really take that and say, we're gonna take this concept.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:19:13]: And as we work with international students, it's gonna look like this. Whereas we work with our military affiliated students, it's gonna look like this. And so they've taken that one concept and they've been able to really scale it across the institution. It's the dream.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:19:25]: And then finally, we have phase four, which is strategic transformation. Tell us about this one.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:19:31]: This is really kind of where the cycle then actually, once we work on representing that vision of a more comprehensive AI integration that's fully aligned with our broader institutional goals. This is what I call the ecosystem. Right? This is where all the pieces are really talking to each other, where we know that we're able to have data in the places and in the ways that we we need it to be, that our communications, that our student experience, all of that is really working in synergy. But honestly, this is where the cycle restarts again. So it's not just necessarily the end spot. It's really where things kind of evolve to, and then they kind of start that whole framework all over again. The University of Florida has an initiative called Building an AI University. And I think for me, this is really, at this moment in time, the best example in the country right now of this phase four.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:20:20]: So it really exemplifies this phase by prioritizing AI education across all disciplines while also really focusing on developing ethical guidelines, ensuring accessible tools for diverse student populations. And this is really where their curricular and co curricular, the student experience, the academic learning outcomes are all aligned and integrated in a way that you can tell the institution is working at a really high level, functioning at a really high level, But also, everybody's kind of marching in the same direction, and they've seen they've scaled all the solutions. They've seen the impact. And it's very obvious that this is an institution to me, at least. And I I live in the state of Florida, but the University of Florida started this six or seven years ago. So it's taken them a while to really get to this place. But I think they really are the model that a lot of institutions will be looking to in the future.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:21:14]: And they also have the resources of being a very large public

Dr. Claire Brady [00:21:17]: They do.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:21:17]: Which is very different than maybe I'm at a two year institution or a small liberal arts institution. I think there's kind of this constant myth that small liberal arts institutions are well resourced, and that's really not true for a lot. Not true.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:21:29]: Not true.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:21:30]: Well, Well,

Dr. Claire Brady [00:21:31]: and I think a big piece of what's interesting about this technical revolution that we're in is I'm actually seeing a lot more open source. I'm seeing a lot more open licenses. I'm seeing institutions like the University of Florida and others saying we're gonna open this up. So everything that's happening at the University of Florida is also being shared, at Miami Dade, and it's also being shared at Florida International. Different type of institution, very different resource set. And so what we're seeing is folks are playing nice in the sandbox right now. There's a lot of beta funding coming in. There's a lot of venture capital coming into this area in higher ed.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:22:08]: I get asked probably once a week to comment to a venture capitalist on what the tools are that my clients are using. And, Jill, I wanna be really clear, I don't work at all for vendors, which disappoints them greatly. I only work for institutions. My my entire business is based on my relationship with institutions. They have to be able to trust that what I'm saying about these tools is accurate and fair and as unbiased as I can be in the marketplace. I have no problem telling a vendor I think their tool is great or not great or has problems. I do that about once a week as well. But I am seeing a real sense of community.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:22:40]: Berkeley's a great example. Zach Pardos at the University of California, Berkeley, his lab is doing some incredible work as it relates to two areas. Tutoring, which in math and chemistry in particular is so important to many of our students success initiatives, and also in transfer articulation and transcript evaluation. The registrars around the country are cheering. That is just a huge manual heavy lift. And if we can do anything to make the transfer experience more seamless, quicker, less taxing on students, where they can make informed decisions quickly about where they want to transfer. I think that's going to be a major game changer for student success initiatives. So I am seeing some nice kind of playing in the sandbox.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:23:21]: I am curious though how venture capital and funding might potentially shift some of those behaviors that I'm seeing.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:23:29]: One of the major components at the front of the report is this idea of human centered AI integration, which I'm glad that you included because I think the conversation that is around fear of AI is will AI take away the need for human interaction or the human nature of student affairs, which my assertion has been student affairs is first and foremost a human to human profession. We're a helping profession. We're making the difference in students' lives and in their persistence and in their college experience, which I don't think AI will ever be able to do fully. So we're looking really more at how does AI enhance our work or inform our work rather than do our work. Can you talk to us about how you you framed human centered AI integration in the report and how you see it show up in the four phases?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:24:14]: Sure. I think that the really interesting piece for me is that this is human centered work that I think AI as a tool is just another one in our toolbox. Right? I think so much of student affairs work and our desire and our need to be accountable and to show the work that we're doing and the impact that we're having became very laborious for many student affairs practitioners. And I think, Claire Brady thinks, that it contributed significantly to many of our issues, not all of them, around burnout, around fatigue. If you're spending so much time as an academic advisor is a great example. Logging in to six to 12 systems a day, The systems are talking to each other. I wanna meet with a student. I have to log in.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:24:56]: I have to figure out who you are. I have to track things. So many of the tools require so much human intervention just to operate. Right? Let alone be optimal or give you a snapshot. And then so many institutions are not able to afford the Cadillac style portals and systems that are out there in the marketplace. I worked at a community college for ten years. I had to beg for an early alert system for seven of those ten years. So let alone the Cadillac.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:25:25]: I was going for a much different version than many of the other institutions. So for me, what I want AI to help us do is to free up our time to remove many of those tasks that have become onerous and laborious for no reason. I want our systems to talk to each other. I love a faculty to be involved in their early alert process, but I would much prefer that I have a background system that tells me my student hasn't logged into Canvas in three days. My student had an assignment in a class, and they didn't turn anything in. My student has been posting things in the discussion posts that have some language that concerns me. I would love to be alerted about that and not have to rely on another person who has a lot of other things going on in their life. So for me, it's about freeing up time for the work that really matters.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:26:07]: I think about a career adviser who spends all that time reviewing resumes. I did it for ten years. I never wanna look at another resume ever again. And I got into career services to do one on one work with students to inspire them for their future careers, and I became a professional resume reviewer to some degree. Right? So there's that piece for me. But I also understand right now, people are kinda over that argument. They're like, but there's so many other problems with it, or there's so many other things. And that's partially because we're so new at using these tools.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:26:38]: We don't even know what else is out there. So we're using them in a very specific, targeted, localized ways. And when our systems with that that integration, which is just around the corner, when your student information system is gonna speak to your learning management system, your mind is gonna be blown. Just that one thing alone, let alone the other six systems that you're also engaged with that will very soon be integrated and talking to each other. So I think we can't even imagine what that looks like yet. And I feel like a futurist a lot in this work, but I'm literally a nowist. Right? Like, I'm a nowist. Here we are.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:27:13]: I think for me in the framework in particular, those early wins, those are all related to free and low cost tools. They are not large licenses. They are not complex systems. They do not require you to do massive data cleanup projects. There are things you could literally be doing tomorrow or this afternoon. And so for me, I feel like in particular right now, that first and second phase are really accessible for folks without significant resources. You can bring in someone like me to do a training, but you could probably cobble together a really great training on your own. Everybody bring your laptop.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:27:53]: Let's sit down. You could watch the webinar I did with NASPA last week. That is free. You could read the report. You could report. You could have a a discussion about it. You could go and try some of the tools. So I think for me, those first two phases in particular, there is no one stopping you.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:28:07]: Yes. Scaling is more complicated. Scaling requires a certain level of finesse. It requires leadership's buy in. But those first two phases for me are absolutely doable in the moment. They do not require you to be the vice president of student affairs. You can be anybody in the organization as long as you're following your organization's policy and practices around their use of AI. And I have seen that really expand in the last six months.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:28:32]: From should we be using it, to how should we be using it, to how can we use it to meet our institutional outcomes. And that is a shift from literally the second half of twenty twenty three to January of twenty twenty five. That's a pretty massive fast shift for a field like student affairs or higher ed, which is, you know, usually, removing at a glacial pace.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:28:52]: And there's an AI literacy question, I think, for the field. And, as we're building our own literacy around this subject and around these tools that are shifting under our feet every day.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:29:01]: Jill, just this week, the whole world's been upended in AI.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:29:04]: Indeed. Do you wanna share more about that insight?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:29:06]: Well, I mean, I travel a lot to campuses, and one of the questions I get asked the most is, how are these technology companies operating? Tell me more about that because that feels like that's really the part that no one really quite understands. And what you saw happen this week was a competitor out of China coming out with a product that seems, on the surface at least, to be operating and functioning at a much higher level than many of the established tools at a tiny fraction of the cost. And so what you're seeing is, literally, the stock market is reacting to this technological shift that was announced. And so we're at a very volatile moment. And I think that also contributes to kind of the anxiety around these tools is there's a lot of messy stuff happening around us. One of the biggest questions I get asked at university and college campuses is, what's the environmental impact of these technologies? And I don't think that's getting anywhere near the attention it needs to be getting. And sometimes when I, when I mentioned that in a, in a speech or a presentation, I get kind of blank stares. Like, what do you mean? It's just the internet.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:30:09]: Right? The internet doesn't hurt the environment. Well, of course, the internet hurts the environment. And when the large tech companies are investing in nuclear power because they foresee the need for nuclear power because their power needs are gonna be so significant in the future, I think we need to be really AI literate. And this always goes back to this super unsexy topic for me when I speak to chancellors and presidents in particular, like, what should we be doing? You should be learning everything. And I say this to student affairs in particular. These questions around ethical guidelines, around environmental impact, around the influence of corporate worlds, if we're not at the table asking some of those critical questions, I don't think the questions are gonna get asked. And I ask vendors questions when I'm representing my clients that they say to me, no one has ever asked that question before at any university in the country, which I'm like, wait. What are you talking about? Why aren't they asking? Everybody should be asking these questions.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:31:02]: But I am uber AI literate. So I read and I know and I listen to podcasts and I'm talking to people, But I am not an agent of one of these companies, and I am not the most techie person on the planet. I still need a Google and YouTube things to figure out what to do on my iPhone sometimes. So for me, it's just really interesting that there's kind of this veil, and I think we did it to ourselves. We got stuck in the cheating conversation and we couldn't get out of it. And the world moved on around us, and the conversations got more nuanced and more interesting and more layered. And we were still over here saying, well, should we let them? Should we not let them? How should we let them? And we got a little behind. And so we do have a little bit of running to do to catch up, and that goes back to the super unsexy idea that you have to build your confidence and your confidence, and you have to be AI literate.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:31:50]: One thing I'll mention is if you're listening and you'd not really considered environmental impacts before of AI, what Claire and I are really referencing is the cost of running a server, really. Every time you do a Google search or put something into chat GPT or another large language model, it has to ping somewhere and that server has to be run off of electricity somewhere. And the bigger they get, the more expensive and more resource intensive they are to cool. And then we start looking at water usage and global warming and a whole bunch of other things that are affiliated with that. So as end users, we might just say, oh, this is really great for helping me to revise this message or to provide a resource. And at the end of the day, we're all consuming. So there's interesting ethical components around that for sure.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:32:34]: And it's just gonna get more and more as folks really start. I mean, even when I do a keynote, I ask folks who, you know, what tools are you using every day, how many tools are you using. I've just seen in the last six months just such an explosion of I usually use one or two to now I use three to five, and then I usually use them five to 10 times a day. It's now become I use them 10 to 20 times a day. So amplify that times times the number of people. It's a lot.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:32:58]: Are there any final thoughts on the AI report or things that you want listeners and student affairs professionals to know?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:33:03]: I think that one, I want you to read it because we really are highlighting and showcasing some incredible folks around the country who are doing the work. And I think that if you are at all thinking about where do we start, how do we start, what do we need to be thinking about, the report is a really great primer to do that. I would encourage you, if you are in a senior leadership role, to share it with your president or your chancellor, whoever that might be. Because although it is focused on student affairs, it is really a higher ed report that we tailored and specialized to our folks. But really, I think there are some key questions and the framework in particular to me, we're really proud of because I feel like it is something folks can really kinda get their hands around. And I'd say, where do I start? Start here. Start by reading the report. Start by discussing it with your peers.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:33:49]: And then I would say, start working on some of the low hanging fruit and working on your AI literacy. When I talk about data integrity and data cleanup and all the rest of it, folks, I start to glaze over a little bit. Right? So that might be a two point o for your institution. But I will tell you that you can start now. You do not need to wait, and you do not need massive amounts of resources. Some of the best, most impactful AI integrations that I have seen so far have been using free and low cost. And one is a great example that we talk about in the report is OA Tutor. It is a open source, open license on MIT that any institution can use and tailor to their own institution for math tutoring and chemistry tutoring.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:34:31]: And think about our student success initiatives and how important math and chemistry are to those. And so I just want you to think really broadly and expansively, but know that this is a really great resource that you need to have in your toolbox. And then I wanna continue to hear from folks because we wanna continue to write and showcase these examples around the world of student affairs folks who are doing work. And if you are doing anything, you are already a vanguard. If you are are are having conversations on your team, maybe you have teams or whatever your product of choice is, and you just have a sandbox, and you share resources or you show really interesting, cool ways that you've used a tool. Any way that we can layer our competency in this area, I think, is gonna really help us as a field and as individuals. And I I think that employers are looking for graduates and for for employees who are willing to explore new technologies and who are willing to not just know how to do it, but know how to do it well. And so I think this report can help a lot of people.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:35:30]: I'm gonna move us into our theme based questions for the season, which again is our past, present, and future of student affairs. So I have one question on each of those areas. So beginning with the past, what's one component of the history of the student affairs profession that you think we should continue to carry forward or alternatively let go of?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:35:46]: I'm, obsessed with community colleges. I'm absolutely obsessed with them. And I think that some of the most interesting work that's happening around student success, retention, and completion is actually happening on the ground at community colleges. And so I wanna shout from the rooftops to graduate students who are looking for topics for their dissertations and other projects that this is the rife area for us to spend more time. I think we assume they don't have as many resources, but I think they are scrappy and they figure it out. And I think that for folks that are really values aligned, who are really equity and inclusion aligned, so many of our community colleges are doing interesting stuff, and they don't know to share it or to sing it or to put it out there. They don't always have the resources to go to conferences and other events and kind of share the news of what they're doing. And so I would like us to see kind of a return to being curious and excited about the work that's happening at many of our thousands of community colleges in this country.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:36:44]: I'm excited every year when the Aspen Awards come out because I wanna see and I wanna go to those websites and I wanna see those institutions. So I think we need a resurgence of excitement and interest around our community colleges.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:36:54]: In the present, what's happening in the field right now that's going well for student affairs?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:36:59]: So much. And it's being overshadowed by so much that isn't. I think that so much of the work around our student communications, how we engage with students, our student governments, our student organizations, I think so much of it is going really well. And it's being overshadowed in a lot of ways, in important ways, by what's happening politically and socially around the country. But I don't want to lose sight of the fact that there is some really great student leadership, student organizations, many of our identity based groups. I think there's just really great things happening, and I'm not sure I see that much of it anymore because I feel like a lot of it has been overshadowed.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:37:34]: And finally, in the future, in an ideal world, what does the field need to be doing to thrive towards our future?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:37:39]: I'm gonna go on my AI track here. We need to be at the table. We need to be leaders in this area. We need to be voices in this area. We need to plant our flags. We need to be really focused around our vendor relationships and asking tough questions, and we need to be informed. And we can only do that if we admit to some degree that we are novices and that we hearken back to the ways we've done it five other times before. When the Internet first came out, what did we do? Right? When social media first came out, what did we do? When we had to go fully online at at the onset of the pandemic, what did we do? When we put calculators in math class, what did we do? As student affairs folks, we centered the student, and we centered the student experience and student learning.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:38:20]: And we figured it out. We we iterated sometimes. We did things not perfectly, and we we got it right eventually. And I think we need to have that same philosophy around artificial intelligence.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:38:30]: And it's so interesting too because it feels a little bit akin to when social media first came out and university, like, what do we do with this thing? And eventually figured out how to harness social media for highlighting student experience and admissions and a whole bunch of other things. So we're probably there again.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:38:44]: We are. I brought a board of trustees and a group of students and a group of faculty and a cabinet into a room, pulled out laptops, pulled out computers, and they couldn't believe how little of the AI work was related to their academics. It was entertainment, it was poetry, it was music, it was design, it was silly, it was fun, And about 15% of it had anything to do with school.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:39:06]: Again, the report is the transformational potential of artificial intelligence recommendations for student affairs leaders. We'll put that in our show notes for you. But also, if you just Google NASPA AI report, it'll pop right up for you, and you can access access the report with or without a membership. Though, of course, we'd love it if you become a NASPA member if you were not. It's time to take a quick break and toss it over to producer Chris to learn what's going on in the NASPA world.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:39:30]: Thanks, Jill. So excited to be back again this week in the NASPA world. And there's a ton of things happening in NASPA. NASPA recently announced all of the award winners that will be recognized at the NASPA annual conference, including the twenty twenty five Melvene D. Hardy dissertation of the year winners. The winner this year was Lisa Janick from Westchester University of Pennsylvania with her dissertation institutional factors associated with closing the equity gap in six year graduation rates at public four year universities. A big congratulations goes out to Doctor. Janek for her work on this.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:40:08]: The runner-up this year was Doctor. Brandy Probst from Elon University with her dissertation Out Here Fighting for My Life, exploring the experiences of black women, student affairs professionals, and critical incidents in workplace relationships with white women at historically white institutions. If you are going to be attending the NASPA annual conference, you'll be able to learn more about the dissertation of the year winner as well as this whole process. And I encourage you that if you're currently in the dissertation phase of a doctorate or working on one in the future to consider submitting for this prestigious award in the future. Today, I also wanna put a shout out to a book that was published a while back but is still so important today. That is a book in the NASPA bookstore called dismantling hazing in Greek letter organizations effective practices for prevention, response and campus engagement. This was published by Jason Meriwether and Associates. In this book, they offer practical strategies to address the complexities of hazing culture and the challenges associated with recruitment and initiation in various contexts.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:41:16]: Why is this important? Well, more than half of college students are hazed in the process of joining student organizations, while seven out of every ten students who pledge or rush a fraternity or sorority experience experience some form of hazing or violence. In recent years, numerous student deaths caused by hazing have called into question the value of these organizations while college leaders seek solutions that keep students safe. This book offers practical strategies to address the complexities of hazing culture and the challenges associated with recruitment and initiation in varying context. Each chapter focuses on the nuanced elements of hazing within sorority and fraternity subcultures and explores the hidden harms inside these secretive and tradition laden systems. I encourage you to check this out if you work with organizations, if you work with fraternities and sororities. This book is a powerful book and definitely one that will help you in your own professional practice in working with the students on your own campuses. You can find this book on the NASPA website. Go to NASPA.org, click on publications, and head over to the bookstore.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:42:23]: Finally, today, the twenty twenty five NASPA Mid Level Administrators Conference is happening June in Salt Lake City, Utah. 20 20 5 NASPA Mid Level Administrators Conference is a dynamic professional development event designed to provide mid level student affairs professionals with the opportunity to engage and learn with colleagues and senior student affairs administrators. During this two and a half day conference, participants will gain insights about promising practices to further develop professional competencies, networking and supervisory skills, strategies to improve professional practice and network to advance your career. The mid level administrators conference is designed for student affairs professionals who serve in roles between but not including entry level positions and AVP and the equivalent roles. Additionally, professionals who have been serving in entry level roles for at least five years are also welcome to attend. If you're looking for a powerful mid level experience to connect yourself with others in the field that are going through some of the things like yourself, I highly encourage you to consider this conference. Early registration ends on April 23 with regular registration ending on May 19. You can find out more by going to the NASPA website, click on events and find the Mid level Administrators Conference right there.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:43:41]: Every week, we're going to be sharing some amazing things that are happening within the association. So we are going to be able to try and keep you up to date on everything that's happening and allow for you to be able to get involved in different ways because the association is as strong as its members. And for all of us, we have to find our place within the association, whether it be getting involved with a knowledge community, giving back within one of the the centers or the divisions of the association. And as you're doing that, it's important to be able to identify for yourself. Where do you fit? Where do you wanna give back? Each week, we're hoping that we will share some things that might encourage you, might allow for you to be able to get some ideas that will provide you with an opportunity to be able to say, hey, I see myself in that knowledge community. I see myself doing something like that. Or encourage you in other ways that allow for you to be able to think beyond what's available right now to offer other things to the association, to bring your gifts, your talents to the association and to all of the members within the association. Because through doing that, all of us are stronger and the association is better.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:45:01]: Tune in again next week as we find out more about what is happening in NASPA.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:06]: Chris, thank you so much for keeping us informed on what's going on in and around NASPA. And, Claire, we have reached our lightning round, and I have seven questions for you in ninety seconds. Are you ready to do this?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:45:18]: I'm ready.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:19]: Alright.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:45:19]: Longtime listener, first time caller. I'm so excited for this.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:22]: Question number one. If you were a conference keynote speaker, what would your entrance music be?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:45:27]: Something Motown.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:28]: Number two. When you were five years old, what did you wanna be when you grew up?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:45:31]: I grew up in Canada, and I wanted to be a Zamboni driver.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:34]: Number three. Who's your most influential professional mentor?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:45:37]: Allen Schott, Michigan State University.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:40]: Number four, your essential student affairs read.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:45:42]: Blogs. It's all blogs now.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:44]: Number five, the best TV show you've been binging lately? Philo. Number six, the podcast you spent the most hours listening to in the last year?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:45:52]: Smartless.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:45:53]: And finally, number seven, any shout outs you'd like to give, personal or professional?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:45:57]: I just wanna give a shout out to Sherry Rowland at Tallahassee Community College, who was my very first AI client, and she was absolutely transformative for me in helping me to kinda shape my business to move towards an AI consulting group. So I wanna thank her.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:13]: Well, Claire, I know that I've learned so much from you, and I really enjoyed reading the report myself. If anyone would like to connect with you after this episode airs, how can they find you?

Dr. Claire Brady [00:46:23]: I'd love to hear from folks. So my website is doctorclairebrady.com. My Instagram is doctor claire brady, and I am obsessed and love LinkedIn. So please find me on LinkedIn. I'm also the moderator of AI in Higher Education, private group on LinkedIn. We have about 500 members where we share resources and connect in a community of folks who are interested in AI. So I'd love to have more folks join that group and find me on LinkedIn.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:46:49]: Claire, it's been a pleasure learning from you today. Thank you so much for sharing your voice with us.

Dr. Claire Brady [00:46:54]: Thank you. I've loved it. Really appreciate it, Jill.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:47:02]: This has been an episode of SA Voices from the Field, a podcast brought to you by NASPA. This show is made possible because of you, the listeners, and we continue to be grateful that you spend your time with us. If you'd like to reach the show, you can always email us at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn by searching for doctor Jill L. Creighton. We always welcome your feedback and your topic and guest suggestions. We'd love it if you take a moment to tell a colleague about the show and please leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It really helps other student affairs professionals find our show and helps us to become more visible in the larger podcasting community. This episode was produced and hosted by doctor Jill Creighton.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:47:40]: That's me. Produced and audio engineered by doctor Chris Lewis. Special thanks to the University of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next time.

In the demanding world of student affairs, professionals are adept at supporting students through crises, but often overlook the need to extend similar care to each other. In this week's "SA Voices from the Field," Dr. Jill Creighton and Dr. Melinda Stoops delve into the complexities of navigating grief and loss within the field, offering strategic insights for supporting colleagues during challenging times.

Understanding the Impact of Grief in Higher Education

Grief is a ubiquitous human experience, but its management within the professional environment, especially in student affairs, can be particularly delicate. Dr. Stoops emphasizes the significance of acknowledging grief and understanding that everyone processes it differently. She encourages a culture of empathy and grace, suggesting that it's critical to check in with colleagues and provide space for them to express their needs without imposing judgments or preconceived notions.

Core Principles for Supporting Colleagues

Dr. Stoops and Dr. Creighton highlight the importance of treating individuals as whole beings, which is fundamental both in student interactions and among colleagues. This holistic approach considers physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, recognizing that well-being is multifaceted and interconnected.

Dr. Stoops shares practical strategies such as simple breathing exercises to help manage stress. Techniques like "rainbow breathing" and "box breathing" can be powerful tools for grounding oneself in the present moment, which can be crucial between back-to-back meetings or during particularly stressful periods.

Practical Strategies to Recenter and Refocus

Returning to fundamental wellness practices can significantly benefit professionals in student affairs. Dr. Stoops suggests incorporating short walks, breathing exercises, and even hydration breaks into the daily routine to maintain focus and manage stress. These strategies are designed to be quick and easily integrated into a busy workday, offering immediate relief and aiding in long-term well-being.

Supporting Supervisees and Supervisors

The relationship dynamics between supervisors and supervisees can play a crucial role in managing grief. Supervisors are advised to adopt a compassionate and flexible approach, allowing space for supervisees to express their needs and emotions. It's important for supervisors to be vulnerable and share their experiences appropriately, while maintaining professional boundaries and focusing on the needs of their team.

Similarly, supervisees are encouraged to check in with their supervisors, acknowledging the power dynamics but also offering support. This can help create a supportive and empathetic office culture where everyone feels valued and understood.

The Importance of Peer Support

Peer-to-peer support is equally vital. Colleagues should feel comfortable checking in with each other and offering help, understanding that different individuals may need varying levels of support. Simple gestures of checking in can make a significant difference, reinforcing a sense of community and collective care.

Moving Forward with Compassion

As student affairs professionals, it's essential to foster an environment where everyone feels supported, especially during times of grief and loss. By adopting these strategies and understanding the profound impact of empathy and compassion, the field can not only navigate the challenges of today but also build a resilient and caring community for the future.

Emphasizing the importance of holistic well-being, strategic check-ins, and compassionate support, this episode of "SA Voices from the Field" provides invaluable insights for higher education professionals striving to support each other through life's inevitable challenges.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:01]: Welcome to Student Affairs Voices from the Field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. Brought to you by NASPA, we curate free and accessible professional development for higher ed professionals wherever you happen to be. This is season 12, continuing our journey through the past, present, and future of student affairs. I'm doctor Jill Creighton, she, her, hers, your essay Voices from the Field host. Just a quick note that we recorded this episode prior to Melinda announcing her departure from Boston College. So while she references her work at BC quite a lot, she just wanted to let you know that she has moved to a new professional opportunity. Today on SA Voices from the Field, we're going to be having a conversation with one of our colleagues about how we navigate tragedy and loss amongst ourselves. We spend so much time doing this work with students that we often don't stop and think about how to support each other in the process or when things happen that are just part of the human experience.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:58]: So I'm pleased to welcome Doctor. Melinda Stoops. As a licensed psychologist, she entered higher education over twenty years ago as the director of a college counseling center. For the past fifteen years, she's served in various administrative roles in student affairs, including as dean of students, associate vice president for student affairs, and deputy title nine coordinator. Melinda prioritizes student well-being in all of her work and is particularly interested in increasing cross campus partnerships to achieve a collective impact on student health and wellness. She earned a PhD in counseling psychology from Indiana State University and an MA in counseling psychology from Radford University, as well as a BA in psychology from Smith College. Melinda, welcome to SA Voices from the Field.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:01:37]: Thanks so so much, Jill. I'm excited to be here.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:39]: We are very glad to be talking to you today about the very important topic and probably under discussed topic in our field around how we support our colleagues going through trauma and tragedy because we know that in our profession, we're seeing an increase in that. We've been seeing that for quite a few years now. But before we dive into our main topic today, we always like to get to know our guests by asking you, how did you get to your current seat?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:02:02]: Oh, that's a great question. I entered higher education as a director of a counseling center. I'm a psychologist. And so when I graduated, I worked in a couple of different settings and just really missed higher education and was fortunate to be able to be hired as the director of a counseling center and then over time was promoted and ended up making my way back into the mental health focus through my work with student health and wellness. And so I've been serving as the associate vice president for student health and wellness at Boston College for a number of years and really find it's a nice combination as a psychologist and as a higher ed administrator.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:43]: What does your portfolio currently include?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:02:46]: Right now, I oversee the areas related to student health and wellness, which includes university health services, primary care sports medicine, the counseling center, the center for student wellness, and I also work closely with a care team that works with students impacted by sexual violence. And I also serve as the university deputy title line coordinator.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:03:08]: That's a lot on your plate right now.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:03:10]: It is. There are some days where it feels like more than others, but that's the nature of the beast, I guess, in higher education.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:03:16]: And eventually, we'll do another episode on the title nine updates. It's been a minute, but I would imagine that we're gonna see some additional changes to the proposed rules at some point very soon, and that will be another set of challenges for us to navigate as a field.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:03:31]: Definitely. That feels like it's a constantly moving piece of work that we need to adjust to.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:03:36]: Yeah. For about the last twenty years or so, I think there's been a rule change every time there's been an administration change. But with all of the kind of well-being components on your plate right now, our profession is really wholly and solely focused on the weld wellness and well-being of our students, which is where we've been focused and where we should be focused. But oftentimes, we don't necessarily translate or apply that same care or those same strategies of care to our teams or our staff members or those of us that interact regularly with trauma. And that happens for a lot of us in student affairs. But also we have our own worlds that are going at the same time as we're exhibiting care for our students. And I know personally we've had quite a bit of loss in the field as of late, loss and tragedy, and just people navigating their own personal needs around, trauma and grief. And so I'm looking forward to talking to you today about how we can translate some of that work, and apply that to, the people that we work with day in and day out.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:04:36]: So why don't we start with what are some of the core principles that you think are most critical when we're working with students in a care setting, not from a psychological perspective?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:04:46]: Not from a clinical perspective. So in terms of our work with students, I think we look at student and well-being as as a whole person, that well-being encompasses many different elements. So a lot of times we think about that as a physical element of well-being, but also emotional, spiritual. There's a lot of different dimensions of well-being, and we'll see different models for that. Some have seven dimensions, some have nine. But the bottom line is they all recognize that we have more than one way of being healthy. And so it's really when we look at an individual's wellness, whether it's a student or an individual who's not a student, we really wanna look at it in terms of the whole person. And also, really, as much as we can from a prevention framework and and not waiting for things to escalate it and get to the point where it becomes an emergency, but really look at it early on.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:05:38]: If if someone's not doing well, what can we do to help them take care of themselves and and learn good self care as a foundation for everything moving forward?

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:05:48]: You mentioned there's a couple of models with varying dimensions. Do you have any models that you particularly rely on in your day to day practice?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:05:55]: Well, here at Boston College, our Center for Student Wellness does a great job of prevention work, and they really simplified it into just keeping it in three areas. And so they drill down from from other models, but basically trying to get students to think about wellness in terms of mind, body and soul. And so it's an easy way to just zoom in and make it simple rather than having to remember seven to nine different areas. And so if you think about the mind can be stress management, it can be self talk, mental health, things you do, the body, of course, it's a physical body, and then the soul, what nourishes your soul, whether it's something spiritual or whether it's something like being with your friends can nourish your soul as well. And so we keep it very basic in terms of those three things, and it's really easy to keep those in mind as as you're thinking about self care.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:06:46]: Are there any tried and true practices that you have in the wellness space and the prevention lens that have served you really well over the years and through generations of college students?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:06:55]: I think the things that serve us the best are the most basic, most simple things. The the more complicated you get, like anything, it's it's harder to pick up and harder to carry on and continue with. So one thing that I think is a good tried and true that is really helpful is the idea of breathing and doing this and teaching it in different kinds of ways. So there are something very simple called rainbow breathing, where you picture almost moving your finger along a rainbow and that you breathe in as you go up the rainbow and then breathe out as you go down, if that makes sense, the arc of the rainbow. And so you can do that where you follow each color on the rainbow and then repeat it. And the idea is it's having you sort of slow your breathing and focus on your breathing. There's a technique called box breathing, which is also very popular right now. And it's the idea of picturing a box and you breathe in on one side, breathe out on the other, and hold your breath at one point.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:07:54]: And the bottom line is the idea of having people really focus on their breathing and controlling your breathing can be really helpful in a couple of ways. One, it makes you focus on the present. So you're not distracted by everything else that's going on, what's bothering you at the moment, but just really being attuned to the moment. And, also, it can be really helpful in managing anxiety, for example. Sometimes when you're anxious, your breathing can be affected. And so, again, slowing your breathing, relaxing can help you calm down in the moment. So I think that's something that you see a lot of people doing is a lot of practitioners focusing on breathing exercises. And, again, even thinking of simple things you can do with movement, we're not focused on go out and run that marathon or go out and run three miles.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:08:41]: It's like just move, go for a walk in between classes or just get up and stretch or and be you know, the things that you can do that are short and sort of get you moving and help you feel better in the short run. So I think there are more complicated things that that we can do, and and there are things that certainly, we teach our students in lots of different ways. But the idea of just these short things that can make you feel better in the moment can go a long way. Also, one thing that we do here at BC, and and I know is becoming increasingly popular, is the idea of health coaches, but not like you picture a coach at a gym or where your team, but student peer coaches that can talk to you about nutrition, exercise, stress management, and short, like, half hour sessions and give you some tips peer to peer on it. And students have really found that helpful.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:09:34]: Would you mind taking us through a rainbow breathing exercise? I think that might be really valuable for our listeners. They can probably do this wherever they're listening. Sure.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:09:42]: I'd be happy to do so. So one thing you can do, if it's helpful for you, is to actually take a pencil and piece of paper and draw a rainbow. And so I would suggest if you're doing that, that you picture maybe five arcs on the rainbow just to keep it simple. So five lines if you picture. And if you don't draw it out, just picture the five lines and picture how at the top of the rainbow, the top one is bigger than the one below it if you picture and so the how it goes smaller. And so what you're going to do is take your finger, and in a minute, we'll do this together. But you're going to start at the bottom left corner of the rainbow, and you're going to trace the arc of the rainbow and trace it all the way back down to the bottom where you're on the other side. And then on that side, what you can do is then keep your finger on that side and go to the next arc right below it, and then you're going to trace that up and all the way across to the other side.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:10:43]: And then you're going to do that again for the smaller one, and then we'll do that along the five. And how I like to do it is tracing it up and go down, and then start at the bottom and go back up to the top. So you sort of have two cycles of the rainbow. And so when you're at the top arc, I'll breathe in. And then when you get to the top of whatever arc you're on, you breathe out. So I'll take you through it right now, and I'll trace a rainbow and just picture tracing a rainbow along with me. And I will walk you through it verbally for the first round, and then the second round, I'll let you pace yourself with the breathing, if that makes sense. So we're going to start with the outer.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:11:24]: So you're going to go up the rainbow, breathe in. Now we're at the top and breathe out. Now move over to the next one and breathe in and breathe out. Now we're gonna go up, breathe in, Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. And breathe out.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:12:11]: And now do it on your own starting with the inner arc, and then I'll do my own and we'll stop together. Just keep tracing your rainbow. Hey. How did that work for you, Jill?

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:12:52]: I feel very relaxed suddenly. I like learning in these ways because while we do this for the benefit of our listeners, I also get the benefit of it as we're going along.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:13:02]: Yeah. I do too. Like, when I stop and do it, I'm like, okay. Now I can relax. And so you don't necessarily need a rainbow to do this. As I said, you just trace it on on any surface with your finger or even picture it in the air. But a rainbow is nice to look at when you're doing it as well. And really, you're just inhaling and exhaling and focusing on your breathing.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:13:22]: And that's really the trick to it.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:13:23]: So this is one thing that we can all do as people to come back to the moment or to the present when there's stress going on, when things are are hard and it's such a fast thing we can do. I know it's very, very difficult for for those of us who have, like, back to back calendars or are just running from crisis to crisis or difficult moment to difficult moment. And this takes thirty seconds, one minute to recenter. So I think that's a good thing.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:13:47]: Yeah. And that's an excellent point if you think about it. And if you're in back to back meetings and someone says, oh, you know, there's a student here to see you. You can say, tell them I'll be right out. And if you needed to take a minute to do the rainbow breathing, no one would even notice that there was this huge delay in you coming out. So it really is a nice way to regroup between meetings if you need to.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:14:07]: Are there other strategies that you might offer for professionals to find that moment to bring their best selves to the next student they're working with?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:14:15]: Well, that's a great question. I think just walking is a great one. And you don't have to go out and do a big walk. Like, even if it's just doing a loop around the office or walking downstairs real quick and right back up. Again, it gets your heart going. If you're feeling sort of tired, it'll get your blood flowing and make you feel alert afterwards. So I feel like that's something that can be really helpful too to just help you get moving and regroup. And, also, if if you're distracted by something that's on your mind, it can be good because when you're walking, you'll probably just notice things around you, which can be a different type of distraction.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:14:51]: So as you're walking, you can intentionally say, okay. I'm gonna pay attention to what I'm hearing and and what I'm seeing as I'm walking to just distract myself from whatever is is in the back of my mind that I wanna leave behind me for the next meeting. And so that's another great example as well. And also just stop and get a drink of water. We all talk about being hydrated, but I think also just, again, focusing on the physical sensation of drinking something can, again, draw your attention to that. So what you're trying to do is sort of ground yourself in different kinds of ways that could be helpful.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:15:23]: So as I mentioned at the top of the episode, one of the goals in us introducing your voice to the SA Voices audience was to give us some some good strategies for how to navigate tragedy amongst ourselves. Because we know how to do it when we're supporting students. We don't necessarily know how to do it when we're supporting each other. So can you talk to us a little bit about how that works in your world and any advice you have for those of us that are working through both elements?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:15:52]: Grief, whether it's a form of a death or some type of other type of tragedy is really, really hard. And I think first of all, especially in the in the workforce where everyone brings something different to the plate, and we don't know what someone's past experience in in dealing with loss has been like or what they're coming in with. So I think, one, recognizing that and giving each other grace to sort of be themselves and to take care of themselves in the way they need to take care of themselves, I think can be really, really helpful for starters. And I also think checking in with people and and how are you doing, what do you need, how's your day going can be really, really helpful. So for starters, I think it's really about checking in with folks and recognizing that what I need could be very different from what you may need or what someone else does. And so if they say, oh, I need this, my job isn't their question whether they really need that or not. It's like, okay. Thank you for telling me, and let's see if we can get that for you.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:16:59]: So I think the caretaking, there can be lots of different layers to it and with different people in the workforce, lots of different ways that it plays out.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:17:08]: That checking in with people, I think, is is such a critical moment, especially if you're in a supervisory capacity to be able to say, I'm here as a human being to a human being first and foremost rather than a supervisor. And we know that we can't take that identity off. That's not something that we can that we can put to the side just from the environment that we're occupying, but it's a good space to be able to to do that. And also, I think gives the person being asked the space to answer that question how they feel, feel like they have the capacity to answer that question. So I'm wondering if you have advice as a supervisor, how you would approach that knowing that every person being asked that question is gonna have a different sense of boundaries at work or a different sense of how they would feel safe responding to that question. Yeah.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:17:48]: That's a great question. I mean, I think first of all, you're right that at work, we all have different boundaries. We have different relationships with our supervisees that even though someone may supervise five people, for example, their relationships are different with those five people. And so I don't think there's any type of canned script you should use. But I think recognizing your relationship, I think one, it's important to acknowledge it and to check-in about it. And someone might say, I'm fair, I'm fine, or I don't want to talk about it. And I think we respect that if they don't want to talk about it. But you can also say, well, if at any point you feel like you wanna talk about it, that I'm here for you, or here are some other resources and letting them know what resources exist.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:18:32]: And more and more you see colleges and universities having EAP programs or someone on campus that's more of a confidential resource if they need to talk to someone. So there can be good resources you can point someone to if they don't want to talk to you as a supervisor, there could be someone else who feels more comfortable engaging with you about it. And I think this is where I think you have to rely on your judgment in the moment about what makes the most sense. But if something is a recent loss, then maybe that supervision session just you just need to listen to your your staff person talk about what they're needing and and how they're grieving. And if there's one or two things you need to take care of, then we can get to those quickly. But, really, if this is what you need today from me is to listen to you and to support you, I can do that even though that's not what we normally do for the whole session. That's okay today because it makes perfect sense this is what you need. Also, though, I think if something's happening in the workplace that you as a supervisor also likely impacted.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:19:35]: And so I think that's where it can be a balance where I think one, it's important to take care of yourself and you find out what you need to do to take care of yourself, whether it's talking to someone on campus or someone off campus. But also, it's fine to acknowledge with someone you're supervising that you're having a hard time to, it doesn't mean you should take that whole session and and make it about you because that's not what they need right then. But I think it's okay to be like, yeah, I'm really hurting too. And, like, if they say something that actually resonates with you or you had a similar reaction, I think it's okay to share that because they're not your client that, like, if you're a therapist, they're not your client or they're not the student that you take care of, you're in a different role. And I think being genuine with them can be really helpful as you're dealing with things as well. But being mindful that as you meet with them, that you are their supervisor, and really, it should be more about helping them than them helping you, if that makes sense. Because you can get help from your supervisor or from somewhere else. So it's not that you have to hold everything yourself, but sort of recognizing the the different roles and giving them permission to do what they need to do.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:20:46]: And at the same time, display a willingness to be vulnerable if it's the right thing for that relationship. Yeah. Given that you're clinically trained and so many of your team members are, what advice do you have for others in student affairs who have clinical training, who are trying to offer support in the moment in that supervision relationship without exceeding the boundaries of what that is and maybe accidentally or inadvertently sliding into that clinical space when that's not what you meant to do?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:21:10]: Oh, that's a great question because I think boundaries are really, really important. And so I think it's one thing to say to someone, you've seemed like you're really struggling this week, and and I'm concerned about you. And I want to check-in and see how you're doing. And And is there anything we can do here that would be helpful for you as opposed to taking on the clinical role and trying to dive deeper into what is it that's distressing them so much and and helping them work through it. That's not your role. But I think your role can be to acknowledge it and to help them connect with resources, which are not you. Like, you're not the therapy support you're advising them to. It's to the EAP.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:21:53]: And they may choose to say, no. I don't wanna see the EAP, and that's their right as well. And so I really think it's really important to be mindful of your role. With that said, I think people with a clinical background, as part of our training, we have talked a lot about boundaries and and and knowing our role. And so I think that just that foundational training is really helpful in just reminding yourself that they're not your clients and that even if you're not practicing, that they're not even your student in a way, you may take care of them in a different kind of way, that they're your colleague. They may be someone you're supervising. They may be just a colleague across the hall who wants to talk to you. And so be mindful that I think we bring things to the table that can be helpful, such as strong listening skills and being empathetic and knowing of resources in a way that some other people might not, but we're not there to help them work through the grief process.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:22:53]: That's not our role.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:22:54]: Let's talk about it from a peer to peer perspective. Maybe it's your direct colleague or somebody that is in a different department that you that you wanna be able to check-in with because you know something's happened. And maybe the distance of that relationship is different. Right? We all have colleagues at work who we're very close to from a work perspective, and we have colleagues that were maybe just more adjacent to, and that's pretty normal, especially in a large matrix organization. What advice and tips do you have for checking in and following up and providing support, knowing that grief is something that carries longevity. And in my experience, anyway, a lot of times people can be very strong at the beginning with checking in. But as we get further and further away from the moment where the the critical event occurred, we sometimes kind of back away just over time.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:23:37]: Yeah. And I think at some level, that's natural that people's needs may change and people may need fewer check ins as time goes on. But I do think that, again, thinking how everyone's different, we can't necessarily make assumptions. So for starters, I'd say checking in is better than not checking in. That even if someone's like, I'm fine, I don't need to talk about it. At some level, there's often the appreciation that you checked in even if they don't wanna talk about it. Because an absence of a check-in might signify like, they might think you don't care or that you're not thinking of them. So I think it's okay to check-in.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:24:13]: It's also okay to say, you can check-in and not know what to say. You don't have to have the right words, and you could even be transparent and say, I'm checking in. I don't really know what to say or what you need, but I've been thinking about you, and I'm just checking in on how you're doing. And and that can go a long way as well that as a peer, you don't have to have the answers. You don't have to know anything about helping them other than just acknowledging that you're there and and asking them if there's anything you can help with or or what do they need. And I think that's really important. I think sometimes people avoid checking in because they worry they'll say the wrong thing or they won't know what to do when I think most times that check-in in and of itself is really, really meaningful. And you're right that over time, we naturally stop checking in, and and that sort of trails off.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:25:04]: And there's a point where people don't need check ins anymore. Now with that said, everyone's different. So I think if there are times where there might be a natural point to check-in. So for example, it might be that this person had a certain role on campus, and there was an event that came up that would remind everyone of of this person because they're not there to do that, that might be a natural point to check-in and say, hey, I was thinking about so and so today because of this, and how are you doing? And so sometimes I think there are natural ways of checking in.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:25:36]: Let's go for the kind of the third version of this relationship, which is you're the supervisee and, you know, your supervisor has experienced something maybe you haven't. What is the the role of the supervisee in this case, knowing that that power dynamic does exist? And how can that check-in feel most appropriate or be best acknowledged?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:25:54]: And I think, again, the idea of checking it in and just saying, for example, if it's a loss they experienced that you didn't, is saying, I know you were close to this person, or I know we work closely with this person, or just sort of acknowledging that that relationship exists. And I just wanted to check-in and see how you're doing. And, you know, I know that that's your supervisor. But, again, unless it's your first day of work, you have no relationship with your supervisor. The idea is that you're checking in and asking them how they're doing. I think that, again, they would appreciate the check-in. They might not go into a lot of details and spend the whole time talking about it. But I think just even acknowledging that and saying, like, hey.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:26:32]: I'm thinking of you and even just something concrete. Like, if there's anything you want me to help with work wise, I'm happy to pick something up if you need a little time. And so, again, giving them an option of them saying, oh, you know what? At the end of this week, there's a this event I'm supposed to go to. And if you could do that instead, it would be great for me to just be able to leave and go home on time that day. And so I think sometimes just there are different ways of helping and sometimes the gift of time and being able to step away so that you can process things is really helpful.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:27:03]: Are there any other strategies or kind of approaches that you'd like to share when we're navigating grief and tragedy amongst ourselves?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:27:10]: It's so tough. And I'll go back to, again, that everyone is different. So I think we need to just be very careful not to make any judgments about how someone's responding. And that could be on either side that there may seems look like there's someone who's not really impacted by it when in fact, we don't know what they're thinking or feeling, and we shouldn't make assumptions about someone else's experience. And so also on the flip side, grief, there's no there's enough timeline where I can tell you, oh, in two months, you're gonna feel better or in six months or whatever. And so everyone agrees differently and on different timelines. And so if you may feel that you're doing better, and starting to move forward and not feel sad every time you come into the office, but that doesn't mean everyone else is moving forward. And so I think we need to recognize that we have a shared experience.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:28:01]: But yet within that shared experience, everyone is in their own timeline and their own process. And so being accepting of that is really, really important. And these points in in the grief cycle can also you may feel you're doing better and then something happens that can set you back a bit. So for example, one thing I lost a colleague years ago. She passed away suddenly. And one thing that struck me at the time was when her office was cleaned out, we hit me that she had passed away because we had her office hadn't been touched for a few weeks after her passing, and then everything got cleaned out. And seeing the empty office was sort of bringing up everything again. And so things like that or even work tasks needing to be divided or do you bring someone in the interim role? There can be lots of things that that sort of step backwards as we step forward.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:28:54]: So recognizing that we certainly can make strides forward, and then there may be things that come up in the workforce that make us take a couple steps back. And everyone again is different in that respect.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:29:05]: Thank you for sharing that. Oh, you're welcome. I'm gonna move us into our theme based questions for the season. Again, our theme this season is the past, present, and future of student affairs. So I've got one question for you on each theme. On the past, what's one component of the history of the student affairs profession that you think we should continue to carry forward or alternatively let go of?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:29:25]: That's a big question. I think the idea that student affairs is often pegged as the group that is responsible for all things students outside of the classroom, and that's a big answer. But I think sometimes when there are challenges with students or even just someone's, like, saying, well, our students go home on the weekends. You gotta get them to stay here. You know, it it falls on student affairs. Right? I think, like anything, as we move along in higher ed, I think efforts are being made more and more to undo silos. And that goes with student affairs in our tasks, that a lot of our tasks and our skill set are specifically focused on student development and how to help our students grow and thrive, but also it truly takes a village. And actually, I think sometimes the best responses to some challenging situations.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:30:24]: And I think this most, like, most recently with all of the protests and demonstrations last year is really, like, a whole campus effort. And so I think that's one thing of letting go of is thinking, okay, that sometimes a whole community resolution to challenging situations is better than any one division. So that's a long answer to one thing to maybe get rid of, but it's shifting away from the silos. I think it's something that a higher ed in general is doing and is moving in a great direction.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:30:50]: On the present, what's happening in the field right now that's going well for student affairs?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:30:54]: I think going back to health and wellness, I think that really at this point in time, there is so much focus in a positive way on student well-being. I think sadly, it came because of the pandemic and that we had talked for years about the mental health crisis of students. But I think the pandemic shifted that in a way that it was the mental health crisis, but also acknowledging the power of relationships and the idea of loneliness and social isolation and the digital environment, which can sometimes be unhealthy. And so I think as a result, what we're seeing is much more of a proactive prevention approach and also more of a public health lens in looking at student well-being, which I think is excellent. And I'm really excited to see that.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:31:45]: And the future. In an ideal world, what does the field need to do to thrive towards our future?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:31:51]: I think if talking specifically about student affairs now, I think we really need to look at how we develop our newer professionals in the field. And what I mean by this is is we have a lot of wonderful people come in. They're excited about the work. And you do see newer professionals, I think more so than in the past. And I don't have data to support this. So this is just my anecdotal piece, but feeling like more often than in the past, they're choosing to leave higher ed after a few years. And I think there's lots of things that can play a role into that. It could be that maybe they find a role elsewhere where the salary's higher or they may say, oh, if if I go work here, I can work remote all the time, and I don't have to come into campus, or I don't have to be on call.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:32:40]: And so there's always a reason why anyone could leave any job. But I think there's so many rewards in higher education and in student affairs that outweigh these other things. And I think what we really need to do is when newer professionals come to the field and start that we really need to focus on supporting them and as they grow into their roles to going back to the the check-in piece to check-in with people to provide professional development so that they see a path forward to and get excited about training opportunities, mentoring relationships, professional development opportunities, I think that can go a long way down the road. And so I think moving forward, that's something we really need to do. We have a lot of people in student affairs retiring or close to retirement age. And as we think about the profession, it's really important as the next generation moves in that they really love this work and stick around.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:33:42]: It's time to take a quick break and toss it over to producer Chris to learn what's going on in the NASPA world.

Chris (Producer) [00:33:47]: Thanks, Jill. So excited to be back in the NASPA world, and there's a ton of things happening in NASPA. The twenty twenty five TPE, better known as the placement exchange, will be having its spring placement career fair coming up on February 20 with interviews happening on March 3 through the seventh. Registration for these events closes on February 17. This spring placement event brings together highly talented student affairs candidates and top employers in a fully virtual setting. Spring placement offers a unique opportunity for personalized candidate screening and interview experiences. If you are currently looking for your next position or your first position, TPE is a great place to go to be able to be able to find opportunities and to be able to search further for your future career. If you wanna find out more, go to the placementexchange.org.

Chris (Producer) [00:34:41]: That's all one word, the placementexchange.org. Just recently, the Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education put out a call for manuscripts for the 2027 special issue. The Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education is going to be having a special issue called Diasporic Black Women, Global Insights for the Future of Higher Education. This special issue aims to elevate the perspectives of Black women who are epistemologically committed to knowledge generation in and through the global South. By curating articles that center diasporic black women's insight and theorizations, the journal is seeking to explore solutions and possibilities for a more equitable and emancipatory future in higher education. All NASPA members should have received a email about this. And if you have a manuscript that you would like to submit, manuscripts must be a maximum of 25 double spaced pages and follow APA style and submissions are due by 06/15/2025. Another professional development opportunity that's coming up is the Collaborate twenty twenty five conference.

Chris (Producer) [00:35:51]: Collaborate twenty twenty five is an innovative global partnership in student affairs and services between NASPA, IUCAA, which is the European University College Association, and SAI or Student Affairs Ireland. Collaborate twenty twenty five will be hosted by Munster Technological University. This conference will be happening June 18 through June 20 in Cork, Ireland. And it is an amazing opportunity to be able to bring together people from both Europe, The United States, and beyond to be able to come together to find new ways to work collaboratively together in helping our students succeed. Highly encourage you to check out this great professional development experience. You can find out more at iuca,euca,.eu/collaborate-2020five. To stay on the international theme, another international conference that's coming up is the nineteenth annual Manasa NASPA conference, which is happening April 27 to April 30 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The MANASA NASPA conference provides student affairs professionals with the knowledge and skills to effectively address and support college students.

Chris (Producer) [00:37:02]: MANASA, which stands for Middle East, North Africa, South, as well as NYU Abu Dhabi, invites you to the nineteenth annual MANASA NASPA conference that's going to be held in The United Arab Emirates on Sunday, April 27 through Wednesday, 04/30/2025. This three day conference is an opportunity to connect with colleagues regionally and abroad. The topic of the conference this year is Beyond Borders, exploring global and local perspectives on student experience in the Manassa area. Student affairs is playing a vital role in shaping students' experiences in higher education institutions. The nineteenth Manassa Conference Organizing Committee invites you to participate in this great conference that's going to bring together people from around the world and help you to be able to identify new opportunities to connect with your students on a different level and connect with students globally on a different level. Highly encourage you to check out the conference for yourself. There is a schedule at a glance that is out on the NASPA website. If you go under events on the NASPA website, you'll be able to find out more on this conference as well as being able to register for the conference.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:38:14]: We currently are in the regular registration rate, so you can still register to attend this amazing conference. Every week, we're going to be sharing some amazing things that are happening within the association. So we are going to be able to try and keep you up to date on everything that's happening and allow for you to be able to get involved in different ways because the association is as strong as its members. And for all of us, we have to find our place within the association, whether it be getting involved with the knowledge community, giving back within one of the the centers or the divisions of the association. And as you're doing that, it's important to be able to identify for yourself. Where do you fit? Where do you wanna give back? Each week, we're hoping that we will share some things that might encourage you, might allow for you to be able to get some ideas that will provide you with an opportunity to be able to say, Hey, I see myself in that knowledge community. I see myself doing something like that. Or encourage you in other ways that allow for you to be able to think beyond what's available right now to offer other things to the association, to bring your gifts, your talents to the association and to all of the members within the association.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:39:35]: Because through doing that, all of us are stronger and the association is better. Tune in again next week as we find out more about what is happening in NASPA.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:39:46]: Chris, thank you so much for helping us learn what's going on in and around NASPA. And, Melinda, we've got our lightning round for you. So I've got seven questions for you to answer in about ninety seconds. You ready to roll? I am. Alright. Question number one. If you were a conference keynote speaker, what would your entrance music be?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:40:04]: Oh, this is a tough question. I think it would be something from Hamilton, actually. I'm not sure which one, but something with a little attitude.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:40:15]: Number two, when you were five years old, what did you wanna be when you grew up?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:40:19]: Maybe a nurse. I think I wanted to be a nurse back then.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:40:21]: Number three, who's your most influential professional mentor?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:40:24]: There are a number of people I see as mentors, but I think the one that has had the greatest impact me, this is not lightning round, but I'll make it quick, is a former supervisor of mine years ago who has since retired, doctor Suzanne Conley at Framingham State University because of two things. One, she saw potential in me. She helped me get recognized for my work, and she was very transparent. And I always appreciated knowing what she was thinking, and I feel like I have carried that transparency with me. And also, she had a great sense of humor, and I also feel like I bring humor more to my work. So she say shaped me into the professional I am.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:41:05]: Number four, your essential student affairs read.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:41:07]: Okay. In the spirit of a read that makes me not stressed out and takes me away from work, I would say I would use anything by Stephen King as an escape from reality. And sometimes, you know, you see scenarios that you're like, as a student affairs professional, I could handle that. So that's my essential student affairs read.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:41:30]: Number five, the best TV show you've been binging lately.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:41:33]: That's a tough question because I don't watch a lot of TV, but I've been watching Jeopardy almost every night for as long as I can remember. Even when I was in college, I recorded whatever. So I say Jeopardy.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:41:45]: Number six, the podcast you've spent the most hours listening to in the last year.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:41:49]: This is very sad, but I don't really listen to podcasts.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:41:53]: And finally, number seven, any shout outs you'd like to give personal or professional? Ugh.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:41:58]: Well, I am going to give a shout out to my family. And that's David, my husband, and my daughter Molly, who is in college and my daughter Addison. And I say that because, you know, at the end of the day, they're there with me. And as we talk about sort of highs and lows in our life, like, they're not the highs and lows. I mean, they are, but they're also there for me in moments of highs and lows. And so talk about people who, you know, always have your back. So I'm shouting out to my family.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:42:27]: Melinda, it's been so valuable to learn from you today and to hear your insights on what's going on to support each other in the space of student affairs. If anyone would like to reach you after the show, how can they find you?

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:42:38]: Sure. The best way to find me would be on LinkedIn, Melinda Stoops. You will see me right there, and I would be happy to connect with you and feel free to message me.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:42:48]: Melinda, thank you so much for sharing your voice with us today.

Dr. Melinda Stoops [00:42:50]: Thanks, Jill.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:42:56]: This has been an episode of SA Voices from the Field, a podcast brought to you by NASPA. This show is made possible because of you, the listeners, and we continue to be grateful that you spend your time with us. If you'd like to reach the show, you can always email us at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn by searching for doctor Jill L. Creighton. We always welcome your feedback and your topic and guest suggestions. We'd love it if you you take a moment to tell a colleague about the show, and please leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It really helps other student affairs professionals find our show and helps us to become more visible in the larger podcasting community. This episode was produced and hosted by doctor Jill Creighton.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:43:35]: That's me. Produced and audio engineered by doctor Chris Lewis. Special thanks to the University of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next time.

Exploring Student Affairs with International Grad Students

The field of student affairs is continuously evolving, adapting to diverse educational landscapes worldwide. In this week's Student Affairs Voices from the Field, hosted by Dr. Jill Creighton, we delve into the experiences and perspectives of six master's students from the hybrid master's course offered in collaboration with the European Council on Student Affairs (EECA) and NASPA. These students, hailing from various parts of Europe and beyond, share their insights on the past, present, and future of student affairs.

Embracing the Past

One recurring theme in the discussion was the value of preserving certain elements of student affairs' history. Simone Cameron Cohen emphasized the indispensable role of student voices in shaping university policies and support structures. She highlighted Ireland's robust student union organizational structure that ensures student representation in university governance, a system embedded in the nation's legislation.

Jake McGrew and Giacomo Bacarelli, on the other hand, pointed out the need to dissolve the silos between academic and student affairs. Jake stressed that combining these areas is crucial for holistic student support, a sentiment echoed by Giacomo who reflected on his personal experiences in Italy's developing student affairs landscape. This theme underscores the necessity of integrating student welfare into the broader educational framework, fostering an environment where academics and student services support each other.

Current Trends in Student Affairs

Currently, student affairs professionals worldwide are paying increased attention to student mental health and well-being. Simone noted that institutions are now better equipped with specialized services, from counseling to academic advising, emphasizing a holistic approach to student support. Jake expanded on this, mentioning the positive shift in student attitudes towards utilizing mental health services, even in regions where stigma was historically prevalent.

Federico highlighted the importance of etiquette and institutional engagement in student affairs, advocating for attention to individual growth and freedom of thought, which is crucial in nurturing well-rounded individuals.

Envisioning the Future

Looking ahead, the consensus among the guests points towards increased collaboration and resource sharing across institutions. Simone and Giacomo both stressed the value of international cooperation, sharing best practices, and codifying these for broader implementation. This approach not only enriches the practices within individual institutions but also fosters a global network of support and innovation.

Jake suggested that for regions like Continental Europe, there's a growing recognition of the importance of student affairs, leading to a greater acceptance and integration of these services within the educational framework. This trend is promising for the future development of student affairs in areas where the field is still emerging.

Conclusion

The insights from these international graduate students paint a picture of a dynamic and evolving field where student voices are paramount, mental health is at the forefront, and collaboration is key to future success. By learning from each other and breaking down traditional silos, student affairs professionals can better support the holistic development of students worldwide. As these emerging leaders in student affairs continue their journey, their experiences and innovative approaches will undoubtedly shape the future of the profession.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:01]: Welcome to Student Affairs Voices from the Field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. Brought to you by NASPA, we curate free and accessible professional development for higher ed professionals wherever you happen to be. This is season 12, continuing our journey through the past, present, and future of student affairs. I'm doctor Jill Creighton, she, her, hers, your essay Voices from the Field host. Welcome to a very special episode of Student Affairs Voices from the Field. I'm thrilled today to be joined by six master's students who are currently enrolled in the hybrid master's course in collaboration with EECA, which is the European Council on Student Affairs and NASPA. This course is taught with the the great collaboration of LUNA University in Rome, and it's been my great privilege to teach the technology module for this course. As we're on the theme of past, present and future of student affairs, I wanted to introduce our listeners to the students who are taking this course and get their perspectives on what's important in student affairs today and why they're learning in this program.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:07]: So I'm gonna introduce our students one by one as I see them. And so I'd love for you to tell us your name, your pronouns, and maybe where you are on planet Earth, including what you're doing for work right now. So, Jake, we'll start with you.

Jake McGrew [00:01:18]: Hello, everyone. My name is Jake McGrew, hehim. I am American from Oregon, but I am currently living in Kyiv, Ukraine working at the student life office at American University Kyiv.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:29]: And we'll go to Simone.

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:01:30]: Hi, everyone. My name is Simone Cameron Cohen, sheher. I'm based in Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and I am the student welfare and support officer for the School of Medicine.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:01:39]: Giacomo. Hi. I'm Giacomo Bacarelli. I'm currently in, Terni, close to Rome, Italy. I work for the European University College Association where I am a project officer.

Laura Malakowski [00:01:50]: Laura. Hello, everyone. I'm Laura Malakowski. I pronounce it differently. I'm from Lithuania, from Lithuania, Yale Science University, and now I am the Dean of Students. So mostly in my office, the students appear the main task, what we are working on and and looking for.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:08]: Federico.

Federico [00:02:08]: I'm Federico. Hello, everyone. I take care of cultural activities in the Cuir College in Rome.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:16]: And Lorenzo.

Lorenzo Caffurini [00:02:17]: Hi to everyone. My name is, Lorenzo Caffurini. I am the head of the secretary of the co Leukini College in Brescia, Italy.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:27]: Thank you all so much for agreeing to share your voice on the show today. Since we're on this theme of the past, present, and future of student affairs, I always love featuring current master's students because you're the future of the profession. You're here because you wanted to learn a little bit more to bolster your professional identity and development. I'm hoping you can tell us why you chose to take this one year master's program and how it's changing the way that you look at your work. And anyone can jump in on that. Go ahead, Jake.

Jake McGrew [00:02:56]: So my background is actually in teaching in high school and middle school teaching. I did that in The US as well as in Bulgaria. And so I moved to work at this university, American University, Kyiv, and I was put in charge of the student life office without having anyone around me who works for student life and no background in student life besides the normal student life you do as a teacher. So I really wanted some extra education, extra support, and more importantly, a network of other like minded student affairs professionals who I could work with and talk with and kind of bounce ideas off of. So that's mainly why I chose to be in this program for the education since I've never been in this position before as well as the network.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:03:36]: Simone, how about you?

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:03:37]: Similarly to Jake, I'm kind of a new post holder. So while I've worked in the university for a lot of years, I have a background from some time ago in student support. This role is the first of its kind based in a school within the college. So, again, I was a little bit peerless. There are a few people obviously, there are several people doing student affairs, but the specificity of what I'm doing, it's not there yet. It's growing now. But to have a network of people at a European level, at international level is fantastic. Like that to be able to learn a little bit more of what's possible in terms of supports and procedures and ways to do things.

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:04:15]: It's really great.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:04:16]: Yeah. I

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:04:17]: am very young, so I start to work, like, one year and a half ago. So for me, this world is completely new. In Italy, the stress Fuelsa First is not so developed. So most of students don't know what student services mean. So for me, since I start to work in IUCAA, I started to read books about Fuelsa First, be updated to learn, but a master, I think it's very important to have a basic knowledge, know where to build your profession. So this is why, and also I'm involved because I'm one of the organizers as part of YUCA. This is why I'm the tutor. So it is a great opportunity to participate in the master, be involved in, in the organization.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:05:00]: And this is the motivation.

Laura Malakowski [00:05:02]: Laura. I would say that in Lithuania, in a lot of our universities, we do have that support and advising of students, but we do not have that, like, evidence based. So this is, like, the chance, for us to get really good background, good knowledge all the practices, all the communication between different countries, universities, so it's a great value of if we want to flourish this help of our students. And the Master, the modules, it's like support, first of all, for those who are next, who will help our students. So it's a good chance for us.

Federico [00:05:36]: This is my first work experience before I was a university student. I chose to train and work in this field because it's simply the most beautiful job in the world, and I want to grow for the guys I am lucky enough to work with every day. Also, my English is not very good, and this is a chance to learn by working.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:06:00]: I'm always incredibly impressed by anyone who can earn an educational degree in their second language. It's it's just amazing. Lorenzo.

Lorenzo Caffurini [00:06:07]: For me, this master degree is a great opportunity. It allows me to know new realities and organize new cultural activity also from an international perspective. I have a degree in law, and the law the world of student affairs is new to me. It is agreed to be able to work every day in a college and to be able to deepen my knowledge with master degree of this level.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:06:35]: Now all of you are working at universities that are not based in North America, and most of the NASPA members are either in The US or Canada. So I'm wondering if you can share maybe one element of student affairs that is happening in the country where you're living and working that might be unique or might be much different than, what somebody working in North America might be experiencing. Jake, let's start with you.

Jake McGrew [00:06:59]: So I come from The US, of course. So I have that background in interacting with student affairs as an American student. I never worked in the student affairs as an American, but as a student, I had a good feeling of what student affairs was. And in Ukraine, as I think in a lot of Europe, but even to, I think, to a higher extent is student affairs isn't really a thing here. It's very common just for students to go to class, do your classes, learn, and then go home. So that's been a challenge for me to not only and I have all Ukrainian students and Ukrainian staff. So I, as the sole person in the student life office, the director and the sole person, I've had to explain not only to students, but to staff and faculty the importance of student affairs and the reasons why we need to have mental health supports or reasons why we need to have strong student life. It's been fairly easy.

Jake McGrew [00:07:53]: It hasn't been that much of a challenge. My university has been pretty open to that, which is good, but that's been a challenge. Not to mention, of course, the war and everything, but that's a completely different thing that is just always there for us.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:08:05]: Limon, what's going on in Ireland?

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:08:07]: So I suppose what I find, having been sort of been to The UK and Europe a bit, our student union organizational structure in Ireland is really, really strong and is very student led, and it is essential to how we govern our universities. They are there to challenge and push us, which is fantastic, and they're there to support their students. And it is written into our legislation that they must be on the governing bodies of our universities and must be allowed to contribute in a very real way. And for us, I think it's wonderful that that they really do still embrace that sense of the importance of organization in that kind of nineteen sixties sort of organization, protest, but also engagement, real engagement with the issues that are affecting them as students, either within the college, but also in the wider society and how they react to that and push issues forward. So that is something that is still really strong here, which we're quite proud of.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:09:10]: That co governance being actually baked into laws and policies in the nation is incredibly meaningful. And I I wish that more more governing bodies would make it a priority to put students in positions to be driving decisions about their education. That's really special.

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:09:25]: It is.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:09:25]: I'm gonna go to Laura next. We'd like to know what's going on in Lithuania because our other three guests are all from Italy. So let's go to you first.

Laura Malakowski [00:09:32]: Yeah. Thank you. I would say that we are trying to do as much as possible, like other countries or American universities are doing. I know that, when we were, inventing this student's appearance in in my university, I was told that, Laura, you know, students' dean office was established in American part of university. So I wouldn't say that we are doing something new and something unique. It would be unique because, my university is more a medical university. So some specific things are really specific for our students, their health, their mentality, their problems will be some kind of different. But, you know, everything that that support, that, trying to give the hope for them, I think it doesn't matter.

Laura Malakowski [00:10:15]: Are you in US? Are you in Ireland? Or some work. Our students' fears, questions, challenges, they are almost everywhere the same. We have to work together for the flourishing of our students, so it doesn't matter. But Lithuania is doing, I think, the best of what what we can.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:10:31]: And finally, let's move over to what's going on that's unique in Italy. And any of the three of you, please feel free to chime in.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:10:37]: If I can permit, I'm live in Italy, and I work in Italy, but I work in a European association. So for me, it could be better to talk about Europe because Europe is, you know, several countries. So every reality is different, but we have a unique situation where to move from one county to another is very easy. We don't need much industrial authorization, documentation. We can move from Italy to France or to Ireland with the same document I use every day to go everywhere in my city, in my country. So this is very useful to create synergy amongst students for offices in Europe, to permit students to meet each other, to have an international dialogue, to discover great organization as the European Parliament Commission Bank and other excellence in new whatever in Europe. So this is something, that as Europe has and is very, very important to remember because a unique condition in the world, this possibility and this easy access to other culture, countries, languages.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:11:48]: And the way that you serve students being incredibly different as well because it lends itself to a much more multicultural environment, I would imagine.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:11:55]: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:11:56]: And either Frederico or Lorenzo, do you have anything to add about the specificity of student affairs in Italy?

Federico [00:12:02]: Yes. So I believe that compared to our way of managing life in the college, the possibility of comparing myself with country like America helps me to accompany the boys in their growth with a particular attention to each boy. Comparing students in their growth from boys to adults in is the most important thing we can do in, our life. I think this, giving trust to make people grow, this is what we do. This is our mission. And the hell in this international experience, I learned a lot in this sense.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:12:44]: Lorenzo, anything to add?

Lorenzo Caffurini [00:12:46]: Yes. I'm, totally agree with Giacomo. And, for me in Italy, Student affairs are not very developed with respect, other countries. There are service, yes, but they are dislocated. So in our case, there are no specific offices or specialized staff. As a college of merit in Italy, we have an association that is creating a virtuous network of contacts. And, this all thanks, to EOCA, the European Association. And so we have a lot to learn of, these new matters.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:13:28]: I'm going to go ahead and move us into our theme based questions for the season. So I have three questions. One on the past, one on the present, and one on the future of student affairs. And I'd love to hear each of you reflect on them. So on the past, what's one component of the history of the student affairs profession that you think we should carry forward or alternatively let go of? Jake, go ahead.

Jake McGrew [00:13:50]: One thing that I've noticed as I'm coming in into this role and even at a brand new university that is only on his third year, I still see it is the siloing of student affairs and academic affairs. I was just at the UCSAS conference in Malta, and that was actually one of the presentations was about that, how to integrate academic affairs and student affairs. And I think it's really, really important. I'm finding it's difficult, especially if you have leaders who are more specifically had they've always been in academics or they've always been in student affairs rather than kind of merging the two. And I think and I say this as a teacher who's really into academics, who's really into education, who is a student affairs person as well, that they're really we need to let go of the silo siloing and really work on combining the two and putting student affairs in all aspects of academic affairs and vice versa.

Laura Malakowski [00:14:44]: I'll give a shout

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:14:45]: out to doctor Chris Lewis, our co producer and audio engineer on the show who is currently the chair of the NASPA knowledge community for ZAPA, which is student affairs partnering with academic affairs. So if that's an interest of yours, highly encourage you to reach out to Chris Simone.

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:15:00]: For me, I think it is, again, embracing that student experience. Having a strong student voice has been so important to push student affairs along. Those students who stood up and sort of began to express what they really, really needed to get through college and thrive is something that is still important now. Having a constant current voice of the student as they are now means that we can work with them and provide the best supports that they need in the moment. So our institution is 400 and odd years old, but it has moved partly in in time with what the students' needs are. And sometimes it takes a little time to get the big cog moving, but when it does, when it gets momentum, it's great, but it's useless without that student voice.

Laura Malakowski [00:15:50]: I appreciate that that's been

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:15:51]: the core of student affairs since its inception, and that inception looks really different in different cultures, especially given that Trinity College is older than most of the institutions that I'm personally used to working with. But it's very neat to hear that that has remained part of the most salient identity of student affairs. Anyone else like to offer their thoughts on the past of student affairs in terms of something we should either let go of or keep going with?

Laura Malakowski [00:16:12]: I could add that, I think still the past of student affairs is with us Because, for example, for us in in our university, it's we need to prove that student affairs has a huge role in the life of students, life of institution, that we, as well, need the resources, facilities, everything, like other academical, stuff or academical, questions as well. Students at PSR is very important. So I think we are still growing that understanding of of all the institution that this is what we have to talk about, to work with, and to try to do the best for our students. It was in the past, but not very good at this moment, I would think.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:16:52]: And I think likely in the present for a lot of student affairs areas around the world where the justification for how we're serving students is always a question from a budgetary perspective. So it's both interesting and a little bit disheartening that that's something that we're facing no matter where we are on the planet in this profession.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:17:09]: I don't know very, very much this history of experience. At first, I'm really young and but, I can bring my past experience as a student because what was very few years ago, and I have to say that, for example, in Italy, my experience, I didn't know experience at first until two years ago. And my personal experience is that a lot of the students leave because they didn't have someone to help them. No. The moment of day where you are in the university is a moment where you are not defined. Who am I? Who will be? What I will do? These are question you bring with you for several years. So you need to define yourself, but you can't. You are waiting at this a very bad moment because you are preparing for something you don't know.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:17:54]: And for example, after a lot of crisis, the perception of the reality of students is like life will be worse. So we have a lot of crisis and a lot of us stop to study and live because of that. So students are first is very important. It permits the students to discover this talent, to be able to face problems, all this problem and this crisis, to have someone who believe in you and someone that is fundamental, make the difference in the student's life, change the value, the perspective. I'm doing something because I have talents. I know that someone believe in me. When you are in a delicate moment, when you are building your confidence, your self perspective. So since my experience of the relevant students at first, I have to say that this is crucial, the crucial part of the university and is much as important as the academic.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:18:52]: Because without it, students are not able to learn with all their, potential.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:18:58]: Welfare and well-being at the absolute core of everything we do in the field, for sure. Alright. Let's move into the present. And I would like to know from you all, what's happening in your opinion in the field of student affairs that's going well?

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:19:10]: About the European students at first, I have to say there are a lot of excellences of very great realities, like the one of Federico of Lorenzo. What we talked we say this that there are not so many, not every university. It's like small private or public, but very few organization that are very prepared, provide a great training for students in every kind of field. They have an holistic growth. There is, as Simona will say after me and Saint Jake, a reality like the Americans or universities or the angle of some countries which has a great strong students of first culture. But there are others like Italy or other in the center of Europe where there is no history of students of first or not recently sort of students of first. So there are only few initiative, very great level, height level, but not that cannot reach everyone.

Federico [00:20:09]: I think it is important to maintain an academic and professional life studies in a student affair. This is a characteristic that risk regain loss with the the new generation. An etiquette learning to relate in a institutional way and with style is a beautiful tradition to maintain in order to orient myself, oneself, well in life.

Laura Malakowski [00:20:35]: I'd like to pick up

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:20:36]: on something that Jacqueline was saying actually in his last two points, and I think it's something that is going really, really well, which is that no matter what level everybody's at and what where they've gotten to, whether they're brand new to student services or if it's more embedded, what is being recognized is the absolute need to support student well-being, that students matter. And for us, where we are in Ireland, we have really good supports that have been growing over the last number of years and have been professionalizing over the last number of years. So, like, for example, in Trinity, we have, like, a disability services office. We have the student counseling service. We have the health service. We have the gym and sports and recreation. We have the tutorial, which is like academic advisers is what other people would call them. So we have a whole suite of things, but that's because students matter and we're we want to make sure that they are looked after and their well-being is recognized and supported.

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:21:35]: And I think that's kind of what Giacomo was saying that it is a tender moment whether you're a traditional student who's coming in as a school leaver or somebody returning to college or someone in between. And I think no matter at what level people are, I think it's the recognition that this is important. Jake?

Jake McGrew [00:21:52]: I'll build off of what Simone was saying because I really think there has been a a huge emphasis on supporting in student affairs, supporting student mental health, especially student mental health. After COVID, I think it really became a lot bigger because I because I remember when I was in university in Oregon, and this was fifteen years ago. And, I mean, we did have mental health services, but it wasn't nearly as it was just, like, someone to just talk to. And now even in my university in Ukraine, it's an American style university, but it's still in a country that, unfortunately, in the past, mental health services have been stigmatized very heavily. And even then, students are requesting this, and if staff is requesting this, that we have more and more mental health services through the student life off through the student affairs department. And so the fact that there's so much emphasis on this, especially at a university for these students is really, really important. And I it's it's really nice to see these students knowing, oh, I needed to talk to someone because I'm having these difficulties. So it's it's really cool that our the university and student affairs department can be that hub to help student mental health.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:23:02]: Moving towards the future. In an ideal world, what does our field need to be doing to thrive towards a successful future?

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:23:09]: More collaboration, more sharing of information, sharing case studies with each other so that we can learn from each other, beginning to codify best practices, but also remembering context. I think all of those things will help us to support students in the best way possible.

Jake McGrew [00:23:26]: I know many of the listeners are from North American universities, so it might not be as applicable there. But at least in Europe, I see more importance being put on student affairs in Continental Europe, especially by administration. And administrators realizing the importance of student affairs in terms of student well-being, student retention, making sure that all students are treated equitably. And so I think there's a positive trend towards the acceptance and understanding of how important student affairs is in Europe, just like it is in North America.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:24:03]: Anyone else wanna chime in on the ideal future for student affairs?

Federico [00:24:07]: Attention to the individual. We are fully respecting the freedom of each individual. A boy, even before being a a student, is a free person free to think with his own head, heaven in a way contrary to ours. So this is the central point.

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:24:28]: Can I add, is it enough to say more resources? Just more of those, please, from wherever they come from.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:24:35]: And I agree totally with what everyone said. In my Italian experience as student, if I can, share is an important moment to explain, for me what is the problem of auto students in similar country of Europe like Italy with the same experience of agriculture. I had a problem with, my internship because I was required to finish my degree. I had a problem and I went to an office and I said, it's not my my business. You have to go to another office. I go to the second, the second sending me to the third and to the fourth office. The fourth office send me to the first. And I said to the first office, okay.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:25:12]: It's not busy. It's business of no one of you. What I can do? I stop to study or you say me who is in charge of it or I call police. No. Okay. I can do that. It was the first office. He or she, the remember, will do that.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:25:25]: It's not their fault. They didn't care. And this attention to the person is fundamental. In the university, you're like usually a number. You have a number to be recognized, to send your information, to be voted, to be valued, after the exams. And the much more importance of the the individual. There is no a a limit for a limit. It's something has to be much more and more important and this need more and more attention.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:25:55]: Because if you are to build some, to build up the, the, the adult of the future, you, as I said before, you need to someone who believes in you. So more you have this and more you believe in yourself, more you will have strong values that will guide you to something beautiful and good.

Lorenzo Caffurini [00:26:15]: Yes. I tell that the Kafka situation Giacomo describe is true. More, awareness is needed. Definitely more exchange of information. I would add that, the future is a multicultural society. I would also like there to be more funding for student affairs.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:26:39]: I think that's the dream for student affairs professionals worldwide is more funding always. It's time to take a quick break and toss it over to producer Chris to learn what's going on in the NASPA world.

Dr. CHristopher Lewis [00:26:49]: Thanks, Jill. So excited to be back in the NASPA world, and there's a ton of things happening in NASPA. The Culture of Respect is excited to reintroduce two invaluable NASPA resources designed to strengthen institutional commitment to student safety, well-being, and Title IX compliance. The first is the Title IX guide going above and beyond compliance. While federal laws like Title IX and the Clery Act provide a floor in terms of an institution of higher education's requirements for addressing sexual violence, college and universities for addressing sexual violence. Colleges and universities can and should consider how they may reach a higher ceiling above and beyond compliance. The Title IX guide going above and beyond compliance originally published in response to the Title IX rule issued by the US Department of Education in August of twenty twenty was created by Culture of Respect to support institutions who are required to follow the Title IX regulations issued by the US Department of Education in August 2020. While many schools have changed their policies in response to the Title IX regulations issued in 2024, a recent federal court ruling struck down those regulations and institutions will likely be expected to return to the 2020 rule in the coming months.

Dr. CHristopher Lewis [00:28:11]: This guide provides a series of questions that help institutions assess compliance with key aspects of the new Title IX rule, identify the source of the information in the rule, and most importantly, prompt institutions to examine key questions, considerations, and evidence based practices that help institutions strengthen their prevention and response to sexual violence, their prevention of and response to sexual violence, and create policies, programs, and procedures that help foster a culture of respect. This resource is available on the NASPA website. You can find out more going to NASPA.org. The second resource that I mentioned from the Culture of Respect is the ninth edition of Core Evaluation. The core survey is designed to assess your institution's efforts to prevent and respond to campus sexual violence. It covers practices and policies mandated by federal law, as well as those recommended by experts in the field. Questions are organized around the six pillars of the culture of respect. The survey questions also are included inside of this resource to encourage you to think holistically about responding to and prevention about responding to and preventing sexual violence and also to allow your institution to document gaps and strengths in its current strategy.

Dr. CHristopher Lewis [00:29:33]: Again, this resource is available on the NASPA website. Head over to NASPA.org and click on publications to find both of these amazing resources. And speaking of Title IX, there is a new opportunity that is coming up here in the next few weeks. The ten zero nine certificate program is running from February 24 through March 15, and it is a virtual professional development opportunity. So the twenty twenty ten zero nine regulations are officially the law of the land nationwide and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Whether you are a seasoned or new Title IX professional, training on the twenty twenty regulatory mandates is required for Title IX coordinators, decision makers, and investigators. The NASPA Title Nine certificate program is a unique, individualized, asynchronous and synchronous learning experience for personnel at post secondary institutions. The speakers within the certificate program include Peter Lake, who is a professor of law and director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University, and Jake Sapp, assistant state attorney with the Florida Fourth Circuit, both of which have a huge array of experiences that have led them to being experts in their field and will definitely be able to help you to traverse this topic and be able to help you to be able to be not only proficient, but ready to lead your organization into the future.

Dr. CHristopher Lewis [00:31:06]: One other piece of professional development is the NCAA Student Athlete Health and Wellness Trends and Resources web event that is happening on 02/13/2025 at 1PM Eastern. This session will provide an overview of the NCAA, as well as the health, safety and performance priorities endorsed by the NCAA Board of Governors. This session will highlight trends in student athlete mental health and substance use, sharing outcome from the 2020 '3 NCAA Student Athlete Health and Wellness Study and other NCAA research initiatives related to student athlete mental health and well-being. Lastly, this session will review the NCAA mental health best practices and other resources in supporting student athlete mental health, substance misuse prevention and harm reduction. If you go to the NASPA website to the learning portal, you'll be able to find this great web event and sign up today. Every week, we're going to be sharing some amazing things that are happening within the association. So we are going to be able to try and keep you up to date on everything that's happening and allow for you to be able to get involved in different ways because the association is as strong as its members. And for all of us, we have to find our place within the association, whether it be getting involved with a knowledge community, giving back within one of the the centers or the divisions of the association.

Dr. CHristopher Lewis [00:32:34]: And as you're doing that, it's important to be able to identify for yourself, Where do you fit? Where do you wanna give back? Each week, we're hoping that we will share some things that might encourage you, might allow for you to be able to get some ideas that will provide you with an opportunity to be able to say, hey, I see myself in that knowledge community. I see myself doing something like that. Or encourage you in other ways that allow for you to be able to think beyond what's available right now, to offer other things to the association, to bring your gifts, your talents to the association and to all of the members within the association. Because through doing that, all of us are stronger and the association is better. Tune in again next week as we find out more about what is happening in NASPA.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:33:28]: Chris, thank you so much for kicking off our season with this fresh NASPA world segment. Now we're back with our lightning round, but because we have so many guests, I've modified it just a little bit. We're gonna be doing four questions instead of seven. Alright. Here we go, everybody. Question number one. If you were a conference keynote speaker, what would your entrance music be?

Jake McGrew [00:33:49]: The final countdown.

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:33:50]: Who runs the world?

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:33:51]: Taraway too even.

Federico [00:33:52]: The name is Clardy.

Lorenzo Caffurini [00:33:54]: The final countdown also for me.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:33:56]: Number two. What is your essential student affairs or higher education read?

Jake McGrew [00:34:01]: The NASPA monthly magazine.

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:34:04]: Can I say two? Because I've it's like Stoner, the novel. I think it's excellent for a journey on being an academic. But also, there's a book called Unstuck by doctor Sophie Mort. It's not specific to academia, but it's a really good read on getting in the night of habits.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:34:20]: I'm a bit difficult with this question. Usually, I I try to search the people I know asking, try to catch all the possible interesting, books or argument not to be to be reading when I talk. So not something I used to use.

Federico [00:34:36]: Nasca and Euka are a good source for me.

Lorenzo Caffurini [00:34:39]: Yes. Also for me, Nasca and Euka.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:34:42]: Alright. Number three, the best TV show you've been binging lately.

Jake McGrew [00:34:47]: Oh, not lately because I haven't had time to watch anything because this semester has been crazy. But as recently as I can think, I really recommend watching Bojack Horseman. It looks like a cartoon. It looks like it's really stupid, but just watch it for at least a few seasons, and you'll understand.

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:35:02]: I watch loads of television, lots and lots and lots. At the moment, the old man is something that I'm catching up on, which is on Disney, I think. It's really good.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:35:10]: I have several answers, but we'll say the chosen. For me, it's the probably the the best.

Federico [00:35:16]: Simpson, but the first ten season, and a school of life and then an allergy of simple living.

Lorenzo Caffurini [00:35:23]: For me, I recommend, watching Twin Peaks. It opens your mind.

Laura Malakowski [00:35:27]: And for me, my mind opens with my daughter's suggestions. So I'm watching if I have time just being with them and watching whatever, they want to watch together.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:35:37]: And my final question, any shout outs you'd like to give, personal or professional?

Jake McGrew [00:35:42]: I wanna give shout outs to while I'm the only student life office person at my university, I work really closely with our program managers who work with the different schools, Ira, Elena, and Olia, and they make my life so much easier. I love working with them. We have student council event tomorrow at kind of a winter ball, and they're coming Ira's coming from across the country. And so we're gonna meet up and I'm really excited to see them and they make my life so much better.

Simone Cameron Cohen [00:36:09]: For me, it's a couple of things as the senior tutor's office, which is the sort of center of the academic advisors, but they're really specialists in supporting students and the post grad advisory service. Martin McAndrew there is just an absolute expert on supporting research students and top master's students. He's fab. And just generally our services altogether, they just do just such epic work for our students. It's amazing.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:36:31]: Yeah. Absolutely. My boss, the president of VUCA, who believed in me a lot of years ago, who was my mentor during the university, and now he's my boss. And I have to say, I experienced that someone believed in me during the university years, and I have to say thank you for this. And, Noga.

Federico [00:36:51]: For me, my school teacher because he opened my to their role for the philosophy and, this my actually life study philosophy and student affairs.

Lorenzo Caffurini [00:37:04]: I thank to my director, Carla Bisleri, and also Carla Bisleri now is also the president of the Italian conference of college of for merit, to believe in me and my aspiration. Thank thank you, Carla.

Laura Malakowski [00:37:23]: I would like to say in general for all my team of my students at your office that they still believe in me, that we are still together, those pioneers keeping that way to the better life for our students. So for all of them that they are still with me, not dropping out this hard field that we have together.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:37:42]: Now normally to close out our show, we would ask you all to share how listeners can get ahold of you. But because, again, we've got a large class today, we're not gonna do that. But I would encourage anyone listening who would like to reach out to any of our guests in their respective countries to take a look at LinkedIn. Most of the students are on LinkedIn, and you can find them there. But I wanna say thank you all so much for being willing to participate. And especially to those of you who are doing this in your second language, it's just so darn impressive that you're able to articulate yourselves so brilliantly knowing that you're translating your thoughts in your head. It's just it's amazing. So thank you everybody for sharing your voices with us today.

Giacomo Bacarelli [00:38:21]: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Lorenzo Caffurini [00:38:23]: Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:38:29]: This has been an episode of SA Voices from the Field, a podcast brought to you by NASPA. This show is made possible because of you, the listeners, and we continue to be grateful that you spend your time with us. If you'd like to reach the show, you can always email us at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn by searching for doctor Jill L. Creighton. We always welcome your feedback and your topic and guest suggestions. We'd love it if you take a moment to tell a a colleague about the show, and please leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It really helps other student affairs professionals find our show and helps us to become more visible in the larger podcasting community. This episode was produced and hosted by doctor Jill Creighton.

Dr. Jill Creighton [00:39:07]: That's me. Produced and audio engineered by doctor Chris Lewis. Special thanks to the University of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next time.

Welcome to 2025! As we usher in a new year, it's essential to reflect on the whirlwind that was 2024. In our latest episode of SA Voices from the Field, hosted by Dr. Jill Creighton and Dr. Christopher Lewis, we delve into the rapid changes that shaped the past year. From the tumultuous political climate to personal and professional upheavals, 2024 was a year of significant transition for us all.

Season 12: Continuing the Conversation With Season 12, we're committed to continuing our deep dive into the past, present, and future of student affairs. Our aim is to provide fresh perspectives and engaging conversations that resonate with higher education professionals globally. Expect insightful narratives from the upcoming annual NASPA conference in New Orleans and beyond. We're keen to explore uncharted stories within our field and amplify voices from all corners of the world.

Engaging with the Community We thrive on your input and encourage you to connect with us. If you'd like to share your story or suggest a guest, email us at [email protected]. Seeing listeners at the conference brings our mission full circle, turning interactions into valuable, featured content.

Your Role in Our Journey Our podcast flourishes because of your continued support and engagement. We invite you to leave a 5-star review on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify, as your feedback helps us to grow and reach more professionals. Let's continue to chart the evolving landscape of student affairs together. Thank you for being part of this journey with SA Voices from the Field.

TRANSCRIPT

Jill Creighton [00:00:00]: Welcome to Student Affairs Voices from the Field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. Brought to you by NASPA, we curate free and accessible professional development for higher ed pros wherever you happen to be. This is season 11, the past, present, and future of student affairs, and I'm doctor Jill Creighton, she, her, hers, your essay Voices from the Field host. Happy New Year, Chris.

Christopher Lewis [00:00:28]: Happy New Year, Joe.

Jill Creighton [00:00:29]: Welcome to 2025. What a ride it has been. 2024 flew like that.

Christopher Lewis [00:00:35]: It truly did. I look back and I am still amazed that we're in 2025. It definitely went by really, really fast with everything that happened in the year, in the US, at least, in regards to the crazy political environment. But but I'm excited about a new year.

Jill Creighton [00:00:52]: And with that new year, we thought a lot about the theme, and we announced this actually at the beginning of season 11. So as we enter season 12, because of the transition point we find ourselves in as a profession, we wanted to continue to have this conversation about the past, present, and future of student affairs. So as we continue forward this season, we're gonna stick on that same theme, but we hope to bring you some new perspectives on it. Hoping to bring you some conversations from all over the world, some amazing and insightful conversations from our annual conference coming up in New Orleans. And as always, if you see either Chris or myself wandering around that conference space, I know it's, you know, so 8 weeks from now, we would love to hear your voices. And as this season arises, we also continue to want to hear from you if you have guests or topic suggestions. There's so many stories in student affairs that have yet to be told, and we want to feature you. So, Chris, if someone would like to appear on our show, how can they do that?

Christopher Lewis [00:01:53]: Easiest way to get on the show is to email us at [email protected]. And as Jill just said, it is really exciting to be able to walk around the conference and to be able to just talk with people and to be able to get some of your own voices on the show. So you will see myself, Jill walking around the conference. And if we ask you, hey, will you lend your voice to an upcoming episode? Please say yes and know that we're not just some strange people walking around the conference recording voices, but we're actually collecting your voice to be a part of that upcoming episode. So it is always exciting to be able to meet people. And if you want to be on a episode when we're in, you're going to be at the conference, you can always reach out as well and we can find a time to be able to connect and get your voice that way as well.

Jill Creighton [00:02:46]: We are so very much looking forward to bringing you another season of SA Voices from the Field. Thank you again for continuing to listen to us. We are only made possible because you choose to listen to us and share the podcast with your colleagues. So if you find our show valuable to you, we would be very grateful if you would leave us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really does help people find the show and helps us figure out what it is that you wanna hear. So thank you so much for continuing to be a listener. We look forward to bringing you another season of content on the past, present, and future of student affairs. This has been an episode of SA Voices from the Field brought to you by NASPA.

Jill Creighton [00:03:30]: This show is made possible because of you, the listeners. We continue to be grateful that you choose to spend your time with us. If you'd like to reach the show, you can email us at sa voices atnaspa.org or find me on LinkedIn by searching for doctor Jill l Creighton. We welcome your feedback and your topic and guest suggestions. We'd love it if you take a moment to tell a colleague about the show and leave us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It truly does help other student affairs pros find the show and helps us to become more visible in the larger podcasting community. This episode was produced and hosted by doctor Jill Creighton. That's me. Produced and audio engineered by doctor Chris Lewis. Special thanks to the University of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next time.