25
Jan
10

TCNJ Brower Student Center Student Employment and Involvement Survey

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How many hours per week do you typically work at the BSC?

Do you have another job on campus?

If you have another job on campus, how many hours per week do you work at this other campus job(s)?

Do you work another job off campus?

If you have another job OFF campus, how many hours per week do you work at that job?

How many campus clubs or student organizations are you involved in?

If you’re involved with other student organizations on campus, how many hours per week do you spend on those organizations?

How has working at the BSC positively or negatively influenced your other jobs?

  • It has helped me to become more organized with my time and it is teaching me about the work world.
  • Work ethic
  • I am able to focus and concentrate on course materials since my employment requires that I prioritize and remain organized.
  • Working at the BSC has made me alot more familiar with different important contact people on campus so Ive been able to do my secretarial job more effectively.
  • I have been forced to leave shifts from my other job early to attend mandatory meetings for BSC
  • It has positively influence my other jobs because it reinforces good work ethics, team work and excellence.

How has working at the BSC positively or negatively influenced your involvement with student organizations or clubs?

  • Time management
  • Minor negative impact; time spent working is less time spent on the club
  • It keeps me abreast at what needs to be done to properly plan and organize events at TCNJ.
  • positively in that i gained valuable time management skills, and I have helped to clarify the room booking process several times.
  • Because I work at the BSC I know more about Booking rooms and requesting different equipment and vendor tables.
  • Working for the BSC has positively influenced my involvement with my other clubs and organizations because it has given me better “people” skills.
  • positive influence because I am more aware about what happens at BSC to be able to schedule my events

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Some take aways

  1. If they’re working here, they’re probably not working off campus.  research suggests that working on campus is beneficial to retention as well as connection to the campus, so I’m glad to see this result.
  2. I’m really not sure how as many of them have other jobs on campus as say they do.  They’re not supposed to work more than one job.  I’m curious if this has something to do with us only hiring work study and maybe they have a “cash job” somewhere else on campus.
  3. I was astonished at how many of our students are involved.  I’m not sure whether this means we’re attracting involved students or whether these numbers track with the campus as a whole.
  4. I was pleased to see that so many of them named a positive outcome of working here was that they better understood the inner workings of the student center.  We’ve struggled greatly with streamlining our room/event scheduling processes to help more students understand.  I’m wondering if a better use of our time than producing more handouts (more wasted paper) and producing a program that’s requires man-hours and is questionable in outcomes (not measured) to teach students how to schedule would be better spent teaching our student employees the ins and outs of scheduling.  If 40 employees knew the scheduling process like the back of our hand and many of them are in more than one club, wouldn’t it follow that their knowledge would reach many of the clubs on campus?
21
Jan
10

Student Center Programming

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I don’t spend a lot of my time tooting my own institutions’ horn, but the next two posts are going to be about TCNJ.

First, on Friday, we had a meeting where we mapped out the programming schedule for the Spring in our student center.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it on here previously, but TCNJ has been undergoing a massive reinvention of their student center.  They have shifted in the last year from a completely auxiliary conference oriented building.  Now, one may ask, doesn’t it say “student center” in the name?  Sadly, some institutions have used the student center as a place to make money, but have neglected their mission to serve as the center of student life and the “living room” of the campus.  Thankfully, TCNJ has seen the proverbial light and has decided to return to it’s mission.

As we’ve been working on carpeting, furniture replacement, and small renovation projects that were neglected during the auxiliary services days, we’ve also been re-envisioning what the people environment of the building will look like in the coming months.

In brief, here were some ideas that we came up with…

  • Love Day (Feb 12th) – making valentine crafts, romance film festival
  • Green Week (week of Earth Day)
  • Service Week – teaming with our Bonner Center to provide service projects and education on service opportunities
  • Free Day – program centered around tax day with giveaways of free stuff and services
  • Many Contests – paper airplanes from the balcony, spelling bee, rock band and Wii to name a few
  • As Seen On TV –  introducing As Seen on TV products to students and giving them away

I’m excited about this new direction for our student center.

20
Jan
10

Free Speech, Programming, and Student Activities

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This is a continuation of a post I made back in the spring about free speech and not an altogether different incident.

TCNJ’s Campus Union Board (CUB) has been trying to bring Tucker Max to campus.  I’m not going to link to him; I’m sure you can find him if you’re interested.  Many people are offended by him, many people find him hilarious; essentially Tucker Max is a polarizing figure and it’s completely understandable that students would be interested in hearing him speak.

As with the event that I spoke of in the spring, members of staff and what I would call administration, became upset at the event and were outraged that CUB would be “allowed” to bring such a polarizing figure on campus.  They expressed “disappointment” that our students would choose such a speaker.  Some even tried to railroad the students into not bringing Tucker to campus through intimidation and suggesting that they re-poll the student body to make sure that this was who they wanted.

From afar, I was disgusted at staff’s actions, so whenever the Vice President chose to share his thoughts on the matter, I was pleased.  For an hour, he spoke about how he wishes staff would have handled the issue.  I think his comments were instructive and I wanted to share them with all

  • It is completely inappropriate for staff to tell students who to bring to campus with THEIR student fee money.
  • It is even more inappropriate to try back door manipulation to make events happen the way we want.
  • Student’s rights to free speech and assembly are not suspended once on campus
  • More than that, student affairs staff is charged with defending student’s rights to free speech and assembly
  • Student rights were established back in the 60s, so there is no excuse for us to not know and defend them
  • It is not our job to convert students to our view but help them to find their own view
  • We need to trust our students to be able to make their own judgments

After his speech, I was inspired and encouraged; I hope you are too.

19
Jan
10

The Real Tragedy of Haiti #justice

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Everyone has been circling the wagons after the destruction of much of Haiti due to an epic earthquake.  While this is important and consequential work, I feel it’s an important time to reflect on the silly way we view natural disaster.  Over the next few weeks, money will literally begin pouring into Haiti.  But literally two months after the disaster, everyone will have moved on to the next thing that our news cycle feeds us as a tragedy.  It’s a joke and shows how little we are concerned with others and how much we are concerned with ourselves.

I ask you, when did the real tragedy happen in Haiti?

Before the earthquake, Haiti was:

  • One of the poorest countries on earth.  Comparative social and economic indicators show Haiti falling behind other low-income developing countries (particularly in the hemisphere) since the 1980s. Haiti now ranks 149th of 182 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index (2006).
  • About 80% of the population were estimated to be living in poverty in 2003. Most Haitians live on $2 or less per day.
  • Haiti has 50% illiteracy, and over 80% of college graduates from Haiti have emigrated, mostly to the United States.
  • Poverty has forced at least 225,000 children in Haiti’s cities into slavery, working as unpaid household servants.
  • Haiti has consistently ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world on the Corruption Perceptions Index. Since the day of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Haiti’s government has been notorious for its corruption. Haitian dictator ”Baby Doc” Duvalier, his wifeMichelle, and three other people are believed to have taken $504 million from the Haitian public treasury between 1971 and 1986
  • The enrollment rate for primary school is 67%, and fewer than 30% reach 6th grade. Secondary schools enroll 20% of eligible-age children.
  • In 1925, Haiti was lush, with 60% of its original forest covering the lands and mountainous regions. Since then, the population has cut down an estimated 98% of its original forest cover for use as fuel for cookstoves, and in the process has destroyed fertile farmland soils, contributing todesertification
  • Cité Soleil, Haiti’s largest slum in the capital of Port-au-Prince, has been called “the most dangerous place on Earth” by the United Nations

I’ll admit I pulled this information from Wikipedia, but I wanted to use it to illustrate a point.  No one would argue that the devastation of the earthquake was not bad.  However, if you want to really help the people of Haiti, it requires constant giving to causes that actually help the Haitian people not $20 given out of an emotional response to deaths from a natural disaster.

If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend looking into the following

  • Charity:Water – does projects to provide clean water to the billion people on earth that don’t have access to clean water (think about that for a minute).  All donations go to directly fund water projects
  • Kiva – connection between low income entrepreneurs around the world and those with money in other parts of the world.  I’m currently being paid back on a loan I made to a group of women doing retail in Bolivia.
18
Jan
10

Break The System To Remake the System

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The genius of HBO’s The Wire is that it shows that the system perpetuates itself.  You cannot improve the system until you determine how to eradicate the system completely.  I was listening in a meeting the other day and couldn’t help but be reminded of this fact.

To how many of you does this scenario sound familiar?

Problem A: We need more money to do X and X is important to our mission as a campus (need more staff, need new furniture, any problem)

Problem B: We have no way to get new money that doesn’t involve placing more burden on those we’re trying to serve or cutting from somewhere else  (We could place another fee on students OR we could cut other programs that are either out of our jurisdiction or connect to our mission)

We can’t truly fix problem A until there’s a solution to problem B and there IS NO SOLUTION to Problem B.

Anyone who is familiar with such a scenario knows what you inevitably do.  You make your best effort to solve problem A with minimal resources by going through the back door or skimping.  OR you make the unfortunate choice to solve problem B by passing the cost on to another massive student fee, even though it probably doesn’t feel completely right to do so.

I couldn’t help but think of season 4 of the Wire.  For those who aren’t familiar, the schools are a wreck because of the “corner kids” not being educated in a way they understand, but the government won’t allow the kids to be educated differently despite people who have proven that such innovation is effective.  So, the current system doesn’t work to solve problems but rather squelches innovation and actually perpetuates the problems that exist.

This brings me to the State of New Jersey.  It’s come down the line that the new governor plans to cut the state budget by a mind boggling 25 percent; those of us in higher ed know that we tend to take the lumps in such budget cuts.  Everyone’s scared to death, but part of me is glad.  Massive change and budget reductions REQUIRES a rethinking of how things are done.  True change and true destruction of the old way of doing things will only happen when those changes are forced to happen.

At the risk of massive narcissism, I will quote myself…”Personally, I believe this to be the biggest benefit of any crisis situation, whether it be personal, local or even national.  A crisis is an opportunity to reflect on our values and to think about what may be most important.  While we are in crisis, we can reconnect with what our values should be and emerge leaner and meaner and more prepared to do great work in the world.”

25% budget cuts might break the system and cause much needed change to happen.  I might be alone here, but I think that’s a good thing.

15
Jan
10

Making It Happen #greenweek

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As I’ve learned over the years, being green is more about attitude than it is about particular actions.  I’ve taken to including a line in my emails in the last few months that I think illustrates this attitude.

“please consider the environment before printing this email”

I would extend that during my personal #greenweek to anything….

“please consider the environment before anything you do”

As many of you know, in 2009, United States carbon emissions per capita was highest in the world, nearly 3 times that of per capita in Europe and over 4 times the per capita carbon output in Europe.  Obviously these statistics are complex and cannot be broken down simply.  But I think we all can agree on what needs to be done to reduce our own impact on the environment from carbon and waste.

When you’re considering the environment in your actions, try to change your actions from that of a consumer, simply using resources to your own whims and needs, to the attitude of a steward.  steward – one who administers anything as the agent of another or others.  We were handed this planet by our ancestors and are in charge of giving this planet to those that follow us.

14
Jan
10

Other Stuff #greenweek

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I wanted to include a list of other things you could do to make an impact on the environment in your place of business.

-Purchase carbon offsets – they calculate the environmental impact of your event or place of business and you can contribute an equivalent amount of money to green causes http://www.carbonfund.org/ or Terrapass.  I also recommend the event/conference carbon calculator http://www.terrapass.com/event-carbon-calculator/

-Purchase green lighting and other green products – If you’re looking for lighting, I highly recommend my friends at Cree – they do great work http://www.cree.com/

-Encourage public transportation or mass transportation – offering incentives for employees who commute by methods other than individual cars and providing forums (social network created on Ning would be a great place to start) for employees or students to connect with others commuting.  Providing places at your facility for employees or students to learn about public transportation and the benefits.  Also, “take the bus to work/school” day or week is a great way to encourage employees or students to at least TRY public transportation.  Discouraging bringing cars in any way possible will make a big difference in the environmental impact of your event or organization.

-Purchase locally made or grown products – Try looking at sites like http://www.locallectual.com/ or http://earth911.com/blog/2009/08/03/8-ways-to-go-local/.  If you work in education, try having a locally grown and produced day to teach students about the locally made products.  This is particularly challenging in our internet culture but there can be benefits to purchasing things over the internet because they often don’t have a local retail store.

13
Jan
10

Using Less (reduce) #greenweek

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I recognize that I come from a different generation.  I read books on my ipod and articles on my computer.  I get it.  However, I don’t understand the incredible waste that our offices generate with regards to paper.  There is no sense in printing and printing and printing.  It’s wasteful and it’s pointless.

As the article in my previous post said, 40% of landfill waste is paper waste.  Obviously, reducing our paper consumption along with recycling the necessary (what is necessary?) paper is critical to greening our work spaces.  But I think we all realize that we need to make better use of our paper and not unnecessarily print out garbage.  Why don’t we do it more often then?

I think it’s lack of knowledge of HOW to do it.  Let’s start with simple stuff…

-Instead of printing out that document for a coworker and writing all over it, add comments with the comment tool available within your word processing software.  Or add them in red.  Or use the strikeout tool.  Someone within your office knows how to do this, I promise.

-Use a collaborative editing software for your office like Google Documents, Zoho, or Wiggio.   These programs allow for collaborative editing as well as chat between users while editing.  Don’t want to drive across town (or go outside when it’s cold) for a meeting?  Set up your ideas within one of these collaborative softwares.

-For the love of God, buy a scanner and use it.  There’s no reason to have paper strewn all over your office.  If someone insists on sending you paper, scan it and email it back to them and then recycle the document

-When you have a meeting, don’t print out 10 copies of every document that you’ll be looking at during the meeting.  Why, people, why?  Pull a computer into your office with a projector and edit the document in real time.  If people need to do things on their own, put notes in the document of what needs to be changed along with suggestions.

-Along the lines of a scanner, I highly recommend Evernote for your personal use or for your office.  Everything you add to Evernote is “automatically processed, indexed, and made searchable. If you like, you can add tags or organize notes into different notebooks.”  That sounds useful – what about this? “Evernote magically makes printed and handwritten text inside your images searchable, too.”  We have a winner!

Leave some more ideas in the comments.

12
Jan
10

Systems and Schools #justice

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One of my favorite parts of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” is his discussion of how the setup of the school schedule unfairly disadvantages kids for no fault of their own.  I’m going to attempt to paraphrase his argument.

So, let’s say you have rich kid and poor kid…

During the school year, rich kid and poor kid make fairly comparable gains in their education.  So, let’s say that during Kindergarten, a kid gains 10 pts in their education, and every year after the kid gains 10 pts in their education.  The majority of American school systems are set up, though, where kids get 2-3 months off during the summer.  Now, during the summer, most poor kids are not afforded the same opportunities that rich kids have.  Rich kids do summer enrichment programs at the science center and go to summer camps; poor kids go and play with other kids in the neighborhood, play video games, and watch TV (obviously, this is a mass generalization for the sake of illustration).  So, over the summer, the rich kids may gain another 2-3 points on their education but the poor kids make little or no gains.  Let me chart this so you can see the effect.

K Summer 1st Summer 2nd Summer 3rd Summer
Rich 10 13 23 26 36 39 49 52
Poor 10 10 20 20 30 30 40 40

As you can see, by 4th grade, the small difference of one summer has grown to a chasm between the educational opportunities provided to the rich kid and the poor kid.

The irony is that our culture often harps about how educational opportunities provided to rich kids and poor kids are all about money provided to the schools (what an american thing to say), but this is not what Gladwell found.  While providing equal funds to the rich and poor schools is certainly an issue, it’s the system that allows poor kids to spend months not getting the education that a rich kid does that exacerbate differences in educational opportunity between the rich and the poor.  How is this fair?

Many schools have gone to year-round schools and this is certainly a solution.  Regardless though, it’s absurd (and I would argue unjust) to allow students to slip through the cracks because we have an antiquated system of summer vacation that existed so kids could help with the summer field work 100 years ago.

On a larger level, it’s also to our disadvantage as a country to allow ANY kids to slip through the cracks of our society.  We need all the brilliant minds we can get, and not allowing a large portion of our students the opportunity to reach their best potential makes absolutely no sense, especially for something as asinine as a school schedule.

12
Jan
10

composting #greenweek

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So let’s say you’ve got the recycling thing down like old hat – have you tried composting?

Up until my experience at North Carolina State, the answer was unabashedly no for me.  I viewed composting as something best left to the stinky spot on what we affectionately referred to as the “sewage plant road” in my hometown of hickory nc.  It’s the location where we rolled up our windows, turned off our air conditioning; the powers that be in hickory had decided to place a sewage plant and a compost plant adjacent to each other producing a smell of poo commingled with rotting food – delicious!

At NC State, we started doing composting in my 2nd year at our events.  We had an arrangement with a composting plant that would haul off our composted materials when we had filled up a dumpster.  Our responsibility was to make sure that our compost materials were not mixed with our non-compostable materials.  Here was the basic process that went into that:

1) purchase compostable items: plates, cups, silverware – obviously the food would be compostable as well

2) people had to watch the trash cans to make sure that other trash was not thrown in with the compost materials – any contamination could hurt the compost mixture

In the large scope of things, this is NOT THAT HARD.  If you’re doing an event that involves food with paper or plastic plates and spoons, it’s easy to accomodate composting into your event.

One of the gold standards of composting is Vanderbilt which, from their new Commons facility, does extensive composting of their food from dining http://www.vanderbilt.edu/sustainvu/pdf/compost_center_3.pdf.

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