Tag Archives: student affairs

We had a really interesting end of semester meeting at my institution today, and I think it’s illustrative to bigger issues going on within student affairs and higher ed in general.  During the meeting our VP read a report from the campus planning commission that expressed support for student affairs as critical to the educational mission to the university (that’s good right?) and that they would continue to support any program that directly connected with the mission of the university to build a strong student life program (uh oh).  Did you catch it?  I did and I don’t think I was the only one.

The kicker was directly connect.  We need to show that our programs directly connect to the mission and foster student life at the college.  But what does this mean exactly?  Well, here’s what that means at TCNJ.  Go ahead and read that and I’ll continue.  Back?  Good.

I want to focus on the phrase “student-centered and learning-focused”.  Folks, gone are the days of “this event was for fun” or “stress relief”.  It’s bullshit, we all know it, and it’s going like a poof of smoke in the wind.

Coming are the days of justifying pennies, defending why this program existed and directly connecting it to learning.  If you can’t do that or if you’re NOT PREPARED to do that, prepare to be excised or marginalized.

I love the fact that the big wigs on campus are expressing support, but I think what people missed is that it also comes with a cost of needing to justify that support.  I hope we’re ready.

The easiest way to avoid embarassing usage of social networking services (twitter, blogging, youtube, facebook) is to constantly consider your usage of the service. Do you want to post personal information or less personal information. Are you using this service to connect with new friends/colleagues or maintain connections with old ones?

Here’s how I use it

Professional – Twitter, Youtube, blogging – I haven’t always used all these service this way, but I’ve found that when thinking about an online presence, this is really important

Personal (old friends) – Facebook – I do have some professional connections on Facebook, and I do accept friend requests from my students but I use privacy settings to limit their access to my private thoughts. I think this is important, and I hope they don’t take it personally.

I’d like to hear how anyone else does this or if they even feel this is a problem

I’ve been thinking about that Clay Shirky talk that I posted below for a few days now, and I’m starting to come to some conclusions. Here we go:

Conclusion 1)
These changes have just begun to affect higher ed. One example is open source textbooks, which should scare the publishing industry to death. Another example is free online classes being available to everyone, MIT is ahead of the curve here.

Conclusion 2)
i really have no clue how these changes are going to affect higher ed. I think that students will always want the on-campus college experience; at this point, that cannot be replicated elsewhere. But is it possible to recreate it? Absolutely! This ought to scare all of us working in institutions of higher learning to death. Listen again to what Shirky said “the institutions are being replaced with a collaborative infrastructure that is much less cost prohibitive”. The take home message: change is coming and you can’t stop it because you can’t COMPETE with it.

Conclusion 3)
We need to either get on board or get left behind. This is one of the reasons I blog, youtube and twitter; I want to be on the cutting edge of what’s going on in the world and be a leader in the revolution, not a follower. The world is changing and if it hasn’t affected higher ed yet, it will. The signs are there. Change is coming.

Check out my ebook I wrote on this topic!

A caveat: I didn’t go to grad school right out of undergrad.  I waited 3 years.  I worked in health care, middle grades education, and corporate America.  However, each of these experiences were formative in directing my career to this point.

When the economy is tough and jobs are tough to come by, common advice is to go back to school and get your masters degree.  I’ve been there.  I know the gut wrenching feeling that you’re not going to get a job and the only thing you seem qualfied for is entry level menial work.  I know how you feel.

My advice though is to take a job,  ESPECIALLY if you don’t know what you want to do with your life.  Grad school is not the place to be if you don’t know where you’re going.  If you can’t decide whether you want to be a businessman or a lawyer, I would thoroughly not recommend plowing through grad school.

The main reason is that despite your best efforts, grad school is draining and frustrating enough that you will want to quit or become a garbageman or join the Peace Corps at some point; it just comes with the territory.  Unless you had a specific vision and direction when you started school, you will be completely lost during those hard times while you’re in school.

Take any job you can.  Find something that pays bills and gets you out into the work world.  You will see things about your particular job and your particular field that will help to direct your career and give you a purpose when/if you decide to pursue further education.  For me, I found that the parts that I loved about my previous jobs were what I could do full-time if I pursued a degree in student affairs.  Sure, it’s not perfect but the graduate degree was the next logical step for me in finding a job that I wanted.

While taking these jobs, try to pinpoint the individual tasks that give you the most fulfillment as an employee.  Pursue opportunities, whether volunteer, at your company or even a 2nd job that give you more of a chance to do these tasks.  You’re looking for confirmation and direction, remember!

I’m going to use one of my students as an example (no names)…

She was working towards optometry school and stated to me one day “i have no idea why i’m doing this”.  I told her to not stop the direction that she was going until she had a specific idea of what she was going to do.  Six months passed before it was mentioned again.  She told me that over those six months, she realized how much she loved a lot of the thigns that she was studying (biology, health) and remembered her passion for them.  But she also realized how much she loved the work that she had done with the activities board and event planning.  She thought she could connect these two by doing community health.  After researching jobs and careers, she realized that one of her best methods of getting into this work was to go on to grad school.

She had a specific direction and a passion for where she was going.  I gave her my full recommendation to go and get it.

Don’t make the mistake of just diving in to something without knowing where you’re going.  Grad school is too much of a time and money investment to do it haphazardly.  Just because the economy is tough and jobs are scarce doesn’t mean it won’t get better.  Focus on direction and trying to apply yourself to whatever you do, and the economy won’t stop you from getting ahead.

Check out my ebook I wrote on this topic!