Category Archives: Student Affairs

Creating Meaningful Orientation for “Between Voyagers”

Posted on January 1, 2014 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

A vast majority of professionals in student affairs are able to name a mentor or someone they admire who made a difference in their lives. Many who choose student affairs as their profession do so because they want to have the same kind of impact on the lives of others as someone did in their own development.

One of the best and most advantageous positions to have an impact on college students is that of an orientation provider. Why is this the case? It is because orientation providers have access to students and families during a critical “between time.” Students and families at this time are like the “between voyagers.”

“The between voyager temporarily possesses . . . flexibility to become whatever can be imagined, and the openness to be radically transformed by a thought or a vision or an instruction.” (I Was Amelia Earhart, Jane Mendelsohn, Alfred A. Knofp, NY, 1996)

Just think about it. The students you see during orientation, whether fresh out of high school or adult learners, are more malleable during this time than at any future time during their college career. What you do or don’t do can make the difference in whether or not the student remains at your college or university or leaves for another institution or even leaves higher education.

To students just beginning their journey in higher education, orientation providers are all-knowing and all-powerful. Orientation providers have what these new students want: the keys to the kingdom, the magic word to open the doors to their success.

Orientation providers can capitalize and take advantage of this critical time and space by knowing, in broad strokes, something about these learners as a generation. Using this knowledge, orientation providers should take it as an imperative to plan an orientation that is created specifically to provide the support and information that this unique cohort of students deserve.

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Posted in Higher Education, Student Affairs

What does welcome look like? Expectations of a multicultural campus

Posted on December 16, 2013 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

Demographic diversity does not define a multicultural campus.

Different cultures living in the same space do not make a multicultural campus.

A multicultural campus has expectations of members of the academic community. These expectations include all members – especially students – contributing to a welcoming and supportive environment.

Members of the academic community are not always aware of what welcome looks and feels like, and they often do not know that they are responsible for it.

I have been on many campuses this fall and, on one campus, I was looking out of a window just above where a student orientation leader or student adviser was giving remarks before beginning a campus tour. All the students taking the tour were white except for one black student with long braids who stood to the extreme right of the group on the front row.

During this beginning part of the tour, the guide never looked toward the black student. The tour guide had long hair that covered or shielded the right side of her face, and she never turned her head to see around the hair, therefore blocking off all vision of those on the extreme right where the one black student happened to be standing.

The black student might not have been welcomed and the student might not have felt welcome. The guide might not have been aware of how it might seem when she never looked toward this student.

This is why it’s necessary to make all members of the academic community who represent the college aware of what welcome looks and feels like. Something as simple as a student tour guide making eye contact with everyone could make the difference in whether or not a prospective or new student feels welcome and whether or not the guide is contributing to the culture of a multicultural campus.

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Posted in Academic Affairs, Higher Education, Race & Ethnicity, Student Affairs, Students

Disconnect on Value of Orientation?

Posted on November 14, 2013 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

In preparing a speech for the annual conference for orientation directors, I talked to many people about their views on the value of orientation and what should be included in the program and what they think would make orientation most effective in preparing students to be successful. In one conversation with the president of a large research university in the Midwest, he described the value of orientation in this manner:

Orientation is the most important moment in the matriculation, retention, and graduation process. It sets the tone for what the campus is like, expectations, social press, and culture.

I was impressed with this view of orientation, so I asked the president how the effectiveness of orientation might be measured. This was the president’s response: “I see yield as a proxy measure of success.”

When I shared these quotes with more than a thousand attendees at the annual orientation conference, I asked them how many of their presidents would have the same or a similar response. I may not have been able to see everyone since the stage lights were in my eyes, but as I looked out at the sea of orientation providers, I did not see a single hand raised. I was stunned. I came to two conclusions. One thought is that the president I spoke with is not the norm and other presidents don’t link orientation to enrollment yield. Another thought is that orientation providers do not know what the expectations are for their work.

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Posted in Higher Education, Student Affairs

Defying Stereotyped Diversity: Getting to Know Students as Individuals

Posted on October 21, 2013 by gwendungy | 2 comments

George Packer’s The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America was written during a recent period when we could hear the chant “We are the 99%” in the background. I read the book weeks ago, and as I talk with students on campuses across the country, I imagine that they come from families represented by the people Packer profiles in one of the most enlightening books I’ve read on our diverse and “multi-culture.”

Packer probably would not want his book described with terms such as “diverse” and “multicultural,” as those who only think of people of color who have been historically underrepresented in the middle class and in higher education when they hear these terms might turn away.

When I’ve spoken with educators about the cocurriculum and learning outside the classroom and suggested that civic learning, democratic engagement, and social justice would be natural themes for collaboration between academic and student affairs, some immediately become defensive and talk about how there is already enough attention given to diversity and social justice through special programs and clubs for underrepresented students. They follow this with the lament that students who are either less academically and/or financially able get all the attention and support, while students in the middle are neglected and left out.

What I like about Packer’s book is that if we think of students in the way each person is profiled – those representing struggling farmers who want to be entrepreneurs, Wall Street fund managers, factory workers, workers in Walmart, and billionaire executives in Silicon Valley – we might have a more accurate profile of our students and their real diversity. This is a diversity that defies stereotyped groupings and calls on educators to get to know students as individuals as well as part of the group with whom they choose to identify.

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Posted in Academic Affairs, Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Cocurriculum, Higher Education, Identity, Race & Ethnicity, Student Affairs, Students

Reinventing and Helping Students Shine

Posted on August 13, 2013 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

There is nothing like the possibility of having a new start or the opportunity to reinvent oneself. Whether just out of high school or coming later in life, beginning college is an opportunity to remake oneself into one’s own image and leave behind the perceptions of those in one’s past.

The beginning of a new academic year is also a time for student affairs to innovate and influence the perceptions of colleagues with whom we want to collaborate to help students “shine.” The final line of John Legend’s song Shine tells us that “ordinary people can be a hero; don’t put out the light.” If we are not helping students shine, we may be guilty of putting out the light. The challenge is great. What can we do with the opportunity a new beginning affords?

This past week, there was a lot of questioning and opining about what Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame and fortune would do as the new owner of The Washington Post. Certainly a new owner is another kind of beginning or opportunity to redesign, innovate, and transform in order to change the perceptions and the culture of a well-respected institution.

The speculations about what Bezos would do ranged from whether he would be the death of journalism or the founder of its golden age. Regardless on which end of the argument continuum one sits, change seems inevitable. If Jeff Bezos came to your college or university, what kinds of changes do you think he would make that would have an impact on student affairs in order to help students shine?

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Posted in Higher Education, Identity, Student Affairs, Students

Educating for Reality…Still…

Posted on July 21, 2013 by gwendungy | 1 comment

“Throughout his campaign, Obama had tried to transcend the issue of race. He was, as the saying went, a post-racial candidate, not an extension of the civil rights generation of black leaders who had preceded him.”

This quote from Don Balz’s column in Sunday’s Washington Post, reminded me of a conversation I attempted to have with our son when he was in high school more than 25 years ago. He had always attended integrated schools and his high school in Columbia, Maryland, was probably the most racially mixed and liberal school in the country. With his friends, he had few if any occasions to think about race. However, because he was of the dating age, I attempted to begin a conversation about the history of black people in America and the civil rights movement in particular.

I told him that his current friends might not see him as they see him now if he began to date white girls because there was a history of black boys and men being killed when it came to white women. Our son responded that he didn’t want to hear about how things used to be because this was a different time, and he didn’t want the burden of the past to be placed on him. I recall feeling afraid for him because he didn’t want to hear. I recall knowing that whether he wanted to hear about the history and experiences of black people or not, he could not “transcend the issue of race.”

This is why I think it was extremely important that the president spoke personally about race following the Trayvon Martin verdict. While we black parents might not be heard by our children when we talk about race, “What he did was something no other American president could have done—giving voice, in calm and measured terms, to what it means still to be black in America.” I think we should give special attention and particular emphasis to the word “still” in this quote because, despite much progress and optimism, there is still much work to be done.

I think educators will need to help students see reality for themselves, especially in light of comments such as this one by Joe Klein in Time Magazine: “There will always be injustices like the murder of Trayvon Martin, but in our multiracial future, led by our color-blind children, there will be fewer of them.”

Will there be fewer boys and men racially profiled just because the demographics are changing? Do we want to be a color-blind society or do we want our citizen students to have the courage to see color and also respect the morality of racial justice? Our students will need to understand the history of our country, reflect on the experiences that helped shape their values, imagine a world that they want to create, and determine what attitudes and actions they will need in order to promote a free and just society.

The big question for educators is the one the mayor of Philadelphia asked us as a nation in another Time Magazine commentary: “Are we willing to set aside ego, be vulnerable and hear things that none of us necessarily want to hear?”

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Posted in Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Higher Education, Identity, Race & Ethnicity, Student Affairs, Students

Contemplating the Big Questions…

Posted on July 1, 2013 by gwendungy | 1 comment

On Sunday mornings, I like to watch shows like Chris Matthews (so sorry the show is ending), Meet the Press, and all the other news talk shows as I flip channels back and forth among them. At the same time, I like reading the Sunday papers while having a late breakfast. As I was getting the breakfast dishes following the talk shows, I changed the channel to Super Soul Sunday, one of Oprah’s shows on OWN. I was not sitting down attending to the show, but what I heard caught my attention.

Oprah’s guest this past Sunday was Rainn Wilson from the television show The Office. I might be the only person who has never watched an episode of The Office, but I was familiar with Rainn Wilson from other roles.

Oprah was interviewing Wilson about Soul Pancake. I may be the last to have heard of it, but it sounds really interesting. From what I gathered from the part of the interview I heard, the idea behind Soul Pancake is to provide a kinky, quirky, fun space, literally and figuratively, for people to ponder the big universal questions.

The question Rainn asked Oprah was something to the effect of, “If you could ask God any question, what would that be?”

Oprah’s response was that she would ask, “Why?”

The question that came to mind for me immediately was, “What is my purpose?”

I’ve been asking that question for a very long time, and I suspect others, especially students, have asked that and similar questions that are never verbalized nor shared.

When I think about the value of the concept of cocurriculum laboratories facilitated by highly skilled student affairs staff or others, I think the labs provide a space similar to Wilson’s Soul Pancake where students will be encouraged to ask the big questions and ponder them with others who have similar questions.

I was so desperate to find an answer to my question about purpose that when I turned 30 – a particularly introspective year for me – I went on a retreat with an unfamiliar group that had advertised – or I interpreted the advertisement as promising – that participants would leave the retreat knowing their purpose in life.

Our students won’t have to grasp at such straws if student affairs and faculty work together to provide cocurriculum laboratories that help students identify cocurricular programs and activities that further reinforce the objectives of courses, and also facilitate discussions among students that help them to intentionally hone their communication skills while entertaining big questions.

A skilled facilitator will find ways to help students practice the skills needed to also develop cultural intelligence, practical skills, habits of civic engagement, and social responsibility. The cocurriculum laboratory is one way to address how students can attain the all-important qualities that we promise in our college and university mission statements.

Whether we open spaces for students to ponder the big questions through Soul Pancake or cocurriculum laboratories, we owe our students this much.

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Posted in Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Cocurriculum, Higher Education, Student Affairs, Students

Tagged rainn wilson, universal questions

Collaborating for Student Achievement

Posted on June 26, 2013 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to serve as one of the faculty for the AAC&U High Impact Practices Institute. If there ever was an indication that colleges and universities are serious about student achievement, it is the number of institutions that brought teams to the University of Wisconsin for the Institute.

While there, the teams dedicated themselves to developing a plan to bring coherence to the high impact practices in which they are engaged. They were committed to insuring that all students would benefit from proven practices, and they were passionate about the contributions of all educators at the college or university. They were resource conscious and democratic in their thinking about who could do what for what purpose. Most of the teams were comprised of faculty, student affairs staff, and administrators.

I had the privilege of being one of the faculty for the leadership track, and in the session I led, I broke the group up into four topics according to my summary of all the teams’ applications. I asked participants to choose the topic they wanted to discuss: assessment; collaboration; retention; and the following together—e-portfolio, first-year experience, and sophomore seminar. The largest number of participants wanted to discuss collaboration.

I was encouraged that there is an increasing understanding that as educators, we should all be contributing to student achievement. What the participants in the Institute understood was that there had to be conversations to determine who would contribute what for what purpose and how to bring the rich resources together in a manner that would be coherent for students to access. I think the Institute was an excellent opportunity for a group of people from the same institution to become a team in pursuit of a common purpose. I wish all of them success in their endeavors.

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Posted in AACU, Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Higher Education, Student Affairs, Students

Collaboration By Any Means Necessary

Posted on June 17, 2013 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

Is it old-style thinking to work at partnerships, collaborations, and bridge-building between academic and student affairs?

Recently a colleague in student affairs was a little exasperated at the notion that student affairs is still talking about collaborating with academic affairs. The exasperation was based on this person’s sense of urgency that we need to focus on the issues of today such as ways to assess the impact of services, engagement of all students, completion with quality, and the changing demographics of college students.

Ironically, in looking at the list of issues we should be concerned about today, it becomes obvious that we must continue to work on collaboration between academic and student affairs.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at a Northeast regional conference on service learning and civic engagement. In preparation for creating my remarks, I spoke with several registrants for the conference. As each one spoke about the context for their work, a running theme was their bafflement about and desire to create meaningful and effective partnerships between the service learning and civic engagement offices that report to academic affairs and their colleagues in student affairs offices. I was not surprised by the comments.

There are some root causes for the difficulty in collaborating on certain programs and activities. These root causes include a history and tradition that service and volunteer work called community service has been the responsibility of student affairs since the 1949 Truman Commission Report that addressed the role of higher education in sustaining the nation’s democracy and in “using creative imagination to solve the problems of society.”

Some decades later, the expectation and responsibility held by student affairs was replaced by service learning and more often than not located organizationally in academic affairs. While structures are still in place in student services for students to volunteer, the work has not had the explicit endorsement or imprimatur of the leadership of the institution as has service learning has enjoyed as part of the Campus Compact coalition. Despite the history of having a core responsibility redefined and moved organizationally, student affairs has the passion and skills to play significant roles as partners in the service learning experience today.

One example of the desire and capability of student affairs in the area of service is the response the NASPA initiative, Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, received when it made a call to its membership for 25 lead institutions to volunteer to share their efforts with colleagues about civic engagement of which service learning is so often an integral part. More than 100 colleges and universities volunteered and 50 were selected for the first-year of the initiative.

In talking about what could be the root cause of the distance between offices of service learning and student affairs, I suggest that we follow the principle of the root canal that we select with a problem tooth. Generally, before a root canal, there has been pain or some kind of disturbance in the health of the tooth. In rooting out the nerve from which the pain emanates, we save the tooth. In our situation about the root cause of the distance between offices of service learning and student affairs, the tooth symbolizes the concept of providing opportunities for college students to practice civic engagement to preserve our democracy and to learn to be socially responsible. We will do what we must do to save the concept and practice.

Ordinarily, I encourage student affairs to reach out, to take the initiative in collaborating with their colleagues across the campus. Today, I’m encouraging those in service learning and other offices of civic engagement to reach out to colleagues in student affairs. In hearing about the work of the NASPA lead institutions in the Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement initiative, it is clear that student affairs is reaching out in all kinds of creative ways to partner. It’s time to meet student affairs part of the way in creating effective and meaningful partnerships to preserve the concept of service among college and university students.

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Posted in Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Higher Education, NASPA, Student Affairs

Creating an Innovative Culture

Posted on April 29, 2013 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

As a new “guest” board member, I spent last weekend in Columbia, South Carolina, meeting with the board and senior staff of the National Association for Campus Activities (NACA) for their annual retreat and orientation. Some ask me why I would spend my time in this manner, and when they do, I have a ready response: Alan Davis, the Executive Director, a valued colleague, asked me on behalf of his board, AND I love learning. While the board may have invited me for what they think they can learn from me, I accepted the invitation eager to learn from them. After the first meeting, I cannot attest to whether or not they received what they hoped for with my membership on the board, but I can certainly say that I received what I had hoped to gain.

Beginning with an overview of trends in the external environment and in higher education by a national expert, Dr. Dennis Pruitt, University of South Carolina, and moving on to a most stimulating discussion of the role of professional associations and their volunteer boards and staff facilitated by long-time association leader, Billye Potts, Association for Health Care Food Service and former chair of the NACA board, the retreat was an excellent way to orient new board members.

During the discussions, I learned what a new board member needs to know within context such as the meaning of acronyms and the history of policies and board actions. I quickly became familiar with board members and staff at a deeper and more meaningful level when I could listen to them talk about their vision, ideas, and hopes for the future of the association and the profession. When I contrast this orientation with those that painfully walk through a manual, there is no comparison in regard to genuine interest and what I will be able to retain.

As the retreat concluded, all were convinced that NACA was on the road to creating among its members and staff an innovative culture where they would all learn to be comfortable with disrupting the way things have been done. They have already begun to use a different lens to look at who they are and what they want to provide to members by changing the structure of the board and daring to add two guest board members. My colleague, Jenny Bloom, graduate faculty member at USC and former chair of the NACADA board is serving a second year as a guest board member. She did such a great job, the board thought they would add another, and I’m fortunate to be their choice.

I have always said that campus activities staff are the most creative people on campus. My declaration was reinforced this weekend, and I can also add that the board members and staff with whom I met are also some of the most perceptive and forward-thinking colleagues I’ve encountered. It was a great weekend!

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Posted in Student Affairs

Category Archives: Student Affairs

Creating Meaningful Orientation for “Between Voyagers”

What does welcome look like? Expectations of a multicultural campus

Disconnect on Value of Orientation?

Defying Stereotyped Diversity: Getting to Know Students as Individuals

Reinventing and Helping Students Shine

Educating for Reality…Still…

Contemplating the Big Questions…

Collaborating for Student Achievement

Collaboration By Any Means Necessary

Creating an Innovative Culture

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