Design Thinking and Learning

In a seminar course required of students in my doctoral program, we spent a day on problem solving and creativity. Professor John Nash took us through an exercise that originated with the Stanford d.school where we used problem solving and then design thinking to create the perfect wallet for a student partner.

Our exercise included:

• Interviewing a partner to engage them and gather insights about wallet use
• Defining and articulating a point of view based on the interview insights
• Sketching new alternatives based on the point of view
• Testing ideas with our partner to gather feedback
• Acting on the feedback and building a wallet prototype from art supplies

This was a fun exercise that I think can be adapted for use with student leaders to encourage bigger picture thinking and processing. You can read more about the exercise and view a student interview at Nash’s blog.

Happy Anniversary #SACHAT

We celebrate a year of #SACHAT this week, our regular water cooler gathering of student affairs colleagues. Each Thursday we take time to pause in our busy workday to share thoughts, ideas, best practices, gripes, and whatever else in 140 characters.

It has been transforming (and frequently laugh out loud funny!) to read the touching accounts of our community members reflecting on their #SACHAT experience. I recall the blank stare that I likely gave Tom Krieglstein when he pitched this brainstorm over a cup of coffee in late summer 2009. The path that we have traveled in such a short time is amazing.

I was certain that I would expound something about MBTI and Type here, but really, at #SACHAT, we are about sharing resources. We are about Challenge and Support (shout out to Nevitt Sanford). And most of all, we are about community. So it is easy to connect what we do to Ernest Boyer and his six principles of community.

The #SACHAT community is…

Purposeful: We share goals to develop our colleagues, our students and ourselves.

Open: Freedom of expression is uncompromisingly protected and civility is affirmed.

Just: Individuals are honored and our differences are what make us great.

Disciplined: Individuals accept their obligations to the group and guide behavior for the common good.

Caring: #SACHAT is a place where the well being of each member is supported and where service to others is encouraged.

Celebrative: We know why we ritually gather around computers, laptops and Smartphones each Thursday at Noon and 6:00 p.m. CST for this goat rodeo™ which has become our student affairs tradition. It is why we celebrate this entire week. And it is why we don't believe anyone who claims social networks have "weak ties".

Lurk, Learn, Drink the Kool-Aid.

Love to you all,

Debra

Transition to College

Jacques Steinberg shared gems of wisdom for soon-to-be first-year college students in The Choice column with Advice on the Transition From Applicant to College Student. It included a recommendation from my friend, W. Houston Dougharty, who advises students to live in the moment and less in their social media updates.

As frequently happens in columns such as this, the best words of counsel came from experienced students who remind first-years to treat college like a full time job and learn to do their own laundry.

I've gotta feeling...

There was a day last week when my work day began at 5:45 a.m. with a two and a half hour drive to a meeting and concluded fifteen hours later in a final class meeting with our very talented peer mentors. And I was smiling. Because on days like that, I've gotta feeling that I have the best job in the world.

Token of Appreciation

The peer mentors that work with our scholarship program make me exceedingly proud. They are a selfless, giving, hardworking bunch, doing what they do for recogntion only. They are students of character.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved. ~Helen Keller

Finding your Student Affairs compass

We speak a lot about the meteoric rise of student affairs professionals communicating on Twitter. Within #SACHAT, our participant numbers have grown 500% since our October 2009 debut. We have so many colleagues engaged that we had to add a second chat time three months into the venture. Our #SACHAT meet-ups are occurring around the spring professional conferences and organically as our student affairs family find themselves in similar locations.

I had an opportunity to meet several of our #SACHAT friends in conjunction with the ACUI conference and spent some time exploring New York City with one of those friends. We made a day of it, walking and sharing stories, stopping for lunch, shopping a bit, and before you knew it, found ourselves uncertain how to make our way back to the car. We stood at a busy street corner, attempting to get our bearings. We asked a passerby for directions and then headed off to find our way. After covering quite a few more blocks and not yet seeing any landmarks leading to the car, it dawned on me that I could use the map function on my phone to aid our quest. This handy little GPS tool is not essential for navigation in my small Midwest city, so I had forgotten that I had it.

We determined our present location, entered an address for the parking garage, and lo and behold, walking directions were magically provided. So, we started out again in the direction of our vehicle, enjoying the city scenery, chatting, and enjoying the day. Only to miss a turn and get off track, again. Ah, but this time we had the map and directions. We backtracked, paid more attention to our map, and finally made our way back to the car.

Early in my student affairs career, I found easy ways to network with colleagues. I joined professional organizations, served on committees, and chatted regularly with colleagues at other institutions as we planned trainings and conferences. As I advanced in my career, it seems that I lost some of those opportunities, as my own work required more of my time and focus. At some point along the way, I lost track of most of my network, also losing the community that helped me brainstorm and recharge with energy and new ideas.

Then along comes a social networking tool like Twitter and fun little communities such as the Student Affairs Blog and #SACHAT. Once again, I am linked with other professionals, sharing ideas, and learning new ways to do things. I am engaged in building a community that challenges and inspires me. It is a community that grew through social network technology and like a GPS, helped me find my way.

Like a box of chocolates

Like many of my colleagues in student affairs, my first job in the profession was the result of a student leadership experience, student tour guide to be exact. My work as an admissions tour guide as an undergraduate later led to a position as an admissions recruiter for a small private college. I like to think that working in admissions, helping students with their college decision-making, is where I honed facilitation skills that are critical to my current work. I had a couple of gigs as a director of admissions before turning my sights to program coordination.

Stanford business professor Robert Sutton suggests employees need predictability, understanding, control, and compassion. As anyone who has spent even a few months in a student affairs position can tell you, those items are few and far between. You learn early in your career that student affairs hours include nights, weekends, and other duties as assigned. The concerns of an 18-year old in college differ from year to year. Reactions to course assignments or program activities may not communicate their message or be perceived as useful. Faculty and academic units question the value of student affairs programming and services, particularly in challenging financial times. Student affairs professionals do, however, provide predictability, understanding, control, and compassion…for our students.

The graduate assistants who have worked in my unit over the years have enhanced my work and life. They went from grad to pro and are now high school teachers, logistics managers, academic advisors, independent consultants, and campus activity and orientation coordinators. Each of these individuals had an opportunity to make a difference in student lives. They used their creativity, energy, and enthusiasm to make our university a better place for students. When I think of my colleagues at the Student Affairs Collaborative, you may find us in campus activities, student union management, leadership development, residence life, career planning, scholarship programs, and consulting. Those paper titles do not include the personal counseling, financial advising, academic enhancement, and other duties as assigned that we provide on a daily basis.

I borrowed the title for this post from a former graduate assistant who is now blazing trails of her own. She used the analogy that Student Affairs is like a box of chocolates for a course assignment and it really stuck with me.

Student Affairs is:

• Being a generalist in helping, listening, organizing, and facilitating, while a specialist in your position.
• Never growing up as you surround yourself with 18-22 year olds.
• Spending your life by the academic year calendar.
• Justifying your existence with the belief that higher education is also about the out-of-classroom experience.
• A real profession.

Student Affairs professionals work hard to make our colleges and universities more welcoming, engaging, and understanding for students because we believe in higher education and all that it offers. We get up every morning and face the day with a smile, because we never know what we’re going to get.

How do you define your work in student affairs?

Divine 2009...Zen 2010?

Reflecting on 2009, there is much to celebrate, but many more reasons to be excited for the year ahead.

Adventures in student success and the first-year seminar: I may have mentioned a time or two that I work with the best students in the world. They challenge and inspire me every day of the year. I love my job.

Road trip with 120 students
Digital Storytelling Project
Blogging
Tom Krieglstein

Vernon Wall
Marshmallow Wars

Adventures in Student Affairs: With tight budgets and reduced funding, most of my professional development in 2009 did not cost a cent. I interact daily with wonderful student affairs professionals and treasure their connections.

#SAChat

The Student Affairs Blog

Twitter

NASPA Website to Watch

Began a PhD

Class with John Schuh

Adventures in Type: I made inspiring connections through MBTI and the Association for Psychological Type International (APTi) in 2009 and volunteered for some new professional duties.

APTi Conference

Vice President for Professional Development, APTi eChapter

Director of Communications, APTi

Collaboration with Dan Robinson

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. ~Hal Borland

Decision Making in Student Affairs

I was approached last week by one of our peer mentors who had scheduling difficulties with leadership responsibilities he had in other organizations. As the discussion progressed, my graduate assistant and I listened, nodded, and were ready to address how we could work with the student to find some scheduling middle ground. To our surprise, the student felt it was best that he resign from his position. I could tell he had given this a lot of thought, so I confirmed his intent, thanked him for his candor, and upon his departure, immediately jumped into action.

"Pull the updated course schedules of all peer mentors," I quickly instructed a student assistant as I began scrolling through my cell phone numbers to contact the student's co-leader. While schedules were being printed, I sent a text to the co-leader for a meeting after her classes. As I dashed between offices, checking class time availability and sending text replies, I stuck my head back in the door of my office where my graduate assistant was still seated.

"Do you want to sit down and process this so we can decide what to do," he asked?

Sandy McMullen addresses questions like these over at Personality Plus in Business. Sandy, an artist and consultant, shares that the MBTI decision making functions of Thinking and Feeling have equal worth even though the quick deciding "Thinkers" are frequently valued in the workplace. She discusses the linear, logical processes utilized by those with the Thinking preference are in contrast to the more subjective review of values and merits required for those with a Feeling preference. Recognizing and using both of these processes can actually benefit our decision making.

Acknowledging that my graduate assistant was using his Feeling preference and was still in processing mode, I took a few steps back to invite a discussion as to what our next steps should be, even though, with my Thinking preference, I had already arrived there. We were able to have a good chuckle over viewing our preferences "in action".

What does your decision making function look like?

Higher Education Dialogue on Race

A conference on race and ethnicity has become a hallmark program at our midwest research university. For the past decade, the Iowa State Conference and Race Ethnicity, or ISCORE project, has been our flagship program on all things affecting diversity, inclusion, and persons of color in higher education. Based upon the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE), ISCORE celebrated it's 10th anniversary in March. It has become a model program for other campus CORE programs. I wrote here about about this year's keynote, Michele Norris.

The Iowa State project sponsors a team of students, staff and faculty to travel and participate at NCORE each summer. Information gathered from that experience is reviewed throughout a fall semester course: Forum on United States Race and Ethnicity. Students then submit individual and group presentation proposals for ISCORE. Hundreds of Iowa State students and staff have been the beneficiary of this project grant. Thousands of students, faculty, staff, and community members have attended the campus conferences. Through lean financial times in higher education, ISCORE has continued to thrive.

Washington Post columnist and editor, Eugene Robinson, suggested in an MSNBC segment this morning that recent discussion on race in America is good for the country, but we rarely see it happen in the classroom. His comments were in reference to the arrest of an African-American Harvard professor by a white police officer that made national news. Robinson's column this week highlighted the incident and questioned the still very common racial double standard.

For at least one university, the discussion and dialogue on race and ethnicity is alive and well, and continuing.

What is your campus dialogue on diversity, race and ethnicity?

Celebrating Independence

Happy Birthday America! Don your red, white and blue and grab your sparklers (with parental supervision, of course.) Enjoy these quotes on the patriotism of education (plus movie bonus!)

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. ~John Adams

In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. "Mankind." That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day! ~President Thomas Whitmore, Independence Day

Constructive Criticism: Wisdom from The Last Lecture

For their midterm assessment, our peer mentors in the first-year seminar were asked to provide a class presentation on the topic of their choice. The presentations were reviewed by our staff and also their peers in the leadership course. We completed half of the presentations last week and collected evaluations. Most were ambiguous praise such as "Great job!" and "Nice Powerpoint!". As a preface to the presentations this week, my graduate assistant offered this gem of wisdom from Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture.

When you are doing something badly and no one’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are the ones still telling you they love you and care.

It was evident from their demeanor and the significant increase in writing on the review forms that our peer leaders took these words to heart and began to show the love. Much of the feedback continued to be positive, but comments were more direct and offered suggestions for improvement.

Pausch asked the question of what wisdom would we impart if we knew it were our last chance. I continue to find wonderful lessons in his writings and explore their opportunity for my first-year seminar and other student programming. Pausch wrote his book to share a bit of himself with his children, but I think he would be pleased that his message has application in student development, particularly leadership, as discussed over at The Student Leader Blog.

What is your favorite lesson or idea from The Last Lecture?

How are you incorporating The Last Lecture into your curriculum?