White Privilege and NASPA 2012

As I mentioned in my previous post about supporting undocumented students, I wanted to write about my experience attending NASPA in Arizona. Back in 2010, Arizona passed SB 1070, also known as the "papers, please" law, which allows local law enforcement to detain anyone for whom they have "reasonable suspicion" the person may be an undocumented immigrant. In a nation whose public debate over immigration is highly racialized, it's not difficult to imagine the impact of using "reasonable suspicion" in determining who may be undocumented and who most likely is not. This article at the Huffington Post and this video posted on the ACLU's website are great discussions of the racial profiling impact of SB 1070.

Originally I think I heard about the push for NASPA to reconsider Phoenix as its 2012 meeting location via ACPA's Commission for Social Justice Educators email listserv. At the time, I was working at a community college and had actually let my NASPA membership lapse--my memberships were not covered through the college, and the college was not an institutional member of either organization, meaning I was paying the full professional price. I was also very fired up about the issue as I was in a professional position where I worked with undocumented students. Our Latino/a Student Union organized an excursion to the University of Washington that summer (2010) to attend a forum on the DREAM Act, and that Fall I invited Dr. Roberto Gonzales, at that time faculty with UW's School of Social Work, to speak on campus about his research into the experiences of undocumented college students. I wanted NASPA to reconsider Phoenix as its conference location.

I was disappointed when the NASPA Board announced it had chosen to keep the conference in Phoenix. I can appreciate how difficult the decision had to have been, but I felt NASPA, with the influence and power it has within the student affairs field, could have done better. For instance, AERA (American Educational Research Association, the largest professional association for education researchers) had planned its 2013 for Atlanta, GA, but moved that meeting to San Francisco after the Georgia legislature passed their own version of SB 1070. I often want to believe that our profession will get political when necessary and make statements like boycotting Arizona facilities until SB 1070 is repealed, but I know this will not always be the reality.

And then things changed for me. In the fall of 2010, I decided it was time to move on from my professional position. I decided to apply for PhD programs, as my ultimate goal is to become a higher education researcher and academic, and at the beginning of 2011, I was hearing back from schools about admission into various programs. All of a sudden I realized I was going to be back in school again, and that for the first time since 2008, I would be able to attend national conferences.

I was invited by my dear friend Lisa Endersby to present with her at NASPA 2012 on a topic we had been discussing for several months at that point, and I did not want to turn this opportunity down. I started thinking again about my feelings on NASPA in Phoenix and, I guess, began to rationalize them away in favor of attending the conference: "My decision to attend NASPA will have little to no impact on the state's decision to repeal SB 1070; I'm not even sure moving NASPA elsewhere will have an impact on the state's decision to repeal SB 1070!" "My grandparents and my aunt and uncle live in Phoenix, it would be really nice to see them." "I'll just get involved at the conference with any discussions happening around immigration and NASPA's position on the DREAM Act. That will be more impactful."

I wanted to go to the conference and reconnect with people I hadn't seen in a long time, I wanted to see my family, and I wanted to present with Lisa. I was going to be a graduate student again so it would be accessible. I was coming face-to-face with my own White privilege (and fairly aware of it too) but feeling extremely unsure as to what to do about it at the time. And I began to wonder (defensively?) why we aren't asking our professional associations to consider other unjust laws, like states which do not protect LGBTQ people against discrimination, in making decisions about conference locations (ahem, Kentucky). I think I was rationalizing, but in retrospect, I learned much from this experience as well.

At the conference, I made sure to attend different sessions exploring immigration, how the debate is framed in public and how the debate is framed within higher education. A friend of mine talked me into attending the NASPA Public Policy Town Hall as well, which ended up being the most rewarding of these sessions in terms of NASPA's position on supporting undocumented students. Most of NASPA's Latino/a Knowledge Community attended the session as a way to voice their anger and concern over the decision to keep the conference in Arizona. Again, "undocumented immigrant" does not equal "Mexican," but in public discourse, it often does, and anger about immigration is often directed at Latina/os in this nation as a result. Members spoke about how many Latina/o NASPA members had either chosen not to attend, or to bring several forms of ID, out of concern for their own safety simply out on the streets of Phoenix. And not simply safety in the face of public attitudes about immigration--safety in terms of defending oneself should one be racially profiled by local law enforcement.

The issue was not NASPA making a statement and boycotting Phoenix in protest--the issue was NASPA not comprehending just how hostile an environment it was bringing its conference into. A candlelight vigil is not enough to make up for this concern for personal safety. And the icing on the cake? Just a week before the conference a lesbian couple experienced anti-gay discrimination at one of the conference hotels (the Sheraton). Like I said, I know moving a conference is an extremely difficult and costly decision, but with a little creativity the association could have done better. Perhaps a fundraising campaign built around the concern for social justice and safety may have been able to energize members and sponsors to help make up the cost?

Needless to say, I was surprised by what I learned from this experience. In retrospect, I'm not sure I disagree with my decision to attend. If the conference was staying put, I think it was responsible to engage the issue, though that decision looks different for different people. For me, in hindsight, it felt impactful to engage the issue in Arizona in Phoenix at NASPA. For others, it may have been more responsible and impactful to choose not to attend. The association did announce in the Town Hall that it backs passage of the DREAM Act and is exploring how it can become more involved in getting that legislation passed in Congress. But most of all, I hope this serves as a lesson to our professional associations (or, perhaps in the future, association in the singular) when considering locations for meetings and conferences. On the one hand, it's not like student affairs and higher education do not exist in states like Arizona, and we need to bring our professional development opportunities to their spaces too, but on the other, we need to be inclusive of and sensitive to the needs and concerns of all our membership.

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

Safe Spaces for DREAMers

A criticism of Safe Space (or Safe Zone) programs that has always gotten on my nerves is the question, "But why just the LGBTQ community? Don't we want our campus to be safe for all people?" Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with the sentiment of the person asking me the question, though it does make me question how the speaker feels about programs explicitly focusing on the needs of LGBTQ students (or any other social identity group, for that matter). Yet it has also given me pause as to why I feel so strongly that Safe Space programs remain structured as they are and not be watered down.

The main purpose Safe Space and similar programs serve on a college campus is identifying faculty and staff--institutional representatives--to whom a student can disclose her, his, or zir sexual orientation and/or gender identity without concern about potential negative repercussions. While college campuses today seem to be pretty safe places for students to come out, they weren't always this way--and for some students, depending where they are in terms of understanding this identity, they still are not. This is a need that is particularly salient for the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning) community. Identity disclosure carries much risk, and a Safe Space type program provides a way to alleviate as much of this risk as possible.

Tuesday's #MSAchat discussed the topic of supporting undocumented students on campus, which, for me, recalled my previous professional position working in a multicultural affairs office at a community college. I worked at a college in Washington State, a state where undocumented students are not only allowed to attend public institutions of higher education, but can also do so at the same rate as their in-state resident peers. The state has determined these students should be considered state residents as well. About a dozen states around the nation have similar laws, including three which also provide access to state financial aid (CA, TX, and NM).

I was also our campus liaison with the College Success Foundation, one of the largest scholarship providers for low-income students in Washington State, who intentionally decided not to make US citizenship a requirement to access their scholarships. In fact, many scholarship providers in states which consider undocumented students to be state residents use "state residency" as a requirement rather than "US citizenship." As a result, our office supported quite a few undocumented students, and I in turn learned much about what life without "papers" can be like.

After attending a forum on the DREAM Act (legislation pending in Congress to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented youth who had no choice in immigrating to the US but face few choices upon finishing school) at the University of Washington, one of the groups at the forum gave us placards to place on office doors and windows which were meant to indicate that the person in this office supports DREAMers (undocumented students). It was in that moment, in seeing the parallel between this action and the placards provided graduates of Safe Space training programs, I then realized that I was working with another population for whom identity disclosure carried much risk--and immediately placed the placard in my office.

After that, I started to think about how we make it known to DREAMers that we are safe people on whom they can rely as they pursue their educational goals. I began wondering what it might take to start a Safe Space like program for undocumented students, and was able to find one example after a brief Google Search (California State University, Long Beach). I mentioned this in the #MSAchat, and am hoping to keep this conversation going through this blog post.

I challenge student affairs professionals to learn more about the issues facing undocumented students in higher education. (Check out the College Board's advocacy website on the DREAM Act for more info, especially a great publication by Dr. Roberto Gonzales on the experiences of undocumented students.) Ask yourself a few questions:

• Do you know who undocumented students are at your institution? If not, why don't you? (I'm not suggesting we identify and label them--I'm suggesting there are reasons why professionals on our campus will be aware or not aware of their mere presence on campus.)
• If so, do you know what support services are available to them, specifically focused on their need for discretion?
• Are undocumented students allowed to attend college in your state?
• What are your state laws regarding access to public higher education for DREAMers?

On this topic, I think I'll write a follow-up post regarding my choice to attend--and experience attending--NASPA in Phoenix. Many of you are aware that NASPA's decision to continue to hold the 2012 Annual Conference following passage of Arizona's Senate Bill 1070 faced immense controversy in the field, including a decision by many professionals to not attend the conference as a result. I wonder how other professionals have been processing that experience and how it informs the way our professional associations conduct business in the future.

Let's keep this conversation going--how will we move forward with a campaign for safe spaces on campus for DREAMers? How are we, as higher education professionals, advocating for passage of the federal DREAM Act?

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

#SAchat as Scholarship

Joe Ginese recently posted about some of the more troubling aspects of the conference attendance experience. Mainly, much of his concern revolved around questioning just how much professionals attending national conferences (mainly NASPA and ACPA) gain professional development from these experiences. The conference experience is worthwhile, he argued, but how much of it revolves around finding ideas to bring back to our campuses rather than fostering an environment which encourages new ideas to transform our work and our profession?

In that sense, he concluded that attending national conferences does very little in providing these opportunities, and perhaps they should be rethink the way we do them.

I posted a comment that, for the most part, agreed with his points, though I felt an underlying issue was unintentionally omitted which could have even further strengthened his argument. In attending a conference on one's employer's buck, a person has to decide how to balance what she or he plans to get out of the conference personally for professional development with making sure that investment was well spent and ideas for improving the institution are brought back. But I gave this a little further thought, and I have another critique of Joe's post regarding the overall purpose of conferences. I'll get back to this in a moment.

In pondering the point of attending (even organizing) national conferences, I got to thinking about a point made by a former internship supervisor regarding the purpose of conferences for student affairs. She told me that presenting at conferences was a major way student affairs professionals engage in scholarship, a scholarship you might name, the scholarship of practice.

Let's look at the entire conference presentation process considering it as a form of scholarship. The first thing that happens is the presentation proposal. A student affairs professional, usually in collaboration with other peers, pulls together a proposal on a particular topic either within one's functional area, professional interests, or topic expertise. This proposal involves background research, an overview of the presentation content, and how the presentation will be facilitated. Once the proposal is complete, the author(s) submit it for review.

The proposal undergoes a peer review process where other student affairs professionals critique the proposed idea and determine if it merits space in the conference's overall program. The reviewers provide some feedback to the presenters related to whether it was selected for the program and how, if at all, it could be improved before the conference. At that point the presenters build their proposal into a full conference session and book their travel for the conference.

At the conference, the session gets a specific time slot in a particular room, and the presenters bring their materials, eager to engage the proposed topic with a (hopefully) full room of professionals also interested in said topic. Whether this happens in roundtable format, formal Powerpoint presentation, or, one of my favorites, as an "unsession," student affairs professionals with an interest in that particular topic gather to hear how a particular campus is addressing an issue or how people are finding innovative ways for professional development and engage with each other around that topic. The engagement may only be a Q&A session at the end of a formal presentation or throughout the session, depending on its format, but typically by the end of the session conversations about the topic have sprung up and, even more ideally, new connections have been made between participants. The session ends, but the conversation does not.

And this is the main vehicle by which student affairs professionals engage in scholarship. While it may not look like formal scholarship in publications, conference papers, or symposia, conference presentations are still a dialogic process, which is key to the scholarship process. Scholarship is a dialogue. The reason papers and articles include so much background information and previous citations is that each is a scholar's contribution to an on-going dialogue in the field. Scholars make sure to provide an overview of the dialogue as it has occurred within their fields to situate what they propose as a contribution. It has less to do with self-importance (though it probably does to a certain extent) and more to make sure to give credit where credit is due to situate one's work within the larger conversation.

In that sense conference presentations are contributions to an on-going dialogue within the field of student affairs. Presenting the program you run at your campus is not to just highlight how well you address a particular campus issue, but to engage your peers in a dialogue about that issue through how you address it in your work. Yes, we want to learn from each other new ways of doing our work which will enhance the service we provide, but much of the conference presentation is the continuation of an on-going dialogue on particular topics of importance to the contemporary student affairs field. Which is also why conference presentations need to be peer-reviewed (no matter how rigorous--or not--that process is).

In pondering this, I realized this is another critique I had about Joe's points. While it does make sense to provide space to talk about what's of immediate concern in the field, it's also important to recognize the role of the national (and regional) conference as a crucial vehicle for driving forward scholarship in the student affairs field (and again, not publications in a journal, but building the profession's conversation). This process does take time (unfortunately) but is also crucial in the advancement of student affairs.

After giving this much consideration, I realized a very important way in which this dialogic process happens on an on-going basis, especially between conferences. The #SAchat is an on-going conversation about student affairs. While it does not involve a great deal of situating one's tweets among previous tweets since the start of Twitter (you only get 140 characters!), the chat does flow as an on-going dialogue and is always full of some of the most relevant, important, crucial issues in student affairs today. And it still does involve a great deal of bringing in other voices to contribute content to the ongoing conversation--mainly through links to news articles, blog posts, and academic writing.

So forget the debate whether #SAchat is a network or a community--it's scholarship, and has thus been crucial to the advancement of the student affairs profession, possibly as much as the conferences themselves.

(Though, really, I think #SAchat is all of those--a network, a community, ongoing scholarship, and a whole lot more!)

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

Slacktivists Can Change the World

I was thrilled to finally participate in #MSAchat for my first time this past Tuesday. #MSAchat is a specific hour on Twitter where people involved in Multicultural Student Affairs gather on Twitter to discuss a topic currently being faced by this particular functional area within Student Affairs. This past Tuesday we discussed campus reactions to the tragedy of Trayvon Martin which had made the news recently, and following this chat a conversation regarding "slacktivism" has continued, which prompted this post.

I remember as a college student being involved in many causes aimed at raising my peers' awareness to important issues in the world around us. I was an active member of our campus gay-straight alliance (HERO--Helping Educate Regarding Orientation), our Women's Studies Club, and our Young Democrats, as well as having honorary memberships in a number of other clubs, and frequently attended rallies, vigils, and other awareness-building events to educate my peers on what was happening outside the bubble of the campus community.

The term "slacktivism" has emerged as a way to describe the type of activism that has taken predominance in the era of social media. This neologism combines the words "slacker" and "activist" to describe the phenomena of "retweeting" or "liking" status updates and internet posts about important issues in our contemporary world. The term has taken significant precedence recently due to the flurry of activity around #Kony2012 and #TrayvonMartin on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking websites, demonstrating the first time how far social media's reach can go when it comes to "spreading the word" about something catching fire in people's minds. Sarah Kendzior provides a great analysis of just how subjective and problematic slacktivism can be when it comes to raising awareness to important issues.

The main issue I see with slacktivism is how unprepared we are to discuss these issues at a systemic level, in a manner which has the potential to lead to deep, sustainable change in social structures which would produce meaningful change. On the one hand, you have #TrayvonMartin. This is certainly not the first time a Black man has unjustly faced a tragic end as a consequence of a system which considers Black men suspect outside very specific contexts. And this is certainly a tragedy that would usually pass under the media's radar were it not for the tireless efforts of Trayvon's parents and antiracist activists leveraging the power of social media as a tool to raise awareness to this injustice.

On the other, you have #Kony2012. You have a cause which has not escaped critique ("Invisible Children"), critique which has been public long before this particular Twitter hashtag was created, but critique that was fairly unknown until the hashtag caught fire earlier this year. Millions of social media users viewed and reposted (retweeted) this video uncritically before realizing just how complex the situation and how problematic the video's message really were, highlighting some of the dangers to which slackstivism could easily give way.

Yet these examples do not mark slacktivism's emergence in American society. I brought up my earlier example of being involved in awareness-raising efforts on campus because these effort were very much like slacktivism--they were confined to our college campus bubble and they involved little effort on students' part in being present at a particular place and time to demonstrate our passion for a cause. You see, to me, the key to slacktivism is how visible the demonstration is, yet how little it contributes to deeper, structural changes in society.

Take, for example, Gap's (RED) campaign (really, any campaign which involves making purchases for a cause). You purchase merchandise branded with (red) and part of the proceeds go toward fighting HIV and AIDS in the world, generally Africa. In other words, you purchase an item which shows your passion for a cause, yet you never question the decision in terms of, "Would it have been more effective to donate the $10 I put towards this t-shirt to a local AIDS charity in the fight against AIDS?" Typically these type of national AIDS campaigns were directed towards fighting AIDS in Africa rather than AIDS domestically (because the recipient might be gay!) and very little of the purchase actually goes toward the charity (these companies gotta make a profit). The consumerism these decisions uphold might actually be maintaining structures which allow AIDS in both the US and Africa to persist because a) they uphold the capitalism which prevents health care reform which would benefit domestic AIDS patients, b) they ensure insufficient resources for AIDS patients both domestically and abroad (too much is eaten up by company profits), and c) they impede the actor (purchaser) from considering other ways in which they could more effectively help the cause. In other words, more resources are utilized in maintaining the IMAGE of support of the cause rather than actually SUPPORTING the cause itself.

The major issue is how unprepared we are to critically examine causes to ensure that our efforts make a real difference toward causing change in the world. To me, the role of MSA professionals is to foster the critical and ethical examination of one's actions in the world as they inhibit or facilitate deep, sustainable change in the world around us. Social media itself is not an evil, and in fact hold great power to deeply change the world around us. It is our responsibility to develop the critical eye it takes to harness this power most effectively, and then empower our peers and our students to do the same.

How do you think social media will change the world?

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

What story would you tell?

What were some of the stories you were told when you were in college? I remember at my alma mater, Gonzaga University, everyone knew of our most famous alumnus (who actually never finished his program). Bing Crosby, who later received an honorary degree from the university, and who donated the money to build a library which was later converted into the student center but still bears his name, had grown up in Spokane, WA, and attended both Gonzaga High School and Gonzaga University. In reality, his passion for acting and music was inversely related to his interest in education and led to his departure, but in the stories we told on campus, his departure was initiated by a number of glamorous reasons, including unsuccessfully trying to hoist a piano through the fifth-floor window of one of the residence halls and dropping said piano to the ground instead. This is one of the many stories alumni of Gonzaga know upon commencement, an example of what I've come learn is called a "saga."

Clark (1972) introduced higher education to the concept of the organizational saga. A saga, as he wrote, refers to how members of an organization, such as a college or university, develop a collective understanding of some unique accomplishment in the organization's history that has significant meaning for the members. This collective understanding develops into a saga as organizational members retell the tale of that particular accomplishment but tend to add affect and embellishment in the retelling. It is through the added feeling organizational members give a particular story that the relative coldness and rationality of the organization melts away, inspiring strong feelings of loyalty to and pride in the organization among established and new members. Gonzaga alumni take some pride in the fact that they share an alma mater with Bing Crosby (though I will disclose there are aspects of the entertainer's life, like his history of abuse, which problematize this legacy).

Clark defined an organizational saga as an expression of a unified set of beliefs about an organization by its members that emerges from the organization's history about some unique accomplishment, characteristic, or circumstance and is held with conviction. Learning the sagas of a particular college or university is a way to understand its culture and values (not simply its history). I focused much of my final for my Organizational Analysis of Higher Education course on organizational saga, and found myself extremely fascinated with the whole idea of institutional "saga."

In doing a little outside research for my final, I came across an excellent example of a higher education organizational saga. President Emeritus of the University of Michigan Dr. James Duderstadt wrote an excellent overview of The Michigan Saga covering the university's history, symbols, and succession of leadership. The whole read was intriguing, but most surprising to me was how Dr. Duderstadt highlighted how the university's trend toward privatization could be linked to aspects of its history. It made me wonder whether the story would have been written in the same way at a different point in Michigan's history.

Sagas also emerge out of the multitude of experiences students and alumni have with their alma maters. Michigan State University started a project called "Spartan Sagas," collecting stories from current students and alumni describing how MSU played a pivotal role in their lives. The collective experiences we have with our alma maters shapes our values and our lives in ways that shape our loyalty to our institutions, the pride we take in having attended, and thus the overall legacy each institution has in our world. Reading through a few of these demonstrated for me much of MSU's legacy.

Think back to your own experience in college. What were some of the "great stories" that were told about your institution? What are some great stories from your time in college that have shaped your values and goals? If you were to write the organizational saga of your college or university, what story would you tell?

**Edit: Forgot to include my reference!
Clark, B.R. (1972). The organizational saga in higher education. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(2), 178-184.

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

Please indicate your sexual orientation (unless you prefer not to answer)

According to this news story later tweeted by Big Q Ethics, incoming University of California students will be provided the opportunity to indicate sexual orientation in addition to the demographics UC already collects on race/ethnicity, gender, and other characteristics. One significant difference is the UC campuses will collect this data after admission to prevent students from concerns over whether this could impact their admission to one of the 10 UC campuses.

Considering so far only one college (Elmhurst) invites students to indicate sexual orientation on their college applications, this marks a bold step forward toward collecting better data on LGBTQ students in American colleges and universities. The UC system includes over 220,000 students, making it one of the largest systems of higher education in the United States, possibly even the world. If we accept that approximately one in ten Americans identifies as LGBTQ, for the first time ever we could track the progress and retention of around 22,000 students to understand how (if at all) sexual orientation and/or gender identity impact college outcomes. There currently is no systematic way to understand this relationship on such a large scale.

What surprised me was how both the article and Big Q Ethics framed the issue. Both pointed to the fact that yes, making such a change is controversial, but that the greater concern is whether or not collecting such information is an invasion of privacy. Yet the CBS article specifically highlighted how collecting demographic data on sexual orientation and/or gender identity is supported by LGBTQ students and professional staff, and that as long as providing this information is voluntary, most people have no problem with it. So where's the controversy?

To me, there was once a time in American history when asking someone their sexual orientation or their gender identity was invasive and threatening. Of course, then, neither sexual orientation nor gender identity were seen as demographic characteristics--they were (and gender identity still is) considered personality disorders. And colleges were not interested at all in knowing whether their students identified as LGBTQ. Our institutions have changed. And it's about time we started collecting demographic data on sexual orientation and gender identity just as we collect demographic data on several other dimensions of identity.

I am a graduate student representative to UCLA's Committee on LGBT Affairs, and we had a conversation about this very topic in one of our recent meetings. The argument that asking students their sexual orientation is an invasion of privacy is simply a stalling tactic to avoid taking the bold risk of finding out how better we can enhance what we know about our students by expanding our list of demographics. In fact, faculty from UCLA's Williams Institute, the leading research center on LGBTQ affairs in the United States (with the U.S. Census they pioneered studying same-sex couples and families for the first time with the 2010 Census), presented to our committee several ways to ask about sexual orientation and gender identity appropriately. It's tough to be the first, or among the early innovators, but without those willing to step first how do we within the field of higher education move forward?

To me, it comes down to one very important question: What risk are we taking by not collecting adequate information about our students' identities and experiences which could provide more genuine insight into factors impacting their persistence and ways we can better serve them?

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

My College Completion Agenda

What defines the social value of higher education? Is it its ability to turn degrees into economic returns, or does it provide other benefits to society unrelated to money? A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education ("Tuning in to Dropping Out") attempted to address this question.

Economic development is clearly a social benefit of higher education. And with financial conditions like those we see today, this benefit has become a highly valued commodity. But where I disagree with the article is how it not only stops at describing higher education's value to society solely by its ability to drive the economy, but how it also devalues degree programs outside the science, technology, mathematics, and engineering (STEM) fields. Higher education provides value to society in more ways than fiscal returns.

I do agree that the STEM fields have an important place in society. I myself have a Bachelor's degree in engineering, and I currently work with the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA examining factors that contribute to underrepresented minority student success in STEM fields. These fields contribute much by way of technological innovation and economic growth, and far too few students are completing degrees in these fields.

There are other benefits higher education provides to society as well though. A major one is how college enables more effective civic participation. A liberal arts education (literally, education suited for a free person) emphasizes study in philosophy, ethics, morals, and other subjects required by people participating in activities like voting or serving the community. We live in a nation that since its founding has been led by college-educated individuals. This is a social benefit that cannot be measured within our gross domestic product.

Another benefit higher education provides is its role in solving social problems. The social sciences, other sciences, and other disciplines engage in teaching, research, and service directly aimed at understanding and solving social problems. Colleges also strive to equip individuals with the skills, knowledge, and behavior needed to personally contribute to enacting these solutions. Student affairs professionals are very familiar with this outcome as it impacts both students cognitive and affective development. How is this not of value to our nation?

Finally, and most pertinent to the examples (performing and visual arts) provided in the article, are the multitude of contributions colleges and universities make to the nation's arts and culture on an ongoing basis. We not only teach students about humanity's past contributions to culture, but we also create space for them to contribute to the perpetuation and progress of culture into the future. Universities have also provided much of the space for critique of our very understanding of what constitutes "culture" and "art." These contributions will provide unperceivable value as they benefit not only us today but also future generations on into perpetuity.

But does that mean everyone should go to college?

I take umbrage with the umbrella assertion that "college is not for everyone." Issues underlying completion rates are incredibly complex, and such a reduction seems to me to be an easy out. I don't necessarily disagree with the statement that college is not for everyone, and I think the stratification of career options following degree programs as opposed to vocational programs diminishes people's ability to make the right post-secondary decisions for themselves.

But even considering who should and should not attend college can be a dangerous exercise. How do we then determine who goes? Who deserves to attend college? College is more than continued personal and professional development for those who win the game of standardized test scores and high school grade point averages. And besides its intangible individual and social value, a college degree (even in the performing arts) is a privileged credential in society, and college attendance itself is a key to access networks of power and influence. From whom would you withhold this key?

Focusing on a number like "completion rates" also obscures many deeper, systemic issues that higher education leaders should be addressing. For one, how many students interested in STEM fields are diverted away from their intended course of study either due to inadequate preparation in the K-12 system or to experiences of marginalization and discrimination within STEM programs? Research shows that even though students of color express an interest in STEM programs at rates equal to or more often higher than their White peers, students of color complete STEM programs at exceedingly lower rates. Many switch into social sciences or humanities fields where they face far less isolation and marginalization than in the STEM programs they intended to complete. The author actually nails this on the head with, "Sit down, stay quiet, and absorb. Do this for 12 to 16 years...and all will be well." The dominant pedagogy in STEM can create a very "chilly" environment for students in these programs, and there are many STEM educators working on innovative pedagogies to retain these students.


A second problem this argument sweeps under the rug is the problem with systemic "tracking" of underrepresented minority and low SES (socioeconomic status) students into vocational programs, despite their true aspirations. The article actually trivializes this pattern by referring to vocational programs as "programs for at-risk students" in and of themselves. Students who attend underresourced high schools get nowhere near the level of college counseling as their more privileged peers, and most often are first generation students who cannot count on receiving crucial information about college choice at home either. These students end up choosing a "default" option, either being advised to consider their "best option" or having known peers and relatives who attended their local college. The article compares our system to that of German and other European systems of higher education, which tend to rely on more formal systems of tracking for placement of students. This tracking begins much earlier in a students' career, and potentially results in students making decisions about their futures very early in life. In this sense, I don't think the comparison is appropriate--although one can argue that our system functions in this way as well, just in more covert and systemic ways.


Overall, the issue is not the completion rate, nor is it deciding which fields of study hold more or less value for society. The issue is empowering students to make the best decisions for themselves--valuing their choices, ensuring access to adequate information, and providing ample support along the way. Our success is measured through their success--we know we've done well when our students reach their goals. This is what a true college completion agenda should be.


What would be on your college completion agenda?

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

Why it's also important NOT to run

This past Labor Day weekend was the Disneyland Half Marathon Weekend, but sadly, and very disappointingly, I had to forego my plans for 13.1 miles of running glory in my first-ever attempt at a long-distance race. My one word for 2011 was "demand," as I was had ambitious plans for this year (quitting my job to start my PhD, plunging into long-distance running, moving 1200 miles from Seattle to Los Angeles, turning 30), and in the process I've had to learn "demanding" of yourself means much more than simply trying to accomplish a whole lot of feats all at one time. It also means paying attention to the demands of your limitations, and realizing when it's time to reassess your goals and revising them to be met at some other time.

By the end of July, I had been making fantastic progress on reaching this half-marathon. My long-distance runs reached 8 miles, keeping me extremely confident in my ability to reach 13.1 in early September. Wade and I traveled to Southern California at the end of July to hunt for an apartment, and spent some time in Disneyland where I spent some time envisioning myself running with the throngs of people through the parks on a quest for that half-marathon finisher's medal. We returned to Seattle having successfully found a place, and I went back to work on my training.

My shorter runs that week went beautifully. In fact, in each of my 30-minute runs, I ran the farthest within that time period I had ever run before. I was looking forward to trying a 9 mile run that Saturday--I was really beginning to enjoy running through West Seattle on a weekly basis.

I started out just fine, but about an hour into the run I began feeling really tired and simply ready for the run to be over with. I mistakenly routed myself up a very steep street, and just did not want to push myself up that hill. I decided I'd walk up the hill and pick up my running at the top, but as I reached the top I could feel the usual aches that come after my long distance runs and realized I would not be able to start back up again. Sadly, this meant I had to walk about three miles to get home, but I just could not get back into it. I figured it was a bad day, I'd rest up for a couple days like normal, and get back on schedule to continue.

A couple days later, I set out on the first of my two shorter 30 minute runs during the week. This one started okay, but perhaps 8 minutes or so into it I felt very sharp pains in my knee (similar to what I felt that Saturday) and I could not run without limping. I had promised myself that if I felt any sort of pain I would stop--so I stopped, walked home, chalked it up to not allowing my legs enough time to heal between runs, and decided to forego my second short run of the week. I figured I'd wait about four days before trying another run to see how it goes. At this point I started to worry that it was something much worse, and that I'd need to see someone about it.

I did Tweet and post on Facebook about my woes, and got some good support and advice from people. I also went back to my marathoning book to reread the chapter on injuries. The best I could determine at that point was I was suffering from runner's knee, brought on by increasing mileage too quickly, but I wanted to see if I waited for the recommended number of days if that would make a difference. Four days later I set out to try to run 4 miles, and sure enough, nearly 15 minutes into the run I started to feel the pain again (albeit much duller than before). That was when I decided I needed to stop for a bit.

I did get an ice pack to help with post-run recovery, but I was faced with a bit of a dilemma. I wanted to see a doctor, yet at this point I was about two weeks from quitting my job and beginning my 1200 mile move down the Pacific coast. With all the other little tasks and activities that had to take place between now and then, wrapping up my job, and the race being literally a week and a half after we arrived in LA, I just didn't think I could squeeze it in. I tried one last time a week later to go for a run, and while I didn't feel any pain, I became very nervous and realized I didn't trust running on my knee without some professional advice and decided not to finish that run. At that point I decided I needed to forego this half-marathon, and as soon as my student health insurance kicked in I would try to see someone at UCLA about what I could do to get back on a training course again and attempt a half-marathon at some other point in the future.

It became a very emotional decision for me. I don't typically set goals for myself that I have to revisit and revise at any point--I (try to) accomplish every task I set out to do within the time frame I give myself to accomplish it. This was a very different kind of goal for me though, and it demonstrated to me how much I needed to learn about my physical abilities and limitations. I had a difficult conversation with my mother where she reminded me how both she and my father stopped any type of running as adults--she on the recommendation of her doctor, he after injuring his knee (around my age) when involved in a lot of races. My biggest fear is that I will get similar advice, that it just isn't in the cards for me, because all of a sudden this has become a personal goal I have begun to care about a great deal.

Wade and I still went to Disneyland over Labor Day weekend, though, which was somewhat difficult for me to face. We had registered for the race, and purchased pins commemorating the race which we had to pick up with our race packets (otherwise we would never get them, and we each spent a little money on those pins). We also signed up for the pre-race dinner which also cost a bit of money that we wanted to take advantage of. So here I was, still trying to figure out how to be okay with foregoing the race, surrounded by people who were all about to take part in this event, many for whom it was not their first, and feeling those same feelings of frustration and disappointment I had felt before. I knew not running was the best decision for me, but in my mind I began thinking, "Well, what about running some and walking some? What about speed-walking through the entire course?" It had been a good six weeks since I had any solid training for this race, and I did not want to be pulled off the course for not being able to complete the race on time, but I kept wondering if there were other ways I could finish.

I became very irritable and grouchy, and had to apologize to Wade several times for snapping back while we were picking up our packets and having dinner at the pre-race party. And I have to say, it was a bit stinging on Sunday to spend time in the parks watching all the people walking around with the finishers' medal around their necks, realizing that for so long (since January, in fact) I had imagined myself with one as well. As I told Wade on Saturday, I didn't want this to be the closest I ever get to finishing that race--and I am scared that it will be. But I know I made the best decision, and I'm sure after I get to speak with someone about it I will be able to sit down, revisit my goal, revise my plan, and get back "on track" all over again.

Number one to me throughout this process is care for myself, which is why I refuse to injure myself over something like this goal. I'm doing this as a way to challenge myself and improve my overall well-being--keeping myself healthy is far more important than making this happen right now, this year. Perhaps I bit off more than I could chew in setting my 2011 goals (which is okay), or perhaps I am learning something new about myself (and the human condition) that will have far greater opportunities for future growth than I can currently expect. So while I stayed off the course this year, look out in the future--I'll be out there, finishing my race, soon enough!

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

Another word on my "One Word"

Teri Bump asked on Twitter: How has your #Oneword2011 impacted your year--so far? My word for this year is DEMAND, which I deduced back in an earlier post of mine from January. Since July 1 marked the start of the second half of the year, I thought I'd reflect back to see just how this word has impacted and influenced my first six months of 2011.

As I mentioned in my post, the word came from a quote I tweeted as my 2000th tweet (wow, to think I reached 2000 in January and recently hit 3000 in June, more than 1000 tweets in 6 months!):

"The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself." -- James Baldwin

One indelible mark Jesuit education has made on my life is a commitment to make the world a better place. Social justice is a hallmark of the Jesuit educational tradition, and the giving of one's self through service is an infectious outcome of Jesuit universities' commitment to that tradition. I am a person who has always maintained high expectations of myself, and I have seen first-hand the legacy that can be left by adhering to a philosophy of being the change one wishes to see in the world (thanks, Gandhi!). To me, the key word within Baldwin's quote is the word "demand," which goes above and beyond the Gandhi's "be the change" perspective. "Being" is a passive verb; "demanding" is an active verb, often done toward someone or something. Making a demand means expecting returns (often from others); making a demand of yourself means you have to produce results for the biggest critic you will ever face in life.

This year, this has mainly applied to moving toward starting my doctoral program. I feel like I got into the best PhD program I could have, and much of this is due to what I demanded of myself in the application process. Now committing to a program and working toward a terminal degree will require a demand of myself to produce the best academic work I ever have in my life. And I want the challenge. I look forward to graduating, when I can look back and reflect that I had pushed myself farther in my life than I ever had before. I've accomplished something very few people in this world have even started. I'm also pushing my comfort levels a bit too in picking up and moving to a city that is fairly intimidating (Los Angeles). It's shaping up to be a major test, but I know that with immense stretching will come immense growth.

Another area where I'm demanding much from myself is my half-marathon (and soon marathon) training. I'm already seeing some growth in that area as I run longer and longer distances. This Saturday I'm planning to run 7 miles, which will surpass my 6 mile run from June 25 as the longest distance I have ever run in my life. That's the part of this process that has amazed me the most: every other Saturday, when I go for my long run, I realize that I continue to beat my personal record for longest distance ever run in my life. It's an overwhelming but empowering thought each time I complete a longer distance. It makes me look forward to beating that record two weeks later.

Now, demand does not mean forgetting about self-care either. If you are demanding high returns from yourself, you also understand that not taking care of yourself diminishes the results you can continually provide. I have a lot of forces pulling me in many directions right now (pending move, marathon training, fiancee, pets, work, church commitments, wedding planning, etc.) which can become very overwhelming to think about all at once. Amidst all this, I have to make sure I'm giving myself enough time to sleep, as well as eating healthy (which I could improve), taking time to do things I enjoy, and otherwise finding enough balance that I don't physically, mentally, or emotionally fall apart. The half-marathon training helps as physical exercise is generally the main item of which I don't get enough, and sleep is the second; knowing these helps me maintain a bit of focus and balance in my life. You may even consider self-care as an item I demand of myself--I demand to keep my life in balance!

Did you choose a "one word" for 2011? How have you seen that word shaping your first six months of 2011? If not, what word would you choose as your "one word" to define how 2011 is shaping up for you?

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

What I'm reading right now: Mentor, by Laurent Daloz

I feel blessed that my Student Affairs position (and functional area) allows me the opportunity to maintain longer term relationships with the students I serve on campus. Compared to my colleagues at the community college where I work, this is a fairly rare opportunity as our student affairs are oriented more around Student Services, so many of them handle long lines of students requesting services, rather than providing prolonged support or mentorship.

I am currently reading Mentor by Laurent Daloz, and though I am only into the second chapter, the book has already given me enough to think about that I've been inspired to write. Lisa Endersby and I have been involved in a long-term conversation regarding mentorship within student affairs, including planning a presentation for the upcoming 2012 NASPA conference. As a greater proportion of the students we serve in the community college are adult learners (compared to my four-year counterparts), I'm finding the book extremely relevant and descriptive of how I conceptualize my work. Granted, I will only be in this position for another month and a half, but the book was purchased for departmental usage and my reading validates it as a valuable resource for our work.

Daloz is using mentorship as a framework for working with adult learners in reaching their educational goals. In particular, he uses the metaphor of journey to describe the educational path of adult learners, and he describes mentors as the guides on that journey. I've had many conversations about the role of mentors in the lives of underrepresented and underserved students as these mentors can provide the type of guidance traditional students receive before and through their college experiences, but I haven't given as much thought to this role in the journeys of adult learners. In particular, I love how he describes the role of a mentor as engendering trust, issuing a challenge, providing encouragement, and offering a vision (p. 31). (Anyone notice challenge and support there?) These themes are of particular importance to adult learners as it respects the life experience they bring to college but recognizes that they too are students who want to learn and are looking to maximize their time "out of life"--not immediately focused on family or work--that they are on campus, in college. My experience working with adult learners is that they simply need reassurance to rebuild their confidence as students--that they are on the right track--rather than the more intensive needs that traditional students bring as emerging adults trying to figure out what will happen next for them in life. Often when adult learners return to school they fear they no longer have the same energy/ability/capacity to be students again, and simply need to be shown that yes, they do, and moreso, their life experiences can provide even better preparation than those moving from one school to the next.

Daloz also does a fantastic job balancing the content of his book--application of developmental theory, framework for mentorship--with stories from his own experience as an educator. As I continue to read I may come across more blog inspiration, but for now all I can say is that I highly recommend this book. Check it out from the library, or convince your director to add it to your departmental resources!

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

Reference: Daloz, L.A. (1999). Mentor: Guiding the journey of adult learners (2nd Ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

A Small Sign of a Big Legacy

On Saturday, I visited the place I went to college, Gonzaga University, for somewhat a final time in advance of my move to Los Angeles this August. Whenever I'm in/around Spokane, I love to drop by the campus, visit the bookstore, walk around to see what has changed and what has stayed the same, and reminisce about the "good old days." I graduated about seven years ago, so there definitely has been a lot of change over the years. Yet it still feels so familiar, trapped in time, where it can be 2004 again...

When I dropped by the residence hall where I lived my first two years, though, I was caught by a very touching surprise--through the front window, you could see the window of the RD's room right inside the hall entrance. And on that window, somewhat obscured by the glass and the fact the hall was dark, was a placard that I instantly recognized--a Safe Space placard.

Now, when I lived in this hall (2000-2002), I was just barely coming out. My first year I was able to come out to my friends, roommate, even RA, but I was still fairly cautious during my years in the hall. In fact, I had even heard a rumor my second year that someone in the hall knew there was a gay guy living there, and if he ever found out, he'd beat him up. So while I wasn't terribly "closeted" as you might say, I also felt a need to be on my guard to make sure I stayed safe while I lived there. My roommate was phenomenal, and I was a member of the gay-straight alliance on campus. I had a support network, but I also knew the reality of what life is like for an openly gay person in the world.

Now fast-forward to 2005. I'm a year into my position as an AmeriCorps volunteer at Gonzaga building up a brand-new LGBT Resource Center we successfully proposed just before I graduated. I got an email from a newer Philosophy faculty member to find out if we had a program like a Safe Space program, and how she could participate. Honestly, we did not. We wanted one when I was a student, but we never thought we could sway faculty and staff to participate in a training put together by us students. So she and I met several times, and I utilized the awesome network within the Consortium of LGBTQ Higher Education Resource Professionals, and we crafted a Safe Space program. I found a very simple symbol to use for our placards (the sign you post after you complete the session), a rainbow squiggle, and passed it along to a graphic designer friend of mine to clean it up and make it look professional. We were able to run the Safe Space program the summer just before I took off for graduate school, facilitating it for much of our Student Life staff. My faculty instigator continues to stay in touch and keep me informed on how the program has developed. She reassures me it has grown by leaps and bounds, becoming extremely successful and popular on campus.

But to see my old residence hall, where I was struggling with my own identity, and to imagine what it may have been like for a college student like me to see a Safe Space placard IN MY LIVING SPACE, I started to get a little choked up inside. It was a fantastic reminder of the role we all play in empowering our students to identify a need, advocate for a cause, and/or make a difference in their campus. My work led me toward an interest in the study of higher education, and the self-efficacy I developed from being a student leader has pushed me to seek more for myself and my accomplishments in life. And to think how quickly that could change for a student who may feel unwelcome or unsafe in their own campus living environment. Above all, nothing can be more meaningful for someone to realize that they left a positive legacy, no matter how small. It reminds me of our constantly repeated adage, "Leave a place better than you found it."

While it was great to see the campus again before I took off for my doctorate, what will leave the greatest impression on me--and continue to push me to seek more, to DEMAND (to use my one word for 2011) more from myself--is seeing that small sign of where I made a difference in the world, and to realize that there's still so much more to come.

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

What I've Learned from (Half-) Marathon Training So Far...

When you are training for a long-distance race, like my upcoming half-marathon, you find yourself with lots of time to think and reflect, especially upon the training process itself. Every other Saturday I ramp up my training and push myself to complete a progressively longer "long run" as Race Day approaches. This means I also get progressively longer periods of time to reflect as I run, typically thinking long and hard about the task at hand. And, first running 4 miles, and then 5 this past Saturday, I got to thinking about what I've been learning throughout this process--and how that might apply to other areas of my life.

First, I found I'm learning quite about persistence (or maybe it's tenacity?). On the mornings that I'm simply trying to put in 30 minutes of running, I've begun to look less and less forward to the tedium of running that same little bit as I just want it done, like a routine exercise. On the mornings that I'm pushing myself to do a longer run, I realize that the farther the distance I set out to complete, the much longer the time I spend in the activity of running. At a rate of 1 mile per 10 minutes, progressively pushing myself toward 13.1 miles means some days I will be running for longer than an hour--quite a bit of time for me to be engaged solely in one activity with ample time to daydream, and to think about how long it has been since I started. The real task in completing long distance is the mental task of not letting your psychology overtake your desire to complete your goal, and so I continually push myself to focus my thoughts toward keeping going, and not toward how much I'd like to be finished. I can see this sometimes with other tedious and routine tasks in my life--at work, at home (chores!), in my community involvement--and that a great deal of learning to persist toward one's goals involves learning how to love the journey--or at least of keeping your sight focused on the goal and continually committing yourself to getting there.

The most difficult aspect of my training regimen is the part where I get up, get dressed, and get out the door. I used to run in the evenings, but I've noticed that it's not as effective for me (mentally in particular) to try to train after a full day of work (and commuting). I have much better energy in the morning to complete a successful run, I feel much better throughout the day having run first thing in the morning, and I sleep a little better when I don't run as close to the end of the day. But that moment that my alarm goes off is a point in the day many of us dread--I'm not feeling the external pressure to leap out of bed to rush out the door to work, it's all an internal motivation to get out of bed as early as I do to ensure I get my run in before I start my day. But once I've pushed myself to get up, get dressed, and start my warm up walk, all of a sudden I'm raring to go. Getting started--taking that first step toward reaching a goal can be the most challenging aspect of the entire process--my life has been successful to this point; maybe it's not so bad if I don't achieve this one thing. But once you take that small first step--and for me, five minutes of walking to warm up for my run is a fantastic first step that I've learned gets me going--all of a sudden your major mental blocks start to clear and you're ready to continue your progress toward your goal. (This works with house-cleaning too; once you've accomplished one cleaning task you're ready to start another. It's weird.) And once you've overcome that one hurdle--in my case, finishing another successful 30 minute maintenance run--you feel ready to attack another. (Granted, in race training, it makes no sense to immediately start another 30 minute run. But for housecleaning, once you've loaded the dishwasher, wouldn't it feel great to wipe down the counters?) The biggest mental block in accomplishing something is at the start--but once you discipline yourself to start, clearing a small hurdle can motivate you to complete the major task at hand.

A well-laid plan toward achieving some goal can make that goal seem far more attainable. Sometimes we set goals for ourselves in areas we are already familiar, so we alter the path we used to reach a previous goal to fit our new plans. But more often than not, setting a goal means achieving something new, and in my case, the furthest I've ever run in my life was 3 miles on a track. When my fiancée approached me about setting a goal of running a marathon, I needed a) the confidence that I could realistically reach this goal in my life and b) some advice on the best way to prepare. Reading works very well for me, so immediately I went to a book store and picked up a copy of Marathoning for Mortals, on the bookstore staff member's recommendation. While I was reading, I focused on building up my running endurance (slowly) and took mental notes on items to remember when it came time to train for distance. After not too long I sat down and mapped out a training plan, and started tracking my progress. Often, when I'm not feeling motivated to run, all I have to do is convince myself to "make this week a good training week," and sure enough, come Saturday, it has been. Having a plan, breaking down larger goals into smaller parts, and keeping the deadline in sight are all crucial components of the goal-setting process. The other piece of advice from the book was to realize that one cannot expect a training plan to remain set in stone; as Stacy Oliver recently posted, life happens, and your plan will have to respond. One thing the book assured me--even if you have to skip one day, it will not throw off your overall goal, just get back on the schedule as soon as you can. And no single template fits all--you have to determine, to experiment, and see what type of plan will work for you to be successful.

I think the most significant thing I've learned (so far) from my half-marathon training is how I can push myself to do more than I ever thought I could. Perhaps I'm only now successfully training for the race because of other successes throughout my life, but I'm finding the little I push myself further every other Saturday to go farther the more 13.1 miles is feeling like an attainable distance for me. After I completed my 4 mile run a few weeks ago, I had the realization that 4 miles was officially the longest distance I've ever run at once in my entire life. I was very proud of what I accomplished, and started to look toward my next long run of 5 miles as a way of breaking my personal best. Sure enough, days before my 5-mile run I started to get anxious about completing that distance. "Well, I knew I could run 3 miles, so 4 was probably in reach, but I'm worried 5 might be beyond what I can accomplish." But I got up on that Saturday, got ready, and started my warm-up walk. There was a point in the middle of the run that I started to realize just how much further I was pushing myself, and with long-distance running it really means a much longer run duration; my training materials emphasized maintaining a pace where you don't tire yourself out. But as I persisted, overcame the obstacles of a longer run duration and a few hills, all of a sudden I rounded the corner toward the last few blocks, and realized that I had done it. Now 5 miles is now officially the longest I've ever run in my life, and with the experience of advancing from 4 to 5 miles behind me, I feel far more confident in being able to reach my next distance goal (which I believe is 6, close to half the distance I will eventually be racing).

One of the main reasons I've been thinking about all of this is a different upcoming transition in my life that will involve reaching a goal that very few people in the world ever will--starting my PhD program. For the most part, thinking about my doctorate has me extremely excited. This was within my plan from the beginning, and it feels great to be taking a next step in my professional and educational journey. And attending our commencement this year, looking at photos from other commencements, and Googling what the UC doctoral robes will look like have me daydreaming of what it will feel like to be at the end. But in the meantime, I begin thinking about all the work ahead, the classes, the research, the dissertation, the mental shift in how I approach my work, and it starts to feel a bit overwhelming. Starting the application process was a major first step--I'm sure many of you who have gone through the application process, whether for your Master's or your doctorate, feel the same way (asking for recommendations and writing a personal statement can take some energy!)--but now I've made a commitment to do this work, and at the doctoral level I set a great deal of my timetable for completion. As I work toward this half-marathon, a distance I don't think I ever imagined myself running, and possibly a marathon one day, I'm realizing that the self-efficacy I'm building in reaching these goals may help me persist through and complete my doctorate, on my time table, pushed by my own self-motivation.

How do you prepare for the half-marathons and marathons in your life? What sort of goal setting advice would you give others? How do you motivate yourself to achieve?

Bryce

Student Affairs in Multicultural Affairs

Back in April, Vijay Pendakur, Director of the Office of Multicultural Student Success at DePaul University, posed a few questions on his blog regarding the link between working in multicultural student affairs and student affairs professional preparation Master's programs. As a graduate of a student affairs preparation program (SDA '08, Seattle University) working in multicultural student affairs (Program Support Supervisor for Commencement Achievement Program in the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs at Green River Community College), these questions caused me to reflect on my experience. How would I answer these questions? What kind of advice would I give current graduate students hoping to work in diversity and multicultural affairs after graduation?

(Vijay's words are italicized; my responses are not.)

1. How many masters programs in higher education, student development, or educational leadership offer one or more courses to prepare students to work in Multicultural Student Affairs? To be more specific, how many masters programs effectively teach graduate students about the key issues, theories, and practices that inform successful work in a Multicultural Affairs department? A best practice would be programs that interweave this knowledge throughout their core curriculum, rather than compartmentalizing this set of issues into one course. Have any of you attended a program that does this well? Let us know!

To begin, I want to clarify how I view the role of a Student Affairs or Higher Education Master's program in the professional preparation of student affairs practitioners. I do not believe that our Master's programs are specifically and exclusively designed to be a credential for working in student affairs. Otherwise, we may as well offer them as smaller certification programs instead. So to say that any would offer courses specifically designed to train students for work in multicultural student affairs would mean that we ought to provide a variety of courses that focus on the functions of student affairs and lead us back to whether our Master's programs should not simply be offered as credentialing programs and not full-fledged Master's degrees.

I also think it begs the question about how permeable the boundaries between student affairs functional areas should or should not be--how hard should it be for a professional wishing to work in a different functional area to break into that functional area? I think there are specific skills and content domains that are exclusive to each functional area, but I don't think our programs should delineate themselves into molding every student into one area or another (internships, assistantships, and practicums do allow students to specialize).

So I definitely agree with the latter point that a best practice would be a program that interweaves this information throughout. And a start would be a theory class that makes sure racial, sexual orientation, gender, and other identity development is a required theory to learn for successful course completion. Another would be a program that actively fosters the development of cultural competence. Many professionals successfully run diversity and multicultural affairs offices without student affairs degrees, so I wouldn't say that it should be a requirement, but a student affairs professional has to know there is a specific content domain for working in diversity and multicultural affairs and that person should be willing to be open to learning as much about diversity and equity as possible. (I would hope most people working in student affairs already are anyways.)

2. How many masters programs in higher education have structured graduate assistantships or practicums in their universities’ Multicultural Affairs or diversity-focused offices? Without this type of practical experience, it will be difficult for newly minted student affairs grads to compete for coordinator positions in Multicultural Affairs departments.

To me, assistantships, practicums, and internships are the best way for prospective multicultural student affairs professionals to learn about the relevant practices and issues facing these programs in higher education. As I mentioned earlier, learning key theories and developing important cultural competence skills, knowledge, and attitudes is within the domain of the classroom, but understanding how to do the work of a multicultural student affairs professional is the work of the apprentice. I took required classes in Social Justice and Multiculturalism for my Master's degree, but I learned a lot more about the practical side of working in multicultural student affairs by interning in Seattle University's Office of Multicultural Affairs.

To me, the real treasure of completing a student affairs preparation program is the opportunity to link theory to practice through having side-by-side experiences exploring college student development (and college administration) from an academic (theoretical) standpoint and from a practical standpoint. We are not simply learning about how to work with college students and how to work in a higher education environment--we are also learning to change the way we think about issues and the way we learn about the world around us. We develop new research skills for taking in and evaluating information, and we develop new perspectives for understanding systems from macro- and micro-levels. As I mentioned earlier, we call it a Master's program for a reason, but future professionals do need to understand what these concepts look like in practice.

It reminds me of a point my classmates would reiterate whenever asked about what topic would they want to learn more in the program. They would state time and again that they did not learn enough about budgeting. Yet I had this conversation with mentors of mine who had experience working as Directors and Vice Presidents in student affairs to see their perspective on the matter, and they always told me it was something they learned from experience, and it was very little different than managing a checkbook. There are just some topics--like managing a program budget--that would not be addressed well in the classroom but could be covered well through a practical experience. (On this note, one of my mentors mentioned learning how to budget is more about establishing priorities than it is managing money, which makes me think it would be a great topic for a Leadership and Governance class...)

3. What conferences should graduate students and new professionals attend to learn more about the core competencies and best practices in Multicultural Student Affairs? I hear from my colleagues in residential education that going to NASPA and ACPA is great for broad professional development, but that they get the most useful material for their work in residential education from the ACUHO conference (or their local CUHO conference). I often hear staff in orientation offices saying that they get enormous value out of NODA, similar to our conduct officers’ remarks about ASCA. This spring, I am going to the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity (NCORE) for the first time. Is NCORE the conference to advance the core competencies, best practices and skill-sets of our field? I’ll definitely let you know after I get back from the conference this June!

I've wondered the same thing myself--where are our functional area professional organizations? In Washington State, under our State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, we have a Student Services Commission that oversees a number of smaller councils. One of those is the Multicultural Student Services Directors' Council, made up of all the directors of diversity offices at our 34 community and technical colleges. Participation isn't limited to directors though, and there is an annual Students of Color Conference hosted by the council in which many folks from around the state participate. Each of the national student affairs organizations, NASPA and ACPA, have Standing Committees/Knowledge Communities for multicultural student affairs. (My favorite so far is ACPA's Commission for Social Justice Educators as they have a very active listserv that shares invaluable resources.) Yet there are no specially designated conferences or professional organizations for multicultural student affairs professionals (that I can identify). Vijay may be right on the role of NCORE in meeting this need--I've heard the same assertion myself--maybe he will have more insight posted to his blog on this matter as NCORE wrapped up this past weekend.

As someone who is interested in the education, training, and formation of student affairs practitioners (and soon to be Higher Education professor/researcher), I love discussing this topic with my colleagues. What are your thoughts on the matter? How did your Master's program play a part in your professional formation? What role should Master's preparation programs play in the formation of future student affairs practitioners? Feel free to leave your thoughts

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

Faith in Student Affairs

One topic that is always of interest to me is religion. As someone who attended Catholic schools from 7th grade through my Master's program, and as a practicing Catholic, religion and spirituality play an important role in my life. I was thrilled to see the Blog Prompt Monday post on Student Affairs Women Talk Tech about talking about religion with students. It's a very tricky issue, particularly for those of us working/attending public schools. But it's a topic with important student development implications.

"Do you discuss religion and/or spirituality at your institution or ignore it? How do you think this affects students?" asked Kristen Abell.

Now, to clarify, I'm not talking about the type of religious discussions that we would normally characterize as proselytization. There are religious people for whom discussing religion is about converting their peers to follow their faith tradition, and (I suppose) there is a time and place and sphere for those conversations. The public sphere is not one of those. To me, the question is not asking people to promote their faith to potentially interested followers looking for something greater to believe in. To me, the question asks, how do we promote conversations with students--and with each other--where we share our values, our beliefs, and better understand what's important to each of us? How do we foster conversations about that which is greater--if we even believe there is something greater--and how that impacts our experiences of education, development, and life in general?

For me, continuing to practice Catholicism is no small thing. There was a point in my life when I could have easily abandoned my faith out of despair. When I was a freshman, I had a deep crisis of faith that coincided with my coming out process and openly acknowledging that I was (am) gay. I feared that as a gay man, I had no place in the Catholic Church--the Church would never accept all of who I am, and, in particular, the Church would never bless the loving relationship I knew I would eventually enter into. Yet in the years leading up to entering college, I had developed a deep appreciation for--devotion to--my religious beliefs, especially the Church's profound traditions, and it hurt to imagine I would have to separate myself from that love.

There are many things I never loved about the Catholic Church (keeping women out of the priesthood, too loud on abortion and not loud enough on human rights, dark history around sexual abuse), but I also saw the tremendous life-giving potential associated with religious faith and devotion. Luckily, due to my desire to attend a Catholic university, I landed at a Jesuit institution--Gonzaga University--where I met many Catholics, including Jesuit priests, who helped me negotiate these two seemingly disparate identities to engage the creative tension between them and reap the spiritual benefits thereafter. I always blame the Jesuits for keeping me in the Catholic Church, and I think I became even more devout after my college experience.

None of this would have been possible if it weren't for their willingness to discuss spiritual matters with students. And one could argue that it is somewhat expected both of a Catholic university and of spiritual leaders in the college setting to discuss matters of religion and spirituality with students. But I know many students who do not have the same access to private institutions such as Gonzaga, and many of these students are grappling with similar, to-the-core issues related to religion and spirituality that they bring with them to college. Some of these issues are best addressed with a person qualified for spiritual counseling, but I wonder if students might benefit from general discussions where they are allowed to provide some insight into the make up of their belief systems and how it has guided them in life to who they are today.

A recent study out of UCLA examined students' experiences of spirituality in higher education, and the findings showed students wanted to explore these issues further while in college. Often these matters drive students' passions in their studies and in their chosen career/vocational paths; perhaps it might behoove student affairs professionals to allow students to bring these experiences into their conversations to better help guide them through their educational journey. I don't necessarily make it a personal habit to discuss matters of religion and spirituality with others as I believe it to be intensely personal and I don't want to come across as someone looking for converts. But might it be to our students' benefit to open up discussions about religion and spirituality a little more often?

Bryce
Follow me on Twitter: @BryceEHughes

Moving along, the Conclusion

The week after finishing all my applications, after I completed my final application to the University of Washington and submitted it, I received a phone call from an unknown number (in an unknown area code). It turned out it was my former faculty advisor, who now teaches at Loyola Chicago. She was calling to let me know I was selected for an on-campus interview for their PhD program, and that more information was coming in my email. I was very excited to hear back from one school, and I was even more excited that it was positive news! I began to dream about my life with a PhD from Loyola.

But the bigger news came the next week. In all I read about putting together doctoral applications, it is highly recommended to mention faculty with whom you would like to work. I actually did not do this, mainly because it felt like a gamble--many faculty have research interests related to each other's and I would end up picking the faculty who don't have room. While this may not be a recommended approach for applying, I have to say it worked out well for me in the end. The week after my first phone call, I received another (unknown, from an unknown area code) while sitting in a meeting.

I listened to the message after the meeting, and just about dropped my phone. "Hello, I am calling from UCLA to talk to you about admission to our program. Could you please call me back either tonight or tomorrow when you get a chance? I'll give you my home phone number as I will be working from home tomorrow. Thanks." The voice on the other end? A faculty researcher at UCLA who, to me, is like a celebrity in the field (and no, it was neither of the Astins). Very unexpected. I had that moment of, "Really, is she calling me? My cell phone? Not a wrong number? My name didn't mistakenly end up on someone else's application?"

What I heard when I reached her the next morning floored me: "I wanted to let you know that you have been accepted into our program, that I have been assigned your advisor, and I wanted to offer you a job as a graduate student researcher on one of my research projects." In one sentence, she laid out every single aspect of a PhD program I needed addressed in order to realistically pursue my degree. I wanted to go full time and work on research, so I needed research work and funding. Working on a research project pays tuition, fees, and a small stipend, so it felt good that I now had a very viable option. I was originally cautioned that UCLA was going to be competitive this Fall, and that my research interests may not align as well, so it was a pleasant and welcome surprise.

The next week I got a letter from Penn State. I originally thought they were declining admission, so it was a huge surprise to read I was accepted! I also received a call from a faculty member there inviting me to work on her research, and at that point I knew it was going to be a difficult decision. But at that point I was also very affirmed in my decision. I was moving on when I needed to, and being accepted showed I was entering at the right time for these programs as well.

It started to get even more surprising, though, leading to a very difficult decision. UCLA was back in touch to let me know my name was put forward to receive a major financial award from the school, and then later let me know I was selected as a recipient. Penn State let me know I was one of seven students selected for a competitive college-wide assistantship, and the only student in Higher Education selected for next year. I scheduled phone calls with faculty and students at both schools for several weeks talking about the programs, learning about the differences in funding, and getting major questions answered about this decision. I knew it would be tough to turn either down as they were both offering a lot. I never knew I would be a competitive applicant (I had major doubts of this process even working out in any ideal fashion), so this became a huge surprise.

Ultimately, I went to visit UCLA and met a few other prospective students. I realized that I was in a very unique position to have funding and work lined up for the Fall, and along with the advisor to whom I was assigned, I knew which option was going to be best for me. It was very difficult though to write to the faculty at Penn State to let them know I was turning down their offer, especially the director of their research center who I could tell was excited about having another Higher Education student receive that special assistantship. But you can't do it all--decisions have to be made. I signed my intent to enroll in late March, and now I wait...

I'm excited to get started, but I'm sad to leave my current position! I'm going to miss the amazing students I've had the privilege to work with these past three years, and I will miss my amazing colleagues who have walked through some rewarding and challenging times with me. One thing I am extremely grateful for--I get to bring my #SAchat community with me! I'm so thankful for the internet and social media for creating new ways of establishing community. I also will be attending many conferences (a welcome change after three years of out-of-state travel restrictions) so I will have the opportunity to meet many of you IRL (in real life).

So pretty soon I'll be trading my life in the cooler, often rainier, Pacific Northwest (Seattle) for the sunny, fast-paced lifestyle of Southern California. While I'm not 100% enthused about living in Los Angeles, I'm excited to see what's in store. Stick around, I'll keep you "posted"!

Bryce

Moving along, part 2

I didn't expect my story to go so long! But I love weaving tales, and I thought breaking it up might make it easier to read. So let's continue...

All of my applications required academic references, and I knew exactly who I wanted to ask. I emailed my faculty advisor, the one I worked with teaching theory, knowing she would be a great reference. She is fairly well-known in the field, and has been recognized as an emerging scholar in student affairs.

After I hit "Send," I remembered something she mentioned to me over the summer that could throw a huge wrench in obtaining references from her on time--she was pregnant, and due in October! She could potentially be unavailable until January, and she was one of my best references! Sure enough, no sooner than when the thought occurred to me, her out-of-office message appeared in my inbox. "Okay," I told myself, "I guess I won't be able to ask her. I will go ahead and ask the other faculty member in our program. I got to know him pretty well during my Master's program too."

So I emailed our other faculty member. Another out-of-office message--he was on Semester at Sea, and wouldn't be back until January! I began to panic a bit--how am I going to get a good academic reference when my only choices are not available--but decided to email him at his Semester at Sea address anyways. Then I had to go back to the drawing board and start thinking through other people I could ask--I gotta get these applications done!

Luckily, the next day, right after I finished a phone call with my mother thinking through some alternative references, I got an email from my faculty advisor. She had just had her baby, and she could provide references for me--just not a formal letter. Luckily, as most colleges have moved to electronic reference forms, the electronic form was going to work for her compared to writing a letter, and I felt like I was moving forward again. On the other hand, my faculty reference on Semester at Sea knew he couldn't complete electronic reference forms due to his inconsistent internet access. He offered to write a letter, and have his administrative assistant mail it to the schools as needed. All he needed me to do was email him my resume.

In November, I went to Orlando with my fiancee to meet his family and spend a week at Disney World (and the other theme parks in the area). Over that time, my first two applications were coming due--and my emails to my faculty reference on Semester at Sea were losing their attachments. We finally realized that it wasn't going to work, and I needed to utilize a backup reference to complete one of my applications. So picture this--my fiancee and I are on a bus to one of the Disney parks (standing, nonetheless, as the bus was full), and I'm using his iPhone to email my references and to manage my applications to make sure everything can come in on time. Life can come at you in unexpected ways! Thankfully technology can make a huge difference in your ability to navigate those bumps...

After getting the first two done (due December 1), the other four came together much easier. My last one due, for the University of Washington, was due in early January, and then the waiting game began...for a week. I heard back from a school for the first time the week following completing all my applications.

The decisions come in the exciting conclusion to this (now) three-part entry! Stay tuned...

Bryce