Thanks to everyone who participated in our #SAchat focused on Summer #AltProDev Ideas. This week’s topic produced 588 tweets from 10 student affairs professionals, graduate students and undergraduates interested or working in the Student Affairs field!

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I’m sure the title of this blog will throw readers considering that I recently just graduated with my own Masters in Counseling. However, when I say my first commencement, I mean the very first commencement that I helped organize and run for the students at my current job.

The entire experience is so different. As a graduate you come to the location excited, anxious, overwhelmed, and overjoyed. But you as the student do not notice the amount of work which goes into planning, organizing, and implementing the ceremony which lasts no more than 2 or 3 hours at most. Here’s the secret of it all. If you, the graduate, do not notice the labor that goes into the ceremony itself then the ceremony was a great success. Indeed, the graduates are not supposed to know how much work is involved but rather get on the stage to get their diploma while smiling for copious amounts of pictures.

If everything is done correctly then the graduates do not know that you, the staff, have spent months planning the ceremony. They will never know that you arrived at the facility numerous times to discuss the details for the event. The students do not know that you, the staff along with student workers, arrived at the location the night before to set up for the big day. They do not know that you arrived at the location at 6 am the day of to finish setting up while running on maybe 3 hours of sleep which to most is a cat nap. They do not know that during the event you, the staff, are running around trying to look calm while solving every possible problem before it occurs. They never know that when it ends this overwhelming sense of relief hits you and you feel the great weight of how tired you really are both physically and emotionally.

Instead, they, the students, come to you right after to hug you, thank you and take pictures with you because they regard you with respect and admiration. In those pictures you feel as though you look so tired even though you are smiling from ear to ear. You congratulate those students and then set off to clean up. The irony being that planning the event takes months while cleaning up takes about a 1/2 hour. Ultimately, during that clean up time you, the staff, begin to plan for the next commencement ceremony by going over what could have gone better and thus developing a new plan then and there for the following year.

Yes, the students never see you sweat. Instead, they bask in the glory of their big day with no complications and you the staff let them have their day.

I am proud to say that, that was exactly how my first commencement went, and I was especially proud of my team that day.

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It will soon be a year since The Oprah Winfrey Show went off of the air. Like clockwork my TiVo was set to record Oprah on a daily basis, and sometimes it would accidentally record an episode twice as though it wanted to make sure that I watched it. Oprah was my go to person for information on a topic, for advice on how to deal with a certain situation, or even the place I went to for an ugly cry. I can honestly say I’ve probably seen every episode of Oprah in my adult years and in vulnerable times have been known to sometimes ask, WWOD – “What would Oprah do?” I must also confess that I have not watched the final week of the show. It has been sitting on my TiVo for the last year as my hope was to watch it when the time was right. I think the time is finally right. The last couple of weeks have been challenging for me, as well as others, as we focus on our professional futures. If you’re a recent grad you may still be looking for that perfect job. If you’ve been in the field for a while as a new professional you’re probably looking for a mid-level or a different position. So when you’re going through a difficult moment when it comes to the job search, all you need to do is ask yourself, “What would Oprah do?!”

You’ve submitted about 20 cover letters and resumes in the last couple of weeks and no responses?

What would Oprah do? The reality is that sometimes it may take submitting applications for many, many, many jobs before you land the one. While we may hope that every job we apply for we automatically receive an interview, that’s just not the case. For some, you will think that you’re 100% qualified while the organization may think you’re not the right fit. You’re feeling anxious and you might even feel like you’re reaching a breaking point. Oprah would tell you to hang in there and keep submitting applications but that you might need to consider revamping your search technique.

You keep getting interviews but don’t get the job!

What would Oprah do? If you’re getting interviews, then you’re definitely doing something right! If you’re not landing the job, that doesn’t mean that you blew it or were not good enough. Ultimately, it probably means that you made their short list of candidates but someone else might have been a better fit for the position. If this is constantly occurring, Oprah would ask you to review your interview style and approach. Are you prepared? Are you able to elaborate on questions with concrete examples of experiences?

You didn’t get the job that you thought was your dream job?

What would Oprah do? When you think you’ve found the job for you and your interview blew everyone out of the water BUT you still end up not getting the job, Oprah would say: “You didn’t get that job because it wasn’t the job for you!” In addition to Oprah, you will probably have a lot of people telling you this and that there is something better on the horizon. Sometimes you won’t believe it but you have to believe it. You will not always get what you think you want. The universe has its own plan and sometimes you just have to be okay with that.

(Questions based on comments on #saschat and #sasearch.)

Nekesa Straker is a Residence Hall Director at New York University.

“When all think alike, then no one is thinking.” – Walter Lippman.

I really enjoy attending conferences.  I hear some interesting talks and chat with some impressive professionals.  At the same time I recognize how outdated their structure and format are.  Apparently other professionals have been feeling the same way (Check out Erika Thompson‘s delicious Stack with links to most of the conversation).  I might be a little late to this party but I  I wanted to throw a thought into the ring.

The conversation’s I read centered around reconstructing conferences to make them more nimble, up-to-date, relevant, thought provoking, and so on – all valid points.  For this post I want to focus on conference content disruption.  Joe Ginese remarked that sessions are not so much about innovation, rather repurposed ideas that are offered as “possibly” applicable to your campus.  I agree with that but I see it going a step further.  The session content itself may not be traditionally innovative but what professionals do with the content is meant to be innovative.  The content we offer attendees become the tools for future program growth, but if we offer sessions lacking depth and richness, then the outcomes will mimic.

I was an Interdiscplinary Studies major as an undergraduate – which I am pretty sure is the technical term for an academic mashup.  One belief that was hammered home that I still believe deeply in:  Innovation sparks when multiple disciplines are brought together to see what can be created. HigherEd conferences probably can’t be considered a mashup of discplines. This is not to say that innovation and great ideas aren’t created at these meetings of the minds, but when you bring folks within the same profession together every year… the outcome isn’t going to shift much. There needs to be a spark that brings a little disruption to our conferences.

Let’s tentatively call it the National Professional Exchange. I picture the system looking like this:  A HigherEd professional organization makes a connection with another professional organization, one outside of higher education but that represents applicable professions.  These two organizations strike an accord that allows 5 or so professionals to attend the other associations conference at discount price.  Think of it as an investment in the group and their ability to come back with applicable fresh and innovative ideas for their peers. The professional would be enrolled as a NPE Fellow and tasked to engage with participants, present, and then bring back new ideas to the conference and discussed in an unconference setting.

This type of AltProDev is burgeoning as can be seen with the BIGIdeas conference in New Jersey. The conference organizers are having professionals in outside industries lead presentations and discussions.  Simply put, I LOVE that. You can also find live streaming conferences andor twitter backchannels that can give a similar experience.  All in all there are a number of ways professionals can find accessible professional development.  Would a National Professional Exchange be a viable option for AltProDev?

Do you think this system could work? Would it add to the conference experience?

The impetus for this post is a gripe I have about student organization constitutions. Many universities require student groups to generate a constitution as a prerequisite for recognition. Yet how many of our offices have constitutions? How many of our campuses have constitutions? Does any group you belong to anywhere–besides the United States of America and maybe the Rotary Club–have a constitution? (Do an Internet search on “organizations with constitutions” and you’ll get a slew of university “how to” pages for their student groups.)

My primary concern: relevance.

Leadership/followership education is challenging, messy, complicated work. There’s no manual, no surefire way to guarantee success. But because it’s so important—so vital—this work can also be very rewarding. We must approach leadership education thoughtfully by creating relevant and meaningful ways for students to learn and engage. We need to help them see connections between all of their leadership/followership experiences–class projects, part-time jobs, families, student organizations, future careers, and more.

Here are a few things for us to ponder:

1) Effective groups have a shared purpose. In his TED Talk on “How great leaders inspire action,” Simon Sinek discusses the power of people who connect around mutual beliefs and dreams. How do we help students identify and articulate purpose and then use purpose to form and ground groups? Would developing a statement of purpose be more centering than hammering away at a constitution?

2) Effective groups have active participants. How do we help student groups establish organization norms–member-generated and mutually agreed upon standards for participation? And then, how do we work with students to identify and address unsatisfactory performance in their groups and to confront, coach, and even “fire” when appropriate? Some faculty members are now allowing groups to remove project-team members who fail to meet agreed-upon standards. Students generally appreciate this option (and use it), and it teaches a valuable skill (and lesson).

3) Effective groups understand that problem solving is a process. Simply saying that food service or parking sucks isn’t enough. How do we coach students to explore why something is the way it is, first? Our campus library houses our University’s archives, where students can learn things like why our institution once had a child-care center and now doesn’t. Many colleges have well-known “historians,” faculty and staff members who have lived through years of changes and enjoy talking about them. Solutions that show a grasp of the past have a better chance of gaining approval.

4) Do we overuse the term “student leader” when we could/should be saying “students when they’re leading”? When we speak about “student leaders,” we are often referring to students with titles–Resident Assistants, Student Government officers, etc. These students are certainly leading in this single capacity; however, they are also participating in groups led by others. They are following. When non-titled students hear us speak about our “student leaders,” they often don’t see themselves, even though they may, in fact, be leading without a title.

5) How are we learning about leading and following? We have access to much wisdom through TED Talks, blogs, and other resources (all of which can be used with students, too). Are we practicing what we teach? Students are watching us. They see how we are leading and following, both in terms of actual behaviors and skills and in terms of the quality of decisions being made.

What are your experiences with leadership and followership? What initiatives and tools are having the most impact? How have your leadership programs evolved? What work still needs to be done?

Lisa Tetzloff is the Director of the Office of Student Life at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

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What are some other topics you would like to see us cover? Please let us know your ideas and feedback to keep #sachat growing strong. Until next week, (if you haven’t already done so) please make sure to LIKE our Facebook Page. Thanks for your continued support!