Tag Archives: NC State

Lessons Not Learned, by Summer Finck, 2013 Alumna

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I regularly draw on the knowledge I learned in the hallowed classrooms of Poe and refer back to the “Green Book” and my binders of notes to inform my professional life. We learned in Capstone that recent Higher Education Administration graduates lacked knowledge of fiscal management, strategic planning, and staff supervision (Waple, 2006), so I was prepared to learn those skills on the job. However, my first year in a full-fledged Student Affairs Educator role has revealed some other gaps in my education.

1. How to Hire Someone. There is a lot of pressure involved in hiring people for your team. In my first year I was responsible for hiring twelve student Orientation Leaders, eight student Tour Guides, and have been involved in the hiring for two professional colleagues, as well as hiring committees. Being able to ask the right questions, discover the expertise and characteristics you seek, make judgments based on a short amount of time with someone, and navigating the Human Resources requirements are hiring skills that I wish I had learned while in grad school rather than on the job.

Summer’s Lesson: Always incorporate an experiential component. For my tour guide hiring process, I made all applicants take me on a tour of 3 campus buildings and their favorite spot on campus and I acted as a prospective student or parent. It allowed me to see their demeanor in a tour situation, their interaction with an audience, and their ability to handle tough questions on the spot.

2. How to Fire Someone. Unfortunately the opportunity to learn this skill came only two months on the job. While necessary, it was still an extremely difficult decision and a heartbreaking conversation. Practicing this sort of scenario with my classmates or graduate assistantship supervisors would have made the real thing a lot less intimidating.

Summer’s Lesson: When having that conversation, focus on the positives that can come out of this. Encourage the student or professional to reflect on the negative things that lead to the firing so they can prevent that in the future so that it does not turn into a bigger deal than it needs to be in the long run.

3. How to Handle a Crisis.  Most institutions have plans in place in the event of an armed intruder, student death, dangerous weather and other crisis situations. However, when you are on front-line of decision making in such events, the plans do not always apply. Risk management training could prepare Student Affairs Educators to make difficult decisions and evaluate different scenarios under pressure. I do believe our counseling component properly equipped me with the tools to handle post-crisis situations and support my students during difficult times. And let’s face it, nothing could really have practically prepared me for making calls on whether campus tours should be canceled during tornado warnings.

Summer’s Lesson: Ask for advice from your supervisor and coworkers. If time permits, reach out and get insight from colleagues at different institutions (I go to my HEA classmates all the time!). Do whatever you can to prepare yourself beforehand so the appropriate reaction is trained into your brain. Most of all, follow your intuition — it is always better to be safe than sorry in these sorts of serious situations.

4. How Amazing the NCSU HEA Program is. I am a part of the Wolfpack through and through. But I did not realize when I was in school how amazing our Higher Ed Administration program truly is. When I talk to Student Affairs colleagues and current grad students enrolled in the program nearby, I realize how perfect of a balance between theoretical grounding, practical experience, and counseling knowledge NC State has struck. I speak to so many professionals who have no counseling training, or tons of practical experience but are not familiar with emotional intelligence research.

Summer’s Lesson: Talk about it in interviews! Brag about how your graduate program has prepared you so well by setting you up with the information you need and giving you ample opportunities to practice in the field and compare to different institutional types so that you have developed into a well-rounded Student Affairs Educator.

I highlight these topics not to criticize our program but to encourage current students — and other alumni if they have not been in these situations yet — to seek out opportunities to practice these skills and glean insight from seasoned mentors. There is a ton of material to cover in two years of grad school and I clearly think our program does a superior job, but I wish I had known how to do these things when I started in the field.

Waple, J. (2006). An Assessment of Skills and Competencies Necessary for Entry-Level Student Affairs Work. Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, 43(1), pp. 1-404. Retrieved 21 Apr. 2014, from doi:10.2202/1949-6605.1568

And yes, I had to look up how to cite in APA format because while I definitely learned that lesson many times over in grad school, I have not used it since.

Connecting Classroom Learning with Professional Practice, by Tara Hudson

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One of the many things our program does well is helping students connect classroom learning, including theories and scholarly research, with their professional practice as student affairs educators and institutional leaders. As a graduate of our master’s program and a current student in our doctoral program, I can attest to how much value our faculty place on connecting theory to practice as well as on using our practical expertise to inform our scholarship. My assistantship experience this year has really illustrated these connections for me.  I’ve been working with a university-wide committee working to secure reclassification for NC State as a Carnegie community engaged institution.

To share a little background: NC State was initially classified in 2006 as part of the first group of institutions across the U.S. to receive this prestigious designation. By “community engagement,” Carnegie means “the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.” NC State literally wrote the book on institutional community engagement: our own Dr. Audrey Jaeger, along with Dr. Courtney Thornton, a graduate of our doctoral program, and several other faculty and administrators at NC State, published the defining scholarship on the topic after the initial wave of institutions were classified in 2006.

Much has changed since 2006, however; there are some ways in which NC State’s commitment to community engagement is less evident than it was eight years ago. And so despite our longstanding reputation as a national leader on institutional community engagement, our reclassification is not guaranteed. Yet there are many things we’re doing well, and the solid grounding in the scholarship of higher education I’ve gained through our master’s and doctoral classes—especially organization theory—has helped me recognize these strengths and advantages. For example, in constituting our reclassification committee, we made sure to include representation from a wide variety of units across the university. As a result, the committee has access to a much wider network of information and institutional resources to help us in completing our application, the wide participation helps minimize potential complaints about being “left out” of the process, and symbolically, we’re demonstrating that community engagement touches almost every part of NC State in some way. In fact, this is one of the things that differentiates us from other NC institutions who’ve been awarded the Carnegie classification—engagement is not a single office on campus, but rather has permeated the university. Yet this also complicates our committee’s efforts to collect data and relevant information, as the loose coupling (those who’ve taken org theory will recognize that term!) between different campus units means that much of the excellent engagement work that goes on here never receives the recognition it deserves.

Ultimately, understanding how higher education organizations function—which I gained through taking and co-teaching org theory—has given me insight into both the micro level of our reclassification committee’s functioning as well as the macro level of how engagement works throughout NC State. In turn, NC State’s experience with this reclassification process is providing us with rich material to follow up on the scholarship produced after our initial classification, to expand knowledge about what’s effective—and ineffective—in institutionalizing community engagement for the long term. Serving on the Carnegie reclassification committee has given me a lived experience with how practice informs scholarships informs practice as well as an opportunity to apply what I’ve learned in my classes in “real life.” I know many of my colleagues in our program have had similar experiences with their assistantships, and this is, in my mind, what makes our program one of the top higher education programs in the US.

“Do you know anyone in Florida?” by Becca Bender, 2013 Alum

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“Wow you’re moving to Florida? Get ready to sweat.”
“Hope you know how to survive a hurricane.”
“Why would you move from NC to a place that gets even hotter?”
“That’s going to suck to like, start all over.”

These were some of the real life questions and comments I got when I decided to leave North Carolina, where I have lived my whole life, and take a job at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida (southeast coast, just north of Fort Lauderdale). Point of advice to everyone – don’t make stressful, somewhat negative comments to someone who is already freaking out about moving hundreds of miles away from friends and family!! After unsuccessfully searching for jobs in NC (where I assumed I would be my whole life), I redefined my job search and participated in C3 at ACPA in Las Vegas. Through that experience, I was fortunate to  be offered the job for Coordinator of Student Involvement, working with service and leadership.

The biggest adjustment for me, moving to a brand new place, was/is finding PEOPLE. It’s so different than being an undergraduate/graduate student, where you have tons of people around you all the time to hang out with. I am lucky that I have great co-workers, who are around my age and also new to the area, but I’ve found that it’s really important to me to find friends outside of work. There should be a class in grad school, or even in undergrad about HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AS A GROWN UP. Seriously. Nobody tells you these things.

As someone used to having lots of friends and family around to entertain me at all moments of the day – I’ve had to get creative being in a brand new place. A few things that I’ve tried include:

  • Joining a gym. The plus is that Florida offers really cool fitness classes on the beach. It’s a great way to meet other people and a good outlet after work.
  • Meetup.com: I’ve always been a little sketched out by online activities. But Meetup is cool because there are interest groups based on whatever you want to do. There are book clubs, running groups, networking, fitness, happy hour, etc. And the coolest part is that literally everyone that goes to events is in a similar situation trying to meet new people. I’ve met some cool people through those events and they have led to other, non-Meetup hangout time.
  • Join a professional group: This is a great way to meet people but also help in your career. I work in service and leadership – I joined the Junior League in my town which is a women’s group focused on community development. So far, it’s been a great way to meet other like-minded women and learn more about community partners in the area.
  • Find other professional opportunities: I managed to make some higher education connections outside of my job at Lynn, which has been helpful and helped me meet other SA pros in the south Florida area. I got involved with LeaderShape in SoFL, which is a collaborative institute between 7 institutions. INSTANT NETWORKING! I also got connected to a fraternity at Florida Atlantic University, which was in need of another adviser, through HEA’s very own Scott Leighty! I feel like these connections help me branch out from my job and help me meet other people to add my social and professional network.

I was really scared moving to a new place – especially after I really thought I would be settled in NC forever. It’s still pretty scary. Not really knowing what comes next. This is the first time in my life I’ve started something that didn’t have a built in deadline. But it’s also exciting! …to be starting in a new place and figuring out how to make it on my own. I’m learning a lot about myself and what I need and want out of my life and my job. My best friend from home made the trek with me from NC to FL and when I had a mini-breakdown two days after we arrived here (because it’s scary, I was going to be all alone, I didn’t know anyone, it was a million degrees out…fill in the blank), she said something I’ll never forget. She said, “Becca, just do it because you can!” And I can. As I am finding out. 

It’s All About Balance, by Ashley Grantham

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One of the things I have struggled with the most during my doctoral work so far is finding balance:  balance between school and work, research and coursework…and I know a lot of you are in the same boat!  I am by no means the poster child for time management and work/life balance, but I’ve discovered some helpful patterns that help me keep it all together.  If you’ve found ways of finding balance and managing your time that work for you, please share them with the rest of us—we’d love to hear them!

Exercise in the mornings

When I decided to go back to school, I was already employed on campus and decided to continue working when I started the program.  On nights I have class, I’m on campus from 8:00am until 7:30pm and by the time I get home, the last thing I want to do is go on a run or head to the gym.  I’ve switched around my schedule so that I start my days with exercise a few days a week which gives me more energy to get through the day and also prevents my workout from getting bumped when unexpected meetings or other complications arise during the day.

Prep your food on Sundays

I try to bring my lunch and make dinner at home as much as possible, but at the beginning of the program and during peak busy times in the semester was relying on fast food and take out much more than I liked.  I came across a blog post recently written by a woman who preps all of her food for the week on Sundays, and decided to give it a try.  It has been a lifesaver! I cut up all my meat, wash and prep vegetables and fruits and put everything in bags or containers labeled with the meal the ingredients are for.  That way, when I get home from class or work, I can just dump everything in a pan and enjoy a quick, healthy meal. You’ll be less stressed about trying to get dinner ready or figuring out what you want to pick up on your way home and you’ll likely save money by eating at home more often, which is always a good thing!  

Schedule fun

This one sounds a little counter-intuitive, but it is working for me!  You could fill up your whole life with research and studying in graduate school if you wanted to.  I used to have the mindset that if I wasn’t working all the time that I was wasting time, which left me stressed and burned out.  Now, I make sure to schedule fun activities into my calendar (dog walks, tennis, lunch with friends).  Planning a fun outing gives me something to look forward to and also helps me stay connected to my support network of family and friends. 

Taking these steps has helped me become a happier, healthier graduate student. While we often talk about the courses we are taking, the projects we are working on, and professional development activities we are participating in, graduate students don’t often talk about our lives outside of work and school, creating a culture of constant “busyness.”  Hopefully, establishing a sense of work/life balance now as graduate students will help us all become more balanced professionals in our future careers, no matter which path we take.   

See Yourself as Part of the Picture Perfect Pack!

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19, 51, 16, 11, 18, 3, 1

What do all of these numbers have in common?  They are all related to 2014 Higher Education Recruitment Weekend.

19   There are only 19 more days until Recruitment Weekend officially begins.  Starting on February 13, candidates will get to meet faculty, staff, and current student to learn more about our awesome program.

51   This is number of candidates that have signed for Recruitment Weekend!

16   How many states are represented at this year’s Recruitment Weekend?  You got it.  16.

11   11 employers from various institutions in the Triangle will be coming to Recruitment Weekend to interview our candidates.

18   North Carolina State University’s College of Education national ranking!!!

3   Three days packed full of interviews, exploration, and fun!

1   The one and only Wolf Pack!  GO PACK!                                                                                

Be on the look for opportunities that you can help out for Recruitment Weekend!