The Student Affairs Blog

Gone FISHing!

We just completed the first of four half-day mini retreats for our peer leaders. These students will be facilitating our first-year seminar course in the fall and they spend this semester building team relationships and studying student development in preparation for their work. A favorite concept that we utilize is the FISH! Philosophy. We introduce the unit early and refer back to it throughout the year. FISH! includes four simple interconnected practices that are easy to remember and fun for activity transitions.

Be There is being emotionally present for others. It's the idea that respect and engagement improves communication and strengthens relationships. For our peer leaders, this means setting personal issues aside so that they may focus on issues and challenges facing their students whenever needed.

Play emphasizes that being creative and enthusiastic, whatever the job before you, can make work and tasks more enjoyable. Our first-year seminar focuses on college transition and exposure to campus resources. We encourage peer leaders to try new instructional methods and not be afraid to step outside the box or the classroom. Play-doh, crayons, and an occasional set of Guitar Hero all have potential for Play application.

Make Their Day is about finding simple ways to serve those around you in a way that is memorable and has meaning. It's about contributions and service to others, without expectation that it will be returned. Peer Leaders are encouraged to learn student names right away to help ease early transition. Many leaders bring class treats or host surprise field trips to the ice cream shop.

Choose Your Attitude is about taking responsibility for whatever your day or life brings to you. It's about how your demeanor and mood impacts others around you. Does your attitude help people around you? Grumpy moods contribute little to our program goals. We focus on accepting life's obstacles, then getting on with the day. This concept is particularly handy in our 8:00 a.m. class.

We borrow the FISH! video from the campus resource library and purchase supplemental materials when needed. FISH! is a simple, fun method for generating a service philosophy with new student leaders and is great practice for our staff as well.

Self-fulfilling prophecy? Excuses for failure

You've heard the joke about the college students who after an evening of partying missed a final exam, claiming a flat tire. The professor told them they could make up the final on the following day.  At the final, the professor placed them in separate rooms, handed each of them a test booklet and told them to begin. The first problem, worth 5 Points, was on the subject matter. The next problem was worth 95 Points. It asked: "Which tire?

A NY Times article highlighting ego protection and lowering of expectations suggests that some students protect their failures and lack of achievement through self-handicapping. Excuses ranging from "I didn't buy the textbook" to "I overslept" are just the tip of the iceberg as students engage in self-defeating behaviors that evade success. If allowed to continue unfettered, self-handicapping behaviors become workplace headaches, characterizing individuals as unreliable very early in their careers.

During the spring semester, I meet with first-year students who were not academically successful during their fall semester. Many of these students were early identified as not performing to potential, and were monitored for intervention opportunities. I wish I had a nickel for how many times I have heard "the professor hates me", "I don't understand the teaching assistant", or "I lost the syllabus". Instead, I develop a schedule of advising appointments with students who frequently rely on excuses versus making a genuine effort at academic achievement. The task becomes helping these students recognize how their actions or inactions define them. Utilizing a discussion on responsibility is a positive beginning to the semester.

What does it mean to be a responsible student?

• If you are responsible, you are reliable. 
• If you commit to enrolling in class, you will complete the required assignments. 
• If you are responsible and you have an assignment, you will do it on time and to the best of your ability. 
• If you are responsible, you will think about the consequences before doing something. You won’t do anything that will jeopardize yourself or your college career.
• If you are responsible, you will be accountable for what you do, and you won’t make excuses or blame others for your mistakes. 

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.   ~~George Washington Carver

They Don't Know What They Don't Know

Students and new staff members will frequently ask me about surveying their students.  They often seem very matter-of-fact and self assured that they've found an answer to one of their pressing programming  issues:  what to present on campus.

It makes sense at first glance.  Wondering what to program on campus?  Ask your students!  Brilliant.  And wrong.

Here's the problem with surveying your students in order to plan your programs:  They don't know what they don't know.

The vast majority of the students on any campus are blissfully unaware of the universe of student activities programs that are available.  They don't attend APCA and NACA conferences.  They don't read Student Activities Journal, Programming  or Campus Activities magazines.  They don't even read this blog.

They essentially have no idea of what's available in the marketplace.  They don't know what they don't know.

Ask them what bands to book, they'll tell you "My Morning Jacket" or "Fall Out Boy."  If you ask about comedy, they'll tell you Chris Rock or Dane Cook.  Odds are, your campus can't afford those acts.  Or at least not all of them.  So you haven't gained much from your survey.

But more importantly,  my original premise:   They don't know what they don't know. 

Ask your students:  would you like to stick your hands in different colors of hot, molten wax?  Really?

Yet we've all seen students at conferences line up for hours, waiting to produce their very own "Wax Hands."

Ask your students:  would you like to see a ventriloquist?  Really?

Many students may not even know what the word means.  Yet we've all seen students rolling in laughter over Dan Horn, Jeff Dunham, or Taylor Mason.

I often liken entertainment surveys to asking children about dinner.  If you ask the average child what he or she wants for dinner, they'll tell you what they know:  they want a Happy Meal.  And if that's what you always give them, they never learn to appreciate more exotic food like broccoli or sushi.  Don't we all know college students whose diet consists of burgers and chicken strips-- because it's the only food they learned to like?

Take your co-curricular duties to heart.  Remember that you serve an important teaching function on your campus.  Avoid a regular diet of "Happy Meals" for your students.  Book some unusual programs, events that aren't even on the students' radar.  Your students-- and your campus-- will be better for it.

Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty as seen in Student Affairs

As Erik Bates discussed in his prior post, there is an assumption in student affairs that we are above impoverished populations; that we only see the privileged students who are well on their way to success. Yet there is a back channel that defines many of the students we enroll. A story that frequently is unknown and can be the cause of academic distress and ultimately attrition of our students. How do we serve the students who are trying to do everything they can to make a better life for themselves? A life they may have never seen?

The following is excerpted with permission from the scholarship application of one of my first-year students:

Neither one of my parents went to college, nor did they graduate from high school. My mother had me 5 days after her 16th birthday. My dad is a laborer, so he never made much money. I have a brother 4 years younger than me, somehow we still had a childhood. Then the major problems started. My parents were both alcoholics and battled drug addiction with my dad ending up in jail. My brother and I both were taken from our parents and put into a foster home. Luckily we were allowed to to move in with our grandmother, but with no steady income, we were moved to another foster home. Then we were again sent to live with our parents. Somehow dad went to jail again and then we moved in with our other grandparents. When dad got out, he came to find my mom and us. Together, their addictions got worse and it broke off our relationships with nearly everyone. Mom left and dad stuggled to keep the up with rent at a house we got next to our grandparents. Dad got drunk just about everyday. I was forced to take care of my new one-year old sister. I remember missing a week of school to stay home and watch her since she was too sick to go to daycare and dad wouldn't stay home. I still kept my grades up and took honor classes that year. I didn't have one grade lower than a B. Mom came back to live with us and it was all good, until one night. Dad pushed mom and I jumped up and ran into the room to break up his actions. I was scared of him my whole life and now I stood up to him and was ready to take him on. I stopped dad from doing any more and I got my little sister. The cops were called and both of my parents were arrested that night. I made the decision to move back to our grandparents with my siblings.

First-generation students with high financial need are a staple of many college campuses. We in Student Affairs need new plans of action to serve students for whom there is no outward expectation or preparation for the investment in college. With tuition costs and student loan debt soaring, we must meet the needs of these students through academic support and engagement while inspiring them to complete a degree. We need to keep trying.

This post is part of Blog Action Day.

Disrupting Class and Student Affairs

I just finished Disrupting Class, by Clayton Christensen, et. al. It's a terrifically interesting book for anyone interested in education.

Christensen is an expert in innovation. In the book, he brings his concise, clear, highly useful frames for thinking about improvement and change over to education.

Of particular interest to Student Affairs, I believe, is the historical narrative listing the changing goals of education.

A quick summary:

Job 1: 1830's - Horace Mann lead a charge to formalize schooling around a Jeffersonian goal: educate students to be citizens in a democracy. Only elite students went on past grade school.

Job 2: 1890's - Provide something for every student. Prepare them for a variety of jobs so that everyone can be employed. This required high school, and diverse offerings in high school. In 1905 only a third of students made it to high school and only a third graduated. Even fewer made it to college. By 1935 75 percent were entering high school and almost 45 percent were graduating. Both breadth and depth of services exploded. With 1954's Brown vs. Board of education high schools opened wide to all of society. While the number of high schools in 1930 to 1970 stayed about the same at 24,000, the average number of students per high school exploded tenfold from around a 100 to over 1000 by 1970. The larger high schools had an unheard of variety of programs with a growing number of student support services. By 1960, 69 percent of high schoolers were graduating- an impressive record of success.

Job 3: 1960's - Keep America competitive. Sony, Canon, and Toyota all started to displace their American competition. Policy makers drew a correlation between performance of American students vs. their foreign peers. Standardized tests were the metric, education, again, was the solution. In the influential 1983 report "A Nation at Risk", the federal government questioned the breadth of services, suggesting it muddied the focus on the more important core competencies. It said "students have too many choices". In short, the goal post had moved. What was good - more offerings to prepare everyone - was now bad.

Job 4: 2001 - Eliminate Poverty. the No Child Left Behind act changed the goal from bringing up the average standardized test score to bringing the highest number possible up to proficiency. It's a subtle, but important shift in the value system.

Christensen sums it up:

"Society has hired education to do four distinct jobs."

Impressively, education as a whole has shown steady improvement towards each goal as it has been defined. The very difficult challenge is simply that the goals keep changing.

Now education is "in a crisis" not because it's doing a bad job per se, but because it is being measured by different people with different, and shifting, value systems.

It does not make sense to blame administrators and teachers for falling short on the new metric of success. Any judgement of success must be placed in context. An important part of that context is clarity on what the current goal is and what metrics go with that goal.

The Student Affairs professionals in my circle often talk about "taking it all on" and constantly struggling to complete assessment that is both actionable and in line with the value systems of the school and their supervisors.

Do you feel like your job goals have changed during your tenure? Are you clear on the big picture? Is your supervisor and school on the same page?

In the same book, Christensen offers a great frame for addressing disconnects - but that's another post.

Stress? Keeping Your Head Above Water

It's near the middle of the fall semester for many campuses and there's a chance you are feeling that pinch of stress. That feeling that we have bitten off more than we can chew and overcommitted ourselves. Again. The feeling of a schedule becoming out of control that may require snorkle gear if we reply to one more email request.

Stress raises our adrenaline, resulting in increased heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure. These increases make bodily organs work harder. A little stress is good and keeps us on our toes. But over the long term, too much stress can lead to illnesses such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke.

The MBTI Blog discusses our stress as an In The Grip experience, or being forced to react contrary to personality preferences. Usually my recognition of being in a Grip experience arises when I am counseling a student with school anxiety and realize I need to take my own advice.

In my first-year seminar, we discuss the symptoms and effects of stress and ways college students can alleviate stress through planning and organization. For a bit of fun, we encourage students to add more stress to their lives with a few of the suggestions below:

♦ No matter where you are going, always leave for the appointment at the time you should be arriving. On the way there, drive, walk or ride your bike no further than two feet from the car or person in front of you.

♦ Don’t pay attention to your body. If you feel yourself becoming over-stressed and tired, ignore it and keep pushing yourself.

♦ Make a special effort to take note of the irritations in your life and blow them out of proportion. Be resentful and hypercritical, especially toward yourself.

♦ Refuse to take action on nagging problems. Procrastinate, worry, and whenever possibly lose sleep over them. Blame other people for all of your problems.

♦ If you’ve been sleeping less than 4 hours a night, consider eliminating this activity altogether.

Stress Management Tips offers great information, games and exercises to introduce to your students. Me? I'm practicing a little deep breathing until finals week.

What causes you stress? Do you have a favorite stress reliever?

Using the Five Whys

"The Five Whys" is a method of distilling the true cause/effect of an issue.  Simply put, it involves asking the question "why?," and then asking "why?" of the answer.  The pretense is that if asked five times, that simple question will take you to the heart of the matter.

When I first heard of the Five Whys, I was told it was an ancient Chinese technique.  Later I learned it was neither ancient nor Chinese-- it had been developed by  Sakichi Toyoda at his automobile company to aid problem solving.  Whatever the source, it's a useful tool.

A quick example:  My car won't start.  Why?  Because the battery is dead.  Why? Because the alternator isn't working.  Why?  Because the belt broke.   Why?  Because it was worn out.  Why?  Because I didn't follow the maintenance schedule. 

So the root cause of my car failing to start is my own neglect of the required maintenance.

The concept is to peel back the layers of an issue, and get down to the true problem or concern.  But is also works in helping to determine a purpose.  I like to use it to analyze a situation, condition, proposal, or issue.

It's especially useful in developing a purpose or mission statement.  While assisting an SGA to create a mission statement, I began by asking them why the SGA existed.  "To be the voice of the students" they replied.  Why?  "So the administration will know the students' opinion on important school issues."  Why?  "So the school can better meet the students' needs."  Why?  "So more students can get an education."  Why?  "So they can become successful productive citizens."

So the SGA's real purpose is to help students become successful graduates.  That's a totally different idea and more powerful purpose that just being the "voice of the students."

While it may seem a little hokey, and the number five is pretty arbitrary (could be three, could be six), it does seem to work.  Maybe looking at the path we've come will make the path ahead seem more clear.

The next time you're faced with a decision, issue, or question try the Five Whys.  You might just get down to the "heart of the matter."    

Black Hawk Down? Parents in the affairs of students

I had to post this New York Times article on helicopter parenting at summer camp. Reading about the cell phone hiding, demands made of camp staff, and encouragement of rule breaking helped me recognize where some of our students develop their co-dependence.

Judith Warner followed up on the story, highlighting this parental behavior as affluenza, or the mentality that there are no holds barred in demands for service to supplement status and identity. Warner cites the trend as prevalent among children of economic privilege, and yet I see the tendencies in my work with first-generation, high financial need students. I field calls and email weekly from parents requesting information or seeking exemption from program activities or assignments. My response? Facilitate discussion and decision making...with the student.

Thanks for the information, Mom and/or Dad. I will be happy to discuss this with your student and I'm in my office now...ask them to stop by.

How do you engage with hovering parents on your campus?

MBTI: Type in Student Development

As I prepare for my student leader retreat next month, I appreciate utilizing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) for program development.  As a Type practitioner, I have long used the MBTI to facilitate the transition to college in my first-year seminar.  I reintroduce Type in my leadership courses for comprehension of differences and strengths development.

Understanding new methods of instruction in the college or university can be challenging for any new student and is especially so for my students from small, rural high schools.  Type assessment in the first-year seminar helps students understand their preferences for learning and methods that will enhance individual learning.  Reviewing the principles of Type for my student leaders promotes understanding of diversity and differing work styles.  These skills become important as they engage in event planning and classroom activities for different learners.

Breanne Potter describes one of my favorite MBTI activities, the Living Type Table (LTT).  The LTT is a great practical exercise that gets students on their feet while demonstrating that learning and work style differences are real.  The activity shows that Type is systematic by sorting participants based on responses to Type specific questions.  For example:

When learning something new, do you like to:  Talk out your thoughts?  -OR-  Keep your thoughts inside?

When learning something new, do your prefer:  Solid facts? -OR- Intriguing Concepts?

Building the grid and moving into the 16 areas of the LTT is a fun activity that helps students define personal preferences in work and learning styles.  Check with your Human Resources office to partner with a trained MBTI facilitator on your campus or seek a referral from the Association for Psychological Type.

Beyond Facebook Applications

"A dot.com is on the computer. When you go there, you do something on it." 

Ahhh, the wisdom of a kindergartner describing my latest foray into Web 2.0. 

So what is that something?  What does it do for us in Student Affairs? 

I was an early adopter of Facebook on my campus.  By early, I mean somewhere in between the university rollout in 2004 and before high schools were invited to join in September 2005...early by Midwest standards.  Facebook became a novelty for checking the pulse of my students and colleagues.  It was humorous to argue its merits and always sparked interesting conversation among my student leaders.  When did facebooking became a verb?

The class of 2010 arrived on campus as the first group of students to have Facebook in high school.  They were networked, had added a truckload of university "friends", and expected me to be in tune with their needs.  Just as Kevin discussed in the Strange Power of the Go-Getter Freshman, they used Facebook Messages for email because it was easier than looking up my actual email address.   I had a responsibility to become a Facebook user, not just a guest.

Iowa State's Facebook network has 36,477 members up from 21,500 in January 2006.  There have been 222 Facebook story references in the Iowa State Daily.  Online identity is discussed in our campus orientation programs and is a lecture topic in my first-year seminar.  I am a frequent Facebook advertiser and have profiles pages for each of the programs I coordinate.  I also recognize the interpersonal divide that social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace may create for students seeking meaningful connections to peers and the university.

Searching for utility in student social networking, I helped initiate Red Rover on our campus to link new students to clubs and student leaders.  With nearly 700 registered campus organizations, our students need useful navigation tools.  I am now spending my summer tracking down our many student leaders (on internships in remote destinations without email access) to engage them in this new web tool. 

Applications like Red Rover build connections so students can move beyond Super Poke to actual networking through shared campus interests.  How cool is that?  A Facebook application where your students can do something besides stalk their friends.