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008 - The Expectations and Satisfaction of Residents with Autism | Dustin Grabsch [Article Review]
4 Plays3 years ago
April is World Autism Month, so this episode aims to share the stories of residents with autism. To do so, we are joined by Dr. Dustin Grabsch from Southern Methodist University who published an article last year in The Journal of College and University Student Housing exploring the expectations of residents with autism to increase satisfaction with the on-campus living experience. We discuss the five themes that emerged from the resident interviews including academics, campus housing, community, roommate expectations, and the student experience. Throughout the episode it become abundantly clear that professional staff need only think just a little bit deeper to find small-scale and simple ways to better support residents with autism. Plenty of resources are provided for staff to explore on their own time to increase their individual knowledge and skills surrounding the topic.
Be Sure to Thank Our Guests!
Connect with Dr. Dustin Grabsch on LinkedIn
Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.
Resources Mentioned
Understanding the Expectations of Students with Autism to Increase Satisfaction with the On-Campus Living Experience [Journal Article]
003 – Resident Assistant Hiring Decisions [Podcast Episode]
Hiring Decisions of Graduate Assistant and Full-Time Hall Directors on Resident Assistant Recruitment [Journal Article]
Autism Speaks [Organization]
Texas A&M Explores Living Learning Community for Those on Autism Spectrum [News Article]
Talking Stick [Magazine]
College Autism Network [Organization]
Students with Asperger Syndrome: A Guide for College Personnel [Book]
College Autism Network Training Courses[Training Courses]
FEMA Independent Study Courses [Certifications]
Committee on Publication Ethics Cases [Organization]
Recommended![025 - Fun Topics from the ACUHO-I Community Forum | Joel Gatti [Feature Topic] image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/605db9539a00e40074826685/733e7e3d-9d73-4dce-9fd9-65d29d14b4dd.)
Transcript
Introduction to the Swakuho Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Swakuho podcast.
00:00:03
Speaker
I'm your host, JC Stoner.
00:00:05
Speaker
This is our second article review where we hope to make research more accessible to our regional housing staff.
Supporting Autism Awareness Month
00:00:11
Speaker
Our first article review was episode three with Dr. Craig Seeger at the University of Central Arkansas about RE hiring decisions of full-time and graduate level staff.
00:00:22
Speaker
April is World Autism Month, so this month's episode aims to support the mission of the Autism Speaks organization in sharing the stories and provide opportunities to increase understanding and acceptance of residents with autism.
Interview with Dr. Dustin Gropsch
00:00:36
Speaker
To do so, today we are talking with Dr. Dustin Gropsch, who last year co-authored an article in the Journal of College and University Student Housing titled, Understanding the Expectations of Students with Autism to Increase Satisfaction with the On-Campus Living Experience.
00:00:52
Speaker
The article, of course, will be linked in the show notes.
00:00:56
Speaker
To amplify the voices of students in housing with autism, after his introduction, Dustin and I will jump right into the article exploring the lived experiences of residents with autism.
00:01:06
Speaker
We will then circle back around to some of the professional development and transferable skills associated with writing for publication.
00:01:15
Speaker
Dustin is a proud first-generation college student and holds a bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degree in leadership-related fields.
00:01:23
Speaker
Originally from Warren, Michigan, Dustin enjoys boating, hiking, DIY projects, and writing in his spare time.
00:01:31
Speaker
He currently serves students as the Director of Academic Initiatives at Southern Methodist University.
00:01:37
Speaker
As the director, he oversees the faculty and residence program with the 11 residential commons, facilitates the peer leader program with over 85 student leaders,
00:01:48
Speaker
leads an interdisciplinary social science research team comprised of students, faculty, and staff, and lastly works with the Engage Dallas student directors and four other academic and student affairs offices to offer Engage Dallas, a place-based community engagement initiative benefiting South and West Dallas.
00:02:08
Speaker
Dustin, welcome to the show.
Research Origins and Goals
00:02:10
Speaker
Thanks, JC.
00:02:11
Speaker
It's so good to be here.
00:02:13
Speaker
We're really glad to have you.
00:02:14
Speaker
Your article explores students with autism and their expectations with campus housing and the college experience.
00:02:21
Speaker
Where did the idea for this research come from?
00:02:24
Speaker
I was actually talking with Hannah Melton and Carly Gilson.
00:02:28
Speaker
They are the two co-authors on that.
00:02:30
Speaker
Dr. Gilson is at Texas A&M at the time as well and is assistant professor of special education.
00:02:36
Speaker
And Hannah Melton was a graduate hall director with us at Texas A&M when I was there at the time.
00:02:42
Speaker
And we had just launched a new Spectrum LLC, so an autism-based living learning community that got quite a bit of national media attention when it first launched, which was a partnership with our Disability Resource Office, as well as our special education area in the College of Education, and then, of course, Resonance Life.
00:03:02
Speaker
And so we had that new program going and Hannah, our graduate hall director, who wasn't able to join us tonight, really had that idea of wanting to kind of explore and do that as an independent study in her graduate program.
00:03:15
Speaker
And so with her willingness and kind of time and energy devotion, we kind of came up with this idea of really framing it around
00:03:24
Speaker
what are the student experiences and expectations of living on campus?
Challenges in Research Recruitment
00:03:28
Speaker
And so, JC, I know we talk about a lot in higher ed and student affairs about the concept of like managing students' expectations, right?
00:03:36
Speaker
Like we're better able, if we know their expectations, we can manage them if they're too high or too low or meet them in the middle.
00:03:44
Speaker
And that is essentially what the impetus was for this.
00:03:47
Speaker
We wanted to understand what expectations are
00:03:50
Speaker
residents with autism were coming in with so we could better manage their expectations and be realistic about what Housing and Residence Life staff can provide them when they're on campus with us.
00:04:01
Speaker
So what specifically about it made it important to research?
00:04:05
Speaker
One of the things when Hannah and I were really digging into the literature, one of the things you'll find around students on the autism spectrum is that the sample sizes tend to be pretty small because it's hard to get at that demographic of students because of different ways in which folks on the spectrum identify, whether they're formally diagnosed with the disorder in the DSM phase.
00:04:27
Speaker
And they have that official diagnosis or they might be on the spectrum, but are choosing not to receive disability accommodation.
00:04:34
Speaker
So you see in the literature, it's very hard to get a hold of that group.
00:04:38
Speaker
And then you also find that when you're asking traditional like quantitative methodologies or questions kind of in a survey scale, you don't get at that depth of insight that students lived experiences really have with them that they can unpack with you.
00:04:54
Speaker
And so the time intensive process of sitting down and really getting and digging into what on-campus life is like takes a little bit of time.
00:05:03
Speaker
And so we really saw a big gap there and realizing too, that we had this new living learning community that we were kicking off.
00:05:11
Speaker
We were trying to also better inform maybe how we could market the program or get more folks interested, both families and parents, and then also help inform
00:05:20
Speaker
future programming of the living learning community.
00:05:22
Speaker
So for all those reasons, it really led us to dig into this topic.
00:05:27
Speaker
You mentioned the gap in not having interviews or qualitative data to really inform this.
00:05:32
Speaker
So why was interviews the way to go then?
Interview Methodology Insights
00:05:36
Speaker
You know, every housing operation is a little different.
00:05:39
Speaker
We did see some talking stick articles that if you haven't checked out talking stick in a while from Akua, I highly recommend it.
00:05:46
Speaker
They had some pieces predating our publication on students with autism.
00:05:51
Speaker
And what they were talking about is different architectural design or things like that.
00:05:55
Speaker
But a lot of that was just based off of recommendations from like the college autism network or other types of like nonprofits or organizations.
00:06:05
Speaker
They have a lot of recommendations for students and families who are sending their resident or student off who identifies on the spectrum to college.
00:06:13
Speaker
They have a lot of resources there, but you will find pretty quickly that it's just anecdotal things.
00:06:18
Speaker
There really isn't research that can be generalized or that has been operationalized to the larger housing profession.
00:06:26
Speaker
And so we really wanted to give voice to that.
00:06:30
Speaker
And in our mind, too, we wanted these solid recommendations about what were expectations, how were they met, and how were they not met.
00:06:39
Speaker
And if they were not met, let's dig into it.
00:06:41
Speaker
And we really needed that space through an individual interview process.
00:06:45
Speaker
And really, I don't know, you know, not to stereotype, but in my experience working with students on the spectrum, they tend to be very straightforward and to the point in their answers.
00:06:55
Speaker
So sometimes if you have to ask the question in different ways to really get at the meat of the experience, because they're really no nonsense and give you exactly what you ask for.
00:07:05
Speaker
And so sometimes the questions we were asking on a survey were
00:07:08
Speaker
or an open-ended response really weren't getting what we had intended to.
00:07:12
Speaker
And that was probably us asking a bad question, but we had to have that space to ask those follow-ups.
00:07:19
Speaker
That's so interesting.
00:07:20
Speaker
I'd never thought about that possibility of the robustness of the examples provided or the richness of a very blunt, direct statement versus someone who just likes to talk about it.
00:07:35
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:07:36
Speaker
You mentioned that part of the challenge with exploring students with autism and their experiences is recruiting participants and that challenge.
00:07:48
Speaker
How did you go about recruiting participants such that you were able to conduct your research?
00:07:53
Speaker
My colleague, Dr. Gilson, who I mentioned is an assistant professor at A&M and focuses on special education and specifically students on the autism spectrum,
00:08:03
Speaker
We really leaned on her because Hannah and I had never done research methods related to this special demographic of students before.
00:08:11
Speaker
And so we really wanted to lean on her expertise.
00:08:13
Speaker
And we went a lot of different directions there about asking the question about formal diagnosis,
00:08:19
Speaker
contacting disability services and asking them to send out invitation for the research for folks that are registered that have that disorder that's on their records.
00:08:29
Speaker
So we went a lot of different ways with this.
00:08:31
Speaker
And we ended up with, we really wanted to open this umbrella up to get anyone who identified.
00:08:36
Speaker
And so what we ended up doing is actually asking an entire census.
00:08:41
Speaker
So all students who lived on campus at A&M, which
00:08:44
Speaker
excluding the Corps of Cadets, which ended up being around like a little over like almost 9,000, I want to say, if I remember correctly, students.
00:08:52
Speaker
And we had them answer one screener question, do they identify as a student on the autism spectrum?
00:09:00
Speaker
And we didn't ask about the disorder and the diagnosis specifically.
00:09:04
Speaker
We had a bunch of students reply about a 14% response rate there.
00:09:08
Speaker
And
00:09:09
Speaker
About 79 of them had indicated that they identify on the spectrum.
00:09:13
Speaker
And we ended up completing interviews with seven of them.
00:09:17
Speaker
There was a lot of scheduling things or folks that didn't show up or didn't follow up with us after we tried to reschedule, but talked with seven and we ended up reading, reaching data saturation with that.
00:09:27
Speaker
And then what did you find any limitations with your sample?
00:09:31
Speaker
Oh, for sure.
00:09:32
Speaker
I think the two that we noted in the manuscript were A&M, if you're not familiar with the institution, is a predominantly white institution.
00:09:39
Speaker
So all of our participants were white identified.
00:09:43
Speaker
So that was limiting in the diversity there with racial regard.
00:09:47
Speaker
And then also we noticed that our sample had no first-generation college students in it.
00:09:52
Speaker
And so there are some limitations there with just kind of those layering and intersectional experiences of students that we weren't really able to get at with our sample in particular.
00:10:03
Speaker
Looking back, is there any way, if someone was to conduct this research again, was it a recruiting issue or was it just a sample issue?
Key Themes on Housing Expectations
00:10:12
Speaker
So if I recall correctly, those 79 that indicated they were on the spectrum, honestly, we've
00:10:20
Speaker
Hannah and I could have probably followed up a little quicker or been more on top of getting those things scheduled.
00:10:27
Speaker
A lot of it was scheduling and it was near the end of the semester.
00:10:30
Speaker
And you know how it gets with
00:10:31
Speaker
finals and folks trying to get ready for the holidays or leaving.
00:10:36
Speaker
And I think we ran up against that and that likely impacted recruitment.
00:10:39
Speaker
So my recommendation would be try to time it in that beautiful period right before midterms, right after midterms.
00:10:46
Speaker
But you know how hard it is to get into those beautiful little spaces in this semester.
00:10:50
Speaker
Well, and when those spaces do occur, sometimes you want to take advantage of them in other ways.
00:10:55
Speaker
Oh, for sure.
00:10:56
Speaker
Like, you know, maybe a little bit of R&R, right?
00:10:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:00
Speaker
Let's jump into what you learned.
00:11:02
Speaker
Your article says that four main themes came out of your interview.
00:11:06
Speaker
So what was first up that you all learned?
00:11:09
Speaker
We really kind of categorized or themed the findings.
00:11:13
Speaker
And remember, again, what we talked about in the beginning, this was about managing or understanding expectations related to housing.
00:11:20
Speaker
So we identified that the students we talked to had expectations for housing related to academics,
00:11:27
Speaker
related to the academic support programming and services.
00:11:31
Speaker
We also had things related to campus housing and just the community they were able to create, as well as roommates, which was its own category related to the overall student experience.
00:11:43
Speaker
So to dive a little deeper in each of them, the first, which was related to academics, we found that students had expectations mainly around transitioning to college and kind of academic degree programs and experiences.
00:11:58
Speaker
So a lot of questions from students around majors and minors,
00:12:01
Speaker
And assuming that both housing staff and everybody that they were interacting with at the university had basic understanding of degree programs, majors and minors.
00:12:12
Speaker
And as we know, as housing staff, we don't specialize in that area.
00:12:16
Speaker
And we didn't quite meet the expectations that they had in answering some basic questions that, you know, mainly students would turn to their academic advisor for.
00:12:25
Speaker
But as someone like myself who works in academic initiatives or academic support programming within Residence Life, we also identify that students had expectations related to residential tutoring and the community computer labs on campus and kind of the expectations around types of software that were available to there, like that might be accommodating to them.
00:12:47
Speaker
Um,
00:12:48
Speaker
or being able to access those kind of spaces that were like lounges or academic study spaces that were more individual that could block out noise.
00:12:58
Speaker
Because as you know, with autism, sometimes some students or folks on the autism spectrum have difficulty with noise cancellation or get distracted easily or need some space that's really, really quiet for them to focus on.
00:13:13
Speaker
And we found that sometimes our academic support environments in the residence halls are all centered around groups and community, and that might not be always the best for students on the spectrum.
00:13:24
Speaker
So that's really what academics talked about for us.
00:13:28
Speaker
When you talk about the expectations related to advising or knowing the things that are more academic based, do you think it was the, there was an expectation for housing staff to know that or just the point of contact they were talking to?
00:13:45
Speaker
Yeah, I, I think it was the point of contact, but when we were, you know, JC, that brings up a good point.
00:13:50
Speaker
Cause we were asking them about why was it built in to housing?
00:13:56
Speaker
And I think what they assumed is because we were agents of the institution, right?
00:14:02
Speaker
We were part of the university that they expected us to have more of an understanding than we did.
00:14:07
Speaker
And I think that's where the disconnect, because if you lived off campus, they don't expect you to know anything about the university because they're not affiliated.
00:14:15
Speaker
But I think with our affiliation came some sort of expectation there.
00:14:20
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that that's one of the challenges of having such impactful frontline employees that have day-to-day, night-to-night interactions is that point of contact.
00:14:31
Speaker
There's a higher expectation, I would imagine, of knowing everything.
00:14:37
Speaker
And despite having two-week-long trainings and day in and day out that –
00:14:41
Speaker
It's becoming hard to know everything at the universities as they continue to grow and offer services, especially related to students on the spectrum or have other needs that in generations gone by weren't as prevalent or noticed or acknowledged, I should say.
00:14:58
Speaker
Yeah, acknowledged.
00:14:59
Speaker
That's a good distinction there.
00:15:00
Speaker
And I do think with this group, too, is like, you know, I got to remember, this was at Texas A&M, which is really huge, like 66,000 total students.
00:15:09
Speaker
We're talking an on-campus population of over 11,000 versus where I am now at SMU, where we're talking about 3,600.
00:15:16
Speaker
And we're at a little bit more of a generalist institution.
00:15:19
Speaker
And I think that that expectation is a little different because larger institutions have to be very siloed.
00:15:25
Speaker
But in doing so, who are we missing out or who are we not acknowledging in our process because of that?
00:15:31
Speaker
And how do we cross train and get back to those roots where we have in student affairs as being a generalist?
00:15:37
Speaker
I think that's such an interesting point, the scale of it, because you're right.
00:15:42
Speaker
Like at a huge institution, it really, it has to be about volume.
00:15:46
Speaker
It has to be about silo.
00:15:48
Speaker
I mean, it, it, I say it has to be, it shouldn't be, and it should be about how do we promote and empower each individual student.
00:15:54
Speaker
But it's so hard to do when there's 9,000 people living on campus versus like my first professional job was at a school of 400 on campus in our heyday.
00:16:03
Speaker
And yeah,
00:16:05
Speaker
it was so much easier to know and interact and provide for every individual student and know the unique needs that they all face.
00:16:12
Speaker
So I think that's an interesting challenge that I hadn't really thought about until you brought that up.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:18
Speaker
So what was the next theme that came about?
00:16:21
Speaker
So the next one was really related to campus housing and, you know, the expectations that students talked about with that really related to what are the advantages and the perceived disadvantages that came with living on campus.
00:16:34
Speaker
And students, you know, these probably will sound really familiar to you and probably to the Spoku nation that's listening in right now.
00:16:40
Speaker
Like they're going to resonate with some of these advantages.
00:16:43
Speaker
So like I can walk to class.
00:16:45
Speaker
I don't have to wake up really early to get to my 8 a.m.
00:16:48
Speaker
The students also talked about the convenience of work orders and not having to worry about that kind of maintenance function or really dealing with contractors coming into their apartment or dealing with those things.
00:17:00
Speaker
They also talked about cost and the savings that came with living on campus with not having to have a car or things like that.
00:17:06
Speaker
So we're all familiar with those.
00:17:07
Speaker
I would say probably we've heard maybe those things come up with campus housing.
00:17:11
Speaker
And everybody's marketing material.
00:17:13
Speaker
Those are the things.
00:17:14
Speaker
Those are the things.
00:17:15
Speaker
Roll out of bed and go to class.
00:17:16
Speaker
Exactly.
00:17:16
Speaker
So that's what we emphasize.
00:17:18
Speaker
But one thing that came up as an advantage that was unique
00:17:21
Speaker
to the students we talked to is goes back to that concept of noise again that we talked about earlier.
00:17:26
Speaker
And I just want to read an excerpt from Chuck, who was one of our participants.
00:17:32
Speaker
And Chuck was commenting on the advantage he perceived by the university publishing quiet and courtesy hours as a policy.
00:17:42
Speaker
So he goes, because I've known some people who are especially dealing with sensory overload or meltdowns in that situation, I've known some people who are off-put by noise or more off-put by certain visual elements that stimulate them.
00:17:57
Speaker
For me, it's always a noise.
00:18:00
Speaker
Continuously loud is usually what drives me off or away.
00:18:04
Speaker
So Chuck was really talking about how like
00:18:08
Speaker
I think like RAs going on rounds at night that enforce
Campus Climate and Community Building
00:18:12
Speaker
quiet hours or enforce courtesy hours, that might not be there for other types of off-campus properties.
00:18:20
Speaker
And I think those enforcements and regular enforcements and that policy really made it attractive to Chuck and some of the other participants that we talked to.
00:18:31
Speaker
You know, those were really it.
00:18:32
Speaker
And then they also, you know, talked about this idea of space as being a potential benefit or advantage.
00:18:39
Speaker
And they talked about the idea of like amenities in the room.
00:18:42
Speaker
And they also talked about like Wi-Fi and having access to technology like that in a consistent way.
00:18:49
Speaker
And so those were some of the things related to campus housing more generally that the students discussed as advantages and kind of some of their expectations there.
00:18:58
Speaker
And then the next theme was community?
00:19:01
Speaker
Yes.
00:19:02
Speaker
That one we broke down into some subsets, JC.
00:19:05
Speaker
We talk about campus climate, their ability to connect with their peers, and then we get into RAs in particular.
00:19:12
Speaker
And so just to kind of boil that down a little bit, our students talked about the generally welcoming environment when they visited campus.
00:19:22
Speaker
They felt like the on-campus living environment was very supportive culture.
00:19:26
Speaker
People were very gracious and sociable.
00:19:29
Speaker
And then also the idea of the campus culture, like the traditions that were happening in each of the residence halls or the unique nature of the commons councils or community councils, excuse me.
00:19:40
Speaker
Those things were kind of speaking to them.
00:19:43
Speaker
And they talked about this idea of like peer connections as well.
00:19:47
Speaker
They wanted connecting with their peers.
00:19:50
Speaker
They didn't want to be just with other students on the spectrum.
00:19:53
Speaker
They wanted to connect with other students that were neurally diverse in different ways than themselves and making sure that they didn't feel not alone.
00:20:02
Speaker
And so they talked about that need or that desire to connect with others.
00:20:05
Speaker
And that's why they might've looked for a roommate through the potluck system
00:20:09
Speaker
or kind of put themselves out there in a different way.
00:20:12
Speaker
And then they also talked about kind of the dimensions that resident advisors played, having like a mentor on the floor, having someone that would like convene the group or put on events or programs for them to socialize.
00:20:25
Speaker
So those things kind of came up as expectations to just have this sense of community overall.
00:20:32
Speaker
I thought it was interesting that it was – I mean, it was almost like halfway through the article before resident advisors or resident assistants were even mentioned, which I think is an important point that it really – like focusing on the needs and the expectations of students with autism.
00:20:48
Speaker
It really is a system issue.
00:20:49
Speaker
It's not –
00:20:51
Speaker
They weren't talking about their REs needing to do more until halfway through.
00:20:56
Speaker
So I think that's neat to think about.
00:20:58
Speaker
It's like sometimes a lot of things get passed on.
00:21:00
Speaker
It's like, our REs need to be doing more or they need to be more educated.
00:21:04
Speaker
It's like, well, maybe if we looked inside at the systems in place and the spaces and the facilities first, that that's a good place to start also.
00:21:12
Speaker
Yeah, we, I don't know about you, JC, but I always feel like it's a pile on for our live-in staff, unfortunately.
00:21:18
Speaker
Like we're always expecting them to do more with less or the same amount of time.
00:21:23
Speaker
And honestly, like I, when I do this kind of analysis and stuff, I'm really looking for like, let's think about it in a systemic way, like in systems thinking, who else could we tap to help support and meet expectations of students on the spectrum?
00:21:38
Speaker
And this was an example where facilities can play a big part in it at the beginning, even how we market and some of the policies that are not necessarily always in the hands of the live-in staff members, but set by administrators or leadership of a department, for instance.
00:21:53
Speaker
Or even just how we retool, quote, marketing and handbooks about spaces.
00:21:59
Speaker
I love that example about the quiet hours and courtesy hours because it's so common in every place I've ever been and every place I've ever heard about has those.
00:22:09
Speaker
But if we reframe it in such a way that it's like, oh, here's an additional value to that other than just –
00:22:17
Speaker
It's quiet hours, encourage the hours as it is commonly done.
00:22:19
Speaker
So I love that.
00:22:21
Speaker
I think like looking like you, the systemic things usually have the most downstream impact instead of piling on, like you said, to the live on staff who already have enough to do.
00:22:35
Speaker
Yep, exactly.
00:22:37
Speaker
Chuck talked about roommates or people down the hall, but roommate expectations was a theme all on itself.
00:22:43
Speaker
So what did you learn about students with autism and their expectations for their roommates?
00:22:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:48
Speaker
Like, I think it goes back to, you know, students on the spectrum just want to be like the average student, the normal student.
00:22:55
Speaker
Right.
00:22:55
Speaker
And they're going to have those unique challenges of how they connect and some of the, uh, the ways in which they communicate or interpret nonverbal or verbal cues and how they respond to noise and visual stimulation.
00:23:07
Speaker
within when they're on the spectrum.
00:23:10
Speaker
And so I think we kind of recommended a little bit more care or time be spent within the roommate agreement process where there'd be a little more opportunity for sharing and being a little more vulnerable.
00:23:22
Speaker
Of course, this is based on the student on the spectrum being willing to identify in that way or potentially putting themselves out there in that way and their vulnerability there.
00:23:30
Speaker
But having some prompts maybe on the roommate agreement that talk about noise, because I think
00:23:37
Speaker
Often we talk about like when guests could visit in the room, noise might be on that little questionnaire we have them fill out in the portal when they're getting roommate selection.
00:23:46
Speaker
But noise doesn't really come up, I think, on the form, at least on some of the ones I've seen more recently.
00:23:52
Speaker
So I think we can think about space.
00:23:53
Speaker
We can think about noise, visual stimulations, like if people have lights.
00:23:58
Speaker
you know, or things like that.
00:24:00
Speaker
And then ways in which noise can be mitigated, maybe between, you know, the types of fabrics that are used, or if there's a window, could a curtain be hung that could be noise dampening in some way.
00:24:11
Speaker
I think we just got to think about space and roommates a little bit different, but really lean into those conversations
00:24:18
Speaker
And really help them develop communication strategies.
00:24:21
Speaker
Because if I was a student, I'm putting myself in like an 18 year old self again, and I'm standing across from my potential roommate and they tell me that they're on the spectrum.
00:24:31
Speaker
At that point in my life, I would have not known what that meant or how to really respond.
00:24:36
Speaker
And I think in a lot of ways, we've got to realize that communication is going to look different and need to be different for the message to be clear and get across.
Roommate Dynamics and Agreements
00:24:45
Speaker
And so how can we facilitate that with our roommate agreements and with our RAs?
00:24:51
Speaker
I agree with you that I've not seen a lot that overtly talk about noise specifically, but usually it's like veiled under something else of like,
00:25:00
Speaker
how late are people allowed to come over or do you like to study with music where it's like, it's in there, maybe a plot implied, but it's not direct enough to get at the heart of what you've been talking about.
00:25:17
Speaker
JC, I'm so glad you brought that up because you use the word like overt, right?
00:25:23
Speaker
In my experience of working with students on the spectrum, you have to be a lot more overt in your communications rather than suggestive or open-ended.
00:25:32
Speaker
because you're probably not going to get at the real root of something or the real issue of a conflict unless you're very overt.
00:25:41
Speaker
I think this community of students really responds well to that direct form of communication, which is not how we are trained as helping professionals.
00:25:50
Speaker
We're trained to be softer, we're trained to be open-ended,
00:25:54
Speaker
But I think we got to remember our emergency management training, our crisis response training, very like direct questions, very like yes and no's are totally okay with this group, you know, and leaning into that directness a little bit more.
00:26:07
Speaker
And that's, that is somewhat unnatural sometimes to how we're trained as professionals.
00:26:12
Speaker
Well, and probably I imagine confidence of delivery with yes or no's.
00:26:16
Speaker
It's sometimes just like a hard yes with confidence is more than, well, I don't know.
00:26:23
Speaker
And, oh, there could be this or that or the other.
00:26:26
Speaker
And I would imagine that even if it has to be a little bit more ambiguous, like with a level of confidence probably would be beneficial for
00:26:36
Speaker
And you talk about the overtness.
00:26:38
Speaker
And I think about some of the roommate agreements I've seen, I've talked about, like, how are we going to address each other when there's conflict?
00:26:45
Speaker
Or when you do something that upsets me, how do we talk about that?
00:26:49
Speaker
Like, I can imagine that's probably something that should be included to be talked about very specifically with students with autism, because someone who's not on the spectrum is
00:27:02
Speaker
might not appreciate or get it because of everything you just said, of the softness and the way.
00:27:10
Speaker
So I think that that would probably be something worth exploring.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah, no, JC, I know our Swakugo nation couldn't see me, but the whole time you were talking, I was nodding my head like, yes, yes, exactly.
00:27:21
Speaker
And I just want to point out, because we're talking about this theme of communication that kind of leads into that last step, which was just kind of focusing on this concept of the overall student experience.
00:27:31
Speaker
Caleb, one of another one of our participants, talked about this concept of like even students on the spectrum come to college because they want personal growth and development, just like every other student that shows up on our college campuses.
00:27:45
Speaker
And Caleb talks about that the person on an autism spectrum should expect to improve upon themselves.
00:27:51
Speaker
For them to improve with their communication skills is going to have to be a must for them to grow as a professional.
00:27:58
Speaker
So I think maybe some communication improvement sort of session would be very helpful.
00:28:03
Speaker
He's talking about possible ways we can do programming, but even in our roommate agreements and the conversations we had,
00:28:09
Speaker
We know college students that are not on the spectrum just as need help with communication just as much as students on the spectrum.
00:28:17
Speaker
So now why not lean into those kind of dialogues and those types of communications together?
00:28:23
Speaker
Well, you talk about like the programs and, you know, we're, we're,
00:28:27
Speaker
We're educators, so everything seems to be an education problem.
00:28:30
Speaker
Like if you're a lawyer, everything's a legal problem that I think sometimes we in our profession and housing and student affairs, we often like, oh, we just need to do more programs to educate people more.
00:28:40
Speaker
And sometimes going back to our whole systems process of like, well, why don't we do a little bit more education within the roommate agreement or be a little bit more direct or...
00:28:50
Speaker
The quiet hours in the handbook, like, you know, we can be a little bit more intentional in those areas that can demonstrate that attention to those educational moments without doing like the programs that might foster awkward moments or not be done well because we're not experts in facilitating on certain things.
00:29:12
Speaker
Exactly.
00:29:13
Speaker
Pass it along because not everything needs a screwdriver to fix it, right?
00:29:16
Speaker
We need different tools for those things.
00:29:17
Speaker
But I also just think it's important to recognize that like some of the struggles that like all college students face is not exclusive to non, you know, or neurodiversity as well.
00:29:28
Speaker
Like students on the spectrum have those similar struggles or wanting to grow and develop in similar ways that other students do.
00:29:35
Speaker
And so it's always important to have that like asset structure.
00:29:37
Speaker
based mindset and not only deficit, that this community is coming in with unique contributions to the community, but also wants to grow and develop in similar ways as well and has something to offer the community too.
00:29:47
Speaker
That's great.
00:29:50
Speaker
Are there any other things that came out within the student experience?
00:29:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:54
Speaker
You know, it was always so funny because I sometimes feel like, man, I wrote this a lot better than I'm talking about it right now.
00:30:02
Speaker
And I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of stuff.
00:30:05
Speaker
that I'm like, oh, I'm sure there was a lot more.
00:30:07
Speaker
Because I remember writing all this, and it was like, oh my gosh.
00:30:10
Speaker
Well, it's especially funny because you have to trim it down to 5,000 words or whatever the limit is.
00:30:14
Speaker
So like so much gets cut out and then it's like, oh, this is the way it is.
00:30:18
Speaker
And now I'm expanding it back again.
00:30:20
Speaker
Oh my gosh, exactly.
00:30:22
Speaker
I think I always have that problem of they always want it to be shorter.
00:30:25
Speaker
And I'm like, how?
00:30:26
Speaker
It's all important, you know?
00:30:29
Speaker
Especially when you're like talking about students' lived experiences, you're like, I can't cut that, you know?
00:30:33
Speaker
There's so many stories and quotes I want to include.
00:30:36
Speaker
Exactly.
00:30:38
Speaker
You know, I think we touched on it, but probably not as explicitly as we could have.
00:30:43
Speaker
But under that overall student experience, you know, we point to some expectations that the students had for staff education.
00:30:53
Speaker
So just as we might have like safe space programs for LGBTQ identified students.
00:30:58
Speaker
or students that are undocumented and being allies, we might also want to offer similar type of ally forming programs for students on the spectrum.
00:31:09
Speaker
And that could also maybe lead to potential like round robins or conference program sessions in RA training or professional development sessions for full time staffers as well.
00:31:20
Speaker
So how do we create maybe ally programs for students on the autism spectrum?
00:31:25
Speaker
was potential there.
00:31:26
Speaker
And we also just talk about this desire.
00:31:29
Speaker
And I think everyone feels this.
00:31:31
Speaker
I know with my own identities, I feel this.
00:31:33
Speaker
It's like you want it to be recognized that you're different, but you don't want to be treated drastically different.
00:31:38
Speaker
And I think that sentiment,
00:31:40
Speaker
comes out in our student narratives as well for this project in particular.
00:31:45
Speaker
And they talk about that with the RA interactions and kind of what they're looking for.
00:31:50
Speaker
And I'm sure, I hope, you know, Swakuho, you go in and dig into this and read into it a little bit more because they say it so much better than I could ever say it as well.
00:31:59
Speaker
And so we have some quotes from Rebecca and others who kind of talk about that concept of wanting to belong, but wanting to be recognized as a little different as well.
00:32:09
Speaker
I love that.
00:32:09
Speaker
I think that's an important point of like, people want to be acknowledged for their differences, but not necessarily treated differently for them.
00:32:17
Speaker
So I'm glad that came out.
00:32:19
Speaker
And there definitely are some great passages from the students and their voices itself.
00:32:25
Speaker
So are there any powerful stories that weren't able to make the cut in the final article?
00:32:33
Speaker
Ooh, yeah, quite a bit.
00:32:35
Speaker
As you might imagine,
00:32:37
Speaker
when you're trying to keep focus on the housing experience and the living on campus experience, things like dining came into play and the noise that's produced in dining facilities.
00:32:51
Speaker
And this, one of the participants talked about like strategically waiting until the last 10 minutes before a dining facility closed.
00:33:00
Speaker
to go eat because it was the most quiet, but then, you know, dining staff would have already thrown out the food or would have started the closing procedures early and how they missed multiple meals for that.
00:33:12
Speaker
So like you had some rich stories that go beyond just what, you know, was the scope of this study.
00:33:18
Speaker
But I think what was also interesting is like all the students in this study told us they were either satisfied or very satisfied with
00:33:27
Speaker
with their on-campus housing experience at Texas A&M at the time, I would love to get some students that would be so direct and tell us we're not meeting their expectations and see what other things we were able to unearth with that and what we could be doing better as a field
Addressing Student Dissatisfaction
00:33:45
Speaker
as well.
00:33:45
Speaker
But yeah, lots of rich stories, but that one just sticks out to me about the dining halls in particular.
00:33:52
Speaker
Is there anything that you would hypothesize based on what the satisfied or highly satisfied students said for people that were dissatisfied?
00:34:03
Speaker
I think it would go around where, you know, where are those expectations that we talked about today?
00:34:07
Speaker
I think one of them is if the roommate situation went really bad, I'm sure that would have impacted them.
00:34:14
Speaker
If noise was really out of control in their building, I'm sure we would have heard about that.
00:34:18
Speaker
If our academic support programming and residential tutoring and computer labs that we have in the residence halls don't have the right stuff, I'm sure we would have heard a little bit more about that.
00:34:28
Speaker
So just as we talked a lot about the advantages kind of in this paper or the themes of the expectations, imagine the inverse.
00:34:36
Speaker
And I think that's where we would have really seen that dissatisfaction potentially play out.
00:34:41
Speaker
But I do think there's ways to be improving.
00:34:44
Speaker
Like we talked about setup of spaces a little bit different, training for sensitivity and inclusion around students on the spectrum.
00:34:52
Speaker
There's still ways we can grow and improve, I think still.
00:34:57
Speaker
the story about the student with dining is, is, is heartbreaking.
00:35:01
Speaker
And it's something that to be completely transparent, I never would have thought about like how that story ended until you shared it.
00:35:11
Speaker
And it's also one that in reflection, it's like, it should be totally obvious if you think about it through the lens of like noise concerns and like,
00:35:23
Speaker
It makes complete sense for someone to wait for the end of the dining hour.
00:35:27
Speaker
And then now think about it one step down.
00:35:29
Speaker
It's like, I know we shut down programs when it starts.
00:35:33
Speaker
Everybody wants to get out of there.
00:35:35
Speaker
So now dining staff are doing what they normally do and getting done early or starting to take meals out because they're not making a whole fresh pizza at the last five minutes.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:45
Speaker
It seems like it should have been obvious to me that that was happening, but I didn't.
00:35:49
Speaker
And I think that's an important takeaway here is if we all just think a little bit more from a lens of the things that you've shared of like, I can probably now think of a lot of things specific to noise.
00:36:03
Speaker
And I know there's a whole lot more to like students with autism than just noise, but programming, you know, there's so many things that are like now just popping in my head.
00:36:14
Speaker
JC, when I was a student leader, I never was an RA, but I was an RHA and things like that when I was a student.
00:36:21
Speaker
I remember my number one recruitment tool was blasting the music in the lounge and see who showed up or make it like a club and put on some lights.
00:36:31
Speaker
And those were the ways I attracted residents to come out to the program or put amplified sound between the two buildings so when they walk out, they would come to the program.
00:36:41
Speaker
Some of those traditional ways we recruit might be actually excluding some students that not all of them want the lively, loud, music-blaring programming.
00:36:51
Speaker
Some of them might want the quiet discussion or the time to reflect.
00:36:56
Speaker
Or, you know, a wellness like activity where you can do meditation or yoga, like some folks might want that quieting space, you know, and when we set up, you know, study spectaculars in our residential communities at the end of the community, often they're all done in group settings again.
00:37:13
Speaker
How are we also creating spaces when we create those study focused programming for individual study or study that's quiet, you know, and diversifying that some people like public studying, some like private studying, some like semi-public, you know, studying spaces.
00:37:30
Speaker
And it just caused me to recognize my privilege, recognize that like what I would have liked as a student may not be speaking or catering to, you know, diverse students nowadays.
00:37:42
Speaker
And even at the time, the folks that I was excluding inadvertently at the time is when I was a student leader.
00:37:48
Speaker
Well, and I think that's a perfect example and not to put you on the spot of like, you're the problem, but that's how systems replicate themselves.
00:37:55
Speaker
And you, you say now, and I know we're all guilty of it at the time is like, you created this environment where it potentially excluded people.
00:38:04
Speaker
And then all the people that then got hired and recruited and it was like, this is how we do it.
00:38:08
Speaker
And so then they recruit that same way.
00:38:10
Speaker
And I think again, not to be like, you're the problem because it's, it's a system issue.
00:38:15
Speaker
It's the, it's systemic.
00:38:17
Speaker
And yeah.
00:38:18
Speaker
you know, I think there's a higher level of acknowledgement of that.
00:38:20
Speaker
And I think your research gets really, really into that.
00:38:23
Speaker
So I appreciate that.
00:38:25
Speaker
Yeah, of course, of course.
00:38:27
Speaker
And, you know, there's just so much that this study like started for me in my own personal, like work and like reflection about like what I, as someone who is not on the spectrum and trying to think about like my own college experience and what I thought was ideal with living on campus.
00:38:45
Speaker
It just caused me to rethink some of that because I
00:38:48
Speaker
I liked the groups.
00:38:49
Speaker
I liked the loud.
00:38:50
Speaker
I liked, you know, that kind of programming.
00:38:52
Speaker
And I'm realizing that, no, we, we need to create space for it all.
00:38:56
Speaker
It doesn't all have to look the same.
00:38:57
Speaker
It doesn't all have to fit the model because you're going to be catering to these different
Systemic Improvements and Recommendations
00:39:02
Speaker
groups.
00:39:02
Speaker
And so, yeah.
00:39:04
Speaker
Well, and that's another thing I appreciate about the article is to connect to it.
00:39:08
Speaker
I liked that a lot of the things, and you mentioned this directly is like a lot of the things are things that non-autistic students,
00:39:17
Speaker
would comment about, but then it, so it made it easier to just like take a little bit step forward on now add in this extra layer of being a student on the autistic spectrum.
00:39:29
Speaker
And so like, I felt I was able to easier connect to that again, as a person who's not, who doesn't identify as being on the spectrum that I connected to all these things you talked about and then, oh, there's this additional layer.
00:39:40
Speaker
And I thought your article did a nice job of kind of leading into that.
00:39:44
Speaker
Let's talk about like small scale localized application.
00:39:48
Speaker
We've talked throughout about some things that departments could be doing or looking at.
00:39:53
Speaker
Is there anything specifically we haven't talked about that you think departments could be doing to better manage and support the expectations of students with autism?
00:40:02
Speaker
Yeah, we name a few things.
00:40:04
Speaker
So just some of those little training things, like just as we have optional developments for ally programs, considering one for students with autism, we kind of talked about that.
00:40:14
Speaker
A little bit of training for staff would go a long way in just kind of creating a baseline, modifying some forms to focus on noise and kind of the way communication flows in those settings.
00:40:28
Speaker
We also go into some other things like there's, you know, just as there's like, you know, the, what is it?
00:40:34
Speaker
U.S. News and World Report rankings.
00:40:36
Speaker
There are also groups that do like the top 25 universities and colleges for students on the spectrum.
00:40:42
Speaker
They kind of have like their own guide of like what they look for.
00:40:45
Speaker
And some of those could be things, those criteria could be operationalized by housing departments.
00:40:50
Speaker
So I would potentially take a look at that.
00:40:53
Speaker
We referenced that in the article.
00:40:55
Speaker
There's also a book that was published in 09 by Wolf and colleagues that's really focused on students with Asperger's syndrome, which is like one component on the larger autism spectrum.
00:41:07
Speaker
But they have a guidebook for college professionals and we reference one of the worksheet activities that we felt would be really applicable.
00:41:16
Speaker
And so there's lots of resources with that one.
00:41:18
Speaker
So for instance,
00:41:20
Speaker
That particular worksheet helps not only, I would say, students on the spectrum, but any college student anticipate
00:41:28
Speaker
negative interactions and experiences.
00:41:30
Speaker
So when they're starting off in their experience, what's everything that could go wrong with living on campus?
00:41:35
Speaker
Let's think about disaster planning.
00:41:37
Speaker
What could all go wrong?
00:41:39
Speaker
And then talk about strategies proactively, right?
00:41:42
Speaker
So we talk about building resilience with our students.
00:41:45
Speaker
And this worksheet that Wolf and his colleagues propose specifically around triggers that might relate specifically to students on the spectrum is super important.
00:41:55
Speaker
So there's lots of great
00:41:57
Speaker
like tangible resources you can do.
00:41:59
Speaker
And if you're a hall director or a live-in staff member or have students you care about or mentoring that are on the spectrum, great resources within that book.
00:42:07
Speaker
And I would recommend that.
00:42:09
Speaker
Your article also mentioned the College Autism Network and trainings provided there.
00:42:14
Speaker
Yeah, lots of great resources.
00:42:16
Speaker
Like, just as we would say, like, what is it called?
00:42:19
Speaker
Canned bulletin boards that like RAs can just like print and go.
00:42:23
Speaker
There's lots of those types of resources on their website.
00:42:26
Speaker
In addition to like great videos, firsthand accounts and experiences, those kind of things.
00:42:31
Speaker
Definitely.
00:42:32
Speaker
I'm glad you brought that up as well, JC.
00:42:35
Speaker
I love those kind of things because it's like there's a slew of like emergency response trainings through FEMA that are free.
00:42:42
Speaker
And I just think of those college autism network and all the all the things that they have there.
00:42:47
Speaker
It's like on demand training that people can self direct like professionals can go at any time and any place.
00:42:54
Speaker
if they want to make this a priority, like it's super simple to do, like to get even just a baseline education through these like micro trainings or even, you know, macro trainings in some cases.
00:43:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:05
Speaker
And JC, I really want to take a moment because I know, as you mentioned at the beginning, this month is autism awareness month.
00:43:12
Speaker
And so I do want to challenge Swaku nation who's listening today.
00:43:16
Speaker
Like, what are you committing to?
00:43:17
Speaker
What's that one thing you're going to go out and learn for yourself?
00:43:22
Speaker
Maybe it's
00:43:23
Speaker
maybe reading this article even, or like going and finding your own kind of resources or looking into some of the things that we talked about today.
00:43:29
Speaker
What's your one thing you're going to commit to this month to make yourself a better professional for students on the spectrum or better support them and be able to kind of expand your network a little bit in that way as if you haven't already been connected really well to this awesome student community on campus.
00:43:46
Speaker
I love that.
00:43:46
Speaker
You heard it here.
00:43:48
Speaker
The challenge from Dustin.
00:43:49
Speaker
We will link to a lot of those resources in the show notes.
00:43:52
Speaker
So we are taking away any barriers for you to achieve that challenge.
00:43:58
Speaker
Love it.
00:43:58
Speaker
Love it.
00:43:58
Speaker
Love it.
00:43:59
Speaker
And then do you see any like metric based like administrative outcomes for departments who want to integrate some of this into maybe their annual assessment or reporting?
00:44:09
Speaker
Like what can be measured from a department level to achieve some of the goals they might set up?
00:44:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:16
Speaker
So I think going back to those courtesy and noise hours, like often we give verbal reminders or things like that.
00:44:24
Speaker
And I also think RA staffs and others don't really take those as seriously, right?
00:44:28
Speaker
Like they kind of let them slide or, oh, it's not too loud.
00:44:31
Speaker
I don't want to knock on that door.
00:44:33
Speaker
But like tracking those kinds of noise violations, you can also do what's called environmental assessments.
00:44:39
Speaker
which is really popular with libraries, right?
00:44:41
Speaker
So they use what's called like autoethnographies or not autoethnographies, but they do those like environmental assessments, like participant observations where they walk around the library and track student usage in spaces.
00:44:53
Speaker
So they'll like tally at 8 p.m.
00:44:55
Speaker
who's using what room.
00:44:57
Speaker
I think it's super important to look at our spaces, like what are actually being used or utilized around the clock.
00:45:03
Speaker
And maybe retooling some group spaces that might be more advantageous to individual studies and set up cubicles or set up like, you know, I'm thinking about lots of hotels now, JC.
00:45:16
Speaker
You walk into hotels and like business centers aren't really a thing anymore.
00:45:19
Speaker
There's like individual rooms where like their own locking door and their own individual workstations.
00:45:24
Speaker
I'm thinking about spaces like that where it's like you can do individual or like someone else can join you in that small room, but it's really meant to be more individual focused.
00:45:33
Speaker
And I think we're such community builders, but we realize that like even community builders need to retreat and recharge the batteries individually.
00:45:42
Speaker
And I think we need to analyze spaces.
00:45:44
Speaker
And those could be some metrics that universities could use around tracking devices.
00:45:48
Speaker
noise elements, looking at kind of those environmental assessments.
00:45:53
Speaker
And I'm just thinking too, is like, how do you ask about students on the spectrum in your demographic questionnaire elements on your assessments that you already send out?
00:46:03
Speaker
Often we focus on race, gender, first-gen status.
00:46:06
Speaker
Those kind of are the main ones, international students.
00:46:09
Speaker
But are you asking the question if they identify in the spectrum?
00:46:12
Speaker
And how can you just embed that one question and look at maybe their experience is decidedly different because you can now sort your data based on neurodiversity?
00:46:22
Speaker
Yeah, anyone doing Sky Factor assessments, put that in as one of your five bonus questions you get to choose.
00:46:29
Speaker
Yep, great suggestion.
00:46:31
Speaker
And you talk about the space and I think about furniture and I know a lot of the furniture that's being marketed these days for like community spaces is highly modular and can be configured to be public access space or community space, but also you turn it a particular way and now it's a more isolated desk space.
00:46:52
Speaker
So some of that could be considered for anyone planning for future renovations or furniture quote refreshes.
00:47:00
Speaker
Exactly.
00:47:01
Speaker
Those are great, great recommendations, too.
00:47:03
Speaker
And there's a lot out there, like, you know, and honestly, cheaper sometimes those individual spaces.
00:47:08
Speaker
So
Personal and Professional Growth in Research
00:47:09
Speaker
get creative and make sure you're catering to all and you're not just doing the same same one, you know, same type of space in all your buildings.
00:47:16
Speaker
Definitely.
00:47:17
Speaker
Any closing thoughts about the article itself before we get into some of the skill application of writing for publication?
00:47:24
Speaker
I just want to close with saying, like I mentioned, Hannah and I, it was our first time
00:47:30
Speaker
ever working this intimately with this demographic of students.
00:47:35
Speaker
And I'm so glad I did.
00:47:37
Speaker
Like for my own professional development, it really did open up a whole new student experience on campus that I was so ignorant about.
00:47:45
Speaker
But I will say, I'm so glad we had Carly able to kind of guide us through the process.
00:47:51
Speaker
And so I just want to throw out there, when you feel the most ill-informed or the most lacking of confidence or imposter syndrome,
00:48:00
Speaker
Like that's the, I wish I would take advantage of those and step in there more and get kind of this immersive experience like this project was able to do for me.
00:48:09
Speaker
And so that's just my closing comment is like this project was something Hannah wanted to do for class.
00:48:14
Speaker
And it ended up being so transformational for my own professional development and learning.
00:48:19
Speaker
And so just step into that unknown, lean into it.
00:48:22
Speaker
And even around demographics of students you never thought you would interact with or don't interact with on a regular basis, it's just such a great way to immerse yourself in the community.
00:48:31
Speaker
Well, and I think there's an interesting point here about the value of – you keep going back to like this was a project.
00:48:38
Speaker
I think there's a really big value in like doing – like we're all doing things.
00:48:42
Speaker
Like why are we not doing more like actual research on the things we're already doing?
00:48:48
Speaker
Like we all have such rich data sets.
00:48:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:51
Speaker
that there should, like, we should all be publishing more about the outcomes of these instead of like the anecdotal conversations at the hotel bar, you know, through an email or whatever that, you know, there's a very, there's a value to getting that out there in a more structured and academic sort of way, isn't there?
00:49:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:09
Speaker
Well, I think you name it.
00:49:10
Speaker
Like when I go to the SWACUHO award ceremony, sometimes when I hear about innovations and things that are going on or,
00:49:17
Speaker
going in on some of the presentations at Swokuho, even on a regional level, I'm like, yes, that's publishable.
00:49:22
Speaker
And I just don't think people know how innovative or creative their work is and how it's easily turned into a publication.
00:49:32
Speaker
They just need that little bit of nudge or mentoring.
00:49:35
Speaker
And I just want to say, if you think you're doing something innovative, think about publishing about it because it's probably needed in our field.
00:49:42
Speaker
And there's so many times where I'm like, somebody has got to have talked about this before in the literature.
00:49:46
Speaker
And I go out there, JC, there's nothing out there.
00:49:48
Speaker
And I'm like, that is just heartbreaking because I'm like, we've been doing this for years as a field and no one's talked about this or published on this like process or simulation that I know every campus has done at least five times.
00:50:02
Speaker
You know, like I'm just thinking right now, JC, and just to illustrate that.
00:50:07
Speaker
We've done behind closed doors forever, right?
00:50:10
Speaker
As a field.
00:50:11
Speaker
Yes.
00:50:12
Speaker
Such great professional development.
00:50:15
Speaker
You go and look, there's very minimal publications on behind closed doors.
00:50:20
Speaker
And so I'm excited.
00:50:21
Speaker
We might be doing an experimental design using the traditional behind closed doors method and then artificial reality simulations for training RAs and comparing which one students learn better on.
00:50:34
Speaker
And like,
00:50:35
Speaker
Those are things that are like helps us innovate our work, but then also we can prove it, right?
00:50:40
Speaker
If we're going to do it anyway, why not?
00:50:42
Speaker
And this stuff happens every day around us.
00:50:45
Speaker
I think just people need that nudge to like, this is worth sharing.
00:50:50
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
00:50:51
Speaker
And behind closed doors, what a great...
00:50:54
Speaker
applicable example.
00:50:55
Speaker
I did a program a number of years ago just about how to assess behind closed doors in a more effective, efficient, instead of two weeks of analyzing qualitative data.
00:51:06
Speaker
I'm thinking about now, it's like, is there something I can do to publish that?
00:51:12
Speaker
There's something there that
00:51:15
Speaker
That is more than just a conference program and nothing against conference program because they're important and all.
00:51:20
Speaker
But I mentioned this on Craig's episode.
00:51:22
Speaker
People who read the journal aren't always the people who go to the conference and they're not always the people who read the talking stick.
00:51:27
Speaker
And so there's also a value to having different audiences to spread the message out there.
00:51:33
Speaker
Oh, for sure.
00:51:34
Speaker
And I just love if you haven't dug into the Akuwai journal, they do such a great job.
00:51:38
Speaker
They make it more engaging with the text fonts they use.
00:51:42
Speaker
They have discussion questions.
00:51:43
Speaker
Like I use those in my staff meetings.
00:51:46
Speaker
Like we're doing like my staff meetings, we're going over different student development theories at the beginning as our check-in, which is weird, I know.
00:51:53
Speaker
But the other thing is like, we also have these where we go into discussions.
00:51:56
Speaker
They have the discussion already in the back of the article for you.
00:51:59
Speaker
how easy professional development we can get.
00:52:02
Speaker
So you're right.
00:52:03
Speaker
There's just so much out there that I think people just need to realize it's so easy to make part of the practice.
00:52:10
Speaker
What did you think of the discussion questions for your article?
00:52:13
Speaker
You know, it's so funny because you never really see them until it comes out in the journal.
00:52:17
Speaker
And sometimes they're, you know, very, very different in that way.
00:52:22
Speaker
I really appreciated how they pulled from the existing literature about autism spectrum.
00:52:28
Speaker
And then just thinking about some of those citations were from 2008 and how much has changed in that short time.
00:52:35
Speaker
So I think the group that developed it, so Jamie Workman was the one who developed these.
00:52:42
Speaker
And they did a great job at kind of like what they were doing there.
00:52:45
Speaker
But I really liked how they started getting at campus partnerships.
00:52:48
Speaker
So just as I told you, like potentially bringing in a new ally program to talk about students with autism or how to create a Students on the Spectrum LLC, what type of partners would you need?
00:52:59
Speaker
They kind of get into some of those logistics and planning conversations, which are really good about starting to operationalize what was found.
00:53:06
Speaker
And I think they did a great job there on the questions.
00:53:10
Speaker
Yeah, I love when I published an article, I love reading the discussion questions just to see what my first audience member actually took away from it.
00:53:19
Speaker
And then sometimes I'm like, wait, but why didn't you ask about this?
00:53:23
Speaker
Like that was the one takeaway I thought everybody would go.
00:53:25
Speaker
And apparently I missed the boat on that one.
00:53:29
Speaker
And what resonates, it's beautiful to see it.
00:53:31
Speaker
And that's part of the process is you get to see and get to engage people in a very different way with publishing.
00:53:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:38
Speaker
What was the feeling you got when you saw your first article in print?
00:53:43
Speaker
Oh, my goodness.
00:53:44
Speaker
I think I'll go back to that feeling, you know, that imposter syndrome that I talked a little bit about earlier.
00:53:49
Speaker
Like, y'all, I was the student who had like a 1.8 GPA my first semester.
00:53:55
Speaker
I was about to get kicked out of college.
00:53:57
Speaker
Like I was that guy right on campus.
00:54:00
Speaker
And writing was never my strength.
00:54:02
Speaker
Like, and now after my undergraduate program and my master's and my PhD, I feel like I'm a strong writer now, which I would have never said as a, as an undergraduate.
00:54:13
Speaker
And so to see something published where I wasn't confident in my writing and to get to a point where I felt confident about it and realize there's ways, if you're not confident about your writing, to still publish and be part of groups and teams.
00:54:26
Speaker
Research is not a solo endeavor.
00:54:28
Speaker
And to see it in print, I finally got over that apprehension about my writing and that it wasn't good enough.
00:54:34
Speaker
And that was an awesome moment to have for myself.
00:54:38
Speaker
It wasn't even about the topic.
00:54:40
Speaker
It was more about just the process of writing and feeling confident in it.
00:54:43
Speaker
And that's probably what I took away from my first publication there.
00:54:48
Speaker
Well, and as we've said on a number of occasions on the podcast, it's like once you get your first one done, it makes it a lot easier to do the next one.
00:54:55
Speaker
Oh, for sure.
00:54:56
Speaker
You get into your own rhythm, your own process.
00:54:59
Speaker
You understand what parts of the research process you love and what parts you want to outsource.
00:55:05
Speaker
And I still outsource editing.
00:55:07
Speaker
I still find other people to edit.
Collaborative Research Practices
00:55:09
Speaker
You just learn your style.
00:55:11
Speaker
And when you're doing it with teams, it's a way to collaborate, way to do professional development, just in a different way.
00:55:17
Speaker
It's just like supervising, delegate the things you don't want to do.
00:55:20
Speaker
Heck yes.
00:55:21
Speaker
Isn't that good supervision?
00:55:23
Speaker
That's my understanding of it.
00:55:25
Speaker
What's your favorite part about the writing for publication process?
00:55:29
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:55:30
Speaker
I am a curious soul.
00:55:32
Speaker
Like I have like literally...
00:55:35
Speaker
I think I'm holding it up.
00:55:36
Speaker
You can't see it.
00:55:37
Speaker
So I have a little like journal that I carry around with me everywhere.
00:55:41
Speaker
I'm showing JC.
00:55:42
Speaker
It literally, it's full of ideas.
00:55:44
Speaker
It's just like random curiosities.
00:55:46
Speaker
Like when I first got to SMU, I'm like, why does everyone multiple major?
00:55:50
Speaker
Like everyone has more than one major here versus when I was an undergrad, everyone just had one.
00:55:55
Speaker
It was hard to multiple major here.
00:55:57
Speaker
Everyone's doing it.
00:55:57
Speaker
So we did a study on why students multiple major, you know, like another one was on like,
00:56:03
Speaker
you know, we had a curiosity on like is behind closed doors effective.
00:56:06
Speaker
So I talked about that possible study there.
00:56:09
Speaker
We did another one on right now we're in the middle of data collection about social class looks very different in college, right?
00:56:16
Speaker
Like how do you determine social classes normally inherited by your family, but what determines social money or social capital in a currency way when you're a college student?
00:56:25
Speaker
So we're focusing on this idea of discretionary spending.
00:56:28
Speaker
how much money students have on a monthly basis beyond the necessities to participate in social life.
00:56:34
Speaker
And like we're doing a whole study on that because SMU, I don't know if you've heard, is known for being kind of, you know, a little bit more expensive school.
00:56:43
Speaker
And so we're interested in digging into that with more students.
00:56:46
Speaker
So curiosities, that's my favorite part is getting to explore those questions and get to explore them in a meaningful way.
00:56:54
Speaker
I love that because Craig Seager made a very similar comment of like this laundry list of ideas that are just out there and some are better than others and some are valid and some are not, but a lot of them are just kind of fun to think about and then some get legs and others don't.
00:57:07
Speaker
So yeah, that's great.
00:57:10
Speaker
And you got a lot that you said you're working on.
00:57:13
Speaker
Your interdisciplinary research team is a part of that, right?
00:57:17
Speaker
That you all publish a lot.
00:57:20
Speaker
So how does this work?
00:57:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:57:24
Speaker
So y'all know high impact practices.
00:57:27
Speaker
We talk about it in our field all the time.
00:57:29
Speaker
Like, we probably think about things like study abroad or internships and stuff like that.
00:57:34
Speaker
But one of them is undergraduate research.
00:57:37
Speaker
And I think a lot of people in student affairs just outsource that and said, that's not us.
00:57:42
Speaker
That's academic affairs to do undergraduate research.
00:57:44
Speaker
Why not create...
00:57:46
Speaker
paid employment positions for students to do research for your department and help you with your assessment work.
00:57:51
Speaker
That's what I did.
00:57:52
Speaker
Essentially, I didn't want to do it alone.
00:57:54
Speaker
So I'm mentoring students on the process.
00:57:58
Speaker
And essentially, that's where it started was just getting students who are interested in data analysis and using software like Tableau or R or Python or SPSS, whatever the skill need was related to the data.
00:58:12
Speaker
They're a lot more proficient at some of that stuff.
00:58:14
Speaker
So essentially,
00:58:15
Speaker
I'm able to mentor.
00:58:17
Speaker
They are doing a high impact practice and getting employed, which is layering, you know, emergent high impact practice and an established one.
00:58:25
Speaker
And then we get to explore these curiosities that we have within housing, within the university environment, et cetera.
00:58:31
Speaker
And it's just a lot of fun to not do it alone.
00:58:34
Speaker
And now our department offers it not only from students, which I can employ, but
00:58:39
Speaker
But we also offer it as a committee assignment as part of our departmental structure where staff can now opt into the research team for professional development for particular projects.
00:58:49
Speaker
So now it's a professional development avenue as well for our live-in and mid-level staff.
00:58:56
Speaker
Staff that opt in, how do they manage the job duties and other responsibilities?
00:59:01
Speaker
Like, is opting into this mean they don't have the opportunity to do something else?
00:59:06
Speaker
Or is it like a committee structure or is it outside the work hours?
00:59:10
Speaker
It's within the committee structure.
00:59:11
Speaker
So if we say that you have to be on two this year, it counts as one of your two.
00:59:15
Speaker
So we build it in that way.
00:59:17
Speaker
But we do have some staff that
00:59:20
Speaker
had been here a while that kind of get special approval from their supervisors because they're on the two committees already, but they want to do a third through this project.
00:59:29
Speaker
And like one, the social class one,
00:59:32
Speaker
Alexander Renz, he's residential community director here and in the higher ed program.
00:59:37
Speaker
And so he has an interest in it, not only that, but also in school.
00:59:41
Speaker
And we were like, yeah, come on, bring the idea, let's go.
00:59:44
Speaker
And so we get to do that kind of project together as well.
00:59:47
Speaker
So it's really cool in that way that I have the support of my supervisor and the department to count this as part of one of those assignments.
00:59:55
Speaker
With all the people involved, my real question is, how do you go about determining authorship order?
01:00:04
Speaker
So funny thing that you brought that up.
01:00:06
Speaker
I actually went to NASPA and ACPA hosted like a collaborative research session.
01:00:14
Speaker
And basically they talked about that concept of author order and how you get credit, right?
01:00:19
Speaker
Luckily, I'm not in a staff position.
01:00:22
Speaker
I'm not in a faculty position, which requires me to be first author on everything.
01:00:27
Speaker
So to me, it's more important for the students to experience first author and what it means to be a corresponding author with a journal and what those responsibilities look like.
01:00:35
Speaker
So often we being the staff, push them or the faculty involved, push them to be leads a lot of the time.
01:00:43
Speaker
But you're right.
01:00:44
Speaker
It is a discussion early on.
01:00:46
Speaker
And we bring it up two or three times normally through the project period as a way of just honestly assessing, right?
01:00:54
Speaker
Am I contributing?
01:00:56
Speaker
What are my contributions to this project?
01:00:59
Speaker
And it's a great like self-reflection.
01:01:01
Speaker
And sometimes people feel guilt and shame, which motivates them to do their part a little bit more while others are like, you know what?
01:01:07
Speaker
I'm fine being last because I'm really not sure what's going on.
01:01:10
Speaker
Like, you know, like,
01:01:12
Speaker
It's whatever it is.
01:01:13
Speaker
I'm just happy to be here.
01:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, I'm happy to be here.
01:01:15
Speaker
I'm learning about like regression analysis.
01:01:18
Speaker
So I'm still like, whoosh, you know, like whatever it might be.
01:01:21
Speaker
And so we have two or three times we talk about it, but it is intentional and it's good practice to talk about it and bring it up early.
01:01:29
Speaker
And for me, it's like sometimes it's who has the idea, but it goes beyond that.
01:01:35
Speaker
It's like who can operationalize the idea because operationalizing the idea is the hardest part.
01:01:40
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:01:41
Speaker
I had a, I worked with an author once and I,
01:01:45
Speaker
it would have been this person's first article.
01:01:47
Speaker
And I said at the beginning, I was like, at the end of this process, when we're all done, you and I are going to have a conversation about who deserves and we're each going to make a case and we'll decide at that point.
01:01:57
Speaker
And part of it was just to do it right, but also to challenge this person to articulate what it was they did and their involvement and their contribution.
01:02:09
Speaker
Because I think that's such an important part is like,
01:02:12
Speaker
You weren't just a tag along, like you were a valuable member of this team.
01:02:15
Speaker
And I want you to be able to articulate when someone asks, when you're talking about your article, like, oh yeah, of course I did.
01:02:20
Speaker
These are all the things I did.
01:02:22
Speaker
And I think that's just such a valuable piece, especially for like young authors or first time publishers that you weren't just along for the ride.
01:02:29
Speaker
You're already doing the mentoring that I talked about.
01:02:31
Speaker
You're getting them to articulate the transferable skills and their impact.
01:02:35
Speaker
Like you're and you're doing that through an author order discussion and you're but you're prepping them for the next conversation they're going to have in the interview when the resume is being reviewed.
01:02:44
Speaker
You know, like that's exactly what you just did there is helping them articulate their contributions on a team of researchers, you know.
01:02:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:52
Speaker
And the interesting thing is like this person had a job interview and it actually came up in the job interview about the article and had the elevator pitch all ready to go.
01:03:00
Speaker
And I mean, it was great.
01:03:01
Speaker
There's, I can't remember what it is now, but there's some like online forum for like researchers where they write in about like complaints about authorship order or contributions or things.
01:03:13
Speaker
And it just is hilarious.
01:03:15
Speaker
Every once a year I'll go on there and read it.
01:03:17
Speaker
And it's like,
01:03:19
Speaker
I mean, it's a legit place.
01:03:20
Speaker
It's not just like a Reddit post, but it's like a legit organization and I'll have to find where it is again.
01:03:26
Speaker
But I love reading that stuff because it's just the politics and those kinds of things.
01:03:30
Speaker
It's just like navigating anything in the job.
01:03:33
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
01:03:33
Speaker
And it gives me some sensitivity as someone who works with faculty in my role.
01:03:39
Speaker
Now I have insight into some of the weird things that they spend an hour talking about and I'm nodding my head.
01:03:44
Speaker
I'm like,
01:03:45
Speaker
I'm not quite sure why this is so important to them and why they're frustrated.
01:03:49
Speaker
But now I have a little inkling.
01:03:50
Speaker
Yeah, that is frustrating.
01:03:51
Speaker
Like when someone doesn't pull their weight on a research project or yeah, that hurts when something you spend a lot of time on and your first author on doesn't get the credibility or the weight because it was just a weird journal that it was published in and not recognized by their field.
01:04:06
Speaker
You know, like I understand some of those concerns now and I think I'm a better collaborator than
01:04:11
Speaker
because I have those kind of insights as well through my work with this team.
01:04:16
Speaker
So lots of new politics.
01:04:19
Speaker
But the one thing I'll just throw out there too, for folks that are thinking about getting into research, like think about the academy.
01:04:26
Speaker
You work at an institution of higher ed.
01:04:29
Speaker
What is its currency?
01:04:31
Speaker
Its currency is what is written.
01:04:34
Speaker
It's what makes a report that
01:04:37
Speaker
what makes the final cut of something, what's published, that's the currency of academia.
01:04:43
Speaker
That's going to be what causes change.
01:04:45
Speaker
And so for me, like this topic around students with autism or other marginalized communities, you can amplify voices and student experience through publication because that's the currency that the academy listens to.
01:04:57
Speaker
And I think that is often what I like about it is that you can really cause change
01:05:04
Speaker
through what you write.
01:05:06
Speaker
And that's really what motivates me to kind of do this kind of work and to write it up.
01:05:11
Speaker
But it also helps me just be a better contributor to the field as a whole.
01:05:18
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:05:19
Speaker
And have you ever received any feedback or comments about change that any of your work has inspired?
01:05:26
Speaker
Oh my, yes.
01:05:26
Speaker
So earlier this, or like late last week, I had a article that published in the college student retention, and it was about characterizing why students were leaving the university.
01:05:38
Speaker
And it's one of the first studies that is at a private school, right?
01:05:43
Speaker
So
01:05:44
Speaker
And it airs a little bit of laundry, some dirty laundry about you think we have our business processes down on some of our departing student processes.
01:05:55
Speaker
We don't.
01:05:56
Speaker
It's a lot more messy.
01:05:58
Speaker
And when you have a researcher that's looking through stuff in a very systematic way, you start finding gaps.
01:06:04
Speaker
But that's the beautiful thing about practitioner scholars.
01:06:07
Speaker
We are action researchers.
01:06:09
Speaker
We are doing the work and trying to inform our work through a methodical, systematic practice.
01:06:17
Speaker
And we found a lot of gaps.
01:06:19
Speaker
And some of the people who were responsible for those areas felt some kind of way.
01:06:24
Speaker
But it's done for improvement.
01:06:26
Speaker
It's not done to point fingers.
01:06:28
Speaker
It's done to show, look, we have work to do.
01:06:31
Speaker
And all institutions have areas of growth.
01:06:34
Speaker
They just have to be more open to it.
01:06:35
Speaker
But boy, I was pointing those out a long time ago, but it took till the publication for that to be taken with some credibility.
01:06:45
Speaker
I love everything about that because it's so true.
01:06:48
Speaker
And even just the skills involved in like qualitative research, like, you know, you do an annual assessment and it's like got some open-ended things on it.
01:06:56
Speaker
Like,
01:06:57
Speaker
Professionals typically focus on the one hysterical comment and we got to resolve that.
01:07:02
Speaker
But like, if you actually look at that with a qualitative researcher lens, that's like, oh, there's a whole bunch of like non hysterical things that are thematically aligned that, oh, we should be addressing this instead of this one thing that there you go.
The Role of Writing in Academia
01:07:18
Speaker
And honestly, those things that those hysterical comments or suggestions or those really big outliers, that's what we would call them in the research process, an outlier.
01:07:29
Speaker
Those things get all the way up the chain to leadership.
01:07:32
Speaker
And that's often all leadership hears is outliers.
01:07:35
Speaker
And so they're forming themes off of outliers.
01:07:39
Speaker
Yes.
01:07:40
Speaker
We that are more touched with the data, not saying that our leadership is out of touch, but I'm just saying that we that are in the data that are mining it, that are going through it in a systematic way, we're seeing the true themes of the student experience.
01:07:52
Speaker
And we've got to do better about amplifying those themes, not theming the outliers.
01:07:58
Speaker
building themes off of outliers.
01:07:59
Speaker
I've never thought of it that way.
01:08:01
Speaker
That is, you are so right.
01:08:03
Speaker
Because the further up you move, like the less involved in the day-to-day, like you only hear the outliers, whether they're the extreme positive or the extreme negative.
01:08:10
Speaker
Exactly.
01:08:12
Speaker
Well, and you talked about writing as the currency of academia, but I think there's also a currency for an individual.
01:08:19
Speaker
And you talk about reports.
01:08:20
Speaker
It's like most student affairs divisions have an annual report that every department fills out.
01:08:25
Speaker
And it's got, okay, now list all of your staff's presentations.
01:08:28
Speaker
And typically one of those is list all your staff's publications.
01:08:31
Speaker
And in most departments or student affairs divisions, that one's pretty sparsely filled.
01:08:38
Speaker
And so if you are to publish something,
01:08:41
Speaker
there's a currency there because of the scarcity.
01:08:44
Speaker
If your name is associated, like I guarantee your VP is going to see your name on a hundred page report because that's a very interesting and powerful category to be associated with.
01:08:55
Speaker
Exactly.
01:08:56
Speaker
So you're finding out that you're going to get recognized in a different way than you thought.
01:09:01
Speaker
Right.
01:09:01
Speaker
And I think you're right.
01:09:02
Speaker
That is a scarce area on the reports.
01:09:05
Speaker
And I'll also point out too, with, with universities moving towards R1 or R1 focuses,
01:09:11
Speaker
we're having conversations here at SMU, how can we get into academic impressions, which is, if you're not familiar with that, it's a software where faculty track their publications, their service, their teaching, that kind of stuff.
01:09:24
Speaker
But why couldn't student affairs, who might be adjunct faculty,
01:09:29
Speaker
in different departments, contribute publications to the overall metric.
01:09:33
Speaker
And so we're talking about ways where we can benefit our academic partners, maybe not in a huge way, if not a lot of us are publishing, but in some way, we're going to contribute to some sort of metric that matters to the larger university.
01:09:45
Speaker
And that it's cool to think about that in that way as well, that like,
01:09:49
Speaker
yeah, it's tracked in our regular annual reports with our division, but what are other ways we can get it out there to maybe benefit the institutional outcomes as a whole?
01:09:59
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:10:00
Speaker
As we wrap up the show, what's the most memorable piece of feedback, positive or negative, that you've received from a manuscript reviewer?
01:10:10
Speaker
This goes back to my first ever publication.
01:10:12
Speaker
You got to come back with me in time, JC.
01:10:15
Speaker
I'm going back to like undergrad, okay?
01:10:17
Speaker
I'm a...
01:10:18
Speaker
End of my sophomore year, going into my junior year, we're publishing what motivates students to participate in a residential leadership living learning community.
01:10:27
Speaker
I'm working with two faculty members, one of them who's highly relational, like everything's great, my cheerleader.
01:10:34
Speaker
The other faculty member, very task-oriented, brash, direct communicator.
01:10:39
Speaker
Okay.
01:10:40
Speaker
I already see where this is going.
01:10:41
Speaker
This is great.
01:10:42
Speaker
Right?
01:10:42
Speaker
Okay.
01:10:43
Speaker
Okay.
01:10:44
Speaker
I thought I was doing great because the only person I was talking to the whole time was my cheerleader.
01:10:50
Speaker
But then I went into someone that actually read everything I wrote, which was different.
01:10:55
Speaker
My cheerleader cared about me in some type of way personally, but the other task oriented one cared about me in a different way and showed their care and
01:11:05
Speaker
through a really red manuscript that looked like it was dead, that something died on it, because that's how red it was.
01:11:11
Speaker
But that kind of feedback, that taking feedback as a form of care, that someone took care to read your work.
01:11:20
Speaker
And she pointed out to me about how I write in a very inactive voice.
01:11:26
Speaker
And not an active voice and pointed out all the prepositional phrases that I use that dilute my sentence structure.
01:11:32
Speaker
And this might sound really crazy to talk about on a podcast, but that piece of feedback, like changed how I wrote and how I was mindful of it now.
01:11:42
Speaker
And it wasn't like I hadn't gotten that kind of feedback before in my class, but it felt different.
01:11:48
Speaker
Because I was doing this as like an extracurricular thing and I cared about it in a different way than my class assignments.
01:11:54
Speaker
And so it resonated.
01:11:55
Speaker
And that was the most beautiful thing.
01:11:57
Speaker
Just working on how to write an active voice and realizing that markups like that is a form of care.
01:12:05
Speaker
And that opened me up to really hearing that feedback for the first time.
01:12:10
Speaker
On the last episode, we talked about, do you want compliments or do you want feedback?
01:12:14
Speaker
I'm just glad you had both of those and individual people there to provide that for you.
01:12:18
Speaker
Oh, you do need a little bit of both because when you're doing something the first time, you need that cheerleader in your court, but you also need someone who's technical and going to point out the flaws in your logic.
01:12:27
Speaker
And that was the beauty of that duo for me.
01:12:30
Speaker
And we're not always that lucky on the reviewer process to have reviewer one being the relational one and the reviewer two being the technical, but we can only hope that it balances itself out a little bit.
01:12:40
Speaker
My first final paper in my doc program that I wrote, it was like a 15-page something or other.
01:12:46
Speaker
It was about cultural capital and student affairs programming.
01:12:49
Speaker
And I remember reading the feedback on it, and I love the professor gave it to me.
01:12:55
Speaker
on page eight, there was a comment off to the side and said, well, it took eight pages, but your paper is finally starting to get somewhat good.
01:13:03
Speaker
But it was absolutely, I mean, he was absolutely right.
01:13:05
Speaker
And, you know, to be able to take, and I think that's such a neat thing about the anonymous blind process is like, there's a whole lot of feedback I've received in papers I've written or manuscripts for publication.
01:13:18
Speaker
Sometimes being able to take feedback like a champ is one thing, but also then being able to respond to stuff you don't necessarily agree with is also a skill to develop.
01:13:26
Speaker
And JC pointed out too, is like, it's so important that you put yourself out there.
01:13:31
Speaker
You're putting yourself out there in a very different way than you ever have been.
01:13:36
Speaker
Right.
01:13:37
Speaker
And I think also in student affairs,
01:13:39
Speaker
we're used to talking about the fluff and the big picture and very abstractly.
01:13:44
Speaker
We want to increase students' sense of belonging.
01:13:47
Speaker
We talk about the world that way, but then when you actually operationalize, I'm like, I asked my staff, what does sense of belonging mean?
01:13:54
Speaker
And they can't even define it.
01:13:56
Speaker
And then when we actually do a research study, now we have a seven-part subscale which breaks down sense of belonging into in-group homogeneity, lack of perceived loneliness, centrality, identification.
01:14:10
Speaker
Now we have operationalized what the definition of sense of belonging is.
01:14:13
Speaker
That's the gap we're filling here, right?
01:14:17
Speaker
We're so used to talking abstractly in our field and we got to realize that when we write and we do assessment and research,
01:14:24
Speaker
We've got to get very technical and narrow and specific.
01:14:28
Speaker
And sometimes it's hard to do that because we have half of our team that's the outgoing big picture group.
01:14:34
Speaker
And then we have a technical team and meeting in the middle is the hard part, but it's so necessary for the work.
01:14:41
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:14:41
Speaker
And sometimes just reading the survey instruments about belonging.
01:14:45
Speaker
Like I'd studied mattering and just reading the survey itself gives you like tangible things to target because you know they're on the survey that it's these four categories that actually make people feel like they matter.
01:14:58
Speaker
And so even just doing that much is going to help people operationalize those things.
01:15:04
Speaker
Exactly.
01:15:04
Speaker
And that's the point of what we do, right?
01:15:06
Speaker
We're scholar practitioners.
01:15:07
Speaker
We operationalize the new knowledge that we're creating and
01:15:10
Speaker
And that's the beauty when you can, you've been so specific, you've been so thorough, you've been so methodical that now you have a true recommendation and you've thought about it in a way that like now you can move it.
01:15:25
Speaker
Now it can help move the needle.
01:15:27
Speaker
And the needle might not move much, but don't get discouraged.
01:15:30
Speaker
It's still movement in the right direction.
01:15:32
Speaker
You know, my dissertation thesis advisors always said, your dissertation is just going to be a pimple.
01:15:38
Speaker
A pimple in the new knowledge.
01:15:39
Speaker
It's going to be so small and obsolete and doesn't look so cute.
01:15:43
Speaker
But eventually, like another layer will form and your pimple will now be part of the literature.
01:15:49
Speaker
Right.
01:15:50
Speaker
And be encompassed and someone else will be the new pimple down the road.
01:15:54
Speaker
And that's kind of what it is.
01:15:55
Speaker
Little pimples we're creating to kind of expand this like larger construct of
Final Thoughts and Engagement Opportunities
01:16:00
Speaker
knowledge.
01:16:00
Speaker
And I'm like, OK.
01:16:02
Speaker
That's fantastic.
01:16:04
Speaker
I love that.
01:16:06
Speaker
Just so the Swakuho listeners know that you're more than just a professional and you do more than just right.
01:16:12
Speaker
Yes.
01:16:13
Speaker
In your bio, we mentioned that you like DIY projects.
01:16:16
Speaker
What's something you're currently doing yourself?
01:16:19
Speaker
Yes.
01:16:19
Speaker
So back in March, I just bought a new condo here in the Dallas area.
01:16:24
Speaker
So I've been doing some home improvement stuff.
01:16:26
Speaker
So I recently retextured my downstairs half bathroom.
01:16:31
Speaker
painted it a nice like nature green so I have a little retreat oasis put a new little um sink fixture in there that's walnut it looks great JC it looks great right now so that was my my most recent project and then I like Google so I changed out all my light fixture switches to be like things I can control on my Google app so now my whole house can
01:16:52
Speaker
respond to me when I ask it to.
01:16:54
Speaker
So it's the only thing that really listens to me is my Google.
01:16:57
Speaker
So that's who I hang out with most of the time when I'm outside of work.
01:17:00
Speaker
So any closing thoughts before we wrap up?
01:17:03
Speaker
No, other than JC, I really appreciate just the opportunity to talk about something I care about.
01:17:08
Speaker
Like that's the beautiful thing about research.
01:17:09
Speaker
People care about what they spent time researching.
01:17:12
Speaker
And so
01:17:13
Speaker
it's always a great conversation starter and I hope it inspired somebody in the Swokuho world to take advantage of that challenge I talked about earlier, learning about something about the students in the autism community that they wouldn't do some of that professional development, but also know like JC, myself, we're like wanting to be those scholars
01:17:31
Speaker
in the field and contribute in the ways we can and do research work.
01:17:35
Speaker
And so find people to collaborate with.
01:17:37
Speaker
And I know I'm open to it.
01:17:39
Speaker
And I would love to connect with others that listen to this and want to connect on these kinds of topics.
01:17:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:17:45
Speaker
And you heard it here first from a capital standpoint, you've got an offer out there.
01:17:49
Speaker
So don't let it slide through.
01:17:51
Speaker
If it's something you're really interested in, like take action.
01:17:55
Speaker
For sure.
01:17:56
Speaker
But thanks again for the time, JC.
01:17:57
Speaker
Thank you.
01:17:58
Speaker
Oh, it was my pleasure.
01:17:59
Speaker
This was a ton of fun, geeking out a little bit.
01:18:01
Speaker
But to all our listeners, I definitely want to thank Dustin for spending time with us, diving in deeper to help us understand the lived experience of residents with autism.
01:18:10
Speaker
I highly recommend reading the entire article to gain an even more robust understanding of what students with autism expect out of and the satisfaction with the campus housing experience.
01:18:22
Speaker
This episode wraps up another four episode block.
01:18:25
Speaker
And by the time it airs, we will have already begun recording and editing the next block of episodes.
01:18:30
Speaker
The podcast continues to find its footing with each episode.
01:18:33
Speaker
And that is largely due to those of you who have reached out, provided feedback or connected via the Swakuho podcast at gmail.com email address.
01:18:43
Speaker
I am seeking volunteers to help out with scaling and elevating the podcast.
01:18:48
Speaker
Specifically, I'm looking for people to write reflection guides, recruit and solicit guests, develop topic outlines, and even edit episodes.
01:18:57
Speaker
It isn't glamorous work, but it is important work with plenty of associated skill development.
01:19:02
Speaker
There's one thing I've learned about professionally growing in the field of student housing.
01:19:06
Speaker
It's that the best skill development with the most long-term benefits actually come from the go-for-tasks and honing the fundamentals.
01:19:14
Speaker
Take it from me.
01:19:15
Speaker
You need absolutely no experience to get involved with this podcast since guess what?
01:19:20
Speaker
I had none when the whole ordeal began.
01:19:23
Speaker
And with that, I say to you, good day.