Transcript
Speaker: I'm JC Stoner and this is the SWACUHO Podcast.
Speaker: Prior to the SWACUHO Conference in February, I was talking with the guest of Episode 3, Dr. Craig Seeger from the University of Central Arkansas about what is being called the Great Resignation.
Speaker: While certainly applicable to the campus housing environment, the challenges we face extend beyond just retaining staff, but also in recruiting staff in the first place.
Speaker: In my conversation with Craig, we talked about the historical patterns and behaviors that have replicated for years that may have led to this current moment, which the global pandemic amplified and accelerated.
Speaker: So the idea was born for this episode asking the question, is campus housing facing an exodus or is it a time of reckoning?
Speaker: Or perhaps it's even both.
Speaker: That's what we are going to explore today.
Speaker: Before I introduce our guest today though, I do have to give a big shout out to the previously mentioned Dr. Craig Seeger for helping put together the topical outline and recruiting all three of today's guests for this show.
Speaker: Craig certainly earned a producer byline tag on this episode.
Speaker: So Craig, when you listen, don't forget to update your resume.
Speaker: Our first guest is Dr. Robin Williamson, who is a proud first-generation college student who started her career as a work-study student worker
Speaker: and her residence hall office.
Speaker: She currently serves as the Vice President for Student Affairs at the University of Central Arkansas.
Speaker: She loves working with and learning from her students and her staff.
Speaker: Robin, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: I'm excited to be here.
Speaker: Our second guest is Dr. Stephanie McBrayer, who serves as the Associate Vice President for Student Affairs at the University of Central Arkansas.
Speaker: She has worked in functional areas of student affairs for over 20 years with a very traditional trajectory, primarily in housing and residence life.
Speaker: Stephanie is the ultimate dog mom.
Speaker: She is a self-proclaimed book nerd, dog travert, and eternal optimist.
Speaker: Stephanie, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Good to be here.
Speaker: And our third guest is Dr. Mimi Benjamin, who is a professor in the Student Affairs and Higher Education Department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Speaker: Prior to that, she was a student affairs professional, mostly in residence life, for almost 20 years.
Speaker: Living Learning Communities is one of her areas of research, and she is the co-author of one book on the topic and another that is forthcoming.
Speaker: Mimi, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: Maybe before we get started, I just have to point out that you are actually only the second guest of this show from outside the Swakuho region.
Speaker: Our listeners won't hold that against you because nobody's perfect, right?
Speaker: Well, thank you.
Speaker: I'm honored.
Speaker: I'm honored to be part of this and to be invited in.
Speaker: And Stephanie and Robin, you both are at the University of Central Arkansas, which is located in Conway, Arkansas.
Speaker: When I looked at the podcast analytics right before we sat down to record, the city of Conway has the fourth most United States downloads.
Speaker: So I guess I just want to extend a big shout out to all your housing staff for tuning in month after month.
Speaker: Unless, of course, Conway happens to have a population of general citizens trolling around Spotify for some campus housing related fun.
Speaker: Putting you on the spot, have you noticed a big increase in professional growth and workplace productivity among your housing staff over the last, I don't know, 16 months?
Speaker: Surely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: To the podcast, right?
Speaker: That's what I like to think.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: And I've also never had both a supervisor and their supervisee on the show at the same time, which I think affords some very interesting opportunities.
Speaker: So, Stephanie, do you think we can scheme to get Robin to say on the record, of course, housing staff should be getting paid more so that a few months from now you can say, remember that time when you said how housing staff should be paid more?
Speaker: That very publicly recorded sentiment is reflected in the budget proposal and staffing plan I'm putting on your desk right now.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: You got me.
Speaker: That's my goal of the day.
Speaker: Good, good.
Speaker: Well, let's see how things play out then.
Speaker: So first things first, Mimi, you sat in on a NASPA presentation last year where the president shared some very interesting and startling statistics related to today's topic.
Speaker: Why don't you start by quantifying the current state of affairs in our profession?
Speaker: Okay, well, thanks.
Speaker: So, I think a lot of people are aware that in March of 2022, NASPA released a document called the Compass Report Charting the Future of Student Affairs.
Speaker: And a few weeks prior to that, I had the opportunity to hear Kevin Kruger, the president of NASPA, share some of the information from that report.
Speaker: The Compass Report, for those who aren't familiar, was based on a project to identify issues and trends in student affairs that could impact the field in the future.
Speaker: And so the task force responsible for the project conducted 18 focus groups with 97 student affairs administrators.
Speaker: And then they also conducted a survey.
Speaker: And for the survey, they received 975 responses,
Speaker: 957 of which were from individuals who are currently employed at higher education institutions.
Speaker: So the statistics are really based on that 957.
Speaker: During that time, as everybody knows, we had both COVID, we had the racial injustices, including the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others.
Speaker: And so our world was dealing with a lot of different things at that point in time.
Speaker: But some of the highlights, or in some cases we might consider them lowlights, from the report included things like
Speaker: 88% of the professionals said they think professionals will leave the field because of salaries and or compensation packages because they say they're not competitive for the experience and education required for the jobs.
Speaker: Another 84% said they think professionals will leave because of stress levels and crisis management responsiveness that's required of the roles that results in burnout.
Speaker: 81% said they think professionals will leave the field because they feel underappreciated or undervalued by their institutions.
Speaker: And then this was the one that, well, this kind of concerned me for sure.
Speaker: 68% of professionals said they think professionals will leave the field because of the amount of hidden responsibilities that aren't transparent in job descriptions or communicated upfront.
Speaker: So clearly, you know, there are a number of things, number of factors that folks think are
Speaker: will lead to professionals leaving the field.
Speaker: And I think it's important to note that the way that was framed was this is what people think professionals in general will do.
Speaker: It's not what they were reporting that they themselves necessarily would do.
Speaker: But when it came to their own plans and whether or not they would encourage others to enter student affairs, 61 percent reported that they plan to continue working in student affairs for the next five years.
Speaker: 57% reported that they would encourage someone to enter student affairs in the next five years.
Speaker: And we're definitely seeing some of this play out in graduate programs.
Speaker: Many graduate programs are seeing fewer applications and lower enrollments.
Speaker: In some cases, a decrease of 50% or more in both applications and enrollment.
Speaker: So this is clearly playing out a bit already.
Speaker: And then almost 30% of those in the field aren't sure if they plan to continue in student affairs at all.
Speaker: So all of that combined, you know, that's not just residence life folks, although residence life folks were included in the survey and the focus groups.
Speaker: But I think from a big picture perspective, those are some kind of daunting statistics that we're dealing with right now in terms of how people are feeling and what they are anticipating for themselves or for their colleagues.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Was there any follow-up about what the, you mentioned the startling one of the not transparent job duties.
Speaker: Was there any elaboration on any of that?
Speaker: Not that I recall, but I think that certainly when COVID happened and I think residence life and housing folks really felt a lot of that burden in terms of, these were the folks whose job descriptions didn't say you will deliver meals to students who are ill.
Speaker: but they are the ones who delivered meals to students who were ill, or you will be the one who helps, you know, relocate the students, pack up their belongings, whatever it might be.
Speaker: And so I think for residence life and housing staff, I would envision that some of those are some of those things that certainly nobody could have anticipated, but I think also sort of were surprising for folks and things that they clearly weren't anticipating getting involved in.
Speaker: particularly as some of these responsibilities put them in contact with people who had COVID and basically asked them to put their own health in jeopardy.
Speaker: So let's look at this sequentially.
Speaker: We hear about the troubles with retaining staff and people leaving the field, but that's a problem downstream we'll get to later.
Speaker: Let's start by looking upstream because not only are we facing staff retention problems, but also staff recruitment problems.
Speaker: So what are general thoughts starting this topic out?
Speaker: It's hard to recruit undergraduate students to consider going into graduate programs when they haven't seen us doing our typical work.
Speaker: And I don't mean anything about our work as typical, but I mean in terms of a traditional, well-rounded academic year experience, because again, these undergraduate students, two years of their lives have been severely disrupted by COVID.
Speaker: And depending on where you're at in the country, some of it may have been you were virtual for at least a year and a half of those two years.
Speaker: So I think it's hard to recruit people to a field that they may not have seen outside of the scope of COVID.
Speaker: And thinking about the great resignation nationally and the fact that there are many well-paying jobs out there that people are scrambling to fill.
Speaker: Some folks don't want to go into a master's degree program right away, right out of undergrad, when the opportunity to make some good money right now and get some career experience is readily available.
Speaker: And I think that manifests like even as we talk about like moving up and additional jobs, it's like, can you project yourself in that role?
Speaker: Or if you're a student, do I see myself in this role?
Speaker: Like, I mean, that's transferable across all levels.
Speaker: And so, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: How do we recruit students to participate in the field?
Speaker: How do we describe the magic that they didn't get to experience necessarily?
Speaker: You know, that student, that traditional student experience that we probably all had that kind of turned the light bulb on for us.
Speaker: and a passion for student affairs.
Speaker: How do we do that when we were telling them, stay in your rooms, social distance?
Speaker: So, you know, I agree with Dr. Williamson on that for sure.
Speaker: I also wonder, as we think about particularly entry-level positions in residence life,
Speaker: And I'm thinking from my faculty perspective, are we going to start to see a master's cohort that is folks who are already in full-time positions who have decided, okay, I've tested this out.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: I know that if I want to advance, I have to get a graduate degree.
Speaker: And so now I'm going to get that graduate degree as opposed to the many straight out of undergraduate students who we, at least we see in our program.
Speaker: And I think a lot of programs see that.
Speaker: as, as entering students.
Speaker: Well, a long time ago, several decades ago, there weren't master's degrees necessarily for these hall direct, what were they called?
Speaker: Head resident positions were basically undergraduate students.
Speaker: And I know that jobs have changed and a lot more accountability and all sorts of things, but are we looking at a time where we're going to not have to require master's degrees anymore?
Speaker: Ooh,
Speaker: I think that's a challenging one because for, I was just talking to Craig about this because our current structure is that we have graduate students that are the hall directors or residence coordinators.
Speaker: And so they're pursuing a master's degree.
Speaker: And so our full-time positions that are vacant, the idea of hiring them without a master's degree, I think it's a challenging concept.
Speaker: We're also sitting on a vacant position for over six months.
Speaker: So yeah,
Speaker: Do we need to open up the pool and what does that look like?
Speaker: And what, you know, I don't know the answer, but I know that it's definitely a challenging concept to look at not requiring masters for those positions when we have positions where they're pursuing their masters.
Speaker: It's also, I think, going to change.
Speaker: the expectations of supervisors.
Speaker: We're looking at bachelor's level, primarily bachelor's level staff, then those supervisors are going to be doing some of that educating that typically would happen through a master's program.
Speaker: And that's a different set of expectations for supervisors.
Speaker: And I would add, as a field, getting your master's degree, and not everyone has to have a master's degree in student affairs or higher ed administration, but as a field, it is very, very helpful to have all levels of
Speaker: entry level, mid-level, senior level, to have experience and knowledge of theoretical constructs, current research findings, best practices in the field.
Speaker: And when we take that away out of our grad programs, it really does do, I personally believe it can do some real harm to our division of student affairs and the work that we do as a profession, in addition to on our own campuses.
Speaker: It doesn't mean that someone with a bachelor's degree can
Speaker: can't learn that.
Speaker: But I agree with you that a lot more work in education and bringing up to speed on certain qualities and capstone educational moments in our field will have to fall on that supervisor then.
Speaker: I also think that employees or staff would miss out on the opportunities to talk with and hear from peers in other functional areas to understand where the collaborative opportunities are,
Speaker: to put sort of that holistic picture together of the student experience.
Speaker: I mean, certainly that can happen at division meetings and things like that, but not in the same way that it happens in the graduate programs.
Speaker: Well, to play devil's advocate a little bit, I wonder if that can, are those just not skills we can facilitate on local campuses of like the collaboration between units?
Speaker: Like, is that unique to graduate programs where I'm sitting next to someone who works in orientation or campus rec or whatever?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, should it not then if we remove that hypothetically, the onus then becomes on the student affairs department to ensure there is the collaborative opportunities and the value of shared.
Speaker: How do we mutually benefit each other?
Speaker: I think that's probably true, but I think you're starting at a very different point.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Thinking about what, at least what I do in my intro class, and our introductory class is called Student Affairs Functions in Higher Education.
Speaker: And so students are reading the Rents textbook about all the different functional areas, and they come away from that with a different understanding of
Speaker: these functional areas that they are not involved in and or have no interest in, but recognize that there are partnerships that can and should happen.
Speaker: And so I think when you're in your job, naturally, whether it's division meetings or committee opportunities or whatever, people would have the opportunity to learn about those things.
Speaker: But it's always that
Speaker: okay, I've got a few minutes to learn about this, not I'm actually taking time to focus on this.
Speaker: I think it's, you know, we feel the pressure to get on to the next thing.
Speaker: So one of the major ways we do recruit people both into graduate programs and their full-time positions are placement exchange.
Speaker: This is Oshkosh or the placement exchange.
Speaker: But from what I've heard, numbers of exchanges have been low.
Speaker: Last year, I think I heard at OPE, there was something like 100 candidates for positions.
Speaker: And only 80 to 90 schools were seeking candidates, but most of them were searching for multiple and multiple positions.
Speaker: So from an economic capital lens, is there a supply and demand problem?
Speaker: Placement exchanges are amazing.
Speaker: And I think that, again, COVID has put a pause on how incredibly powerful and helpful it can be to the candidates in addition to the hiring institution.
Speaker: And again, coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people had faced a lot of insecurities with financial income, food, housing, health, you know, all of the things that
Speaker: And so I think finding resources to travel to a place, to be on site, to acquire professional attire for multiple days of interviews was probably too much to ask for that soon coming out of the pandemic.
Speaker: But I also think it's on those of us in the field to be encouraging students, both graduating with bachelor's and master's degrees, of why a placement exchange can be a really helpful tool
Speaker: tool in the job search process for those coming out looking for graduate programs and or entry-level programs.
Speaker: It's a really great way to maximize their resources to get a lot of face time with different institutions, but also get a sense of that institution's personality and culture before they even have to commit to on-campus interviews and whatnot.
Speaker: And so I think that it's really important that we're encouraging folks to understand the importance of placement exchanges.
Speaker: There's been this sort of break in a lot of things because of COVID that, you know, much like
Speaker: students hadn't been on campus to see professionals doing the work.
Speaker: And as Stephanie said, you know, to experience that magic, they also haven't had much of an opportunity for the placement exchanges.
Speaker: And so there's nobody saying to them,
Speaker: you know, when I, or there aren't that many people currently who are saying, you know, when I was there a year ago, blah, blah, blah, you know?
Speaker: And so even as, you know, as we're finding with our own program where, you know, we've got students who have never seen our end of the year banquet, trying to plan an end of the year banquet, which they have no concept of.
Speaker: I think in some ways that break has hap has affected placement exchanges too, where,
Speaker: their peers have no concept of what it was like.
Speaker: And so they don't have people, those peers to kind of reinforce, as Robin said, that value of those kinds of opportunities.
Speaker: But I do think the financial part is a really important component.
Speaker: And anymore, we have reached the point where
Speaker: Everybody will say, well, we did it on Zoom before.
Speaker: Why can't we continue?
Speaker: And I think that that is another element that's out there.
Speaker: I agree with that.
Speaker: And I think it would be easy to say, let's do virtual placement exchanges.
Speaker: It's more accessible and it's more affordable.
Speaker: But the challenge for an institution like UCA, without that name recognition, the in-person experience,
Speaker: experience that we had from placement exchanges was invaluable in finding candidates and getting them to give us a chance.
Speaker: And like you said, showing our personality and it's, we've been really successful in person because when we show up and show out, you know, we're able to kind of sell ourselves.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so I understand and appreciate the idea of virtual placement exchanges, but I really hope that we can find space for some in-person opportunities as well.
Speaker: So I'm reading the room here.
Speaker: We don't think placement exchanges are a thing of the past.
Speaker: Like they are going to come back stronger than ever.
Speaker: I want them to come back stronger than ever and maybe instead of a peer is encouraging,
Speaker: We're going to have to encourage, you know, to go and participate and understand the value as an employer.
Speaker: I absolutely see the value.
Speaker: But if we need to get our candidates there and our graduate students and graduating class there, we're going to have to explain the value because you're right, their peers haven't experienced it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, a couple of or all of you have talked about the financial implications of placement exchanges.
Speaker: And I think that's an important point of reinforcing the idea that the pandemic accelerated a lot of things.
Speaker: And I know that even prior to, I've been a part of many conversations about the equity issues associated with spending thousands of dollars and getting formal attire for multiple days in a big city with expensive hotels.
Speaker: And hopefully that our experience is maybe there's room for both of like, we can still facilitate both.
Speaker: for those reasons.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And even on the employer side, like our delegation, you know, instead of sending 10, we need to send five or, you know, whatever we need to do on our end too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause I just think about the staff resources involved.
Speaker: If we're also going to be talking about the workload of our housing staff.
Speaker: And now all of a sudden our entire housing staff is traveling to Oshkosh or Orlando and what's, who's getting the work done back home.
Speaker: Are they all just going to be working after hours and on weekends before and after that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of nice to just have to show up for a virtual interview, interview whoever and wherever they're from and go back to work.
Speaker: It is within our midsize institutions without the name recognition, how to work harder, you know, to get to get out there and and get some traction with some candidates.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: We got to we got to sell the sizzle and the steak.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: One's easier to do in person than the other, but I get the point.
Speaker: So we've talked about people haven't seen things, they don't know what it's like, they can't project themselves because of the two-year discontinuity.
Speaker: But as a whole, as we look at our staff who have been with us through the pandemic and pre-pandemic, does anyone think, is the field less attractive than it once was?
Speaker: And I mentioned this because of the stats that Mimi mentioned about people's impressions and those kind of things.
Speaker: Like, are the jobs of entry-level housing staff, are they less desirable than they were 15 years ago when I started out?
Speaker: I'll say that, you know, as someone who also came up through housing, when I was in my graduate programs, and even when I was an adjunct faculty member at Iowa State years ago, the number of folks, number of students who wanted graduate assistantships in housing was
Speaker: was quite high.
Speaker: And I've seen over the years as a faculty member, and I've been a faculty member for the last, this is my 10th year, those numbers have decreased.
Speaker: And you hear more and more students anyway say, I know I don't want to live in, I know I don't want to be on call and those kinds of things.
Speaker: So I hear that more, I've heard that more over the last 10 or 15 years for sure.
Speaker: However, those who are in it are in it.
Speaker: Like the ones who are excited about it are so excited about it.
Speaker: And, you know, every now and then somebody sort of gets a little bit disheartened.
Speaker: But I would say that the folks who I see who are excited about it and come into the program wanting to be in residence life typically also leave the program wanting to be in residence life.
Speaker: The ones that have the passion for it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I would say, you know, you're either a res lifer or you're not, you know, but I, I mean, of course I'm biased, but I think that our assistantships are still attractive, but it's simply because if you do choose an assistantship in residence life, you are getting such broad experience and exposure to everything in student affairs that no matter what you choose to do,
Speaker: you are able to draw from the experiences that you have in residence life to go and do, you know, other areas of student affairs.
Speaker: Yeah, but not even student affairs.
Speaker: It's like, I mean, I had it written down to bring up later.
Speaker: It's like the transferable skills in housing are astronomical.
Speaker: And I think about the numbers game of like a department has one director and three assistant directors and 15 assistants.
Speaker: coordinator level or hall director roles and how many grads.
Speaker: It's like the funnel has always existed, but if there's stagnation, it's like not every coordinator is gonna be able to send at the same rate if they wanted to be a director.
Speaker: but maybe we need to remarket our positions as like, you come and work in housing for three years and you're gonna be set up for training and development in the corporate world.
Speaker: You're gonna be set up for hiring and manager and HR.
Speaker: Like, I mean, the number of people I know that have left housing even like years ago,
Speaker: to do any of those things is unbelievable.
Speaker: And they've had very successful careers because of what they've learned in terms of hiring hundreds of people in a year, providing training, development, supervision.
Speaker: Like, I don't know, maybe that's the way to recruit people.
Speaker: It's like, if you have any interest in corporate or any sort of business, small business, whatever, we got it for you.
Speaker: Like transferable skills are amazing.
Speaker: Well, I think, too, right now, given the kind of training that Residence Life does around diversity, equity and inclusion, organizations, businesses are really eager to have that kind of expertise and our staffs have it.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Well, and I would think like, I think sometimes as like leaders of our departments or at our institutions, that sometimes we get this feeling of like, if somebody leaves the field, it's a reflection on me or the experience they had where maybe we just need to accept that like, it's going to be pretty cool if 50% of our entry level staff leave to go to DEI work at a
Speaker: big business or become an HR person or whatever, like instead of being like, gosh, I must have failed this person because they didn't – I didn't give them the passion that they all needed to grind it out until they're a director in the whatever the case may be.
Speaker: But I just have to come back to the like the part about I said somewhat jokingly about you have to have the passion.
Speaker: Isn't this kind of the problem with how we prop up like teachers as heroes as we, you know, oh, it's OK that we treat you poorly.
Speaker: We pay you poorly.
Speaker: But because you're a hero, that makes it OK.
Speaker: Well, I think the first part of your sentence, though, is if we treat you poorly, right?
Speaker: That's something we can control.
Speaker: For those of us that work in public institutions, well, even private, anybody in the education sector, we may or may not be able to control the actual pay amount per se, but we can definitely control how we treat you.
Speaker: And I think going back to what we just talked about in terms of
Speaker: empowering our staff to think about what's next.
Speaker: Maybe they leave the field after being that entry level live in or live on, but maybe they come back to the field in five years.
Speaker: They get some experience outside, they fill in some more of their portfolio, and then they come back at that mid-level, upper level.
Speaker: I think that would be fantastic, but I think it all comes back down to how do we treat all of our staff, undergrad, graduate, entry level, and beyond,
Speaker: and making sure that we're investing in them because that is something we can control.
Speaker: The talking stick came out today.
Speaker: I don't know if you all saw that.
Speaker: I saw that.
Speaker: There was an article in there called New Growth.
Speaker: Student affairs professionals are tired and tired of it.
Speaker: What are the questions today's leaders need to answer to approve conditions for tomorrow's new hires?
Speaker: And one of the things that one of the panelists talked about
Speaker: was the need for good mentoring, for meaningful connections, but also recognizing what people value and offering that.
Speaker: And sort of the flip side of that was, and if they're not being offered what they value, then they are going to just value money.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: You know, when it comes to appropriate salaries and all of that, you know, I think that's still important.
Speaker: But as I think you kind of mentioned, there are other benefits of working in residence life, student affairs, higher education that...
Speaker: that we need to, I think, highlight a little bit more maybe.
Speaker: And, you know, one of the things that's hard is, I think, if you've been in, I don't know, a professional position, if you went straight from your undergrad to graduate work to a full-time position, the only context you've really ever known is higher education.
Speaker: And it may be sort of like what Robin was saying, that some people leave and maybe recognize some of the value of being on a college campus or being in a higher ed environment, that maybe that's what brings them back.
Speaker: But for those who are there, sometimes those sort of benefits that are part of your normal day, you don't necessarily recognize as benefits.
Speaker: I've definitely experienced that where employees have left and then come back to the field based on those other intrinsic values or those other rewards for working in higher ed other than pay.
Speaker: They pay.
Speaker: We've got to, you know, we've got to talk about.
Speaker: But outside of that, how can we be more flexible?
Speaker: I think COVID taught us a lot about flexibility, a little bit about allowing remote work.
Speaker: And flex time and maybe things that we were more rigid on in the past.
Speaker: We've definitely been more open to and been considering different options for our employees.
Speaker: Exactly what you said.
Speaker: What do you value?
Speaker: You know, how can how can.
Speaker: The things that we can control, like your schedule or your workload, you know, the things that we can, how we treat you, how we show that we appreciate you, you know, what do you need?
Speaker: Just asking the questions and being flexible and open to listen to our employees.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Two notes.
Speaker: We will link to that talking stick article in the show notes.
Speaker: And two, I do just want to clarify that I was saying like, I don't endorse treating staff poorly.
Speaker: When I was saying we treat you poorly, I was thinking more collectively as a society because I'm thinking more about the environment of in the middle of the night when two roommates are yelling at you or people are treating you poorly because their refrigerator hasn't worked in two days or whatever reason.
Speaker: That didn't necessarily mean like me as a supervisor of treating you poorly.
Speaker: So just one, the very public record to reflect.
Speaker: No taken.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: So let's talk about the work environment and workload.
Speaker: We've kind of touched on it back and forth here and there, but we've talked a little bit about remote working.
Speaker: And I know this was brought up in the Talking Stick article too, but why would people desire to physically work someplace when they could remote work somewhere else and actually get paid more or feel about, I've been working remotely now.
Speaker: Or I had worked remotely for a year and a half.
Speaker: Why can I not continue that?
Speaker: Is this something we need to explore to help meet people in the middle?
Speaker: I think it probably is.
Speaker: I mean, certainly in the news lately, you know, the meta and Twitter letting go so many people.
Speaker: You know, I think that it's an interesting time, even in technology, where after COVID, I think we thought technology, you know, if you work in technology, you're golden and you won't have anything to worry about.
Speaker: And I
Speaker: You know, I know of other companies that are six months ago said, I don't expect that we'll have everybody back in the office.
Speaker: And last week are saying now you're all going to have to come back to the office.
Speaker: So I think that we're seeing a lot of that outside of higher ed.
Speaker: But I think within higher ed, I've observed just at a couple institutions where there's sort of this doubling down on, no, we are all coming back.
Speaker: We're getting back to whatever it was.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: And in some cases, I think people would say it does make sense.
Speaker: You know, we want the time together to be around each other, to be able to bounce ideas off of each other.
Speaker: And that's easier to do when I can walk into your office than when I have to try to figure out if you're free for a Zoom call or whatever and those kinds of things.
Speaker: But there are also jobs where people are saying, yeah,
Speaker: Seriously, I do not need to be here.
Speaker: Like, you know, my job really could be done remotely.
Speaker: And and in some cases, those kinds of requests are being turned away because, no, our campus is back to normal.
Speaker: We're back to face to face.
Speaker: And I think if we're going to keep talent, part of that is going to be thinking about what is what is the flexibility option?
Speaker: What is the middle ground?
Speaker: Because the all or nothing never seems to work, no matter what the topic is.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's also, I've heard that it's got to be equal.
Speaker: Like we either all are back, like you said, or none.
Speaker: And it's like, I think that's something we just need to get over.
Speaker: Like I could personally really care less if somebody who's like in financial services is working remotely or not.
Speaker: Like I'm not feeling any worse about my job because if I wanted to work remotely, I would agree and worked over there.
Speaker: And that's the difference is like our jobs are not equal in terms of like responsibilities and necessary face time.
Speaker: So I, that when I hear people, it's like, it's all or nothing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's kind of the reason we're in this situation is because we've thought that way far too long.
Speaker: It's a fair point, but it is a conversation that comes up like just in my area in housing residence life, we might be able to allow a remote opportunity for an assignment coordinator, but not necessarily for a residence life person or, you know, absolutely not for a custodian or a maintenance person.
Speaker: And so
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: I'm not saying it's all right, but there are conversations about, you know, fairness and how can we be flexible?
Speaker: My thing is we just kind of look at what the impact of your role is and do you need to be on campus or can you do it remotely?
Speaker: And is there some kind of hybrid model that we can entertain?
Speaker: I know we've kind of forced everyone back already, but Stephanie, what you said about housekeeping and maintenance, I was like, nothing drove me crazier than when people were like, oh, I don't have to be here.
Speaker: And everyone's like, maintenance and housekeeping, we've been here this whole time.
Speaker: I don't want to hear your griping about it.
Speaker: Have a little bit of respect for the people who were here day in and day out the entire time.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I'm not sure housing ever left.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then just keep it to yourself.
Speaker: But there is a point, like some jobs are more essential than others, even though we're all quote essential employees, but there are some that are more essential than others and others that we cannot do remotely at all.
Speaker: But I will never begrudge personally somebody who has a remote job within our housing department and I don't.
Speaker: Well, I also think there's this interesting dynamic of what jobs can be accomplished remotely and what do those individuals who currently hold those jobs prefer, want, what are they able to do?
Speaker: Like, you know, I could do more remote than I do, but I like to be in my office.
Speaker: I like to go, like my head gets into the work when I'm in that space.
Speaker: And I'm not thinking about the laundry down the hall or, you know, the dishwasher that I should be, you know, I could be unloading when I take a break or whatever.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: For other people, that, you know, being at home and having that, you know, being able to use the moments where they take a break to do those kinds of things is probably much more important.
Speaker: So then it starts to become the question of, OK, is this job?
Speaker: Can this job be done well remotely or can this job be done remotely by you or can this job be done remotely because you like it that way?
Speaker: And what happens when you are no longer the person who's in that job?
Speaker: So I think all these elements that are so much messier than just we are here or we're not here.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And we're in a people business.
Speaker: We're in a relationship building business.
Speaker: And so I think that that's so much easier to do in person.
Speaker: But there are tasks that we can do remotely.
Speaker: So that's why I'm interested in looking at what's the balance and how do we find that?
Speaker: And that's what I was going to say, Stephanie, is that maybe the job can't be 100% remote, but some of the tasks can be.
Speaker: Or, and I think the pandemic was really great in the sense of forcing us to think about things differently, that in a million years before the pandemic, we'd have been like, we can never do it this way.
Speaker: It's always been done this way.
Speaker: And boy, we had to pivot really fast.
Speaker: And so giving ourselves permission as a profession to hit full stop on some of these things, if they're not serving our staff, if they're not serving our halls, if they're not serving our communities well, full stop and and think about it differently or.
Speaker: you know, maybe that position or that level of position doesn't need to do that anymore, right?
Speaker: Maybe the task can be shared in other ways and other capacities.
Speaker: But I think, again, looking at tasks and seeing how we can use technology to our advantage, how we can maybe add some flexibility to who does it and when they do it.
Speaker: My husband works in technology.
Speaker: He's a software developer.
Speaker: And I always think about him saying to me, technology is the tool.
Speaker: And if the problem can be resolved with the tool, then you use the tool.
Speaker: But you don't start with the tool.
Speaker: You start with the problem and figure out what tools you need.
Speaker: And I think about that all the time when I'm thinking about my work and teaching.
Speaker: And sometimes I think,
Speaker: When we use the technology, it's more flash than substance.
Speaker: And so trying to think about the work in that way of what are we trying to accomplish?
Speaker: And does technology help us do that in the best way?
Speaker: Seems like a more reasonable thought process than how are we going to use technology to solve our problems?
Speaker: Well, I think from an organizational management standpoint, it's like we in Residence Life are the ultimate customer service providers because we do it 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
Speaker: And so I think we've kind of built this prison, so to speak, of
Speaker: All of our days are constantly interrupted because we're providing customer service nonstop.
Speaker: But if you think like if we repackaged and trained, quote, trained our residents that I'm only available in the office to deal with your roommate problem Monday, Wednesday or Friday, because on Tuesdays and Thursdays, guess what?
Speaker: I'm working on committee work to plan out the recruitment to hire you.
Speaker: three months from now when you go through this process.
Speaker: But we're constantly interrupted.
Speaker: And there's that book, The Myth of Multitasking, where it's like we believe and brainwash ourselves and think, hey, focus on 80 things at once and we never get anything done.
Speaker: So I think about like, gosh, we just need to rip the band and be like, you can only talk to me on these days about these things.
Speaker: And if not, here's the backup in the building or the building next door where if it's an emergency, you go to them because we're alternating days or something like that.
Speaker: Like, I think we've got some options.
Speaker: I mean, we've been forced to not only COVID, but before COVID, even we were doing a process of evaluating all of our positions as people left.
Speaker: And, you know, losing some positions, consolidating some positions.
Speaker: And so we've had to rethink COVID absolutely made us rethink everything.
Speaker: And then that process, you know, going from like five professional staff to three, really looking at the load and availability, although students expect 24-7 availability and response time, really looking at that and trying to temper expectations on the front end.
Speaker: So that brings up a really great segue.
Speaker: At UCA, did you all drop things during the pandemic that were evaluated as, we don't need to bring this back, even as we get the staff brought back on?
Speaker: Robert, this could be across the board if student affairs-wide too.
Speaker: So I started at UCA in June of 2021.
Speaker: So I can't speak during the heart of the pandemic, but I will say yes.
Speaker: And it's one of the things that I've appreciated about coming on board as a new vice president at UCA.
Speaker: And our leadership is incredible.
Speaker: Maybe before the pandemic, we did 10 things because we had 20 staff, and maybe now we have 12 staff, so maybe we only do seven things or we do five things.
Speaker: And that comes from the president all the way down.
Speaker: So I think, again, what is it about...
Speaker: feeling like things are back to normal, quote unquote.
Speaker: And we feel like we, as the staff who have been there a long time, want to get back to normal and we do all the things.
Speaker: Well, we're different people.
Speaker: We're a different staff.
Speaker: We have a different student population.
Speaker: We have different needs right now coming out of this pandemic.
Speaker: And I think being able to really feel comfortable with letting a few things go doesn't mean you're still not addressing the student needs or
Speaker: creating opportunities for student development and engagement, but maybe it just looks differently at how we accomplish that.
Speaker: So instead of doing 10 things, we do the seven things and we've tweaked a little of them, a little bit of each of them so we can accomplish what our ultimate goals are.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And making sure staff know that
Speaker: that it's not leadership's expectation that you're checking email at all hours of the day and night.
Speaker: Yes, you're going to receive emails, but, you know, helping staff feel comfortable, you know, waiting until the next, and I, you know, I need to role model that better, but feel comfortable, you know, to wait until tomorrow to answer.
Speaker: And I'm sure we sunset some things, but one thing that comes to mind is we, we implemented some things during, so like express checkout, you know, that,
Speaker: We're like, wow, that's made our life so much easier.
Speaker: And we continue to do that even after COVID.
Speaker: And also like how we do room condition reports and walkthroughs, you know, we've tweaked a little and made it so much easier and less time consuming for our staff.
Speaker: Well, I have to ask going back originally, we talk about, oh, we don't expect staff to send to respond to emails after hours.
Speaker: But I'm guessing everyone in this room has probably sent some emails.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: It really doesn't.
Speaker: And what I've learned, I've tried to set mine to send it the next day.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: I learned in Google how to do the, you know.
Speaker: Delay send.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Delay send.
Speaker: So I really tried to remember to do that.
Speaker: Because then the people we've trained to not do this are now wanting to ascend in our positions.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But Stephanie, I have to say, as someone who's done that delay send from time to time, I did get a question once is, how did you send me 16 emails at eight o'clock this morning on the dot?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oops.
Speaker: Especially when like I saw you walking in at 810.
Speaker: You were standing in my office talking to me when these 16 emails came in.
Speaker: Like, don't worry about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's how good I am at my job.
Speaker: And one day you're going to be this good, too.
Speaker: Some arbitrary time, like 8.23.
Speaker: There's our takeaway for the day.
Speaker: And I will say, I learned that.
Speaker: So UCA is the third place I've served as the senior student affairs officer.
Speaker: And I learned that in my first SSAO role where my staff was like, you're emailing all hours and we feel compelled to respond.
Speaker: And I was like,
Speaker: Oh, well, I'm just trying to get caught up on work.
Speaker: And so I've made the conscious decision that I, I mean, every once in a while I will send them, but I hope that I'm glad that Stephanie sees that I really do intentionally avoid sending emails after work hours and on the weekends.
Speaker: Because if it's an emergency, I'll call or text and be like, hey, 911, call me back.
Speaker: But it's a lesson I had to learn that I didn't want my staff to feel like all there is is work and responding to me.
Speaker: And that's not how I want any of my staff to function or feel.
Speaker: Well, I think that's one thing the pandemic, at least in my observations, kind of brought out is, you know, as we were all moonlighting as healthcare professionals for two years, like we were living in an era of mediocrity of like, we don't know what we're doing.
Speaker: We don't have these skills.
Speaker: We're not professional healthcare advocates.
Speaker: And so I, at least me, it's like, wow.
Speaker: It's okay to be mediocre.
Speaker: It's okay that like, you know, we continue to improve, like we're not going to be perfect.
Speaker: And if we were, that means we'd have to be up all night and sending all these emails and making progress happen and being bad role models or whatever, that it is what it is.
Speaker: And it's okay.
Speaker: We're, we're doing the best we can.
Speaker: And I think that's what we need to instill across all of our jobs or all of our profession, I suppose.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: What's the best decision so we can serve our students well,
Speaker: You know, we tried to do during the pandemic, during those difficult times when we were like, we don't know what we're doing, you know, but what's the best decision to serve the students well and how can we do that?
Speaker: Stephanie, you talked a little bit about like being down staff.
Speaker: So let's talk about the cost of these staff vacancies we've experienced, like work gets distributed around.
Speaker: What are the not only the like tangible costs or the fiscal costs, but like the cost on morale, the cost on experience, how we tend to package that is what a great opportunity you have to do this person's job in addition to your own.
Speaker: I mean, that's absolutely what we're doing.
Speaker: We're, you know, what a great opportunity, a learning opportunity for you to run two buildings instead of one, you know, without any extra pay.
Speaker: But, you know, look at this mentoring that we're giving you.
Speaker: But so, yeah, it's been challenging and we still have a current vacancy.
Speaker: And we'll have another one in January.
Speaker: And so, you know, some solutions we're trying to look at maybe senior RA positions.
Speaker: So if we were not able to get those assistant positions or professional staff positions filled, then looking at like a senior RA role, like an undergraduate RC type role, just to try to give relief.
Speaker: And again, look at appreciating and taking care of our current staff.
Speaker: Well, I think this is also where we get the intersection of like generational differences, because I know when I was a first year hall director role, like equivalent role, like if anybody had ever told me there was an opening and another building to run or two buildings, there would have been like fistfights on who got to do that.
Speaker: And some of us probably would have said, you can have 5% of my salary to give me that opportunity.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: And so now here we are in like leadership positions where it's like, why are people not the same way we are?
Speaker: I do think it has changed where I know coming up through, you know, my graduate programs and everything and being in residence life.
Speaker: Your social life was connected to your colleagues.
Speaker: Your work was sort of also a hobby.
Speaker: It was like, this is what I'm interested in doing.
Speaker: So why wouldn't I spend extra time doing it?
Speaker: And when I do spend extra time, I get to spend time with students.
Speaker: That's fun.
Speaker: My staff, that's fun.
Speaker: My colleagues, that's fun.
Speaker: And that's not how professionals look at it these days.
Speaker: And I do think that people's perceptions of what a career looks like have changed.
Speaker: And
Speaker: you know, back when I was an assistant director of residence life, I remember a hall director saying to me, if you go by my building at, you know, 11 o'clock at night and the light in my office is on, it's not because I'm overworked.
Speaker: It's because work is my hobby.
Speaker: Well, I don't think that's the way it is anymore.
Speaker: And so, and for those of us for whom that was the way it was, sometimes it's hard to sort of wrap your mind around the fact that
Speaker: that our staffs aren't jumping at those opportunities and they're not trying to sort of have this interconnected life and career.
Speaker: It's sort of, we've got these separate things going on and they're happy to keep them separate.
Speaker: And I don't think there's a problem with that.
Speaker: It's just that sometimes as supervisors, I know for me, I don't know how to do that.
Speaker: I don't know how to, I don't know how to supervise to that.
Speaker: Well, that's, I guess that's the point.
Speaker: It's like, I'm not expecting anyone to like love their job.
Speaker: So they want to do it 24 hours a day.
Speaker: Like, cause I mean, I said on this podcast on one other episode, I was like, do I love my job?
Speaker: No, I just happen to enjoy it more often than I don't.
Speaker: And I think, Oh, I think we live in like, it's a decisive world where you have to pick one or the other when there's a ton of gray area in the middle.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: you either have to be totally anti-work and anti-capitalism to appreciate, like appreciate the freedom of the individual where it's like, Hmm.
Speaker: I feel like I'm kind of in the middle here.
Speaker: Like, I don't mind working a little bit extra.
Speaker: That's where I mean, we're recording this podcast after hours because I find value in the skill development here.
Speaker: And hopefully you all find value in some participating.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's a hard thing to it's a hard nut to crack as I've tried to talk to people about it because it's like.
Speaker: Oh, there's JC.
Speaker: He's just a cog in the machine.
Speaker: And I will, I have freely admitted that I am a Gen X to the core of, I am a cog in the machine.
Speaker: Like, and I appreciate and respect that role I play.
Speaker: And I, I, maybe that's the, we are the, the transition to the next generation of how do we get there and beat in the middle?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I too am Gen X to the core.
Speaker: So I appreciate your comments.
Speaker: I think, yeah,
Speaker: What I appreciate about this new generation, the newer generations of professionals challenging me on this notion of I still am not a firm believer in work life balance because I don't believe everything is 50 50.
Speaker: I was sharing with Stephanie earlier.
Speaker: I think it's a blend.
Speaker: And some seasons work is a lot and some seasons life is a lot.
Speaker: And when you make quality investments in both areas, you're able to ride those waves out.
Speaker: And so when one is higher than the other, the other doesn't suffer as much because you've made quality investment when you can.
Speaker: And then when life is happening a lot,
Speaker: you know, you've got the investment at work that you've got people to get your back.
Speaker: So I do appreciate, because I'm with you, Mimi, coming up, I was working a lot because I also enjoyed it.
Speaker: I got a lot out of it personally and professionally.
Speaker: And I do appreciate being challenged on, well, that's not all of who I am.
Speaker: It's not all of what I'm interested in.
Speaker: And I do appreciate that sentiment.
Speaker: And I'm grateful to learn that lesson.
Speaker: But I also think that there is something to be said about realizing that sometimes work is going to have to take priority and sometimes life will have to take priority.
Speaker: And how do you write out those moments when that happens?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I was talking, we, I just thankfully got fully staffed a week ago and there, there, I was down several coordinator or two coordinator level roles and a couple of front desk assistants and had taken on these responsibilities and the, the coordinators came in to me and they're like, Hey, just delegate some to us and we want to help.
Speaker: And they were like, why are you, why are you, why can't we do this?
Speaker: And I said, well, because I'm the supervisor when somebody's gone, either they're out on vacation or
Speaker: ultimately it's my responsibility.
Speaker: And yes, I might delegate some of that out and delegate to them or to others and help divide up the workload.
Speaker: So nobody's getting saddled with everything.
Speaker: And then they came back later and I told him, I was like, the truth is,
Speaker: is because I recognize where we are and that there's a narrative of, I don't want to assign double work to any individual without additional pay.
Speaker: And I just don't want to have that conversation.
Speaker: And it's my responsibility.
Speaker: We can take on more.
Speaker: And I think that's where the narrative about culture earlier was talking about is like, we treat people well.
Speaker: And guess what?
Speaker: They're going to rise to the occasion.
Speaker: They're going to take on a little bit more responsibility, but they feel a sense of like,
Speaker: camaraderie, we're all in this together that may not always exist.
Speaker: Like Robin, you were saying, it comes in waves.
Speaker: Sometimes we're going to be more committed and sometimes we're going to be less.
Speaker: Sometimes we'll need to be more committed and sometimes we'll need to be less.
Speaker: I just think it's an interesting thing to explore.
Speaker: And I also think when we piece together, because I think, you know, millennials and Gen Z thinking about there's a real entrepreneurial spirit when we're thinking about professionals, whether you're in higher ed or not, there's an entrepreneurial spirit there.
Speaker: So how do we market these opportunities?
Speaker: Like we were talking before, like how do we market opportunities to help recruit?
Speaker: or help with DBIE trainings, or how do we market it, but also deliver to what we're marketing in the skill building, this capacity building, and really feed into that entrepreneurial spirit, which hopefully will keep people in the field, but also fulfill promises that we make to our staff.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I was talking to my AVP a while back about this issue and the problem we caused ourselves when hiring freezans happened or is that we in housing, we often demonstrate how we can continue to operate more or less successfully on shoestring staffs and budgets.
Speaker: So once again, we did so and we added our value to the administration by making do and getting through.
Speaker: But the problem is we did so with half occupancy.
Speaker: And so now that we're back at full occupancy, or a lot of places are, we haven't necessarily scaled the necessary resources and support to match the student population.
Speaker: Now we're expected to continue because we did so well in demonstrating our value during the crisis that we've experienced.
Speaker: I think about this a lot.
Speaker: Like, do we overpromise to students and their families and then create work that we can't quite accomplish?
Speaker: And whether we're the ones overpromising or somebody else in the institution is overpromising.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: And interesting thing about COVID was, in some ways, it was a time for a reset, right?
Speaker: Like, things that are, you know, I think about our students, I mean, we're talking a two year graduate program.
Speaker: So in that time, like things they didn't know about, if we didn't tell them, they were probably never going to know.
Speaker: And so, you know, there was a real opportunity there to make some changes if we wanted to.
Speaker: And I think even thinking about, you know, last year's first year students had no context.
Speaker: And in some ways, their peers, their sort of one level up peers didn't have much either.
Speaker: And so everything was sort of wide open for us.
Speaker: And I wonder sometimes how the reaction to COVID just carried over such that we set
Speaker: and maintained expectations that might be unrealistic.
Speaker: Like I think about our student activities staff.
Speaker: I remember during COVID, you know, normally they put on 10 big programs a year and suddenly it's now it's now you need to put on 45 programs on Zoom, you know, and, and, and then it's like, okay, well, where are all those Zoom programs now?
Speaker: Like those were fun.
Speaker: And it's like, well, we don't have to do that anymore, but the expectation in some ways has been set.
Speaker: And so I wonder about,
Speaker: how that plays out for us as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've been talking about Zoom – well, not Zoom, but virtual programs for years because there's all – we all know the residents who don't come out because they don't want to or aren't comfortable doing.
Speaker: So it's like how do we meet them there?
Speaker: It's like why don't we just watch all these Netflix party videos and people can tweet on a hashtag and comment.
Speaker: And the next day in the dining hall, they're like, oh, that was you who said that comment about Thanos.
Speaker: And then now we've built a relationship there.
Speaker: So it's like –
Speaker: Again, can't we find a middle ground somewhere where maybe we're not doing 45 Zoom programs and 10 huge programs, but maybe five and 20?
Speaker: I also think that housing has become kind of the catch-all for a lot of student affairs departments because of our...
Speaker: direct access to the largest population of students on campus outside of any single academic program.
Speaker: Some of our larger schools have 6,000, 7,000, some of our mediums 4,000 or 5,000 students.
Speaker: And so has it become the responsibility which then becomes additional workload on our entry-level staff in promoting things like
Speaker: Campus Recreations intramurals, athletics attendance at games.
Speaker: This, of course, differences if you're at a Texas A&M and you don't have to promote games versus a NCAA Division II, Division III school that's like, we need athletics to build that culture here.
Speaker: Are housing and residence life people just too agreeable or are we just bad, poor advocates for workload that we need to do to accomplish our direct mission?
Speaker: And I've mentioned this in the frame of like who gets, who has to promote, who has to market, who has to recruit students.
Speaker: It's all of our entry-level staffs who also have to do conduct meetings and one-on-ones and developmental conversations that,
Speaker: Now we have to get 4,000 people to a basketball game also.
Speaker: And maybe I'm fortunate, but I personally don't feel that pressure at UCA.
Speaker: I don't know that it's changed much over the years or since COVID.
Speaker: But, you know, again, maybe I'm fortunate.
Speaker: Maybe now that we're in student affairs, we just we partner together to promote everything.
Speaker: But we fortunately are not hit hard in that area.
Speaker: So, Robin, you don't look down on Stephanie and housing if they don't generate headcount at some big student affairs event?
Speaker: No, I do not.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: I'm not saying we don't do our part to promote, but I don't feel any undue pressure or anything added, anything different.
Speaker: I think that's the way it should be.
Speaker: And maybe I've just heard the negative stories from colleagues and friends across the nation of the expectations of the responsibility for generating attendance.
Speaker: I do think there is truth to that statement, though.
Speaker: And I have worked in housing departments where we were expected to, you know, really promote it, get students there, get them in the seats, help do the things.
Speaker: And it wasn't even our event.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: And it just felt like it was an add-on and because we're there, we should be able to do it.
Speaker: Or because we had easy access to the residents, we've got to push out all this information.
Speaker: We've got to hang up all the flyers.
Speaker: We've got to put out all the door tags.
Speaker: We've got to do all the things all the time.
Speaker: And I think, again, going back to Mimi's comment about technology as a tool,
Speaker: So what do you have on your campus, campus wide, not just in housing?
Speaker: How are you communicating with students?
Speaker: How are you building relationships across the board, not just in housing, but again, as a vice president for student affairs, how is my entire team building a relationship with students?
Speaker: How are we building community and how are we communicating?
Speaker: using our student leaders to help us not only spread the word, but be actively engaged in these events and these programs and these opportunities, because nothing beats the power of their peer telling them, hey, I worked on this event.
Speaker: Will you come support me?
Speaker: They'll show up in droves.
Speaker: And also, again, that's cultivating talent for our student affairs pipeline.
Speaker: So it's kind of win-win, but
Speaker: But we also know, again, that when students are engaged, they're more likely to be retained.
Speaker: And isn't that what it's all about?
Speaker: But I do know that there are several campuses that have felt the pressure to be the keeper of the students in terms of making sure you kind of heard that you're the shepherd or the shepherdess, right?
Speaker: You're hurting them to and fro.
Speaker: And it's not necessarily always fair.
Speaker: Well, I also think about those as, you know,
Speaker: Again, is that an opportunity to say, we're not going to plan the program.
Speaker: We're going to gather folks and take them.
Speaker: And that's our program.
Speaker: Like, you know, it's sort of like we don't have to do the planning and the recruiting and all that.
Speaker: But where are there opportunities where things are going on on campus where we can say,
Speaker: As a floor, we're going to go to this as a RACA.
Speaker: You know, I don't have to plan and figure out where the food's coming from and where this is.
Speaker: You know, I just say we're going to meet here and we're going to walk together.
Speaker: And, you know, this is a kind of a nice opportunity to both support some of the other things, but also sort of take the burden of the planning off of some of the staff.
Speaker: And in some cases, then it becomes the planning, how to plan for the planning or whatever.
Speaker: We're going to make plans around your plans.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: It'll cost a little bit of that mental bandwidth, but.
Speaker: All right, as we look to kind of wrap up, let's kind of take a look in the hindsight and looking forward.
Speaker: As mentioned, the pandemic kind of accelerated a lot of things.
Speaker: Grocery delivery, online education delivery, social justice and equity disparities.
Speaker: If this is true and the pandemic exacerbated some of our current culture issues, accelerated them, it means we were already facing the great resignation before the pandemic.
Speaker: We just didn't realize it fully.
Speaker: Was there a canary in the coal mine that we just didn't listen to years ago?
Speaker: I've never heard that expression before, just FYI.
Speaker: For any of our listeners, canary in the coal mine is they would have a canary in the coal mine.
Speaker: The canary would die first.
Speaker: And if the canary was ever, ever died, then you needed to get out because the quality of the air in the coal mine was bad.
Speaker: So it's a warning or like the rosebush at the end of a vineyard that the rosebush gets the pest first before the vines do.
Speaker: I think that millennials started the conversation about work-life balance.
Speaker: That is when I first started hearing, especially in graduate schools and entry-level professionals talking about work-life balance.
Speaker: And I think that they were letting us know that there was a generation change in what they were looking for in meaningful work experiences.
Speaker: So kudos to those folks who started that conversation in very hard spaces.
Speaker: Because again, when you think about Gen X and you think about boomers, and I think that we kind of, again, you paid your dues and you put in the work and you did the things to get to the next level.
Speaker: And they were saying, hey, that's not how we operate and that's not how we want to operate.
Speaker: And I think that those conversations were starting before the pandemic, well before the pandemic.
Speaker: And I think for those of us who are older, I think it was easy to write off as, ah, these kids today, stay off my lawn.
Speaker: And I give those professionals a lot of credit for raising their voices and asking those tough questions personally.
Speaker: when the conversation wasn't really open for those that were in supervisory or authority positions.
Speaker: So I give them a lot of credit for starting that conversation.
Speaker: I agree with that 100%.
Speaker: And I had to self-reflect during COVID and really humble myself to listen because I think before it was like exactly what you said, Robin, just, you know, what's going on?
Speaker: You know, why are,
Speaker: Why are we all going above and beyond what's, you know, what's happening?
Speaker: And then having to self-reflect and humble myself and listen to the new generation and how they can make our field better and our work better.
Speaker: And so, yes, the canary in the coal mine, new expression I've learned.
Speaker: So it was happening before.
Speaker: But I think that for me, the pandemic just forced me to really evaluate and self-reflect.
Speaker: And I would say, as I think about, I don't think I saw it when I was working as an administrator, but as a faculty member, I can say that over the years of my time as a faculty member, I have noticed how students, when I first started, students never utilized my office hours.
Speaker: Every now and then somebody would stop in, but I did not have meetings.
Speaker: And now I
Speaker: Students always are scheduling meetings and they want and they're not talking about necessarily their class experience.
Speaker: They're talking about the challenges of an assistantship or how they're feeling.
Speaker: And that has really grown over time.
Speaker: And it.
Speaker: it makes me realize for as many times as they've talked about being overwhelmed, I think I often thought, well, you know, it is hard to kind of juggle graduate school and an assistantship, especially if you decide that you're going to
Speaker: put lots of extra time into your assistantship or whatever the case may be.
Speaker: But I learned over time with them that it actually, it's not as easy for them to separate and yet they feel the need to separate or have some separation.
Speaker: And their approach, their experience is not what my experience was.
Speaker: And that's the thing that sometimes is hard to reconcile.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: no, no, no, like this is not what you experienced.
Speaker: It's different.
Speaker: And, and you have to sort of, again, as Robin and Stephanie were saying, kind of learn from them what the experience for them and for their peers is now.
Speaker: And how is that manageable?
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I've been guilty of, oh, it's a season, you know, it's just a season.
Speaker: I've been guilty, but to really take the time and listen,
Speaker: to what they're saying and, and what we can bring value to, like they have really good, relevant feedback and we can make a difference, you know,
Speaker: And some of them will tell us when they're struggling and others will feel like they can't do that because then they won't look like they're competent and they're very concerned about looking competent.
Speaker: And so even those students I find who I'm not hearing from about being overwhelmed,
Speaker: Sometimes later I hear it, you know, they it's sort of like, I'll deal with it.
Speaker: I'll manage, but I'm not doing well right now.
Speaker: And I think, again, sometimes they think everything is rigid and it's not always that way.
Speaker: It rarely is.
Speaker: Rarely.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, and I try to tell our students all the time.
Speaker: I said, I expect you to do your best work at the time.
Speaker: And sometimes your best work is not the work that you would like to be doing, but it's what you can accomplish right now, given your bandwidth, given everything else that's going on.
Speaker: And that's all I can expect of you.
Speaker: And I will be the same.
Speaker: Sometimes I'll be better than others, but I promise you I'll do the best that I can.
Speaker: I saw that meme sometime during the pandemic that said, today I'm going to give it my sum.
Speaker: Good one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think I reflect on that often.
Speaker: It's like, you know, I tell my staff, it's like the Hippocratic Oath is do no harm.
Speaker: It's like we all have those days in the office where it's like.
Speaker: I don't have it in me.
Speaker: I'm just going to do no harm.
Speaker: And that's going to stay out of the fray.
Speaker: And I just, that's all I got in me today is like, do no harm.
Speaker: And I think that's why it's so important to think of staff more than just a cog in a machine, right?
Speaker: Like that saying of people leave people, not places.
Speaker: And so when we are fully investing in these mutually beneficial relationships and mentoring opportunities and training opportunities, we can honestly say to one another, like today, I'm just going to do no harm.
Speaker: That is all I can do today.
Speaker: And again, people can give you the space to do that and realize that, hey, we're all human beings and we have really great moments and some not so great moments.
Speaker: But overall, we're fully committed to each other and the work that we're doing, I think, is also going to help with where we're at right now in terms of our talent pipeline and retaining our talent.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So any closing thoughts from any of you three?
Speaker: I would say that I love being a student affairs professional.
Speaker: And obviously I've been in the field for over 25 years and my whole career.
Speaker: I'm one of those folks that did undergrad grad school and went right into the field.
Speaker: I know no different, but student affairs has allowed me to, to experience things and learn things I never would do if I were in any other field.
Speaker: It also has allowed me the great privilege of walking alongside our students as they grow and figure out who it is that they're meant to be.
Speaker: And it's pretty rewarding.
Speaker: And I know it doesn't put money in your pocket, but the reward that you get from seeing students kind of live into their full potential is there's nothing like it.
Speaker: And earlier today, I was on a webinar and the presenters came up and one of the presenters who was a faculty member at a university in the
Speaker: Swakuho area was one of my former student leaders at another institution.
Speaker: I was like, look, you know, and I'm just so proud.
Speaker: And he's always been amazing and competent and intelligent and curious.
Speaker: But I just feel so excited that he's out there doing great things in the world.
Speaker: And it's just, there's nothing like it.
Speaker: So I know that we're talking about the great resignation.
Speaker: And I know that some of our Swakuho friends are listening to this.
Speaker: And maybe you're on the fence about whether or not they want to stay in the field.
Speaker: They want to stay in housing.
Speaker: Find a trusted mentor, both in and out of the field or in and out of housing and talk about the things that you love about this.
Speaker: And what is it that's missing in your daily work and see if there are opportunities to get that back.
Speaker: And I can honestly say it's one of the greatest thrills of my life is to just be in education and be in partnership with folks.
Speaker: Well, I have to agree with Robin.
Speaker: I loved my administrative work.
Speaker: I love my faculty work.
Speaker: When I talk to our students, I always use the personal pronoun we because I feel like I'm still part of...
Speaker: Student affairs work.
Speaker: And there really is nothing that I enjoy more than seeing the sort of enthusiasm and the aha moments that our students have as they are experiencing things through assistantships and practicum experiences and learning and applying what they have learned.
Speaker: It's really very rewarding.
Speaker: We as a program just celebrated our 50th anniversary and last weekend,
Speaker: Not this past weekend, but the weekend before we had a reunion and we had about 150 people back on campus and the energy and enthusiasm of the this group of people who are mostly still in student affairs or higher ed.
Speaker: was just tremendous.
Speaker: It was really, and so many people said, you know, I came into this kind of like we go to conferences.
Speaker: I came into this feeling a little tired and a little burnt out and I left feeling really energized and I did too.
Speaker: And I just, I think it's such important work.
Speaker: I think there's so much value for our students.
Speaker: And so I feel privileged to be part of it.
Speaker: And I feel a great sense of privilege to be the second person
Speaker: person outside of Swakuho to be able to be part of this podcast.
Speaker: So I thank Craig Seeger.
Speaker: I'll do a little shout out to Craig.
Speaker: We worked together for three years on a research seminar and that's how I got to know Craig.
Speaker: And so it was, I appreciate him putting me in touch with everybody and having the opportunity to be with you.
Speaker: Well, you brought a lot of value to our region through this.
Speaker: So you're welcome back anytime.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Shout out to Craig, too.
Speaker: And just similarly, I mean, my background is similar.
Speaker: Just grew up traditional background.
Speaker: Came into higher ed and residence life as an undergrad and really never left.
Speaker: So obviously finding value in the experience.
Speaker: And again, like Robin said, it's all about seeing what our students do, what our students can accomplish.
Speaker: And as long as we can continue to contribute to that student experience, which I think we do like no other, and that sense of belonging on our campus and also seeing our students succeed.
Speaker: So
Speaker: This morning, I got to speak to Dr. Bruick, who is a former RA here, and he's reporting that over 75% of our graduate students are still in the field after five years.
Speaker: So that's just very encouraging as well.
Speaker: He's now over our CSPA grad program on campus and he was a former RA.
Speaker: And so just seeing those kinds of stories where they're in the field or they're not in the field, but they're just doing great things and they're successful in their own right.
Speaker: And however they define that success for themselves, being able to contribute to that in any small part is what keeps us going.
Speaker: Well, great.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: I want to thank our guests for their time today and discussing what is on everybody's mind.
Speaker: I'm confident our listeners got something from the discussion today since it's been on everyone's mind the last year or more.
Speaker: While we really only scratched the surface, hopefully the candor today will inspire some soul searching among our peers across the region.
Speaker: Be sure to reach out and thank our guests if you have the opportunity.
Speaker: And with that, I say to you, good day.
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