Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Swakuho Podcast.
Speaker: As always, I'm your host, JC Stoner.
Speaker: Two things often cited by housing practitioners when discussing their lack of engagement with the assessment, research, and evaluation competency are, I don't have time, and I don't know how.
Speaker: Today's episode is going to change that by bringing research to you and breaking it down for you.
Speaker: Occasionally on the podcast, we feature practitioner scholars in the Swakuho region to discuss the research with the goal of inspiring more housing staff members to engage with research.
Speaker: Today we are talking with Dr. Craig Seeger, who recently published an article in the Journal of College and University Student Housing titled, Hiring Decisions of Graduate Assistant and Full-Time Hall Directors on Resident Assistant Recruitment.
Speaker: The article will be linked in the show notes.
Speaker: Today's conversation with Craig begins by discussing the value of being a practitioner scholar.
Speaker: We then focus on his article and where the idea for the research originally came from.
Speaker: The real meat of the episode, we'll be doing a deep dive into the article's findings surrounding what graduate assistants and full-time hall directors consider when hiring RAs from a candidate pool.
Speaker: We close out our interview by discussing the professional and skill development associated with writing for publications.
Speaker: There are plenty of practical takeaways throughout this episode, many of which derived directly from research on RE hiring practices.
Speaker: So if you're looking to make research-based decisions, you definitely came to the right place.
Speaker: Before I share Craig's bio, I do feel obligated to forewarn listeners that while this is the third episode to air, it was actually the first episode I recorded.
Speaker: Craig was generous enough to be the pilot guest.
Speaker: and therefore you will, unfortunately, hear some obvious sound quality and fluctuation issues on my audio once the conversation begins.
Speaker: Thankfully, Craig's audio was nearly flawless.
Speaker: I simply wasn't able to rectify the tracks with my limited editing skills.
Speaker: I hope the audio deficiencies do not distract too much from the conversation.
Speaker: Craig has been a housing professional with the University of Central Arkansas for 13 years.
Speaker: He is currently the Associate Director for Housing and Residence Life, a position he's held for the past three years.
Speaker: His areas of responsibility include oversight of all Residence Life operations and budgets, assessment, student conduct, and graduate assistant recruitment and training.
Speaker: Prior to that, he served as assistant director for Residence Life for 10 years.
Speaker: He has a bachelor's degree in airway science management and a master's degree in administration, both from Henderson State University.
Speaker: In 2015, he earned his PhD in leadership studies with an emphasis in higher education from the University of Central Arkansas.
Speaker: Craig also once played drums for a band that won the state battle of bands and then got to open for smash mouth at a music festival in 2007.
Speaker: Craig Seeger, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Hey JC.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker: I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Glad to hear that.
Speaker: Well, first things first, did you know you are one of only two housing practitioners who have been published in the housing journal while employed at an Arkansas school?
Speaker: I did not know that.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: The other person was Stephen Johnson from Garland County Community College back in 1991, who wrote an article, The Effects of Safety Promoting Materials on Resident Attitudes.
Speaker: Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: It has a nice little nugget of information there.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Yeah, it's kind of cool.
Speaker: So in addition to the article we're going to discuss today, you've authored another article and several talking stick articles.
Speaker: So you must find some level of value in engaging in scholarly work.
Speaker: Let's start our conversation by talking about the value of being a practitioner scholar.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I think it's important being a practitioner's caller.
Speaker: I think it adds a different dimension to the work that we do.
Speaker: I know for me, it allows me to kind of reframe some of the observations that I see in the workplace a little differently.
Speaker: It allows me to kind of dive deeper and, you know, look at any...
Speaker: issues I may see rather than just kind of skim the surface.
Speaker: And in a sense, I feel like it reprograms your brain to kind of think differently in a good way.
Speaker: So for example, when I was a younger professional,
Speaker: You know, I would always, especially with grad students or anybody in a casual setting at meals, you know, we would talk about things that were kind of not going well with the, you know, in the department or we would just, you know, I don't want to say complaining, but, you know, just kind of talking about things.
Speaker: And back then, you know, I would kind of chime in, you know, and say, oh, yeah, you know, that's right.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I never thought anything past that, but once you kind of get into that writing and researching and truly engaging in that scholarship, now when I sit down and I have those conversations with the grads, I'm like, really?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Your RAs are unmotivated?
Speaker: Tell me more.
Speaker: It's developed curiosity, and it's kind of made me more inquisitive with why
Speaker: certain things are happening instead of kind of just accepting issues as, you know, part of culture or things just kind of running, you know, their natural course.
Speaker: But, you know, what I've noticed is, you know, I kind of catch myself kind of like I do with, you know, music.
Speaker: Whenever I think of like a cool lyric or a cool melody, I'll jot it down on my phone or I'll hum something.
Speaker: And I kind of do that now when
Speaker: You know, I'm in a meeting or I've just kind of had a conversation, you know, with someone in the field.
Speaker: I'll be like, oh, this is a cool research topic.
Speaker: So I'll like continuously jot down ideas for me to like, you know, come back to later and be like, OK, now what were those, you know, things that I thought would be interesting to kind of to kind of look at, you know.
Speaker: So what is, give us an idea, because I think a lot of people who engage in research have got a lot of ideas that just like, oh, this would be fun one day, or this would be fun.
Speaker: Yeah, there's, I mean, there's so many, a lot of it.
Speaker: So a big, you know, part of my role in my department is assessment.
Speaker: So a lot of my, you know, research is geared towards, you know, assessing different functions in our department.
Speaker: So a lot of times if, when I'm having conversations with
Speaker: with different coworkers and colleagues, you know, if they would say something kind of like, you know, my Aries are unmotivated or why is XYZ happening?
Speaker: You know, I'll jot that down.
Speaker: Oh man, let's look and see what's going on with here, investigate.
Speaker: you know, this little effect that I'm, you know, kind of caught on.
Speaker: And so it's really kind of helped with how I view things and the ability to publish is great.
Speaker: And I think it's really tough for practitioners because, you know, that's not an expectation, you know.
Speaker: There's no tenure on the line.
Speaker: No, yeah, there's no, you know, tenure.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: You honestly have to kind of a have a passion to kind of do this stuff and see the value in it.
Speaker: And you have to kind of carve out time to do it.
Speaker: And that's what I actually do.
Speaker: I have to literally on Fridays, I'll block out two hours of my schedule.
Speaker: and dedicated to research, you know, only because value it.
Speaker: And, you know, you're, when you kind of publish, you're contributing to, you know, existing knowledge base and increasing, you know, the existing knowledge on specific topic or whatever.
Speaker: And, and it kind of makes you somewhat of an expert on the matter.
Speaker: It just gives your feedback and recommendations significantly more weight when it comes to
Speaker: you know, talking to administration or the powers that be, if you're asking for more money or support for a program or initiative, you know, it kind of just, it's difficult for someone to argue against you when you've done some research and you're presenting your work, right?
Speaker: So it's very valuable.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a whole different thing to say, oh, here are my feelings on something versus, oh, here's what I've found and learned through data and research.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I think you're right about how it reframes the way people think about it.
Speaker: And I think about like, you know, just because you have, you talk about this laundry list of ideas and I have one of those too.
Speaker: It's like, not all of those have to generate a publication out of it.
Speaker: It's just like, how do we look at things differently?
Speaker: Like I had this one idea when we were at
Speaker: I used to go to TPE every year and it's like, man, it'd be kind of fascinating to qualitatively analyze the thank you notes we receive from Canada.
Speaker: And it's like, you know, there's probably no value for that in the housing journal, but it would be kind of fascinating.
Speaker: And so then it's like, where am I finding those two hours to just kind of do that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, something similar to that, you know, we would go to OPE every year to recruit graduate students.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: And, you know, we revamped our whole strategy with GA recruitment.
Speaker: And, you know, something that some of the challenges that we were facing when I had taken a GA recruitment under my wing was competing with larger schools, you know, that honestly didn't have to put a whole lot of effort into sticking out.
Speaker: You know, they were depending on the name, you know, of this institution.
Speaker: And so we started being incredibly intentional with everything, you know, we did.
Speaker: Like we had, we would pick a theme and the theme would run through everything we did.
Speaker: And we also did, you know, an assessment.
Speaker: So I, the CSPA program has an assessment class.
Speaker: So, you know, they partnered with us and we actually was fortunate enough to have
Speaker: my co-author, Dr. Bruick, I reached out to him and I said, hey, do you mind assigning a group, one of your projects to help me assess my GA recruitment?
Speaker: And so they surveyed past grads, current grads, and we found out that, and then I also looked at some of our selection data and everything, and we found that,
Speaker: Our biggest strengths were taking a large group.
Speaker: We used to just send four people to OBE, but then we started showing up in numbers.
Speaker: So all our pro staff would go and we would take a pretty big committee of grad students.
Speaker: And that was a big recruitment tool.
Speaker: If we could get them on campus, we knew that was a huge impact and influence on their decision.
Speaker: And so we kind of restructured and revamped the way our timing of offers and everything.
Speaker: It was just immediately, you could see the positive impact that our recruitment had.
Speaker: And we were done by April.
Speaker: And some years we were like...
Speaker: in July, you know, like looking for one or two more people.
Speaker: You've already missed the summer training.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're like, you know, anybody that, you know, needs an assistantship.
Speaker: So, so it's just, it's really cool to kind of see your, your work and the decisions that you've made based on, you know, on some of the data and things like that really, you know, come to fruition.
Speaker: It's really cool.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker: And I think your point about, oh, we started sending a mass of people really, I mean, that's a huge investment of like resources and money and personnel hours that I can't imagine to be able to do that without some level of data supporting it.
Speaker: Yeah, I had to tell my boss, you know, I was like, look, this is, you know, we'll have people with their phones if you need to get a hold of it.
Speaker: But essentially the whole ResLife squad was, you know, gone.
Speaker: I think that's the other big piece is having
Speaker: you know, that support and trust from your leadership, you know, and my, you know, supervisor, Dr. McBrayer, she's, you know, she puts full faith in me, you know, so, and she'll ask questions, you know, and then I'll be like, oh, here's, you know, here's the data, this is this, so, and then, you know, she's like, all right,
Speaker: Oh, that's great.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: So let me ask you this.
Speaker: How did you feel?
Speaker: What was the feeling you had when your very first article was published?
Speaker: Man, it was great.
Speaker: It's so awesome to see your work all nice and published in the journal.
Speaker: It looks way better than the Word document that you've been working on, you know?
Speaker: And it honestly, it gave me, you know, drive and it fueled me to continue, you know, to do this, you know, scholarly type of work.
Speaker: Because, I mean, it's hard work, you know, and some of these studies take two to three years, you know, and it's very rewarding, you know, once it's all said and done.
Speaker: And every time you, you know, engage people,
Speaker: in that type of behavior, you get more confident about doing stuff.
Speaker: As with anything, practicing makes you better.
Speaker: So as through the years, I've made a point to make sure that I'm engaging in that type of work.
Speaker: Make it a priority.
Speaker: Yeah, making it a priority, absolutely.
Speaker: Even though it's not considered priority for positions, but I think it helps us sharpen a skill set that a lot of times just doesn't get used enough.
Speaker: And I can definitely...
Speaker: see that you know the way i tackle problems and analyze you know issues with the department is completely different now you know my my former boss used to say that or does say that like once you publish your first article it makes it a whole lot easier to publish your second one and i think that relates to a whole lot of things that you know like this podcast once you record the first episode it makes it a little bit easier yeah
Speaker: There's that initial hurdle of getting over it that's so challenging, which is why they put part of the value of this conversation is like, how do we enter that conversation with the skills that we already have and what transfers between our work and this side gig that you've got going on?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So let's talk about your recently published article.
Speaker: Again, it's titled Hiring Decisions of Graduate Level and Full-Time Hall Directors on Resident Assistant Recruitment.
Speaker: What was the genesis of this article and where did the idea come from?
Speaker: So, you know, our...
Speaker: department is very grad heavy.
Speaker: You know, we have all our RCs or hall directors are graduate students.
Speaker: And I started noticing, you know, some patterns every year in regards to RA hires.
Speaker: And I noticed, you know, we had quite a few that would go on very quickly on performance probation and, you know, some even, you know, getting terminated, you know, a month or two into the position.
Speaker: And a lot of those folks were popular candidates, you know, through the process, you know, they were kind of candidates that were sought off after by, you know, a lot of our grads.
Speaker: And so I was like, well, you know, what's going on over here?
Speaker: You know, what's happening here?
Speaker: Even though, you know, their decisions were based on, you know, data within our process, why was it that we were having so many, you know, go on probation and
Speaker: you know, just are not up to snuff kind of type of thing.
Speaker: And the other part of that was when we lost RAs due to bad performance, and we would have to dip back into the alternate pool, we would find these rock stars sitting there that, you know, ended up being stellar staff members.
Speaker: And that really was when I was like, wait a minute, okay, so
Speaker: Our first picks are there's a percentage of them that aren't performing well.
Speaker: Some of them are getting terminated, you know, a month or two into the position.
Speaker: Quite a few of them are going on probation at the end of the semester.
Speaker: And then when we are placing the ones that did lose their positions from our alternate list, we're finding gems sitting in there.
Speaker: So what did we, you know, what made us, how did they slip through the cracks, type of thing?
Speaker: I was an alternate RA back in the day.
Speaker: Me too, me too.
Speaker: You know, look at that.
Speaker: I'll take alternate RAs all day, every day.
Speaker: Yeah, and I remember one stood out really strong for me, and it was, we were doing camps and conferences, and this person ended up getting picked up as a camp assistant, right?
Speaker: And he was phenomenal, and I was like, hey man, what have you thought about
Speaker: And being an art, he was like, yeah, I actually applied and went through and I didn't get picked up.
Speaker: And I was like, what?
Speaker: So that really kind of got me looking to see what's going on.
Speaker: And then what does our selection process look like?
Speaker: And how are we evaluating these different pieces of our process?
Speaker: And after that's all said and done, are our grad students making...
Speaker: the right decisions based on, you know, our process.
Speaker: And with that, also on the other side, you know, are they getting any sort of training in the program in terms of that HR function, which is a big piece of the student affairs position?
Speaker: Most programs don't have any sort of emphasis on that HR function.
Speaker: I read an article once.
Speaker: I think it was like 9% of programs have, it's either supervision or like human resources, like curriculum.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And in the article, you know, we cited a study where they did a content analysis of CSBA programs and there was a
Speaker: hardly any emphasis on, you know, that HR piece.
Speaker: Another interesting thing is, is our program went through an assessment and they brought in an external consultant, you know, to kind of just see how things were with the program.
Speaker: And they invited campus partners, you know, to meet with the consultant just to kind of
Speaker: And I asked the consultant, I was like, because, you know, we had just started on this article and I was like, what are your thoughts on, you know, this HR function kind of not being part of a lot of these CSP programs?
Speaker: And he said, you know, well, I very, you know, matter of fact, didn't even like...
Speaker: put any thought he was like, I think that's something they just have to learn, like a trial and error type of thing when they take their first position.
Speaker: I was like, really?
Speaker: And I was like, and to me, it's kind of crazy because there's, like you were saying, you know, time intensive, resource intensive, and the RA position is such an important position, you know, the big
Speaker: picture and any position, you know, after that too, it has its role in, you know, retention and whatnot.
Speaker: And so I just thought it was really interesting that it was more so, Hey, you know, just learn from your mistakes and how long is that going to take, you know, for some people?
Speaker: And so I just thought it was interesting that that was something that, you know, wasn't even kind of viewed as important to include in a program.
Speaker: Yeah, it really shows that if we're not getting education in programs, it really is on-the-job training.
Speaker: And then we start to wonder why, like, why are we doing things always the same way we've always done them?
Speaker: And Justin Liebowitz was one of the co-editors of the special issue you were published in.
Speaker: He tells a story about his first full-time job, and he needed to hire some office assistants.
Speaker: And he shared this in the recent Akuhoi webinar on RE recruitment.
Speaker: And basically his boss, he's like, what do I do?
Speaker: And his boss said, make a poster.
Speaker: interview people, hire them.
Speaker: And it's like, that's your process.
Speaker: That's what it is.
Speaker: And I just think that's so fascinating when we look at what's going on.
Speaker: And another one of my favorite Justin stories is like he will always share.
Speaker: And you talk about poor performance of these high rated candidates.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And often we look at poor performances like, well, there must be a training issue.
Speaker: Well, Justin would always say it's actually could be very well be a recruitment issue that we've got recruitment problems that are now putting people in positions where they're not going to be successful.
Speaker: And I think that's fascinating also.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: It's like bad seeds that you're trying to water, you know, like, and that's just exactly what it is, you know, some just have the wrong attitudes or, you know, or some just didn't understand what the position entailed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And even though we had very detailed informational sessions during the application process where they would come out multiple nights and our staff would present on what it means to be an RA and what the job entail and the compensation, all of that, they still had different expectations when they did get hired.
Speaker: And it was just weird.
Speaker: I don't know if that's just a combination of somebody applying, not paying attention at the informational or just not even, it didn't even go to informational or is a friend of an RA that said, hey, just apply and I'm going to push for you to get hired.
Speaker: And then it's a shock.
Speaker: Oh my God, I have to do what?
Speaker: I have to do this?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, we see that a lot where the, where RAs prioritize things that they don't get paid for over the position and, you know, all the time.
Speaker: And I'm like, but we're paying you for this, you know?
Speaker: And they're like, well, I have, I have this, you know, thing to do with my organization, you know?
Speaker: And I'm like, yeah, but you have a job we're paying you all the time.
Speaker: You know, it just blows my mind.
Speaker: And I was like, what, you know?
Speaker: Well, you mentioned the record, like, oh, I know a friend who's an RA and that's why I'm in this.
Speaker: Like one of the things that came out in terms of what influences hiring managers was current RA feedback on candidates was, I think, ranked like third lowest in all the influences you looked at.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But I find that fascinating also that these are the, RAs are the people with the most face-to-face interactive experience with candidates that,
Speaker: And it doesn't seem like it's overly important to hiring managers, at least in what you've found.
Speaker: Yeah, I really thought it would have had a higher influence because just based on what I've seen and on my experiences, you know, and just from having conversations with clients.
Speaker: with candidates in the past, a lot of them would say, oh, I'm here because I know so-and-so.
Speaker: And they would almost pigeonhole themselves to a certain community just because that's where their friend was.
Speaker: And I've even seen it to where some would turn down a position because it wasn't in the community that they wanted, even though we said, hey, we think that you would fit better in this community.
Speaker: But they're like, oh, but I want to be with my friends.
Speaker: over here, you know, and, and sometimes we had to have those conversations with the hall directors, you know, like, okay, because they would push, you know, for having them, you know, there.
Speaker: And, and that was kind of something that came out in the study too, was current staff feedback was significantly higher for males than females.
Speaker: And this is something that I've noticed, especially with, you know, the male hall directors where it was, you know,
Speaker: Much easier.
Speaker: A, I remember they would always try and hire the folks that their RAs wanted.
Speaker: I had, when I was an assistant director, I had an all-male hall.
Speaker: And over the course of my years at UCA, we've had multiple meetings.
Speaker: male hall directors, and this was a conversation I've always had with them where they already knew who they wanted prior to selection.
Speaker: And I was like, how are you coming to this conclusion?
Speaker: And it's purely based on what
Speaker: Their staff is saying, you know, like this person is going to get along great, you know, and I'm like, yeah, but are they going to do the job well?
Speaker: But that didn't seem important.
Speaker: It was more about they're going to fit in.
Speaker: It's going to be less work for me to to do any team cohesion and team development.
Speaker: You know, they're automatically going to fit in.
Speaker: It's almost like a microcosm of good old boys networking.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And I don't know if it's that they had less faith in the selection process because that was, you know, something that came out in our study too, you know, that was statistically significant.
Speaker: It was that males just did not have faith in the selection process.
Speaker: And females reported, you know, much higher confidence in, you know, the hiring process.
Speaker: But it was just crazy to me.
Speaker: And something that we noticed was we're very developmental with our grad students.
Speaker: So we're not going to say, you will hire this.
Speaker: We want them to understand the repercussions of
Speaker: of some of their decisions.
Speaker: So a lot of times, you know, we would say, all right, go ahead and, you know, hire this person.
Speaker: And it was great for the first month.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden, so-and-so is, you know, was not picking up his duty, not pulling his weight, not being a team player.
Speaker: And then there's, guess what?
Speaker: You're having to do all this team bonding and team cohesion and, you know, all this because you're, you know, your perfect fit all of a sudden is just not, you know, doing, pulling his weight or pulling their weight, you know, with the job.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: It was just interesting, you know, that that came out.
Speaker: I immediately, you know, connected some of those experiences with this finding.
Speaker: So it was really interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, you mentioned like lack of trust or lack of faith in the process developed.
Speaker: This actually came up in one of the other articles in the special issue by Evan Kiel, who interviewed about like placement decisions.
Speaker: And I thought it's interesting between the two of your articles that that seemed to be something that I think is rather problematic because we spend a whole lot of time, a whole lot of resources and a whole lot of money recruiting people.
Speaker: And then if our hiring managers, whether they're grads or full time,
Speaker: or sit around like, oh, I'm not using any of these metrics because I know what I'm doing as a first-year professional, it seems like there's a little bit of a disconnect.
Speaker: So do you have any more on what that lack of faith is?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think A is how involved are they in that planning process?
Speaker: So something that this study kind of found too was that folks that weren't involved in any planning or implementation of what selection looks like
Speaker: also didn't have confidence, you know, and that makes sense.
Speaker: And we did see that professional staff do rely more on those like metric based influences, you know, like GPA and group process core and, you know, things that actually have some sort of score attached to it.
Speaker: Whereas the grad students and those that may not have prior hiring experience rely more so on those kind of squishy metrics like leadership experience and
Speaker: The things that are really difficult to kind of evaluate and or their interactions, you know, and I think it's all connected, you know, and I can understand not having faith in something that you just aren't a part of and have not kind of given your feedback.
Speaker: on and more so just kind of said this is the process, this is what you're going to use, you know, and then it's I think it's easy, especially new call directors that are, you know, trying to fit in.
Speaker: They're trying to be popular with their staff.
Speaker: They want to be liked.
Speaker: And so it's easier for them to say, OK, you know, I'm going to take your feedback over my supervisor's feedback or
Speaker: I'm going to listen to a peer and put more value on what a peer tells me than what my supervisors, you know, kind of giving me advice with.
Speaker: And I think it all kind of feeds into that.
Speaker: And, you know, even outside of RA hiring, it's just you have more buy-in when you're kind of have been involved in
Speaker: in the planning and implementation of something.
Speaker: So you understand why we're doing this, why are we doing this activity?
Speaker: What are we evaluating by doing this activity?
Speaker: It just provides more context.
Speaker: So I think that's some of the things that at play with that.
Speaker: Well, on some of that, that buy-in, I totally understand.
Speaker: And I think one thing that comes to mind is like, well, outside of having a committee made up of the entire department so that everyone has buy-in, then what sort of communication efforts are made to explain the...
Speaker: As much as it's in vogue, the why, quote unquote, of certain things or certain questions we're asking and how much time are we investing in staff who are actually on the front lines hiring people that this is why we're asking these questions.
Speaker: This is why we're not asking certain questions or what is a departmental expectation?
Speaker: And again, going back to Evan's article, it was interesting.
Speaker: very clear that there's a lot of departments out there that are not providing expectations on what does it mean to be a part of this process or what are we expecting departmentally?
Speaker: And it's just like, here's what it is, but not the context.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: You know, because it's going to look different for every department.
Speaker: Like what?
Speaker: What does a successful RA look like?
Speaker: I think there are some attributes that would probably span across institutions, but depending on the institution, they may value certain characteristics more than others.
Speaker: And is your selection process designed to evaluate those characteristics?
Speaker: And that was something that we actually built into this survey was this little open-ended question that asked respondents for what are your top three attributes for a successful RA?
Speaker: And Thomas and I coded all that data and we're actually writing another piece about that.
Speaker: But it ended up that there were...
Speaker: we came up with these six dimensions of what the perfect RA would be.
Speaker: But the biggest dimension was a lot of these squishy metrics, you know, that are really difficult to kind of evaluate in a selection process.
Speaker: And so something that we were...
Speaker: looking at and suggesting was that's kind of where you would want to put a lot of value on that reference piece because some of these characteristics were things that needed to be measured over a period of time, right?
Speaker: So it was just too difficult to kind of evaluate that on like one day or two days or from an interview or an activity.
Speaker: It was something that needed to be observed over a long period of time.
Speaker: And to me, that's where references come in.
Speaker: And being very intentional when speaking to references, tell me about so-and-so's passion for XYZ or, you know, just those types of things that are just so difficult to kind of evaluate, you know, on the fly.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: That was something, that's something, you know, that we're working on.
Speaker: So it's very, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So very, some very interesting, you know, stuff.
Speaker: And then there's, you know, the, we called universal competencies.
Speaker: I think is that what we call that, you know, one of the dimensions, which was kind of things that spanned across, you know, but I think it's important for departments to have those conversations with their staff and say, this is what we value in an RA and what
Speaker: And then whoever's over selection needs to take a hard look at their process and almost tie those characteristics to parts of their process and say, is this being evaluated here?
Speaker: Is this being evaluated here?
Speaker: And if so, how?
Speaker: You know, and then you get into the whole...
Speaker: Especially with something like group process, which is so valued by everyone, right?
Speaker: But it's so difficult to evaluate.
Speaker: Well, at least evaluate well.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I can't tell you how...
Speaker: frustrated I would get over the years just watching candidates go through and, you know, and I would like intentionally go and look to see what a candidate scored just from observing them because there's, you know, extrovert bias and you have people that monopolize conversations and then everybody that's kind of just sitting there gets a horrible rating, you know, and I'm like, what?
Speaker: And I think a lot of that contributed to these diamonds in the rough being, you know, just a
Speaker: Pushed into the alternate pool, you know, because that one guy that I spoke to that was a conference assistant was a quiet guy.
Speaker: He was an introvert, you know, but man, he worked really well and he had really great one on one relationships with his residents.
Speaker: And, you know, and you just it's so difficult to evaluate those types of things in those types of settings.
Speaker: And then training on how to evaluate candidates.
Speaker: Which we're not getting in grad schools, as you said.
Speaker: Which, absolutely.
Speaker: And you would see this variability from ratings, you know, where somebody would just get a zero and someone else would give them a five, you know, a five out of five.
Speaker: And it just is crazy, right?
Speaker: And so I'm a big fan of rubrics.
Speaker: I think
Speaker: Rubrics are the way to kind of help clear up some of that noise, very detailed rubrics.
Speaker: So being very precise about, okay, this person and keeping it simple, you know, like a 0-1-2 score, you know, or 0-1-2-3 score.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Tying outcomes to each of those scores.
Speaker: So the candidate or somebody that's evaluating a candidate knows, okay, I'm going to give them a three because they've, they've hit all of these check boxes that warrants them a score for, of a three.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: And that's something we've done in our department to kind of clean up some of that noise because we had a big issue with just how candidates were being evaluated, all sorts of crazy, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we've tied rubrics to everything, even evaluating a resume, even for references, you know, we were tying rubrics so that they're
Speaker: extremely clear, you know, with what, how to score somebody so that it's consistent.
Speaker: And we've made quite a few, you know, changes to our selection process.
Speaker: Because of your research?
Speaker: Yeah, because of the research.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And because, you know, as even though it took three years to write this article, I mean, I was in the, you know, in the data and whatnot prior to then.
Speaker: So I was already as soon as I would find something that was interesting, I would tell my assistant directors, you know, oh, this this is coming out in my study.
Speaker: Go ahead and change this up.
Speaker: And and actually started from I was actually doing an analysis of applications.
Speaker: OK, I was just looking at application data.
Speaker: And something that came out that was statistically significant
Speaker: was on the application, there was an open-ended question about leadership experience and involvement or something like that.
Speaker: And what I did was I looked to see if there was any correlation between a GPA because something that we were having a problem with was students at the time of application had a good GPA, but by the time they were getting ready to, you know, finishing out the semester, their GPA tanked and we couldn't hire them.
Speaker: And so I was trying to find, is there a predictor to see if there's something that we can get, you stay ahead with this.
Speaker: And it turns, it was just so interesting.
Speaker: It turned out that the students that took the time to answer those open-ended questions, even to say, no, I don't have leadership experience or no, I'm not involved.
Speaker: had a strong correlation to a higher GPA.
Speaker: It was really interesting.
Speaker: And I was like, is that just, and I was like, what is that?
Speaker: Is that fairness of application?
Speaker: Is that, you know, just being, whereas the ones that just didn't even, they just left the question blank, right?
Speaker: Were likely to have their GPA drop at the end of this event.
Speaker: So interesting.
Speaker: I was like, this is really interesting, you know?
Speaker: Well, I'd love that just running some stats on some random departmental data.
Speaker: I did that once for, it was like programming evals and this would have been like six years ago.
Speaker: And I did the estimated attendance against the cost of money spent on food.
Speaker: And there was actually an inverse relationship between attendance and cost of money spent on food.
Speaker: So when people are like, oh, people only come because of food.
Speaker: Well, here's a piece of data that is against that.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So you'll find the strangest things.
Speaker: I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker: But going back, we revamped our whole project.
Speaker: We used to have –
Speaker: You know, group process w as a whole day.
Speaker: We called it Super Sunday.
Speaker: And we had everybody come in.
Speaker: And it was like, you know, 150 candidates all day going through, you know, and there were large groups, you know, and that was another thing.
Speaker: Like large groups are hard to manage, harder to evaluate everybody in there.
Speaker: And it's more difficult for everybody to kind of pull their own weight, kind of interact within the activity.
Speaker: And so that was the first thing was, you know, breaking that up into more manageable groups.
Speaker: an RA class and not very many schools have that as part of their selection based on the data that we captured.
Speaker: And so we used to, once we hired candidates, the semester that they started working for us, they would go RA class and it was kind of like an extended training and whatnot.
Speaker: But so what we ended up doing
Speaker: was we made the class prior, we pulled it out, and it was something that was part of the application process.
Speaker: And we called it a leadership class.
Speaker: And we did away with group process, and we built our group process into this class.
Speaker: And so we got to see applicants for longer.
Speaker: You know, it was like a six-week, it's a six-week class.
Speaker: type of thing once one hour a week oh four weeks sorry it was four week and they just do some of those group process activities through the class but what what it did was it kind of weeded out all the folks that just weren't serious about the position and it cut it just kind of helped us clean our process right off the bat because that was something else that was so difficult
Speaker: to predict was how many are doing this just for the compensation?
Speaker: Like how many of these students that are applying for this position actually care about the impact that they're making on their residents and whatnot?
Speaker: So building that on the front end
Speaker: and tying those group process activities to the class and having those rubrics to assess all those assignments and whatnot.
Speaker: This is the last year, it was the first year that we did it, so we're still looking to see if any of that predicts some good performance.
Speaker: And what we're doing is we're having multiple people
Speaker: use our rubrics so that we're getting some iterator reliability, you know, so just to kind of see if, you know, two people evaluating, you know, one candidate, how close their evaluations are, you know, just to build a robust kind of metric to evaluate them.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: Hopefully, you know, we'll see some good, you know, results from that.
Speaker: But right off the bat, we're seeing more quality applicants, less applicants, more quality, more committed.
Speaker: And because, you know, four weeks of once one hour a week is, you know, that's a lot for some students.
Speaker: And it's truly weeding out the ones that are that want the job, that are, you know, committed to the position.
Speaker: And then by the time they start working,
Speaker: they have a good idea of what the position entails, which was the other piece that we were kind of addressing is, you know, people getting hired and they're like, what after the duty?
Speaker: What do you know?
Speaker: You know, what, I have office hours?
Speaker: You know, or just stuff where you're like, really?
Speaker: Like, you didn't know this?
Speaker: Well, as you mentioned, group process is always a lively discussion.
Speaker: So next time our listeners find themselves at a conference hotel bar debating the efficacy of group process, what from your article can they specifically say to elevate their participation in that conversation?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think group process is, from our study, it was something that was valued.
Speaker: The interactions that all directors had with candidates was, I think, the second strongest influence out of our influence characteristics.
Speaker: And then group process itself was the third highest.
Speaker: And I think it's important, again, to kind of break down what group process looks like to see and to ask those questions like, why are we doing this activity?
Speaker: What are we evaluating here?
Speaker: What are we hoping to learn about a candidate from XYZ activity?
Speaker: And then are we evaluating this activity correctly?
Speaker: Are we training our evaluators well enough to be consistent with their evaluation so that we're not getting these questions?
Speaker: this huge spread of scores and and then and then even going back to what we were talking about with the departmental what they value for candidates you know i think that's important because it doesn't make sense that you know we value a certain attribute that we're not even trying to flesh out with our process you know like um
Speaker: So I don't know how much of disconnect there is, you know, in that, but I think that's a great starting point, certainly for us.
Speaker: you know, we had to kind of look and see, A, how big are our groups?
Speaker: Because there's so, humans are so complex and it's so difficult to evaluate somebody, you know, with some of these characteristics that we hold so high, it's just so difficult to kind of score somebody on one day, you know, or through an activity like that.
Speaker: And so looking at everything that the group process is made of, the group sizes, you know, the activities, what those metrics are for evaluating, you know, and are the evaluators being trained accordingly to, you know, to kind of...
Speaker: evaluate correctly.
Speaker: So what did you discover about hiring influence related to racial identity of the hiring managers?
Speaker: So staff diversity was the highest influence factor, which I think, I can see if I can find out, but it was the strongest influence on hiring decision.
Speaker: And then people of color, there was a statistically significant difference between people of color and
Speaker: their white counterparts and with a pretty, I think, medium effect size.
Speaker: Something interesting too was the influence of candidates' social media.
Speaker: That one was kind of on the low end.
Speaker: And I honestly expected that one to be a little higher.
Speaker: I think that one was the least, I was the bottom of the decision influences.
Speaker: you know and i really thought they'd be higher because i've been on multiple search committees that i know that even for like executive positions you know people stop on their social media like that's happening on the first on the first day you know and so i was like really this is not a huge influence but there was you know there was a big difference between people of color statistically significant difference between people of color and their white counterparts and that one had a close to a large effect size you know and um
Speaker: But I thought it was interesting that it was not higher in terms of the influence.
Speaker: But, you know, the big thing is that, you know, representation matters, you know, for people of color.
Speaker: And I think it's really important to kind of understand that, you know, even for me as a person of color in a, you know, in a...
Speaker: senior leadership role, you know, like I still to this day, if I walk into a meeting, you know, or any classroom or anything, you know, that has leadership in there, automatically I'm looking to see, you know, are there any other people like me?
Speaker: Because it does, you know, impact, you know, to a certain level.
Speaker: to a certain degree of what's valued on the institutional level.
Speaker: And then I think just additional training on diversity and inclusion within hiring practices, I think would be beneficial based on some of the findings that we found.
Speaker: I keep referencing another article on that special issue with some of the qualitative follow-ups about placement.
Speaker: And that article also talked about the interviews that they did.
Speaker: A lot of people talked about how representation mattered or didn't to them individually.
Speaker: And a lot of people said that representation mattered.
Speaker: And I just wanted to be able to ask the follow-up question.
Speaker: It's like everyone's talking about representation, but nobody's follow-up interviews talked about like
Speaker: anything further than just like face value representation and well it's absolutely important but it's like what about the diversity of ideas that are being generated and i almost wonder if that's back to the departmental expectation that we're getting the we need representation yes uh but we also need newer ideas and different ideas and how are we facilitating that upward mobility of uh like diverse networks and diverse ideas
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: You know, and that's something that I really take pride in, especially with our grad recruitment.
Speaker: You know, we always hire an extremely diverse set of graduate assistants.
Speaker: And we've had many, like even during interviews at placements or even Zoom this past year, like we had candidates.
Speaker: make comments about how they loved to be interviewed by a diverse group, you know, of leadership, which is something that you don't see.
Speaker: And especially for our students to be able to connect, to be able to see themselves being represented in leadership.
Speaker: I think there's research on, you know, that shows the impact of that and
Speaker: And even with our RAs too, just for them to see this representation, I think it definitely has an impact.
Speaker: You know, that's maybe something else to kind of, I may have to jot down on real quick, put that on the list.
Speaker: Is there an impact on RA performance based on their representation in regards to diversity?
Speaker: I'd be curious to see.
Speaker: So knowing that there's a lot of like entry level professionals out there that have maybe some limited authority or power to make large changes in the department, what do you think is the simplest takeaway an entry level listener could put into action from your research to improve their hiring process?
Speaker: That wouldn't have hiring influence?
Speaker: Yeah, like an entry level professional, a hall director who is grinding it out, facilitating the interviews, but doesn't necessarily have a whole lot of power to make systematic changes in their current state.
Speaker: Like what's something they can do small scale in their own practice?
Speaker: Maybe looking at what they are basing their decisions on, kind of like having a reflective moment on, you know, okay, this candidate is sticking out to me.
Speaker: It's, you know, in selection.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: You know, do I have any relationship with this candidate?
Speaker: You know, you kind of have to be honest with yourself and say, am I just picking this person because my staff has been pressurizing me, you know, to hire this person?
Speaker: Has this candidate stuck out to me because I've seen them at programs, because they've stopped by the office, because they're involved with my hall council?
Speaker: So I think as an entry-level professional, when it comes to selection and you don't have control of your process and you're kind of just saying, use this process to hire your staff, take a good look at and reflect on
Speaker: and be honest with yourself about why am I picking this person?
Speaker: You know, where do they stand based on, you know, the evaluation system that my selection process has?
Speaker: And what are the different things that are influencing me to pick this person or to not pick somebody, you know, equally important.
Speaker: And to just kind of be honest about there's a bias if you're
Speaker: that they may are overlooking or are intentionally trying to not kind of admit.
Speaker: But I think it's important to see what is this person bringing to my staff?
Speaker: Are they going to add to my staff?
Speaker: Are they going to complement areas that I need them to in terms of the big staff picture?
Speaker: So I think that's super easy to do is just to reflect on your short list of people that you want to hire and kind of see what, you know, for all of them, what are those big influences that have led me to put their name down on my sheet?
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's just general good advice of like, how do you just improve within your sphere of influence and, you know, work on personal improvements as opposed to, well, I've got limited ability to improve outside of that influence, but I might as well make my sphere as best as it possibly can be.
Speaker: So I think that's great advice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then, you know, it doesn't hurt to read and research too, to see things that they may not be aware of, to kind of, you know, bring awareness to some of these things that we're seeing in regards to RA selection.
Speaker: So bringing that awareness to see, is this happening in my selection process?
Speaker: Is this, am I...
Speaker: intentionally going against the grain because I'm not involved in the selection process.
Speaker: Do I actually trust this process?
Speaker: Why am I picking somebody that is so low on the score sheet or whatever?
Speaker: Which I think most departments have a line where if you pick anybody below this type of a score, you have to justify that decision.
Speaker: with your supervisor.
Speaker: I know we have that.
Speaker: And so being able to articulate your decisions honestly, I think is important.
Speaker: So let's talk a little bit about the, just the publishing process while we wrap up and tell me about the experience in the peer review process and receiving anonymous feedback from journal reviewers.
Speaker: Do you have any memorable comment that just like sticks out in your mind, either positive or negative?
Speaker: I can't really think of a single comment.
Speaker: I do remember early on when I was submitting, you know, and something that I remember really frustrating me was I would get feedback, you know, from everybody.
Speaker: And one of the pieces that got rejected and the feedback was contradicting, you know, and I was like,
Speaker: what?
Speaker: So they were like half of the reviewers said one thing and half of the reviewers said to do the opposite.
Speaker: And I was like, what do you do with that?
Speaker: So I remember that being something that was kind of frustrating.
Speaker: So I looked at it as
Speaker: you know, I think all feedback, there's truth to all feedback.
Speaker: And so something like that, where maybe it split, you know, the room, I thought, maybe I can simplify that piece to where there's not people saying do this or don't do that, you know, to try and simplify as best at all.
Speaker: And to think with, you know, the reader in mind.
Speaker: And that was something that as an early writer that I just wasn't
Speaker: good about, you know, I just, I would just like, I'm writing this day, you know, people need to just automatically understand what I'm writing about and know, you know, read my mind, you know, that type of thing.
Speaker: And it's just, you know, just being a young, you know, writer and wanting to, to get your, you know, your, your work noticed.
Speaker: And, and so that's kind of the, you know, the, the early on the feedback was, you know,
Speaker: Keep the reader in mind.
Speaker: Don't overcomplicate it.
Speaker: Be plain.
Speaker: Be simple with your writing.
Speaker: Don't use big unnecessary words and phrases to try and sound scholarly.
Speaker: Because there is a lot of that as a young writer.
Speaker: You want to
Speaker: And with that, I will say that, you know, articles from the past were very dense, you know, and did not take into account, you know, what the reader had to digest, you know, because I remember part of my PhD program, I had to read some really old articles and I had to read some sentences like six and seven times over before I even understood what the heck they were trying to say, you know, with my dictionary out and like, what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I think that's changed a lot.
Speaker: And I think a lot of thought has been given to the reader because you want people to read your stuff.
Speaker: You don't want people to say, oh, my God, this guy writes the most boring or just he's so dense and uses all, you know, like this person's so full of themselves.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just I don't know what he's trying to prove.
Speaker: But you want in the end, you want people to.
Speaker: to read and understand your work.
Speaker: I think that's the goal, right?
Speaker: You're finding all this good stuff, you're contributing it to the field, and you want as many people to read it and understand it and, you know, make use of it.
Speaker: And that's just not going to happen if you're just, you know, thinking about, you know, yourself and, you know, what you want to get out.
Speaker: Well, I think there's a larger takeaway of like, how do you make what you're working on accessible to others?
Speaker: And using big words limits accessibility.
Speaker: And I think what I've noticed is, you know, you've got the Talking Stick article about RE recruitment.
Speaker: I believe you're doing a presentation at Akuho with some of the other authors of that special issue.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're playing to different audiences because the people who read the journal are not always the people who read the talking stick and are not always the people who go to a conference session.
Speaker: So I think there's a lot of value in how do you frame a narrative, whether it's a budget proposal or a program proposal or a award nomination.
Speaker: We have to play to different audiences.
Speaker: And I think that's kind of what I took away from what you were just saying.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So have you received any message?
Speaker: I know it's fairly recent, but any messages about your work from others?
Speaker: Or I know you said you've made changes.
Speaker: Are you aware of any departments that have made changes based on your work?
Speaker: On this work?
Speaker: No, not yet.
Speaker: I hope not.
Speaker: I hope people reach out and let me know.
Speaker: I do know that when I sent out the survey initially, there were a lot of folks that reached out that said, hey, let me know your findings, you know, after.
Speaker: And I said, I was very...
Speaker: Upfront, I said, this is actually coming out in the special edition, so you'll get to read everything about it.
Speaker: But I had about four or five folks reach out to say, hey, I'm interested in the findings of this.
Speaker: So at the time, I don't think they knew that we had already been slated for the special edition.
Speaker: So there were some folks that did that, but I'm not aware of anybody that has actually implemented anything yet.
Speaker: It's kind of early, so maybe after the Kuho-Ai presentation, maybe that will hopefully generate some positive change with some departments.
Speaker: But with some of the other, now with the talking stick, I did get a lot of people randomly reach out and say, hey, I enjoyed this article or tell me more about your partnership with your campus police or the one that I did on...
Speaker: the one that Thomas and I wrote on, I think, Screen Time or whatever, somebody connected with me on LinkedIn and sent me a message.
Speaker: And it was so cool from up north, you know, and I was like, this is awesome.
Speaker: And they're just saying, hey, I loved reading your article, you know, and that was it.
Speaker: And I was like, dude, you just made my day.
Speaker: You know, that is awesome.
Speaker: You know, one person, you know, read my article and got something great out of it.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Well, yeah, I love that.
Speaker: And I've had a couple of people reach out to me about some things I've written or my dissertation or whatever.
Speaker: And it's like it's super neat.
Speaker: It's like, finally, someone other than my parents have my dissertation.
Speaker: And it's just kind of neat that someone and I think that's another thing that I would encourage readers of journals and articles is like,
Speaker: It costs you almost nothing to reach out to an author, even if it's like the person who reached out to you just to say, hey, I really liked it.
Speaker: Like they didn't say anything about like, oh, I changed my life or changed my department.
Speaker: But there's like an encouragement there.
Speaker: Oh, my gosh.
Speaker: And it also might build a relationship through LinkedIn and a network node that you can activate later on.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It was so great.
Speaker: And then I always have like my old grad students, you know, they'll...
Speaker: send me a picture if they see, you know, my article or something, they'll say, oh, look at you, you know.
Speaker: So, I mean, and that also just gives me so much more fuel to just, you know, keep doing this.
Speaker: Even we have this thing at our university where we can submit to the institution and they compile like a daily briefing of everything that's going on campus, any highlights on certain things, you know.
Speaker: And my boss, you know, she submitted the Talking Stick article, you know, she was like, oh, you know,
Speaker: Craig and Thomas, you know, collaborated to write this piece.
Speaker: And the provost sent me an email and said, it's so great to see, you know, this collaboration.
Speaker: And I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, my God, you know, just small, simple things like that.
Speaker: It just, you know, they go a long way and make they make big impact, you know.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's one way of building like departmental or institutional capital of like most student affairs departments have an annual report that they run.
Speaker: And there's that one column for the practitioners like what presentations have people given at conferences and what articles have been published.
Speaker: And in my experience, that articles published one is often very scarce on submissions to it.
Speaker: And so that's a cool way to build some capital for yourself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And do you think that that will ever change in our field?
Speaker: Do you think that we would get to a point where scholarly work...
Speaker: gets more of a focus as part of a practitioner's job?
Speaker: You know, I think, I don't think so, at least not in the near future.
Speaker: I think it's one of those, I think writing and researching is one of those things that, especially coming out of grad school, everyone's fired up.
Speaker: Like probably our most knowledgeable people of research are our grad students or recent grad students because they've been in it and everyone's fired up, but it's like, well, now I got to do good at this job and
Speaker: It's not a priority, even though people say it is.
Speaker: I just don't see it.
Speaker: One of my side projects is I've been working with someone on the Akuhai Journal.
Speaker: That's how I knew that you were one of two practitioners, is classifying, categorizing authors by their role.
Speaker: There is a...
Speaker: huge trend down.
Speaker: And the last time I ran the data, it showed like, if the trend continues, there will be no practitioners publishing in like 2025 or 2022, something like that.
Speaker: But I mean, I just think it's one of those things.
Speaker: It's kind of like everyone's, you know, white whale out there.
Speaker: It's like something really cool.
Speaker: There's a lot of like that.
Speaker: I don't have time.
Speaker: I don't know how is probably the biggest one.
Speaker: So I think if there's more people out there that are like, how do you bring people in the fold, help them write their first article or I've done this before.
Speaker: So come along and contribute.
Speaker: It makes it a whole lot easier the next time.
Speaker: And hopefully they can do it themselves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I actually asked that question because I also was like, where do I find the time to do this?
Speaker: I knew I wanted to do this.
Speaker: And one of the coolest experiences that I've had was, and this is where I met Justin Leibowitz, was at this research seminar.
Speaker: at Elon University, they were doing a special research seminar on living learning programs.
Speaker: And my dissertation was involved with living learning programs.
Speaker: I developed an instrument to kind of assess living learning programs.
Speaker: And I was like, you know, I'm just going to apply and see if I get accepted.
Speaker: And I got accepted and
Speaker: And I went there just not knowing what to expect.
Speaker: And it was a mix of, you know, practitioners and faculty.
Speaker: And it was the coolest experience that I've ever been submerged in.
Speaker: And there were some great authors there that, you know, I actually got one of my books signed, you know.
Speaker: One of the books that I actually use when I do all my research is called Student Affairs by the Numbers.
Speaker: And it's Rishi Siram from Baylor.
Speaker: He was there.
Speaker: And it's one of the easiest stat books to read.
Speaker: And it's all from a student affairs lens.
Speaker: And it just helps you understand some of these complex ideas in a way.
Speaker: through a student affairs language, it's so much easier to understand.
Speaker: But he was there and like Jody, Jess of Anger.
Speaker: And it was so cool to just, you know, at first I was kind of like, oh my God.
Speaker: You know, I had my imposters.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, I was like, am I even supposed to be here, you know?
Speaker: And then Justin and I ended up getting, you know, in a group together, a research group.
Speaker: And the idea was, you know, we would meet three summers and everyone would kind of find a research project and we'd work on that.
Speaker: And that's what led to my first big publication.
Speaker: with Justin and then our other co-author charity, Love It.
Speaker: And it was so cool, you know.
Speaker: And the only reason I was even introduced to that opportunity was from the CSBA program.
Speaker: One of the faculty members who was on my dissertation committee, you know, Dr. Barclay, she sent me this thing that hit on her list of, and she was like, hey, I thought you may be interested in, you know, applying for this.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, I'll do it.
Speaker: And Elon was amazing.
Speaker: They paid for everyone's flight out there.
Speaker: I mean, they put a lot of resources towards research and whatnot.
Speaker: And then I got to meet Dr. Karen Inkelis, who was a huge influence for my dissertation.
Speaker: It was just, I mean, it was like meeting celebrities.
Speaker: And I was like...
Speaker: cool you know and a lot of times I just sat there and listened you know and just learned a lot you know and people were like you're so quiet and I'm like I'm just listening and just learning so much you know that imposter syndrome probably yeah that's exactly what I was saying I had complete imposter syndrome you know like I don't think I'm supposed to be here like did they you know vet me out properly you know they're all gonna find out
Speaker: But it was so cool, you know, to actually sit down and just talk, shop with some of them and then just to learn who they were as people and what their story was.
Speaker: You know, but I asked Jodi, you know, Jessup Anger, I was like, how do we do this?
Speaker: You know, as a practitioner, how do I engage in it?
Speaker: Because it's so time consuming and there's so much, you know, expected out of us that is not scholarly work, you know.
Speaker: And she's like, Craig, you just got to schedule it into your calendar.
Speaker: And that's what I started doing.
Speaker: And I just started setting, you know, carving out two hours every week dedicated to research.
Speaker: And that's what did it, you know?
Speaker: So Jody, thank you.
Speaker: If you ever did this, you can have advice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I talk about random data usage.
Speaker: I wrote a newsletter article for Swakuho once about like engaging with research and basically counted the number of paragraphs in a journal article and
Speaker: And said, if you read a pair, like two paragraphs every day after launch, you'd be done in two weeks.
Speaker: And then you'd probably be more well read than everybody else in your department or something like that.
Speaker: It's like, you know, how do we start small?
Speaker: But part of that is also like whatever the main thing is keeping the main thing, the main thing.
Speaker: And you put the time away.
Speaker: I found the best time for me to work on that stuff is.
Speaker: before eight o'clock.
Speaker: And I have always felt the best professional development happens before eight o'clock because it's the only time of day when not everybody in my life is telling me what my priorities should be.
Speaker: Everyone's got a different system and a different play.
Speaker: And I just think it's exciting to kind of explore that for individuals and to see a little bit of momentum.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And even if you're not writing and publishing, but you're engaging in reading,
Speaker: You know, scholarly articles.
Speaker: I mean, that also sets, you know, sets you in a different mindset and it makes your discussions and your, you know, any arguments you may have with your co-workers completely because you're, you know, you're going to start citing, you know, the research that you've read.
Speaker: And then it's like...
Speaker: Nobody can argue with you because you're not just talking about your, like you said, it's just not just feelings.
Speaker: And I feel like this or I, or assumptions like this is based on concrete data, you know, and,
Speaker: trends that, you know, people have written on and, and instead of starting every sentence with, I think, I think, I think, well, the literature says this, or I read the article that says this.
Speaker: And that is a completely different level of discourse.
Speaker: And it's a completely different level of a professional to me.
Speaker: You know, I think it's a different, you're just at a different level, you know, definitely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Craig, in closing, I know you've already kind of talked about this, but I give you an opportunity.
Speaker: What's next or what, in addition to the other article you mentioned, like what is your research agenda look like for the future?
Speaker: And what do we have, what do our listeners have to look forward to?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I'm actually working with,
Speaker: On a piece with my boss, Dr. McBrayer, we're actually looking at student affairs hiring practices.
Speaker: So kind of looking at what is valued based on entry level positions, mid-level and then senior executive.
Speaker: And to see what those search processes look like based on those three levels.
Speaker: Because
Speaker: I've been on multiple search committees and, and like, you know, I'm, I'm, like I said, everything, you know, I reframe everything now from, you know, like, why is this happening or what, you know, so how important is your search committee selection, you know, basically,
Speaker: How many should be represented by, you know, that division?
Speaker: You know, who's chairing?
Speaker: You know, things that I think are important, you know, me personally, but how important are they are for entry-level positions, for mid-level positions, for executive, you know, senior-level positions.
Speaker: So I'll be, we're going to be looking at that.
Speaker: And then Thomas and I are, you know,
Speaker: We've field tested this instrument from this article for a second time.
Speaker: And we ran factor analysis and we have some pretty cool constructs that came out that we're going to be writing on.
Speaker: And then we're also going to write about some of that from some of the qualitative data from the first survey about the preferred RA attributes.
Speaker: So those things, six dimensions of an RA.
Speaker: So that's something really cool.
Speaker: that I'm working on.
Speaker: And then long-term, Thomas and I are working on a, this is all stemming from this same research.
Speaker: We're working on some predictors for RA performance to see if there are any, and even if they're not, that's still valuable research, right?
Speaker: So we're using a lot of this data to see if there's some magic formula that we're using.
Speaker: The silver bullet.
Speaker: Alternate candidates.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so, but I mean, I think, you know, it may not be, you know, I definitely do think there's, there are some predictors that exist.
Speaker: And I think it's just a matter of seeing if the data backs that up and, and, you know, we'll see.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: And we'll get to do some regression and whatnot, which I've not really dabbled with a whole lot.
Speaker: So I'm kind of excited about that because stats is like – it's like a language.
Speaker: If you don't practice it, you're going to forget it.
Speaker: And even though I do make research a priority, I still –
Speaker: have to refer back all the time because it's just, it's, you know, it's, it's sad, you know?
Speaker: So, but it's not as scary anymore.
Speaker: And then I think that was something as a young writer was, that's as scary, but you're not having to do these calculations by hand.
Speaker: You know, now it's more so about,
Speaker: interpreting SPSS tables and whatnot.
Speaker: And there's a YouTube tutorial for everything that is helpful.
Speaker: And so I take full advantage of that.
Speaker: And sometimes I'll rewatch videos on YouTube just because I'll forget.
Speaker: Yeah, I've got a stats website that I've got a membership to, Layered Statistics, and it is just like tells you how to write everything.
Speaker: It reminds you of all the assumptions.
Speaker: So that is, I've used that every single time I write.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, it sounds like we got a lot to be excited about coming from you.
Speaker: We'll definitely have to have you back on the show when some of that comes out.
Speaker: JC, thank you so much for this opportunity and experience.
Speaker: It was awesome.
Speaker: I had so much fun.
Speaker: It was really cool.
Speaker: It was fun.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: As we close out this episode, I definitely want to thank you, Craig, for investing a bit of your time with us to discuss the article.
Speaker: To all our listeners, please make sure to read the entire article because we only scratch the surface.
Speaker: RE hiring processes are often yet another one of those things we do them the way we do because we've always done them that way.
Speaker: Today's conversation gives some practical ways to start reimagining your staff involvement in the process by considering what motivates and influences their decision-making.
Speaker: Let me know your number one takeaway from this episode by replying on the Swakuho social media podcast posts.
Speaker: Be sure to reach out and thank Craig for participating today via his LinkedIn profile in the show notes.
Speaker: Are you having a professional conundrum and don't know what to do?
Speaker: Do you need some professional advice navigating a situation in the workplace or on the job search?
Speaker: The podcast now has a form in the show notes where you can anonymously ask for professional advice.
Speaker: Once we have a handful of questions, I'll pull together a panel to provide their take on the situation and provide recommendations for you.
Speaker: Consider it like Ann Landers, but for housing professionals.
Speaker: Our next episode is going to be a topical dive into the world of preventative maintenance, where we will discuss competing priorities, the value and importance of preventative maintenance plans, and how preventative maintenance looks upstream to prevent problems before they are problems.
Speaker: This is sure to provide some great exposure to the wild world of facilities for those of you who may work with maintenance, but not for maintenance.
Speaker: You have my personal guarantee that there will be actions you can immediately take in your personal life that will further help you understand and appreciate the maintenance side of the house.
Speaker: Because guess what?
Speaker: You should have a preventative maintenance plan at your home too.
Speaker: With that, I say to you, good day.
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