Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

I committed to pushing myself beyond what I think I’m capable of and comfortable with this year. I will try new things that will result in embarrassment, failure, criticism, and feelings of inadequacy. Why? I’m not doing new things just for the sake of trying new things, but rather, I want to challenge myself to get used to the feeling of being uncomfortable. What I’ve come to realize after some reflection is that I have the tendency to give up too soon when things get hard, or when I encounter criticisms. I tend to personalize criticisms, taking them to heart to the point where they paralyze me. I look back at opportunities missed in my career when if I only persisted more than I did, I could have done more. I look back at how easily I gave up in 2009 when I tried promoting the idea of mobile websites, but I could not quite convince my colleagues that mobile would become more common in the next few years. I gave up too soon. Six years later, some of our most used sites are still not mobile-friendly. What a missed opportunity.

I recently started a group on campus called Innovators Community at UCSB. I started the group because I was craving a place to just chat about new ideas. I feel there’s not enough space to just talk about ideas without getting stuck thinking about why things can’t work. I had invited folks to come to our first social. I even offered to buy food. After some feedback, I chose a date. I had expected quite a few people to come. Two other people besides me came. In the past, I would have beaten myself up and considered the event a failure. This time around, I didn’t see it that way. I was talking with a colleague today, and he said, “that’s a bummer.” My response was, “not really. I thought it was great!” Two folks or fifty, I was going to make the most of the result. I had an awesome time having long conversations with my friends who showed up. It was the type of conversation I had been looking for.

There are goals I had wanted to do, but I was too scared in the past to pursue them. I’ve always wanted to do formal research about student affairs and technology, but I gave myself many reasons why I couldn’t do them. This time around, I will find ways to finally start taking steps towards this goal. I will be attending the NASPA Regional 6 conference Research Institute to gain research skills and connect with others who may be able to help me out.

I will be called the “lone nut” I will probably be called some names I may not appreciate, but I will take them on as a challenge. When I attended a student affairs conference this last weekend at UCLA, I attended a panel session of senior higher education administrators wherein they shared their experiences and challenges. One of the panelists, VP of Student Services at Rio Hondo College, Henry Gee, said something that resonated with me. I’ve heard the advice, but it was different this time. He shared how in his position, not everyone supports everything he does. He shared a story where a board of trustees offered their opinion not to renew his contract while he was in the room. VP Gee’s advice is you can’t take it personally. Guess what? I think that sounds like good advice. As I have learned in my position of one year as the acting Executive Director for my IT department, even with the best intention, everything I’ve done so far has not been met with unanimous approval. At least one person tells me I’m doing things wrong or I’m not doing things well enough. I’ve come to learn I cannot please everyone, and so with that lesson learned and with all my plans to try new things this year beyond what I would have done in the past, I will be learning to be comfortable about being uncomfortable. Onward I go!

I was speaking with a recent graduate who, after two years in the workforce, is exploring the possibility of going back to pursuing a Masters in Student Affairs and Higher Education. She was very concerned about the idea that because she didn’t go straight from an undergraduate to a Master’s program, the conventional path would reflect negatively on her when she did apply. As she told me this, I just had to smile because I was reminded of how, early in my career, several well-intended folks offered me advice about staying put in one place. After all, going from one job to another will not be seen positively when I apply for jobs. I wasn’t following the conventional career path. In retrospect, my experiences in start-up, corporate, and higher education have provided me with varied perspectives that have helped me appreciate and assess the realities of my job. I am glad I chose to listen to my instinct and not be pressured into pursuing the conventional path I was advised to take.

Just as I believe industry best practices have value in improving organizations, one must be cognizant that local contexts must be considered when applying best practices. Local factors like tradition, politics, personalities and other organizational constraints cannot be ignored. I liken best practices to the conventional career paths I was advised to pursue early in my career. Like best practices, advice about conventional career paths must be taken cautiously. I realized that early on in my career. Hence, while I politely listened to the conventional career advice I was given, I knew I had to consider my unique experience, background, skill set, and aspirations. The folks giving me advice were successful in their ways, but there were challenges I faced and strengths I possessed as a first-generation immigrant Filipino-American. My personal attributes and circumstances are analogous to the local contexts I mentioned above. Even beyond my personal attributes and background, today’s economy and job skills have significantly changed from decades ago.

In this world of every so dynamic workplace, how much of what’s considered conventional career paths are applicable? In the past, folks stayed in one job their entire lives, but I’ve read many articles, including this one, that job hopping is the “New Normal” for Millennials. I wonder how many younger professionals and students still receive career advice from well-intended senior professionals based on their experience a couple or more decades ago.

Personally, the prospect of where I may be in my career ten years from now is exciting. I don’t know what careers will be available for me in our field of student affairs in the future. I suppose the best advice I will cautiously provide to anyone asking for career advice is to continue learning, be open to possibilities, and study trends that may provide clues on where we may be heading. In other words, prepare for a career yet to be invented.

What are your thoughts on this topic? What conventional and so unconventional career advice have you received in your career?

I attended the Western Regional Career in Student Affairs Day at UCLA this last Saturday, Oct 17, with the UCSB’s NASPA Undergraduate Fellowship Program (NUFP) team. This was an opportunity for our undergraduate students to learn more about student affairs as a profession and to meet other students and professionals in the field. I also attended to be a panelist for a session on Social Media in Student Affairs. As it was with the previous years I have attended, I left the conference with a sense of renewal and commitment to my role as a student affairs professional. The event was well planned, the sessions were informative, and the speakers were knowledgeable. I sensed those involved in the planning and those who participated in a deep commitment to serving students and learning about student affairs. Beyond the learning were also the fun moments getting re-acquainted with friends and colleagues I interact with through social media and meeting new friends. Here are some of the personal highlights (I can remember) of the conference:

Dr. Sumun (Sumi) Pendakur‘s keynote speech (“The Personal, The Political, and The Professional”). Dr. Pendakur delivered a dynamic speech about the intersections of her personal upbringing and her profession. As she said, “we all come from somewhere, ” she spent some time introducing her parents, specifically her dad, and how their experiences informed and shaped her world views and activism. She shared her personal story because, as she said, “personal narrative informs our work we do.”  She spoke about our obligations as student affairs professionals to serve all students and to promote success for all students, not just for some. She asked, “are they graduating and thriving, or are they surviving”? Dr. Pendakur also shared some strategies to get the most out of this conference, which applies to our daily work. For one, she suggests doing some relationship-building – purposeful networking. In addition, she suggested self-care/renewal. Conferences this size can be a challenge for introverts (like me), and it’s okay to find a corner someplace alone to re-energize ourselves on our own. Lastly, she suggested pushing the edge/practicing taking risks. Ask questions and challenge. We need to practice asking questions, and we don’t have to be SSAOs to be asking questions. We can ask questions wherever we sit in the institution.

Reflections from Senior Affairs Officers. Four seasoned administrators (Dr. Jeff Klaus from CSU Long Beach, Dr. Sumun Pendakur from Harvey Mudd College, Dr. Suzanne Seplow from UCLA, and VP Henry Gee, Rio Hondo Community College) along with the facilitator Dr. Mink-Salas from Azusa Pacific University shared some really valuable insights on their experiences, and they also shared important lessons.

Watching two Asian American senior administrators on the panel was a welcome sight. As I wrote in this blog post, we need more Asian American mentors/advocates in higher education. The messages from all of the panelists were valuable, but the messages from VP Henry Gee and Dr. Pendakur spoke to me as an Asian American.

This session made me think about where I am in my career and where I would like to go in my career. During this session, I had this “Eureka” moment of what my purpose in student affairs has been though I never realized what it was. This was to shape my institution and higher ed in general to best, serve the interest of students!

The other important insight I got from this session was the idea that I don’t want to be pigeonholed as an “IT guy” because I’ve primarily been in student affairs IT for most of my career. I have always seen myself as a student affairs professional who works primarily with technologies to promote student success. I have played several roles as an organizational advisor, mentor, FYE discussion leader, multicultural programming facilitator, etc. The challenge and interest for me have been on how to bridge the gap between IT and student affairs and, in general, how to use technology more effectively within student affairs. It is still my goal to be a senior administrator someday to be able to solve the challenge I posed through the position of Dean of Student Affairs Technology, a role that does not yet exist. This role needs to be at the highest level in student affairs organizations sitting alongside other senior student affairs officers (SSAO). As this role still does not exist, I continue to advocate that an IT director or one in charge of enterprise technology initiatives within student affairs needs to be at the SSAO table.

Black Lives Matter in the Ivory Tower: Trials and Triumph in Navigating Anti-Racist Work session. This session was planned to be facilitated by a UCLA senior student affairs official and a panel. Still, due to the ongoing investigation of the “Kanye Western” theme party, which involved racial overtones, Dr. Dougherty, the facilitator, could not attend. The other panelists from other universities were able to attend as well. Two professionals, Diana Victa from Cal State Los Angeles and Patricia Nguyen from UCLA (and UCSB alum), effectively facilitated the hard topics of how to promote anti-racism efforts on campus and the barriers facing these efforts. Participants shared their thoughts about anti-racism challenges and opportunities at their own campuses. Undergraduate students spoke about the challenges of being expected and devoting time towards fighting for social justice while already facing heavy academic work. Some professionals spoke about their personal challenges and how they found their voices in the process. When asked why we attended the session, I shared that I wanted to learn about the topics and, more importantly, to listen to the raw and unfiltered voices of those impacted by racism. I shared that we don’t have enough space to have honest conversations about racism on our campuses. It was a powerful session, indeed. One of the comments shared by a new pro and a former student activist was the myth of resource constraint in response to the idea that we need to be patient in our anti-racism fight. We can’t solve the problem in one day. As the attendee stated, “how is that money magically appearing after a crisis and when the university’s ranking is going down, and donors stop donating as the result of a crisis when students have been talking with the administration for a long time before the crisis.”

photo courtesy of Grace Bagunu

Social Media in Student Affairs session. I sat on a panel with  VP Henry Gee and Jennifer Rodil, with Grace Bagunu as the moderator. We spoke about the role of social media at the personal, campus, and professional organization levels. As VP Gee shared, Grace was the first social media account manager for NASPA Region 6, and she was instrumental in getting VP Gee to use social media. Jennifer also credited Grace as her social media mentor. I first met my co-presenters through social media and have become friends since we met, so this session was fun to participate in.

VP Gee spoke about why he joined Twitter at the urging of Grace and why he joined Facebook (to listen to feedback about his programs). He also provided important responses to questions from the audience on how to appropriately use social media regarding job searching and networking. Jennifer provided insight on how she manages her department’s social media presence and strategies for promoting engagement with the NASPA Region 6 Twitter and Instagram accounts. An audience member asked how to manage time spent posting content and social media accounts effectively. Jennifer suggested having a schedule of postings along with the schedule are the types of content to post. I spoke about specific uses of social media at UCSB. I cited how I used Facebook to share information about the status of our IT services during the power outage since our email server was out of service. Since we couldn’t send messages through our email server, Facebook became the primary medium to communicate with our UCSB customers about our services’ statuses until we could have email service up and running again. The second example I provided was the significance of social media during a crisis. I specifically spoke about the tragic Isla Vista shooting on Mary 23rd, 2014. Social media became the medium for real-time communication (I learned about the shooting the minute shots were fired from students I advised through their Facebook statuses), community building (show of support within the local UCSB community and across the globe on social media), and event coordination (series of events were held that following week along with a memorial at UCSB’s Harder Stadium attended by 20,000+).

I also spoke about the reasons why I blog, including why I started (I was frustrated because I had a lot of ideas but I didn’t feel heard at my campus, so my blog became a platform for me to express my ideas), what my purpose for blogging (promote student affairs technology and leadership), some strategies and tools I use, as well as how I address the common challenge of how to write authentically (I don’t share everything but what I do share are true to my heart).

Some audience members shared their success stories, including how they used social media on campus. One of the stories shared by the creator of the account was the use of Twitter to inform students of food on the UCLA campus. The Twitter account is called @hungry_bruin.

Several attendees spoke to the panel after the session for several minutes, thanking us and exchanging other ideas.

Ethical and Legal Issues in Higher Education session. I was late to this session because of the last session. Still, I am glad I attended as I learned some valuable insights from the panel, which made me think about the value of understanding policies, making ethical decisions, and the increasingly difficult choices to be made as one advance in the management hierarchy. Institutional responsibility and ethics were discussed as they relate to things we probably don’t consider ethical issues. As one of the panelists shared, staff don’t own the money used to run the university. Students are paying for the services, and so when staff comes into work late, they’re taking resources away from the students. A panelist shared his guiding principle when making tough decisions – “Did I follow the policy, and did I practice fundamental fairness in the process?”

A discussed topic was the issue of individual rights and freedom of expression. As one of the panelists shared, one has the freedom of expression, but one doesn’t have the freedom of consequences. Senior administrators must help frame the consequences of students’ actions in this term “I’m not saying you’re right or wrong, but how is that being perceived? Is that the message you want to send out?”

The three sessions I attended were informative and led me to reflect on my role as a student affairs professional and how I view my role at my university and my career path. In addition to the value provided by the sessions, the most valuable experiences I got out of the conferences came during the breaks and lunch. These were the times when I had the chance to connect with our NUFP fellows and mentors, reconnect with friends I had not seen in a while, and meet new ones. Attending this conference with my fellow and our NUFP team was a wonderful experience we could build upon to further develop our relationships and learn more about each other.

UCSB NUFP Team (photo courtesy of Klint Jaramillo).

The conference was also an opportunity to connect with other Filipin@-Americans in student affairs. We started this tradition of taking a group photo at conferences starting last year, and this photo below is a part of that tradition. Finally, meeting other Fil-Am professionals, I met via social media face to face for the first time was nice.

Pin@ys in Student Affairs (photo courtesy of Grace Bagunu)

From time to time, I like to think about what student affairs and even higher education, in general, will look like maybe about three or four years from now. These predictions are based on general observations on my campus, reading technology trends inside and outside higher education, and reading about the general landscape of higher education. These are not based on formal research, so I don’t have citations to provide:)  Here are some personal thoughts on what 2018 in student affairs may look like. Some may be considered outrageous and have a low likely chance of ever becoming a reality, but one can explore beyond the realm of reality, right? It will be fun to just look at these predictions in 2019. Here they are:

1.  Assessment will become more important as the need for greater accountability increases. Assessment as part of formal job duties will also become more prevalent. This will require new skill sets for staff, including conducting assessments and using technologies to analyze data. Some organizations may even have data scientists who will explore and design ways to use data for student success.  The use of machine learning, an advanced predictive analytic, will be used in different areas of student affairs and enrollment management services. While big data is the big talk, the focus will be algorithms.

2.  Greater use of consumer technologies in the workplace, including social media, cloud, mobile, wearable computing, and the Internet of Things. I wrote in this blog post about how these technologies could all work together in student affairs. Wearable computing and the Internet of Things will pose challenges to IT organizations when it comes to securing information and protecting networks. In addition, using these technologies for cheating will pose challenges to judicial affairs and academic staff.

3. Outsourcing of student affairs services as the need for 24/7 availability increases. These services could include 24/7 counseling hotlines for suicide prevention. As more online courses are offered, the traditional 8 to 5 local work hours will require extended hours of operations as students from different time zones (global) require instructional technology and student services support.

4. Organizational restructuring will occur to accommodate the needs of the diverse student body, including veterans, undocumented, LGBTQIA, international, and non-traditional students.

5. Health, wellness, and campus safety will become even bigger issues.

6. New student development theories or revisions of existing theories incorporating digital aspects of identities will be introduced.

7. Budget constraints will lead some student affairs organizations to find different sources for funding and/or cost-cutting efforts. These efforts could include the formation of development offices within student affairs as well as the consolidation of multiple offices. Partnership with vendors in exchange for access to student data (hopefully aggregated and not personally identifiable information) and insights may be a path some organizations take.

8. A new controversial social media platform, like Yik Yak, will be created, leading campuses and student affairs professionals to react extremely against the platform. The use of virtual/Augmented reality technologies like Oculus Rift and Microsoft HoloLens with the new platform will make privacy/confidentiality/cyberbullying issues even more significant.

9. With technology finally added as a part of the ACPA/NASPA professional competency area for student affairs, discussions around the importance of technology’s role in student learning, professional development, and administrative use will lead to a creation of a new Senior Student Affairs Officers (SSAO) position focusing on technology such as the one I proposed here – Dean of Student Affairs Technology.

10. An additional role that may be created in some student affairs organizations is that of Chief Innovations Officer or a role dedicated to exploring new ideas. Given the lack of resources, increasing demands to be more effective/efficient, and the need to respond to the fast-changing needs of students, some student affairs organizations will move towards disruptive instead of incremental innovation efforts.

Bonus prediction: New technologies will confuse higher education staff even more on the appropriate use of FERPA.

What other predictions do you have?

I once read that identity is an intersection of how others see you and how you see yourself. As much as we want to define how we want others to see us, I think that’s pretty much impossible. We can certainly try to influence others’ perceptions of us but ultimately, what matters is how others see us. I believe that’s called reputation. The concept of identity is a complex one. It’s even more complex when one considers the role of identity in the context of social settings. When we are associated with groups, such as the organization we work for, we assume the organization’s identity and identity are shaped by its members. Actions by individual members reflect the organization and other members, while the organization’s identity impacts how its members are perceived. Have you ever walked into a meeting where you’ve never met anyone before, yet they’ve already formed an impression of you?

Those in leadership positions must sometimes have to negotiate and reconcile their identities and values with that of their organization as they don’t always match. So, how do leaders authentically represent themselves when representing their organization? What does it mean in this context to represent “themselves”? Are they representing their identities independent of the organization, or are they representing identities defined by their role in the organization?

I think about the questions above when I hear from individuals who maintain that they want to be authentic to themselves and the values they represent. Considering the possibility that there probably isn’t an organization anywhere that completely aligns with the values of every single one of its members, how will those individuals deal with this reality?