Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

One of the benefits of working for a central student affairs IT department is that I get to work and learn about the different business processes of the various units within student affairs. I also know about other teams on campus, like academic departments, who are often our partners regarding the information systems we provide. More significantly, I learn about the subcultures and issues specific to each department and those they serve. Working with these units for many years, I’ve witnessed and participated in these evolutionary changes and business transformations on our campus. These changes span the entire student life cycle, including enrollment management units, student services, academic services, and residential life.  Most of these changes have been responses to issues faced by the departments and the university. By looking at when systems were placed into production and the reasons behind them, it’s possible to figure out the campus’s political, cultural, student demographics, and environment, or beyond, at that particular time. An example is the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a program to track international students and scholars in the United States. It was a program we had to implement on our campus by 2003 because of a federal mandate. This holistic perspective of student affairs is a unique view that is probably only available to Senior Student Affairs Officers (SSAO) as their positions are at the level where their scopes of responsibilities span multiple units.

Understanding the business processes is the window to my education on what student affairs are. My view of student affairs is that, as a profession, we provide support for students in their personal and learning development while at our institutions. To understand student affairs, knowing what these units do is not enough. One must seek to understand the reasons behind them. This process involves learning about student development theories, the history of higher education and student affairs, administration, governance, professional competencies, and topics specific to each section of student affairs. Because I did not attend a graduate program in student affairs and higher education, this process has been through self-directed learning, most of which comes from reading textbooks, journals, social media, and materials I can get my hands on.

To get a broader perspective of student affairs meant extending my experience and knowledge beyond UCSB student affairs, where I work. Social media has made it easier to connect with colleagues from other institutions. It is through social media that I’ve developed my Personal Learning Network (PLN). I work for a research university, and it’s been enlightening to learn from colleagues from community colleges, small liberal colleges, private, and other public institutions. While the theories and topics I read in textbooks may have come from decades ago, the lessons I learn from my other colleagues are present and often involve discussions about the future of higher education and student affairs. I even recently had the opportunity to visit another campus to do an external review of a student affairs IT department, which further gave me a different perspective.

Learning about student affairs through IT may not be the conventional way, but I’ve come to appreciate the value of my experience working in IT when learning about student affairs. I also realized a long time ago that I needed to combine my practical experience with theories to understand student affairs fully. It’s an exciting time in higher education, and technology is a significant component and a driver of the changes happening in our field. Social media, mobile, cloud, big data, and distance learning are technologies that have introduced new issues and opportunities to students and student affairs staff as well. It’s fun to learn these new technologies, but it is essential to understand the implications behind using them. What do these technologies mean when it comes to how we perform our work, how we communicate with students, and how do they impact student development and learning? Working in student affairs, IT is an excellent place to be a witness and be part of these changes.

Higher education IT departments’ indirectly support student learning, development outcomes, and student success by providing technical support to the departments. In addition, by employing students, higher education IT departments have opportunities to directly impact student success by providing them with experiential learning opportunities to learn soft and technical skills in preparation for their careers. Given thoughtful consideration, students could be provided with learning opportunities that complement/enhance the lessons they learn in the classroom. This mindset is consistent with the values of student affairs, the belief that learning happens within and outside the classroom.

Maximizing these learning opportunities requires re-examining technical job duties (code, troubleshooting) to include non-technical activities, so they may learn how to communicate, work in teams, lead, and develop critical thinking skills. One of the typical comments from computer science students we’ve hired is how much they learn about working collaboratively and in teams from their experience working for our department. They only get to work in teams in one or two of their computer science classes. As supervisors, how do we ensure that learning happens in the technical and soft skills areas? With career staff, we have performance evaluations based on job descriptions. We can extend this practice to students by providing them with performance evaluations and also defining learning outcomes, using assessment techniques to measure their progress towards these learning outcomes along the way. These learning outcomes could be grown in areas of technical and non-technical competencies.

By being intentional with the areas of competencies for our students to develop by defining learning outcomes, I believe they would be more effective in their positions. At the same time, we are contributing to their learning process and preparing them for the careers ahead of them.

I attended the Western Regional Career in Student Affairs Day (WRCSAD) at Long Beach State University last Saturday as a member of the UCSB NASPA Undergraduate Fellowship Program (NUFP) group. This was my first student affairs conference aside from a student affairs technology conference (satech) in Rhode Island two years ago.  I met a few folks I have known via Twitter in person (face-to-face) for the first time. I was also pleasantly surprised to meet a few student affairs pros who told me they’ve been following me on Twitter. The sessions I attended, including “Reflections from Senior Student Affairs Professionals,” “Professionals of Color,” and “Research in Student Affairs,” really invigorated me and validated the work that I do with students and through technology. The opening and closing keynote speakers were dynamic and provided personal perspectives on why they chose student affairs as a career. Another session I attended was “Social Media in Student Affairs.” The panel provided insights on their personal/professional use of social media. The students and professionals in attendance also asked questions about issues/concerns they have about social media, and one even shared their hesitation about using it. As I listened to the discussion, I thought about the different ways I use social media and how student affairs use it. I was also thinking about the message from the opening keynote speaker, Dr. Dyrell Foster, Dean of Student Affairs from Rio Hondo College. Here are some of the topics he shared and how I think social media relate:

Congruence of personal and professional values:

Dr. Foster spoke about how his personal life experience and the values he learned from his family are consistent with his professional value system. I think the topic of “authenticity” comes up from time to time when it comes to how one represents themself on and off social media. Do we share/relate with others online as we do “face-to-face”? In addition, how much can we separate our personal and professional lives on social media? Similarly, when it comes to our work, how much can we separate our values/perspectives from our work?

What is your reputation/legacy?

Dr. Foster asked the questions of what will be your reputation and the legacy we will leave behind. I think reputation is subjective; it’s how others define you from their perspectives. As personal as it is, I believe through our consistent actions and what we share, we develop a reputation(s), and we do have the ability to shape how others view us based on how we act online or what we share through our Facebook statuses, Instagram photos, Vine and YouTube videos, tweets, Linkedin profiles, and our blogs. With regards to legacy, what we write has the potential to be read and shared by more folks than we probably intended and, in some cases, even become the foundation for new projects at individual and institutional levels.

Who are your mentors/who will you mentor?

Dr. Foster also reminded the audience that student affairs are a tiny field and that the student/pro we are sitting with may be the one who will hire you or will connect you to the person who will be able to help you. Thank your mentors, he also said. I’ve met a few folks via social media who I’ve come to respect and follow. These are folks in student affairs, higher education, and technology fields. Since joining Twitter on August 9, 2010, I’ve had the opportunity to share some of my personal experiences and advice with graduate students and other student affairs professionals. I consider mentoring a relationship, so my experience with others on social media may not be defined as “mentorship.” However, the potential for conversations that started via social media could lead to meaningful mentoring relationships.

 As student affairs professionals, our identities and value systems are very much related to our work. I think the enjoyment and satisfaction we receive from our jobs relate to how aligned our value systems are with our work. The folks around us and the communities we work with also matter. Our communities have become more extensive in this digital age than on our physical campus. Social media also changes our identities and the impact of what we do.

This post is about student affairs technology competency.  Actually, this post is an invitation for readers to contribute some ideas on how to define and assess student affairs technology competency. I believe it’s a very important issue to resolve for our profession. It  will require a group effort to generate some ideas to move the discussion moving forward. Admittedly, the proposed ideas and approach are rudimentary so feedback is welcomed.

(continue reading…)

There will come the point shortly when these five forces — mobile, social media, data, sensors (internet of things), and location, as Robert Scoble and Shel Israel call them in their book “Age of Context” will transform student affairs. As with every technology, the applications of these technologies have negative and positive consequences. Privacy is undoubtedly at the forefront of concerns. For example, this article concerns proposed legislation on cell phone tracking in retail stores. Consider these probable scenarios: (continue reading…)