Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

Academic year 2013-2014 was a year filled with accomplishments and memorable events that impacted me professionally and personally. It was a year of connecting and working with new students, UCSB colleagues, as well as professionals from all over the country I met via social media. It was a year I committed myself to learning as much as possible about student affairs, IT, and higher education through books and my personal learning networks. Below are some highlights as well as memorable moments that impacted me personally and professionally.

Student Information Systems & Technology (SIS&T):

Our student affairs division and my department started working on several major projects this year as part of a comprehensive suite of technology initiatives we will be working on for the next few years. Amongst those projects I directed/managed include:

• Student Financial Systems Project – a redesign/migration of our existing undergraduate/graduate financial aid and scholarships system.
• Adoption/implementation of communication/collaboration applications:
  • Emma (mass e-mailing solution)
  • BaseCamp (project management)
  • Google Analytics
  • Sitefinity (web content management system)
  • Sharepoint
  • Intelliresponse (knowledge base system)
  • Policy & Procedure Management (PPM) – document workflow approval system
• Communication Collaborative (CommCollab) – a divisional communication initiative aimed to advance the mission of our division using the network of staff from within our division using the tools mentioned above.
• Cloud Services Usage Guidelines
• Data Retention/Destruction Guidelines

We are indeed busy with projects, but our department likes to have fun as well. Our department retreat last December was one of the most fun events I’ve had with my colleagues. Check out this youtube video of our team having fun – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU_P6a3nKp0.

UCSB STEP Program (August 2013)

I was a Transitions course facilitator for this one-week summer bridge program for under-represented and first generation students.  Just like the previous three years, it was a very enjoyable and satisfying experience, personally and professionally. This one week in August is my probably my favorite week of the year because I get to meet new students. These are students who are eager to learn and who are in a major transition in their lives. It’s amazing to watch the transformation that happens in a week. Personally, my interactions with the students are reminders of why I work in student affairs.

Foundations – New Student Affairs Professional Development Program (October 2013 – June 2014)

Foundations is a cohort-based program professional development program for new student affairs professionals at UCSB. It’s a new program intended to introduce new staff about theories and issues applicable to their roles. The program started with a three half-day “New Professional Institute” in October to introduce the participants to professional competencies, student affair structures, and overview of topics to be discussed during the year. Each month, we had a session devoted to topics including work/life balance, workplace communication, creating change, technology, shared governance/student leadership, and budget/salaries. After each session, a survey was conducted to assess the effectiveness of  the event. I was fortunate enough to have been one of the program’s coordinators. I enjoyed working with the coordinating team and our cohort members.

Gaucho U Learning and Leadership Program (October 2013 – May 2014)

I was a mentor for a team of 12 staff (cohort G) for this university-wide professional development program. It’s a cohort-based training and development program founded on the UC Core Competency Model. I was a participant two years ago and that experience provided me with some perspective on how to serve as a mentor effectively. Our project was to implement a prototype of a mobile version of our campus homepage. Part of the effort included research by the members on what other UC campuses have already in place, as well as soliciting feedback from our campus via a survey of mobile use and preferences. From what I know, this is the first campus-wide survey regarding mobile usage that’s ever been done at UCSB. What I loved about this program was the opportunity to work and mentor staff from other parts of the campus I would never have had the chance to interact with if it was not for this program. The best part of the experience for me is watching the members develop as leaders. There was one staff in particular who was very shy at the beginning of the program but I had the hunch she could serve as an effective leader for our group, based on the initial interactions I had with her. I selected her as one of the team leaders and it was amazing watching her come out of her shell and show her leadership skills.

NASPA Undergraduate Fellowship Program (NUFP) (October 2013 – June 2014)

NUFP is a program designed to provide mentorship to underrepresented students interested in pursuing careers in higher education and student affairs. Students are provided with opportunities to learn more about student affairs via activities and discussions, including a trip to the NASPA national conference. I was a mentor this year and it was an amazing experience working with the highly motivated, smart, and very involved students. Some of the highlights include a trip to the Western Regional Careers in Student Affairs Day in November at CSU Long Beach. It is during this trip that I had the opportunity to interact with some of our NUFP fellows and talk about their interests and issues. It was also during this conference where I met a few student affairs colleagues I met through social media for the first time face-to-face.

The trip to the NASPA national conference in Baltimore last March was a fun experience for the mentors and our fellows. The trip provided our team to get to know more about each other. It was an educational experience for all of us, learning more about issues/trends in student affairs and networking with other graduate students and professionals outside our campus.

The year ended with the fellows presenting their research topics to the campus. The topics included the use of resource center towards student success, multiracial identities, and LGBTQIA. The event was attended by our Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, other senior student affairs officers, staff, and students. Watching the fellows present, including my mentee, Navkira (Navi) Kaur, was a moment of pride and joy.

External Review of Texas A&M University (TAMU) Student Affairs IT Department (September 2013 – December 2013)

I had the honor and privilege of leading an external review team to examine the IT department as part of TAMU Division of Student Affairs’ assessment efforts. I consider it a privilege because I was recommended by their IT Director for my online reputation as one who is experienced in student affairs technology. I learned a lot from this experience. For one, I was able to get a glimpse of another student affairs IT department and compare it with my own IT department. In addition, I read many IT and technology-related books, including ITIL framework, governance, and funding models. It was one of the most intense project I’ve experienced professionally. As the team leader, I had to quickly develop rapport with the other members (TAMU staff) virtually (web conference calls), and plan the three day on-site visit. As soon as I arrived on the campus and got my luggage in my room, the work immediately started with a meeting with some of their student affairs senior leadership to outline the expectations during the visit. For the next three days, it was back-to-back meetings all day, interviewing different constituencies including the IT group, the divisional customers, and the division’s senior student affairs officers (Vice Presidents). The days ended with a team meeting in the evening to review our notes. The on-site visit ended with a presentation of our findings to the directors and IT staff. My work was not done after the visit as I still had to produce a report of our findings and recommendations, with input from the other team members. In the end, it was one of the most satisfying experiences of my career. What I remember from this experience are the friendly TAMU staff and the very polite student leaders. The student representative on our team was the student body Vice-President and he wore his cadet uniform the whole time I was there. He was very formal and very respectful, addressing me and other staff with “yes, sir/yes, ma’am.” He had very thoughtful input and added a very important perspective to the process.

NASPA (National Association of Student Personnel Administrators) – (October 2013 – June 2014)

NASPA is one of the two major student affairs professionals organization. I became more involved with NASPA this year through NUFP as well as through their technology initiatives. I attended the national conference for the first time and I was very impressed with the programming and the size of attendance. I was honored to be asked to participate in a two-day technology summit in Washington, DC to talk about issues and trends related to student affair technology. The group represented different constituencies in higher education and student affairs. One of the many highlights of the tech summit was meeting other colleagues I met via twitter for the first time face-to-face. While we’ve only interacted virtually before the tech summit, it was as if we’ve known each other and have been friends for a while.

NASPA Tech Summit (February 28th – March 1st) – Washington, DC

NASPA National Conference (March 14th – 19th)

The trip to the national conference in Baltimore was a very memorable experience. Spending time with our NUFP team, meeting and spending time with someone from Scotland, learning about student affairs issues/trends all contributed to a week I will never forget. In addition, I also had the opportunity to meet other Asian-Americans and Filipino-American colleagues. We also had a #sachat meetup. This is a get together of folks who are part of the #sachat twitter community.

Kapatirang Pilipino (KP) – (Spring 2014)

KP is the Filipin@-American student organization at UCSB. As an undergraduate student, I was very involved as a member and a leader. I was also KP’s staff advisor for years. A few years ago, KP leaders decided to go with a new staff advisor, and so I gradually became less-involved with the organization to a point where I did not know many Filipin@-American students. I was invited to attend an event during Spring quarter this year and I was more than glad to attend. What a wonderful feeling it was to be able to meet the students, including a group of them, who are part of my “KP family” lineage. One of KP’s long running tradition/program is the Kuya/Ate (big brother/sister) program that promotes the idea of mentoring by more experienced members to new members. As years had gone by, these “family lines” continued.

I also attended KP’s 35th anniversary celebration. I met additional students and reunited with some alums. One highlight of this celebration was getting to serve a lechon – a whole roasted pig.

Isla Vista Shooting Tragedy (May 23rd)

The tragedy that happened in Isla Vista on May 23rd when we lost some of our students really impacted me personally. UCSB/Isla Vista is a community I’ve been a part of since 1991 when I entered UCSB as a freshman. While I didn’t know the students we lost, I felt angry, lost, and confused. At the same time, in the midst of this horrible tragedy was a display of community I have never seen before. From my colleagues volunteering their time to counsel and provide any needed services, moments after the shooting, to the candlelight vigil attended by 5,000 students and community members, to the 22,000+ who attended the memorial at our stadium, these actions/events really confirmed why I love my job and while I’m still at UCSB.

Commencement Ceremonies (June 12, 2014)

I volunteered to be part of the commencement ceremonies for the first time this year and what a fun experience that was. Helping students inside our gym as they line up and watching them find their friends so they can march together was a really satisfying moment for me. I also got to work with my wife, who helped coordinate the College of Engineering and Sciences Commencement Ceremony.

STEP Program in August started the year for me and I ended this year by saying goodbye to one of the students, Ange, I met three years ago via this program. I am very honored for her to consider me as a mentor. Ange will be spending the next three years in China pursuing her Masters Degree.

I also received a very nice “thank you note” from a student I just recently met through KP. The note was particularly significant to me because it showed that as a student affairs professional, I can be a difference in students lives the first days they arrive on campus, like at STEP Program, or during their last months here at UCSB.

I’m excited and the same time anxious to what the next academic year brings. There are significant changes in our division with the retirement of our senior leadership and the change in leadership will provide opportunities and challenges.

I have had several mentors and sponsors who have guided and advocated for me throughout my career. For this, I am very grateful. There is no way I would have advanced in my career without the help of many.   However, at times, I also fell into the trap of relying on others for my career advancement and lost a sense of self-accountability in terms of proactively planning for my future, learning new skills, and promoting myself along the way. Somehow, because I had gotten help from my mentors/sponsors, I took for granted that they may not always be able to help me all the time. In some cases, I assumed they knew the direction and opportunities I wanted but as I later found out, they had no clue.  I came to realize even when they did want to provide opportunities for me within the organization, there are other factors in play that prevented them from doing so. Organizational politics, personalities, and my career interests not aligning with organizational priorities are just some factors that prevented me from moving on to areas I wanted to progress into. I can recall key moments in my career when I was disappointed when opportunities came and passed me by and I unfairly expected others to come and advocate for me. I fell into the victim mentality, blaming others for my missed opportunities. Gradually, I came to the realization that I may just be relying on others too much, failing to take ownership of my career development. This shift in attitude, taking personal accountability, has become more empowering and has provided me with a sense of control when it comes to my career.

One constant message I share with others with regards to career development is that they have to “own their career”. One should not have to wait for others to learn new skills and knowledge. I firmly believe professional development is a personal choice and a commitment. One should create professional networks and develop relationships before they are needed.

It is conference season in student affairs and one of the topics discussed during this time is how to network online and at the conferences. I personally make the effort to provide opportunities for others to connect via introductions and I also take it upon myself to make the first step. I tweeted this a few days ago as part of a conversation about this topic:

As hard as it is, make the first move to say hi. I’m an introvert, I can be shy, but if I don’t do it, no one may talk to me. #sachat
— Joe Sabado (@JoeSabado) March 21, 2014

My point about the tweet above is that, if we rely on others to help us out, that help may never come. We must take it upon ourselves to make the first move or we end up watching others while we sit on the sideline. Do you want that opportunity? Prepare yourself then take steps for your interests, skills, and accomplishments to be known. I grew up in a household and a culture that discourage talking about ourselves and our accomplishments. But, I realized at some point in my career, this was not always helpful. There’s a fine line between self-promotion for the sake of ego and advocating for ourselves because we need to. But, there are times when we do have to talk about ourselves or no one else will. Others will interpret this several ways based on their perspectives of us, some positive and some negative, even with our best intention.

I sometimes hear others complain about their jobs feeling as if they have no their choices but to stay where they are. Frankly, I think there are always choices, some choices harder than other. Does it take time and effort to make a change? Absolutely! I do believe life is too short to be in a job without joy and satisfaction. When one’s not happy at work, it does impact our personal lives and the folks we care about.

Ultimately, we have to be accountable for our own career development and be our biggest cheerleader.

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.

Even the most skilled and brightest futurists in the 1990s could not have predicted the upcoming massive changes in the first decade of 2000 in higher education by consumer technologies such as the web, social media, cloud, and mobile computing. I still remember a job interview in the late 1990s for a university web director position. I was asked to present my vision of the university in the next decade and the role of the web and other technologies. Nowhere in my mindset were the consumer technologies that changed how we in the universities and students now do our day-to-day activities and business processes. I am intrigued and curious about what the higher education of 2020 would be like. I read predictions such as this “Higher education in 2020: three key forecasts from new report” and this (“College 2020”)  as well as Gartner IT Predictions for 2014 and Beyond to get a sense of what to expect. However, the accuracy of these long-term predictions remains to be seen. However, even as I remain cautious about the validity of these predictions, I know that I better keep up with the trends, even if these trends are not part of what could be considered part of my job.

Yesterday, I spent a few hours with some student affairs directors brainstorming about communications in our division. I’ve been told in the past that our role as IT is to provide the tools, and the departments are the ones who communicate with students. Frankly, I’ve never believed in the idea that IT is just a tool/utility provider. I think the value of IT comes not only from the infrastructure we manage but also from the innovation and transformation of business processes that became possible because of our partnership with our business units to develop new systems and methods to do our business. With this mindset, I approach communication and the role of IT. It is also with this mindset that I view my role as an IT manager/leader. To be an effective IT leader, I need to keep up with the preferences and demands of our students, our staff and other customers, including how they would like to communicate. I need to keep up with technologies and the mindset that come along with them.

I was recently asked if IT should be involved in communications and marketing, to which I responded, “I don’t see any reason why IT should not be.” Traditional thinking of IT probably does not include communications and marketing as part of their responsibilities. Still, the way I see it, given that technology is such a big part of communication these days (as it has been in recent years) and in the future, IT folks better start re-considering this traditional view.

The increasing convergence between IT and marketing/communication led me to think about what my career in the future would be. A few years ago, the idea of a social media/communication/marketing position and a videographer reporting to me in IT would probably not have been an idea well accepted. After all, that’s not what IT does. It’s perhaps not a conventional arrangement to have these positions in IT in many organizations, even to this day. Thinking a few years ahead from now, I wonder how the role of IT will evolve.  Will IT, as an organization, be combined with other departments, like marketing and communication, and be seen as part of a digital service organization? With this evolution, how will my role and responsibilities change?  Ten years from now, will I have a career I would never have envisioned as it does not exist today?

As I think about the possibilities and the uncertainties of the future, what I do know and what I’ve committed myself to is to continually learn and understand emerging technologies, the changing nature of higher education, the changing demographics of our students, as well as their preferences and demands. Learning is a process, and it takes time. Learning is a journey that’s not always a straight line. Along the way, I’ve been introduced to ideas and people I did not expect to meet. So, while I do not know what my career holds in the future, I will continue to prepare and learn towards whatever the destination will be.