Case Study Team by Ryan Podolak

SIU Residence Life has some great things going on, and we want to showcase some of our proud moments on our blog. We also hope people considering working in RA, graduate assistant, or full-time positions with our department will take a minute to learn more about the things we are doing. More information about our department, including position descriptions, application information, and graduate and full-time staff profiles can be found on our recruitment website. Today's blog post was written by Ryan Podolak, Hall Director in Neely Hall.

During the months of December (2012) and January, five members of the SIU Residence Life team entered the 2012-2013 ACPA (College Student Educators International) Winter Case Study Competition presented by the Standing Committee for Graduate Students and New Professionals and the Standing Committee on Men and Masculinities. Our team included Hall Directors Brian Gallagher (our team captain), Jac Jewell, David Keys, and me (Ryan Podolak); as well as Coordinator of Residential Leadership and Engagement, Justin Schuch. Brian received word of the case study through the CSPTalk Listserv.

Ryan and David performing in the case study video

The case study was distributed on November 30, but we knew we wouldn’t be able to dive in until break. With the halls closed for Winter Break and fewer evening commitments, we had some time on our hands. I will spare you the details of the entire case study background information given. In summation, we were charged with helping a father of three children, who was in his mid-forties, had a high school degree, had been working in a factory but was recently laid off. He is attending the community college where we are an academic adviser. We’ve been asked to advise him on how to proceed in his academic career while shedding light on the allied health offerings our department has asked us to promote to males. Our response included an examination of our advisee's perceived gender, social-class, and race/ethnicity and how these areas intersected and influenced his decision(s).

Over SIU’s winter break, we met to discuss strategies, divide up the work, record video, create slides for our presentation, and record the narration for those slides. Brian was the camera guy - he’s got all the fancy equipment. Jac knew how to edit everything, record the audio, and assemble all the “ingredients” of our submission.

We uploaded our submission to YouTube and waited. When we received the results and the judges’ critique, we laughed. We laughed in the "we-didn’t-do-so-well" way people laugh. The feedback we received was helpful and it provided a great learning opportunity for us.

None of us have formal advising experience, have much interaction with non-traditionally aged students, nor work at a community college and understand the nuances of higher education in this realm. These deficiencies in our knowledge were highlighted. Also, being fresh (1-3 years) out of graduate school, our response was theory-heavy. The judges were hoping for some more practical ways we could assist our advisee.

After receiving our feedback, we were at lunch with our Director of University Housing, Dr. Jon Shaffer, and had a chance to discuss the results with him. He reiterated the sentiments of the judges: while theory is important and should provide a foundation for our work, there still need to be pragmatic applications of that theory with how we operate as professionals day-to-day. In short, our response for the case study was much too cerebral.

In the end, it was a great exercise. We continued to develop ourselves as student affairs professionals. We bonded before, during, and after the competition. We role modeled professional development for our College Student Personnel graduate students, which helped us push them into entering a case study of their own shortly after the semester started.  

Professional Development Institute by Brian Gallagher

SIU Residence Life has some great things going on, and we want to showcase some of our proud moments on our blog. We also hope people considering working in RA, graduate assistant, or full-time positions with our department will take a minute to learn more about the things we are doing. More information about our department, including position descriptions, application information, and graduate and full-time staff profiles can be found on our recruitment website. Today's blog post was written by Brian Gallagher, Hall Director in Schneider Hall, about his experience attending the 2013 Professional Development Institute (PDI) presented by the Great Lakes Association of College and University Housing Officers (GLACUHO).

Over the weekend of February 8-10 I was fortunate to be selected to be a member of the GLACUHO PDI class of 2013. PDI stands for Professional Development Institute and is run by the Programming and Development committee of the Great Lakes Association of College and University Housing Officers. This year was the 5th annual PDI.

PDI occurs each spring and was sponsored by Southwest Contract – so it was essentially free for me to attend. Thanks to Southwest Contract!

My experience at PDI actually started in November when I had a conversation with my supervisor about attending. He had previously attended and said it was a great idea for me to apply. The application process was a series of reflective essay questions and a résumé. The questions asked me what challenges I thought faced professionals when they hit the 3-5 year mark, what I thought I would be doing in 5-10 years, and then a series of questions about the five chosen topic areas that we would be learning about: Social Justice, Supervision, Facilities, Mental Health, and Advanced Budgeting.

Once accepted to PDI, we received some "homework" to prepare us for our sessions. I read a few articles, I was able to interview our Director of Housing about social justice and the budget, and filled out a leadership style assessment. I was also able to take some time to mentally prepare myself for PDI. Since I didn’t know what to expect at PDI, it was tough to prepare!

PDI itself was a whirlwind of presentation sessions, reflective personal thinking time, and 1:1 time with a mentor. I was challenged to think about Housing, who I am as a leader, and how we treat those around us. I met a great group of 18 other housing professionals with 3-5 years of experience. We had five excellent faculty members who were all senior housing officers at a variety of small and large institutions.

Without going into a ton of detail about each thing I learned or thought about it is hard to write a blog like this. However, as I think about myself as a professional, I learned a lot about telling my story and standing strong in saying “I have valuable experiences that I can share in a meaningful way.” I think so often we, as professionals, turn to those in the room who have been in the field longer than us or who have terminal degrees. When, in fact, we all have valuable experiences to bring to the table. I’m clearly still processing my time at PDI. I am very thankful to the housing professionals here at SIU for both enabling me to go and for covering my duties while I was gone. I value this team and I value how each of us can be encouraged to learn and develop both in our daily duties and at conference opportunities such as PDI.

GLACUHO Winter Meeting by Michelle Kinney

SIU Residence Life has some great things going on, and we want to showcase some of our proud moments on our blog. We also hope people considering working in RA, graduate assistant, or full-time positions with our department will take a minute to learn more about the things we are doing. More information about our department, including position descriptions, application information, and graduate and full-time staff profiles can be found on our recruitment website. Today's blog post was written by Michelle Kinney, Hall Director of Mae Smith Hall, about her experience attending the 2013 Winter Business Meeting for the Great Lakes Association of College and University Housing Officers (GLACUHO).

It is one thing to be involved on your campus; it is another thing to have the opportunity to connect with people of the Student Affairs field on a larger spectrum. When applying for my first post-graduate Hall Director position, networking was something I made it a point to ask schools about. I did not just want the ability to network within my university, which is still important (and secret: you can ALWAYS do this!), I also wanted to know it was an option to network in larger areas as well. The first thing I did in order to help with this was look into ways to get involved with the GLACUHO region. After some research, I applied for a committee. I thought "hey I loved regional committees in graduate school, I’m sure I’ll love them here too." I was selected to be on the Health and Wellness Committee and I started working with my Chair as soon as possible, though something was still missing. SIU was able to fill the “hole” this month when I (along with other co-workers) had the chance to go to the GLACUHO Winter Meeting. This is held at Camp Tecumseh in Brookston, Indiana each year and is about a day and a half with travel. During this time, your main focus is on working with your committee while getting some social time with others during meals and in the evening. I was so pumped about this opportunity and before I knew it…. I was on my way to Brookston, Indiana...

Once we arrived, it was straight to work! After a quick welcome session and some chatting with old friends (it is awesome to see where everyone is!), we headed to committee meetings. Though my committee chair was not able to be at the conference, we hit the ground running with some ice breakers and brainstorming sessions. I have the unique experience to belong to a “baby” committee (we have only been around in the GLACUHO region for a couple of years) and the opportunities really are endless! This year we have decided to focus on the graduate students and professionals in our region. After a lot of brainstorming (and using a LOT of paper) we came up with some areas to focus on throughout the remainder of the year. Some areas we will be focusing on (all within the realm of Health and Wellness) are: crisis support, the what-ifs of student affairs, wellness in the job search, managing transitions, navigating unspoken expectations, and the challenges of living on campus. We will be creating some webinars, blogs, Trends (quarterly) articles, and so much more. We have set our eyes on the prize and have a lot planned! But a great quote, “Have high expectations and expect to have them met”!

If you are interested in the Health and Wellness committee's blog, you can always check them out here. I’m excited to have the chance to make a great name for myself in the GLACUHO region. It’s great to get to be a part of a topic that I genuinely really care about and take the lead on some great topics with both a Trends article and blog posts!

After a day and a half of brainstorming and drawing up plans, we all got back together as a large group and shared our ideas to all! This was the time to really get to see what we as a region were creating for the upcoming year…and just as you would expect at a Student Affairs Conference… there were lots of cheering, skits, songs, and more!

Overall, it has been nerve-wracking coming back to my home region, only this time as a professional. The pressure is on! However, GLACUHO has allowed me as a young professional to get my “feet wet” in the field and within the region. Ultimately I want to be a President of a university. With that goal, networking is always a good idea! This opportunity will only help me in my future endeavors as a Student Affairs Professional! It was a long day and a half, driving to and from Indiana, and spending my waking hours in meetings, but one heck of an experience! I made more connections with the region that will only help me and was able to help form a great plan for the year. There is even talk of a 5K at the annual conference in November 2013! (Get pumped!)