Term: Summer, 2013
Description: NASPA hosted a Drive-In Conference at California State University Fullerton on Thursday, July 18, 2013. NASPA is one of the major professional associations for the student affairs profession. The conference's theme was "Knowledge is Power: Student Affairs Professional Development Conference" "Defining the Nature of Student Success" My primary purpose for attending the conference were for personal and professional development, and what I can do to promote student success.
Learning Outcomes: Prior to attending the conference, I developed the following learning outcomes for the conference:
- SWiBAT Apply knowledge gained from the conference to better myself as a leader
- SWiBAT Identify ways to support student success by attending at least two workshops
- SWiBAT Gain knowledge about one's self for personal and professional development.
Evidence: Here are photos of the conference, the conference flyer, and my notes about the conference workshops.
For all three student learning outcomes, I gave myself a "4-competent" for exceeding my expectations.
Reflection: I was proud of myself for attending and engaging in three workshops regardless of lack of sleep the night prior to the conference. The three workshops I attended were: Maximizing Performance at the Root Cause, Step Up Bystander Intervention Program: Helping Students and Staff Make a Difference, and The Secret Life of a Student Affairs Introvert.
Three key points I learned to help students persist and succeed are self-efficacy, understand beliefs, and self-talk. Self-efficacy is important because the environment is always changing but students may not successfully transition into college. When students' have high self-efficacy, they are more likely to transition and persist in school. I believe Student Affairs educators can help students with their self-efficacy by validating them (Rendon, 1994). Knowing students' beliefs is important because it controls actions and life. Habits, attitudes, and expectations cannot be changed without understanding beliefs. For example, if student affairs professional try to change an athlete’s habit of smoking marijuana, it won’t change if the student believes he or she can perform better high. Lastly, positive self-talk triggers pictures which affects emotions. Students who practice positive self-talk have an optimistic outlook in life which would lead to a positive outcome in their educational goals. One method I can think of is asking students to list all the pros and cons of their experience, thoughts, and/or opinions of themselves. This would branch off to what outcome would occur to each pro and con. Helping students realize the benefits of positive thinking may help them be more optimistic because time is wasted with negative thoughts and only focusing on the past such as receiving a grade lower than expected. Just as the Maximizing Performance at the Root Cause workshop mentioned, it takes one negative to overlook 11 positives. These key points are essential for EOP students who are undeclared. They may be frustrated because they do not know what they want to do since a major is not declared. This is turn may affect their self-efficacy and self-talk resulting to low academic and social performance. It is important for me to understand students' diverse backgrounds and situations and remind them exploring majors and interests is okay.
In addition to the student success ideas (through the key points) in the previous paragraph, student success is increased when Student Affairs educators teach students about stepping up. Students stepping up to prevent negative experiences for other students will benefit both sides. The students who took action will feel good about themselves while the potential student victims will avoid a detrimental situation. Many students in college live through negative experiences such as hazing and sexual assault. If student affairs professional teach students to notice the event, interpret the situation as a problem, assume personal responsibility, know how to help, and step up, can change lives. Stepping up brings student success to one's self but also others.
As an introvert, I learned about stereotypes such as introverts being anti-social or shy. It was beneficial for me to recognize being an introvert does not necessarily mean I fall under the stereotypes. For instance, there are shy introverts who cannot approach others and talk to them while there are introverts who can speak to a small group but have difficulty with large group presentations. Introverts can use strategies to adapt and cope. I learned introverts like to know a lot about what they experience, prefer breaks from stimuli, draw
energy from internal world of ideas, emotions, & impressions, need to
balance alone time with outside time or they can be easily overstimulated. After analyzing introvert characteristics and personalities, it was beneficial for me to come out of my comfort zone and be able to approach students especially if students are introverts too. Acknowledging students and displaying their importance to the institution will help them feel they matter (Schlossberg, 1989). The knowledge I gained about my introvert aspect helped me be aware of how extroverts may see me in addition to learning more about extroverts and understand their actions. Being more knowledgeable about introverts and extroverts helped me with my personal and professional development because I learned to respect differing work styles and consider pace (ie introverts may take longer with thinking or actions because they assess and/or reflect on the whole experience before speaking their minds while extroverts can spring into action without much thinking).
