Fall 2013 NACA West Regional Conference

Title: NACA West Regional Conference - Ontario, CA - November,2013

Term: Fall, 2013

Description:  NACA held a regional conference for the west region at the Ontario Convention Center from Thursday November 14-Sunday November 17, 2013.  NACA is short for National Association for Campus Activities and describes itself as a recognized leader in higher education for providing members with innovative practices and access to programs that support campus engagement.  The conference's theme was "Lets Make Waves," focusing on how students affairs professionals an make an impact on students' lives.  My primary purpose for attending the conference were professional development to obtain skills in advertising, surveying, and programming in addition to learning how to balance personal and professional life.  

Learning Outcomes: Prior to attending the conference, I developed the following learning outcomes for the conference:

• SWiBAT Discuss methods of outreaching to diverse student populations and program diversity events with minimal issues.  
• SWiBAT Identify ways to advertise events and various methods for feedback through surveys.
• SWiBAT Explain effective strategies for balancing life as a Student Affairs professional.

Assessment:  I graded myself based on the number of ways I can advertise and survey events, various ways to address diversity, and learning about different methods to balance life.  The scale ranges from 0-3, with 3 being the highest, thus, giving myself a score of "4-advanced", and so forth.  For instance, a score of competent would be discussing three methods of outreaching while a score of "3-competent" would be discussing two methods.  In addition, reflections were made on each student learning outcome.  

Evidence: Here are photos of the conference including pictures of my notes.  Also, the link to the NACA West Regional Conference schedule provided through their website.

For all three student learning outcomes, I gave myself a "4-competent" for fulfilling the student learning outcomes.

Reflection: The NACA West Regional Conference was a beneficial conference for someone new to the field such as myself.  I learned various strategies to get students involved in events while discovering different assessment methods for improvements.  Additionally, I learned about diversity and how programming diversity events may have issues if Student Affairs professional do not research and educate themselves about various student populations.  

I attended two workshops on diversity, "How to address a diverse student population without being offensive" and "Advising students in diversity programming".  The first workshop focused on colorblindness. For  instance, many people state, "love doesn't see race or color" which may come off offensively to some people because race is a part of their identity.  "Treating everyone the same" indicates the person not seeing individuals for who they are.  This workshop focused on celebrating diversity.  The three ways to do this are: talking about experiences, celebrating on a usual basis, and being more visible.  Having students discuss their experience would help break stereotypes and have meaningful conversations.  Dominate groups will have an opportunity to hear various voices and come to an understanding of their struggles.  This may help them become allies with the minority student population.  Celebrating diversity often is beneficial to the minority groups who may feel more welcomed by the institution and bring awareness.  Celebration of diversity does not have to be a specific week or month such as Black history month in February.  It should be an ongoing effort.  With this, being more visible is essential.  Promoting diversity through social media, guest speakers, student volunteers at events, would be helpful in promoting diversity and continuing students' learning about all student populations.  Therefore, this workshop connects to the diversity programming workshop because some events may unintentionally reinforce stereotypes or exclude certain students.  For example, an event may be located in an area where students with disabilities may have a difficult time accessing or activities may prevent them from participating.  I learned that if I cannot take away from the event I am hosting, I can improvise and improve it.  For instance, if the event I hosted was a Korean awareness event but we had Chinese and Japanese food available, I could have students discuss what is wrong with the food.  I learned various ways of addressing issues of an event after the event takes place: suggestion box stating likes and dislikes and improvements or suggestions, surveys of what students learned, a reflection question "how would someone of a certain identity feel at this event?"  These methods help the event coordinators learn from their mistakes and identify strengths and weaknesses of the event, in addition to challenging students to understand how someone else may have felt for attending the event.  

Different techniques to advertise events were shared at the "Cut through the noise" workshop.  Out of the list, I liked the Easter egg idea, t-shirt design, social media competitions, and decorating windows.  The Easter egg idea is to put notes of the event and/or prizes and have them scattered around the campus.  T-shirt designing is a way for students to participate in decorating a shirt while promoting the event by wearing the shirt around campus.   Social media competitions is a fun way to get students to participate while informing them about information regarding the event.  Lastly, decorating windows is unique and stands out compared to posters and banners around the campus which blends in with other clubs' events.  With an increase in students attending events through applying knowledge learned from this workshop, the survey workshop was beneficial to get feedback from students.  It is important to recognize the challenges of surveying such as students dislike taking them because they are time consuming, getting a diverse audience, knowing which questions to ask, and effectively translating results into action steps.  The presenter advised the audience to answer four questions: What do I want to know? From whom do I want to know? How can I get them to tell me? How can I interpret what they told me?  It is important to know what the purpose of the survey is, who the audience is, collaborate with other organizations who are looking for the same information, and use excel or survey monkey to help assess the information gathered.  Surveys available through technology include: Google forums, top hat, on campus text, guidebook, survey monkey, and groupme.

With a busy life working as a Student Affairs professional, it is essential to learn how to balance life and not get burned out.  Strategies for balancing life include: leaving work at work, if doing work at home then having a relaxing setting, saying "no" to employers, writing in a planner, and being surrounded by people who will motivate you.  People, purpose, passion, and perseverance are key to juggling personal and professional life. People include but are not limited to family and colleagues.  Having people who can hold you accountable, provide constructive criticism, and work as a team to complement strengths and weaknesses, help balance personal life with work.  Having a purpose and discovering what gives you energy is an important aspect for working in Student Affairs.  Passion for the job leads to perseverance when individuals have a sense of meaning to their work.

This conference has been helpful to my professional development as a new professional.  It has also given me insight of the type of work I may be going into in addition to what I need to focus on in order to strengthen skills.