Hello Board members and welcome, again, to new Board members. Generally new Board members don’t get too immersed in NASPA business on the national level until after the July Board meeting. This year is different. It’s different in many ways because of the vote on consolidation. As you know, we’ve moved deftly and swiftly ahead with NASPA’s agenda. Our president, Patricia Telles-Irvin, has had a busy schedule. She spoke eloquently at the Region II Conference yesterday about NASPA’s current position of strength and about the major themes you, as a Board, will address as you move into strategic planning; she spoke at the national conference on women student leaders, and she was a very engaged participant at the Council for Higher Education Management Associations in Seattle. In fact, she was something of a star at CHEMA in that everyone wanted her card for follow up, and she has been selected as the volunteer leader on a task force on diversity and inclusion. In addition, PTI has been writing for the Forum newsletter and the management magazine, Leadership Exchange. Patricia is also working with the staff and a communications consultant to help us with our messaging post consolidation that demonstrates that NASPA will move forward building on our strengths.
I’ve been carrying the message to a variety of venues about the role, function and place of student affairs within higher education today and during the next decade. I’ve even been on some of your campuses. Renee allowed me to speak to her staff at the University of Illinois; I had the honor of doing the “Chet Peters Lecture”at Kansas State—Chet Peters was a past president of NASPA and everything at Kansas State; I was so honored to be the Commencement speaker at Gettysburg College—my biggest concern was not to mess up and embarrass Julie; and one of our assistant director of educational programs co-facilitated a workshop with me at Spelman, Morehouse and Clark Atlanta. During our time there, we took the opportunity to invite Spelman to host NUFP during one of our upcoming conferences, and we engaged the leadership in discussions about our Minority Serving Institutions advisory board. This past week, I co-facilitated a 2.5 day workshop with the consultant I hired for our portion of the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission Lumina Grant, and I must say that it was a huge success! NASPA is providing workshops to train trainers all over the state to prepare their two-year and four-year college and university staffs to increase the completion rate of adult learners. It is a fascinating project that could be a model throughout the country! I always think big. So look out. Region II allowed me to sit in on their Advisory Board meeting yesterday, and I was inspired by the energy and creativity among its leaders. If their opening session is any indication of the quality of the remainder of the conference, they have hit one out of the park! Congratulations, Laura!
Kevin and I were brainstorming recently about what we really needed on the staff to help us focus on programming for the ssao in collaboration with the Academy. We really needed a respected ssao who could focus on this group of members and help us with programming and anything else that seniors would value. We could see no way that we could get someone to do this because we couldn’t afford someone of this description. Well, we must be living right because we have received a gift. Ed Whipple, vpsa at Bowling Green University for the past seventeen years, past president of the NASPA Foundation, Director of the most successful two Stevens Institutes, and a NASPA loyalist has agreed to work with NASPA for approximately one year on our quest to reach ssaos in a meaningful way. . It’s a great day here in the NASPA office. When Ed comes on board, I know you all will welcome him as enthusiastically as we will here in the office. He will be with us full time beginning late summer. Kevin and I are happy campers!
The incomparable and talented NASPA staff have been working their fingers to the bone as always. Here is a snapshot of some of the accomplishments and goings on. If this brief update stimulates any questions, please do not hesitate to be in touch with Kevin or me.
Publications
The Summer Issue of the Leadership Exchange is in the final stages of editing. Look for engaging articles from Ray Junco on using Twitter, and our very own Jeanine Ward-Roof with an article on research she has done on compassion fatigue and perspectives from an SSAO roundtable.
We have also recently completed three new book contracts:
Decisions Matter: Using a Decision-making Framework With Contemporary Student Affairs Case Studies
Delight Champagne, Annemarie Vaccaro, Mike Siegel, and Brian T. McCoy, Editors
Learning Is Not a Sprint: Documenting Student Leader Learning in the Co-curricular
Darby M. Roberts, Kathleen M. Collins, and Associates
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Student Affairs
Doris Ching and Amefil Agbayani, Editors
These three books each cover compelling topics important to our work in student affairs.
Finally, The Foundations of Higher Education Law & Policy: Basic Legal Rules, Concepts, and Principles for Student Affairs
by Peter F. Lake will be published soon. We are very excited about Peter’s book – and are very pleased he chose to publish with NASPA.
Educational Programs
Since the Annual Conference in March, we have been busy with a wide range of workshops, webinars and conferences.
This spring, we offered a series of webinars in partnership with Margolis, Healy & Associates on “Preventing and Responding to Violence Against Women Crimes on Campus”. We had 61 campuses sign up for the entire three-part series.
We also continue to offer the free “SSAO Briefings” targeted towards senior student affairs officers. Since the March, we offered three of these briefings, all with attendance of between 45-55 registrants. Topics included transfer students, a panel of higher education association executive directors, and a review of assessment practices by George Kuh. Dennis Black and his staff have served as the moderators and organizers for the senior briefings and have done an excellent job.
The Conference on College Men, was held in Indianapolis on the IUPUI campus and was very successful again. We had 110 registrants for this program which is co-sponsored with ACPA
The annual Assessment and Persistence Conference will be held in Las Vegas this week. We have over 325 registrants and a very strong program anchored by David Paris, Art Levine, Javaune Adams-Gaston and John Pryor as major speakers.
We are just wrapping up the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders held at the University of Maryland. For the past five years, NCCWSL has been developed in partnership with AAUW. This year’s program had over 525 registrants and recognized five Women of Distinction including our very own Marsha Guenzler, was one of the recipients along with Swanee Hunt, Natelie Randolph, Lisa Jackson and Connie Chung.
Finally, we are wrapping up plans for the 2011 Stevens’ Institute chaired by Karen Pennington. This summer’s institute held in Lake Tahoe will feature 2 & ½ days with Peter Lake on Higher Education Legal Issues: Competencies for Senior Student Affairs Officers and 2 &1/2 days with authors from NASPA’s new book Exceptional SSAO Leadership: Strategies and Competencies for Success. Twenty-one SSAO’s have registered for this year’s Stevens’ Institute.
NASPA Staffing Changes
LaTonya Murphy began as Customer Service Specialist on March 1st. Tonya provides customer service support addressing phone and email inquiries and also serves as the office manager.
Danielle Howard, who has served as Assistant Director of Educational Programs and NASPA Foundation Coordinator has accepted a new position at the University of Miami. She has done a great job with the Foundation and the Center for Women this past year. Her last day will be June 7th.
Curtis Miller, who currently serves as Regional Accounts Coordinator/Bookkeeper has been given a promotion and will now also manage the NASPA Foundation financials.
Joey DeSanto, Associate Director of Educational Programs, who this week completed his fifth year at NASPA and who has been one of NASPA’s rising stars, has been promoted to Director of Member Engagement and Community Programs. In this role he will provide programmatic, membership and community building support for NASPA’s regions and knowledge communities.
Rhoda Chari, will begin as NASPA’s new Director of Membership Services on June 13th. She replaces LaTisha Hunter who left NASPA in March. Rhoda brings a strong record of database management and membership systems.
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