Tag Archives: student affairs

Office of Student Life, Reporting for Duty

Posted on August 16, 2020 | 4 comments

Professional headshots of 44 team members above (6 more team members not pictured) plus pictures of 12 new hires this summer below (still searching for 3 open positions)

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This afternoon feels part finish line, part starting line, and all sorts of consequential.

In the middle of March 2019 my wife and I said our tearful goodbyes to California and drove across the country to a new life in Tennessee. One year later, in the middle of March 2020, I was leading an effort to evacuate as many university students as possible from campus as COVID-19 began its terrible reign. And for the last five months, both I and my team have worked harder than I thought possible.

This has been the most challenging season of work that I have faced, including working through multiple historic natural disasters—and in a real sense we are just getting started.

My university is one of many that carefully and prayerfully weighed all the competing forces and decided to welcome large numbers of students back to our classrooms and residence halls for a new academic year, and the preparatory work to do that well has been intense. Although both my housing/residence life team and security team literally never left campus for a single second—and my other teams have worked nonstop remotely as well—early tomorrow morning is when freshmen begin moving in our residence halls in significant numbers. And this week of move-ins and new student orientations build to the first day of fall semester classes one week from tomorrow.

So this afternoon feels like a big deal.

I am confident that we have prepared well and that we will love our community well, but in a COVID-19 world we have all discovered that we cannot predict what happens next. So I cannot say with confidence, nor should I predict, what the next few months will hold. What I do know is this: regardless of what happens, if I grow to be an old man and sit on a porch someday with folks from my team who lived through these past few months, we will look back and remember with pride that we gave our full hearts along with blood, sweat, and tears—most definitely, tears—on behalf of our students. And what might stand out the most is that we learned that our capacity to do extraordinary work was greater than we had ever imagined.

I find great comfort in that today. To be a part of a team like this is an honor. And knowing full well that the days ahead are filled with great challenges, I am proud to face those challenges with these good people.

Here we go.

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Resilient in Adversity

Posted on March 23, 2020 | 8 comments

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I realize there are a few people who still think COVID-19 is a hoax because I have a diverse set of acquaintances and a Facebook account, but it is safe to say that the reality of the global pandemic has hit almost everyone. And hit hard. No one needs me to list the unpredictable disappointments and challenges that have combined to produce predictable emotions like anger, frustration, grief, and fear. Nevertheless, here we are.

And as we sit in this universal timeout, we find ourselves considering our individual purposes on this planet. For many, like grocery store workers, housekeeping staff, truck drivers, and healthcare providers, there is no longer a question whether what they do is important or appreciated. But as the rest of us reconsider how we work, we are forced to drill down to remember what our work is. I have surely been thinking about mine.

The student affairs profession in higher education exists to complement the academic work of faculty in educating the leaders of tomorrow. We complement by teaching outside the classroom and focusing on “life” competencies. In my new role and with my new team, we identified nine things we are trying to teach—our “mission”—and it is not difficult to understand how each is valuable during this time of crisis. We want every student to be:

* Spiritually disciplined
* Professionally prepared
* Resilient in adversity
* Intellectually curious
* Socially skilled
* Culturally competent
* Physically fit
* Financially literate
* Environmentally aware

Every single one of those matters now more than ever. But today, I am particularly interested in the one that says—resilient in adversity.

Adversity: A state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune.

Resilience: An ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.

Well, here we are. Practice is over, and it is game time for RESILIENCE. Even if ESPN is busy showing reruns.

But if any of us needs a little in-game coaching, I offer once again the famed quote from neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, who said: “Everything can be taken from a [human being] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Resilience begins with the choice of attitude—the one freedom that, regardless of any virus, cannot be taken away.

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First Grade for Grown-ups

Posted on October 14, 2019 | 1 comment

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I am one of sixty-four students from around the world here in Alexandria, Virginia, at the 2019 NASPA Institute for New Vice Presidents for Student Affairs. Each of us is the most senior student affairs officer on our respective campuses and in our first two years on the job. That so many of us are here is an interesting statement about both higher education and student affairs.

We were told that this is an institute and not a conference to make it clear that we will not pick and choose among class offerings. No, we will all partake of the same intensive cohort experience, including sharing meals together. Tuesday evening is our only break, and as luck would have it, I get to attend Game Four of the NLCS with my buddies, Steve and Rachel (Go Cards!).

I jumped at the opportunity to be here. When I served as Dean of Students at Pepperdine Law, I did my best to attend the national AALS conference each year because I learned a lot, sure, but more importantly, because of the relationships I formed with people who truly understood what I did each day. I still miss my law school student affairs buddies, but that is what excites me about being here today—the opportunity to connect with more amazing people from diverse places who share the common bond of loving students from the same seat as mine.

I love, love, love diversity. It is simultaneously a challenge to navigate and a gift to embrace. But for those like me who are drawn toward diversity instead of resistant to it, it is worth remembering that we also need those who truly “get” us. What I love about national organizations is that it provides the opportunity for both.

There is just one me, and for that we can all be thankful. But there are sixty-three other people here that have a job like mine, and what a comfort it is to know that and to know them.

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Student Life

Posted on March 25, 2019 | 2 comments

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The plan worked. Starting the new job on spring break week was the right call. New house, new office, new computer, new work phone, new cell phone, new business cards, new driver’s license—even a new car with new a Tennessee license plate—all taken care of last week. But today is the day that I targeted all along: The first day on the job—with students.

I am a university vice president whose area of responsibility is listed as “student life.” I love those two words so much — independently, but especially, together. For those unfamiliar with the lingo of higher education, student life, also called student affairs or student development, refers to the large number of student experiences outside of the formal academic setting. From dorm room to intramural field, from student organization to fraternity/sorority, from career counseling to intercultural experience, from campus ministry to veterans’ services, from student government to campus safety, from disciplinary action to behavioral intervention—all this and more is our world. Student “life.”

We are educators. At times we stand in front of a group of students in some formal way (for instance, I speak to approximately 1400 students in Allen Arena tomorrow!), but our teaching posture is far more often one-on-one, or small group, or even side by side. And the lessons we teach are often the kind that, to risk sounding overly dramatic, the world needs and that you never forget. “Life” lessons.

I am raring to go this morning, and I hope you can catch a glimpse of how I can be so energized about this new work so quickly after leaving such an amazing community two thousand miles away. To put it simply, there are over four thousand students here, and I get to lead a fantastic team doing important work in an exciting place at a crucial time in history. That is why I am ready to go.

Jesus once said about his intent for humanity: “I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” (John 10:10, MSG)

Today, on my first day here with students, I aim for that, too. Student “life”—that authentic, permanent, full, and better life that defies imagination.

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