Computer & Internet

Archive for August, 2009

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 There is no denying that times are tough for recent college graduates. With many terminal degree holders out of work, or working in positions typically populated by bachelors recipients, undergraduates are entering a tumultuous job market to say the least. It was and continues to be difficult to help students navigate the waters of the recession climate, but who’s responsible for doing the navigating?

By now you have probably heard about Trina Thompson, the May 2009 graduate of Monroe College who is suing her office of career services because she has been unable to find a job in her first three months as a bachelors degree recipient. Thompson claims that the career professionals at her alma mater haven’t done enough to help ensure her post-graduation employment, and that the focus of their efforts is unfairly placed on students with 4.0 GPAs. For these offenses, she is suing Monroe to the tune of $72,000, the cost of her college tuition. 

Many things are troubling about this situation. Are career counselors at fault when the students they advise are unable to find employment? Where would a student like Thompson get the impression that she is not inherently responsible for her own career future, but that it is her college’s job to find her a job? One has to wonder where Thompson received the message of guaranteed employment within a few months of graduation, and further, whether her lawsuit will inspire other frustrated, unemployed graduates to follow in her footsteps. 

As a career advisor at Michigan State, I do everything I can to assist students in the career search, but the student is always in the drivers seat. This means never promising students jobs, internships, or admission into graduate schools as a result of using our services. That, in my opinion, is not my responsibility. Career advising should provide students with tangible tools for crafting their own success, and certainly, career advising offices should work to build relationships with employers, graduate schools, and other agencies for the benefit of the students they serve. Above all, my work in career services has led me to believe that its essential function is to empower students to seek and achieve their post-graduation career aims.

So is Thompson at fault for her lack of employment, or her college? There are lots of arguments on both sides, but I’d like to take the middle ground. The alumna may be taking her unemployment angst too far, but she had to get the message of guaranteed jobs from somewhere. Students need to be realistic about the outcomes and associated expectations of receiving their degrees, but colleges have to be wary of what is promised along the way. 

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If you are a usual suspect (regular reader or subscriber) with The Student Affairs Blog (and if not you should be), you may notice some interesting new features for making connections at the top of this page. We have just added SA Forum, SA Jobs, and SA Blog Directory links for you.

The SA Forum is a place for all your questions, comments, and discussion on anything related to Student Affairs that isn’t covered in The SA Blog. Create a quick Forum profile and join in the conversation, answer questions for others, or ask our blog community for feedback.

SA Jobs is a place to post your listings for free maximum exposure with our community. Seeking a job or have one to offer, this will be the site for you. After completing a Forum profile you can click right over to SA Jobs.

The SA Blog Directory is a place to share all of the wonderful resources that you read (and write) in the student affairs world. Add your favorite blogs here or add your own. Most of our SA Blog community also write personal or other community blogs and we want to share it all!

Thanks for being a part of The Student Affairs Blog. We are working hard to be your go-to place for the know-how of student affairs peers and professionals. 

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All of my experience in student affairs has been in student activities, two years as a student leader and two years as a graduate assistant.  This week, I embarked on my first full-time professional role in student affairs working outside of student activities in the college for the first time in my life.

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If you cannot view this poll click here.

And here are the results from the last poll.

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“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”  – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

“Embrace the Chaos” was one of my favorite chapters in The Whuffie Factor.  I’ll go out on a limb and say that student affairs professionals should, by nature, be inherently good at this skill.  Chaos is something we are used to, right?  However, I believe that a hesitation to fully embrace the chaos is one thing that stands in the way of many colleges and universities making the most of Web 2.0 tools.

Embracing the Chaos is about letting go of control and resisting the need to plan absolutely everything.  To my student activities colleagues who live and breathe a semester in advance on a planning calendar, the “roll with it” approach doesn’t always work, right?  Author Tara Hunt writes of ad campaigns that changed 25 times along the path in the name of staying current with client needs and taking advantage of new ideas and directions.  Her whole foundation is that by being transparent and flexible, we can remain open to truly hear our “customers” and bring them into the inner circle of the heart of our “business” when opportunity presents itself.

Hunt writes of the Library of Congress success with asking the online community to utilize their photo collections by loading the pictures on Flickr and getting the community to tag photos and use them under a wide open No Known Copyright permission.  The Washington Post grew their list of blogs from one to sixty after abandoning fear around the “what if” associated with blogs and the comments that can possibly ensue.  Jet Blue embraced the chaos by allowing “real people” to interact with Twitter followers and “tweet” with honest conversation like this:

JetBlue:  There’s a lot of talk going around about corporate rolls in Twitter.  Since this IS a conversation…What WOULD you like to see?
SarahM: @jetblue, did you mean “corporate roles?”
JetBlue:  @SarahM sighh…yes first role: spelling.

I don’t know about you, but that kind of exchange between a company and its customers makes me a little giddy.  It’s real people interacting and hooray for Jet Blue for not suppressing this type of customer interaction.

Embracing the Chaos means, as I wrote in the last post, to stop analyzing social media for the “Why” factor and instead looking at “Why Not?”  Let’s capitalize on the essence of our profession and put the heart back into our “institutional” communication.  The slickest brochure about a student leadership conference can’t compare to a student’s honest and unfiltered feedback about the experience itself.  Maybe that student won’t always say the identical things we would say – is that so bad?  Maybe it will be even more effective in reaching students?

I’ll post next about her take on “Higher Purpose” and how it applies to Whuffie.  Yet again, Tara Hunt is speaking our language!

What do you think?  Are you ready to Embrace the Chaos and up your department’s Whuffie Factor in the coming year?  What are you thinking of doing to become more transparent and open in your social media communication? 

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So here it is, the first workday of August. It’s just past midnight and our professional staff training in Residence Life starts in just a few hours.

Though the day kicks off, as usual, with a breakfast welcome meeting, I find myself again feeling somewhat like “Fred the Baker” in the classic Dunkin Donuts Commercial . The tireless donutarian drags himself out of bed, and shuffles out the door, muttering “time to make the donuts.” Ceaselessly coming and going, his faithful wife greeting him and sending him off, Fred waddles through a seemingly endless cycle. His daily reward for the Sisyphean task? A line of happy customers, always waiting anxiously for some donuts.

August and September annually blur themselves together when you work in academia, but I always find some shreds of variety in the routines we march through each year. And no matter how much stays the same, I always find a few glints of the unique and special, from meeting new people, changing tasks, or seeing the university, the department, and all our rules and protocols through the fresh lens of a new staff member. And, like Fred, I find the routine often dull, and the reward in serving happy customers. And after 15 years, I still get up at roughly the same time, though I worked too late or worried too much about what the next day would bring, and trudge to work.The routine reasserts itself, and I find some comfort there, not in the rules, the tasks or any of the other nonsense, but through the eyes of new students, their parents and new staff.

 So, as you drag yourself out of bed today and stare another year down, muttering to yourself “time to make the donuts,” try to remember that there are all kinds of donuts out there, and plenty of hungry people waiting for what you have to serve. It may seem mundane drudgery to you, but to the people you serve, “them are some damn tasty donuts!,” and well worth the wait. One could do worse than be a baker of donuts. Good luck to all as we start another year!

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