Yesterday I had the opportunity to engage with my colleagues at a regional academic advising conference that we refer to as UAC (Uniting Across Campuses). The conference is held is each near the University at Buffalo and includes academic advisors from the Buffalo/Niagara region. It's a great way to get out of the office for a day and focus on honing your skills.
This weeks #sachat discussed how to share information with others once you return from a conference and local conferences are no exception. Sharing of resources is vitally important if we want to expand our knowledge bases as much as possible. Even if your colleagues are attending the same conference, try to have everyone attend different sessions and then share when you return to the office. It's especially important to share with colleagues who were unable to attend the conference once you return (hence this blog post!).
One of the best ways to learn at a conference is to attend sessions and then find ways to apply what you learn to your own programs and methods. I wanted to try this out with the UAC conference and use it as a model for sharing information once I return from future conferences.
Multicultural competencies for student affairs & higher education professionals was the topic of Dr. Amy Reynolds keynote address and while I think she did an excellent job presenting this topic, it was actually a statement she made regarding dealing with a homesick student that resonated with me. She said that if we can get a student who is having transitional difficulties (i.e., homesickness) to make it through the first six weeks of the semester, we can significantly reduce the number of students who leave us. It's during that critical period that involvement occurs, friends are formed and a student stretches future than they probably ever have before. I hope that was I notice anxiety and homesickness during mandatory first semester advising sessions that I remember this statement and can encourage students to hang in there a bit more rather than just accepting that at face value and starting the transfer discussion. Perhaps I will probe them more about what they've done to get involved, introduce them to some opportunities they may not be aware of or just show them that we are a caring institution who wants to retain them.
That's it for lesson #1. Stay tuned for lesson #2 (taken from the first session that I attended entitled Advising Students of Color: A Holistic Approach).
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