Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Beginning our assessment plan

We know the work we do in student affairs matters. But can we prove it? 

Learning is difficult to measure. Faculty have the advantage of using the commonly understood and accepted method of grades to measure learning and development. Learning outside the classroom does not possess this advantage. With financial resources for higher education dwindling and expectations of accountability rising those of us in Student Affairs run the risk of losing resources and influence because we cannot point to established quantitative metrics to show the contributions we make to student learning and development. 

One of my priorities in my role at uWaterloo has been creating an assessment plan so my team and I can more clearly describe how effective (or not) our work is in achieving our objectives. At the highest level we want to demonstrate how our work in Housing and Residences contributes to our student's learning and development. A campus housing operation has many functions which all make a contribution to our overall objective and I believe it's important to show how each function makes a contribution. 

An early action we undertook was having managers in different functional areas identify Key Performance Indicators. Mike Iley in Cleaning Services and Jessica Lang in Residence Life were the first to establish KPIs in consultation with their teams. Here are the KPI scorecards they developed: 


One of the most important actions taken has been to hire Andrew Noble as a Project Coordinator and outlining that his major project was to take the lead in creating an assessment plan for the department. Andrew was hired in May 2013 and at the most recent OACUHO conference at Wilfrid Laurier University Andrew and I were given the opportunity to outline the progress we've made with our assessment plan to date. Here are the slides we used in the presentation:

Developing an Assessment Action Plan

More PowerPoint presentations from Glen

One of the greatest achievements I've seen in the past year has been the change in departmental culture around assessment. My team went from being uneasy to a place where staff display curiosity about how we go about our work and the impact our work has on learning and development. I'm excited to see how our culture around assessment continues to evolve. 

Saturday, February 22, 2014

We are ACUHO-I


When we pay for something we expect to receive a product or service in return. While this is a core feature of our global economy, it is by no means the only medium of exchange.  There are many other types of benefits or services that can be received, and our relationship with ACUHO-I is a prime example. We all pay to become a member of ACUHO-I, and accordingly we expect to receive traditional goods and services in return for our payment.  While this is a reasonable expectation, it misses a critical aspect of being part of an association: Together WE make up the association.

In other words, the transaction is not just one-way between us and ACUHO-I.  Instead, we are also paying ourselves and each other to access the goods and services we are seeking to purchase. A more accurate way to think of ACUHO-I is that we are pooling our resources so we can work together to provide more powerful services and benefits then we could generate on our own.

Moreover, money is not our only resource. In an association, the most important resource is the people that make up the membership. We know this because when we attend a conference we network with and learn from our peers. Our experience with ACUHO-I (or our regional or professional associations) would be radically different if we did not actively contribute to the content which make up the services and benefits we are accustomed to receiving.

In order to maximize what we receive from ACUHO-I we must contribute. Not only do our peers benefit from us sharing our time, knowledge and experience, but these exchanges will deepen our understanding of the issues. In some cases our contributions are as simple as joining a face-to-face or online discussion. In other cases it's the presentations we deliver, the articles we submit, the events we plan, or the leadership roles we play.  Is is the total of these contributions that make ACUHO-I work. To continue being a strong association it is important for us to understand that without each of us there would be no ACUHO-I. Put another way: We are ACUHO-I.

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Consulting students through social media instead of face-to-face

Do students want to engage with higher education management through social media? Many don't, but some do.


My team and I are in the midst of building a case that my institution should build a new residence. To raise awareness of our vision and to seek input from our students we elected to use social media as the primary medium to consult with students and the community. We set up a blog and are using the #newUWrez hashtag to organize the discussion on Twitter.

I've wrestled with the idea of how to engage with students on Twitter in earlier posts - Twitter, a new way to serve students and Tweet students or not?  In the current #newUWrez discussion I've been able to interact with 30 or so students. My staff have overheard students talking about our consultation efforts in our student centre. Furthermore, students have shared comments in a few other forums, like Facebook, despite the fact that we made the choice to not actively use other social media tools.

These efforts have allowed me to engage a small number of students but, perhaps more importantly, it has given me insight into a set of tactics that can improve how I use social media in my work. The principles of our approach would seem to be:
  1. Identify an issue that is important to students (eg. residence design), 
  2. Break the issue into a few different topic areas (eg. We developed a calendar), 
  3. Provide content to frame the discussion and material for students to comment on (eg. Wepps' Housing Blog) and
  4. Be active in the discussion on Twitter. I've tried to be on Twitter two or more times each day. 
We still have a few weeks of consultation planned so I still have more to learn. Have you seen an institution or someone in student affairs use social media effectively to engage with students? If so, please share examples here so we can learn together.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

The increasing importance of advocacy by our associations

An association's functions can be narrowed down to four areas: networking, learning, services and advocacy. The first three are often the most familiar to an association's members as they tend to have the most immediate and direct benefits to members. For example: networking at conferences, learning from reading industry magazines, and services such as online job listings.

The benefits of advocacy, however, may not be as immediate or apparent.  In many cases the benefits of advocacy take time to be realized. Big wins can come from advocacy though, and we would be well served to dedicate more resources to this type of work. 

Many associations can learn from the approach ACUHO-I has adopted for advocating on behalf of campus housing professionals and our field. For instance: the creation of a Public Policy committee, partnering with other associations in a Student Affairs Consortium, and hiring an organization to lobby on behalf of the campus housing profession in the United States. 

A largely untapped area for campus housing and student affairs association's advocacy efforts is at the highest levels of leadership within higher education. Board chairs, Presidents and Provosts need to understand the contribution we make to student learning and development. Publishing discussion papers or fact sheets, presenting at conferences or other gatherings where these individuals will be present, and leveraging those high-level leaders who deeply understand our work, are some of the actions we can take to raise the profile of the contribution we make to higher education. 

In an increasingly complex future where the pace of change in higher education is increasing, the Internet is changing how we learn, and new delivery models for services are being explored, we need to assert ourselves or we risk losing our place. We make a valuable contribution to our student's learning. Dedicating more time and resources to influencing higher education leadership will ensure our leaders know this fact.   

Saturday, January 25, 2014

It's time we learned how to sell campus housing


For decades colleges and universities in North Amercia were really the only players in the student housing market. Twenty years ago things started to change and today the student housing market is big business - a multi-billion dollar business.

My institution, uWaterloo, has witnessed the changes first hand over the past decade. The city of Waterloo is home to both uWaterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, and our combined enrollment is approximately 50,000 students. This has proven to be a very attractive market for private investors interested in student housing. Rock Advisors have indicated that more than 9,000 off campus beds targeting students have been added in the past decade and more are coming.

To put this in perspective, there are about 9,000 purpose built beds targeting students in the rest of Canada combined! For students in the city of Waterloo this means they have more choice than students elsewhere in the country. For my team and I, more student choice means we must compete with other student housing providers.

Competition is not something we are accustomed to in our work as campus housing professionals. I suspect the trend will continue in Waterloo and elsewhere as more private investors look to enter the student housing market in the years to come.

In my role as Chief Housing Officer, I'm seeking to understand the implications of the changing market so I can provide effective direction to my team. One skill set I believe we'll need to develop is our ability to sell. Selling is something we are not accustomed to doing as campus housing professionals. Investors and property managers understand how to sell though so they can achieve their financial targets. To ensure our students understand what makes campus housing distinct from other types of student housing we will need to develop our ability to sell to continue serving our students well.      



     

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Interest in Canada's Student Housing Market Growing Rapidly


Only 16% of undergraduate students live in on-campus housing according to the 2011 Canadian University Survey Consortium (see Table 8). Twice that number live in rental housing off-campus. How would you describe the type of off-campus housing that undergrads live in? After my experience today at the Canadian Student Housing Symposium I can guarantee that a decade from now student housing off-campus will be described in a very different way.


The symposium was hosted by Derek Lobo and his company Rock Apartment Advisors.  In the morning we received insight into the Canadian rental market over the past half century, heard about how to finance student housing and heard from Campus Living Centres (CLC), American Campus Communities (ACC) and Domus Student Housing on management of student housing. The second half had us travel to three ACC properties at the University of Buffalo in Amherst, New York.

Student Housing has been changing over the past decade and in the next decade the change will become bigger and much more noticeable. Hot tubs, large game rooms, indoor basketball courts, model suites available year round to attract new residents, in-unit laundry, a bathroom inside each bedroom and walk-in closets are just some of the features now included. 

About 100 people attended today's symposium with the vast majority looking to or already investing in purpose built student housing properties. The days of student's renting basement apartments is about to become a thing of the past. For-profit student housing providers are learning, adjusting and offering impressive properties for reasonable rates.

How do you feel about these changes to the Canadian student housing market?



Image source

Sunday, October 14, 2012

The Animal House teachable moment

Earlier in my career I would hear references made to how living in residence was like the 1978 movie Animal House.These references faded over time until recently when I heard it again. Having never seen the movie I decided it was time I sat down and watched it. Turns out I will never get those two hours back!



Animal House was awful! Aside from being a comedy with little humour and no plot line the story has virtually no resemblance to what it is actually like to live in residence aside from the fact that accommodations were "provided" on a college campus. For instance, residence is not a frat house, alcohol consumption is greatly exaggerated (see social norms study) and accommodations are hardly a dump (see most beautiful residences).

Should you encounter someone who uses Animal House as an analogy for living in residence stop them immediately and counter them with points like these:
What poor analogies have you heard someone make about a student's experience or the supports in place to help students be successful?