Mistaken Goal: Where Higher Education & Technology Meet

I have been extremely critical of NASPA’s disenfranchisement of graduate student members, especially since that effectively negated the membership’s desire to merge with ACPA. So I was very happy to receive the following message in an e-mail from NASPA:

After a month-long voting period, the NASPA voting delegates overwhelmingly approved a proposal to revise the voting structure of the association to allow associate affiliates, graduate student affiliates, and emeritus affiliates the opportunity to vote in elections for the chair of the NASPA Board of Directors (previously NASPA President) and Regional Directors (previously Regional Vice Presidents).

“As a result of member feedback, the Board of Directors voted unanimously in May to submit this Bylaw Amendment to NASPA’s Voting Delegates,” said NASPA President Patricia Telles-Irvin. “I feel strongly that this was the right thing to do at this point in time, and I am so gratified that the Voting Delegates agreed and voted so overwhelmingly in favor of the change.”

“Graduate students, in particular, have been increasingly active within NASPA and have been its fastest growing membership type over the past year,” said NASPA Executive Director Gwendolyn Jordan Dungy. “I am particularly pleased to see the governance structure adapted to better recognize the contributions our members along the full spectrum of the student affairs career trajectory.”

The expanded voting rights will go into effect immediately with January’s ballots.

That this was necessary and that the organization denied full voting rights for over a quarter of its membership will remain stains on NASPA’s history. But it’s wonderful that the voting delegates have voted to remedy this injustice as we move forward. Well done, NASPA!

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There are many different angles one could take in reporting on the 2011 NSSE Annual Results; it’s a dense 50-page report. I know that every group has its own agenda and every reporter has his or her own personal interests but it’s very disappointing that CBS News chose the snide headline “Business majors: College’s worst slackers?” for their article. In an ordered list, something must be last. In this case, some major must rank last in the number of hours students typically study each week. But to label that group of students “slackers” simply because they fall at the bottom of the list is unnecessarily mean and unprofessional.

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The 2011 NSSE Annual Results were released today. I don’t want to focus on the content of the report in this blog post. Instead, I am briefly noting how fun it is to work on a project with a large impact that regularly receives attention from the press (even if some of the attention is sometimes negative, a very interesting experience itself). It’s gotten more fun each year as I’ve become more involved in much of what we do; this year I directly contributed by writing part of the report itself. Yes, it’s ego-boosting to see my work in print but more importantly it helps address a very serious and difficult problem that vexes many researchers and administrators in higher education: It’s hard to explain to others, especially our parents and extended families, what we do. Instead of trying to convince them that I really have graduated (several times!) and am not wasting my whole life in college, I can send them the report and articles from the New York Times and USA Today and say, “Look – this is what I do!”

Now I get to watch media reports and subsequent discussions to see how they play out and what they will emphasize. This process is unpredictable and it has surprised me in previous years when relatively small bits of information have caught on to the exclusion of other interesting and important information. As The Chronicle of Higher Education notes, this year may be a bit different given recent events but who knows how things will play out.

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I’m buried in work and research but I have two thoughts dancing on my mind and they’re both related to online community:

• I hate when websites or tools list reader comments in reverse chronological order i.e. newest messages first. I finally figured out why I hate that: It makes it very difficult to view the messages as a coherent discussion within a pre-existing social context. Because new participants are not immersed in the context of the ongoing discussion they can easily view the opportunity to comment merely as a way to shout messages without any responsibility to engage with or form a community. Mediated communication is difficult enough without us actively encouraging antisocial behaviors and views.
• Our obsession with tools and technologies leads us to underestimate or ignore the social effects and communities that build up around them. I see this happen all of the time in Wikipedia when new editors leap into articles without having any understanding of the cultural norms of the immense community of users that have used Wikipedia for years. It’s sadly naive to believe that such an immense collection of resources doesn’t have a correspondingly large and complex community with cultural and social norms and expectations.

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