CSSA Blog @ Oregon State University

After the pandemonium of interviews comes that moment when you realize that you are going to move. Far, far away. I just set up my first on campus interview in Indiana and the reality of it all is still sinking in. The stress of relocating, finding apartments, thinking about moving two cats across the country. All of the possibilities that come along with an on campus interview (even though you still might not get the job) are numberless and seem to fill the time quite efficiently. Although I was raised down the street from Oregon State University, I had never thought I would live in Corvallis after I graduated from High School. Now being back for Graduate School, I hadn’t realized how much I love this little town and the security of knowing where the best restaurants are, where to do your laundry, and what your friends are doing on a Friday. All of that was something I had taken for granted over the last two years and leaves me feeling slightly frantic, but mainly excited at the thought of leaving it all behind to face the next adventure!

Tristen Shay

As a second year graduate student about to graduate in June, I thought it would be a good idea to attend some professional conferences this year. These conferences in my mind would allow me to start networking with individuals from all over the nation. I attended NASPA in Boston, and it was very overwhelming. There were about 4,000 plus student affairs professionals in attendance. The conference was amazing and I got to sit on some sessions that really sparked my interest, and I want to continue to learn more about these topics. I went to sessions on ethics, racism, sexual assault, compassion fatigue and many more. These topics were wonderful and I felt connected when I was in the sessions, but as a graduate student I felt very overwhelmed and felt “lost” while at the conference. I know that without my fellow co-hort members, it would have been an awful experience, but the support that the fellow graduate students provided me while at this conference was amazing. So my thoughts are that conferences are wonderful and can spark intellectual development, but they can also be very overwhelming for those of us that are not as outgoing or extraverted. I do not regret going to the conference, because I learned a lot about myself but I also got to learn more about my fellow co-hort members.

In some ways this has seemed like a lost term….I can’t believe it is the middle of March already!  It has been one of the busiest in my career.  Balancing school, RA Selection, Coordinating the Regional College Bowl Tournament and assisting with the hosting of the Northwest Association of College and University Housing Officers Conference (NWACUHO) has caused this term to slip past before I knew it.  First, the good news…it looks like I will do well in both my classes (First Year Programs and Philosophies and Elements of Counseling), RA Selection is done, the College Bowl Tournament was amazing and the conference was incredible as well.  And now the bad news…I have had little time for a personal life (I expected this going into this term, but now that this is reality it is kind of sad), I am really sick currently and have been for the last week and this is my first blog in a long, long time.  So, it would appear that balance is an issue that I am struggling with.  Hmmmm….not really all that different than what I have experienced throughout my career, but it seems to be magnified with the addition of school.  Although I have been successful professionally and academically, my personal balance has suffered.  I need to do better.  At times, I think I am doing the best I can, but I can’t help to think I could be doing more.  Specifically, in the area of personal wellness.  It does not benefit anyone when I wear myself down and get sick.

So, with a new term, comes new goals.  Get more exercise, eat healthier, avoid getting sick, spread out the reading for class more equally over the week, spend more time with friends, utilize my work day more effectively, say “no” a little more and be more consistent writing blogs.  Wish me luck! 

 Patrick Moser   

These questions were compiled from people who went through the job search at the end of the 06-07 school year. All of these questions were actually asked in the interview process.

1) Tell me about yourself.

2) What distinguishes you from other candidates?

3) Why are you interested in this position?

4) Tell me why you feel you’re qualified for this position? OR What has prepared you to take on this position? OR Why
do you feel prepared for this position?

5) Why are you interested in this institution? What makes you a good fit for this type of institution? (ie,public, private, religiously affiliated, etc.)

6) How would you define a good relationship with an administrative assistant?

7) How would you define a good relationship with the supervisor?

8) What is your experience in partnering with parents? How do you view the role of parents in higher education?

9) Tell me about any supervisory experience that you have.

10) What can you bring to this position that is unique? OR How do you stand out from other candidates applying for this position?

11) What is your definition of diversity?

12) How will you incorporate diversity into your work?

13) What are some of your personal biases? How do those biases factor into your work as a student affairs administrator?

14) Share a time when you had to work with conflict. What was the situation? How did you resolve it?

15) Discuss a time when you had to de-escalate a situation. How did you handle that?

16) How do you deal with stress? How will your coworkers know if you are feeling stressed?

17) Describe a situation in which you had to make a difficult choice. How did you make that choice? What were the motivating factors?

18) Describe your role when working in a team.

19) How do you plan to integrate yourself into the new institutional culture?

20) What is your leadership style? Describe a time when you had to lead. Describe a time when you had to follow.

21) Talk about a time when you disagreed with a decision made by a supervisor. How did you communicate this disagreement? How did you come to peace with the decision made?

22) How do you keep yourself organized? How do you ensure that tasks you are assigned are completed in a timely manner?

23) What steps do you take to ensure positive, ongoing communication with your supervisors, supervisees, and students?

24) How do you handle confrontation?  Describe a time when a student, parent, or colleague directly confronted or challenged you.

25) Tell us about your most difficult professional challenge to date. How did you handle that? What did you learn from that situation?

26) What is your Meyers-Briggs type? Do you think that it accurately describes you?

27) What is your “ideal office”?

28) What are your thoughts on working evenings and weekends?

29) Describe partnerships that you have formed outside of your current office. How did you go about forming these partnerships?

30) Tell us about any professional organizations to which you belong.

31) Describe your presentation style. Tell us about a time that you presented to a large group.

32) How do you see yourself promoting the mission/vision/values of our student affairs division? Our individual office? (This question came up a lot, and stumped a lot of us who had failed to REALLY research the institution to which we were applying)

33) How would your current supervisor describe you? If your supervisor could only use three words to describe you, what three words would those be?

34) What do you believe are the most pressing social justice issues today? How do you plan to help combat social injustice?

35) You will be joining an already-existing team. Please share with us how you will go about building trust with your new coworkers. How will you build trust with the students with whom you will work?

36) What are your thoughts on student development theories? Which theories to you use in practice the most? Which theories to you most strongly ascribe to? Which theories do you dismiss from your practice? And Why?

For those of you applying for live-in positions:

1) How do you plan to strike the work-life balance?

2) You will be literally living where you work. How will you set boundaries between you and your students?

3) How will you set boundaries between you and your student staff?

4) Being a hall/resident director requires odd hours and a 40 hour work week isn’t always possible. This contributes to a high burn-out rate. What is your plan to stay rejuvenated?

5) How will we know when you’ve been assigned too much to do?

6) How will you identify for yourself when you are in over your head?

**GOOD LUCK TO ALL OF YOU JOB SEARCHERS!!**

Following up on Britt’s thoughts around spirituality, I would like to share a few comments from a woman I have worked with for a number of years. This woman has endured many of the typical issues we all encounter at some point in life and it seemed as if it was just a matter of time until things clicked for her – and they did. In our conversations around spirituality, a common definition that seems to work for us is that one’s spirituality is a “way” to make meaning in life. We all approach this in slightly different style, but the common theme is “making meaning.” Here are some thoughts from our graduating senior as to how she took another step forward in making meaning in her life.

“It is general consensus that a few weeks ago I was able to flip a switch. I was able to go from a stressed out mess to calm, cool, and collected. There has been a lot of discussion on how this happened. What made the difference? How did I make the change? What made the change possible? I have been thinking about this a lot because it seems that I just woke up one morning and started doing this differently without knowing why.

This week I had to write a personal values statement for a class, and I found myself writing this as one of (and my most important of) core values:

Keeping it Simple

When life gets complicated and cluttered with drama, it is hard to feel happy with my situation. It is also difficult to positively contribute to my relationships, my organizations, my institution, and to cater to every situation that arises. To prevent this from happening, I constantly adhere to my most essential core value: keeping it simple. It was my greatest “ah hah” moment when I realized that life doesn’t have to be complicated and that the benefits of living a simple life are innumerable. Keeping it simple means to me: 1) living a working towards my core values at all times, 2) challenging myself to take time for self reflection and evaluation, 3) turning negative into positive, and 4) meeting challenges as they come instead of looming over what may happen in the future. By living a simple life, I have time to breathe. Therefore, I am able to be the best person I can possibly be and to do the best work I can possible do. By keeping it simple, I am able to be a complete, yet continuously developing person. I give myself space to be the best version of myself, while leaving room for growth.”

During our spirituality seminar we have discussed the concept that spirituality may not be a “thing,” but a “way.” For this young woman, “keeping it simple,” is her “way.”

Don Johnson

This quarter, I have the pleasure of being one of five participants in Professor Don Johnson’s Spirituality in Higher Education seminar class. It has been a fascinating 8 weeks of enlightening discourse on the potential role of the university in fostering its students’ spiritual development.

As a class, we have been operating under the paradigm that spirituality is excruciatingly personal, broadly defined, and “a means to a way.” We have come to the working conclusion that spirituality is a force that can be used to make holistic meaning of one’s life and experiences. We also have chosen to view spirituality as a tool that may invite religion, but can be a decidedly separate thing altogether.

Our final project for the seminar is to propose a program or initiative to “assist students in their search for examining and understanding spirituality.” Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong! While I personally believe that institutions of higher education could and should be doing more – or anything, for that matter – I am at a loss for suggestions how to end the Cold War between higher education and spirituality…

It is easy to see why higher education – especially public institutions – might be hesitant to enter into a discussion about spirituality. The first major obstacle is likely the fear of repercussions for violating the “Separation of Church and State.” However, if viewing spirituality in the broadest sense as a tool to help students make meaning and connections to their personal self, learning and development, the Church and State may never actually need to intersect or interact. By that, I mean some students might not use a religious avenue to find their purpose or define their values; they might develop that self-awareness through mediation, journaling, taking a hike, attending a lecture, or playing the banjo.

I would hypothesize another possible roadblock to higher education’s involvement in spirituality would be the perceived belief that spirituality – an intangible – might be incompatible with academe, which too often prizes facts, data, and the objective. By no means do I want to suggest faculty members are ill-qualified or unwilling to engage in a discourse about spirituality, but my assumption is it might be difficult to convince some of them of its relevance and purpose.

So does it fall upon the Student Affairs professional to create these opportunities for students? If the classroom and lecture hall has no allowance for discourse about how to integrate one’s self and one’s values into the world, where can students find support and guidance? In the hustle-and-bustle of the college campus, where can a student go to find quiet to contemplate, test and reaffirm their spiritual self?

In Student Development Theory class, we have covered how students develop their racial, gender, physical, sexual and social identities… but what about their spiritual identities? What support do we offer for students questioning the religion they were raised with now that they are no longer living at home? What can we offer to students as they transition to the college campus and begin to become aware of different religious and spiritual practices? What empathy do we demonstrate for those students who are searching for answers about who they are, why they are here (both at the university and the universe!), what they are passionate about and how did they come to be who they are today?

I would like to invite you, loyal readers, to chime in with your perspective, ideas, observations and dreams about the role higher education could, should or should not play in fostering student spiritual development. What measures have you seen taken by other institutions? What should higher education’s involvement be? Do you think spirituality is an important part of the college experience?

I look forward to hearing about your ideas and opinions on this matter!

BQH

p.s. It may prove helpful to some of you to read and review UCLA’s National Study of College Students’ Search for Meaning and Purpose as a primer to this discussion!