Amanda Dean
In the TV show The Last Airbender, the the cartoon, Ang is the Airbender, and there’s an episode where he has to literally walk between two groups of people through a canyon. And at night, he says, it’s lonely, isn’t it being neutral, and I have that little screenshot. And I have an office of one. And so the community is really important. So as you step into that space, if you’re thinking about the ombuds role, if you’re serving in the ombuds role, having the support and the community, external to your university is really important, and it has been important to me.

Heather Shea
Welcome to Student Affairs NOW the online learning community for Student Affairs educators. I am your host Heather Shea. Today on the podcast, I’m connecting with several folks who serve as ombudspersons on college and university campuses in the United States and Canada. By definition, the Ombuds Office is a designated neutral and impartial conflict resolution office. They typically operate independently from the university and have no official or formal decision making capabilities. Although we learned that that might be different in different places. Ombudspersons have been referred to as the conscience of the University working with campus communities to resolve conflict through identifying systemic issues and trends, while focusing on fair treatment. So I have today four folks who are serving currently as university ombuds, who will be joining us to talk about how these campus officials are really important partners to those of us who work in Student Affairs. I’ll introduce you to my guests here in just a moment. First about a little bit about the podcast. So Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations make a contribution to the field and our restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays and you can find us at studentaffairsnow.com on YouTube, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Today’s episode is sponsored by Symplicity. A true partner Symplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. You can stay tuned to the end of the podcast for more information about Symplicity. As I mentioned, I am the host of today’s episode Heather Shea, my pronouns are she her and hers and I am broadcasting from the ancestral traditional contemporary lands of the national big three fires confederacy of Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi peoples otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, which is home to Michigan State University where I work. The university resides on land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw. Thank you all for joining me today we’re going to do introductions. And I really appreciate each of you and your time. Tell us a little bit about you, your audience, kind of where you came to this role from maybe a little bit of context, and and a little bit about how this professional journey ended here at your ombuds role. So Shannon, and my colleague at Michigan State, we’re going to start with you first.

Shannon Lynn Burton
Great, thanks, Heather. Yeah, so as Heather said, I’m a colleague of hers at Michigan State, I serve as the university ombudsperson there. And I also serve as the CO ombuds for the American Educational Research Association. I think my journey to ombudsing really kind of begins in that history of the profession here in the States. Michigan State University’s ombuds office is the longest continuously operating ombuds office in the United States. Second in North America, we have to give a nod to Simon Fraser in Canada. But like many offices here in the states in the 1960s, and early 1970s, our creation really was a response to the social context of the moment, in particular, the civil rights movement, and anti war protests going on on college campuses. It also is related in part to kind of the shift we were seeing in the relationship between students and their universities at the time. So our office was really put in place to begin to address some of those conflicts and issues that were emerging as a result of kind of those changing dynamics. More recently, what we’re seeing in that space is associations like the American Educational Research Association, Ashe, creating ombuds offices, again, out of kind of some social context, in particular, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and medicines, sexual harassment and discrimination report in 2018. So our offices really are kind of in this space of addressing equity issues. Historically, we’re in the space of really making sure that individuals are getting fair treatment within our associations. So for me, and this might be the case for my colleagues here. I don’t know that I necessarily like as I was working on my Master’s in student affairs, and my PhD in higher ed like was like, I’m going to be an ombuds. It’s really a role that I’ve kind of fell into because of my professional interests. As I was finishing my PhD, I had had a history of working in academic advising. That’s Where I grew up professionally and I was really drawn to learning theory and how systems functioned or didn’t function, especially in that internationalization and in the academic advising space. But as I was finishing my PhD, I was looking for that kind of what’s next. And the assistant University ombudsperson position was open. And I really saw it as a way to kind of bridge my interest in systems student learning and equity. When I moved into this office, I often joke that colleague said, Why do you want to hear students complain all day? I’ve never really seen it as that. It’s really the one place where individuals can be fully heard. It’s the place where our students can come to when they feel like they’ve encountered barriers and challenges that seem insurmountable to them in some ways. So that’s kind of what draw drew me to this position initially.

Heather Shea
Well, thank you so much, Shannon, and I appreciate you joining me today. Amanda, we’re gonna go to you next. Tell us a little bit about you.

Amanda Dean
Absolutely. My name is Amanda Dean. She her pronouns. I serve as the ombuds for faculty and staff at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas. And my trajectory is actually I don’t know perpendicular, are very, very different. So I actually came to the ombuds role through the conflict field. So I was very interested in working in dispute resolution, and conflict practices. I was actually, in my early 30s, sort of on the journey of what is adulthood actually going to look like after having a first career and nonprofits and running AmeriCorps programs. I was doing a entrepreneurial coaching program, seeing if I wanted to open a business and decided that I would go to grad school for conflict management, while in that program, took a class on organizational management. And learned about the Ombuds role and was like thinking thing, all the light bulbs went off, it was like, Oh, this is the thing, this is the thing that does all the things I want to do. And so I sort of jumped in as hard as I could. I was very fortunate. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and the IOA a conference was actually happening in Atlanta while I was in grad school. So I went to IOA, and then paid my way to take the Iowa foundations course met people. And that worked my butt off, I applied for every job I could got really lucky and getting my foot in the door as the assistant ombuds for students and postdocs at UC Berkeley. So a very different role than the one I’m in now. But sort of got to meet people and jump in and get some, some real life experiences. And that’s there. And then came to Austin about four years ago. I didn’t think of myself as a higher ed practitioner, I wanted to work in corporate, I didn’t want to work in higher ed, but higher ed is the sector with the most and that’s and I now can’t imagine leaving. So it’s a very different world. But I love I love it. And I love my job here. So think about that.

Heather Shea
Also doing this at a community college, we’re definitely going to talk a little bit about different institutional contexts and different national contexts. Julie, you’re here from Canada. Thank you for joining us

Julie Boncompain
at our booth row. As great to be here. It’s great to see that students affairs now talk and give the space to different stakeholders in the communities in higher education. My name is Julie Boncompain she hers her. I serve right now at Polytechnic the MaHA at Mila which is a Quebec Institute in artificial intelligence. I’m also co founder of just equitable which is a service we offer to implement processes of conflict resolution tailored to the needs. And we also I’m also the chair President of the Association of ombudsman and universities in Quebec, I am on the International Relations Committees. You can tell Ombudsman’s world I’m very passionate. And how I fell into this actually, I never thought I would come and work in higher education, and my career, but I was doing my law practice. And back in 2005, in the north of Quebec, Val d’Or, that’s where my daughter is born. And as I was working with the chief bank Counsel of a Cree community, indigenous community, I had written up a legal opinion. And it wasn’t all that good. It was about starting up a business economic activity. And the chief called me up and say, Julie, Hey, you want to come down and talk about this with the stakeholders? Like, oh, my god, okay. Yeah, sure. But it was a circle. And I had to tell them the truth about my legal opinion. It was exhilarating. I loved it. I was exhausted. And I said, I want to do more of this in my practice, and see what tools do I need. So I got into mediation, I’d start doing come So labor, Law Mediation, and that’s what brought me this opportunity. When I was working for a student body group at University of Montreal, I met an ombudsman. I said, what is that? And what does he What does it live on? And then I realized that, in my legal practice, I couldn’t investigate on issues ago at the source of it. I could not make recommendations that were systemic or individual to try and resolve issues. I couldn’t bring parties together, you know, based, and here, I saw this job and I was like, this is the best job in the world. And you report to the highest, you know, status in the in the university. So I was like, This is what I’m going to do. I ended up being at Concordia University as an associate ombudsperson, worked as an interim ombudsman. And that’s what brought me here now to be serving for Polytechnique, and doing all the things I do. So I love the people I work with. And it’s really it’s challenging, I have to say, but I love the job.

Heather Shea
Well, thank you so much for bringing your perspective as well today. It’s that’s going to be a fascinating conversation. And Jessica, welcome.

Jessica Kuchta-Miller
Thanks, Heather. I think what you’re going to hear is that all of us love what it is that we do in our role is ombuds. I’m Jessica Kuchta-Miller, she her pronouns. And I am the university ombuds at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. And I am leading a newly reimagined office that serves faculty, students, and now staff. So brand new constituency that’s never been served here at the university. And I have been at Duke since November. So I in many times, it feels as though I am drinking from a fire hose as I learned what it means to be at Duke. I’m also joined by a full time student, but so it’s nice to have a colleague here as well. And prior to being at Duke, I was at Washington University in St. Louis, and also served as an associate ombuds at the University of Colorado, Boulder. So I’ve been an ombudsman organizational ombuds for about 10 years now. And the background that I bring in coming into this role is that I really started in alternative dispute resolution. So like Amanda, really, that emphasis are focused on conflict resolution, and in community mediation, and helping communities to constructively be able to manage and to address issues that come up. So a lot of overgrown trees, yard related cases, barking dogs, kind of anything and everything people can fight about in small claims court, which sometimes included a dispute that was more than the filing fee, or the filing fee was more than the disputes At issue is what I should say. Sorry, come to this with a background in law, Counseling Psychology, and education. And for most of my career, I really what was known as a an ADR or alternative dispute resolution portfolio practitioner. So kind of hobbling things together. I managed at high conflict Sliding Fee Scale divorce education program. And while I was doing that, I served as a project administrator at a law school. And I taught steady state mandated divorce education classes, and then facilitated mediation workshops. And in the midst of all of that, that I’m gonna go get my Edd and then figure out how it is that I can leverage this experience and maybe get myself down to just having one job. Do away with all this portfolio work. And so I was aware of of ombudsmen through the other ADR work that I had done. But on a whim it it was I’m going to Google what job opportunities are out there. University of Colorado position popped up and I was very fortunate that in my first attempt to find a job as an ombuds, I had success. But I think it really was my background in mediation, as well as the the legal background really made me a good candidate for what it is that that office was needing at that particular time.

Heather Shea
Well, thank you so much. It is really interesting that different contexts and places and spaces that you all are coming to this conversation with. Julie, I’m going to put the first question overall to you is just in general, can you talk a little bit about who you serve, how many visitors come in, what types of things you do, and then we’ll build from there and have have each of you share a little bit more and then I’d love to love to know like, what is the day in a life of an ombuds? person? Julie, are there any typical kind of patterns that emerge? A typical day

Julie Boncompain
there’s there’s always extenuating circumstances or something that makes you do well, from what you thought you were gonna do. It’s very rare, you could stay on track. But there’s a lot of things in general numbers men will do. They’ll meet members of the community. So the community is very large, we’ll talking about students, professors, staff, and personnel. Sometimes, we didn’t have to develop relationships with unions representative, because sometimes our mandate does not allow us to intervene in collective agreements, issues related issues, but there are many issues related to processes. And we’ll get into that later on. But that being said, so generally speaking in an ombudsman is really there to greet. So you know, you can call us by phone, by internet. We’re accessible by all the different media, social media. So depending on what we have, at Polytechnique, we’re about 10,000 students, overall about 1000 staff. So we get about 100 cases a year. So it’s a relatively 1% of the whole community body, I’d say. And, you know, it depends, each case is different. I like to say we’ve got five fingers or fingers, but the different sizes and shapes. So each case brings their own colors, their own, you know, uniqueness, and I thought I’d be bored. After one year. It’s I’ve seen everything, but I’m still learning from each of these experiences. So we give information consultation. With my colleague, Amanda, she said the facilitation of form of mediation, I call it informal conflict resolution, we have different terminology, but mean really is the you know, the way we act or conduct in Canada love it, the ombudsman do investigations. I think we’ll talk about that a little later. There might be differences. And we also have our recommendations. That’s the, you know, that’s the annual report that goes up to the board of directors, it’s usually anonymized. And that’s where we give the trends or make systemic recommendations. This is an important moment for the ombuds all our credibility and the importance of our influence. We have a I say a moral influence, because we can’t overturn decisions. But we have to work with the different stakeholders. So it’s always prevention. On my part, anyways, my approach is prevention, collaboration, let’s work together. And I think some people sees sees us as peace officers, and others gatekeepers of fairness. Sometimes there is resistance. So those are the some of the things we involve in the nature of the cases. And I’d say that 75% come from the student body. From that there’s 1/3, that’s really I say, graduate students, graduate students, it’s always related to supervision with their supervisors, their thesis, it’s more interpersonal, inter relational, the power and balance issues that might come about funding also is very popular with undergraduate students. It can touch everything from the moment they’re admitted into a program. From the moment they get their marks, evaluations. Sometimes there’s group projects, plagiarism, I mean, I could go on absenteeism, religious issues, it we go for whole scope very till the end till the graduate, basically, we could still be involved in a file. So that’s an as a general scope is what the Ombuds Office does.

Heather Shea
Yeah. What about the rest of you, Shannon, do you want to go next?

Shannon Lynn Burton
Yeah, I think similarly, I think different scaling, right, because MSU is a much larger institution, we have about 50,000 students and what 12 To 13,000 faculty and staff, we see between 1200-1300 visitors a year, about two thirds of them being students. So similar to Julie, we are dealing with issues for undergraduates dealing with academic misconduct, it might be they’re going through another conduct process that they don’t feel like they’re being treated fairly. And it could be an issue with a grade dispute with a professor. Wide range have an issue with their housing, contract and issue with financial aid, basically any part where their lives as students kind of touch some piece of the institution as where our office can get involved with graduate students, as duly noted, as well, they can be a little bit more complicated because we’re usually usually dealing with students that are kind of in this unique dual role as both being students and employees of the institution, which in a lot of ways, makes their concerns more complicated, especially when it involves things like academic bullying and harassment and civility, issues regarding to their advising and kind of, you know, what they’re experiencing in their labs and those kinds of things. The other thing that our office works with that may be different too is we also have have our professional students. So our medical students and our law students can also avail themselves of our services. In those cases, again, we’re seeing situations that there’s a different level right of concern, because their investment, I think, tends to be higher financially in some ways that other students aren’t. And they’re more competitive in other ways that graduate programs aren’t. And so they tend to be very complicated as well, when they come in as cases. The other third of what we see our faculty and staff and in general, those cases are a situation where a faculty or staff members are reaching out, they’re having a difficult situation with a student, and want some coaching someone to talk them through how do I have this difficult conversation with the student? What policies might apply in this space that I’m not thinking about, they really want a thought partner to think through the situation so that they are treating the student fairly. And then there’s a small bit of those that might be an employee case that comes in, but our office is not mandated to serve employees, so we’re usually referring them to a more appropriate resource on campus.

Heather Shea
Yeah, gotcha. I, I’ll tell you a little bit about my first interaction or awareness of an ombuds. Office in my previous institution, I was having an issue with a personnel issue within my staff, and I sought the on the Ombuds office out because I was looking for just some advice around mediating that conflict myself. And it ended up being a really powerful tool for coaching. And I learned a lot through that experience about how to how to be a better supervisor, how to more clearly communicate expectations, how to hold people accountable, and help each of them hold each other accountable. Right. And so coaching seemed like not necessarily my, you know, the immediate thing I would have thought of, but I’m curious, either Jessica or Amanda, like, Are there less obvious roles that that you all have played as ombuds? offices? And talk a little bit about that?

Amanda Dean
Yeah, well, I think it’s interesting that Shannon was saying that they don’t serve staff, because most of my cases are on the employment side. I don’t serve students. So I don’t actively recruit like advertised to students, but obviously, students are gonna find you. They’re very resourceful. And so I do serve them as best as I can. But we have about 4000 employees. So I have about 100 cases still in that sort of one to 2% of population range. But it is much more than employment. So it’s much more the dynamics between sort of power dynamics between supervisors and employees. There’s faculty, same sort of things, chairs, all those all those dynamics. As far as blood less obvious, I think that I also do a lot of the coaching. So it’s a lot of your your experience other of serving the visitor in the room when they’re in the room with you. And some of that is helping them understand the other resources that are available to them. What are the formal sides, right, as a organizational ombuds, I serve as an informal resource. So I look for informal solution. But you know, I have a lot of cases that are people who are interested in filing grievances, and we talk about what that process looks like, are they gonna get out of it, what they hope to, how do you organize it? I even will sit down and like, here’s your grievance, and you want to go over it and make sure it makes sense. So being sort of a copy editor, for people I report. So one of the sort of IOA standards is

Amanda Dean
reporting to the highest level. If I’m, if I’m jumping ahead, let me know. But But I report to our Executive Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration, which was the big question when I arrived, right? Again, so I got here in June of 2019. And a lot of people wanted at the time we had a president, we’ve changed titles to Chancellor’s, so I might interchangeably use them, but they’re in here. But at the time, people wondered why I didn’t report to the Board of Trustees why I didn’t report to the to the president Chancellor. But who I report to is over, he’s over HR and compliance and Title Nine and all of those other sorts of functions. And what I tell people is it’s an administrative reporting line, he makes sure that my like is done correctly, but it’s not a reporting line of like, what are you doing? And, you know, tell me about your cases are you like checking in it’s it’s funny every year I have a pet. It’s like, so how do I do your? Like wow, no. Do you think I’m doing like That’s great. Because the only public parts are that reporting part. And so I actually don’t do a full annual report, I report to cabinet annually. But I do just a little slide deck, and I write a letter to the college. So I sort of stay in that informal space. And I’m just about to start doing a quarterly newsletter that will have more sort of ongoing information for the college to try to keep my accountability up. And advanced questions. Good.

Heather Shea
That was good. Jessica, what else would you add?

Jessica Kuchta-Miller
Yeah, I typically describe the purpose of my office as being forthful, where I facilitate, navigate, illuminate and educate, so facilitate, when and where it is that people see things differently from one another, where they experience tension, or conflict, navigating the bureaucracy of an institution, especially the larger the institution gets, the more decentralized it’s likely to become understanding knowing, are there policies that speak to this or even questions that I’ve asked and institutions that I’ve been in? Is there a policy and policies as far as how these are vetted, and to understand how they’re interpreted and what they might mean for individuals with illuminating bringing to light or servicing problematic patterns or trends of misbehavior or misconduct, malfeasance, when systems don’t work as designed? Or sometimes the systems are working exactly as designed? And that’s the problem. And then with educate, you know, how can I be more than a harbinger of doom within the university? To borrow from Wayne Blair? Another ombuds, who used to be at UNC, here in Chapel Hill, but you know, how can I be part of creating a conflict wellness culture in building capacity to be able to address conflict, productively, constructively. And I think one of those things that comes up is to around you know, that facilitate. I’ve encountered misconceptions that ombuds, don’t mediate, or even if it’s informally facilitate conversations, and many ombuds come into this role, as with an expertise and a rich background in mediation, conflict resolution, helping people have and navigate difficult conversations. And so people are sometimes surprised that we can bring people who see things differently together to talk in ways that they may not have been able to do themselves. And it may be bringing in some conflict coaching on the front end of that, to think about when you come together in conversation, what’s important to you? What are you wanting the other person to know that they may not understand? And let’s see, would it be helpful to think through? What are you going to say? How are you going to say it? And how might that be received? As well as then whatever that response might be? What are your thoughts about how you might respond to that, and I’ll just close with. The other thing that I’m noticing with the misconception of mediation, and particularly with students is that they tend to think that mediation is more than what it is, or that the mediator may have more authority than what a mediator does. And in many ways, acting more like an arbitrator. Or I’m going to invite you into mediation so I can convince compelling control outcome might look like, so that you will do what I want you to do. And to recognize that’s not at all what mediation is, or how it will be approached.

Amanda Dean
I’ve definitely had some of those direct requests of like, Could you sit in this meeting, so that it goes better? And I’m like, that’s not what I do.

Jessica Kuchta-Miller
Be a witness to what it is wrong, unjust and unfair.

Julie Boncompain
But it’s interesting, Jessica, what you’re saying about mediators and authority, I think there’s a truth to that. It’s seen a very legal context. And I think stakeholders, like if we said less obvious cases, is when you have people who have different functions within the universities, and they think that the intervention of the Ombuds Office is stepping over their boundaries, you know, it’s their managers micromanagers. I had a case, I remember Polytechnique, we did. We did. We had I had reoccurring issues, same issues all the time where you’re occurring. And I said, Okay, let me investigate this. So I start investigating preliminary investigation, gather the information, start speaking to the different stakeholders. I see what’s being done. Also externally, this is why a network of ombudsman is very important. So see what others are doing higher education. And then I realized that, you know, like, if you look in the structure was a structural irritants I’ll say, but it was two units that were not talking to each other. And they needed to talk because the person who was in the middle line was the beneficiary the student, right? So I said, Hey, you’d like to come together and talk about these differences. But of course, they had fear because they fear that they would be, you know, one doesn’t do their job well, once not doing what they’re supposed to do. And actually, once we addressed those issues, and we set perimeters of what would be discussed, this was not to be I’m not a supervisor, I’m not a manager, that’s not my role, is to shed the light on processes that are unfair systemic issues that need to be addressed. And we got these two units that come together. And what came out, the result was amazing, like they made their own recommendations of how they would address these issues in the future, we were able to go to the root of the problem. And that was a first. So that’s the type of intervention but you know, I say mediation, facilitation also is also good. But we prepare the grounds for these difficult conversations to take place. And it has nothing to do somebody than do their job back there. All I know is that I’m getting a lot of files that are reoccurring. And that’s my role when they say geek, gatekeeper of fairness, bringing your shedding the light illuminating. I like the way just suggested illuminating, and let the stakeholders decide how they want to go forward with it.

Heather Shea
Yeah, I’m really curious. This is fascinating. I’m going to jump to the question around how higher ed has changed a bit, maybe since COVID? Because well, we’re still kind of in the middle of COVID, of course. But you know, when I think about conflict, and I think about the ways in which we interact with each other, I mean, even just like this mediated screen, right? It, it kind of changes the way the tone and tenor of an engagement. What kinds of changes, have you seen in terms of the various conflicts or things that have been directly affected by COVID? On your campus? And that, Julie, do you want to start or Shannon? Or who would like to go first?

Shannon Lynn Burton
I can go first. That’s fine. Sure. Yeah. So I think one of the things that one of the ways that our lives on college and universities was was impacted by COVID was the move to everything being online, right our whole lives, transitioning from interacting, and having a lot of those cues we normally have with nonverbal communication with tones and our voices can be changed through the technology, right? Like a lot of these things that we rely on to help deliver our messages to one another, deliver communication to one another, really kind of impacted the way we saw one another and allowed us to dehumanize one another in ways that otherwise we may not have. Right. And so that’s one of the biggest impacts. I think I’ve seen COVID-19 Was this this ability to dehumanize in ways that we couldn’t before? Additionally, right, I think it’s not only that, but taking cues from the greater social context around how we’re supposed to be managing conflict. I know that the tone and tenor of the conflict that I’ve seen in my office has increased, right, in ways that we didn’t see pre pandemic. And I think the ombuds plays a central role in helping us kind of reconnect with one another, finding the humanity in one another. You know, I know Heather in her introduction referred to us as the conscience of the university. Another framing that I really like is your chief empathy officer, right? We’re here to help you see one another and see that you have some commonalities around your needs and who you are as just as human beings. And how do we start from a space of listening? Even though I think it’s backwards on your screen, similar to kind of Jessica’s four things on our welcome wall, which is what the image is behind me, it says ombuds advisors refers reviews explains and the last one is listens. And those were the very first words that our ombuds used in 1967 to describe the role of our of our office. And in his report, he states that the most important of those pieces is to listen and to listen wholeheartedly. So Julie,

Julie Boncompain
yeah, Shannon and you say listening. So it’s just a medium that’s changing because of the pandemic. We couldn’t meet people in person. So we had to use video conference webinars, and all these different means I, honestly at first I was a bit resistant, I was like, I’m gonna lose the nonverbal, which is 80% of what I get in terms of information. With the person I’m working, I’m speaking and listening to, but actually works out pretty good. To some extent. Some people are even comfortable to have a screen. So they’re not to engage in they can, you know, discuss about certain issues. So there’s pros and cons to it, definitely, I think we’re in a hybrid. But I was saying, in the conversation, I feel that, you know, universities are organic, constantly moving and shifting, are a reflection of maybe what we see in society I’ve seen, where I feel that the perimeters in which I started in back in 2013, are very different today. Social media is strong, political, religious convictions, ideological convictions are strong. People are, it’s like, I don’t know, in 1972, the calling the first term of what harassment was, then we started developing policies, then we set the tribunals to deal with these issues, then we started having internal tribunal tribunals to deal with this issues in our institutions. Now we got you know, the EDI access movement going on. There’s a lot of things going on. And I think we’re redefining our perimeters, how to deal how to handle and the Ombuds Office is like a stop book to diet, you say, Stop, Breathe in, breathe out. And let’s see how we can address these issues without, you know, going into extreme positions. Because everybody has an interest or a need, everybody has a reason why they’re doing or acting the way they do. But when that’s acknowledged, and you start interacting with them, that’s when you see pension, you know, de escalating, I do a lot more of de escalation and civility issues. But like Shannon said, communication is at the bottom that I think was a man that would told me that before. So I mean, students cheated in it 72, they still do today? Professors have moments where they you know, they yell, and they still do it today. It doesn’t change the but it’s the context, perhaps that’s changing the mediums the tools we have. So we have to adjust as ombudsman, I think for that as well. Well, I’ll say,

Heather Shea
oh, go ahead. I was just going to have you talk a little bit about setting up a new office in the middle of all of this as well. But go ahead.

Amanda Dean
Well, I was gonna say it’s interesting, because I think one of the primary differences in the community college, then in the institutions is we were already a little online, right? So it was It wasn’t as dramatic as a swing. But I also we have 13 campuses across the Austin area, I actually became way more accessible to people by becoming virtual. Because pre COVID, I sat in an office in an office building that was not on a primary campus. And people had to drive, some people would have to drive an hour to come to have an appointment with me. And so that shift in COVID actually made me a more available resource to people. Why now in my office at home more than I’m in my office campus, and I go to campus and do things, but it allowed me to sort of shift medium in a way that that was really interesting.

Jessica Kuchta-Miller
Prior to COVID, we would never have imagined that we could deliver service in this way and do it effectively. And as you mentioned, Amanda, there are people now that that prefer it to meet you, it creates in some ways for some comfort or a boundary as well to be able to meet by zoom or or by phone.

Julie Boncompain
Yeah, I’d say something that’s definitely on the rise. Chad GPT Ooh, I’m waiting to see that. That’s those are another issue. But anyways, you’re asking the question. So I think artificial intelligence is definitely going to change the dynamics in which we work in higher education, and it’s definitely going to challenge some of the things we do. When I started me, Eli said, Could you reproduce the work? I do? And they said, no, no, no, we’re very, very far from this. Let me tell you Chat GPT is pretty good. There’s a couple of things there that it’s definitely going to have an impact on our services or the services that are giving higher education.

Amanda Dean
And we see as more people use it to do things. Right creates conflict and using artificial intelligence.

Heather Shea
Yeah, that that I wanted to do a whole other episode on this. I think it’s, it’s fascinating. I’m using chat GPT to design a eight day trip this summer, and it’s actually really effective and I also see the positives as well. So this is a whole nother topic though. I Um, I do want to get to this idea of setting up a new office, because I imagine some of the folks who are listening, or watching today don’t have an ombuds office on their campus, or, or maybe no, you know, know how it could be constructed, but I don’t have yet that kind of resource. And Jessica, you, you know, talked about in our, in our preparation, like this is a brand new office at Duke. So, talk a little bit about the process of setting up new offices, and then, you know, we can kind of also talk a little bit about like, what, what does it mean to be successful ombuds office too?

Jessica Kuchta-Miller
Yeah, and, you know, this is my, the second office that I’ve set out. So the the first one that I set up was at Washington University in St. Louis, I was the inaugural staff ombuds. In many ombuds offices come about because there’s a call to action, there may be demand, something has happened. And that was you, it followed the death of Michael Brown, and really demands from staff that they have access to a resource like the Ombuds Office, similar to the faculty and the students. And so it was through the diversity and inclusion forum for faculty and staff that really put together a proposal for the Chancellor to bring in an ombuds for for staff to campus, and the initial proposal probably look more so like a classical ombuds with some investigative authority, more so than what an organizational ombuds would have. But it really was that support from the ground up that staff wanted this resource. And then of course, as I got there, I learned more about what they thought existed as student ombuds maybe not so much. Plenty of people on campus calling themselves ombuds with no training or experience or awareness that there are formal ethical principles or standards of practice to be following. And so some of establishing an office is getting a sense of what’s the sort of the landscape look like, within the university? What are the other resources available, what support is available for the office, who are the stakeholders between and I didn’t serve initially at WashU students. And so it was learning about human resources, compliance, General Counsel’s Office, there was a staff council that was created. And after about a year’s worth of service, and in doing what I was doing, the good news was is that they decided to expand to graduate students. And so I started to serve graduate students there. And I was there for about seven years. And then now transitioning to Duke, I’ve been here for about six months. And the position at Duke really came about from two parallel task forces working to professionalize the role. So for years, there have been designated faculty ombuds, and a designated student ombuds. But those were people who are also performing other roles at the university. And so the faculty ombuds was a faculty member from a department that would rotate in and out every so frequently, and this staff, but was usually someone tapped from within student affairs. And these two task forces recommended to professionalize the role where it’d be a full time, but dedicated to providing the services who would have ombuds training backgrounds and conflict resolution mediation, who could really just focus then on the campus community as a whole. But what I’ve discovered now, in the six months that I’ve been here, that there’s a lot of level setting that needs to be done in terms of what an ombuds is versus what an ombuds is not. It’s not accompanying people to meetings to serve as a witness.

Julie Boncompain
It’s sort of clientele service either.

Jessica Kuchta-Miller
Exactly, exactly. So there’s a lot of of education that needs to be done despite the fact that the role has been here for a while. And it’s getting to know various stakeholders. Relationship Building is such a crucial part of what we do, that we really can’t be successful if we operate them in a vacuum. And so we We’ve got to get to know our campus communities know who can be allies and advocates for the work that we do. And how it is that we can in some ways, remain independent yet be integrated within the university itself. How can we be sort of memorialized in some ways and campus policies and procedures, yet not be a mandatory step that must be taken in order to access another aspect of a process? And so I’m curious for others Yeah, to in their experiences in their offices.

Amanda Dean
The office here at ACC was sort of born out of the association’s really pushing for an ombuds for voice. So both the faculty senate and the the associations that serve the different employee groups, I obviously wasn’t here for that part. My understanding was that it really came from a need. There is a union, I’m in Texas. So there’s unions function very differently here in Texas, but there is a union. And I think they had really identified some bullying, some some issues of conduct. And so the ombuds, one of the mandates for this office was to do the informal data collection to sort of try to be a place to hear what was happening, that people weren’t reporting. I’m glad I feel like when you come into a new office to build an office in a situation like this, there is it’s sort of ripe fruit, there’s space to do things, right. I rewrite, I acted as a content expert in helping to rewrite our grievance procedure. And so doing that piece, Jessica of like, we encourage informal resolution, if you need help, you can reach out to the ombuds. It’s not a required step, but it’s an option, right? And trying to sort of get engraved in those those pieces. And I think other for your bigger question of people who are listening or watching who don’t have an ombuds office who are looking of how they get one, find a champion, right? So so or be the champion finds people in in all levels of the university who, who can at least acknowledge that their issues, right, say like, oh, yeah, there’s interpersonal problems exist in every workplace and every campus right? And being able to say, an ombuds could help, right? I often say, my job is not necessarily to answer the question, but to help ask better questions, right? If we use the information that I can provide through the right, the data that I do the anonymized data, as well as what we’re seeing in other surveying and other departments, can we ask better questions. And so finding that champion who’s interested in doing some of that culture work, even if really all you’re doing is serving a person in the room, right? That’s number the number one thing, you’re still working on culture as a whole. And so I think that it has to come it has to really be successful. It comes from movement, right? office being 50 plus years old came from a movement that came from a mean, so yeah.

Shannon Lynn Burton
And I wanted to see if I could touch on something Jessica said, she brought up the idea of someone who was a faculty member in a unit and serving as ombuds and a staff member and of those space and serving as an ombuds. And kind of our lingo, we call that a collateral role. ombuds, where they are an ombuds. But then they have these other responsibilities. And I think in our prep for this, one of the questions was, you know, have you ever been in a space where your personal values clash with your professional values as an ombuds. And prior to me becoming ombuds, in 2018, our assistant and associate ombuds positions were halftime positions, and I was in a collateral role. So I was halftime, in the ombuds office and halftime and other ombuds offices on campus. And I think for me, where I saw those values Clash was when one of those collateral roles called into question my integrity, asking me to leverage the positionality of the Ombuds Office for their department. And I had a difficult decision to make. I’m a single mom with three kids, right? So do I lose my full time status and go to part time to maintain my integrity as an ombuds? Or do I just kind of hope that this doesn’t escalate into something more, right? And so at that time, I ended up leaving that other half time position, right, because I wanted to protect the integrity and the reputation of the Ombuds office as being a space that people can come to without having those conflicts of interest. And, you know, thankfully, then that rose up to catch me but Um, and I found another position part time, but those collateral roles can be dicey for a lot of ombuds, because you are having to navigate to very distinct spaces. And sometimes individuals within an organization can say, you know, you have to kind of clarify, are you coming to me as my capacity as the ombuds are my capacity in the space, and that can be, I think, a very difficult space for some ombuds to navigate.

Julie Boncompain
I find that interesting because I think ombudsman some of the orphans, like we’re, we’re part of the organization, but we’re external to the organization. When we we, you know, we look at a file and we say, we agree or disagree with this, we might be going against the grain here against the academic administrators or against the professors. And it might not be well perceived. So, you know, we have to choose our battles, and see how we make sure that the ombuds office is integrity is, is not impacted that we’re independent, confidential at all times, we’re, you know, accountable for what we do, it’s always part of the, but if they cut our funding, or they don’t like your personality, there’s all kinds of stories of ombudsman that could be another show or podcast, but it you know, there’s, it’s It’s delicate to be you’re kind of an orphan, you’re you’re appreciated your life, but sometimes not and, you know, leadership if there’s a change of leadership, so when you’re putting in place a new office, or, you know, stepping into with a new diet, you know, leadership does, you have to rebuild your relationships rebuild the confidence. So it’s an ongoing process, I’d say.

Heather Shea
I think we could continue and I am fascinated by this. I think we definitely have to do a part two, I say that often at the end of these episodes, because we are out of time. But I think that idea of this institutional values clash with with we should have dug into that a little bit more, because I think that must be one of the most difficult parts of your work. So as we typically end on Student Affairs NOW, I’m curious what you are currently pondering, questioning, excited about traveling now, and then if you would like to share how people can get in touch with you, that would be great. And, Julie, I’m gonna start with you on final thoughts.

Julie Boncompain
So people can get in touch with me at justequitable.ca, or on the website of Polytechnique, is always available. Just to let you know, if you’re interested in more about the ombuds work in higher education on the ninth of May 2023, there’s a big conference, a webinar going on discussing across different continents, Africa, we’ve got Europe, we’ve got America, North America, everybody’s there and Amanda is going to be one of our speakers. But it’s certainly an event you can attend to and it’s free. And it’s for anybody who’s in the academic education, higher education,

Heather Shea
we’ll put a link to that maybe in our in our show notes so folks can access that resource. That’s fantastic. Okay,

Julie Boncompain
Did I answer the question?

Heather Shea
Yeah. What do you think? What are you thinking about now, I guess, is the kind of the final thought.

Julie Boncompain
I think that the Ombudsman’s role or ombudsperson is really an ally within an organization, I think that we do have a value and it’s not based on performance quantities, I do think that it’s a quality of service that we offer. And if you want to share the idea, or sell the idea, I say, think about it, if you gotta go art, and you got to go and settle this case, three, four years later, down the road, you have an ombudsman to deal with it. You’re getting time you’re building on relationships, or maybe improving your processes internally. So I think an ombudsman is an opportunity to change something maybe not working well, or that’s not appropriate, into a context where it’s more favorable for the members of the community.

Heather Shea
Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here, Amanda, or no? Sorry. Let’s go to Jessica first and then Amanda.

Jessica Kuchta-Miller
Well, is someone who’s leading a new office, it’s been reimagined, really what sort of I’m thinking about are, what ways can we engage with and support our campus community that goes beyond the traditional delivery of services, whether that be consultations, one on one consultations, group facilitation work, or workshops? Now how can we leverage what it is that our website does in offer other ways for people to engage that don’t require them to schedule a meeting? How can we use social media in a way that doesn’t compromise the integrity of the office itself or of confidentiality? So I’ve got that in mind mind in terms of how do I get this message up and out to the community and invite them to trust us beyond just saying trust us? Contact us we can help. And you know, the other thing that I’ll offer, too, is just some advice for student affairs professionals that if they are interested in exploring an ombuds office, if their organization does not have one, I will just caution to proceed with caution. If you think that you want to add the ombuds function to an existing role, as Shannon mentioned, that’s a collateral role. And it just adds a lot of complications. In particularly with regard to Title Nine and Clery. So the last thing I’ll say, if anyone would ever wanted to explore that I’m always happy to explore as it relates to Title Nine and to Clery, I can be reached through my website, which still needs to be worked on. But it’s on but it’s that duke.edu Great.

Heather Shea
Thank you so much, Jessica, for being here. Amanda, your final thoughts? Sure.

Amanda Dean
Um, before I forget, I’ll just say you can find me on LinkedIn. Similar to Jessica and I’m sure we would all say this, we’re all available. Ombuds are very friendly, folks. So I’m happy to discuss I also serve on the IOA board. And so I know that IOA has some resources for those interested in opening an office. Happy to to discuss connect to other people be a resource. I think about the ombuds profession as a whole a lot. Of my some of my closest friends now are my ombuddies, I reach out to people a lot. Mine, he’s Yeah. At the end of the IOA conference, I had a nine and a half hour day of sitting around with two other ombudsman, we caught up on life and did other things. But we also talked about our profession a lot. We’re all I think, looking at ombuds, and the work that ombudsman organization but they’re doing in relation to a lot of different aspects. So always happy and interested in a part to to engage in the conversation. And then I’ll share a sort of my final thought because Julie said this thing about the loneliness. In the TV show The Last Airbender, the the cartoon, Ang is the Airbender, and there’s an episode where he has to literally walk between two groups of people through a canyon. And at night, he says, it’s lonely, isn’t it being neutral, and I have that little screenshot. And I have an office of one. And so the community is really important. So as you step into that space, if you’re thinking about the ombuds role, if you’re serving in the ombuds role, having the support and the community, external to your university, right. It’s really important, and it’s been important to me, so glad to be here with all of you.

Heather Shea
Thank you IOA. Again, for folks who aren’t familiar, the acronym is international ombuds. Association, I’m assuming? Okay. We’ll put it we’ll definitely put a link also in the chat to that so folks can access that for more professional development. And Shannon, what about your final thoughts?

Shannon Lynn Burton
Yeah, so people can reach me through LinkedIn, I’m on Twitter, you can also reach me through Michigan State University’s ombuds website, those are the best ways to to find me. So in terms of final thoughts ever, kind of the probably research nerd of the group on some level. You know, I serve as chair of the research and assessment committee for the International ombuds Association, and I’m editor for the Journal for the International ombuds Association. Ombuds practice is a under research field. And if you are working on a master’s thesis, a dissertation are looking at some of the topics like Jessica mentioned around title nine or dei work, like Julie mentioned, or looking at community colleges, right? Like, we would love to have you think about ombuds as the participants in a study or as you know, how do we contribute to those systems? If you’re interested in research in that space, please reach out to me, I’m happy to have conversations, I’m happy to connect you with ombuds that might have expertise in those spaces as well. In terms of kind of what I’ve been thinking about as an ombuds these days. So Jessica I think I mentioned earlier, the classical ombuds office, which is we’re kind of all branches of a tree rooted in the same space and that space that the concept of the modern ombuds office, really is from Northern Europe. And one of the things that I’ve been really thinking about is the precursors to the ombuds role, whether those are precursors from the Middle East, from Asia from other parts of the world and how maybe we’re or as ombuds in our current space, how are we reifying kind of systems that are broken or might not be as inclusive as we think they should be. So that’s kind of my research nerdy thing that I’ve been pondering these days. I am a historian in terms of my own research. So, again, please do reach out if you are interested in that.

Heather Shea
Well, thank you to all of you today for your time and for sharing more about this really, I think, vital role on our campuses and I think something that maybe is under understood and definitely under appreciated. So thank you so much. I also want to appreciate our dedicated behind the scenes work of our producer, Nat Ambrosey. Thank you for making a sound and look great. If you are listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website and you’ll get a pop up which you can add your email to our newsletter list. And while you’re there, you can check out our growing archives. Thanks also to the sponsor of today’s episode, Symplicity is a global leader in services technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institution Symplicity supports all aspects of student life including but not limited to Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and well being student success and accessibility services. To learn more, visit symplicity.com or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. You can visit our website and also click on the sponsors link to learn more. Again, I’m Heather Shea thanks to all of our listeners and everybody who is watching. Make it a great week everyone.

International Ombuds Association

Registration for Webinar: “Showcasing Sectorial Ombudsman (in Higher Education)

Burton, S.L. & Mershon, C. (October 2021). Assessing Ombudpersons in Professional Academic Research Association. Journal for the International Ombudsman Association (JIOA). https://www.ombudsassociation.org/assets/docs/JIOA_Articles/2021_JIOA_K.pdf

Bingham, S.G., Smith, T., Burotn, S.L. & Elkerson, D. (September 2018). The Research Agenda for the Organizational Ombuds Profession:  A Living Document. Journal for the International Ombudsman Association (JIOA). https://ioa.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/JIOA-2018-3_Research-Agenda-for-the-Organizational-Ombuds-Profession.pdf

International Ombuds Association Research Grants Program: https://www.ombudsassociation.org/ioa-research-grant

International Ombuds Association Research Award Program:  https://www.ombudsassociation.org/ioa-research-award

Journal for the International Ombuds Association: https://www.ombudsassociation.org/journal-of-the-ioa

https://justequitable.ca/ 

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Case Study: Where Does the Ombuds Fit? Julie Boncompain, Heather McGhee Peggs and Brent Epperson

Volume 5, Number 3, 2022 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1092959arDOI:https://doi.org/10.7202/1092959ar

https://supervisingconflict.com/  , a guide for Faculty by Heather McGhee Peggs