Roshaunda L. Breeden
And we started to realize that there is a culture issue happening that was that it was a consistent thread throughout every story we heard in that room. So we said, Who do we need to be as a field? Like, what are our hopes and dreams for this profession? If we want to put something forward? What do we want that to be to really shift where we are?

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we’re talking about reimagining the workforce in higher education and student affairs. ACPA has just released the report from the 21st century employment and Higher Education Task Force, and we’re joined by ACPA President Dre Domingue and taskforce co chair Roshaunda Breeden to discuss the context analysis of the roots in white supremacist culture, and recommendation recommended antidotes for action. I’m a big fan. This is terrifically insightful and helpful document I’m so excited to learn more from the folks who are joining with us today. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays find details about this episode or browse our archives at Student Affairs now.com. This episode is sponsored by Leadershape. Go to leadershape.org to learn how they can work with you to create a just caring, and thriving world. This episode is also sponsored by Vector Solutions formerly ever find the trusted partner for more than 2000 colleges and universities Vector Solutions is the standard of care for students safety, wellbeing, and inclusion. As I mentioned, I’m your host, I’m your host Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his. I’m a speaker, consultant and coach and you can find out more about me at Keith edwards.com. I’m broadcasting from Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of both the Dakota and the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to our conversation. I’m so grateful for the two of you for joining us today. Let’s kick off with some introductions. And Dre. Why don’t you go ahead and get us started.

Andrea D. Domingue
Thanks, Keith. Hi, everybody. My given name is Andrea D. Domingue. Everybody calls me Dre. Yep, like the rapper. My pronouns are she her and hers. I’m recording today from ancestral in the Catawba just outside of Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina. A lot about me. And so my campus day job is at Davidson College, I am the Chief Strategy Officer for student life. There’s a newer role after doing like 20 years working, diversity equity inclusion work. I also am currently one of the adjunct lecturers for UW lacrosse on their master’s program in their doctoral program. So I do I’m scholar practitioner in that way. I’m probably most known right now as the current ACPA president. So college student educators International. And for those that don’t know much about us, we are one of the premier associations. Our tagline is boldly transforming higher education. And we’re mostly trying to move and advance higher education through advocacy outreach, especially development and our research.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Thank you for being here. Roshaunda. Tell us a little bit more about you.

Roshaunda L. Breeden
I sure will. First I want to say shout out to Dre, Dre. You’ve been doing an amazing job as president. And so I’m delighted to share this episode with you. But yeah, shout out to Dre y’all. Also, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are Roshaunda Breeden she her pronouns. I’m currently an assistant professor in educational leadership, and higher education at East Carolina University, which is in Greenville, North Carolina, on the traditional homelands of the Tuscarora Indians. And so that’s my day job. Although I’ve been a faculty member for the last year now, I’ve also worked in Higher Education and Student Affairs for the last 13 years at historically black colleges and universities and historically white institutions. So I have a background in residential life orientation, diversity programming, academic advising, college access, all the things but my first love is housing. I have a housing kid. Yes. And so I love this work. And I’m such a huge fan of the podcast, I also have to shout out doctors, Porter for their black feminists research episode. it’s quickly becoming one of my favorites. So go listen to that if you haven’t, and my connection to this topic. So I am currently the chair for the ACPA Presidential Task Force on 21st century and employment in higher education, which we’ll talk a little bit more about in just a second. But I don’t want to just center myself, I definitely want to center all of the work and labor done by the taskforce members who helped contribute such a dynamic document. So shout out to all of y’all. We’ll talk more about y’all later. But this is essentially a labor of love, from ACPA to its members.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. So, Dre, your ACPA president, each President typically has like a major initiative and a big impetus. Is this yours?

Andrea D. Domingue
Yes and no.

Keith Edwards
We talked about the task force. Yeah.

Andrea D. Domingue
How long did you try to be sustained? Well, one before I can even get into the task force, I think I just want to name that, you know, higher education and employment has been an ongoing grappling for decades, and so early on different iterations, what have you. And so what we’re talking about today is not necessarily a new topic, I think it’s an exacerbated topic. That requires more urgency, more attention, then I think we we have clicked with feel hadn’t really done so. So just to kind of help people think about higher ed was happening. And I like to think about pre COVID. And now living with COVID Times and other things that before we even got into 2020, the same that kind of dramatic way. We were already talking about challenges with exempt versus non exempt employees, the ways in which some people did not get paid compensated for their time. I’m thinking a lot about our live on staff who do not have great support institutionally for boundaries in their work. I’m thinking about folks that are, you know, Dean’s on call, I’m thinking about the ways in which student activities, folks, fraternity sorority live Dei, folks, we’re doing a lot of, you know, on the ground program, and so we were already having conversations about workload, sustainability, burnout, we were already talking about discrepancies in salaries, especially at the entry. mid level in particular, we were already talking about challenges of not being able to sustain at different institutions because there wasn’t opportunities for growth or support or what have you. We were already talking about climate around racial justice, decolonization, queer, trans issues, immigration, and how these climates were very challenging for minoritized. Folks, so these are not know what, okay, we can also disability, we’re already talking about the ways in which folks for a variety of disabilities did not have full access to higher education and employment. So these are not new topics. I think there was some conversation or rumblings we should look at this, but COVID happened, right. And I don’t want I wasn’t just COVID I think also we were dealing with grabbing some racial justice, our social political climate, what have you. I want to name that for some people navigating COVID, they got the privilege of being able to, A, have a job, right, I knew a lot of colleagues who are furloughed or in the middle of searches and couldn’t find anything in a standard way. I knew some people that have the ability, the privilege to be able to work from home and work remotely, while some people still had to very much be on campus, navigating their personal safety, what have you. I think what we learned, I think are collectively a couple of things is that one, some of them work in higher education that we used to say that we but some people would say it’s not possible to do in different ways became really possible, right? I think a lot about my time running an identity based Center during COVID. From home, right, and I was always told that to be around be available for students, what have you. And I was able to run support groups and events and view bias response from my living room. And so I think there became, I think, personal and collective questioning about why are we doing this way, this is the way that I personally want to do it, if I really truly supported is my institution really thinking about me. So that is a larger backdrop in which we were entering in which I was entering a turn of my presidency. You know, I will shut out Vernon wall was the first associate to present for us who had to first deal with COVID. And then Danielle Morgan Acosta also had to, and so a lot of their lens. While this was very much attention of the association, they couldn’t quite get to it. They were trying to respond to how do we do a virtual conference? How do we, you know, support our members as we’re navigating things, so I had the first opportunity to really focus on this. I will also name that before we even got into COVID times it was a strategic priority of the association, we had a strat plan we had just released in 2020. And one of our Arabiya five areas of focus and one of our buckets in association leadership and presence and it was specifically naming how do we retain our employees in higher education? How do we address burnout? And how do we do that, in particular, for entry level, there’s a lot of research and data, that entry level folks in particular are the ones to leave the field the quickest and the hardest to retain for a variety of reasons. And so we knew that before all these dynamics were happening, and that was an attention. So I named it in my presidential address. It was something I had already been thinking about. And I literally within the first month of being President wrote a charge and what was important to me were a couple things I was writing it is that and I’ll name it’s fair, NASPA had put out a report, HR had put some things out. So we were already seeing a lot of reports about what was happening and I’m gonna be candid and say they were telling us what we already knew, right? They were telling us a lot about what we knew about stuff. Already in wanting to go remote in these different things, but there wasn’t a lot of adding in the conversation about minoritized population, there wasn’t a conversation about the levels, there wasn’t a conversation about different college types. And so when I thought about this charge, I wanted to make sure we were adding to the conversation, and not just repeating it. Being ACPA, longtime opponent, you know, loyalists, we like to have tangible results for our members they can use right now like not to do they can actually implement it actually make a change on the campus. And so as I was writing, it was very clear, we had to have some usable document that our members could use immediately to impact change. Um, so all those are important to me, overall. And so when I thought about how to do this, there were two things in my mind and one is definitely about Roshaunda. And the other is about my experience, through the CT comparative for racial justice decolonization, I think some people know I was a part of that guiding document with Dr. Stephen clay. Mitchell, DL Stewart, Dean Squire was a part of that. Melissa, Jacob Guido, Alex Lange, we were all the bigger folks that were doing it. And we got together and in real time in Detroit to have an in person dialogic conversation. And from that drafted some some of the documents. So we knew that was important, especially in zoom time, we got to be together somehow. Luckily, we had funding to do that. And then when I thought about how do we move us from the charge to actual being in community. Roshaunda, so I’m a big fan girl Roshaunda. I had just been following her we had mutual we have a lot of mutual friends, but didn’t really do much work together until now. And so I’m a big believer, like, we have some shared people in common we get along with and clearly we should do. But Roshaunda dissertation, I was really impressed with the innovative ways that she approached research, but all the way that it was so deeply connected to community and community impact. And so when I thought about leadership, it was for Roshaunda. And so I was very grateful that she had said, Yes. And from her saying, Yes, I worked with Chris moody, and her to collectively come up with a really big list of people to join us. And so I’m going to stop there. So Roshaunda can talk about how he got from her guest to being in Raleigh in the document. So

Andrea D. Domingue
yeah, you got you got to captain the ship. How did that go?

Roshaunda L. Breeden
Well that is an interesting conversation of how I got there. But I do want to also shout out Chris Moody, he’s been amazing in helping me get all of my ducks in a row. And he makes things look so easy. And he just takes care of things. So shout out to Chris. But yeah, Dre reached out because of my dissertation research. And I also do research around black women and senior level positions in student affairs. And I wrote an article about it, and I got her email. And at first I was like, Absolutely not, I’m not taking any additional labor. I, you know, I was like, you know, Dre knows so many of my friends, like a friend of my friends is my friend. I was like, I don’t think I can do it. But that same month, I saw so many folks on social media, particularly entry level professionals saying the field isn’t what I thought it was. It’s I’m not enjoying myself, I’m leaving for XYZ experience. And at first, my brain went to well isn’t a season of transition. So people are moving out of all fields, right. And so I just kind of dismissed it, if I’m honest, but then I started seeing folks at the middle level and the senior level. And then I started to do some research and listen to the podcast, including this podcast, and some other podcasts and tweets. And folks, were just sharing this same underlying issue and concern, and I couldn’t shrug it off anymore. And so I knew something was there. And honestly, in our field, I think it’s easy to complain about what’s not being done, I’ve been guilty of saying, you know, this is terrible, someone needs to do something. And as I got, when I got Dre’s, email, I had to have a conversation with myself, like, you can’t just complain, you also have to be a part of the work you want to see for our profession. And so that is when I decided to connect, and I wanted to bring our community together in a way that could center voices. Dre gave us the charge. She wanted people at different levels, different types of people, different institutions. And I wanted to be a part of that conversation, getting all of those folks in a room so that we can really talk about where our field was going. And again, it was a conversation like If not me, then who suddenly that’s how we got here.

Keith Edwards
Well, I’m looking at the document and what I highlighted I had later many things, but one of them was your call to action, which kind of kicks off the beginning and you end that call to action with This quote, this document is not just about the great resignation, but also about the great recruitment and retainment. It is about the greater leadership required for the profession and the work to come. This document is a call to action to build sustainable careers in higher education by dismantling systems of supremacist cultures in our work. This is a call for agency regardless of where you are in the organization, it is not a moment left waiting for change to happen. But for taking responsibility and creating change, and I think both of you spoke to there are challenges. They are real, they are not brand new. And what should we do about and I, as I share with both of you and the both, and is throughout this whole thing, about the challenges and possibilities about the difficulties and actions about the theoretical and the practical and the both and really connects through this? Well, it’s also broken very cleanly into three parts. What is the problem, which I think we’ve kind of articulated, really rooted in supremacist cultures, and then some really tangible, practical recommendations. So let’s begin with that second part. You talk about this being rooted in supremacist culture, Roshaunda, tell us a little bit more about what that is, and what the what you mean by that?

Roshaunda L. Breeden
Yes, I was certainly.

Keith Edwards
Dancing, she’s dancing.

Roshaunda L. Breeden
Yeah. When you read a document that we’ve been working really hard on, and you have such energy around it, it brings it to life for us. And so I’m just I’m appreciative of your energy around it. And so I want to tell you how we got to some promises culture as just an idea because a person might pick up the document and say, Wait, how did we get here? I thought we were talking about employment. Well know that when we brought all of the 20 or so folks to Raleigh back in July, we first wanted to meet with intention. So before even getting to the space together, we we read Dr. Sullee’s book about creating sustainable careers and student affairs and really grapple with ideal worker norms. Also, we started to listen to a podcast and again, Dr. Sullee was on this podcast talking about it with Dr. Perez and some other folks. And so we started grappling with conversations that they were having. And we read some articles, some dissertations, Brit Williams dissertation are out black women in higher ed. Oh, my goodness. So all of those things converged. But like Dre said, we wanted to contribute something else to the conversation, we didn’t want to just regurgitate what had been said. So on the first day of our of our convening, we’ve talked about, okay, here’s what the here’s what the research says. But by the second day, we started to say, Okay, now what, why are people leaving? What do we need to do? And by mid day, that what do we need to do kind of shift it to? Who do we need to be as a field.

Roshaunda L. Breeden
So there was all of this, like, harm that had been happening. And we started to realize that there is a culture issue happening that was that it was a consistent thread throughout every story we heard in that room. So we said, Who do we need to be as a field? Like, what are our hopes and dreams for this profession? If we want to put something forward? What do we want that to be to really shift where we are? And so we started having conversations about what would a current culture shift mean? And I remember, Lena Crane was one of the people who got up. Lena Crane is a brilliant scholar practitioner, and she legit came to the front of the room with some PowerPoint slides she just put together. And she said, y’all, she didn’t say y’all, that’s the country. So she said everyone, like, I think I think some of the conversations that we’re having here today can be couched into Coon’s white supremacy culture. And at the time, I had not heard about this, this framework, I had no idea what it was. But from there, Dr. Crane, she basically taught us in real time about white supremacy culture. And as she starts to describe, right, so white supremacy culture, she started to talk about the ways that white supremacy culture was manifesting in higher education, how the sole purpose of white supremacy culture, which is enacted in all of us was to divide us to distract us to disconnect us from society at large and yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it disconnects us from ourselves. And you know how it works within these institutions. And so she started to talk about how all of our values, all of our norms, all of our beliefs in higher ed, were rooted in white supremacy culture and how we needed to disrupt those values and beliefs. And so it was so beautifully done. It was just a moment. And I think Dre was like, Oh, this feels like a moment. And I was absolutely. It was a moment. Yeah, yeah. So we sat there. And we started to slowly unpacked the different tenets of white supremacy culture, there are actually 10 of those. But we looked at seven of those within the document, and I’ll pull out to just four examples. One of the characteristics of white supremacy culture is this idea of fear. So fear, particularly in higher ed, Student Affairs is like, not belonging not being good enough, feeling afraid, right. And what this looks like in our field is, you know, you have an entry level professional, who’s had to compete with other folks for their job, and had to really hustle for their job. So when they actually get into their role, they don’t even feel like they’re good enough. And they’re constantly having to prove that didn’t being selected was a good decision. So then they’re feeling like they have to stay late. And they feel like they have, they can’t make any mistakes. And they’re feeling like they have to be perfect in their role. And so white supremacy just lays out that fear of not being good enough. You’re never good enough. You don’t belong here. You got to work twice as hard all the time.

Keith Edwards
And the perfectionism that comes with that, and how, yes, yeah,

Roshaunda L. Breeden
yeah, so that’s the second one I’m gonna name because I think It pairs well with it. But also, perfectionism is the second one of the second characteristics that were talked, we talked about, there’s only one way to do things. We don’t think about any other way. There’s only one leader, there’s no appreciation for folks, you just keep working to do everything, right. No room for wrong, right. And so that looks like, you know, folks being inflexible with how we show up to work, like Jerry was mentioning. We just proved that we can work from home and do our jobs. Right? We just proved that we could, why are we now saying, Oh, no, there’s no way that we can do that? Well, that’s because we think that there’s only one way to do our jobs. And that’s to think about all of the students and staff that were so encouraged by being able to work from home. And so those are two examples of characteristics and domains that we named in the document. But we also mentioned antidotes to white supremacy culture, because mentions antidotes in her document as well. So again, we’re centering ideal worker norms, and white supremacy culture, how were interplays and works in higher education, and then what can we do to interrupt some of those norms that we’ve all been taught. So it’s not just white folks who, you know, contribute to these norms. It’s all of us. And, you know, it’s how we can move higher education forward by just reflecting some of these characteristics. So I’ll stop,

Keith Edwards
just as you say, you know, it’s all of us that are contributed to this, and all of us need to be part of solutions. So what does that mean for? How do we all engage, engage in different ways to to be a part of it? Dre, what do you want to add here before we get to the antidotes?

Andrea D. Domingue
Sure. Yeah. So what was on my mind as Shana was talking was urgency, right? And that’s another the tenant and both my my micro and a macro, the micro example I give is, you know, I think about the way that we have to rapidly respond to emails at all hours the day that we gotta get these programs out as soon as possible, like, without really thinking about the how, or the why or the purpose. And so I think one thing that’s also really important about urgency that I think is really tethered to, you know, what was happening around 20, last couple of years, that there’s been this urgency to get back to normal, whatever normal was right. And without pause, I used to make these jokes on social media about like, it’s gonna be like a light switch. I haven’t we should be slowly, like turning on the dimmer right. And I knew that we would, as a collective higher ed would want to just flip back to a campus was status quo before without thinking about how we could do the work differently and taking that pause. And I think that was definitely at play. We think about the ways that I saw even on my own campus it didn’t even I can own as myself as a as a den hiring person. To see the way I had to rapidly put jobs out as soon as possible without thinking is this the same job that I really need now to best serve my students in my department? I was so concerned about getting people in on the campus in Peru. person not even thinking about safety, whatever. So quickly that I think I made some mistakes I think other people did to to really rush. And I think people are making choices about like, that’s not the environment I want to go back into. That’s not how I want to feel in my work environment. So I think the urgency and it’s still a part of us, I think there’s still that feeling in the air that we can’t quite let go up is quite harmful overall.

Roshaunda L. Breeden
Yeah, yeah. Dre, and we’ve been socialized around it. And so it’s been really hard to put it down. For some of us who started this work years ago. This is how we learned that this is what we learned is the work. So even while we as a task force, were grappling through these characteristics, we had to do our own, unlearning, and still are, but Right, but that’s what we want our members to do, grapple with it with these domains.

Keith Edwards
And the unlearning unlearning unlearning white supremacy and you begin with white supremacy. You also open it up to supremacist culture in general dominant thinking and some of the things that Dre mentioned around disability and religious oppression and so much more, all of that kind of weaving together. But also, you know, some of us have been student affairs professionals for a long time. And we have a lot of bad habits, right, that we need to learn

Andrea D. Domingue
we do. Terrible.

Keith Edwards
And I think for some of our newer professionals, we’re so quick to teach them our bad habits and the way we always do things. You You say in the document collectively, we asked two questions collectively ask one, how might a supremacist culture influence contemporary workforce changes and to what can be done to reimagine a new higher education workplace, and I love how you have deep conceptual theoretical analysis of the problem is wonderful. It’s revealing. And you have some super practical, pragmatic action items that come along with this, which you frame is antidotes which I just love, right? We want to understand the disease and also the antidote to that. We’re not going to have a time to get to them all. We’re going to try and play with him here a little bit over. Roshaunda why don’t you tell us a little bit about some of the antidotes and recommendations for action?

Roshaunda L. Breeden
Sure, sure. So I want to name that anecdotes is actually a part of Okun’s language, and so we’re cool, but we’re not that cool. We took that language directly from that framework. So I do want to honor her work in that. But I want to say that we are all about practical recommendations in our field. In the words of Dr. DL Stewart, Student Affairs is an applied field. So if nothing else we want people to in real time, like Dre was saying earlier, use the document and think about where they are in their career, think about what questions needs to be asked in real time. And so that’s what we want it. So using a Coon’s framework using ideal worker norms and conversations across the task force, we map out appropriate antidotes or solutions to our work. And we thought about them in different in four different areas. Right. So recruitment and hiring, training and development, administrative structure, and even compensation and morale. And we split them up in this way, because we wanted this document to be really accessible for folks, for folks who just want to skim read quickly give them the meat, we wanted to include the meat in this third section.

Keith Edwards
And I’ll say it’s really well organized and the way the three parts, these five or four components, it’s really well organized for that. So thank you for helping us readers through the journey.

Roshaunda L. Breeden
Oh, yeah, we know what it’s like to get lost in a document. And we don’t want anybody to have any excuse about why they didn’t know how to move forward. So we gave clear instruction that

Keith Edwards
numbered lists and bullet points.

Roshaunda L. Breeden
Yes, yes, we love a chart. And so I’m going to give an example of one of my favorite anecdotes, and just give some some thoughts around that. So one of my favorite ones is to reshape marathon job interviews, to focus on what is essential to understanding candidates and consider what can be learned by employers and candidates using other parts of the hiring process. So what that essentially saying is, why are we doing these marathon interviews? Right, as a field, you all think about this. How many of us have been invited to campus for two day long interview, back to back You know, lunch being had identify as a bodied person, so having to like wear a blazer and traverse across campus and you’re high and you’re tired. And by the end of the day, by the end of your second day, you don’t even care if you have the job because you just want to go home, right? Like, I did all I can, I’m exhausted, I just went home. And so in this anecdote, we’re like, how can we reshape marathon job interviews? What would it look like if we we centered what is essential, most essential in this hiring practice? Dr. Dobbs, one of the taskforce members said in a conversation like, we need to stop asking like, what’s your favorite color red and blue? What does this mean? Like? How can we be more intentional about these questions? How can we be? How can we build the space where you know, only the most important folks are included in the conversation? Like who needs to be included? And who doesn’t? We don’t need to waste the whole departments time, in this one interview space across months at a time? Do we even need to invite people to campus anymore, right, just from COVID, we learned that we can do some really amazing things, virtually even virtual tours and thinking about things in that way. And so that’s an example of one of the areas that we really wanted to nuance is just thinking how we can do the campus interview. And so I have more, but I’ll wait in case Dre wants to share any of hers.

Keith Edwards
Well this one that you’re mentioning, I think came up and was part of the emphasis for impetus for our conversation around a hiring episode, which, you know, I had people talk about these marathon interviews, and one person said, We bragged about our day and a half process and how every candidate would get sick at the end of it. We bragged about that with pride. And he’s just like, I want rethinking what we’re redoing. And so to me that says not only do we do it, but we pride ourselves on our dehumanizing process, wow. integrated into our thinking, is it that we would brag about a process that made people literally ill and sick? And how do we impact that? That’s the

Roshaunda L. Breeden
and then key, don’t let us search fail? Because you’re like, we got to do it again,

Andrea D. Domingue
all over again. You are you are irritated

Roshaunda L. Breeden
in the next group of interviews and has nothing to do with a candidate exhausted, and we’ve been doing it for years, so

Keith Edwards
unlearning, unlearning. Yeah, Dre. What are some other anecdotes that you love?

Andrea D. Domingue
Yeah. So it means probably who’s on my mind right now. So part of my role at Davidson is I do a lot of staff recruitment and retention. And I just got done. I’m actually not finished. But I’m in the middle of onboarding, our cohort of new staff. And, you know, so

Keith Edwards
often we talked a little bit about the size of that cohort, because I think that’s, yeah, so we’re a small

Andrea D. Domingue
liberal arts college, my division is about 70 some odd people and I had an onboard 22 people, which is, you know, a good it’s a third of this. Yeah, that’s a good amount of people. And so you know, I used to make these jokes last year like this, I got all the emails of people exiting, like who will be on our campus, I’m, I just want to name and give a shout out to my campus. And my colleagues, like the fact that we were able to recruit very thoughtfully, in a very short amount of time is remarkable. But I’m also noting how exhausted my my colleagues who were Dean’s department heads are to do that. And so one thing that I think, is relating to the document, in a way, my supervisor created my role in particular, to be the mindful person of our staff and retention in our professional development to look at supervision. And one thing that’s been on my mind about onboarding, this particular cohort is it’s so often and I was kind of guilty of this too. And I was a department head that we focused on the job function, making sure they know the skills, maybe the departments to do the job, but we forget about who the IRS people, right, so I’m a woman of color, queer women of color, fat. And so just a small thing of like, I needed, I needed some space to get my hair done, or it’s a spaces for doctors and things like that. And so trying to have a mindfulness of our staff as full employees who what do they have families are not that they need their own personal needs taken care of. I know, there and I think a lot about you know, particularly campuses where maybe they are one of the people, folks of color, few queer people there and they need to find community and connection. And if our staff are not fully happy as human beings, they will not be fully successful employees on campus. And so we have to think about not just the job, not just the climate of the campus and understanding the alleged cultural norms and traditions of our campus and belonging, but really belonging to the community that they are now that they have moved or kind of integrating into as well. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about that. How do I get my staff into what Charlotte has thats exciting or what? Different? You know, a color queer? I’ve written a lot about mental health and wellness, and how do I make sure that they are connecting to local doctors that you know can work on variety of schedules. And that’s been on my mind a lot of crossroads in my life. Where can I go? Meet? Listen, there’s so yeah, so that was whatever the first thing, first thing I did is go to CrossFit gym when I moved here. So So yeah, those are really hugely important things. And I think that is going to help us over time. And I think about an employee who’s new is seeing that the campus isn’t just want me here for the work that I do. They want me here as a person and want me to thrive as a person, they’re going to want to ideally, I hope, stick around the campus that they see values and as a human being not just this tangible person getting a job done for the sake of our students.

Keith Edwards
Overall, this is another thing we have in these conversations all the time is that people do not want to be treated as employees. They want to be treated as people. Yes. I think that’s a major, major shift. Particularly. I think there’s some generational things in there. I think there’s COVID made people things people wanted before now they don’t want they need, and they’re a nicety. This is something that has to be a part of this conversation.

Roshaunda L. Breeden
Well, yeah, also, but in so long, you know, before you were told to take any job, like when you came out of grad school, or when you had your first job, you were like go anywhere, do anything. And now I know, I need a black therapist. I need a, I need a Wegmans. That’s my grocery store of choice. And there are things that we need. And I think it’s okay to say that and provide new employees, like, we’ll talk talk to us about, you know, where would you like to live? Or what do you need for your family to be successful here, because if you see me as a whole person, and you give me space to set up my life in a way that I feel good about home, then I will show up to work every day. Exactly. Right. So I love that you name that Dre.

Keith Edwards
I also think we got to remind people that you can’t be picky about everything, right? You can’t be picky about location and institution and function and student population. Right? Right. You can be picky about some things, but you gotta be open about some things, right? Totally. But you’re saying you’re real clear with yourself about what I’m picky about, oh, that means I am flexible on these things. I think people get too picky about everything, have very few options, but people who are like, I’ll go anywhere, I’ll do anything. I’m like, I don’t know how to help you. One or two things. Yeah, well, I think we’re going to try and do something fun here. There’s so many great anecdotes and recommendations. We’re never going to get to them all. We get to really great in depth examples. We’re going to move to the rapid fire round, right. And so they’re dancing again. Three real quick. And I think we’ll go back and forth. Rashanna, we’re going to start with you, which antidote do you see as the simplest to implement what is just so easy to implement?

Roshaunda L. Breeden
Ah, the marathon interviews, one got to that’s gotta be it, because don’t do it. Don’t do it. And I think we’ve recycled the schedules, I was guilty, I would just copy a schedule that I used last year and the year before and the year before that, but really spacing it out, giving people opportunities to use the bathroom. I think Rosie Perez said that on one of the other podcasts, people don’t even have an opportunity to use the bathroom people have don’t have an opportunity to make a phone call take a break. I think there’s some really easy ways that we can do that. And we just had to do it. So it’s not going back to that one way, which is what I would say.

Keith Edwards
And what’s the simplest to implement

Andrea D. Domingue
other duties as a sign, we use that as a catch all. For some really shady things. I’ll be honest, it’s a shady way to talk about ways to kind of slip in Word. And so I’m a big believer of you be explicit. What does that mean? Give examples. Say it’s a stupidly what that is, it’s not fair to set up an employee to do these things. You know, after they got the job after probation, they may not either be aligned with their skill set or you know, in their desires a functional area. It’s just it’s just a really shady practice. And we got to get out of that.

Keith Edwards
I love what you’re talking about. It’s all about the both and like, other duties is designed shouldn’t be 50% of your job responsibilities should be like 5% like it’s some occasional thing. Yeah. But if you’re being told it’s other duties assigned daily then then yeah.

Roshaunda L. Breeden
And I think we can share what some of the some examples of what that might look like in that section of our job description. It could be like sitting on a taskforce it could look like you know attending this meeting so people know what are getting into ahead of time. Exactly.

Keith Edwards
Dre, what’s the most obvious recommendation for you?

Andrea D. Domingue
Performance Review, I think on my first review, you know, we so often we just take what HR gives us as a way to evaluate our staff. And it’s never truly aligned with how we do things in higher education. And I’m mostly focusing on student life, Student Affairs in particular, if we can, I know it’s something I did recently with my staff is that I sat down and took the HR model and said, This is what this means for our department. This is what this looks like. And that’s another small example to kind of really unpack that is that I had my staff think about what are some behavioral goals that you have for performance review? And what are some outcome goals? And I think we’d get so caught going back to the quality versus quantity, part of Okun supremacy, like if we could talk about yes, there may be some tangible things that you want them to be able to successfully advise or put on a program or what have you. But what are some things you really want your staff to, like, learn and grow from too. So that could be that you really want them to learn about how to do some curriculum design, you may want them to think about how they are learning how to do some strategic planning. And so how do we create both of those things? Through performance review is a really good one. I think we do performance reviews terribly. Overall. So yeah,

Keith Edwards
Shauna, what’s the obvious one to you that you thought? Are we do we really have to write this down? Isn’t this so obvious?

Roshaunda L. Breeden
Oh, my gosh. And I changed mine to Dre, so don’t feel bad. I was just at Saxa in Birmingham, and I said this in a meeting with senior level folks. And I said, Can we just put the range of the salary on the position description? That’s it, because that will let a whole lot of folks know what the expectation is right away. Right. And so I think that’s something obvious that we can do that folks are doing in other industries, that is a game changer. And then folks will know exactly what they’re getting into. No one’s time is wasted. Folks are not surprised. There’s none of that. I think that will be something simple we could do, if we could work with our HR folks to move forward on that. So huge

Keith Edwards
equity issue, for sure. Yeah. Well, we talked about the simplest and the obvious, what’s the most powerful or most transformative? What’s the one that you think? Well, if we can do this, that would be a game changer? Roshaunda.

Roshaunda L. Breeden
Oh that’s a, that’s a tough one I was going to talk about. I was gonna talk about the training and the onboarding. Should I talk about that? Yeah, I’ll talk about that I have a lot, I got a lot going on in my brain, my brain is going a million miles a minute. But I would say supervision is, is an was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. No one prepared me for doing it. I only went through one supervisory training at my institution. And it was all about, you know, how the institution can avoid getting sued. So I would say, if we can really, really, really center ongoing supervisory training for folks, as you get new people, you need to relearn and unlearn some things. As the institution shifts, as we’re coming out of out of COVID, or through COVID, we need to all do a refresher. And it needs to be space where people can actually share what’s going on. So we can also learn from each other. But there’s this such fear around doing it wrong, or the right to comfort that we don’t talk about how hard supervision is. So for me, the most powerful thing we can do to keep people engaged at work is to work on supervision, because we know people don’t leave an institution, they leave really bad bosses.

Keith Edwards
This is a great example because it just didn’t you’re talking about it. You’re you’re threading this very practical example back to this premises culture and perfection and can make mistakes and comfort and all of that it’s all really tied in so you can see how this is not just a nice, fancy social justice framework. It really organizes things there. What’s the powerful transformative one for you?

Andrea D. Domingue
Yeah, so I’m thinking a lot about morale, but I’m also thinking a lot about, it’s been on my mind, I haven’t quite figured out the way to be trying to figure out how to write about and talk about it, but I’m still going through it myself.

Keith Edwards
I’m so excited for

Andrea D. Domingue
Like feel like Higher Ed is grieving, right? I feel like we’ve been and I’m deeply intimate with grief. I lost my parents about 11 years ago. So I know grief. Well, and I’ve been feeling that collectively that we’re collectively mourning what Higher Ed was and what it could be. We’re really there’s literally staff on Fortunately, they passed away. I just got one of those emails recently, you know, and that was, I’ve been grappling with that overall, but also like, you know, you’ve had loss in our own lives, you know, lots of different things. And so I really am thinking a lot about our morale and thinking a lot about the fatigue that even though some, for some people, it may feel better, they may have to staff they don’t maybe one person offices anymore, but they’re still tired. But there’s still the student issues we’re dealing with, they’re still going on. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how do we create spaces of rest and better boundaries and better care? I did. I did. I did talk a lot with that recently with my symposium with the ASHE president, but so good, it was so good. Yeah. And one thing I’ve been like dreaming about, and I’ve been saying it for years, is I would love a sabbatical or step like I would love to just take, you know, a semester or have a complete summer off, or I can just recover, take care of myself, like clear my head. And then whenever I do get some little bit of actual true rest, I come back to the work more like energized, more clear new ideas, like ready and I just feel like the last few years in particular, it’s been a different type of an exhaustion plus grief, that I just never can quite recover from. And I wish you could find ways on our campuses. So whether that’s short term sabbaticals, I’ve been dreaming about what a semester at sea, I had to think about leaving my job completely to do that, or just even just taking a minute just to like, I don’t know, like declutter my house, like I would love that we would be able to create those more organically in our work without feeling like I may have to lose my job or make a harder decision, or that the work can go on without me. So I wish we could be in that conversation more,

Keith Edwards
wait till it gets so bad that you qualify for FMLA. I was

Roshaunda L. Breeden
just about to say key. Yeah, I was just about to say that. That is. Yeah. And I have a partner who works in the nonprofit world, who I, we argue that we do the same work. But they are allowed to take sabbaticals in that job. And they are staff and it said, they take the sabbatical, because the work can be so challenging, that they need the space to breathe, do whatever take care of themselves, and then come back to the work in a with a more fresh perspective, right? And I’m just like, how are we not there yet?

Keith Edwards
Well, we’re running out of time, folks, as we knew we would this is called this podcasts called Student Affairs NOW, we always like to end with what are you thinking troubling pondering now? And if you want to share where folks can connect with you? Where might they be able to do that? Dre? What’s with you?

Andrea D. Domingue
Yeah we’re probably going to out as we’re recording this, but I’m thinking heavily about violence on our campus. And so at the time of this recording, we’re just kind of worried about a shooting at the University of Virginia. And so I’m just thinking very heavily about not only the loss of life, but you know, I’m thinking about clearly there are staff that are now having to step in and support a variety of people and families and have is compounded upon many other things. And so that’s been very heavily on my mind, so heavy. But that’s where my mind is, in terms of connecting with me, I’m on the on the social. So I’m more of a basic person these days, I am on Twitter at Dre Domingue. I’m also at ACPA pres on Twitter a little bit longer, you can Google me for my email address, and I am on LinkedIn. And by all means, we’re happy to contact me at any time.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Roshaunda, what’s with you now?

Roshaunda L. Breeden
I think Dre and I are on the same page, because I definitely was going to mention some of that grief and like where we are in the world and, and how I just woke up with a heavy heart. But I think aside from that grief, there’s also joy. There’s also a hopefulness that we have we the two of the three of us would not be here if we didn’t hope for change. And so what’s on my heart is as we’re moving through the this season of grief and love, that we can also tell the truth with care. And we can hold that. And we can move up towards joy, and towards hope for the future of our field. And that people truly use the documents that we’ve provided as a jumping off point to get them started to think differently about our work, and to have hard conversations, again, from a place of love. So that’s what I’m pondering and how you can reach me. That’s a great question. If you’re coming to ACPA, which you should be you should sign up today . You can come to convention in March in New Orleans, we’d love to talk to you there. I’m also on LinkedIn and ever Roshaunda Breeden don’t know know how much longer I’ll be on Twitter, but for Now um, there is Dr. Breeden instil. Yeah. Feel free to engage with us because we are regular folks. And we like people. I do actually do.

Keith Edwards
A reminder to you, you close us out there Roshaunda, because I think, as Dre is talking about sabbatical in the space and time for grief, not just sabbatical, but space in our day, spaces meetings, you’re really bringing the both end of grief and other difficult emotions and wherever we need sabbatical or space in our day for joy, and love, and liberation, and all of those things. And sometimes we crowd that out, too. We don’t make time for that. And right, and that how you are articulated that that both and essence is all throughout the document, things are hard, and they can be better. This is difficult. And I do it too. There’s theory and solutions. And it really comes through all throughout. And it just feels very, like the folks who contribute to this really get what it’s like, have been there have been through it, and are talking down to you that they’re talking with you. And I think that really comes through through all of it. Thank you. Well, this has been terrific. Congrats on the report and getting it out. It should be available to ACPA members and then maybe down the road open to available to others who want to be able to access it. It’s a really great document. If you’ve liked this conversation, be sure to check it out. There’s so much more in this report. That will be really helpful to folks that we’ve been able to talk about here today. And thanks to our sponsors of today’s episode LeaderShape and Symplicity. LeaderShape partners with colleges and universities to create transformational leadership experiences both virtual and in person for students and professionals with a focus on creating a more just caring, and thriving world. LeaderShape offers engaging learning experiences and courageous dialogue integrity, equity, resilience, and community building. To find out more visit leadershape.org/virtualprograms, or connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. And how will your institution rise to reach today’s socially conscious generation today’s students our report commitments to safety, wellbeing and inclusion are as important as academic rigor when selecting a college. It’s time to reimagine the work of student affairs as an investment not an expense for over 20 years Vector Solutions, which now includes the campus Prevention Network, formerly aerify has been the partner of choice for more than 2000 colleges, universities and national organizations. With nine efficacy studies behind their courses you can trust and have full confidence that you’re using the standard of care for student safety, wellbeing and inclusion, transform the future of your institution and the community serve. Learn more at vectorsolutions.com/student affairs now. And as always, a huge shout out to our producer Nat Ambrosey who does all the behind the scenes work to make the three of us look and sound good. And if you’re listening today and not already receiving our newsletter, please visit our website at Student Affairs not a calm scroll the bottom, check out the archives and add your name to our MailChimp list. My name is Keith Edwards. Thanks again to our fabulous guests today and to everyone who’s watching and listening. Please make it a great week. Thank you both.

https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/

ACPA Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5EL1I6C9I0

White Supremacy Culture – Still here: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XR_7M_9qa64zZ00_JyFVTAjmjVU-uSz8/view

Brit Williams’ dissertation

https://esploro.libs.uga.edu/esploro/outputs/9949334968802959

Margaret Sallee’s book – https://styluspub.presswarehouse.com/browse/book/9781620369517/Creating-Sustainable-Careers-in-Student-Affairs

Breeden’s Our Presence is Resistance: Stories of Black Women in Senior-level student affairs positions at PWIs

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/26379112.2021.1948860

Student Affairs Post-COVID: Restoring, Evolving, and Transforming Higher Education (February 17, 2021)

GenZ New Professionals (February 24, 2021)

Creating Sustainable Careers in Student Affairs (March 17, 2021)

Workplace Culture, Humanity, and Innovation (August 11, 2021)

New Hiring Practices for Student Affairs