Heather J. Strine-Patterson
Well, maybe what I would just target a little bit is the Student Affairs educator that might be listening to the podcast. I think we did the big picture there, and is to say, right? Leadership, going back, is a shared process between leaders and followers towards a set of shared goals, and so don’t sit on your heels and wait for somebody to present this kind of approach to you and say, This is what we’re doing. I think there are steps where followers, right in an organizational context, can get together and say, Okay, we might not be hearing this from our director, but wait, we’re doing similar programming. Can we have the coffee and maybe figure out what the commonality is between us? And you know, we can influence from our follower perspective, right? And so I think everybody can get their gear going, and then that helps get the other gears going, right? And so I would just encourage you to do that.

Keith Edwards
Keith, hello and welcome to Student Affairs NOW. I’m your host. Keith Edwards, today, I’m joined by assessment experts and Student Affairs leaders applying the multi level assessment process as a leadership practice. This conversation will help explain this approach, what it offers, and how it can be done. I’m so thankful for our guests for being here and all that they’re going to offer us today. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast, an 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 studentaffairsnow.com one of our sponsors is Evolve. Evolve helps higher ed senior leaders release fear, gain courage and take action for transformational leadership through a personalized cohort based virtual executive leadership development experience and also Huron. Huron, education and research experts help institutions transform their strategy, operations, technology and culture to foster innovation, financial, health and student success. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he, him, his I’m a speaker, author and coach, helping empower better tomorrows through better leadership learning and equity in higher education. You can find out more about me at keithedwards.com and I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the intersections of the current and ancestral homelands of both the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to our conversation and bring our guests in. Would love to have each of you introduce yourselves and share a little bit about yourselves, Jose, we’re going to start off with you.

José-Luis Riera
Well, thanks, Keith, and exciting to be part of this conversation. Appreciate the invite and really looking forward to chatting with all all of the guests. So I’m Jose Riera. Pronouns, he El. I have the privilege of serving as the vice president for Student Life and Interim Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, and love what I do, passionate about what I do, and just a little personal live here in Newark, Delaware with a wonderful partner and wife, Kate, who is a faculty member here at UD, and four girls and two little Havanese dogs. So that’s me

Keith Edwards
Glad you’re here. Will tell us about you.

Will Sheppard
Hey everybody. My name is Will Sheppard. I am the Director of the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs at the University of South Carolina. Pronouns are he, him. Want to say thank you for the opportunity to be here to talk about this important and can sometimes be fun and impactful conversation that we’re doing here. I am a scholar, practitioner at heart. Have a passion to help students, all identities, backgrounds, to succeed and whatever that looks like for them. So I love taking that quantitative, qualitative data, putting it into a story, and that’s highlight some people and make things happen for them and in the future. So again, glad to be here.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, glad you’re here. Well, Sophie, tell us about you.

Sophie Tullier
Hi Sophie Tullier She her pronouns. I work with Jose at the University of Delaware as the Director for Student Life, assessment, data analytics and research. I have two twins, three years old, and a partner, Caleb, who’s wonderful. And I’m really want to echo what will said about fun. I think assessment is by far the best functional area in student affairs. Yeah, I’m really, really excited to be in this conversation and love what we’re talking about today. It’s really changed a lot of how I think about assessment having been in this work for a while. So yeah, excited to be here.

Keith Edwards
wonderful, wonderful, and last but not least, Heather, it’s your fault. We’re all here, so tell us about you.

Heather J. Strine-Patterson
That is true. I’m sorry. No, I am Heather. Strein Patterson, I am currently the director of assessment, evaluation and data strategy at Virginia Tech. And I, let’s see, on the personal side, I have two small kids, I guess maybe not so small, seven and 10 now, and a great husband who keeps us all together on the homestead and is a creative writer. So pretty fortunate, and I’m really glad to be here today, Keith, thanks for bringing us together. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
well, let’s hear a little bit more from you. Heather, as I mentioned, it’s kind of your fault. We’re all here today, doing this, having this conversation. You wrote a piece for new directions on this multi level assessment and assessment as a leadership practice, and really thinking about assessment beyond measurement. So I’m hoping you. Can tell us a little bit more about what that is, and then we’ll begin to unpack how people are putting that into practice.

Heather J. Strine-Patterson
Yeah, so if it would be all right, it probably is helpful to provide a little context on how I got to the point of the ways that I think about this. And I actually started I did the Higher Education program at Syracuse University for my master’s degree. So I graduated from there did academic advising Residence Life was, you know, working directly with students, and ended up doing undeclared Advising and Career Exploration. And so I was really front end Student Affairs practitioner. Ended up working up to overseeing first year academic advising at an institution. And loved that work. I happened stance, I would say, into assessment, because my second job out was at James Madison University, which is a national leader in assessment efforts for Student Affairs and higher education. And so all the professional development that I got to go to on a college campus was from some of the best in the country. And so I was in a space where people were thinking about assessment a lot, and doing the front end work. And just was really fortunate. And so I also think I was learning it and seeing what might not be working right, like the theory or how we say things work, and then going back to my office, and it didn’t quite work like that, or people didn’t quite get it. Or have, you know, great feelings about assessment. I really, I did, as Sophie said, I became, I think at first I tried to kind of Oh no, and then I ended up really being an advocate for the work in the field. But I think there was some consistent experiences I was having as a student affairs educator, and it was that it was an isolating experience. The assessment, assessment is was isolating. It was like, Well, you do that and then get the results, and if they’re good, give them to me so I can tell our story. And if there’s improvement, things like go take care of that. You know, it was, it was really a lot about storytelling. And we were doing it alone. We were coming up as educators with our own learning goals and outcomes. And it was right around the time to the residential curriculum was coming on board. Departments weren’t quite thinking about a curricular approach. Divisions weren’t thinking about a divisional curricular approach at the time. And so I was doing it right on my own. And the director was like, that’s all of your responsibility. I don’t help with that. I’m not engaged in that process. And so I took on kind of trying to help an office coordinate some efforts. How do we work together on this? How do we have common learning outcomes and goals that we’re pointing to? Was trying to do that, I think, doing that successfully in a department. And then I moved into a full time student affairs assessment role at Appalachian State University, and in that first month, was meeting folks at that director level. And one director that I met with literally said to me, it’s nice to meet you. We’re we’re not going to work together. And so let me introduce you to the person down the hall that’s going to do assessment with you, and that person is wonderful person. We’re still great colleagues. But he was referring me to that person because they were the data Analy, like they did the data in the office. And I was so frustrated by that experience, and I walked back to my office, and on the way back, I thought, I’m going to look at that traditional assessment cycle, right? We if you’re in higher education, student affairs, you know it’s like a six step process. You start with your goals and outcomes, you plan a good strategy to achieve those outcomes. Then you do your measurement plan, you implement your measurement plan, you analyze that data, and then you, you know, share the results, and you should make, you know, make decisions from those results. And so I thought, I’m going to go back and I’m going to look at that and think about how I’m going to go back to his office and tell him how he’s involved in this process. And I looked at that and I was like, I can see why he doesn’t see himself involved in this process.

Heather J. Strine-Patterson
And I think that some of it is the language that we use. I. Think in student affairs, we use language like program, right? You should assess your program, but a program in student affairs means something very different than a program in academic affairs, right? So we take the language that academic affairs has used in student affairs, and so when I ask a faculty member, you know, what is your program? They’re going to say the discipline, right? They’re going to say secondary, secondary ed or math or finance. And you ask a student affairs person that, and they’re like, Oh, it’s this thing I do on Friday night. You know, the only exception I kind of will give to that is orientation. Orientation will kind of think of a program a little bit more holistically. But if I asked that person that was a career educator alongside me, what’s your program? Oh, I’m doing the career fair that one day, that one thing is my program. And so when then we start with, like, set the goals, outcomes, objectives of your program, it looks like we’re talking just to the frontline person, and so it doesn’t make us look up. So I was having a moment to say, Well, how do I show everybody where they fit into the process. And I started thinking about, what if there was a cycle for that director, or directors like leadership team for a department, and what if there was a cycle for that educator, where would they come together? Right? Like, I understand a director doesn’t need to get into all of these weeds. But let’s also acknowledge the Student Affairs educator doesn’t need to get into all the clouds, right? And so where do they come together? And then that was receiving a lot of good response from folks on my campus, like, people walk up to me like, this is the first time I’ve ever understood what I’m supposed to do. And so that was really cool. And and then I started talking with, like, a VPS and my vice president, and I was like, oh, I need to show you where you fit into this process too, right? And so, like it like, if you think about it, it’s like three gears that work together, right? And so I did that, and I honestly just did it for me as a tool to be like, this is where I need you to step in and what I need you to do, right? And then I think there’s a couple things on that. At the same time, I was doing my PhD at JMU, and we talked about things like, leadership is not leader, right? Like, those two things are not synonyms. Leadership is a process where leaders and followers work towards a set of shared goals and and then I’m thinking, Oh, I remember those, like great faculty, like great faculty, and people I was learning from, like dairy Irwin and Sarah Finney, and like custom Fulcher, they would say assessment is not measurement. Like measurement is a piece of the assessment process, but it overshadows setting good goals, doing great program development based on theory and evidence, and like using results for improvement. And so I think the symmetry kind of and like assessment does not equal measurement and leader does not equal leadership. And then I was like, wait a minute, a leadership is a process where leaders and followers work towards a set of shared goals. Wait, we start the assessment process with shared goals, right? And everybody it is like an organization where we have leaders and followers, right? We can get into like, it’s not always positionality, but Right, there’s positionality in that. And so that’s where I think I’ve just started to say, right, like I believe assessment is actually modeling good leadership, good a good leadership process. And I think the multi level assessment process, it still includes measurement, right? It’s still there, but it’s more proportional to the amount of work. You know, we do a lot of thinking and intentional planning and reflection at the division and department level, and then that student affairs educator level, right? We do a lot of planning, and then we do a lot of reflection at all of those levels too. And so all of that is now incorporated in a more proportional way when you use the multi level assessment process and where. We can, like, pass the baton to one another. So I’m not saying that assessment does not include measurement, but I’m trying to break myself of a habit where I use assessment as a synonym for measurement, because I think when we do that, we are taking our focus away on the why and what we’re trying to do. And sometimes, then, if we don’t focus on that why, we can start to veer to just be like, what are we measuring? Oh, this is the better way to measure. And like, we just look at that, that survey or right? And if we’re looking at that survey and just focusing on editing the survey, all of a sudden, we’re not looking in the same direction as our original goals, right? And so that’s that’s a hard shift, even verbally, for me. I think after this time, I’ve gotten to that. But that’s how sorry that might be. All too much, but a little bit of a synopsis of the article.

Speaker 1
Yeah, I think it’s a great synopsis. And I know we’re going to hear from each of our other guests about how they’re putting into practice. I want to see if any of you maybe have any questions for Heather or anything you want to add just this concept before we get to that. But just for folks who are not watching Heather is drawing circles on the screen. And there is, as she said, there’s, there’s a, sort of a three circles, kind of three years working together. And we’ll put in the show notes, a link to this new directions for Student Services article that has this visual. And I think for folks who are hearing how they’re and wanting a little bit more of the detail that visual is going to be really helpful to be able to see and look at while you’re listening to this conversation or maybe following that afterward. Now we are going to get to sort of the examples and how you’re putting in practice, but I want to see if our other guests have anything that you want to add or ask Heather before we move to that.

Sophie Tullier
I’ll just say so when I first stumbled on the map. I think it was at a time in my career where I been doing assessment with the traditional assessment model, long enough that we had started having conversations at the institution I was at at the time of like, Oh, our VP keeps asking us to build assessment capacity, and we keep doing these, like boot camps or these trainings, and this needle is not moving. We’re just training people to go off and get promotions and like, nothing, nothing is really and it and so and so I felt like kind of stuck for a while, and I this has happened a couple of times with my relationship with Heather at this point where I get stuck, and then Heather’s, like, gives me the thing that opens up the whole new door to, like, The Secret Garden of like, what comes next to fix the thing that was frustrating me, because I think, and I imagine a lot of people in assessment are like Heather and I, and like, very strategic thinkers, and so I, in addition to sort of getting frustrated at like, this approach, of like, I’m helping you get a new job with my assessment boot camp type of thought I was like, also getting frustrated with just the lack of like strategy in terms of what, what was happening in terms of like, I’m helping you get better with this training for staff around undocumented students. Or I’m helping you get better with your alternative break, welcome back program, small p or I’m helping you get better at this other thing. But we’re not actually all assessing, measuring something together to move the needle on a larger scale. Or we might even have come up with, well, we’re gonna, these are our three belonging items, and you put them on your survey, and you put them on your survey, and you put them on your survey, and then we’ll roll them up. But how many of our students are involved in all three of those programs and then we’re asking them the same questions over and over and over again? And it’s just like, it just seems not strategic to me, and I don’t like that. It doesn’t seem efficient, it doesn’t seem clean. And so when I read the map, I was just like, Oh, here’s the answer to all my problems. I just need to go do this. Well,

Keith Edwards
we’ve got gear references and secret gardens. We’re well off on the metaphor.

José-Luis Riera
Yeah. I mean, one of my thoughts, I mean, first of all, you know, I want to, I feel like one of the cool things that we could do in a setting like this is, you know, truly scholarship, right? Is a, I mean, I think your scholarship, in this case, Heather, is a gift to our field, and it helps to advance this conversation. And and how cool that we have venues now, like podcasts, where we can actually have conversations about that kind of metaphorical conversation that comes through literature, right? And so it’s very cool to be, to be, you know, using your work as kind of a basis for this. I think so. So thank you for that. I also feel. Feel, you know, as a VP for a number of years now, I don’t you know VPS like being right, and they like really feeling very confident. I’m sure I’m going to say something wrong, and I’m sure I’m going to use the word assessment when I really mean measurement. So I’m totally open to being schooled here. I was thinking about that as we were going into this, but, but, you know, I don’t know this is not some definitive thing, but, but a few things really resonated with me as you were talking. One of them is that I think, like coming out of you know, which I think were really also helpful contributions to the field, but publications like learning reconsidered and that, that whole wave, you know, I think, you know, student first has always had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder, like, like, how do we prove our worth and, and, and really show who we are in the academy and, And honestly, I think in some ways, assessment came measurement and really small key program outcomes came on the map in a way around that time, and then somehow was about our survival as a field like I need to show that this time is well spent, and that X number of students are showing up, And that, you know this and that, which is why, when the results aren’t good, it’s like, well, just keep them to yourself. Don’t tell me that. Yeah, because that doesn’t help. You know, our case and and it’s such a dumb moment when I read the article, but like in in some ways, what I see is we kind of forgot what we’re doing this for. It’s for students, and it’s for, you know, our students, learning, our students, growing, our students and versus, you know, we want to prove that our functional area is doing a really good job. I also think it comes at such a great time with so much, you know, growing complexity in in higher ed. And obviously every president’s different. Every culture at every institution is different. But I can tell you, being at a research one public like my president rarely asked me about some functional area in my division. I mean, it’s just not what they’re focused on, right? They’re focused on this big P and as we think about, you know, more scarce resources, and thinking about, how do we integrate our work as a division of student affairs or student life here at Delaware, you know, it is trying to get people to orient them to the big P. So in some ways, inadvertently, we’ve focused people so much on the little p, and they’re not seeing kind of where that connects. So I appreciate that the model does that. And, you know, I’m a, consider myself certainly a scholar of leadership. I’m a big leadership nerd. I love leadership, and so just love that folded into this, you know, and, and I have come to believe that actually, assessment folks make really, really great leaders in student affairs. I promoted one into an AVP position here at Delaware, and I got the most, I’ll say like, I got the most bewildered reactions, like, but she just did assessment. What? But, but. And the reason I share that is because I think what your article brings out is that assessment, when you think about it broadly, to me, I see it now as a way of thinking or an approach much more than like what Sophie was saying, like, here’s a survey, or, you know, is this a double barreled question? Uh oh, let’s stop and edit that, you know, versus it’s a way of thinking about what is it that we’ve promised we’re delivering to our students, and how do we do that? Well, and understanding that there’s forces on multiple levels in this complex institution that are working at the same time to try to come to this larger outcome. So those are just some some thoughts Keith that I had as I was listening to Heather chat a bit about the model, right?

Will Sheppard
Yeah, and I’m saying about this model too, of what Sophie said about time and the survey. When, when I first started out with assessment, all I thought was, well, it is a survey. Okay, you just need to take the time and survey students, and I’ll give you these numbers and take take off. Okay, great. Well, and then you push it up to the your director or the division leaders, and they take those numbers and do something with it, or you throw it on the shelf and just get to it later and say, Oh, I’ll see what numbers or what they like in that program, and then we’ll just do it again, not improve. So I look at it takes a deeper dive into what do you need to learn, to help support students and the mission, but also with the other impact is it gets everybody that’s involved on the same level, and you get the different ways of the. Thinking, because when I first started, I had to really sit back and just take time to look at it. And I am a infographic person. I love seeing it in front of me, and so this helped me connect the dots, literally, of the circles, to see how the different pieces. And when I first saw this, I was an associate director at F state also, and I said, Okay, I see my place, but now as a director, Oh, I see my place, hopefully as a future AVP, I now can see the forward thinking with this assessment piece and knowing how to tie it together. So I think it’s a great model to see how that goes together.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, we love it when our guests put out their career ambitions just like that. That’s awesome. Well, good for you. Heather, do you want to say a little bit you’ve had you sort of laid a summary and foundation, and then we’ve got some comments here from our guests. What do you want to add?

Heather J. Strine-Patterson
Jose mentioned, like how I think, particularly thinking about learning and development student well being. How does this move that along? In full transparency, this, I had developed this 2018 maybe 2019 and then the book came out for the divisional curricular approach. And I was like, Well, I’m done. Like, what’s my contribution? Yeah, Keith, I didn’t know you. And I was like, Well, I don’t have anything to contribute. And it really made me step back, because I think 100% learning is part of it, right? But then I thought, I think there’s a piece here that this demonstrates how different organizational levels, like work together and work independently, but also, in the article, really talk about its learning, development and well being alongside our operational and business considerations, like we need to do both of those at the same time, right? And even, like long term or, you know, in the process, we get to that reflection I might be working with, you know, overseeing, kind of managing two student affairs educators, both doing great work, right? Both their programs, small p programs, are working, getting to these same things, but, like, okay, are they attracting the same students? They’re both effective. Are they attracting the same kinds of students? If so, which one’s getting to more students, right? Like, where do we use the assessment process and this leadership process to sunset things, right? And so I want to look at those operational pieces of which one is reaching more students. Now, if one is reaching marginalized students, and it’s a smaller group that’s not one that I’m going to sunset, but those are things I need to think about, right? And the business needs alongside our educational and well being needs for students. So I did, I love what you said, and it just took me back to that time when I was like, Oh my gosh. I love this book with, you know, Keith the divisional and like, you know what is a little different about this, or additive to to the great contribution of that book? Well,

Keith Edwards
and I think you’re thinking about this, but in terms of learning, but also operations. I work beyond higher ed with with nonprofits and foundations and strategic planning. So I was reading this thinking about even beyond, but we’ll keep it to higher ed, because this is student now. So let’s get to our guests to talk a little bit about how they’re they’re putting some of this into practice. We’ve got the the gear metaphor and the secret garden, and I think Jose is going to bring in a photography metaphor as well. So Jose, how are you putting this into practice in your role? Yeah,

José-Luis Riera
yeah. So, so, I mean, I think I’ll say, I’ll say a couple like things for context and kind of high level comments. So the first is, we, we did a reorganization of of the division. So to your point, Heather, like, I think part of this is, it’s very much thinking both about, like the operational and how does our what’s the culture of our organization, even at that fundamental level, but then also, like, what are we producing and how are we making students lives better, right? Like, on, on the broadest level, I think, and I think both apply, we are into, you know, after that reorganization for a few years, we’re one year into our strategic plan. And I would say that as a division, which we were kind of founded in our most current state in 2007 because there’s a period of time that there wasn’t really a division, divisional structure at the university. This certainly represents our most mature strategic plan from that time and and I think a couple things are are interesting to me. One is, like, prior to this, I feel like there was a lot of pressure. Sure for it’s almost in the learning outcomes esque model, like for units to map up to some list of things that were important for the division, right? And it’s like, if I’m again, like a little bit of that, like survival mentality, like, if I’m gonna, if I’m gonna be a good functional area, if I’m gonna be a good department, I need to show that most of my things map up, if not all of my things, because then I should question, you know, and, and I would say this has slipped out a little bit in that there’s more and more. I think our divisional culture is moving towards a place and the strategic plan is accomplishing this where, yeah, there’s some clarity there from the leadership as a whole, and that, you know, has a place, and that’s interacting then with what departments are doing. And by the way, yes, departments are doing things that contribute to the strategic plan, but by the way, they’re also doing things that we just need to do, like, and that’s okay, like, not everything has to be like fit into the strategic plan. And so so we do have, like, a portfolio model that I think a lot of divisions do, but one of the things we’ve been talking a lot about from an efficiency perspective, and also one of our values is transformational collaboration, is how you work across the division. And and, so I think this model has helped us do some of that. I divisional storytelling is a huge piece, so I love that it’s represented here, and this really helps us to frame that and and, and really that’s about acquiring resources to a great degree, obviously, helping people understand our work. Certainly, it helps us think about align things like goals and and on multiple levels, goals on multiple levels, but then with like, what’s the impact that the division is having so? So I think that’s something that’s that’s really important. And I’ll use a couple examples of a little bit of how we’ve done this. So thinking a little bit about, like, mental health, obviously big deal on most campuses, from an operational perspective, I have literally stepped in and said no when, like a an academic department has concerns about mental health, and they contact our director of Counseling Center, and that’s who’s going to talk to them, because I really want to dissuade the campus community from the idea that mental health is fixed by the Counseling Center. Mental health is a much larger systemic issue, right? And so like, this is a great example of how, like, I could look at assessment from the Counseling Center, but that’s like a, you know, what? A, I don’t know, Sophie, 10th or 10% or 15% of our population that goes through the Counseling Center, which that’s for a certain reason. But then we have all these other students that also have mental health, right? And so even if you think about, how do we assess mental health, and thinking about doing that, and thinking about the assessment of mental health on a much broader level. And so this is part of where the model, I think, has been helpful for us. Like I always say, our counseling center director should have something to say about our Residence Life program. And if they don’t, that’s a problem. And Residence Life should be willing to listen, because there’s a lot of mental health things that are positive and negative in residential environments, and we all know that, right? And so, so I think those are some of the ways that we’ve started thinking about, and I can obviously contribute as we continue going through but, but I wanted to give that high level of where, of where we are with, with the application of the model. Now,

Keith Edwards
Jose, I promised the metaphor, you got to talk about grayscale, color and high gloss.

José-Luis Riera
All right. All right, I will. I was like, sorry, Keith, should I talk about this? So So Sophie and I talked a little bit about this. And Heather, I think you talk about this, certainly in your work as well. And so others, others can, can jump in. But if you’re thinking the way I have, you know it’s been Sophie and I have discussed it is thinking about, I guess, I don’t know if, if it’s levels, necessarily, but how do we interpret, I guess, what it is that we’re seeing from and help others understand where we are with the development of various goals that we have as a division. So thinking gray scale as like this is an area that we have that we need to improve in. And to your point, Heather, those aren’t things to hide. Often, frankly, in my experience, when we’re talking about either grant applications or donors or even the board they want to know. Increasingly, I think at least our board is impatient when we come in and kind of try to give in this metaphor, like a high gloss kind of picture to them, like, everything’s great. We’re doing everything’s. Great. And they’re like, Well, why am I a board member? Like, I, I’m volunteering. I signed up because I want to make this place better, right? And so, like, they want to know that gray scale. I think donors want to give to areas that we are actively saying we need to improve. Right color. You might think of things are are good, but they’re not perfect. So hey, we have a proven concept. I think a good example for us is probably like, our food pantry, like we launched one a couple years ago. It’s good. It’s probably too good. It’s selling out every week. You know, we’ve got but we need more resources to make it better, right? And we’re also thinking about operational efficiencies as well. Like, where’s the food coming from? Who’s providing that? How do we keep those prices down? Etc, and then, and then, you know, hike loss is that, like I said, Keith, that that everything’s perfect. You know, great impact is happening, etc, yeah, yeah. But Sophie and Heather, you can add to that too, because I know you, yeah,

Sophie Tullier
we were giggling, because there’s a lot of things that I get to say to Jose that I actually just get from Heather.

Keith Edwards
I get credit, and I know in high school math, that’s called cheating. Now it’s just collaborating.

Sophie Tullier
It’s all her. But yeah, I find it like, yeah, there’s lots of metaphors in our work that make it more easily understood. Of like, what are the different stories we’re trying to tell, and how do we talk about them in a more colloquial way that people can maybe identify with a little bit

Will Sheppard
more? Yeah, great. Love that example that Jose said about not only it being siloed, say, in mental health and well being, but what if that is entwined into every other department is in that division. So wherever that student goes, they know all those offices are in this on the same mission. They have the same expectations and standards, and so they understand that. And that’s one of the pieces I love about this, which I have utilized working with Heather, is through some student success initiatives. Is the other collaborators in different departments knew exactly where we were going, because we all have talked about this instead of it’s more efficiency. Also, you don’t have to take that time to say, Oh, this is where we’re at. Oh, this is what we’re trying to do. How do they align? No, it’s already done. That time is already taken in the beginning, setting this up so once it’s woven in, you can really make an impact and really make it start moving. As soon as I got here at my current position at University of South Carolina, the department is going through a review. And one thing they said, Hey, we need to do more assessment. And it wasn’t a knock on the division or the office, it was just, here’s an improvement. And so we did, like you said, sunsets and programs. We took funds from other places. So how can we make an impact? Not dismissing another group, but we said, how can we bring them in to make a collaboration with each other and make shared experiences again, even on the student level, of them understanding who they are together on that assessment piece. And so I found out, even with those focus groups of students, they were talking and being very creative as well. And this made a big impact on our review of changing our whole model, mission, our position descriptions of just so it’s been great.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, great. I love that shared language can be really powerful, right? So we’re not using different language in different units and functions. And if we can align our language, there’s a lot of efficiencies, as you just spoke to will. But also, if we can align our language for students, so they don’t have to be making the translations, right? I think that can be really, really powerful. So if you tell us a little bit more about how you’re putting this into practice,

Sophie Tullier
yeah, so I think, you know, I’ve been at University of Delaware for about a year and a half now, and so as Jose mentioned, you know, he set this vision, and I think I’ve now started to get this reputation where people will say in meetings, you know, I know you hate surveys, but should we do experts? No, I don’t hate surveys. I just think we should be intentional and aligning them. And I actually had our Student Life assessment Council listen to TJ Stewart’s Student Affairs now podcast on labor commitments. And have we had a conversation about, you know, it’s uncompensated labor to have our students responding to all of these surveys over and over and over again. Can we be a little bit more strategic and trying to come at it a little bit from that direction? But I also think, like how I’ve been spending my time in the last year and a half is really getting to know people, getting to know culture, and I really haven’t done much of any data collection and really working behind the scenes to think about, given our strategic plan, what is a divisional data strategy that we should stand up? You know, it’s easy to come in as the assessment professional and be like, oh, we need, you know, I’m the assessment professional. I should do a survey. Well, what survey should we do? It needs to align with our. Strategy. I’m new. I need to figure out what are our priorities and what does that look like. So I think for me, it’s so far, you know, a lot of coffee I do a lot of meetings in coffee shops trying to build those relationships, because at the end of the day, you know, part of what this strategy entails is people putting down things that they’ve been, you know, using for a long time to bolster support for their department or their program, and trusting me that I’m going to be able to do that with a different instrument and do that in a different way. But you can’t do that without trust, and you can’t do that. You can’t create trust without relationships, and coffee is a great way to get there.

Keith Edwards
So assessment is relationship building. I love it. We’re breaking sort of all sorts of taboos here. This is great. Heather, do you want to add anything before we move to our next question?

Heather J. Strine-Patterson
I I’m just, I’m having so much fun. Back to maybe Sophie’s original point, and even like Jose using that metaphor, it takes me back to a student one time when I did frontline things. You know, years after I did it, this student is with me and telling me, Oh, I did this great assignment in this career development class, and it was an assignment that I made, right? And that’s when we know we’d make a drop, but it goes and, you know, Sophie takes it and Jose, it’s like, yeah, that storytelling right is, like, we need to tell our story. And I think a lot of times we are referring to the high gloss. But there also is that color print, or the thing I’m not even going to waste color on, you know, because I just take it to the meeting, and we know how to improve, right, and, and so it’s really, this is, it’s just really great to see, like, you know, this thing that was just helpful for me, maybe be helpful for other people.

Keith Edwards
Isn’t it great that the gift that you give these folks and then how it kind of continues to build and mold and reach places maybe you never even imagined? Yeah, great. Well, let’s, let’s get a quick round here. We’ve talked about what this is. We’ve talked about some examples. Love for you all to share some thoughts about tips or recommendations you maybe have for others who want to put this into practice. We’ll just do a kind of quick round of this. Well, what, what kind of tips or suggestions would you have for others who are or maybe listen to this and thinking we want to put this into place?

Will Sheppard
Yeah, I would first say, take a, I guess, a 10,000 foot view first and and look within and say, Are we going to be honest with everyone showing up in this relationship around assessment? And then don’t be afraid to get into the dirt the weeds and dig for those places that need to be uprooted. Sometimes that’s where you find the best soil to bring up until to say, oh, that’s where the work needs to be done. So don’t be afraid to get in there and show what needs to be done. I’m a big component of emotional intelligence and not putting up walls when I see something that doesn’t fit the like you said, Jose the gloss, well, let’s, let’s pull a dirt on and see. How can we just put it on a microscope? And, oh, this is a place we need to fix, but it’s a positive. Some of those things that we bring up are ways that you can show people, this is where you can actually help us, or we’re going to help ourselves to be better. And the numbers and the stories are going to tell the biggest story for all of our collaborators, donors, whomever is involved. So it’s some vulnerability there, but it’s all going to be a great impact, and then just use that data. We always talking about putting things on a shelf after we’ve done surveys or assessments. Use them. Be intentional about talking about these during meetings. Staff meetings, all division meetings, have your assessment experts talk about this so it keeps on the forefront of everybody’s not, non of the why, and then remember to practice this as it keeps going.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, great things about shared purpose. And why, Jose, what? What suggestions would you have for others?

José-Luis Riera
Yeah, not, not, not a revolutionary thought, but it’s right in the model for number one of divisional leaders, which is the clear divisional priorities. I think it’s really, really important. And I think the process, you know, this isn’t necessarily talking about like the process of how we get there. And, you know, sometimes people don’t like the kind of top down type of approach, but I think the process can kind of help to lubricate that, depending on how you move through that. But, but the reality is that really helps to set the direction. It really helps to like map out, okay, where are we going? How are we doing this? What? How do these different layers? Is, or levels within this plan work together so that that would be my, my contribution,

Keith Edwards
and Sophie, and then so I

Sophie Tullier
speaking, you know, as like a student affairs assessment professional to other student affairs assessment professionals looking to implement this model, I would say, right, it takes a lot of conversations with your divisional leadership to understand what their priorities are. Because, like, it’s sort of my job, I think, to understand, you know, how is Jose operationalizing our strategic plan? In his mind? What are, you know, what do we need to do in order to make that come to fruition? So a lot of my conversations with Jose are more philosophical, like when, when you say this, do you mean this or this, and how, and trying to make sense of what he wants and needs from the division in terms of that data strategy and making that come to life. So just like more coffee, lots of conversations, yeah, that’s

Keith Edwards
Yeah, more and more coffee. That’s great. Heather, what do you want to add here?

Heather J. Strine-Patterson
Well, maybe what I would just target a little bit is the Student Affairs educator that might be listening to the podcast. I think we did the big picture there, and is to say, right? Leadership, going back, is a shared process between leaders and followers towards a set of shared goals, and so don’t sit on your heels and wait for somebody to present this kind of approach to you and say, This is what we’re doing. I think there are steps where followers, right in an organizational context, can get together and say, Okay, we might not be hearing this from our director, but wait, we’re doing similar programming. Can we have the coffee and maybe figure out what the commonality is between us? And you know, we can influence from our follower perspective, right? And so I think everybody can get their gear going, and then that helps get the other gears going, right? And so I would just encourage you to do that.

Keith Edwards
Well, we’ve got some assessment nerds here today, and Jose outed himself as the leadership nerd. So we’ll just say it before he can leadership is a process, not a position. So thanks for emphasizing that, Heather. That’s really great. So we are running out of time, but the podcast is called Student Affairs now. We always like to end with what you’re thinking, troubling or pondering now. And if folks want to connect with you, where would you direct them? Will? We’re going to start with you. What are you troubling now? Will?

Will Sheppard
I think what I’m troubling now is how to still keep students motivated so they understand their why as well and getting to their goals. But then on the back end, how does me as a scholar practitioner, can be intentional about showing up for them every day, the best way possible using development through learning. We’re always learning, but then also leaning on great professionals like this that I met and know to help me through those difficult times when I need that, that help and so, like you said, go through the process. It’s not the end of the goal. And I do this by motivational speaking for myself and others, consulting work, you know, you name it, and I love the service of giving back that even helps me. So I’m definitely on LinkedIn, and please find me there, and that’s how I do things.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Thank you. Well, Heather, what? What are you troubling or pondering now?

Heather J. Strine-Patterson
We’re at some turbulent times, I think, to say the least, and I think we’ll just talk very positively about how to try to show up in space for students and ourselves during those turbulent times. I think, I think a lot about even Jose earlier, right? We’re justifying our work, and it makes me think about Sophie and I actually just recently wrote an article in the Journal of Student Affairs, assessment for inquiry, improvement and impact. And we talk a lot about those paradigms of assessment for improvement and assessment for accountability and justification and the tension there, right and and how, during this turbulent time, that assessment for improvement might be driven by accreditation, and how does that look differently if regional accreditors Go away and and I worry about that. I you know, there is the piece of the storytelling for the high gloss that we need to do, but I worry for that grayscale story. So those are the things that I’m thinking about a lot right now. Yeah, great. And you could find me on LinkedIn. I don’t really. They do any other social media? So find me on LinkedIn or send me an email. Yeah?

Keith Edwards
And Sophie, what is? What’s? What are you thinking about now? Yeah,

Sophie Tullier
I think you know, as I’ve been catching up on my student affairs podcast over the last couple days, I keep thinking about sort of assessment and this model in these times of for me, this model is like a way of organizing, not in the calendar sense, but in the political sense, right? So if we have as a strategic pillar for our strategic plan racial equity and inclusion, how are we organizing our division, using data to tell that story and make that argument, and rallying everyone sort of around that purpose of our field. And yeah, just how are we doing that, both with each other, with the ways in which we measure that, the ways in which we put labor on students to do it or don’t, and all the different ways that we sort of think about how it intersects with the student experience. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
awesome, awesome. And Jose, what are you pondering? I thought you

José-Luis Riera
were gonna say coffee. So yeah, I mean, I’ll just, you know, Echo, obviously, in turbulent times and, and what I’m thinking about is, how do we not, you know, I’m reading the Chronicle I’m reading Inside Higher Ed, obviously, every media area, reacting to the federal administration and, and. And I’m thinking about, like, the next 20 years of our work around issues of social justice and social justice education. And how do we mean, obviously, we there’s a compliance that’s important with the federal government. But how do we not like do that by reacting to this administration. I mean, I don’t. I think the pendulum swings, in other words, are going to continue right for the foreseeable future. I think that’s, that’s where our society is at. And so thinking about, we’ve always thought about, I think in many ways in our field, that this work is integrated into what we do. And I think that’s one of the tensions that we’re experiencing right now is like, how do you pull those things out? So those are the things I’m thinking about. It’s like, it’s like, almost, how do we proof these things within, you know, the co curricular space that we have influenced over in a way that that continues to be authentic, but also doesn’t, you know, doesn’t seek to be exactly this way or that way. Now I’ll say that I’m in a blue state, so I’ll just say I think that’s important to note, I have, probably freedoms that others don’t have. Yeah, that’s where, that’s where my mind is great.

Keith Edwards
Well, this has been terrific. I really want to thank all of you for being here and being in this conversation. Thank you, Heather for this think piece and sharing with the world. And thank you to will Jose and Sophie for sharing how you’re putting into practice. So thank you all. I also want to thank our sponsors of today’s episode,Evolve and Huron .Are you are a higher ed senior leader who is knowledgeable and deeply committed to transformational leadership, yet find yourself unsure and not as effective as you know you could be. Evolve is a program I lead, along with doctors Brian Rao and Don Lee, helping senior leaders release fear, gain courage and take transformative action to unleash unleash your leadership for social change. Evolve is a three month virtual experience, combining on demand modules, personalized coaching and powerful group sessions. Visit evolve to learn how you can be a part of our next cohort, or chat with us about evolve for your senior leadership team and Huron. Huron collaborates with colleges and universities to create sound strategies, optimize operations and accelerate digital transformation by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo. Huron promotes institutional resilience in Higher Education For more visit them online as always. A huge shout out to Nat Ambrosey who does all the behind the scenes work for the podcast, and we love your support for these important conversations. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube and to our weekly newsletter, where you’ll get the latest episodes every Wednesday morning. If you’re so inclined, you can leave us a five star review. It really helps these conversations reach more folks. I’m Keith Edwards, thanks to the fabulous guests today for your wonderful contributions, and to everyone who is watching and listening, make it a great week. Thank you all.

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