Paul Rubin: And so regardless of where you did your undergrad, regardless of where you’re from, regardless of where you’re pursuing your degree, your experience is 100% valid regardless of who, what everyone else says. So I think in some respects, it’s that uniqueness of, of, of your interpretation that is also super helpful and critical as, as we’re thinking about this co-construction of knowledge

Heather Shea: Welcome to Student Affairs NOW, the online learning community for student affairs educators. I am your host, Heather Shea. Today, I am super excited to be joined by an incredible panel of faculty representing student affairs and higher ed graduate programs across the United States for a special conversation focused on a simple but incredibly important question: What do you wish every new student affairs grad student knew before they began their program?

Collectively, our panel represents research universities, regional comprehensive institutions, HBCUs, and online graduate programs. Together, these educators have prepared thousands, literally thousands, of student affairs professionals who now serve students across higher ed. Whether you’re beginning your master’s program this fall, considering a career in student affairs, or mentoring the next generation of professionals, we hope today’s conversation provides encouragement, practical advice, and inspiration for the journey ahead.

Student Affairs NOW is the award-winning podcast and online learning community for thousands of professionals who work in, alongside, and adjacent to higher education student affairs. New episodes are released every Wednesday. You can learn more about our archive and read more about our podcast at studentaffairsnow.com.

Today’s episode is sponsored by the Evolve Institute for Higher Education Leadership. Evolve offers four leadership coaching journeys designed to expand capacity and build capabilities, empowering courageous leadership to transform institutions and reform the future of higher education As I said earlier, my name is Heather Shea.

My pronouns are she, her, and hers, and I am joining you from the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Anishinaabe, Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples, otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, where I work. Gonna bring everybody onto the screen here. I’m super excited for you all to meet our panel today.

So we’re gonna start with just brief introductions. In about 30 seconds or so, I’d love each of you to please share name and pronouns, institution and role in grad preparation, and then one sentence about what excites you the most about preparing future student affairs professionals. And Jayla, I’m gonna have you kick us off.

Jayla Moody Marshall: Awesome. Thank you so much, Heather. My name is Jayla Moody Marshall. I’m currently an assistant professor of higher education at North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina. And for me, college represents possibility so it’s always an honor for me to help prepare the next generation of educators who will cultivate the experiences that will change lives of so many.

And that’s what happened for me, and I love passing that on to other people. Thank you.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thanks, Jayla. Ally?

Allie McGuigan: Sure. Hi, everybody. My name is Dr. Ally McGuigan. My pronouns are she, her, and hers. I work at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and I’m an associate professor of practice and I coordinate the online Master’s of Science in Higher Education Admin program.

Because I work with online students who have often been out of school for some time, what excites me most is helping students to realize that they’re qualified, capable, and deserving of earning this degree, and also to get to mirror for them what it looks like to support students.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thanks so much for being here, Ally.

Christopher?

Christopher S. Travers: Yeah, thank you. Christopher Stephen Travers, pronouns he/him/his. I’m at the University of Maryland, College Park, in the student affairs concentration. And I think what excites me most is knowing how critical student affairs administrators are to the lives of students, and how critical of a time we’re in right now, and just the responsibility that I have, the privilege I have to be able to support the future of student affairs professionals.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thank you so much, Christopher. Gudrun, welcome back.

Gudrun Nyunt: Hello. Hi, everyone. My name is Gudrun Jundt. I use she/her pronouns. I’m an associate professor of higher education at Northern Illinois University. So I teach in our in-person master’s program and our hybrid EdD programs. And what excites me most is introducing people into the higher education community, and so getting them connected with professional associations, professional development opportunities.

And so I’ll be talking about that more later on.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thank you so much, Gudrun. Lindsey.

Lindsay Jarratt: Hi, everyone. My name is Lindsey Jarrett. I use she/her pronouns. I am currently an assistant professor in our student affairs and higher education program at Iowa State. Not to be confused with University of Iowa, another great program.

And I think what excites me most, I worked in student affairs for 15 years before I came back into sort of the academic side of things. And so the new creative energy of folks that are emerging into the profession and the ways they help me rethink what I think I know about our field is just really exciting.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thanks so much, Lindsey. Paul Eaton, or Peaton, we’re calling you during this episode. Welcome.

Paul Eaton: That is. Thanks so much, Heather. My name is Paul Eaton. You can call me Peaton. I use he/him/his pronouns. I’m an associate professor at the University of Alabama, Roll Tide, and I’m also the program coordinator for the master’s program, both online and in person, here in Tuscaloosa.

So what really excites me about working with new professionals is all the possibilities of the people that are coming into our profession. We’re caring, we’re kind, we’re loving, we’re equity and justice oriented, and we’re visionary. And so I just love working with each and every student. I love all of our students that are coming into the profession because they’re bringing the hope and the future of our profession in, and so that’s really exciting.

Heather Shea: Thanks so much for being here. The other Paul Rubin, welcome

Paul Rubin: Thank you. I’m Paul Rubin he, him, his. I’m an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and also serve as the program director for our MEd with an emphasis in student affairs.

I think for, for me, the, the excitement really stems from the populations we serve in our in-person program. We have those students who are coming effectively straight from undergrad and had a really great experience as a student who volunteered or worked in the student affair space and are looking to transition into a stronger career as well as those who are currently working in student affairs and are looking to better understand the space that they’re in.

I think it’s very interesting, as Peton mentioned this, this transition and thinking about the future of what this profession is gonna look like, and it’s very eye-opening to get those two perspectives at once.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. David?

Paul Eaton: Hi. Bienvenidos. Welcome. My name is David Perez II.

My pronouns are he, him. I’m an associate professor of higher education at Syracuse University, where I coordinate our higher education master’s program and teach across our master’s program, our PhD program, and now our new EdD program in higher ed. Before going any further, I want to acknowledge with respect the Onondaga Nation, Fire Keepers of the Haudenosaunee, the indigen- the Indigenous people on which the ancestral lands of Syracuse now stands.

One of the things that excites me most is recognizing that graduate students bring an array of knowledge, skills, and experiences. And for me, the opportunity to be in the classroom to teach and learn with our graduate students and also to collaborate with them on work is something that really just excites me really pushes my thinking, has really pushed my own work.

And I’m so grateful for the opportunity to always have students to collaborate with on work.

Heather Shea: Thank you so much for being here. And last but not least, Steve. Welcome.

Steve Grande : Thanks. Thanks, Heather. Good to see everyone. It’s great to be here. My name is Steve Brandl. My pronouns are he, him, his. I’m a associate professor at James Madison University in Virginia.

It’s a public university in Virginia. In our Department of Graduate Psychology, I’m the program director for our college student personnel administration program, our higher education student affairs program. And yeah, I definitely echo everything folks said. Thank you. Everyone’s very inspiring. And I think this might be redundant, but just I find the creativity and the sense of humor of our students really inspiring, and the commitment that they bring towards self-awareness, critical thinking, but also preparing graduates to be members of a democracy and the real important work of doing that

Heather Shea: Awesome.

I am so grateful for all of you spending time. Just listening to your introductions reminds me of how much collective wisdom is in this room. Thank you so much for answering my call. I put that, this out on the faculty and student affairs list serve, and received over 60 responses from folks across the country.

So I’m super thrilled to have the nine of you with us here today. So let’s imagine for a moment that we are a brand new graduate student listening to this episode. Driving to orientation, maybe unpacking boxes in a new apartment, or logging into the online program for the very first time. Perhaps you’re excited, maybe a little nervous, maybe wondering what lies ahead.

If this is you, this conversation is really designed for you. So to help guide our conversation, I organized today’s episode into four different chapters of the graduate student journey. We’re gonna begin by talking about what students need to know before they even begin, why they belong in grad school, and how to start strong.

Then we’re gonna explore how to make graduate school count, prepare for the profession they’re entering, and then finally reflect on why this work still matters and what gives us hope for the future. Along the way, different members of our panel will take the lead in each chapter, and everyone is welcome to jump in as ideas connect.

And we’ll pause midway for a more personal conversation about the lessons that we’ve learned the hard way. All right, so let’s start at the beginning. Christopher, what is one thing you wish every new student affairs graduate student knew before they began their program?

Christopher S. Travers: Yeah I appreciate this, this question, Heather.

And I think for me, it’s first and foremost that they would trust that they know what it is they already know. I think much of Western education and schooling experiences that folks have, particularly Black and brown folks, is a particular kind of disciplining and a distancing from who they are and the home epistemologies they bring into the space.

And I’m always just trying to encourage my students that you are knowers. You are holders of knowledge. And while it is important for you to understand some of the core competencies about student affairs, that’s also important not to forget who you are and what it is you already know.

Heather Shea: Awesome.

Lindsay, what would you add?

Lindsay Jarratt: Oh my gosh, I’m just sitting here in awe of that answer. And it resonates so much with how I was reflecting on both my own entry into grad school, but also what I see every year from students. I just, I think what I would say is you don’t have to prove your value or your worth to anyone.

Lots of students start off with this sense of nervousness. They’re questioning their capabilities. Do I have what it takes to cut it in grad school? And especially for students who have been socialized that learning is a constant test of their, even their right to be in the learning space.

And it’s just it’s so easy to enter grad school thinking that it’s gonna be the same, but even more ramped up, and I don’t know any faculty that want that learning experience or that to be how what we’re doing in the classroom is framed and experienced. We… I actually think that those fears when we all bring them and we act from them, they put up walls that make it harder for us to build the authentic learning and the vulnerability and the mistakes that actually become the learning, which I’m gonna talk more about later.

And really trying to bring your whole self, like Christopher said, I think is something we want and we want to honor and we want to welcome you in the wholeness of who you are

Heather Shea: Awesome. Paul Reuben, what do you wanna add?

Paul Rubin: Yeah I’m gonna extend exactly what Lindsay said. I think for me it’s the recognition that graduate school is not undergraduate education.

And what I mean by that is there isn’t it isn’t about testing, it’s more of about creating foundational knowledge and understanding. And I think for, in reflecting on my experience when I was a grad student, I think it’s also the, the recognition that your experience, whether it be through your work experience, your time as an undergrad, being an RA or anything along those lines, are such critical experiences that will help shape how you experience grad school, especially in student affairs.

And so I think, to me, that- that’s one big part. I think the sort of secondary component which I know that previous students I’ve had always talk about is they always end up looking at online to see oh, what does it mean to be a grad student? And I think- … what I, the reason I mention this is because pursuing your degree in student affairs is such a unique experience in the sense that you, it isn’t like getting a degree in or continuing your undergraduate education in say like psychology or economics or what have you, because you don’t have that foundational history and foundational texts already taught to you a- as an undergrad, right?

So in some respects being a grad student in this space is both being able to draw upon your own experiences while also still opening yourself up to understand what this world is that you’re now entering.

Heather Shea: So hearing so many different common threads around trusting yourself, remembering why you’re here, building on those experiences that you had as an undergrad.

I’d love to hear what other folks on the panel think. Anyone else wanna jump in?

Paul Eaton: I’ll jump in.

Heather Shea: Awesome.

Paul Eaton: So j- just one of the things that I I’m always surprised by and this I think echoes across s- what people have already, several people have already said, is that you were not admitted by mistake. You are no one’s mistake. You weren’t seen as deficient and as someone who needs to be fixed, right?

You were admitted to your respective program because someone saw that you possess knowledge, skills, experiences that our profession needs. And that’s something that surfaces in my own work. The research that I’ve done early in my career with men of color in higher ed a lot of them pointed to having family members or peers or their own determination as the, the things that helped them to get to and through their program.

And I think that, to me, hearing that from students I would say should humble us all as educators, but also should embolden us as educators, right? Recognizing that you’re not an empty vessel, right? You have something to contribute to this field. You are a practitioner who’s in formation, right?

You’re developing. And that’s worthy of the investment. So your admission to your respective institution was an investment. People see something in you that, that’s valuable. And I just encourage you to lean into that, right? Even when you feel like you don’t have the right answer, that’s okay.

Maybe you need to ask the right questions, right? Or to develop the competence to explore those sort of questions. But just recognizing that you’re coming already with vast amounts of knowledge, skills, and experiences that are worthy of this investment

Heather Shea: Oh, brilliant. I saw some, some hand claps going on in the background there.

Other thoughts that you all would like to add in?

Christopher S. Travers: I think if I could offer an additional thought.

Heather Shea: Sure.

Christopher S. Travers: It’s for students to appreciate the value of theory. I find that incoming graduate students are quick to want to run to, to practice or conversations around practice. W- and this doesn’t mean that all theory is perfect or absolute, or that we can’t critique theory.

But there’s value in theorizing and using various frameworks to better understand how we can think about our work. And so I would certainly encourage students to value theory, and by extension, reading.

Gudrun Nyunt: Yeah.

Heather Shea: Reading. Yes. I’ve seen

Gudrun Nyunt: lots of people- I would say-

Heather Shea: Yeah.

Gudrun Nyunt: Everyone is nodding and laughing, right?

But I think building on that, I think what makes grad school so different, and particularly grad student, grad school and student affairs so different, is ’cause we’re engaging with each other in a classroom, right? We’re talking with each other. And so when you didn’t do the reading, you can share some of your experience, but you’re not gonna be able to connect them to the theories, to the reading, to the content.

And so it’s a very different experience than what you might have had in undergrad or if you’re an international students, right? Particularly from certain cultures where it’s like lectures, and you’re just listening, and that’s your job as a student. No we’re co-constructing knowledge, right? We are figuring things out together.

And so that reading is the starting point of what gets you to being able to engage in that knowledge construction as a group, as a community

Paul Rubin: Can I just say one thing that, that really- Of course … just struck with me is- Yeah … it’s also the fact that the goal here is not to memorize everything, right?

The point here is not let me go read 100 pages for a class and be able to respond to what’s the third word on the 45th page, right? That, that isn’t what we’re looking for here. And I think related to that, a- and that’s really fundamental to g- to grad school, but I think fundamental to that or related to that is also be willing to make mistakes, right?

I think part of this is also your interpretation of something that you’ve read is 100% based off of your experience and h- and your perspective when you’re reading anything. And and I think given the, the person-to-person relationship that occurs in student affairs and higher ed that experience can really s- say a lot, right?

And so regardless of where you did your undergrad, regardless of where you’re from, regardless of where you’re pursuing your degree, your experience is 100% valid regardless of who, what everyone else says. So I think in some respects, it’s that uniqueness of your interpretation that is also super helpful and critical as, as we’re thinking about this co-construction of knowledge

Heather Shea: That really that really hits me because I don’t currently teach in a student affairs master’s program, but when I did, I would see this hesitancy among students to, to weigh into the conversation.

And I think, it wasn’t that they weren’t prepared, it was that they were trying to formulate the perfect response in their head so that they didn’t look like they didn’t know what they were talking about, right? And I would constantly be like, if you don’t say it, somebody else might, and then you lost that opportunity potentially.

But also, your unique perspective and wisdom is a big part of this here. So dive in, even if it’s not the most perfectly articulate thing that you’ve ever said in a class. That is not what it’s about.” That’s brilliant.

Paul Eaton: Yeah, Heather, and if I can just, say on that, I think one of the differences between graduate school and many undergraduate programs is that, for many students, especially those educated in the US, the K12 system and then the higher education system has inculcated them into thinking there’s a right answer that there’s a, a certain approach, that you’re gonna be tested, quizzed and, as my colleagues have said, that you’re supposed to memorize this information.

I think a big transition coming into a student affairs program or a higher ed program is that we really are trying to create a community of professionals that are engaged in supporting, caring, and loving students and making our institutions the very best places they can be. And that means that we’re gonna sometimes have disagreements about how to do that, that we have to engage with knowledges that make us uncomfortable, that we sometimes don’t understand what it is that we’re talking about in the classroom, and that you shouldn’t be afraid to be like, “I disagree.

I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What is that big word you just used? I don’t know what it means,” right? That’s not a scary thing. It should be part of your foundational experience that we’re here to care for you, educate you, and you are a part of our knowledge community.

Heather Shea: Really well said.

Okay, I wanna do a little brief lightning round. We’re gonna do lightning rounds actually I think three different times during this episode. So for the three of you who started us off there are two sentences that I want you to complete, and we’ll do it in this order. Lindsay, Chris, and then Paul Reuben, okay?

So graduate school is not about…

Lindsay Jarratt: Performing intellectualism

Christopher S. Travers: Graduate school is not about performativity and productivity.

Paul Rubin: Graduate school is not about perfection.

Heather Shea: Excellent. I wish students would stop worrying so much about

Lindsay Jarratt: having the right answer

Heather Shea: Love it

Paul Eaton: Perfection

Paul Rubin: Yep.

Heather Shea: I would say being perfect. It’s not surprising that you all had some similar thoughts in your minds, right? That’s great. Thank you so much for that. I’m hearing a ton of common themes, and so let’s move from preparing to begin graduate school and the mindsets that students bring with them to getting the most out of graduate school.

So this is really about what separates students who simply complete a program from those who really thrive. In other words, what helps graduate students get the most out of their experience, both inside and outside of the classroom? And Alli, I’m gonna start with you.

Allie McGuigan: Yeah, and you’re about to hear some more repetition of themes here.

I’ll go- But for me, it’s really a lot about the perfection and the productivity. I advise students in the program, and something that’s really interesting to me is that I get to hear their vulnerabilities in ways that their classmates don’t. So things like, “Why are my classmates able to get their work done early in the week?

Why are my classmates able to present at a hundred conferences? Should I be doing that? This person’s had three job offers.” This is your journey, and especially for me, working with online students who are working full-time, juggling families, caregiving responsibilities, maybe have more than one job, being in grad school might be all that they have time for.

Getting their submissions in on the last day, right before the assignment deadline, might be all that they have time for. What I do in my classes is that I put, I set aside time for students to think about goals that they have and tangible steps that they can use to develop professionally in ways that make sense to them as individuals.

If your program does not have this built in, I highly recommend that you take five to 10 minutes each semester to create a little bit of a personal inventory for yourself, where you think about, are you happy with your progress? Do you have capacity to do other things? How do the decisions that you make impact other goals or things that you’re hoping for yourself, without comparing yourself to others?

So for example a student that is looking for their first job, if they take seven classes a semester, they’re going to be able to apply to fa- far fewer jobs than if they took three classes that semester. Or the student that wants to get a really great conference experience, maybe one where they take a lot of time to, to put together their proposal to attend that one conference, maybe that would be more meaningful than attending five and not get a chance to present.

Really think about your goals and then think about what steps get you there

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thanks so much, Ally. Gudrun, let’s bring you into this piece.

Gudrun Nyunt: Yeah. So I think for me, I think a lot about this is the start of your professional journey. And so it’s really about figuring out who’s the kind of professional that I wanna be, right?

And how am I gonna make sure- … that I continue to be the professional I wanna be. And so Paul Rubin mentioned earlier, right? We teach you foundational knowledge in our grad program, and you don’t wanna sit in a faculty meeting when we talk about curriculum, right? ‘Cause we’re like, “We need to put all these things into the curriculum, and we don’t have time, and what do we take out?”

And people get, real passionate. But that’s part of the problem, right? We can’t teach you everything. We can’t prep you for what it’s gonna be like to supervise full-time staff five years into your career, right? Or to navigate the current political climate. We didn’t know that was gonna happen when we prepped the people who are currently in vice president positions, right?

And are navigating that on an institutional level. And so I think part of it is figuring out where is your professional community. How do you continue engaging in learning as you go on? And grad school gives you some of those opportunities to learn about that from your supervisors, from your faculty, and to explore some of that, right?

Most professional associations have, have grad student pricing that is much those rates are much lower. There are two now that have free master’s student memberships. So of course I had to bring that in, right? One of them is ACPA, College Student Educators International, and ASCA, our Association for Student Conduct.

And those two, right? So and that’s for ACPA, it’s for both full-time and part-time students. So if you are part-time students, you still get that membership for free for two years. Take advantage of that, right? Take advantage of some of the, the lower rates for conferences. It’s gonna help you find your community.

And all of us like all of us hold identities. We’ve talked a little bit about bringing your authentic self to that, but that can also be really scary when you’re the only one in your program, right? And so when I did my master’s program, I was the only international student in my program, and ACPA was where I found my first other international student affairs professionals, right?

And we’ve now formed a community through one of the commissions. And so that’s why that’s the power of professional associations and involvement. It’s not about do I have these 10 conference presentations on my resume. It’s about have I made those connections. Do I have someone I can call when I’m going through a rough day?

I’m stuck on this, right? I don’t know what to do. And so I think starting that exploration as a grad student is really important in just figuring out how do you wanna shape your career.

Heather Shea: Sounds like building an ecosystem, right? Of support, not just within your program, but also broadly within the field.

And that does extend beyond grad school. I can attest to that, and Keith Edwards, if you’re watching, you know that firsthand. Jayla, what about you? What would you add?

Jayla Moody Marshall: Yeah. First I wanna say Gudrun is right, and actually, I was one of the students when I was a grad student who received free membership, and we met, and you supported me in my journey.

So take advantage of those opportunities. They mean a lot, and they will be very helpful. So I wanna put into perspective that this is one of the few seasons of your life where you are expected to ask questions to be a sponge- … to wanna figure it out, to try something new. And I joke with my students all the time that being a grad student is a really good job, right?

Because- … expectations are, a little low for you, right? I can try something new and then decide this isn’t what I want to do. There are opportunities for a student to be in the room just to listen and to learn what’s happening. If I take on an assistantship this semester and I decide this practice is not for me at all, it’s okay, right?

That was the overall goal of it. And so I highly encourage you to soak up the opportunity to just be a sponge to be wrong, to try something new, to not be good at something to put yourself out there in a way that you didn’t necessarily envision you would when you started this program. And I think for many of us who stumble into student affairs or higher education, we’re often mimicking our careers based off of- people we saw when we were students, right? The hall director I had who was everything to me as a student, or the vice president who gave me my first campus job, right? We don’t have to be those people. Our time and our programs is an opportunity for us to figure out who it is that we want to be.

And so try something new and that’s the best way to do that. And then secondly, I will add, S- find a mentor. And I say that loosely because I think we throw that word around a lot, and it’s not as easy as people often position it for us to be. But find a mentorship program that might give you a, a mentee community, right?

It may be that you find mentorship from someone who was just in the program a year before you, or you seek out mentorship from someone who you met at a conference, right? Who is doing something similar to you. But find that community who will be instrumental as you enter the job market as you pursue a doctoral program, right?

And I think for me, and when I think back on my time as a student and what I try to stress to my students, you’ll find family at your institution, whether you’re online or in person, but sometimes the people who sustain you are in California or in Georgia or in New York, right? And you can pick up the phone and call them when you really need to, because we know we work in a field that requires us to do that a couple times a week.

But yeah, I’ll stop there.

Paul Eaton: That’s great. Yeah. Can I build on what Jayla and Gudrun said? You know- When I was becoming a faculty member, my facult- my mentor said, “You need to think carefully about what kind of academic citizen you wanna be.”

And that’s my advice as you’re starting out in graduate school, is to think about what kind of college student educator do you wanna be.

And what that means is coming into the profession with an open heart and an open mind, because I think Jayla or Gudrun, they were saying, we came into this many of us stumble into the profession because we wanted to be an orientation director. We wanted to work in academic coaching.

Th- this person changed our lives, and we think that’s what the profession is going to be. But the profession is really wide. Yeah. And the people that we are going to be serving in this profession are very divergent. They are diverse. They come from very different backgrounds. And so part of what can make your graduate school experience really impactful is if you come in with an openness that I want to learn, I want to take advantage of every opportunity, I want to put myself in situations where I may be uncomfortable.

I didn’t see myself going into student conduct, but maybe that’s my career pathway because I realize I can do justice work there, right? Or I didn’t see myself going into transportation, whatever the case is. So coming in with that openness and then taking advantage of everything that you possibly can fit into your life.

The online resources for this generation of scholars are unbelievable. There’s online webinars, there’s networking, there’s mentoring, there’s online conferences for those of you that are in fully online programs or even place-based programs. So I just really encourage people to try to, do everything my colleagues said, but also just be open to what possibilities might exist for your future

Heather Shea: That’s great.

Before we move on, I’d love to hear if there’s other perspectives that folks wanna add.

Steve Grande : I just wanna underscore what, yeah, my colleagues have said. We’ve talked a lot about perfection. We’ve talked a lot about take- keeping open. And so just to say that we’ve talked about the importance of learning, and we can’t learn if we’re not open, we’re not actually open to making a mistake.

And so I’ve thought back to my, my first semester of grad school and how I made this bold claim in class, and my faculty member disagreed with me. And and it was great. I really learned a lot from that, and I’m so glad I got that out of the way pretty early on. And w- at first I thought, oh, I made a huge mistake, and my face kinda all turned red, and I felt all embarrassed.

But then I realized but that was actually a great moment to learn more ’cause I took a risk. And and so yeah, I just wanna just reinforce the brilliant things that my colleagues have said about openness and vulnerability and avoiding perfection.

Heather Shea: Yeah. Lindsay?

Lindsay Jarratt: Yeah, I would love to also I think circle back to something that Jayla started off in conversation and other people have talked about with this idea of trying new things, because this is absolutely one of the few times you can do it.

And what I have witnessed, I got my master’s, we’re not gonna say when, but it’s a while ago. And most of my cohort, in watching where we’ve gone, I think n- almost none of us are in the initial trajectories that we thought we would be in. We’re in very different places. And I was recently introduced to the metaphor of thinking of your career as a book with many chapters.

And so set yourself up at least with enough that you can transition between chapters, and you can flip the page, and you’ve got enough that you can move things. But simultaneously and this speaks to one mistake I would talk about, it’s not maybe the only mistake that I’m gonna share ’cause I make a lot of mistakes, but maximizing your opportunities does not mean doing everything.

And I think it’s really easy to over-commit yourself. And a lot of our grad students are overachievers who also then will not ask for help, and it can become a really toxic place for you. So maximizing is about thinking reflectively and reflexively about, the things that do push your comfort zone, that maybe give you some of the foundation you need to be able to move.

But it’s not about collecting all the status signals, and it’s not about needing to do everything. It’s a thoughtful journey that we’re asking you to be on.

Heather Shea: David, what would you add?

Paul Eaton: Something that you just said just struck a chord. I was thinking this is not Pokémon Go. Ah. Not to collect all the Pokémons while you’re in grad school.

I don’t know why I thought that, but that’s not what I was gonna say. Okay. For me, there’s three things: relationships, reflection, and real stakes. I feel like folks have talked a lot about relationships, and I wanna emphasize something about reflection. You’re gonna have lots of opportunity in your courses to reflect on your experiences, to reflect on what you’re reading, and who you are in relationship to it.

But I would also encourage you to think about you building in some time to actually digest what you’re g- what you yourself are, outside of a course what you’re getting from your courses, what you’re getting from your assistantships, rather than just moving on to the next thing. Again, this is not the Pokémon Go.

I found a connection. It’s not the Pokémon Go- … of graduate education. I’m all about getting things done, but getting things done well. And I think reflection is a really important part of that, is to think about what am I learning in my classes? What am I learning from my students? What am I learning in this experience?

The third is I say real stakes, and this is something that I really try to build into my courses with students, is really giving them an opportunity to make the most of a c- of a curriculum experience when it isn’t hypothetical. So for example, in, in one of my courses HED 725, Gender and Race, I ask students, actually, I scaffold an assignment where students are actually crafting a proposal that they could s- submit to an ACPA, a NASPA, a NACADA.

Great. So I try to build in. Students are often told “Oh, just take your paper and do something with it.” That’s sometimes really difficult to do, so I’ve used my course as a site to think about how can I deconstruct this experience in a way that allows you to take an assignment, a reflection, and turn that into a presentation, a publication, a, a potential collaboration.

And again, it’s, so important for you to share what you’re learning in the classroom with others in the field. Given the, and I just think about the diversity of this panel, right? Coming from different institutional contexts, there’s so much to be learned from going to a place where that might be structured differently.

And so I just encourage you to do that to take time, right? To invest by thinking about ways in which you can share what it is that you’re learning. And my hope is that you’re in courses that actually design assignments that allow you to do that.

Heather Shea: Ally

Allie McGuigan: Let me just make a small recommendation to students based on all the things that I’m hearing.

It’s something that I see work well for my students too. Right now, open up a Google Doc, get a piece of paper, start a running list of everything that you’re doing. Start a running list of in a course if you’re creating a conference proposal, if you’re learning about a specific topic or you’re learning about budgets, things that you can look back on when you’re done with your program, things that you can talk about in job interviews.

It goes by really quick, and you’re going to be collecting a lot of different things that are going to serve you well. It’s really easy to forget it, so making sure that you’re keeping track of those things is how you translate those when you’re on the job market.

Heather Shea: That is a fantastic piece of advice I’m hoping anybody who’s listening right now is taking that because it is really easy.

And it’s just not about just checking boxes, but it’s really about building the professional skills that the students on our campuses deserve, right? But and I also heard a little thread that it’s also not about doing everything perfectly. So I wanna ask a, a couple folks to be a little vulnerable here because I think our listeners will learn just as much from the lessons we’ve learned the hard way as they will from our advice.

So looking back on your own graduate experience, what’s one mistake you made or one lesson you learned the hard way that ultimately made you a better student affairs educator? And Christopher, I think you said you sa- had something you wanted to offer here.

Christopher S. Travers: Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that, that question. So there’s a word that, that comes to mind immediately for me thinking back, and I’ll focus on my doctoral journey.

Just had a bit more time than I had as a master’s student, but it’s pace. And I think for me, I’m thinking about what Lindsay shared, I’m thinking about what David shared. I felt like I had to rush and do everything and know everything. I felt like I had to… I remember my first semester at Ohio State, and I was in a research lab, and we all got an opportunity to go to ASHE, and I was one of the few students who didn’t have a presentation, and I just felt like I was already behind- ’cause I didn’t have an ASHE conference presentation, and I felt like I had to have my research interests locked in immediately in that first semester. I felt like I had to be working on something before I ended my first year, and so I just rushed. I finished my coursework in two years when I didn’t have to.

And so while I’m offering this perspective, I do wanna name the reality for some folks that you do need to move at a particular kind of pace, and I don’t wanna dismiss that. But just speaking about my own journey, I think I could have been more present when I was in my PhD program. And this is not even about the academic experiences I had at Ohio State, but just the awesome people that I got to connect with.

You will never have that, that moment or that time again to be around so many brilliant, curious, creative- Scholars. And so I could have been more present in those moments. I could have slowed down, which I know is a very antithetical term to how we rush in our current context, but I could have slowed down and read more deeply, read more slowly.

I could have taken more courses outside of student affairs. And because I didn’t do those things when I was a doctoral student, I had to spend, I’m still spending, the f- the first few years of my time outside of my program having to learn, relearn, unlearn some things that I probably could have done when I was a student.

So I think the mistake that I made, while still giving myself grace, is just feeling like I had to move at a particular kind of pace to arrive at a particular kind of point, and the reality is I didn’t need to. I didn’t need to. So I would encourage folks, to the extent that they can given their circumstances, to slow down and be o- be okay with taking your time and trust that you’ll arrive where you need to when you’re supposed to

Heather Shea: Lindsay, tell us your story.

Lindsay Jarratt: I’m- first I’m just resonating- Yeah … ’cause I can think back to so many times where I didn’t give myself permission to really sit with something or take the time to learn it because I felt pressure to I was paying for everything from undergrad on, and so I just felt this pressure, like get through.

And so I’m- I just wanna start by yes, Christopher, I resonate. In terms of mistakes. So I often tell my students that I have a, a career in mistakes. If there’s a mistake to make, I’ve probably made it. And I used to take myself so seriously, y’all which makes those mistakes really hard.

Yeah And if there’s one thing I can tell you before I even tell you my story is that learning humor and learning grace for yourself as much as others is something I really want you to take as a professional skill into the field. And it’s just a human skill. But when I was reflecting on some of those mistakes and where I really wanted to go today, I kept coming back to boundaries and boundary setting and how hard it is in student affairs period, let alone when you’re starting out.

And that can be about just the labor we take on. We’re a helping field, and so we feel very connected to mission, and therefore it’s easy to call us into extra labor, extra time, extra, e- extra emotional work, et cetera. But it also, and very p- particularly for master’s students who are the same age as the folks they’re gonna be working with, boundaries with your peers or near peers is really hard.

And I, my assistantship in my grad program was in res life. I was supervising folks, and I stayed on the same campus that I had done my undergrad at. And so I was not only supervising people who were almost my same age, I had worked with some of them in housing the year before. And I think back and I’ve watched many of my students make similar

I don’t even know if I wanna call it a mistake, but it’s like a really hard thing to do. It blurring or making fuzzy the lines between being their friend and being a supervisor. And I really got called to task on that when I had to fire some of the people that I was supervising in my first year. And they felt betrayed.

I felt incredibly guilty. I still, actually, when I think about that story, have this pit of guilt in the center of my stomach because, while I don’t think we ever truly crossed into this is an unethical relationship, the lines were blurry and I can totally acknowledge that. And I, I took away powerful lessons not, and I really wanna be clear here, the lesson wasn’t that you don’t build good, holistic, kind, warm, and empathetic relationships with the people you work with.

That’s not the lesson. But I did have to learn about where my support structure should be. When I needed things, where maybe in my ecosystem I go to that isn’t the people that are my age that I’m supervising. How to build support for folks while also building accountability. And I’m gonna I’m gonna put this in it’s an advanced move.

You’re not gonna maybe necessarily be great at this to start with. But it is easier to make your boundaries more permeable as you develop relationship than it is to dial them back if you go in too hard too fast. And I know not all master’s students will be working with students, but you will at some time in your career probably be in a relat- a relational situation like that.

And so what I really want you to do is to, we talked about mentors earlier. I want you, if you’re in a relationship like this, to early talk to your faculty, talk to a mentor you trust, talk to your supervisors in your assistantship because this is a dynamic that’s hard. And I would prefer you to have advice and coaching and mentorship early than, like me, when you ha- accidentally figure out that you crossed the boundaries

Heather Shea: Wow both of those stories really hit me as not only similar to my own journey, but also things that I’ve definitely had conversations with students around as they’ve engaged in this field.

So thank you both for being willing to share. I think both of the stories really remind me that growth doesn’t necessarily happen always according to a plan, right? And it’s not always on the syllabus either. It’s sometimes that other lesson outside of the grad school experience that, that sticks with you.

Lindsay Jarratt: I find-

Heather Shea: And I think… Yeah, go ahead.

Lindsay Jarratt: I was just gonna say I actually think the mistakes are the best learning I’ve had. You know what I mean? In the moment it feels terrible. But later it becomes a compass that guides you and it sticks with you in ways that the abstract ideal practice doesn’t always.

Heather Shea: For those who are listening and not watching, you should know that there are a lot of people nodding in agreement on the screen. I think this is also a, a field that is really evolving. And so being able to think through things and have good conversations, be reflective is gonna be a really important skill as we prepare to navigate what student affairs is and will become.

So let’s move on to talk a little bit about that. What realities should today’s grad students be prepared to navigate as they enter the field of student affairs? And my group for this is, starts off with Gudrun. What do you think, Gudrun?

Gudrun Nyunt: All right. I think you’ve talked about how this field is evolv- evolving, and I think one of the things we’re struggling with right now is that for so long we’ve been based on this idea that folks can always be available to their students, that we have staff who love what they do.

And we do, right? We care about the students. We love what we do. But I think our field in many ways has, does become based on this idea of staff will always go the extra mile to do the right thing- … for students. And now we have systems and structures where that’s the expectation. And I’ve noticed this generational struggle when many of us who went to grad school when I went to grad school, which also was a while ago, right?

We had that Pokemon Go experience of you do all the things. You’re always everywhere. You’re a hall director, so you’re available at nighttime for your students, for your staff. Whatever they need, you’re there. And I see many of my students being much better about setting boundaries, about saying no, about being selective, but that’s not the field, the way the field has functioned, right?

And so I think one of the realities to prepare yourself for is that I think as a field we’re starting to recognize we need to care about burnout. We need to create more manageable work- job responsibilities, and there’s movement towards that. And it’s really hard to do that right now during a time with limited budgets, with

It, it feels every day everything’s on fire, right? With our political climate right now, how that’s impacting higher ed- And so the, I guess the advice for navigating I have is thinking about how can you manage up, how can you set healthy habits early on, right? To set yourself up for success.

I do quite a bit of research on employment in higher ed, and there’s so many amazing professionals I’ve talked to who’ve either left the field who say, “I’ve been burned out, and so now I’m doing this job that’s, student affairs adjacent, but not really in the functional area that I was super excited about.

And I’m always a little bit thinking about leaving the field, even though maybe I haven’t left yet. And, and the priority has really become my health.” And so I encourage you to think about that from the start, right? Is how do you set yourself up to have a healthy work-life balance, whatever that means to you, right?

To have that healthy relationship so that it doesn’t become of, I got burned out and so now I’m changing exactly how I’m doing things.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thank you. Paul?

Paul Rubin: I’m gonna just continue what Gudjon was saying. But I’m gonna focus, I think we’re in this I don’t wanna say unprecedented, ’cause I don’t think it’s unprecedented, but we’re in a time where higher education is receiving a lot of attention, and both positive and negative.

Both in regards to what constitutes like, quote, a valuable degree, what constitutes like a, quote, good experience and all of those types of things. And not saying that hasn’t been a conversation previously, but I would say that those are now becoming be all, end alls of how institutions are now operating.

And so to that point, I think what we’re seeing now is that a lot of institutions are making really tough decisions in regards to what programming is allowed, what offices can operate. And in so many ways, a lot of institutions, particularly public institutions in primarily conservative states like my own you’re seeing a lot of what…

Or I should say, what students who are entering student affairs in higher ed hold very closely to their heart are increasingly becoming, what’s the word removable in the, in some respects- … from the standpoint of some administrations and some institutions. And so I think it’s that, that reality.

And it, and it isn’t to say oh, if you are super interested in working with like Pacific Islanders at at my institution that there’s no hope to do that. I think that it’s about creativity, and I think that’s really what a lot of this comes down to. And that really becomes the important component to thinking through how to navigate some of the, the ick that’s currently happening.

And I say this at so this is where I like feel like I take my mask off and say, “I am actually not a student affairs researcher.” All of my research is around policy and governance and politics and all of that. And so for me, I think one of the things that that I see with a lot of our student affairs students is they get, they’ve got, they get into the program they go through the entire time and say the thing that I wanted to do originally is no longer there.”

And so what I always recommend is remembering the why, the thing that brought you in, right? And I think Ally was the one who mentioned this before about maintaining a journal and thinking through what all of that means. And so in so many ways, I think it’s not necessarily just being creative, but it’s also thinking outside of what we traditionally view as student affairs as being that pathway for you in the future and what that could look like, because it’s gonna take a lot of innovation just given what we’re seeing today and so to me, I think that’s really, th- that’s really what I tend to, how I tend to promote this for students is that it’s as much a sort of roadblock, but it’s also an opportunity.

It’s an opportunity to think through outside of the confines of an institution what could student affairs look like to support students in all of their fa- all facets of their education, which is really fundamentally why most people get into this field to begin with.

Heather Shea: Thanks for sharing that.

That’s a great perspective on that. Steve, what would you add?

Steve Grande : Yeah. This is an extension, I think, from what Giedre and Paul Ruben were talking about, which is just the, the, the great deal of uncertainty that exists in the lives of not only the students that are in our programs, but the students that they’re working with as well.

And there are things that really exacerbate that uncertainty, things like social media where every crisis is right in front of us seemingly 24 hours a day. And there’s things at every level from the interpersonal level to the, the global level that can just be incredibly unsettling. And what exacerbates even that sense of uncertainty too is that if, which many of our students are at that 20-something age where we may not have a lot of experience with managing uncertainty.

And so as we go off into careers in higher ed, there’s more uncertainty than ever before, as we’ve already noted in this work. And I go back to the work of Meg Jay, Dr. Meg Jay, who’s written a book on 20-somethings and uncertainty. And she talks about that when we’re feeling uncertainty, our emotions, they can feel more extreme, and they can contribute to a sense of an- more anxiety, which can contribute to a sense of catastrophizing.

And so when we have that that stress and that anxiety, sometimes in today’s society, we’re likely to diagnose ourselves with “I have anxiety. I have depression.” And what might be a more accurate term, and what I recommend our students to do is to put the word situational in front of that.

Like right now- … this moment is making me feel anxious. This moment is making me feel depressed. And those are very reasonable kinds of reactions to the society we are in today. But not to put a diagnosis on it, but put just that. There’s something about this environment. It’s not me. It’s this world we’re in.

And the world that we’re in is sadly unhealthy, which is actually why we are in this field and why students are going in this field is to make it make it better. And so just to remind ourselves and remind the students that that they’re working with is that, one, that we need to validate the feelings we’re having, and that the problems and the issues are not located within the student.

They’re located within the environment. And now let’s look at drawing out the strengths and the values that we do have to move forward.

Heather Shea: Payton, what would you add here?

Paul Eaton: Y- yeah. One thing I wanna say is that I agree that you need to have some creativity in thinking about what the future of the work that you will do.

And- … and part of that is because I think our campuses are not only being pressed by a kind of sociopolitical environment that’s deeply toxic and dehumanizing for many people but I think also the technological changes that are now sweeping so fast through our campuses are gonna cause us to have to think about reinventing our work.

And so one of the things I was really thinking about was you have to be prepared to lead with values and ethics that honor and respect people. And I think that you have to be prepared to be unyielding in your commitment in this profession and this world to things like care, justice, and love so that whatever’s coming at you in the profession you’re able to lead from a strong core center of who you are as a professional in the field.

And that’s why it goes back to what I said earlier about, ask yourself the question, what kind of college student educator do I want to be? And then be unyielding in what that is. For me, that’s about care. It’s about love. It’s about nonviolence. That’s really important to my professional practice.

And so whatever foolishness comes down in terms of institutional power dynamics, politics, all of that, you can be really centered in why you’re doing the work, and you can then stay committed to the work because we need people to be in the profession. We can’t lose you. So whatever you have to do to stay in the profession starts with self and then extends out to having a strong community with your faculty, with your cohort, with your peers, with the professional associations so that we can be the future of the profession that we need

Heather Shea: David, I would love to cold call you into this conversation right now.

I think you have a lot to add, too, about the climate that we’re in. Any, any additional thoughts? I saw your hand. You’re clapping too, by the way.

Paul Eaton: Yeah. No, I was just something that Paul just said, Eaton just said just really struck a chord. So I’m just thinking about, again this moment that we’re in.

Going back to Steve’s remarks, right? Anti-DEI legislation, right?

The dismantling of things in higher ed can be really disheartening. The budget and enrollment pressures. I go to work every day and I can see it. I can see it on my… Not just on my students, but I can see it on my colleagues’ faces just the stressors of it.

And I’m sitting here sipping tea- Unmoved. Yeah, unmoved. In part because, … And I, and a lot of this comes really from my students. I, a decade ago, executed a study based on, or initiated a study based on exposing students to anti-deficit research about student success. And recently wrote a piece about how students bring their informal theories in conversation with formal theory.

So one of the things that I think is just so important that I heard in Paul’s remarks was that I think it’s really important, one, to build some sort of conceptual map for ourselves, right? What are the theories that inform the work that we do? Are they equity-minded frameworks that inform the work that we do?

What is your understanding of who you are, right? Your understanding of your own positionality in relationship to the people that you work with, the, the commitments that you’re making. Because it’s that sort of stuff that will sustain you under this pressure. It’s why I sip tea. Literally, I sip tea at night.

Harney’s & Sons Cinnamon if you’re looking for recommendations. But really when the pressure sets in, because we’re in a particular moment now, but this is just a reoccurring moment in history. This is … There will be some iteration of it 10 years from now, 20 years from now.

And so what’s really important is to to, one, know yourself. Have a sense of the literature, right? And not to say that the theories are perfect, right? Or that they’re absolute, but that you have a sense of what informs your work and the interconnections between your own sort of ways of thinking and being in the world, and how you put those things in conversation with each other to better serve our students, to better support your colleagues to better transform our institutions.

I think that is really what matters in this. So I appreciate the invite Heather. There was a lot of head nodding, but I was like, “I’m gonna stay out of this one.”

Heather Shea: No, that was great. We really needed to also add to that. Other folks who wanna put something else into the conversation?

Lindsay Jarratt: I would actually love to just jump off of that ’cause I…

this conversation is really drawing to mind for me something that we talk about in my org and admin class a lot which is the need for a sociological imagination drawing on Wright Mills’ idea which is a framework for connecting your personal troubles to social issues. But it also creates this comparison, comparative landscape that helps you keep perspective, I think, when you apply it to personal learning.

And looking to history is one of those ways where you can gain a grounded perspective of what you’re going through now. Looking to other cultures and contexts is another way you can gain perspective. And I think holding that perspective while also really building and developing a grounded sense of self and your values it helps you meet the current moment in a different kind of way, in a different situated and contextualized way that can be very powerful.

And I wanna add to that do not let them take your joy. I- So many of my students, it’s almost like they feel guilty still having joy or still having happiness, and that is that does no one any good. It certainly doesn’t do you any good. Your joy is an act of reclamation, and it is a powerful stance against these dark times.

And I actually think creating joy, creating spaces for joy, inviting joy, and inviting your own joy, and welcoming it is really important right now, too

Heather Shea: Brilliant. Any- anything else on this theme before we move to our final and fourth theme?

Christopher S. Travers: I think one, one quick thought, Heather, is-

Heather Shea: Yeah …

Christopher S. Travers: I think it’s why it’s so important, as much as our master’s students and even our doctoral students have to be on campus, course work, assistantships, full-time jobs, it’s so critical to get outside of the bubble- … both physically, literally, and metaphorically, that is higher ed, and be in the real world.

Be in communities. Go to different places. I think there’s a way that we sometimes believe that where we exist on a college campus is the entire world, and it is not, and there’s much to be learned, there’s much to be gained when we get outside of the bubble and actually learn more about the people, the communities, the histories, that can ultimately fuel what it is we’re trying to do, as if it’s new, ’cause it’s not.

But it can fuel what it is we’re trying to do in those pockets and in those spaces.

Heather Shea: That’s great. We have spent some time talking about beginning grad school, starting strong. We’ve talked about making the most of the experience. We talked a bit about preparing for the profession that we, will be seeing in the next three to five years, what, that students are about to enter.

And I’d like to close the conversation today by talking a bit about zooming out, right? So despite all of the challenges that are facing higher ed every one of you has chosen to dedicate your career to preparing the next generation of student affairs professionals. I have dedicated my career to working in higher ed.

And to me, that tells us that there’s still something really deeply hopeful about this work and about serving as educators in this moment however complicated it is. So I’d like to end with the why this work still matters. And Ally, I’m gonna s- kick it off to you. Jayla, Steve, David, but then everybody else is willing to jump in, that would be fantastic.

Why does this work still matter?

Allie McGuigan: Okay, so the question that I’m prepared to answer is, if every grad student listening remembered one thing from today’s conversation, what would you hope it would be? And so I’m gonna focus on the students, and I’ll do my best to connect back to why the work still matters, because I wanna focus on you all in this room in the moment starting a grad program.

So I work with online students, and I’m curious if my colleagues that work with in-person students will be nodding along or if it’s different. But my students tend to forget that they’re students. They’re working full time. They’re thinking about navigating the university system. They’re not so comfortable asking for help and they try to go about this journey alone and independently.

And remember that your faculty, even though at first as you get to know us, we may seem intimidating because of the roles that we’re in, we’re here because we want to support students the same way that you want to support the people that are walking into your offices. When you enter into a master’s program, you are not expected to be a master day one.

You need to learn the material. You’re gonna make mistakes. You are entitled to all of the same opportunities and benefits that you speak to your students on. Things like if you need accommodations, you should be seeking them for yourself. You should be thinking about things like if you are having trouble applying for jobs, asking your advisor or your faculty member to help you, to introduce you to their network, to look at your cover letter or materials.

If you’re struggling with information, don’t just keep reading it yourself. Talk to us and let us help you. And to go back to that first question that Heather asked, I think all of us are in here because the work matters because we care about students. So whether that be the students that you all serve or whether that be the students that that I serve or that my colleagues in this room serve, we all have this common purpose.

So this, in a way, as a student entering into your program, you get to be a little bit of a private agent or a secret investigator, and you get to really step into that role if you’ll allow yourself, of being vulnerable, of navigating university resources so that you can say to your students, “Hey, I went to Financial Aid too at one point in time, and it was really great or really confusing,” or, “I remember the first time that I met with my career services professional.”

This is that last moment that you get to really be a student and to understand the people that you’re gonna be serving for the duration of your career

Heather Shea: Thanks, Sally. Yes, that is the actual question. If every grad student listening needed one piece of advice, what would you hope that they remember from this conversation?

Shayla, yes.

Jayla Moody Marshall: Yeah. I’ll answer both. Great. So I actually wanna push back on this notion that our work still matters because- … what I’ve been telling myself and my students is that it actually matters now more than ever, right? So as we are witnessing spaces, experiences, and opportunities be taken or changed the titles are removed it tells me that there’s likely someone falling through the cracks, right?

And it is our job to ensure that does not happen. And I’m encouraging my students to get creative, right? Student affairs and higher educations, we’re in our creative era, and I think I’ve heard every single one of my colleagues say that today, right? The titles will look different. The spaces will look different, but the work is still the same.

And I would argue- Yes … that our field is challenging us to lock in on the real work now more than ever. And so I think pretty much everything I’ve read in the past year has had some sort of connotation of be more caring or more humanizing or more people-centered, right? I think we’re all saying the same things.

But everything that’s happening around us is telling us that this is what matters now more than ever. And I just wanna encourage students to lock in on that, right? Remove yourself from what we’re calling it, the fluff around it and focus on the work, and that’s that students need us.

They need us to show up as our authentic and whole selves. They need us to pay attention to them, to listen to them, right? ‘Cause I, I think we have our own ideas of what’s important and what matters, but students, like to me, that’s where the brilliance is really coming. They’re telling us what they need, and it’s our job to listen to them and to show up in that.

And then one more thing I wanna add, because this is what got me through very, very difficult seasons. Toni Morrison says, “You are not the work you do, you are the person you are.” And I think our field sometimes challenges us to merge those things, right? Gudron said it, right? We work nights.

We work weekends. We do things that are outside of our job titles. But you still have to remember that you are a whole person outside of the work you do, and sometimes stepping back and recognizing that helps us to show up much better the next day. And I think Chris said it, too. Like, when you said what you said, I’m like, yeah, sometimes we just need to go touch grass, right?

And like- Yeah. … leave the building for a little bit. And, recognize that there’s more than what’s happening in this room or what we’re arguing about on the agenda or how we’re changing the name of something. And I’ve been trying to do that this summer, and I encourage you all students listening to this to do that as much as possible whether it’s one day of the week or just an hour out of the day.

But remember, you are not the work you do, you are the person you are

Paul Eaton: Yeah, look, I love the expression, “Go touch some grass.” This is the first time I’ve heard it in a more affirming way. It’s usually calling people out on some stuff. So I appreciate that. No, something that when, as you were saying that it makes me think about the thing I would want students to remember is that this work outlives any single job you’ll ever possess.

It will outlive any single semester. It will outlive a policy climate. So it’s gonna outlive this current political climate. And I alluded to this earlier, but I’ll go back to it again. But, I designed this longitudinal study 10 years ago to track how my graduate students were carrying equity-minded practice- into their work. This year I’m interviewing the very first cohort again. Now, I’ve not been involved in any interviews, so I have a research team that does that, but my team said, “Hey, you should connect with people for this last interview as a culminating experience.” And I’m deeply grateful for the folks who encouraged me, a lot of them are my former students, for telling me to do that, because it’s been really meaningful to me.

But I received an email from a participant of mine who during this period has been at four institutions. And I don’t say that with, that wasn’t a progression, it was like they were going through some things. And they sent me an email recently, and I could just read in the email that they were in a different place.

And rather than email back, I just ca- I cold called him and I was like, “Hey, you sound so good. I almost hear you in this email message.” And what he told me was just like, it just warmed my heart because he spent some time talking about what he had learned in this course and how he translated that to real work that he was doing with his departments to better serve students in advising.

And those are things that you lose track of. It’s the like, I know this is gonna have an impact, but I’m seeing it real time in front of me. And so my hope is that you’ll build, you’ll, that you’re building the orientation to carry that with you, not just into your practice but to think about how you, how this work, what you’ll be doing now, it might inform the ways that you approach how you show up for people in your lives, your family, your friends, your partner, your ch- if, should you have children, if that’s what you want in your life how you engage with the community.

I’m a soccer coach. If you follow me on Facebook, you will see I post a lot, probably too much, about soccer, but it’s where my work translates onto the field with kids. And so just to think about to think about that. Good, certainly go touch some grass. I do it twice a week. Yeah, if I can just build one– on one thing that, that David said, because I don’t think we’ve actually touched on this.

If you show up authentically every day and you are doing purpose-driven work, you do not know what impact you are making on people’s lives. And it will come back to you. So the– Sometimes it’s 10 years down the road, you will get this random email from a student who will say: “Don’t you remember that you sat down with me and listened to me when I was dealing with this issue?

Don’t you remember this thing that you do?” And sometimes you won’t remember because we’re doing so many things, right? But you impact people’s lives every day. The other thing I encourage graduate students, new professionals to do is to start an affirmations file for yourself. Save the emails from the students.

Save the handwritten letters. Do all of those types of things so that on those days when you are thinking to yourself, “I cannot do this,” or, “This person is really pressing me today,” or whatever the issue is, right? That you can go to that and you can remember what the purpose of the work is, which is to love and care and serve students in our institutions.

Heather Shea: Wow. Steve, thoughts?

Steve Grande : Yeah. Th- this is building on all these, these great thoughts about self-care and relationships. And and there’s just two additional pieces I’d add to that. One is it’s tempting right now to offload our thinking to AI. And what-

…

Steve Grande : My colleagues practitioners are telling me is that really to establish the trust and maintain trust, as well as to, in our we’re just, we’re in a very quick kinda field. We don’t have time to go to AI when we’re sitting there with a student or on the phone with a parent. We need to have the sharpness in our thinking. So that, that’s one thing, is keep on building those skills and don’t offload to AI.

But instead, do that thinking. You’re gonna need that when you’re in the field, number one. But number two is this notion of critical hope as well. And so this comes from the work of Paulo Freire, and you may come across that in your graduate program, that he’s a incredibly inspiring thinker and a, and an educator.

And he really coined this term of critical hope, and others have worked with it as well. But the idea of, one, being critically aware of what’s happening systemically, and which can make us feel hopeless. But the other piece of critical hope is not stopping acting, that we keep on acting.

We keep on looking for ways of taking action. This is where relationships come back, right? Because a lot of the actions we can take are being authentic in the way that Paul Eaton talked about, and that’s a great way to be active in a hyperlocal space, and that can be powerful. So we can’t separate out the sense of the, the pain that we’re seeing with injustice with also finding ways to take action.

We may not always be able to address things at the macro level, but we can address things at the micro level.

Heather Shea: Wow. So much wisdom, honesty encouragement in this space. I don’t know about you all, but I wish somebody had recorded a conversation like this when I was headed to graduate school although back then it might have been on a cassette tape.

We definitely didn’t have Zoom. So we have definitely covered a lot of ground today. We have one final lightning round. We’ll see how this goes. It’s, really brief responses, one to three words, no explanations, don’t overthink it. I’m gonna share the, I’m gonna share the question, and then the order’s in the chat.

So for those of you who are listening and are like, “Why do these people know exactly when to go?” All right. One word that describes the best graduate students you’ve worked with.

Gudrun Nyunt: Energetic.

Paul Rubin: Empathetic.

Paul Eaton: Creative.

Paul Rubin: Inquisitive. Curious.

Paul Eaton: Agency Curious Selfless

Steve Grande : Sense of humor. That was hyphenated.

Heather Shea: One leadership quality we need more of in higher education

Gudrun Nyunt: I’m on the list, but I’m, like, blanking.

Self-care.

Christopher S. Travers: Immuno care.

Gudrun Nyunt: Consideration.

Paul Rubin: The ability to communicate outside of higher ed. There’s a lot of- … dashes between those. I

Heather Shea: love it.

Allie McGuigan: Courageous authenticity.

Heather Shea: David is-

Paul Eaton: Equity-minded

Heather Shea: Okay.

Paul Eaton: Humility. Love.

So

Heather Shea: good.

Steve Grande : It’s that… did Paul, you just say love? Is that your- I said

Paul Eaton: love, yeah.

Steve Grande : Oh, I love it. Yeah. Okay. I… Multiple words have already been selected that I would just endorse,

Heather Shea: cosign. Okay. One skill every new professional should develop.

Gudrun Nyunt: Critical thinking skills.

Christopher S. Travers: Emotional regulation.

Lindsay Jarratt: Personal branding.

Paul Rubin: Asking why Staying no

Paul Eaton: Empathy

Lindsay Jarratt: Setting healthy boundaries

Paul Eaton: Networking Reflection

Heather Shea: one book every grad student should read besides your syllabus.

Gudrun Nyunt: Something not related to student affairs.

Jayla Moody Marshall: Yes.

Christopher S. Travers: Teaching to Transgress: Education as a Practice of Freedom by bell hooks.

Jayla Moody Marshall: I said Rest is Resistance by Trecia Hershey.

Paul Rubin: Jessica Calarco has a field guide for grad school that’s specifically, I would argue, more tailored toward the social sciences.

Allie McGuigan: Your university or your employer’s strategic plan.

Paul Eaton: I love that. Strategic. Nothing in strategic plan, but I love that. The Miseducation of an Negro.

Lindsay Jarratt: I’m last minute changing my answer to On Tyranny.

Paul Eaton: Contemplative practices and acts of resistance in higher education.

Steve Grande : The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying About What Other People Think of You by Michael Gervais.

Heather Shea: I love it. Did everybody go? Yes. I’m gonna add one because I, as you all have been talking, I’ve been thinking about creating sustainable careers in student affairs. And that if you could do that at the master’s level, that would be amazing.

All right. One word that describes the future of student affairs. You can say the- Innovation. You can say the same thing as other people, okay? I, th- Okay. I’ll just say that for this one. Yeah, go ahead, Rachel. Innovation

Gudrun Nyunt: and change.

Christopher S. Travers: Revolution.

Jayla Moody Marshall: People centered.

Hopeful.

Ever evolving.

Christopher S. Travers: Transformative. Innovative.

Paul Eaton: Possibilitarian.

Steve Grande : Relationship rich.

Heather Shea: I love it. And then one word you hope every graduate student leaves their program with.

Steve Grande : Critical hope.

Paul Rubin: Belief.

Steve Grande : Community.

Paul Rubin: Understanding their why.

Paul Eaton: Agency.

Paul Rubin: Confidence.

Paul Eaton: Adaptability. Purpose.

Steve Grande : Seeking authenticity.

Heather Shea: So good. Wow I love it. There were some really great sound bites there, so they’re gonna just hit social media, just so you all are aware.

So as we always do on Student Affairs NOW, we end with a final question. I would love to invite you all to think what are you thinking about, pondering researching excited about. And then if you would like to mention a project you’re working on or where our listeners can get in touch with you, connect with you or your grad program’s website, that would be that would be awesome.

And Ally, I’m gonna start final thoughts with you.

Allie McGuigan: Yeah, sure. So it’s really interesting for me to work in the online space because my entire experience was in person, and- … that’s what drew me to this field. So the question that I’m constantly pondering is how can we create those experiences for online students?

How can we help them to create connection and belonging at our institutions? Does engagement matter or involvement matter the same way for an online student that theory tells us it does for an in-person student? And to connect with me, and I very much enjoy connecting with people, so please feel free to reach out.

My name, which is under my picture, allymcguigan@utk.edu, is the best way to reach me via email, and you are welcome to find me on LinkedIn as well.

Heather Shea: Thanks, Ally. Peaton.

Paul Eaton: Great. So I’m thinking a lot these days about hope and possibility and visionary leadership. You can connect with me by emailing me. My university email is pweaton@ua.edu.

I’m also on LinkedIn at ProfPeaton and on Instagram. And in terms of a project I’m working on, I should soon be launching a national study that will interview student affairs professionals on how they are making sense of the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion in US higher education. I’m also working on building an archive of interviews of this period of student affairs educators so that we have that for future researchers and historians.

It’s currently under review at the IRB. So stay tuned. Soon to be launching that, and I invite you to participate.

Heather Shea: Amazing. Gootrin

Gudrun Nyunt: Yeah. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how are we supporting folks throughout their career in student affairs. I’m doing a project on mid-level professionals, and just have been really fascinated by their stories.

And this might be helpful for all of you at the master’s level to know of how the stories didn’t go the way they wanted, and how a lot of the career advice and career myths that we give aren’t actually what careers in student affairs end up looking like. And so just really thinking about that.

And related to that I think what I’ve heard a lot from participants is that importance of the connections with other professionals, with their communities whether it’s identity based, whether it’s functional area b- based, right? And so the other related thing that I’m thinking a lot about is how are we prepping master’s students to figure out how to find that community, to find that support, right?

I heard all these stories of mid-level managers who are like, “I was supervising full-time staff for the first time and I didn’t know who do I talk to- … because I’m completely screwing it up. I thought I knew what I was doing. I didn’t.” And so thinking about some of the professional association involvement that I’m doing and I’m gonna put a little plug in there as well.

We have a virtual master’s student conference for ACPA that will be happening again this fall. And so I encourage you all to check that out and think about attending. There’s also a Grad Connections program that you can do with the conference or separately, and that’s gonna give you… we’ve talked about mentoring.

We’ve talked about community. It’s gonna be small group conversations where you can build community by meeting once a month virtually to just really have those relationships and start building those relationships. Start figuring out, what are the resources for me? How do I create that sustainable career in student affairs, and how do I do it not on my own?

Heather Shea: Wow. I need to talk to you about the mid-level piece, ’cause that’s a future episode. I’m, I’ve got that in the queue. Jala.

Jayla Moody Marshall: Yeah. Thank you, Heather, for everything today. I’m always thinking and dreaming about ways to help Black women feel more seen and heard in higher education. And my work centers that in, on all different levels.

And specifically uplifting their voices to make the experiences of everyone better because we find that’s what happens. You can reach me on LinkedIn just using my name. My email address is jmoody27@nccu.edu. And I’m an open book, and I try my best to be a resource when needed. So please reach out.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thank you. Christopher.

Christopher S. Travers: Yeah. I’m always thinking about this larger project of communion and what communion looks like within higher education. Specifically in this current moment, I’m thinking about Black life making. I’m thinking about David Stanley Jr.’s et al.’s work around fugitive masculinities.

I’m thinking about Tina Campt’s work around refusal. And I’m especially excited about a AERA proposal that I hope turns into a project that I’m conducting with my friend Dr. Rica Barton at Maryland on the show Forever, the Netflix series Forever, and taking a deeper dive into Keisha, Justin, the character and the humanization of Black teens in this show.

So I’m really excited about that, that show and what it can offer us in terms of Black life-making and humanizing Black characters in film media or TV show media

Heather Shea: Can we

Christopher S. Travers: share your- Oh, and you can actually- Yeah, go ahead, sure … yeah, you can, sorry about that. You can email me at ctravers@umd.edu if you wanna keep up with me or follow more about what I’m up to.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thank you so much, Chris. Paul Rubin.

Paul Rubin: Yeah. All of my work is trying to understand the influence of context.

So state factors, state characteristics, institutional realities, and how different institutions approach similar policies, policy outcomes, et cetera. So currently I’m doing a lot of work on the sort of implementation and outcomes as a result of Utah’s anti-DEI policy and what sort of the, the uniqueness of the state and institutions that are implementing, how that has resulted in disparate and varied responses.

And so in the long term, I’m really interested in thinking about how these various contexts influence student success in the long term. But for right now, the snapshot of what we’re doing currently is around that space. You can reach me at my email is paul.rubin, R-U-B-I-N, @utah.edu. I’m also on LinkedIn as well.

Heather Shea: Thanks so much, Paul. Lindsay.

Lindsay Jarratt: Yeah, so I am very, I don’t know if excited is the wrong word, but I am very invested in exploring invisible labor in student affairs where it is distributed ’cause it’s not distributed equally to everyone. And particularly looking at that in this moment where resources are constraining, where laws are constraining, and how, where that invisible labor shifts in the ecosystem or how it’s changing.

Yes. So I’m trying to launch a project on that. And unrelated, a story for another time, I’m also now launching research on IRBs in politically contested environments. So stay tuned. And but I really do think there’s a lot of opportunity. I think we’ve brought this out in many ways throughout this entire conversation to think about reimagining what our work looks like how we can still show up every day with our values and not burn ourselves out in the process.

And so that’s really where I’m putting a lot of my energy and hope right now. I’m always happy to connect with folks. I’m sometimes slow because I am always open to everybody, and so my calendar fills up, but I will reply to all requests. On LinkedIn, it’s just my name, Lindsay Jarrett or my email is ljarrett@iastate.edu.

And pro tip, there are no E’s anywhere in my name.

Heather Shea: All right. That is good to know. Thanks, Lindsay. David.

Paul Eaton: Thank you. This has been, like, so generative. I really needed this on a Friday afternoon.

So that, that is filling my cup of tea. I, For me right now the work that I’ve really been focused on is all things student success, but I do it with a particular sort of lens.

So it’s always thinking about either focusing on the assets that people possess or thinking about it from an anti-deficit perspective, so i.e. assets. You know the longitudinal study. I’ve talked a- already about it, but that, that project has several strands. That, that group has evolved into a, a, what I call the…

what we call the Women of Color Collective. So there are some women of color who have come together, and we’ve been working on a project that centers a women of co- how women of color think about student success in higher ed. Doing some work with community colleges around it. And really now as I’m getting ready to go through the promotion process, I’m in the middle of it thinking about doing some work in the area of faculty development and development with admin- senior level administrators.

So how do I get folks who make decisions about what happens at institutions and to think about it from an anti-deficit sort of perspective? So that’s the next iteration of the work that I’m hoping to do in the future. I always welcome opportunities. If you pull up I always tell people, “Check my receipts.”

‘Cause if you look at my my, my CV, you’ll see that more than half the stuff that I do is always in community with students. So those have always been my collaborators. So trying to create opportunities for folks who are really invested in doing the work. You can find me on LinkedIn. My email address at Syracuse University is diperez@syr.edu.

You can also connect me on other social media platforms: IG, Facebook. I’m no longer on Twitter. My profile’s there, but I don’t engage in that space anymore. But yeah, welcome opportunities to connect. And like Lindsay, I’m gonna use that line, I really appreciate it, I might be slow, ’cause I say yes to everything.

You just never know where these relationships go. So I always welcome the opportunity to connect with people, but if I’m slow to respond, just know that I will get to you.

Heather Shea: Thank you, David. Steve?

Steve Grande : Yeah, hi. W- I guess we’re past the hello stage in that conversation. Not sure why I said that, but yeah, please connect with me.

My email is grandyse z- and then @jmu.edu or you can find me on LinkedIn as well. Though I’m impressed that you all know your LinkedIn profile names. I don’t know. But I know I’m Steve Grandy in LinkedIn somewhere at James Madison University. And one of the projects I’m working on right now and love to talk with others about is w- I started these monthly conversations with folks around the country around critical hope.

And so we’ve been meeting since January and having some really important conversations about talking about our practice and all the feelings that go along with that, including some sense of hopelessness at times. That’s part of critical hope, is feeling hopeless and feeling grief, and that’s often where critical hope is actually born.

Some great conversations there, and also talking with folks about where do we find beloved community and the values that undergird that at this time and how critical that is. So yeah. And thanks for this conversation. This has been as David said, just really powerful.

Heather Shea: Yes. I could not thank you all enough.

I just wanna say as we’re wrapping up, I know how busy this time of year is as we are on the eve of August. And I genuinely appreciate each of you for accepting my invitation and participating today. So much practical advice, honest reflection, genuine encouragement, love for this field. It was just exuding through these responses.

So I have no doubt this will be a resource for graduate programs to share with incoming students for years to come. So if you’re a faculty member and you were a- among the 60, please encourage and consider sharing this. Again, your wisdom, your generosity thank you for being here so much today.

Before we wrap up today’s episode, I wanna again thank our sponsor, Evolve. Given the current context of higher education, we need to invest in leaders with the capacity and capabilities to transform their institutions and the future of higher education. The Evolve Institute for Higher Education Leadership offers four leadership coaching journeys tailored to four different leadership levels.

Each is a three-month journey that includes individual and group coaching, plus a curated curriculum of short asynchronous video modules. We also offer Evolve for leadership teams. If you are ready to evolve your leadership voice, visit evolveinstitute.com to learn more. A huge shout-out as always to our incredible producer Nat Ambrosey for making each episode possible and transcribing this extra long episode today.

Thank you, Nat. And if you enjoyed today’s conversation and you’re new to Student Affairs, you’re a grad student listening to this for the first time, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, join our weekly newsletter, and if you’re so inclined, leave us a five-star review. That helps us in many ways.

Again, I’m Heather Shea. Thanks for watching and listening. Take care of yourselves, take care of one another, and let’s make it a great semester.

Opportunities for Graduate Students

ACPA – College Student Educators International: Free Master’s Student Membership – https://myacpa.org/join/free/

ASCA (Association for Student Conduct Administration): Free Master’s Student Membership –https://www.theasca.org/membership-categories/

ACPA Virtual Master’s Student Conference: https://myacpa.org/event/masters26/

ACPA Virtual Grad Connections Program:
https://myacpa.org/event/gradconnections26/

NASPA Graduate Associate Program: https://www.naspa.org/division/graduate-associate-program-gap

Articles & Books
Ashlee, A., & Pérez, D., II. (2021). Real talk: Students of color get real about racism during a student affairs graduate program interview weekend. In K. Hinton, M. Howard-Hamilton, G. O. Brown, & M. Davenport (Eds.), Unleashing suppressed voices on campus (2nd ed., pp. 103–112). Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b18195

Batista, A. E., Collado, S. M., & Pérez, D., II. (Eds.). (2018). Latinx in higher education: Exploring identity, pathways, and success. NASPA—Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

Calarco, J. M. (2020). A field guide to grad school: Uncovering the hidden curriculum. Princeton University Press.

Chatman, M. C., Costa, L., & Robinson-Morris, D. W. (Eds.). (2025). Contemplative practices and acts of resistance in higher education: Narratives toward wholeness. Routledge.

Felten, P., & Lambert, L. M. (2020). Relationship-rich education: How human connections drive success in college. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Gervais, M. (2023). The first rule of mastery: Stop worrying about what people think of you. Harvard Business Review Press.

Jay, M. (2024). The twentysomething treatment: A revolutionary remedy for an uncertain age. Simon & Schuster. 

Pérez, D., II. (2019). No struggle, no progress: The complexities of pre-tenure minoritized faculty addressing bias, discrimination, and oppression in student affairs graduate preparation programs. In P. M. Magolda, M. B. Baxter Magolda, & R. Carducci (Eds.), Contested issues in troubled times: Student affairs dialogues on equity, civility, and safety (pp. 341–351).  Stylus.  https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003443667

Pérez, D., II, & Taylor, K. (2026). “Success is not just about grades”: Exploring scholar-practitioners’ informal theories on student success in higher education. Journal of College Student Development, 67(1), 34–50. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2026.a984831