Shea, H. (Host). (2021, June, 30). Using Case Studies for Professional Preparation (No. 46) [Audio podcast episode]. In Student Affairs NOW. https://studentaffairsnow.com/casestudies/

Christa J. Porter:
So when we were outlining the book and selecting cases for our book, we wanted to make sure that everything was not one just about undergrads, undergraduate students, that we included cases on graduate students, but we also included cases on professionals, right. And practitioners who are actually engaging in work on campus. And so absolutely the book can be utilized in professional development trainings for folks who are even senior and mid-level management right there, these especially now when racism and sort of sexism and the intersectional approaches to our work and thinking about equity and oppression is in the limelight now.

Christa J. Porter:
Right? Well, it’s always been there, but right. More so in the limelight now because of what’s happening in our country this is, this is prime material, right? This is where you get the experience of what if this was to happened on our campus? What if a student was to interact with the police like this on our campus, right. What if this happened? And so these are great tools and scenarios for folks to actually engage the, what if’s and to not be as reactive, right. To be proactive and to engage, okay. We need to make, maybe we won’t create a necessarily a disaster plan, right. Should something happen due to weather or should a campus shooting happen, but these are some other just as important issues that we need to be able to tackle and to address, should they happen on our campus? And so this is a great opportunity to continue those learnings.

Heather Shea:
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs Now. I’m your host, Heather Shea. Today on the podcast, we are discussing the use of case studies in student affairs with dynamic panel. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations, make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. In fact, just this morning at our host call, we learned we have reached the milestone of 10,000 downloads of the podcast. So we’re very excited about that here. We do release new episodes every week on Wednesdays, and you can find us at studentaffairsnow.com or on any of our social media channels.

Heather Shea:
This episode is brought to you by Stylus. Visit styluspub.com and use the promo code SANow for 30% off and free shipping. This episode is also sponsored by lLeaderShape, go to leadershape.org to learn how they can work with you to create adjust, caring, and thriving world. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Heather Shea. My pronouns are she her and hers, and I am broadcasting from east Lansing, Michigan near the campus of Michigan State University, where I work. MSU occupies the ancestral homelands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Peoples. From wherever you’re listening today, we urge you to investigate the original occupants of the land. I am thrilled to have the following individuals present for today’s conversation.

Heather Shea:
So let me introduce our panelists. First joining me today is Stuart Brown, the president of studentaffairs.com and sponsor of studentaffairs.com case study competition. I also have with me today, Shannon Karbowski, recent graduate of the University of Nevada Reno and current community director at Arizona Utate university and half of the winning team from this year’s competition. And finally Dr. Christa Porter, assistant professor of higher education administration at Kent State. Thank you all so much for being here today. I’m grateful for your time. And for the conversation that we’re about to have. So as each of you give a little bit more of an introduction, can you talk a little bit about your interest in case studies? So why did you say yes to this episode invitation today? And I’m going to start with Dr. Porter.

Christa J. Porter:
Thank you all for joining us and thank you Heather for welcoming me Dr. Christa Porter, here she, her hers pronouns. And I recognize traditional people of this land, where I am and Kent State in Northeastern, Ohio belongs to the nations of the Delaware, Miami Mingo, Ottawa, Shawnee. This land acknowledgement pays respect to those folks and our ancestors to the temporary culture and spiritual practices of native Americans. I’m so excited to be with you all. As Heather said, assistant professor at Kent State teach higher ed administration. I’ve been here for going into my fourth year, and I’ve also worked in the academy for about eight years and so excited to be with you all and discuss what I teach as well as our recent book. Shout out to my co-editors and I, and I’ll talk more about that a little later.

Heather Shea:
Yes, we will be talking about that book and, and including a link in our show notes. So folks can pick up a copy. Stu, welcome to Student Affairs Now.

Stuart Brown:
Well thank you for having me, Heather. So I am, as you said, the founder of studentaffairs.com and that began in April of 1997, and I’m not going to bore you with the exciting story about how studentaffairs.com started back then. And it’s kind of hard sometimes to think about this back then. No one really knew what, what a domain name was. The web was just beginning. There was this new tool that we all started using called email. So we are really the oldest student affairs website. And for the past 30 plus years, I’ve also been the director of student services at the Waterbury Regional Campus of the University of Connecticut. So I, do you want me to mention about my interest in case studies.

Heather Shea:
Or, yeah, that would be great. Tell us a little bit about what you do in studentaffairs.com with case studies. Yea.

Stuart Brown:
So I’ve been interested in case studies since 1987, because at that point, my wife and I were doctoral students at teacher’s college at Columbia University, and we entered the NASPA national conference case study competition, and we won. So that was a lot of fun and it, you know, it required you to address a problem or situation in a focused amount of time at the conference. It was really less than a day. So once I started studentaffairs.com, I’m thinking of different resources, and I thought this would be a fun program. The limitation at the national conferences is you have to be there. Well, this is the web, so we could be virtual. So that was one of the reasons. So any grad student anywhere in the world could really attend. So we just finished our 20th case study competition. We were probably the first entity to offer a virtual case study and we also award prize money.

Stuart Brown:
So it’s not just, here’s a nice little certificate. So Shannon and her group had all the team members receive $200, the second place team one 50. So we we’ve given tens of thousands of dollars away to grad students over the year, over the years. And I, in the document, or I guess on your resource page, I put a link to our case study competition page because we have the past 20 years worth of case studies. So the topic and all the case studies that people can look at, I’ll talk about that a little later.

Heather Shea:
Awesome. Thanks so much Stu, I love it. And thank you for bringing this topic actually, Stu approached us and we’re thrilled to be able to talk more about case studies because it’s a personal interest of mine as well. And I too had a NASPA case study experience at my very first NASPA conference. I think my professor at the time kind of voluntold us to compete in the NASPA case study competition. And I found it to be a super fun time, even though I think I missed like an entire day of the conference trying to prep our case study. So Shannon, tell us a little bit about you and your interest in case studies.

Shannon Karbowski:
Yeah, so hello everyone. As I mentioned earlier, my name is Shannon. I used she, hers pronouns recent grad starting my journey in the professional world of student affairs. That’s really exciting. It also kind of intimidating a little bit, but my interest in case studies actually stems actually this past year. I’ve been really into kind of finding ways to like apply what I’ve been learning was something that I’ve been very passionate about. Just kind of like moving forward. I think being virtual, it’s really hard for you to really engage in that aspect of being able to kind of figure out like how you can, like, you know what I mentioned before, like the theory into practice, you know, cause we’re trying to adjust to like the health and safety of like students that we’re working with. And so I participated in actually a regional case study competition through our region.

Shannon Karbowski:
And I actually took first place in that one too. And so when they were posting about like the student affairs case study competition, and one of my mentors, she tagged me in that one and she’s like, you gotta do it. I was like, if you right, like I got it, cause I’ve, I really enjoyed my experience. And I really enjoyed like finding solutions and finding ways for me to kind of like solve a problem. I enjoy using like a critical thinking lens and like I’m very competitive as a person. So one of my strengths is competition. And so like this was kind of like something that I just really enjoyed putting it, putting the effort into and putting like thought into and like collaborating with my peers was another big component of that because we don’t really get a lot of opportunity to do that right now is do a lot of collaboration. We’re expected to be more independent and work virtually from home. And so this really allowed me to just have something to do outside of work and school and like redefine like what my passion areas are and like what work I wanted to contribute towards.

Heather Shea:
I love it. Well, Shannon, congrats on your wins. Multiple wins. I think that’s awesome. And I love the, I love the energy that you bring also to this conversation around kind of like what it’s really meant for you. So we’re going to have a good, good conversation here today. So I want to start by like, what do we mean by a case study? So people are listening today who, you know, maybe they don’t have a professional preparation background in student affairs, or they’re thinking of a case study as like a business case or something like that. Like what is the basic definition? So Stu, why don’t you kick us off there?

Stuart Brown:
So I would say, what would I look for for a case study is pretty basic. So I want, I’m looking, I think people working as a team to solve in a maybe creative way, a problem, a situation I also, for the studentaffairs.com, I think it’s very important that we tell people there’s a presentation part of it. So I’m looking as a case study, teamwork, creativity, presentation. It’s not a live presentation, but let’s say a PowerPoint presentation that people could look at. So it has to be in an orderly fashion. It can’t be all jumbled up. So that, that’s what I look at. That’s how I briefly define a case study.

Heather Shea:
Dr. Porter, what else would you add?

Christa J. Porter:
So, so as opposed to a presentation in class, how I’ve used case studies is a paper. And so I call it a case study analyst, you know, analysis, excuse me, and a lot of faculty right around the country in student affairs, higher ed prep programs are the same thing where we say here’s the case, right? And you need to as an individual, right? Some folks do it in pairs, but I specifically do it as an individual. If you’re this particular character, if you’re serving in this particular role, how would you then go about tell, put your, put your thoughts on paper? How would you go about identifying the issue? What are the characters who are potential collaborators? How do you meet the students or the staff person’s needs, if it’s a faculty member, right? How are you meeting their needs? And more specifically, what theoretical frameworks, groundings lens are you applying to solve, right. The, the case at hand. And so it’s sort of a step-by-step process similar to what Stu just shared, but in the form of a paper, as opposed to cool.

Heather Shea:
Yeah, I think application of theory, right? So we talk a lot in student affairs about using applying theory to practice, or even like theory to practice or practice the theory to practice, right. That PTP model. And so I think that this provides a really awesome opportunity for folks who are in professional prep programs to kind of work through what might be real life, somewhat real life hypothetical situations. Shannon, talk to us a little bit about as a student, what did you gain from doing these hypothetical scenario case studies in your program? What about it? Did you like, were there any pros or any cons potentially to completing case studies? And now as a new professional, are there applications that you’re like, Ooh, I did a case on that, and I kind of know how we talked about it when we discussed the case. If you have some examples there, that would be great too.

Shannon Karbowski:
Yeah, of course. I think as a student, like, it really allowed us to apply, like what we learned in our classes and apply like especially this year, I think a lot of our professors kind of rework their their lesson plans in our, to incorporate like virtual aspects of like what we’re going through in this past, past academic year and so forth. And so it really allowed me to kind of utilize the resources that our professors have given us. Like, I used a lot of articles like for, in class, like retention as well as like student engagement and looking at like access as well. The guy that used a lot of resources given to me by actually my faculty advisor for this, she gave us a lot of those things to really work towards. And it gave us that opportunity to really like utilize what we learned, kind of like putting on a presentation.

Shannon Karbowski:
We’re looking at kind of what we wanted to do. Like, it was really important that we came in as a cohesive team. I have a really small grad program, so there was only five of us in housing best last year. And so the three of us were the only returning grads to our department at that time. And so, like, it was really important for us, you know, to really work together and making sure that we’re understanding all of our perspectives. Like we all have these big ideas, you know, we’re all in this program together, we’re taking the same classes, but it was really important that we really collaborated with each other and made sure that we had that face to face interaction when we’re creating these in order to make sure that we’re on the same page of like what we wanted to do and how we wanted to achieve that.

Shannon Karbowski:
I think it helped with us too. I think some of the pros is like the three of us that were on the team, Suzanne and Nathan, like, we all work together, you know, we’re in the same, we’ve been in the same cohort, we’ve done the same, like committees and working groups. And it really allowed us to understand like what each other’s strengths were and what the three of us all brought to that team and how we wanted to like go forth and do doing that. And so I think it really helps solidify, like collaborating and knowing when to kind of step away from your own idea to encourage other voices like within the team to step forward and like share perspectives. Because I think that can be really hard to do, you know, can be really hard to be like, you know, like I know I really liked my idea, but you also have a great idea.

Shannon Karbowski:
So let’s work on like creating something together on that. I do think like when I was thinking of the cons, you know, like overall, I think it was a great experience, but I kind of wish that you know, you could see this program kind of like be an actuality, you know, I think, you know, being like it’s kind of a pro and a con, like you get to put all of this thought and effort and creative energy into a space to create some sort of program, but then like, we don’t get to see that if that’s actually like, if that actually can come true, right. Like you don’t really get to see, like if this program that we created is actually realistic, you know? And so I think we kind of were in that boat, like how creative can we be with this within like the focus of like what we know?

Shannon Karbowski:
And so I think definitely we were thinking about that. We were like, man, this is a great program. Don’t know if I’d want to do it or put it on, but this is a great program. And it would be interesting to just kind of see, like, if schools, like I’ve taken some of these things and put them to actuality, I think would be interesting to look out, but overall it was a great experience. And like, it really allowed us to work kind of under pressure, you know, work in school and then doing this as well. And just trying to figure out like what strengths we all bring to this team.

Stuart Brown:
Heather, if I can add to what Shannon said. So, and again, the link is going to be available to people, but we have 20 years worth of case studies. And what happens is we’ll get about a hundred different teams from maybe 50 different graduate programs. And then there’s some that, that fall off. So we have about a 75% submission rate, every presentation is there. So my goal, my personal goal is exactly what Shannon said. I want student affairs people to go in and take, you know, yeah. If you want to email me and say, oh, by the way, I, you know, we loved Kent state’s program and we’re taking it. Yup. Steal it, take everything because you know, that’s what students are, you know, these teams are doing. If we’re doing something on food insecurity, we’ll scan the 50 different programs, you might find a complete program. There might be a resource or an idea that you didn’t think of. So that, that’s my goal. I, unfortunately, I don’t have anything unless someone emails me and says, oh, by the way, on this year’s case study or the case study, you did 10 years ago, we borrowed something.

Heather Shea:
That’s great. I mean, this is where having these online resources is really useful. Right. Cause we can all Google and find, but knowing I could go here and here are all these topics that are kind of current issues. That’s great. Dr. Porter, I am really curious if you see any cons to using case studies. One of the things I think I mentioned before we got on the actual recording today is that I wrote a paper with a colleague in my doc program about using case studies. And some of the cons we identified were that when you ask graduate students to pretend like they’re the Dean of students, or pretend like they’re the vice president of student affairs, like those are typically not jobs that people have right out of grad school. Like is the, is, is that, that, that have a utility to it? Or does that create, you know, new professionals that are like, well, I did this case study on how to be a Dean. So now I can go tell my Dean, this is what you should be doing. Right. that was one that was one kind of hypothetical con that we, that we thought of. But what other cons would you say?

Christa J. Porter:
No, I think that’s, that’s really important. Heather is when we’re, and I say we, as administrators, faculties, grad students, we’re working with the undergrads. I think we have to be realistic. Right. And so a few things come to mind is making the case study content specific, right? So content meaning job descriptions. What are folks actually going to be taking up as, you know, entry-level mid-level executive level holding executive positions, but also context, right? For us who are facilitating the case studies is to make sure that folks are understanding of, you know, this case is occurring at a Hispanic serving institution. So this is different because this particular case is happening in an urban area, right. A metropolitan city where the campus is located, how does that make a difference? So content context, but also in the book we really highlight wanting folks to then not use theory as a prescription.

Christa J. Porter:
Right? So just because this particular case study is about this particular student at this particular context, that does not mean that whatever you decide or whatever you resolve to be, the implication does not necessarily mean, right. It doesn’t mean that it should be a prescription it’s going to match every single student at every step. Right. and then the last thing I’ll share is how we really talk intersectionally about student identities, positionalities, right? All of this makes a difference. And so one student who identifies as Muslim in this context is not going to necessarily be the same for another student in another context. Right. And so all of those, I can see those being cons. And so we really push the readers of the texts and the readers of case studies to go further. Right. And that’s where the pros come in. That’s where the opportunity comes in. That’s where realistic sort of nature of case studies come into play.

Heather Shea:
I’m going to stay with you for just a moment, Dr. Porter. Cause I am really curious about this book and we’ll come back to the case study competition. So tell us a little bit about the book. How did you, how did it come about what were some of the things that you were hoping to kind of explore as far as topics how do you see the book being used and, and who are your collaborators on the book?

Christa J. Porter:
So first I’ll shout out to my people, right. Jason Garvey, Jessica Harris, Darris Means and Rosie Perez. So we are a group of five, actually the class of 2017 ACPA emerging scholars cohort.

Heather Shea:
Rockstars, all of you!

Christa J. Porter:
We were it’s an honor, right. To have that title. And so what basically you do is you come together and you decide on various projects to engage. You can work individually. Some folks, you know, have engaged individually, but us, we just, we just meshed. We gelled well together. And we all had some sort of interest in stem development. And so it matched right. Our research strands and all of our themes. Okay. So actually I’m a shout out to Jason because Jason thought of the idea of a book and we said, you know what? All right Jay, cool. We, we go follow your lead in this one. So, so it happened, right?

Christa J. Porter:
So we started the proposal, we talked with our senior scholars and Rutledge, we shot it to Rutledge and they accepted it. Okay. And so what we wanted to do was first get a sense of what other student development theory, books and case studies were out there first. And there’s, there’s some right. So we said, how can we come at it from a different perspective? And that’s where the advancing social justice and inclusion came in is yes. There’s case studies and yes, there’s some development, but how do we sort of advance this idea of equity? How do we include cases and topics relevant to our current day and pushing our field further? Right. So of course we shot out the book, rethinking student affairs, where there, instead of families, they’re looking at sort of perspectives and theoretical lenses, right? And so we wanted to, to gel all of that together.

Christa J. Porter:
And so our book consists of 39 case studies where folks who are authors are doctoral students, administrators, faculty around the country folks were selected. So folks had to submit nominations. They were, and then of course we selected them. And then we as a co-editing team wrote introductory chapters the book is sort of separated into all of the theoretical development sort of family. So, you know, psychosocial identity, racial, gender, but we also include opportunities for further investigation. So what are some emerging trends? What are, how can we look at third culture kids? How can we look at veteran students? How can we look at student athletes, right, all of these student populations that were not necessarily included right. In our sort of understanding of theory. And, and then I’ll share the, what we do and how we want it to be used.

Christa J. Porter:
So we really push readers and students and faculty administrators to, to five things, right? Reflect on how we’ve labeled student development theory. Reflect on the power to create theory. So who controls theoretical assumptions, who controls theory, who creates it? Re-Examined the nature of development. So we talk about growth development, change all as different processes. We examine, we want folks to examine how oppression intersects with student development. So what does Critical Race Theory and racism and sexism have to do with someone who is developing cognitively? Right. All of those are important at the same time. And then finally, we want folks to explore the possibilities of theoretical borderlands. So what does it mean when you have a student who may be right, we want to use Perry or, you know, we want to use you know, Cross’ Nigrescence model. Okay. Well, what does it mean also when they’re going through something around their sexuality? Right. What does it mean when they’re in a predominantly white space that we have racism and sexism and heterosexism going in at the same time. Right. And so we want folks to think about that.

Heather Shea:
I can’t wait to pick up a copy of this book. In fact, I am going to put it on my my shopping cart. I put it in there. Partially because I feel like I love the application to the theories and the other books that I’ve looked at have either focused on ethical decision making and really focused on that lens. Or the topics are all kind of jumbled together. And you have to read through a lot of them to kind of get to that. What would work in this particular class session. So I love it. We’re on Student Affairs Now kind of interested in how faculty come to identifying their, their class structure. So like using cases, I think is something that folks who are watching may be interested in doing it’s going to be a great resource for the field and I’m super excited about the project too. Right. So when the emerging scholars came together and came up with something, that’s, that’s great.

Christa J. Porter:
Shout out to an awesome team.

Heather Shea:
Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, I said, I sent a, I sent the book cover to Kris Renn who, you know, Dr. Porter and I’m like, how did this happen? And she’s like, wow. They were all emerging scholars together that you’re like, ah, I love it. So cool. So Stu and Shannon, tell me a little bit about the history. Well, you talked a little bit about the history of the competition in the past, but what are some of the legacy moments that you would consider and then Shannon, if you could talk a little bit about the case, the specific case that you explored and you talked, you alluded a little bit to this program that you’d love to do, but what was it that you, that you went into? So Stu we’ll start with you and then lay the groundwork and then Shannon can unpack the case a little bit more.

Stuart Brown:
So in preparation for this program, I was just going through all the last 20 years. And what I find interesting is, you know, you’re going back in time, here’s a time portal. So what was big? And so, for example, I think the third year we asked about coming up with a fictional student life website and, you know, and, and, or critique a portal because back then, again, websites were not big offices did not have websites. Schools did not have websites. One year, I think the fifth year it was all about Facebook. So again, Facebook now, but Facebook in 2005 was still new. What were these groups colleges were doing? There was a lot of issues around Facebook. And then let’s say fast-forwarding in the last couple of years talking about food insecurity, bullying. Let’s see, eight years ago, 2, 4, 6, 7 years ago. Really before I think this was as prevalent as it was now welcome put together a presentation for a more welcoming environment for transgender students bullying to over 10 years ago, talking about sexual violence.

Stuart Brown:
So I, I like to think that we are, we’ve been ahead of the curve with some of the issues. And then again, having those students think about it and having to come up with ideas. And I think for even grad students, but you know, really new professionals, mid-level a lot of times, there’s, there’s not a lot of comfort. You might get a phone call or an email. You’ve been appointed to this committee and I need results yesterday. So that’s where I think with the case study where you do have a limited amount of time. I mean, for our case study, I think I give students three weeks. You might not have three weeks. So I think it helps people really come up with ideas in how to work on a schedule while they’re in the sense doing their full-time job. So that’s where I see with the case study and some of the topics, and because we start putting together the case study, it could even be a month ahead of time. It’s like, what is new? So in usually I unveil the case in February, well, in January, there might be this hot button issue that everyone’s talking about. I’m going to write the case study about that. So so I think that really makes it very fresh and hopefully interesting to the students

Heather Shea:
I love the time, you know, the time travel kind of thing, right? Like when that particular issue was, you know, super, you know, hot or timely those end up being, so it’ll be interesting. I’ll go back and take a look and we’re putting that link.

Stuart Brown:
Yeah. And I think it’s, you know, if, if people have time, oh, we all have time, but it is maybe fun to go back and see like what, what were people thinking back then? Because it was so primitive compared to today. So it, it, I think it’s instructive and it also, it could be maybe in a warped way, a little entertaining.

Heather Shea:
Sure. So, Shannon, what was the case that you specifically looked at for the competition this year?

Shannon Karbowski:
Yeah, so this year’s theme was social engagement, so creating an impactful and engaging program or opportunity for, I think it was predominantly for first year students. I think that the focus was you know, cause this year being virtual, a lot of students didn’t have an opportunity to really engage the campus or come to campus. They stayed at home at school, from home work, from home. And so my group and I, we wanted to find, we wanted to create an experience. So we felt like students are missing out on the most this year. And so I supervise our student staff and so look working on housing. I have a team of community assistance that I oversaw, and one of them have been talking to me during one of our one-on-ones. But you know, he was really just like despite everything he says, the one thing that he really missed out on was like studying abroad.

Shannon Karbowski:
And he said that, you know, that trip got canceled for him. Like he was really excited about it. Like it was a great opportunity for him to kind of like get out of his comfort zone and learn something new, meet new people, connect with people whose whose identities don’t necessarily represent yours. And just trying to find ways to like embrace different cultures. And so that really stuck with me cause I heard that a lot from our different students as well. And you know, they, a lot of trips got canceled. They got sent home early. Like I had a friend who was in Italy at the time and they got to come home early. They sent all of them all home, like at the start of the pandemic. And so that really stuck with me and like that kind of overall theme of like cultural engagement or study abroad or something by I was thinking a lot about.

Shannon Karbowski:
And so in meeting with our group, like we were looking at kind of what institutions were doing to kind of fill in that void. And so like what cultural engagements that they were opportunities that they were providing. And I forget what school kind of did it, but they did like a study abroad, like resource fair, where they said like, this is what, like, you can hope for in the, that this is what study abroad looks like, but we didn’t really see a lot about trying to kind of create that experience, you know, like one of the pros of, you know, having the internet and being online. And it’s like, you can connect with people all over the world, you know, through your computer screen. And you know, there’s a lot of negative biases or connotations about like connecting virtually and people don’t want to be in person that’s all valid and real, but there’s still a lot of pros and affordability when it comes with it, just connecting with people over zoom or over video chat.

Shannon Karbowski:
And so that’s what we wanted to do. And so we created a a virtual cultural exchange. And so it’s like a weekend event where we partnered up with an institution in Mexico. So we looked at institution comparisons. And so looking at the University of Nevada Reno, like what was our population what demographics did we have? Like we’re an emerging Hispanic serving institution. And so we have a lot of individuals that like want to learn more about their culture or want to learn more about like where their family comes from or yeah. Stuff such as that. And so we wanted to kind of make it more of a, like a real life type of thing. And so we use like actual or actual institution and used an institution in Mexico, which is our faculty helped us kind of narrow that down of like what type of event, or look what we could realistically provide for students during that weekend.

Shannon Karbowski:
And so, because we had big ideas and they were like, no, let’s tone that down a little bit. Like you’re like, all right. All right. And so, yeah, we made an event where we partnered up hypothetically partnered up with an institution and provided like activities such as like intro to language, like a cooking opportunity where we provide like recipes and supplies or working with like the dining facilities to help create meals for students like different opportunities for socials, like game nights. There’s a lot of virtual games that we could have provided. And then like finding like potentially reaching out to like faculty to also like teach classes about like meaningful conversation, a respectful inquiry, you know, because with first-year students, especially at Nevada where they all come from very rural areas and often don’t have to interact with individuals who don’t represent or who don’t represent them. We wanted to like find ways to make it more like a safe environment for individuals just to learn from each other and get that experience the best we can virtually.

Heather Shea:
Oh my gosh, I love this case. I actually lead an undergrad study abroad and we’ve had to completely abandon our plans last year. And this year we tried to do something similar, but I’m sure you had lots of ideas that would have made our engagement even better. So. Awesome. Well, I love, I love the idea of using this to is kind of an opportunity to, you know, see great examples out there. And so as you reflect, I want to move to the kind of the now what, right. So, you know, you do do a case either in a classroom or as a part of a case study competition. I’d love to hear more from you Shannon about like, how did you reflect upon the experience, what, you know, beyond the, it was great, you know, and we, we got, you know, obviously we’re one, it was such a cool opportunity. Like when you think about you know, the important part of theory to practice it often comes back to this idea that you need to reflect and what are the actions you’re going to take out or do differently. Talk a little about the importance of reflection.

Shannon Karbowski:
Yeah, of course. And so I think I try to like working on these case studies, like in the two that I’ve been a part of, I really try to utilize like what I’ve learned and utilize that experience and try to give it to my student staff as well. I think, you know, student leaders really want to grow and they really want a lot of professional development opportunities to really reflect and engage with each other. And so I kind of made, I do this every year with my staff. So I’m in the two years that I’ve been supervising student staff every year I have them present their own kind of hot topic presentation. And so they get to pick a topic that they’re passionate about, that they feel like are impacting their residential communities, or they feel that it’s impacting on the students that they’re working with.

Shannon Karbowski:
And they do a lot of self guided research and reflection and like use their own perspectives of what they think needs to be re-evaluated or what they think is like being what they think is happening on our college campus. And they present it to each other during our meetings, and then they engage with each other in conversations that reflective conversations. And so I think when I look at what they’ve put on, so they’ve done topics such as toxic masculinity, affirmative action, indigenous support, sexism, as well as accessibility on campus. And it really like seeing them engage with each other on these conversations and seeing how they see things being impacted, like really related a lot to my experience of like self reflecting. And so for me, like, it really allows me to kind of think about when we’re talking about like student populations, for example, or like providing opportunities for students of what students are we talking about.

Shannon Karbowski:
Right. Like, I think it’s really easy to like bring on programming or create programming or opportunities for students that kind of fit that dominant identity group. And we’re not really thinking about like that intersectionality piece that was brought up earlier. And so for this, like when it comes to creating like a study abroad, this study abroad program we wanted to think about affordability too. Like study abroad is, can be very expensive for some individuals that don’t have those specific financial aid or scholarships or financial support. And more often than not, they kind of may not get that same opportunity or that same experience just due to not being able to afford it, which is why we wanted to create this event to kind of be it’s free. So like it would be all funded by us. And so that way students will kind of get that opportunity while it’s not exactly the same.

Shannon Karbowski:
It was kind of some sort of like meet in the middle of that aspect. And so I think when it comes to creating programming and working with students is I really challenged them to think about like what students are programming to, or like what students they’re interacting with and how they can utilize those resources that they found in each other in order to create something that impacts all students, you know, and not just like the dominant student identity population that we work with. And so that’s something that I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on it. I think, especially with the, with these case studies, like the one before this, we talked about like students staff, they want to protest, but they’re also student leaders and represent the university. And so like, what does that look like? Right. And so it’s really just kind of breaking that down and really looking at all aspects like policies and procedures and like current practices that we have, and really trying to find something that we could use to like help support like students at all, like at every aspect of their journey or at every aspect of the career field or passion areas that they have.

Heather Shea:
Wow. I think that was a great summary of the importance of reflection and also how you do it with students. So thank you so much. Case studies are useful beyond classroom though, right? I mean, I think that’s the other piece is how can we take either the cases in this book or the cases that Stu’s group has developed and think about them as tools for professional development or other further conversation. Dr. Porter talked a little bit about the utility beyond professional preparation.

Christa J. Porter:
Absolutely. I think, and I just want to shout out to Stu I’m so grateful for the database. I’m actually gonna pull it right. And think about how we can use in addition to the book. So I’ll say that first. So when we were outlining the book and selecting cases for our book, we wanted to make sure that everything was not one just about undergrads, undergraduate students, that we included cases on graduate students, but we also included cases on professionals, right. And practitioners who are actually engaging in work on campus. And so absolutely the book can be utilized in professional development trainings for folks who are even senior and mid-level management right there, these especially now when racism and sort of sexism and the intersectional approaches to our work and thinking about equity and oppression is in the limelight now.

Christa J. Porter:
Right? Well, it’s always been there, but right. More so in the limelight now because of what’s happening in our country this is, this is prime material, right? This is where you get the experience of what if this was to happened on our campus? What if a student was to interact with the police like this on our campus, right. What if this happened? And so these are great tools and scenarios for folks to actually engage the, what if’s and to not be as reactive, right. To be proactive and to engage, okay. We need to make, maybe we won’t create a necessarily a disaster plan, right. Should something happen due to weather or should a campus shooting happen, but these are some other just as important issues that we need to be able to tackle and to address, should they happen on our campus? And so this is a great opportunity to continue those learnings.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. Stu, what else would you add about using cases beyond grad school?

Stuart Brown:
Well, first of all, I want everyone out there to please use an abused, the database of presentations. That’s what it’s there for. I would love this to be a living document. And and if you want to just email me or say, thanks, that’s fine, but I really want people to use it. And I’ve, I have had faculty that have contacted me in the past and, and they’ll actually make it an assignment. So you know, all of a sudden, I’ll see five teams from a certain grad program I’m thinking, well, maybe that was, which is great. You know, if I can, I can help out. So I think one thing that kind of touches on what Dr. Porter was saying is when we are working in student affairs, yes, we are collaborative. And, but a lot of times we’re in silos or we have jobs and it’s hard.

Stuart Brown:
And I think what the case study does is really helps people start to work together this past year and this summer, even maybe more. So we have been forced to work together. We have all these little groups and committees and subcommittees, and this group reporting to that. Well, maybe the case study gave you some experience over other people because you had to deal with that. And you’ve had to deal with it in a short amount of time. I mean, I was on a sub committee that in one month had to make recommendations, and this was getting a very large group together virtually. So people that had that experience can shine or maybe take a leadership position as opposed to someone who hasn’t had that. So I think that’s something that is very positive about being involved in a case study and taking chances. And, you know, a lot of times, I think I said, previously, you might not be selected because you’re the expert you’ve been selected because there’s nothing, you’re not doing anything right now. And boom, you’re the expert.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. That’s so true. And, and I think your ability to think quickly, right. And do it, do it on the spot. I think that’s one of the muscles that you get to kind of fine tune through, through doing cases. And as Dr. Porter said, thinking through scenarios, because if it’s not like on multiple times, that’s like it’s happening on that campus right now, next it’s going to be our campus. Right. and for folks who have been out of grad school for a while you know, as Vernon Wall said in the episode that we posted yesterday, you know, our physicians, we hope are continuing their education, right, going back. I have a primary care physician and I hope that she is going to the medical conferences, learning the latest tips and tricks on how to deal and, and reading the research.

Heather Shea:
And we in student affairs need to be doing the same and cases. And particularly those that are grounded in the theory and that the foundational documents of our profession help us kind of think more about what we would do. I think it’s a fascinating resource and I’m really grateful for all of our conversations and we always run out of time. We’re wrapping up and we always end Student Affairs Now. With the question, what are you thinking about traveling kind of questioning or what is this conversation sparked for you? Now, so Stu I’m gonna start with you on closing remarks.

Stuart Brown:
Well, if I was doing my case study right now, I would do something about reopening, but that that’s been in my mind. And I think every student affairs person right now you know, what, what’s the fall going to look like as far as reopening plans, masks, social distancing. One thing that was brought up in one of our meetings, which I’ve been really thinking a lot about is the whole nature of virtual work. I mean, in my view, the, the structure of student affairs has changed that we are not going back to pre pandemic, that the virtual realm is here. And a lot of student affairs people are asking, well, how can I work virtually? How can I work virtually? And not only that, but when we are hiring now, our candidates going to be saying, okay, great. You know, I love everything about your school. What’s your virtual working policy. So these are things we have to develop because business is doing this. We have to do it now. We can’t be a passive at this or reactive. So those are the things I’m thinking of. And, and we’ll see next winter when I’m putting together the case study, if this is still out there, then you might see something about virtual work. So you’ve heard it here first.

Heather Shea:
All the, all the grad students out there like, oh, I’m going to start kind of thinking more about that. I would get the prep. Shannon, what about you? What are you thinking about now? Or pondering or questioning?

Shannon Karbowski:
Yeah, I think I want to echo what was said previously. I think, you know, we’ve all spent a year, you know, working from home or being, or like avoiding, not avoiding, but just like making sure that we’re like isolating ourselves, like our own health and safety is also health and safety of others. But I wonder, like what that’s going to look like going into a new normal, like, I don’t think it’s a realistic expectation to expect everyone all at once a hundred percent in person again, you know, like, I feel like we’ve gotten a lot of time to like, create those boundaries and expectations for ourselves of like what screen time looks like of what sitting in an office looks like all day. Right. And so I think moving forward, I think it’s really important. Like for me, like when I’m working with my students, like making sure that, you know, they are finding that balance and making sure that they’re not putting themselves in an opportunity where they’re burning themselves out a lot quicker.

Shannon Karbowski:
And, you know, especially like with classes being in person again and work being in person again, like there’s, we need, I think what’s bothering not bothering me, but troubling me, or what’s gotten to me thinking right now is like, how can we find that balance? You know, that healthy balance of making sure that like our students are feeling comfortable and safe in the work environment that they’re in as well as like professionals, you know, and making sure it professionals mental health is still being like a priority and making sure that we’re not expecting everything to be exactly the same as it was before. And I think, you know, I would want to echo a lot of with, with what Stuart said on that as well. And like, just trying to figure out like how to find that balance and maintain like a healthy work environment for everyone.

Heather Shea:
Dr. Porter, what are your thoughts? Questions?

Christa J. Porter:
Yeah, So I’ve engaged in two sort of lines of inquiry as a result of the global pandemic and all of the racial injustices happening. Right? So COVID for me as well as the past summer has revealed some things, right. So one project is how do we, as minorities specifically, and racially minoritized faculty call out, call in and our institutions who have put out these equity statements and who have put out all of this, I’m going to do this, and we’re going to put money here and we’re going to do this, but yet in practice faculty of color specifically are still engaging in the same type of exploitive labor increased advising loads, right? And so how has the pandemic and the racial injustices really perpetuated and exacerbated what we’ve already experienced this whole time. Right. So we don’t want folks to go back to normal, right?

Christa J. Porter:
So that’s the one project is what does this mean for, for us as black faculty? The other project is what has the global pandemic exacerbated for black women, graduate students and new practitioners. So Laurie Patton Davis, and I, as well as Lawanda ward have put out a national call, a national survey, we were able to get 70 plus participants of black women at various institutions to really talk about the economic injustices that have continued to occur as a result of COVID. Right. And so what does this mean for wage disparities? What does this mean for equity? What does this mean for folks losing jobs, still having children at home and all of these rights? So we’re shedding light on specifically black women graduate students, professional students, as well as new practitioners in our field. And so we have a forthcoming piece coming out, look out for it.

Heather Shea:
I would like to put a pin in that episode as a future topic on Student Affairs Now, because that I think is a really a really critical topic that we, that we need to kind of delve into more deeply. And if there’s a a platform or a way for us to continue to eliminate that through sharing here, I would be thrilled. So I’ll be in touch with you and Dr. Patton Davis and your collaborators. That’s great. So thank you all. This was a fascinating conversation, I think it’s definitely given me some things to think more about regarding case studies and how I want to use them in my classroom and as well as in my professional development. So thank you for your time. Also thanks again to our sponsors, LeaderShape and Stylus. For those of you who don’t know about both of these organizations, let me tell you a little bit about them.

Heather Shea:
LeaderShape partners with colleges and universities to create transformational leadership experiences, both virtual and in person for students and professionals with a focus on creating a more, just caring and thriving world. LeaderShape offers, engaging learning experiences on courageous dialogue, integrity, equity, resilience, and community building. And you can find out more at www.leadershape.org/virtual programs or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Our other sponsor of today’s episode is Stylus. Stylus says that they are proud to be a sponsor of student affairs. Now podcast browse their student affairs, diversity and professional development titles at styluspub.com. And as I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, you can use promo code SANow for 30% off all books plus free shipping. And you can also find Stylus on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter at Stylus Pub a huge shout out also to our production assistant, Natalie Ambrosey for all the things she will do behind the scenes to make our podcast look and sound good. And if you are listening today and not already receiving our newsletter, please visit our website@studentaffairsnow.com scroll to the bottom of the homepage and add your email to our MailChimp list. And while you’re there, you can check out our growing archives. I’m Heather Shea, thanks again to the fabulous guests and to everybody who’s watching and listening, make it a great week, everyone.

Websites: 

https://www.studentaffairs.com/resources/vcs/

Books: 

https://www.routledge.com/Case-Studies-for-Student-Development-Theory-Advancing-Social-Justice-and/Garvey-Harris-Means-Perez-Porter/p/book/9781138610743