Gavin Henning
And I think that’s why there are these, , it’s actually, there’s an inter fascinating article called the Epistemology of Ignorance. Which is really about why we don’t know what we don’t know. And some of it’s intentional, some of it’s not. It’s about, so it’s very, it’s a fascinating, , piece, but it makes me wonder, so why don’t we know some of these things?

It’s because in many ways, , we’re kind of siloed in our disciplines. Once we get into student affairs, we’re not necessarily talking to, to some other colleagues in other areas. Uh, and I’ve learned that we’ve really gotta start pulling some of the knowledge and the resources from other disciplines so we can tap into the stuff that’s been out there forever.

Now, even when we look at the assessment field, even assessment in higher ed is somewhat siloized. If we were to look at some of the evaluation literature, even the equity conversations in evaluation, they happened in the 1930s.

Heather Shea: The recording started, and I always give a shout out to Nat. Hi, Nat. Thank you for being amazing in every way.

All right. Welcome to Student Affairs NOW, the Online Learning Community for Student Affairs Educators. I’m your host, Heather Shea. Today on the podcast, we’re talking about one of the more persistent challenges in higher education, how to turn assessment findings into real sustainable change.

Utilize these findings as a catalyst for innovation, equity, and organizational learning. I’m thrilled to be joined by the editors and two chapter author authors of a new book, maximizing the Impact of Assessment in Higher Education to explore how change management frameworks, student partnerships, and han-centered approaches can help move our work from data to action and make improvements that stick.

Student Affairs now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to higher education and student affairs. For the past five years, we’ve been creating space for meaningful conversations that inform, inspire, and affirm the work of educators everywhere, and we are so grateful to our listeners, our many guests and collaborators who have helped this community grow and evolve.

We hope you find these conversations. Conversations make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. New episodes drop every week on Wednesdays, and you can find us@studentaffairsnow.com, on YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today’s episode is sponsored by the Evolve Institute for Higher Education Leadership, courageous leadership, to reimagine the future of higher education.

As I mentioned, I am your host for today’s episode, Heather Shea. My pronouns are she, her and hers, and I’m broadcasting from the ancestral, traditional and contemporary lands of the NBE three fires, Confederacy of Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Ottawa. Peoples, otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, home of Michigan State University, where I have the pleasure of working.

So we are joined today. Let me bring everybody onto the screen by four folks who. Are the co-authors, editors of this incredible book. So I’m gonna read a short bio on each of them and then we’ll get into the conversation. Welcome back Dr. Gavin Henning. I think this might be episode four or five.

I don’t know. You’ve been on a maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Mostly all focused on assessment, but not exclusively.

Gavin Henning: Yeah.

Heather Shea: So Gavin is the professor of Higher a professor of higher education at New England College. He is also past president of both A CPA and the Council on Advancement of Standards, or cas and Gavin’s current work focuses on integrating e equity into assessment.

Also joining us is Dr. Cindy Cogswell. Hi Cindy.

Cindy Cogswell: Hi Heather. Glad to be here.

Heather Shea: Cindy is an assessment and evaluation professional whose work across multiple institution type centers on strengthening campus efforts to measure and demonstrate impact. Cindy and Gavin were the two editors of this text.

Also today we have Dr. Jennifer NAOs higher education leader With nearly two decades of experience, improving systems, connecting people, and advancing data informed decision making. Welcome to the podcast, Jennifer.

Jennifer Nailos: Hi, Heather. Thanks for having me.

Heather Shea: Finally, Dr. Renee Delgado Riley director of Student Life Assessment and Research at the University of Oregon, a scholar practitioner known for leadership and equity centered assessment, and a recent past president of the Student Affairs Assessment Leaders.

Is it an organization or an association? I can’t recall.

Renée Delgado-Riley: It’s officially a nonprofit. Okay. So we’re a professional organization run by volunteers, but we’re officially a nonprofit, so we’re a formal entity.

Heather Shea: Awesome. It’s so great to have you here. All of you. Welcome to Student Affairs. Now let’s get into the conversation.

I’d love for you to begin with just sharing anything beyond what I just read, and then tell us a little bit about your contributions to this new text. And Cindy, I am gonna start with you.

Cindy Cogswell: Sure. Thanks Heather. Like you mentioned, I work in this space of assessment. I’m currently at New York University in University Life, which encompasses student affairs and some additional wonderful areas of work doing something called data strategy, which most people ask me what does that mean?

And I would say it, it’s really blending and working in the spaces across and between data assessment and planning, and I’m really. Related to the book and what I get to do every day. Interested in how we can use data to not only create artifacts like reports, which are important, but to really drive that learning into change and improvement.

And so with that, I am thrilled to get to co-edit this book.

Heather Shea: It sounds like a perfect demonstration of that skillset and knowledge to have this text as well. Gavin, what about you? What else would you like us to know?

Gavin Henning: So I think it might be helpful to know that I started in res life and then moved into student affairs assessment for a while in institutional research.

And I’ve been doing some academic assessment once I moved into a faculty role. But even though I’ve been doing this for a long time, I virtually knew nothing about change management until. Cindy decided we should do this book. And then I’m like, gosh, I wish I would’ve really known about this when I started doing assessment stuff.

So I had the opportunity to learn from Renee, Jennifer, and some of our other authors, which is great. And I had the pleasure of co-authoring two chapters with friends of mine. So the first chapter on the history of higher education with my friend Aaron Beckham, which was fascinating ’cause we learned that.

Assessment of skills and knowledge actually started in Imperial China. So it’s been around for a long time. And then I co-authored a chapter with my friend Anne Lundquist around positionality and paradigms and the impact of assessment. We’ve been doing some writing and thinking about that for a while, so it was great to collaborate with those two.

Heather Shea: So glad to have you back, Gavin. And shout out to Anne. She’s one of our favorites. Jennifer, how about you?

Jennifer Nailos: Sure. Thanks Heather. So I too like Gavin started in residence life and got interested in asking questions of how, what, who do I need to talk to and how can we make things even better on our campus.

Over the course of my career so far, I’ve had the opportunity to work in academic leadership policy, working for the state. And administrative roles with accreditation and assessment. I’m at the University of Texas at Austin currently in that capacity, and I also had the pleasure of collaborating with colleagues from the university on our chapter, A framework for Measuring Change.

So my colleagues, Jeff, Monique, and Raj we were all situated in different places of the institution and we’re really interested in. So now what, after the report is done. And these really sprung from conversations that we are having here on, on campus and then also with an organization that I’m involved in the Texas Association for Higher Education Assessment, where I served as president about two years ago.

And so really thinking about the community and how do we bring people together to dialogue, discuss, and implement great ideas to benefit our campuses.

Heather Shea: Awesome. So glad to have you here. And finally, Renee.

Renée Delgado-Riley: So excited to be here and I did not start in residence life. I actually got my start in something that was around student affairs assessment that we didn’t really call it, that I was hired on to help understand what our historically marginalized students needed.

Based in evidence-based research and how do we apply that to program development and how do we expand capacity to better serve our students. I started at the University of New Mexico, which I am a ninth, 10th plus generation native, new Mexican. And so it was very bred into me that we serve our community.

And so it was a very easy job to get into, although. Like what folks have said, I wish I would’ve known a lot of things when I got started. And it was like, as I think Gavin said, once, we’re you flying the plane as you’re building it still? And I feel like that’s been the history of my career almost two decades.

And I’m just really excited with this book because I think it’s really really captures the essence of what it means to do this work. Is how are we changing systems and how are we making it better to serve the communities that we. Truly have the moral obligation to serve. And so I got to co-author a chapter with an awesome colleague, Dr.

Alyssa Brooks, Nelson from UNC Charlotte, who is in a similar world director of Student Affairs research and assessment. And really we explored how we take we created a table based on other research from a practitioner approach is how do we take that to frame? The importance of using assessment to influence change within a division of student affairs and what that might look like.

And so we use that framing throughout the chapter to share various case studies, talking about the whole flow of, from the collection of the information, the curiosity, how that manifests into interpretation, and then how do we actually use that to do something with it. And then the secondary, how do we keep learning?

How’s it become an iterative, reflective process? And so I was really excited to contribute to that chapter.

Heather Shea: Oh my gosh. I have so many questions and I wanna go completely off script, but we’re gonna try to stay with the questions today because I think it’s such a important point that you made, that we’re using this to change systems and I think sometimes our campuses get in stuck in a rut of we just need to admit different students, but maybe we actually need to change the system to better meet the needs of those students who we have already admitted.

Gavin Henning: Yeah.

Heather Shea: So Cindy, I’m gonna I’m gonna aim the first question towards you, but anybody else can add into 25 years ago, I, when I started my career in student affairs, I felt like something assessment was not something that we talked about really at all. I like you said, Renee, I don’t think that the word even really was a part of our lexicon.

Today, we talk about it a lot, but I don’t know that we actually use assessment to create and sustain change. And I think our institutions get stuck in that. Like we’re collecting all the data, but what are we doing with it? So I’d love to hear how you were inspired to connect this to change management frameworks and then what kind of gap in the field are you hoping to address with this particular book?

Cindy Cogswell: Thanks for that question. It’s funny that you comment on the use of the word assessment, which we define in the beginning of the book, Gavin, I think it’s in your first chapter. About it coming from Latin for I think a, which means toy aside, right? Because I feel like so many times assessment comes up as this let me look closely at your work. Let’s evaluate you and then let’s like give you a score. And that’s really not the spirit of it. And so I love this work. I will just say I did not rise up from housing.

Heather Shea: I did. I think you’re, there’s two of you though.

Cindy Cogswell: We’ll rally together.

Heather Shea: That’s great.

Cindy Cogswell: But where I stbled into change management is a nber of years ago in my previous role, my previous VP SA vice President of Student Affairs and I were just trying to figure out how to write something together and we were just brainstorming and trying to figure out what would meaningfully help the field.

And it’s Jason Pina and he suggested we use Kotter. He said, I read this every year. Why don’t you read it and see if we could use this? To analyze how successful our restructuring and strategic plan were. So we, they had launched, they had been in effect for a year or two, and we were looking to figure out, like parts of it had gone further and realized themselves more fully than other parts.

And I was reading Otter, I was like, this sounds great. This will be fun. And so we wrote that chapter and it’s out there in the world, but I just couldn’t get enough. So I read Cotter and then I just started digging. I’m like, are there other change management frameworks? And so then I just continued this journey of understanding and exploring different change management theories.

I’ve known Jennifer since graduate school. I might have even asked you at some point saying have you heard of Cotter and anybody else? And I went to an assessment institute one year, and I pretty much went around the whole conference being like, have you considered change management with assessment?

I think something could work here. And so that was just one journey I was on. And then to the second part of your question, I was really stuck on why it is so hard to feed results into action. And when I spoke with colleagues, they too had this issue. It wasn’t an isolated phenomenon. And so either as the assessment person collecting results or as a faculty member or staff person in the work day-to-day, I just kept trying to figure out why is this so hard?

And I wanted to figure out how to get results closer to action and more naturally feeding into either decision making. Or at least having a seat at the metaphorical or real decision making tables. And so what brought this together was just this long held desire to write a book. And I was at a conference and Gavin and I were talking and he said it would be great to write a book together.

And so slowly just at one point it just clicked. Change management could help us close the assessment loop.

Heather Shea: I love that. I feel like the way that get, that, the way that scholarship happens in this field and the way that we bring together concepts is really unique as compared to others.

Like we’re using and bringing in ideas from other sectors, other fields, business change management. And so that’s a great kind of connection that was made. We’re gonna link some of the resources that we share and in addition, of course, to the. The link to the book in our show notes. So folks are like, I wanna read the Kotter book or a chapter or learn about the model.

That would be helpful given that I think most of us are not as familiar at all with these frameworks. So

Gavin Henning: yeah. Heather, I wanna just add on that. Yeah. Because. Even though our field particularly student affairs is in some ways very interdisciplinary. We, pull from social sciences, people come from a lot of different counseling, psychology, sociology, but we don’t look to other fields for some of the literature.

And I think that’s why there are these it’s actually, there’s an inter fascinating article called the Epistemology of Ignorance. Which is really about why we don’t know what we don’t know. And some of it’s intentional, some of it’s not. It’s about, so it’s very, it’s a fascinating piece, but it makes me wonder, so why don’t we know some of these things?

It’s because in many ways we’re siloed in our disciplines. Once we get into student affairs, we’re not necessarily talking to some other colleagues in other areas. And I’ve learned that we’ve really gotta start pulling some of the knowledge and the resources from other disciplines so we can tap into the stuff that’s been out there forever.

Now, even when we look at the assessment field, even assessment in higher ed is somewhat siloized. If we were to look at some of the evaluation literature, even the equity conversations in evaluation, they happened in the 1930s. Few of us were aware of that. And so I think we get stuck in our own scholarship, but we need to figure out how do we tap into some other things and find out what’s out there and how do we learn how do we know what we don’t know?

And then how do we learn the how the information to fill those gaps.

Heather Shea: That’s fantastic. So Renee, I think for me at least, I know I’ve been a part of different assessment efforts or strategic plan assessment efforts or just gathering data in general. We write these reports but then there’s not always, there’s not a lot of actions sometimes.

And so I’m curious about if you can talk about some of the frameworks in the book that help people not just move from findings to reports, but findings to improvement.

Renée Delgado-Riley: I think that’s good. And I think you had originally referenced calling this the assessment report graveyard, which I wanna hone in on that.

’cause I think that’s a really good point of, for me, giving my cultural background here, but a few weeks ago the los like super sacred holiday for me and I had a lot of loss last year. And so for me, I was just, I’ve been doing in a mode of huge reflection lately and thinking about all the forgotten data and abandoned stories that we’re not elevating and telling.

Because there’s hans behind this data, right? These are either students, employees, whatever data we’re collecting, and the fact that it hasn’t been celebrated, or even more importantly, transforms into action always makes me a little sad. But reflecting on this, thinking about the chapter that I was.

Fortunate to contribute to bringing all that back to life. I think the essence, and I actually think woven throughout the book, I wanna give kudos to Cindy and Gavin for doing a really good job weaving, how do we do these things and how does that manifest in action? Because it’s really about the relationships that we’re building.

And that data storytelling which starts long before you even have data. Before it’s even collected is how are we fostering the relationships and leaning into those curiosities that our colleagues need to either, whether they’re telling their impact or whether they’re looking at improvement capacity, whatever those curiosities are, that’s where it begins.

And so going back, reminding us, that’s where it begins, but we know it’s not a perfect world. We’re in assessment and we know sometimes we’re in this scenario, so how do we lean in? And so some of the things we talked about in our chapter, and I’ll just give you some high level things, is the first is assessment is always.

To be focused on continuous improvement. We know that there’s compliance reasons for assessment. We get that, but more importantly, it’s not something you do once and then put it away and not think about, but it’s an ongoing, iterative process and really it’s meant to evolve within your respective organization.

So every department, every division, every organization has their unique culture in what they need. And so your pro process should be customized to the people, and so people think we sit, an assessment practitioner sits behind a computer and does like data all day. No, 99% of my job is meeting with other people hearing, and the questions I ask is.

What’s on your assessment bucket list? What would you like to know or what are you seeing working with students or working with staff that you wanna know more about? And similar to this STOs Holiday is I don’t just create an, there’s a lot of reflection and learning that goes into that, and I’m figuring out what did I not do well and what do I need to do better to honor that reflective holiday?

So you keep adding, it’s iterative. Another thing to think about is. We’re in a different world today where it’s more than just sitting behind a computer and, collecting the information. But we have to empower our colleagues through this assessment culture, this relational piece I’m talking about.

So it’s much more of a collective, collaborative, community oriented piece, and that’s where people start seeing themselves. And so it becomes that co-ownership with that data storytelling. You hear that more and more nowadays because people don’t just act on nbers, whether it’s qualitative or quantitative data.

They act upon something related to other hans. So if we can capture those lived student experiences in a way that empowers some type of action. That’s where we can really like, spark that connection with the colleagues we work with and those key decision makers, or as Cindy said, like the metaphorical decision making table.

And I think what’s really important about that concept, it makes it hard for assessment practitioners now. We don’t just put together pretty reports or dashboards we’re having to inspire. But I think that comes from that collective, conversations with folks. I also wanna emphasize the equity piece.

’cause I would be remiss to say that I think that’s also important as you’re meeting with people and you’re asking questions in a way and collecting data. You’re reporting in a way it’s always. It’s good to go back to folks because we all come with our own set of experiences and it’s gonna influence not just the way we collect, the way we interpret, but also the way we tidy and structure the data all relates to our own experiences.

So taking it back to the people and saying Hey. Does this make sense? Am I missing something? I think that’s also a part of the equity centered practice that can be coupled with this empowering people to make act actions. ’cause it’s more than just a report. So I think a way to move to improvement starts way before you even collect the data, is reimagining this place together with your colleagues, what they need, what they want to know, what their curiosities are, because how do we connect the data?

To the han stories to ultimately commit that we’re all on the same journey together to change the system and make it better. Or maybe it’s working for some students, let’s celebrate that, but then let’s figure if it’s not working for other students, what do we need to do to shift? So our chapter really gives a lot of great case studies on how to, that might go into practice around different concepts, whether it’s student wellbeing.

Career readiness even. We even added in a campus climate employee engagement piece. ’cause a lot of us as assessment practitioners also oversee employee engagement data. And so it’s just another thing to do that we can figure out how to share with our colleagues who don’t know where to start. But I would always say, begin with your why.

Why do you do this work? And how do we help our colleagues along that continu?

Yeah.

Heather Shea: That’s great. I I’ve also been thinking it’s like we are, assessment can be used for improvement. It can also be weaponized. And we’re gonna now use this data to shut down something. So that’s not a question.

I just was making that observation. Yeah. But I do, yeah. I do think it’s an interesting kind of flip on it too, because improvement isn’t the only thing sometimes people collect before, right?

Jennifer Nailos: If I may jp on that, Heather. Yeah. That is something that I had written down risk in data collection as a thought there of what also what Renee is talking about with community building and relationship building and our roles is thought.

When. Assessment practitioners are engaging with our colleagues. The aim is for them not to be scared when an email from this comes, when we ask can we meet it, it should not be a fear-based relationship. And I think part of that is that trust building and relationship building with colleagues but also trust building of what is this information gonna be used for?

And if. If the, if sunsetting a program is improvement oriented because now we’re gonna do this.

That’s a different type of discussion than you didn’t do a good job, so you’re done. And so having those conversations early and having having the people closest to the impact of the data aware of.

How things are going and being involved in that process so that nothing should be a surprise to them. And having that engagement early is so important. And I would echo what re Renee’s had shared that a lot of the role is engaging with colleagues. It is relationship building. It is.

Building so that, in those few instances where there are discussions or conversations that are tough or difficult folks are aware of your intention and are aware already of the information or data that you’re discussing.

Heather Shea: Yeah, I think what I’m hearing you talk about is really how to hanize the process of data collection, but then using that to improve the organizational culture as well.

And I think sometimes we get looped in with the compliance part of data collection. What do we need to be able to report to the feds or, I can say more about that, but I won’t. About what do we need to be able to tell our story? And so how do we move towards that kind of shared process where assessment isn’t just a compliance task, but really about learning and care and growth.

Jennifer, do you wanna pick up on that?

Jennifer Nailos: Sure. Yeah. I was smiling in my head and with my eyes in agreement on there. Yeah. Organizational culture is one of the things I get super excited about. I. Like to talk about traditions and artifacts and behaviors and values and how that manifests.

It might be because I have always been at large organizations, so it’s like, how do you make it more personal and how do I feel a connection at a the campus I’m at now has over 50,000 students alone, so how do I find friends? And thinking about the things that bring us together. So hanizing our environment and.

So the first thing I’m thinking about with organizational culture is that it is created by and for the people that are part of it, and we either tacitly or explicitly agree to participate or perpetuate those elements.

And we have an active role in the culture that we’re. Entering into or engaging with or shaping.

And so I think that’s important to, to center our autonomy and decision making and power within any group that we’re part of. When that comes into connection with assessment. And thinking about, this question of why are we doing this? What is this for? Of one of the questions when I’m meeting with folks, I ask them what information will help you?

Better serve students, work better in your role, contribute to the mission more. Those are the type of things that we wanna be looking at for continuous improvement. And for you to feel that this is a worthwhile endeavor that helps shift in my experience. That has really helped shift from scrambling to write a report in the smer to actively engaging with information of more of, oh.

Not a, I have to, but I get to, or isn’t this interesting? And I wanna keep asking more questions. And so that is part of the hanizing aspect that I have seen our chapter focuses on. Proposing a framework that builds on the shoulders of giants in the field of saying, we have these processes to gather the information, to make decisions, and to have points in time that we’re able to see.

What did we want to happen? What did we change? How did it go? And our chapter talks about and then what? And so we propose looking at people, processes the outcomes and the culture to see not only just how did it go, but how is it continuing to sustain itself if these changes that you’re trying to implement are.

Something you want integrated into the organization, that continuous observation and sustainability is really important. And we posit, we have some statements that we pause it. And the first one is the importance of the people, the importance of the people at the center and the relationship to everything else that’s occurring.

And so we drive that home that we’re in higher education. Because we want to equip knowledge and skills and have improvement for our community’s lives and wellbeing. So the people are always the first the first on the list. The first in mind.

Heather Shea: Yeah. I think central in that group of people are students, right?

Yep. I love the way that this book centers students as a part of the process and creating assessment as a tool for equity. So Renee, I am gonna turn back to you as you’ve worked with folks and have, as you’ve engaged with people on your campus or elsewhere. What are some of the ways that you’ve seen practitioners bring students into the work of assessment change?

And this is different than just we want you to be a part of a focus group so that we can build a new first gen center. Like how do we really make them partners? And if folks are listening and want to do more of this work in engaging students, what advice would you have?

So what works? And then how do we get more students engaged?

Renée Delgado-Riley: I appreciate that we’re centering students because they’re the reason we’re here. And I think that as we think about assessment as this community driven approach, it’s not just working with our colleagues who were with students or indirectly with students.

But it’s also working with our students because there are hans and they’re evolving. And if we’re not responding to their evolving needs and involving them, we’re gonna become like not viable in the future, in my opinion. So I think there’s a couple of different ways to approach this. Instead of just doing the ad hoc, or, Hey, some person in the community complained about this, so we’re gonna explore this and create a task force. I think it’s important to bring students in at all aspects of the co-creation of things, whether we’re developing a new survey or a focus group. One thing that.

A couple weeks ago when we were at the Assessment Institute, one of my colleagues in our data storytelling workshop, we probably had a hundred people in there, he said, who actually shares assessment results back with students or involves them? No one raised their hand. So I think it’s happening.

But I think we could do better, right? So it’s not just involving them in the co-creation, but it’s also letting them help shape the questions. Because I know a lot of the times when I meet with students, I’ll hear a perspective and then it’ll help me think about something a little bit different because I’m valuing and validating their experience.

Something that I’ve seen at some other institutions is people have student data or student assessment ambassador programs where they start working with undergraduates and bring them into the process to help with doing focus groups. I know some colleagues at Bowling Green do that, and I think it’s a really great model to have that shared ownership.

Our office has a graduate level internship where we give graduate students who have this wonderful background in data and analytics and qualitative methods, but they’ve never actually worked with real world data or actually worked with data to actually change the system. And so we give ’em money to do that.

And that’s also something I think too, and we’re working with students. Just understanding the context of basic needs and the economy. I won’t. Say too much about that. I think we all have our fills about that, but our students are really struggling in a lot of ways. And so how when we are centering them in this process, making sure that we’re being equitable and paying ’em.

Yeah. And so one of the things I have in place in our office is we give our students cards that they can use on campus for a meal, and we always frame it even when we. Invite them to participate. We say, you’re gonna get this much in duck books. This is enough to buy a male at so and because we’re all about feeding them. It’s really important for us. And so when we think about working with students, don’t just exploit them and use ’em. Also give them something. And of course they’re learning, right? I think if we have more structured programs that work with students in an internship or an ambassador program, we’re giving them the skills and knowledge.

But I still think it’s important. If we think about driving that long-term change, we wanna also pay them. ‘Cause I don’t think that’s fair. I also think always sharing data back to the students. I wouldn’t say we’re great at it. We do it in different. Places specifically for our historically marginalized students.

I tend to do it a little more often, and that’s my own bias that I will admit is I’m in a predominantly white institution. These are small in sizes. They’re not always represented well with the big surveys, so I wanna make sure we center their voices, but particularly our students who are parents is a really small population on our campus, and they’re overlooked.

And so anytime we do our needs assessment on student parents. I always send it back to parents and say did we represent your voice? Do you see yourself in these results? Is there anything we missed? And if we did, you wanna have a connection so you can share with us, here’s the link to the survey again, or, Hey, I’m always happy to have buy you a cup of coffee on campus.

And I can’t tell you how many students I’ve met through that process.

Who’ve now are like, Hey, I wanna do more of this work. And then I’m able to connect them to other resources on campus. And so to me that makes me really excited that we’re able to connect in that way. And so I think in some, making it more relational, of course, not just extending the things that we do with our colleagues to do this work, but centering the students in that work, not exploiting them, making sure that we’re paying them for their contributions and reinforcing that culture of continuous improvement is really.

Making sure we’re constantly asking the questions, did we do them justice and are they represented in this report? And I know that’s hard. Depending on different populations, depending on different states. Right now with all the federal legislation, I get that’s not feasible in some places and locations.

And I know that’s a real struggle for a lot of our colleagues who are doing this work, is they’re really much prevented from doing that. But how can we center their student success because we’re here for our students. They’re paying a lot of money. They’re sacrificing years of their life to invest in themselves.

We need to also invest in them. And I have kids who are in this age category, traditional age college students, and they are not the same students that I was measuring even just 10 years ago. So we have to continually lean in and hear from them, and students love to be involved in the process. I don’t think I have one incident where a student was angry about me reaching out to them.

I think they really, they feel voice and agency and when we give that to them, they wanna be part of the solution. And I do find, just anecdotally in my work with students over my last nine years here, is they get more invested in the system. And so that’s a really cool kind of thing. Maybe that’s a research project in of itself.

Yeah,

Cindy Cogswell: I wanna jp in. Just to add, one of the things that we just did like last week was to check the face validity of what we thought was a good question or a good phrase. We checked it and I said, does. Does the office downstairs have student workers working right now? Could we just go ask them if, when they read this, it means the same thing we want it to read, and then that way they’re compensated and it’s within the scope of their job.

But no, we had to change it. And I’m glad we got that feedback because we were checking against, our current student student population, if they understood it the way we wanted them to understand it. And we work to bridge that gap. Another thing that I will bring up sometimes from my work in student affairs is to think through every phase.

Of the assessment cycle. So design, research, questions, analyses, interpretation, moving the results into action, and see if you can embed some sort of student check into every part of that. It might not always be feasible for everything. We have a lot of projects going on that’s not always possible, but could you at least catch involving students in a couple of those or bucket them so you’re doing it for a couple of instrents at the same time?

Might be practical, easy steps into it.

Jennifer Nailos: Yeah, I’d like to jp in. I think this is the question that we’re all super enthusiastic about of student voice, student agency, student advocacy. One of the things that I’ve seen at my institution because of the size of it, is that there are many, student serving units that are conducting assessments and asking for information or engaging students. And sometimes it’s the same students that are answering a lot of these questions. And so there is this sort of tax that’s happening, especially for specific populations. And one of the strategies we started to see is, inter office sharing of information, like obviously disclosing how information will be used, but if a student has already answered this question for office A, why is office B asking the same thing to solve a similar problem? And so really being mindful and respectful that we’re we all wanted. Do a great job and get this information, but we could collaborate on the on the staff and faculty side.

And to further Renee and Cindy’s points about. The different time periods of an assessment cycle to engage students is that for those of us that are organizationally maybe closer to the top or in, in those fancy rooms, is to bring an extra chair and to bring students to the table with the folks with the big titles because that.

Is a unique opportunity to be there sharing results or to talk strategy or to address questions or problems and have student voice yet again, like physically in the room.

Heather Shea: That’s great. That’s a great segue actually to my next question because I think when I think about our audience of student affairs now, it’s not always the folks who have.

Either the power or the institutional influence and other ways to impact, what the assessment practices are. And Gavin, I’m really curious as you think about people who are coordinators or faculty like you or other types of mid-level managers, what advice would you have for folks who are trying to use assessment?

As the lever to create the type of change that they wanna see, but from that kind of middle of the organization stand standpoint.

Gavin Henning: Yeah. So I think back to my time coordinating student affairs assessment for divisions. And one of the biggest challenges was I didn’t have legitimate power. I couldn’t tell them to do any of this.

And fortunately, I did some graduate work in sociology and I learned about Raven in French’s, sources of Power, and this is written back in 1959, but they talked about everybody has an organization, have different types of power, so there’s the legitimate power, i’m the vice president, so I have power which really only matters in staff.

’cause when you’re on the faculty side, you can’t really tell faculty view anything. It’s really like hurting heads. And then there’s the other pieces like about referent power. So I have a connection, so when I was a director of student affairs assessment, I was connected to the vice president.

So I had their ear. There’s information of power. You have the data. Around that. And then there was that expert piece too. Like you were the considered the expert. So those are the types of influence that I could tap into when I didn’t really necessarily have the legitimate power to tell people like, you should really need to do that.

And I think beyond that, it was just, they’re just personality traits. We all know people who are really charismatic. Like you would sit and talk with them forever and they, if they asked you to do something, you go, yeah, I’ll do it right now. And so I think doing like an influence audit. Might be really helpful to figure out what types of influence do I have access to, either in my role, who I am, my knowledge, or my expertise.

It, can be really helpful to me, that’s the first part, and as we all talk about, it’s this assessment’s not about data necessarily. It’s about people. And I think sometimes we forget about that. Even when we think about organizational change. I can’t remember if it was Jennifer or Renee said this.

People make up those organizations. So if we’re gonna think about change, we’ve gotta figure out how do we get people to figure out change? And that’s what I’ve found really helpful about some of the theories mentioned in the book is ’cause that hanization is part of that it, some of those theories.

It’s really about keeping in mind that hans are the people who do the change. Within these organizations. And it’s also that, there are psychological reasons for people wanting to do change or not wanting to do change. I’ve got a daily routine if that daily routine gets screwed up, my whole day’s screwed up.

And just imagine thinking about other types of change. And Jennifer mentioned sun setting programs. When people create programs, they’re invested in those and sometimes it’s hard to let it go, even though the data suggests. And maybe we should use our resources other ways. So I think it’s really helpful to build those relationships so they, you can begin to learn from folks what might be, is there a high propensity for change?

I’m always up for improvement, even if it’s about, stopping programs I’m involved with. But that’s not true for everybody for a lot of different reasons. And I think the other issue around change is what I’ve seen in other organizations is perceived lack of power.

If people in offices feel like they have no power, they’ll hoard that data.

They won’t share that data because that’s the only type of power they have. But building those relationships and getting to know these people are ways to figure out some of that team. And then working with shared goals, there are people that are doing different things across the institution and they may not know somebody else is doing that.

And one institution, we had, I think, six different offices focusing on leadership development. Once we started bringing them together, I’m like, oh my gosh, we could actually maybe create a divisional goal around leadership development. And that helped coordinate things and helped build a critical mass where we could actually foster some change.

And I think the final thing, couple, two more things I’d mentioned is breaking some of the change steps up. Change is scary. It’s overwhelming, but can we break those up and chunk those out into smaller steps which seem more manageable, celebrate those when those steps are achieved, and then building structures and processes to move those steps along.

So it’s really thinking about how do we shape the path. Danny Chip Heath wrote a book on maybe 10 years ago now called Switch. So how do you change culture when change is difficult? And they talk about, one of those things they talk about is how do you make it easier for people? I think for those of us doing assessment work, we can create those templates.

We can create those resources to make that process a little bit easier.

Heather Shea: That’s great. I I’ve been thinking about this a lot because, I think change is one of the things that is indeed constant within, our society broadly, but specifically within higher education. And I think once you start making change.

There is, there are people who are like, I’m here for it. Let’s just keep going. And then there’s others who are like, can we just go back to the way it was, right?

So Cindy, I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about that once this has started. How do you keep the moment going and how do we build.

The culture within the institution, so we’re not just reacting once a year, right? Like the reports are due and we’re like, oh, yay. Once a year. To what do we do to do that kind of more holistically, continuously, and then really focus on the learning.

Cindy Cogswell: Sure. How do we solve this? Yes. In thinking about this.

I really stepped back to consider how do we shift to this culture of continuous learning like we’ve been talking about and digging into during this time together. And it’s what we’ve said, shifting from compliance to curiosity, creating lower stakes environments to reflect, to ask questions, to make it safer, to have a learning that might not be phenomenal, that might even be at face value.

Quote, bad. I’m not challenged by quote, bad data. I’m encouraged by learning something new that I didn’t know before. It’s the then shifting into how do we do something with this? Celebrating the learnings and not just success stories, but also when we do need to pivot or when we do pivot or rethink an approach.

And so to the part of your question about creating systems or environments where we learn and adapt continuously, I know one thing that’s changed. As a result of diving into this deeply with all these wonderful contributors here and co-editor is we’ve shifted our reporting process entirely. We changed it through some conversations and listening from leaders about pain points in our own processes to stack up the deadlines so that they all.

We’re do at the same time. And then we shifted it so that it aligned better with the rest of their work life calendar, because for many assessment is something that gets fit in the margins.

And so we tried to shift as best as we could to the moments that were more convenient for everybody.

And I was just changing some language to say if anybody. From myself or my graduate assistants gonna help make this any bit easier. Please let us know. We can extract the data and do what we can to make it more available. And then just one other idea I had about this learning and adapting continuously is that as I’ve tried to drive results into decisions and decisions back into results, I see it as this ying yang, like when we’re faced with a decision moment, can, what data is readily available that speaks to it, that we can look at to have it help inform our decision making? And then conversely, when we’re writing reports or arriving at new findings or insights, can we. Have a conclusion concluding section in them that says, these are the recommended next steps.

It might be finding out more. It might be sharing this report with somebody else, but at least walking the data to that point so that both of them are queued up for what the next right thing is.

Gavin Henning: I would just add a couple of things. One is I think re-shifting the way we think about assessment.

’cause we talk about cultures of assessment, we talk about cultures of evidence cultures of informed or information or data driven or data informed decision making. But Jeremy Penn has a great chapter on systems thinking and learning organizations, and I stbled across learning organization literature a few years ago.

But Jeremy’s chapter really reminded me that. There is some really great stuff in that. And if we begin thinking about how do we create learning organizations, we pull into that hanism piece of it, we pull in that curiosity. We put, pull in this value of improvement and how do we do things better, more efficiently, more effectively for students?

And I think that lowers the stakes as, and he said, then, if they’re, if the data are bad. That’s okay. Because I’ve actually seen vice presidents who put resources towards programs that, where the results weren’t great because they thought there was value in that. The initiative was built on research and scholarship.

They’re like, okay, let’s resource this a little bit more and see if we can make it happen. And so I think if we were able to really think through what does the learning organization look like and build those systems to foster that we’re more likely to actually foster change. We have to build, some of those structures and processes like Cindy talked about.

We’ve gotta remember that it’s about people, as Jennifer mentioned. And we have to also thinking about that equity piece to make sure whose voices are actually. Heard because sometimes it tends to be the directors or the people who are on those deans and directors meetings. And it’s not the person who’s working the front desk in the career center office who probably has learn, hears everything about the students who come into that office.

So we need to really think about that stuff. But I also think about the demonstrating, communicating the change piece. ‘Cause Renee mentioned that we don’t tell students often what we did with the data. Why would you wanna contin, cont continue to be part of that process if you don’t know how those data are used.

And so I think that and then there’s a great chapter on that as well, thinking about how important it is and what are the ways to do that.

Heather Shea: That’s great. I think we’re at the point in our episode where I’m always like, I could just keep talking and asking more questions. Yeah. But we’re out of time.

We always end episodes on the podcast with a similar question. Doesn’t always have to be the exact question, but I am really curious, and this can be related to our conversation today or related to anything else. Our podcast is called Student Affairs. Now we always like to. Ask, what are you thinking about pondering, troubling now.

And if you would like to share how folks can get in touch with you, whether that’s LinkedIn or elsewhere you can also feel free to mention that as well. Renee, I’m gonna start Final thoughts with you.

Renée Delgado-Riley: I think just something to smarize, what I’m feeling listening to all my amazing colleagues talk today is that this closing the loop isn’t a finish line.

It’s a continuous process. It’s a beginning and end. It’s a cycle of reflection, dialogue, relationship building. And so how do we continue to honor the c. That we serve. And I think our awesome colleague here, Jennifer said it, it’s created by and for the people in the community. So how do we continue to do that?

Because when we approach assessment from this han focus lens. It’s more than a reporter or a process, it’s ultimately a living story. We’re hans, we’re dynamic. We’re constantly living and breathing. So that invites us to listen, to act, and get inspired. And I think, hearing these influence audits and hearing like data-driven decision, making and all these pieces, it really comes down to the people.

And sometimes we get in our own way. So that’s also something I wanna leave people with is sometimes we get in our own way. So how do we get out of our feelings, out of our egos? We’re hans. We all have egos. So how do we get out of the way and refocus and reshift on how are we honoring the stories behind these nbers that are in this process of assessment, continuous improvement?

And I’ll just say, feel free for anyone to reach out. I am on LinkedIn and always happy to chat more about this han-centered approaches.

Heather Shea: Thank you so much, Renee. It’s great to have you on the podcast. Jennifer, I’m gonna go to you next. Give us your final thoughts, what do you think about pondering, et cetera, and then if you have a way for folks to get in contact with you on LinkedIn or elsewhere.

Jennifer Nailos: Sure. I’m always thinking what’s next? Who’s not in the room yet and how do we get them there? And what are we gonna do with the information that we have? When we started we were talking about moving from a report to engaging with information. And I also think a lot about assessment is opportunity to gather information and make change in real time, and particularly for our students, like hopefully.

They leave because they’re, they’ve completed their credential, they’re off to do great things in their lives. And so when we have that information to use it right away and to make those changes make those growth opportunities. So I’m thinking about increasing the speed of action and how do we empower faster decision making.

And then continuing to encourage folks to ask those important questions time after time. I also am on LinkedIn and love to hear great ideas and suggestions that folks have at their institutions as well as problems that they’re grappling with and look forward to learning from colleagues across the country.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Gavin, how about you?

Gavin Henning: So mine’s a little bit different. I am pondering professional development and continuing education in the field. Because I’m really wondering if the, if we’re preparing folks and particularly some of that continuing education. I think back to, my program that I was in, I graduated in 1993, so nothing I think I learned at that point is relevant today.

But I think about the programs are direct and also having been involved in cast and leading. Three revisions of the professional preparation standards. Really wondering, do we are we thinking broad enough? ’cause I go back to this idea of this epistemology of ignorance. We don’t even know what we don’t know and how do we not know that?

And I think about, a lot of organizational administration and org courses. They talk about functional areas. We don’t talk about change management necessarily. And I’m, I also wonder are the API NASPA competencies sufficient? Do we need to think outside of those? I think those are great guides.

But I begin to wonder. How do we tap into some of these other disciplines to help us do our work? Not just for people who are going into the field, but for those of us who’ve been in the field for a long time, we gotta continue to upskill because like you mentioned how the field is changing and it’s more, it’s ever been more uncertain than right now.

And we need to learn how to adapt and keep up. And so I think we need to begin to tap into some of these other disciplines to learn how to do that. And it is even the structure. The traditional structure of professional development, preparing new professionals or continuing professionals to do the work we really need to do to support students.

Heather Shea: That’s great. Thanks so much Gavin. Cindy.

Cindy Cogswell: Yes. So our president launched a strategic plan called Student Flourishing, and I am just in the day-to-day work of understanding how belonging plus purpose plus wellbeing equals flourishing for our students and also all the narratives behind that. So just.

Data collection and understanding it, it’s fun. It keeps my mind occupied, which I enjoy. And then we’re doing a big survey in the spring and so working through just the details of how do we get a great response rate at this day and age. So that’s where I’m at. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m by Cynthia Cogswell over there.

Heather Shea: Alright.

Gavin Henning: Oh, I, my LinkedIn is, I forgot to mention that.

Heather Shea: We will, we’ll find you all. I am so grateful to all of you for being here today, sharing about this new book. I’m excited to just have it be out in the world because I think the ideas are really fresh and as you all have mentioned, brings together a lot of different perspectives and ideas.

So thank you so much. So I wanna just really quickly before we wrap up the episode today, appreciate my incredible producer, Nat Ambrosey. She does everything behind the scenes to make us look and sound great. Thanks Nat, for all you do. We are also deeply grateful for our sponsor, the Evolve Institute of Higher Education Leadership.

Evolve is evolving. Dr. Brian Arao, Don Lee, and our own Keith Edwards are excited to announce the Evolve Institute for Higher Education and Leadership. Evolve offers leadership coaching journeys for executives, emerging executives, and emerging leaders, as well as a specific leading for equity focused cohort.

If you’re ready to evolve your leadership team or invest in your own personal leadership. They would love to connect with you to talk about their in-person, hybrid and online modalities to evolve your leadership for us all. As I said at the beginning, we’re marking five years of student affairs now, and we are especially grateful for the way that this community of listeners, guests, and collaborators has grown.

Over the years. We’ve hosted hundreds of conversations like this one. And so if you found this to be meaningful or useful for you today, please definitely share it with your colleagues or with your network. And if you have ideas for future episodes, please do reach out. To myself. I am also on LinkedIn or Keith Edwards or any of the hosts, and we’d love to be in touch with you and talk.

If you’re tuning in for the first time please do join our newsletter. Every week on Wednesdays we send a short newsletter just sharing what the newest episode is and some related episodes from our archives. Once again, I’m Heather Shea. Thanks for listening. Thanks to everybody who’s been a part of today’s episode and all the future and past ones, and here’s the next five years and beyond.

Websites:
A Conversation with the Co-Editors of a New Routledge Book on Assessment and Change Management. (September, 2025). Leading Improvements in Higher Education.

Book/Article citations: 

Cogswell, C., & Henning, G. W. (Eds.). (2025). Maximizing the impact of assessment in higher education: Closing the loop with change management. Routledge https://www.routledge.com/Maximizing-the-Impact-of-Assessment-in-Higher-Education-Closing-the-Loop-with-Change-Management/Cogswell-Henning/p/book/9781032649085

French, J.R.P. and Raven, B. (1959). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social power (pp. 150-167). Institute for Social Research. http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/the_bases_of_social_power_-_chapter_20_-_1959.pdf

Jankowski, N. A., Baker, G. R., Montenegro, E., & Brown-Tess, K. (2021). Student-focused learning and assessment: Involving students in the learning process in education. Peter Lang, Inc. https://www.amazon.com/Student-Focused-Learning-Assessment-Involving-Education-ebook/dp/B08WXFC7JF/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1N2HTIXJ21065&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y2zEZnEZE-Hq9nOLF9DzqGtB24jlRTnMEhjPIgaqZa6fz8X8mB8daekV-HIgmKzBdgnspVwrX-eo-BVUKEIuZg.R_ObVaGVVQqsGrVwgKZWtp7oK6TgbsogtTIFHpk-s3k&dib_tag=se&keywords=Natasha+Jankowski+student&qid=1763066271&sprefix=natasha+jankowski+student%2Caps%2C104&sr=8-2

Add Kotter chapter or article

Kotter, J. P. (2012). Leading change. Harvard Business Review Press.

Stockly, Olaf Dana Thomas. (2011). The epistemology of Ignorance. Anthós, 3(1), Article 5.

https://doi.org/10.15760/anthos.2011.33

Maki, Peggy. (2025). Humanizing assessment reporting: Challenging prevailing reductionist approaches. Journal of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness, 14. 149-183. https://doi.org/10.5325/jasseinsteffe.14.1-2.0149