Oct 31, 2024
Exploring Institutional Intelligence and Student-Centric Approaches
In the latest episode of NASPA's SA Voices From the Field, Dr. Jill Creighton welcomed Dr. Michelle Boettcher, an associate professor at Clemson University, to discuss a range of pertinent topics in higher education. With a rich background spanning nearly 20 years in residence life, various administrative roles, and extensive academic experience, Boettcher brings a wealth of knowledge to the conversation. This episode, delves into the nuances of institutional intelligence, ethical considerations, and the essential focus on student-centric practices in higher education.
Bridging Law and Ethics: The Minimum Baseline
Dr. Boettcher emphasizes a crucial distinction between meeting legal standards and upholding higher ethical standards. In one illuminating example, she discusses an accessibility issue where a building at Clemson University housed both office space and an honors residential community on the first floor. Although the building was ADA-compliant, the arrangement limited accessibility accommodations to honors students only. Boettcher argues that this situation, while legally acceptable, raised significant ethical concerns. She underscores that legal frameworks should serve as a foundational baseline, and institutions should strive to go beyond mere compliance to embrace more inclusive and ethical practices.
Unpacking Institutional Intelligence: A Framework for Change
One of the key highlights of the episode is the exploration of "institutional intelligence," a framework co-developed by Boettcher and Salinas in their new book Law and Ethics in Academic and Student Affairs Developing an Institutional Intelligence Approach, and is designed to understand campus culture and decision-making comprehensively. This approach integrates three main components: law and ethics, the institutional environment, and decision-making processes. Boettcher elaborates on how this model assists practitioners in navigating institutional culture, underpinning decisions with historical context, and fostering positive institutional change. By employing reporter-like questions—who, what, where, when, why, and how—this method helps gather and analyze vital information, ensuring well-informed decision-making.
The Core of Ethical Practice: Human-Centered Policies
Boettcher's commitment to student-centric approaches shines through as she emphasizes the importance of keeping students at the center of all institutional efforts. Drawing inspiration from Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dynamic view of law, she illustrates the need for adaptability and responsiveness in student affairs. Boettcher's approach is grounded in balancing control and care, aiming to build more collaborative and engaging environments for students. She also highlights the increasing recognition of student affairs professionals and their critical role in managing various campus scenarios, from everyday operations to crisis situations.
Practical Applications and Reflective Practices
Throughout the conversation, Boettcher stresses the significance of practical applications and reflective practices. Whether it’s onboarding new staff, managing crises, or implementing change, the institutional intelligence framework serves as a guiding tool. Boettcher also touches on the importance of taking time to pause and reflect, referencing mindfulness practices as a metaphor for the long-term benefits of reflection in professional settings.
Merging Law, Ethics, and Practicality
This episode of NASPA's SA Voices From the Field underscores the intricate balance between legal obligations and ethical responsibilities in higher education. Dr. Michelle Boettcher's insights remind us that effective student affairs work hinges on understanding and navigating institutional culture, centering student needs, and committing to continuous reflection and improvement. Her practical, human-centered approach offers valuable guidance for educators and institutions aiming to foster more inclusive and ethical academic environments.
Listeners are encouraged to provide feedback, suggest topics, and leave reviews to help SA Voices From the Field continue reaching a wider audience with such impactful discussions.
TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Student Affairs Voices From the Field, the podcast where
we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to
seasoned experts. Brought to you by NASPA, we curate free and
accessible professional development for higher ed pros wherever you
happen to be. This is season 11, the past, present, and future of
student affairs, and I'm doctor Jill Creighton, she, her, hers,
your essay voices from the field host. Today on Essay Voices, we're
welcoming doctor Michelle l Batcher, sheherhers. Doctor Batcher
studies the overlap of student affairs and higher education
practice with policy, law, and ethics. She examines how these areas
intersect in the areas of career decisions, diversity, equity,
inclusion, access, and belonging, popular culture, residence life,
the scholarship of teaching and learning, and work environments.
After working for nearly 20 years in residence life and student
conduct, she's now an associate professor at Clemson University in
the student affairs and higher education graduate program. She has
a great job, enjoys life as well as work, and is the luckiest
person she knows.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:01:00]:
Michelle, welcome to SA Voices.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:01:02]:
Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here and have some
conversation today.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:01:06]:
And while we are here primarily to talk about your new ish book,
which is Law and Ethics in Academic
and Student Affairs Developing an Institutional Intelligence
Approach, which you coauthored with doctor
Christabel Salinas junior, we always wanna start our shows by
getting to know our guests. So can you tell us how you landed in
your current seat at Clemson?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:01:25]:
Absolutely. So I'll go back to undergrad. I was an RA. And when I
graduated, I said I would never live in a residence hall again.
Then I went to grad school, and I worked in housing for almost 20
years. So just don't say never. I did that, worked different
places. My undergrad's Iowa State.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:01:47]:
My master's was University of Arkansas. I was at the University of
Cincinnati. I took a year and well, first after that I was at Ohio
University and then I took a year. Because when you work in
housing, you don't always have time to think about, do I wanna stay
in this work because you're just busy all the time? And I worked at
a public radio station for a year in California, which was very
fun. And then decided, yeah, higher ed is my thing. I was at
Dartmouth for a semester and then moved back to Iowa, which is
where I'm from. Went back to Iowa State for a practice interview
and was there for 12 years. So I was there for 5 more years in
housing and then right before my current position, I was an
assistant dean of students and director of student conduct.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:02:35]:
And I love that job. It's not for everybody, but I really enjoyed
it. While I was doing that, I finished my PhD and started to look
at faculty positions. Got the interview at Clemson and came and
just really enjoyed the people, both the faculty and the students.
And that's what I do now. I just am finishing up 10 years at
Clemson, which is mind boggling to me, but I love it. It's the
right job for me. It's a good mix of working on my own and then
getting to spend really great time with students.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:03:09]:
So, yeah, that's a condensed version of my journey.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:03:11]:
I love that you've gone from that practitioner perspective to that
kind of researcher perspective and and scholar practitioner because
it really, I think, informs your position in your research about
how you're going to be approaching challenges and those intractable
problems that we're looking at in higher ed. I know a lot of
faculty members have gone straight through that faculty track, and
a lot of practitioners have never been in that scholar track. So
giving those two perspectives some voice, how does that change how
you approach your work?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:03:39]:
Oh, I love that question. So I think first and foremost, I'm always
looking to partner with practitioners. I'm a faculty member. I will
always be a practitioner at heart. And I worry sometimes that as
faculty, we can get really excited about questions that may not be
as pressing and relevant to practitioners as those questions that
we can come up with when we're partnering with them. And I'll sort
of reference the book in this too. When Chris and I were working on
the book, it was really important to us to have practitioner voices
in the text. And so almost every critical scenario, we coauthored
with practitioners.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:04:22]:
And then there are introductory quotes for the functional area
chapters and the same thing. We did bring in some other faculty and
academic and administrative leaders, but we really wanted this to
be rooted in the day to day doing the work kind of thinking. So I
love working with practitioners as co authors or supporting them
because the people doing that face to face work with students and
with incidents on campus, they're the ones who really know what the
most important topics are. I very quickly, to my students, became
just a faculty member, but at my core, I'm always, I think, gonna
be a student affairs practitioner.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:05:02]:
Leading into the book, how did you decide this was the topic for
now?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:05:06]:
So I did not set out to write this book. I set out to find this
book. I get to teach law and ethics every fall, and it is
definitely one of my favorite courses to teach. And I don't know
that it's the course every student looks forward to. And my
coursework was very much studying case law and understanding how
case law and policy inform what we do. And that's important, and
that's part of the sort of context section of our textbook. But for
me, I wanted, how do you think about it? How do you plan for
things? And I also wanted an ethical component. Because while a lot
of the decisions we make on a daily basis might have legal
implications, it's the ethics.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:05:53]:
That's, like, almost every decision we make. There's some sort of
ethical piece informing that. So I looked and I just couldn't find
the book that I wanted. And Chris and I had worked together on a
different book related to hazing. And so I reached out to him and
said, hey, I wanna put a proposal together. I know that we write
well together. He also had practitioner experiences in areas that I
have not worked in. And so I thought we make a pretty good team and
he was really good.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:06:25]:
But his first question was, are you sure I'm the person you wanna
write this with? And because he said, I haven't done that work. I
said, oh, but you have. You know, you you make those decisions. And
he had the academic, like, advising and and mentoring experience,
and I just haven't had that. And so that's where it came from. I
was looking for a book for class, and I couldn't find the book that
I wanted. And so then I was like, okay. I think at the time it was
like, we'll just write it.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:06:56]:
Yeah. So that just it's a bigger project than, just, but but that's
how it came to be. And like I said, I love the topic, and I'm
really interested in it. And I want it to be approachable for
people. So that's where it came from.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:07:08]:
I would also consider myself a bit of a case law nerd and
definitely a policy nerd. One of the things that I've been doing
with NASPA for many terms now is sitting on the public policy
division and kind of looking at the lens of what are we doing in
terms of policy information for practitioners, and there's the
intersection of law and policy. And ethics is an interesting place
to introduce that topic for aspiring student affairs practitioners.
Why at Clemson and for your class in particular, do you choose to
pair those 2 subjects together?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:07:37]:
So that predates me. That's how the course was set up. But I once I
got into it and was working with it, like, it's never even entered
my mind to separate them. Mhmm. Because I think we it kinda comes
down to just because it's legal doesn't always mean that that's the
answer to the question. And I'll give an example. My last residence
hall that I worked in as a hall director, I was in a a brand new
building, which is an experience unto itself. And if you're
listening and you've had that experience, you know, everybody
thinks everything's gonna work on move in day and it doesn't
really.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:08:18]:
There are tweaks still to come. Well, one of the things in this
particular building, the first floor, half of it was office and
meeting space and half of it was a residential community. And it
was an honors community, which meant if you had needs around
accessibility, unless you were an honors student, you could not
live on the 1st floor. The building was up to code in terms of ADA
and all of that. There were lots of really good spaces, but not on
the 1st floor, again, unless you were an honor student. So during
that 1st year, we had conversations about, can we move the honors
floor? And our honors community was one where students tend to
tended to stay for a couple of years, and students were not excited
about moving until we were able to work with the honors program and
expand the community. So the upper floors were full floors, so it
was twice as much space. So that was kind of how we were able to
make that change.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:09:19]:
And it didn't mean that every student with an accessibility issue
chose to live on the 1st floor because we have one student who was
living on the 3rd floor, and he liked his community there. He
didn't wanna move down to 1st floor. But for me, ethically, to not
even have that as an option in the newest building on campus was
problematic. So I think our our ethics and our laws, like the legal
standard is the lowest standard. It's not what we aspire to. And so
for me, that's where ethics come as comes in is how do we do the
legal thing as well as we possibly can do it? Does that answer the
question?
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:09:58]:
Yeah. I think we say the similar thing with policy, which is the
policy is the floor, not the ceiling, meaning that the policy is
the baseline expectation of how we are fundamentally providing
access for someone or how we are looking at equity in other
learning opportunities or what we expect from our students from a
behavioral perspective. I think you and I both grew up in the
conduct perspective. That conduct code isn't telling us what we can
do. It's telling us what we can't do, and we see that all over the
place. And so thinking about the book that you wanted to create for
your class, you and Chris invented a framework called the
institutional intelligence approach. And when we think about this
season of our podcast theme, the past, present, and future of
student affairs, this institutional intelligence approach to me
frames the questions we have been asking in the past, examines the
challenges of the present, and gives us a framework to look towards
institutional decision making in the future. So can you talk to us
a little bit about what is institutional intelligence? Do you and
Chris have framed it in your work?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:10:58]:
And I love the way that you put that in terms of past, present, and
future. I'm working with students right now on a project using it
around the job search, which is future oriented. But absolutely,
it's really, I think, a pretty simple model. And so institutional
intelligence is at the center. And it's always in flux because
there's change all the time on campuses. So it's never that you
reach the now I know everything about my institution. It's a
growing, evolving kind of thing. And the model, it's 3 pieces.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:11:35]:
So on on one end, you have law and ethics. And I would put policy
in there. I would put procedure can be part of that as well. But
that's sort of the guide. Those are the guidelines. And then in
terms of the law and policy piece, the ethics is how do we enact
that. And so those help to set the stage for what's the culture on
campus. The other side is the who, what, where, why, when, how
questions.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:12:04]:
And using those, the way that we talk about them in the book is as
you navigate institutional culture, how can you build your
awareness or your intelligence about a given campus? It could work
for another organization. It could work in another context, but you
can go through. So just thinking of who's your supervisor. Right?
So who are they? What is your relationship with them? How long have
they been on campus? How long have you been on campus? You just can
go through the questions to kind of anticipate or reflect or again
to your point in the moment when you're dealing with something, who
needs to know about this? A student just shared something with me.
Who else needs to be informed? What's our process for communicating
that? When do I need to make sure other people are aware of this
situation? And so it really is and it was not a starting point for
the book. It came up as we were talking through other things, and
it's like this could really be helpful. And again, coming from
housing and conduct where there is a lot of crisis, you can get so
overwhelmed with whoever is right in front of you in the moment
that you can miss other things. And so this model is meant to sort
of give you a moment to think about it.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:13:21]:
And that moment may come it might come during the event, but it
might come after the event. So you're using it to look back and
reflect on what did we do? What would we wanna do differently? How
did we communicate with the community about this? And it might be
used to look forward in terms of changes that we might wanna make
in case this situation comes up again. But I think a lot of people
use at least parts of it intuitively. We want to understand the
place where we are or the situations that we're in. And so we just
put a little more detail to it and a little more formality and
structure to what a lot of us do instinctively, I think.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:14:01]:
Let's back up a minute. And can you define institutional
intelligence as you and Chris use it in your book?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:14:06]:
Yeah. So the idea of institutional intelligence is really being
aware of the culture of the place and understanding how does it
work. I would say at the core, institutional intelligence is
knowing your place in the larger picture. And it's understanding,
again, policy history is really important. When I teach law and
ethics, I talk about the idea of the random campus policy. Every
campus has this weird policy that you've never heard of anywhere
else. It's almost always the result of a thing that happened,
right? There's a story behind those and sometimes we can get to
those stories and other times It's so far gone that the story is
lost, but the policy remains So it's about awareness. It's about
just understanding how things work in an effort to understand how
to make things happen, how to create change, or how to sort of
engage in ongoing improvement, things like that.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:15:10]:
And when we move into the framework that the 2 of you have
developed, you mentioned that you're looking at what I would call
the reporter questions. Maybe when we first learned in early
schooling years how to interview someone or how to ask a question
or how to write an article for something, we're looking at that
who, what, where, when, why, how, the 5 w's plus how questions.
Tell us about how you arrived at these questions, which are well
known in American journalistic culture, but transitioning them into
a higher ed context.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:15:39]:
It's hard not to think of these questions because, like you said,
they're just so embedded. We use them, like you said, in reporting.
We use them in writing. We use them in understanding, and everybody
kind of knows them. And so I think that was part of the appeal. You
know, we weren't looking to make something that was unapproachable
because the harder it is to understand, the less utility it has.
And so using them in our context, it really is just a little bit of
a reframe. In a way, a reporter uses them to gather information for
the story, which is their work.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:16:16]:
In our thinking, we use them to gather information for student
affairs work. So asking who within the context of higher ed. We
grouped why, when, and how together because those are a little bit
more about action. Why is sort of the bridge. Right? It's the
bridge between what's happening, what should happen, and how to
make it happen, and when and how is putting it into it being
whatever it might be. It could be a policy. It could be a crisis
response. It could be a supervision strategy.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:16:53]:
But those are more the task things and why bridges between the
information gathering and the putting into action. And it's again,
the comfort that I think a lot of people have with it just made it
very appealing. We found ourselves asking those questions as we
were building the book and especially as we were writing the
critical scenarios. They just kept coming up and over and over
again. And so that was sort of the seed that grew into the
model.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:17:22]:
You've already mentioned that you're using this model with your
current students in the job search in terms of application. You've
put some examples in the book around kind of deconstructing
university responses to freedom of expression components. How would
you envision a practitioner taking this model and applying it to
their work? And when does that happen? And what do you hope the
outcomes will be?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:17:42]:
So I'm a big fan of the model. I think that there is utility for it
in so many different ways. The first thing that comes to mind for
me is onboarding. Helping someone understand and I would say this
doesn't have to be a person new to an institution, but particularly
in that case, it could be really helpful. But it could be I'm
moving to a new functional area on the same campus. It could be I'm
getting a new supervisor. There are lots of different ways, but it
is a great tool for adaptation and acclimation. So navigating
change or planning to navigate change for implementation as we're
doing this and as we're going through whatever the process might
be.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:18:28]:
I tend toward crisis just because my work experience involve that a
lot, but it could be rolling out a new mission statement. Who do we
want involved? Who should have input? How do we wanna build the
process to move forward? When do we wanna do this? When does it
make sense? I also think a really valuable and I would say based on
my own experience. So this is, anecdotal, not research driven. But
where we miss the opportunity to learn the most is in that
reflective stage. We're so busy and there are so many things
happening all the time. We don't always carve out time to reflect
after. And again, it could be after a crisis, but it could be
after, say, you're moving to a cluster higher model in your area.
Reflecting on what worked, what didn't, who's involved in that
reflection, when do we do it? Do you do it right away? Do you wait
6 months? Do you do it more than once? So I think it works in
really the big aspects.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:19:34]:
So the creation, ideation, visualization stages of things. It works
in supervision, group dynamics, team development sorts of things,
and it works in looking ahead and planning, anticipating. It's just
an easy model that has pieces that fit into all of the different
sorts of activities and conversations and planning that we do and
beyond higher ed. But I'm focused on higher ed because that's where
I wanna be.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:20:07]:
In the book, there is a table that I like called the ultimate cheat
sheet for critical thinking using this model. And so we've talked
about kind of the big buckets of the who, what, where, when, why,
how. But what I like about the cheat sheet is that it breaks down
into more specific subquestions that could be used. I'm just gonna
share some of them with our listeners. So if you wanna go pick up
the book, you can kind of understand a little bit more about what
these buckets might represent in practice. So in the who or whom
question, you might ask, who made a decision or decided about the
situation, or has anyone else faced the situation? In the what
bucket, we might have what are the strengths and weaknesses of
those who were involved or effective, or what's another perspective
or alternative to the situation in the way that it was managed. In
the where, we're looking at things like where's the most need for a
specific resource or support in the situation, or, where can we get
more information is a is a great question we should always be
asking. In the when we have, when did it occur, when's the best
time to act? And That's a great reflection question for
practitioners who are looking to implement change or even make a
response to something that could have been a crisis on your
campus.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:21:15]:
In the why, we have why is this situation a problem or a challenge?
And I don't think we stopped to ask that question a lot. The why is
this happening, why now? Because as responders in student affairs,
we're often looking at, okay, what should we be doing? And I think
the impetus for the why question can help us actually solve the
problem because we might be getting to the root a little
differently. And then finally, in the how bucket, how will we
approach this situation safely? How does this response or decision
harm us or others? So I think it just gives us a nice framing of,
hey, let's pause. And one thing we don't do in student affairs a
lot is pause. Yeah. So thank you for giving us some of those
questions that I think you're right. We're already doing, but we
don't necessarily put in one place.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:21:58]:
And the idea of the pause, I'm so glad that you brought that up.
There's a story that I like about this man and he goes to a teacher
and asks, I'm really busy, but I know I need to meditate. How long
do I need to meditate? And the teacher says, about an hour every
day. And the man says, I don't have that kind of time. I can't do
it for an hour every day. And the teacher says, okay. Then 2 hours
a day. And I think about that in terms of what you were just
sharing because that pause, it does take away time in the moment,
but the time that it saves down the road and the clarity that it
can bring, it's an investment forward.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:22:37]:
And, yeah, it takes some time in the moment. But if you don't
reflect, you end up doing the same things over and over again that
may or may not be in the best interest, not only of the students
involved or the faculty or staff involved, but in terms of your own
team and your own I don't wanna say productivity, but your own
rootedness in the work. Because more committed and energized and
understanding ways instead of that's just the way that it is.
Lora Phelps
[00:23:13]:
What are the other major takeaways that you're hoping readers of
the book will keep with them?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:23:18]:
So I will share that one of the things and Chris and I definitely
wanna acknowledge doctors Mimi Benjamin and Jody Joseph Banger who
worked with us and supported us through the development and the
submission of the book. One of the things for me is I use humor a
lot, and I use it in my teaching. And I wanted this to be as
enjoyable as this kind of a book can be. So there is some humor in
there. Chris came up with this great concept of the onion. And to
understand what issues are, you have to get to the core of the
onion and an onion is layered. And I think we even have in there
sometimes it will make you cry a little bit. But we tried to use
examples like that.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:24:05]:
You know, we use real life examples. And again, the partnering with
practitioners was really important to us. But there are ways to
make scholarship approachable and enjoyable. And there are also
scholars who write and use language that creates barriers and
hierarchy. And we did not wanna do that. We really wanted this in
the hands of practitioners, people using it in classes, and
providing students a way of engaging with what can be really
challenging. The issues that our students and our higher education
communities are facing are heavy, and they're challenging. And
there can be joy, and there can be laughter in the work as
well.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:24:48]:
So I think that's one of the things I'm most proud about. Again,
thanks to Mimi and Jody. There were a few things in there that
they're like, yeah. It's funny, but I don't think you really want
this in the book. And I would then go to Chris and say, it is
funny. And he would say, yeah, but I think they're right. So it's,
I think, an appropriate amount of humor. But I do think that in the
end, we're human beings, and we're navigating our lives and
building our stories.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:25:15]:
And for me, humor and love go hand in hand. And so that's part of
what underscores the book is I hope that people receive it as a
book of care, not as a directions or I don't want it to be rigid
because policy is really not rigid. It can look that way on paper,
but when it comes to implementation and meaning making, it is more
malleable. And if we don't bring care, we can shape it in ways that
do harm rather than in ways that ultimately it should be something
that supports healthy communities and places where people can
thrive and grow.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:25:56]:
Michelle, we're gonna transition into our theme questions for the
season. So first, I'm going to talk to you about the past, which is
what's one component of the history of student affairs that you
think we should continue to carry forward or alternatively let go
of?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:26:11]:
So I would say something that we should carry forward is centering
students. And I say that because while I think for the most part we
do that, where we are right now, and one of my go to people or one
of the people I admire very, very much is justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg. And she talked about law as a pendulum. And it's not
static. It's always in motion. And sometimes it's a little more
where we want it to be, and sometimes it's a little more where we
would rather it not be. And there are people at either ends of
that. And so we're all comfortable at times, and we're all
uncomfortable at times.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:26:55]:
And so I say centering students moving forward because we are in, I
feel like right now, a place where I worry that we are being pushed
to center law, policy, and politics rather than centering students.
And this is not the first time we've been here. I know it for me,
it can feel very scary at times. But if you look back over the
history of higher education, this is common and it's where the
pendulum is in the moment. I want us to carry that forward and I
don't really have a fear that we won't. I think the people who are
drawn to this work are drawn to this work because of the
experiences they had, the experiences they didn't have, and what
they want to create for other people as they're going through their
higher ed experiences. So we can get pressured or it can get easy
to get caught up in other things. But in student affairs, if at
some point in whatever our process is, we're asking, is this what's
best for students? I think we're gonna be okay.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:28:01]:
And sometimes we have to compromise on that a little bit because
things we don't always get to be the boss of all the decisions. But
that's something that I would say, while it originally probably
started over controlling students, the way that this work has
emerged has really been about caring for students more than
controlling. But again, we go back and forth on this and but that's
something I would really like for us to hold on to. And I'm happy
and proud to say I know lots of people who are doing exactly
that.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:28:31]:
Moving into the present, what's happening in the field right now
that's going well for student affairs?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:28:35]:
I think that student affairs is I don't know if rising in prestige
is the right way to say it, but I think because of different things
that have happened and are happening, I think people understand we
need student affairs because a lot of times college presidents,
particularly at 4 year institutions, come from the faculty route or
more and more they're coming from a business route. And while those
leaders bring certain strengths, they don't bring the strengths of
dealing with student behavior. And stop it is generally not gonna
work with students. And so I think that the role of divisions of
student affairs and the functional areas that are really student
facing, I think people are understanding we need people with that
kind of expertise to navigate not just when things go poorly, but
when things go well. We need to understand and I'll use just
because it just happened when the Vanderbilt football victory.
They're walking the goalpost 3 miles to the river. Well, sure,
there's law enforcement involved with that. There's policy and
things like that.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:29:57]:
But in terms of communicating to students and balancing the
celebration with the responsibility, we're the ones who know how to
do that. I worked for a vice president at one point and his
philosophy was we do the things other people don't wanna do. Well,
I think that's true to an extent. I think now people are
understanding we do the things other people can't do. And so it's
faculty matter, administrators and leaders matter, but student
affairs people, they're the ones who really are dealing with some
of those really big issues, whether it's the recent hurricanes on
campus or celebrations or whatever it might be. So and I can be
naive, and maybe that's not exactly true. But I see more examples
of consultation rather than direction from the top down in terms of
working with student affairs practitioners.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:30:51]:
And looking towards the future in an ideal world, what does the
field need to do to thrive towards our future?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:30:57]:
We have got to tell the story of what we do And whether that's
assessment, whether that is more practitioners in public media,
there's the joke of you can't really explain what student affairs
is. That's true. It's a weird kind of thing that most people don't
understand, but you can tell the stories of specific things that we
have done and the way that we make a difference. And we do that in
partnership with students, but any chance that someone has to share
information about what we're doing and the difference that we make,
that's just gotta continue. And I'm I'm a storyteller at heart, so
there are lots of different ways to do that. Could be being on a
podcast. It could be writing for a publication. It's great to do
things at conferences.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:31:46]:
It's important to do that. And could you do something like that for
your city council? Could you do something like that for maybe even
local schools talking about transition. And we do that in the
practice of the function of our work. But the more that we can get
out and tell the stories of how we make a difference. And it's not
just about preserving roles on campus, but it's really about
letting families and students and communities know about the
resources that we have. It always hurts to find out a student has
been struggling for weeks or months when we have the people, the
places and the things that could have helped them through whatever
it is they're navigating. But that storytelling, I just can't
stress it enough. It's really essential and we've all got the
stories.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:32:36]:
We don't have to come up with things. We all carry those with us
every day.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:32:40]:
It's time to take a quick break and toss it over to producer Chris
to learn what's going on in the NASPA world.
Dr.
Christopher Lewis [00:32:46]:
Thanks so much, Jill. So excited to be back in the NASPA world, and
there's a ton of things happening in NASPA. The 2024 Leadership
Educators Institute is happening December 9th through December 11th
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This is a partnership between NASPA,
ACPA College Student Educators International, and the National
Clearing House for Leadership Programs. LEI provides a unique
opportunity for all professional levels within our field to engage
in critical dialogue to promote positive, sustainable change on
their campuses. We all know that leadership is an integral
competency for our profession. The leadership development of
students is an important and ongoing process that requires
commitment from both students and staff. Student affairs
professionals and other university administrators play an essential
role in coordinating, shaping and evaluating the leadership
development of students by designing leadership courses and
programs, creating co curricular opportunities and utilizing
emerging technologies.
Dr.
Christopher Lewis [00:33:47]:
The Leadership Educators Institute has a rich history of convening
professionals committed to leadership development for nearly 17
years. This Institute creates a space for student affairs
administrators, scholars, and practitioners to discuss and advance
current leadership topics. As mentioned, the conference is from
December 9th through December 11th in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Registration is still open with regular registration deadline
coming on November 11th. Get more information on the NASPA website.
The 2024 Women's Leadership Institute is coming up also in
December, December 10th through 13th in San Diego, California. The
Women's Leadership Institute is the premier professional
development program for women who aspire to be senior leaders in
higher education. The Women's Leadership Institute provides an
experience that offers strategies for women to succeed in the
higher education profession.
Dr.
Christopher Lewis [00:34:35]:
Participants include women from facilities and operations,
administration, auxiliary services, student affairs, recreation,
and libraries who share a passion for the profession and plan to
lead with lasting impact. You can be a part of a special program
for women seeking to become leaders in higher education
administration and student affairs. This institute is co produced
by several higher education associations and is a unique program
that will bring together administrators from across campus
functions to help you hone your leadership skills for working in a
rapidly changing environment, develop a better understanding of the
campus as a workplace and culture, share experiences with others
about how campuses are adapting and adjusting to the new reality
and create new personal networks and networking skills to better
tap the higher education community. Registration is still open and
you can find out more on the NASPA website. The 2024 Red Ribbon
Week Campus Video PSA Contest is currently open. This annual
contest aims to promote the importance of living a drug free
lifestyle. Just recently, NASPA announced that through the campus
drug prevention dot gov website, your campus can submit a campus
video PSA to promote the importance of preventing illicit drug use
and legal drug misuse among college students. If your campus wishes
to do this, you would create a 30 to 60 second video PSA showcasing
your campus' commitment to a healthy drug free lifestyle.
Dr.
Christopher Lewis [00:36:05]:
You can submit your entries until November 4th and there's some
great prizes for the winners, including a first prize of $5,000 to
to support the winning campuses, the winning campuses efforts to
prevent drug misuse among their students and a recognition plaque.
Beyond this, it's a great opportunity to be able to bring your
whole campus community together for a common goal. Find out more at
campus drugprevention dot gov. Every week, we're going to be
sharing some amazing things that are happening within the
association. So we are going to be able to try and keep you up to
date on everything that's happening and allow for you to be able to
get involved in different ways, because the association is as
strong as its members. And for all of us, we have to find our place
within the association, whether it be getting involved with a
knowledge community, giving back within one of the the centers or
the divisions of the association. And as you're doing that, it's
important to be able to identify for yourself, where do you fit?
Where do you wanna give back? Each week, we're hoping that we will
share some things that might encourage you, might allow for you to
be able to get some ideas that will provide you with an opportunity
to be able to say, Hey, I see myself in that knowledge community. I
see myself doing something like that.
Dr.
Christopher Lewis [00:37:27]:
Or encourage you in other ways that allow for you to be able to
think beyond what's available right now, to offer other things to
the association, to bring your gifts, your talents to the
association and to all of the members within the association.
Because through doing that, all of us are stronger and the
association is better. Tune in again next week as we find out more
about what is happening in NASPA.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:37:55]:
Chris, thank you again for all of the work that you do to keep us
informed on what's going on in and around NASPA. And, Michelle, we
have reached our lightning round. So I have 7 questions for you. 90
seconds. Ready to rock?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:38:08]:
I'm ready.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:38:08]:
Okay. Number 1. If you were a conference keynote speaker, what
would your entrance music be?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:38:13]:
It would be I don't know that this puts me in a positive light, but
I love Apex Predator from the Mean Girls soundtrack. So I would go
with that.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:38:22]:
Number 2, when you were 5 years old, what did you wanna be when you
grew up?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:38:26]:
A writer.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:38:26]:
Number 3, who's your most influential professional mentor?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:38:29]:
Frank Robinson.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:38:30]:
Number 4, your essential student affairs read.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:38:32]:
Oh, well, my book.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:38:35]:
Number 5, the best TV show you've been binging lately.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:38:38]:
I am watching right now the Gotham series, which I haven't decided
if I like it or not, but I love Batman. So that's what I'm
watching.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:38:47]:
Number 6, the podcast you've spent the most hours listening to in
the last year.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:38:51]:
Criminal.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:38:51]:
And finally, number 7, any shout outs you'd like to give personal
or professional?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:38:55]:
Yes. Absolutely. Shout out to Chris Salinas. Thank you for
everything. And to my partner, Leslie, who endured the process of
me writing the book as well.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:39:05]:
Like a second dissertation all over again. Exactly. Well, Michelle,
it's been wonderful to get to know you today and learn more about
your and Chris's work on institutional intelligence. If anyone
would like to follow-up with you after the show, how can they find
you?
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:39:17]:
Yeah. So the best way to reach me is through email. I my email is
my to do list, and I'm very good at keeping up with that. That's m
as in Michelle, and then the first part of my last name, boettc@clemson.edu
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:39:35]:
dotedu. Michelle, thank you so much for sharing your voice and your
institutional intelligence with us today.
Dr. Michelle
Boettcher [00:39:42]:
Jill, thank you for the invitation. This has really been a
pleasure, and you have a great demeanor. You made this very easy
and very pleasant, and all the best moving forward. But thank you
again for your time.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:39:57]:
This has been an episode of SA Voices from the Field brought to you
by NASPA. This show is made possible because of you, the listeners.
We continue to be grateful that you choose to spend your time with
us. If you'd like to reach the show, you can email us at sa voices
at naspa.org or find me on LinkedIn by searching for doctor Jill l
Creighton. We welcome your feedback and your topic and guest
suggestions. We'd love it if you take a moment to tell a colleague
about the show and leave us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts,
Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It truly does help other
student affairs pros find the show and helps us to become more
visible in the larger podcasting community. This episode was
produced and hosted by doctor Jill Creighton, that's me, produced
and audio engineered by doctor Chris Lewis.
Dr. Jill
Creighton [00:40:39]:
Special thanks to the University of Michigan-
Flint for your support as we create this
project. Catch you next time.