Professional
In the next 5-7 years, my goal is to lead a university’s Orientation, Transition, and Retention office as their Associate Director or Director. In order to accomplish this I will obtain my M.A. in Higher Education and Student Development, improve my professional competency skills, and network with other Student Affairs professionals. Throughout my professional experience, I have discovered that working within orientation planning and developing student leaders is what energizes and motivates me the most.
*The competencies below are based on NODA's core compentencies.
Campus Collaboration
New student orientation planning consists of bringing together multiple campus departments such as Housing and Residence Life, Card Office, Student Health Services, Mail Services, IT Support, Parking Services and more in order to ensure a successful orientation for all. Due to planning 10+ orientations, I now have a clearer understanding of the functionality of these departments and how they fit in the overall picture of providing new students with a positive transition experience. Going forward, I not only want to strengthen each of these relationships, but I also want to begin new collaborations with departments not previously involved with our orientation planning that new students could benefit from being exposed to early on.
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Organization & Leadership
One of the main functions of my current role is the hiring, training, and supervising of student orientation leaders. I soon realized I was not just their supervisor, but also their mentor and guide. With this in mind, I expanded their training to include sessions on conflict management, group facilitation, institutional structure and more. Additionally, I created a guidebook that is provided at every training for the student orientation leaders to use throughout orientation week and on as a resource. Going forward, I plan to create a more elaborate training that consists of training modules student orientation leaders will need to attend throughout the summer or fall semester.
Program Delivery & Management
One of the programs I run that many new international students participate in is the American Thanksgiving Exchange. This program pairs international students with local families who volunteer to host these students for Thanksgiving dinner. Typically this is an in-person program but we had to pivot to a virtual format due to the pandemic. There were struggles transitioning this program virtually such as time zones, opportunities to build connections, and technological issues. Going forward, I plan to expand this program to last the duration of a semester so families and students have more opportunities to connect and interact with one another whether it be virtually or in-person.
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Diversity, Inclusion, & Access
My higher education professional experience lies mainly in international students, however, my goal is to work with other diverse student populations such as first gen, indigenous students, foster youth, and more. Due to this I focused my academic research assignments on indigenous student populations and took advantage of various diversity and inclusion trainings provided by the university such as UndocuAlly (focusing on the undocumented students perspective at Mason) and Cultivating Inclusive Excellence (focusing on challenges such as implicit bias and anti-racism and how to create inclusive spaces). Going forward, I plan to expose myself to more of these trainings to build my knowledge-base and experience when working with various student populations.
