Messages from the Conference Chairs

BACHA Newsletter

The All of the Above Conference was held at the Uni-versity of Massachusetts Lowell this past Saturday on February 7th. We were fortunate enough to have some good weather and welcomed 150 people (undergraduates, graduate students, and new profes-sionals) to University Crossing, our brand new state-of-the-art student center. Kicking off the day with Key-note Speaker Rich DeCapua (Associate Dean of Stu-dents at Boston College), the theme of the day was find-ing your passion and exploring a career in higher edu-cation in student affairs. Session topics ranged from graduate school opportunities, managing up, effective communication, and inclusive leadership while also providing attendees with the chance to participate in the conference’s annual mock resume review/interview program and networking fair. Overall

feedback was very positive with many in attendance saying that they felt inspired and confident in their decision to enter the field while also having the opportunity to learn more about their own skills and leadership as aspiring and new professionals. Special thanks to our co-sponsors MA-NASPA and MCPA, and to the Conference Planning Committee and Host Site Coordinator for all of their hard work in making this day a success!

On November 15, 2014 BACHA held its annual Resident Assistant Conference at Wheaton College in Norton, MA. Over 400 RAs were in attendance with 100 professional staff members representing 22 institutions in and around the Boston Area. The Hunger Games themed event welcomed its "Tributes" with an enthusiastic, as al-ways, Welcome and Roll Call.

This year the committee decided to incorporate a keynote speak to speak to the students about just how important their role on cam-

pus is. Adrienne Frame, Vice President of Student Affairs at Endicott College in Beverly, MA de-livered this year's keynote address. Her message was simple- what you do makes a difference. She delivered a fun, entertaining and heartfelt address paving the way for the future of the con-ference. After the welcome RAs and professional staff broke off to attend educational sessions. This year there were 45 sessions that participants could chose from and all session were deliv-ered by peers and professionals.

As always the RA conference is a successful event where RA's can recharge and share knowledge with each other! The committee is always looking for knew institutions to host and show off their campus each year. We look forward to seeing everyone attend in the Fall of 2015.

MARCH 2015 P AGE 2

Kelly Treseler, Director of Residence Life and Housing, Regis College

When people ask me about my graduate school experience, I tell them “it was fine. I applied to one school, got in, got an assistantship, got a job and got out.” While this may lessen the learning and

growth that occurred during my younger twenties, I do be-lieve this experience comes in stark contrast to the experi-ence of graduate students in the field today. In 2008 (yes, I know I am not that old to be doing a historical piece), going into student affairs was still a bit unknown. Most of my friends and family still asked, “oh, so you want to be a prin-cipal of a high school?” or “what do you plan to teach?” There were not monthly workshops on how to prepare for a career in student affairs, and I attended SALT before the advent of it being called SALT (it was simply the

“Undergraduate NASPA Conference”). However, as I was working the networking tables at the All of the Above Conference this past weekend, I met sophomore students already trying to plan their track into a specific area of students affairs as well as graduate students who looked like if they did one more mock interview they might throw their resumes in the air and walk out.

What do I see as wrong with this? I contend that we are fueling the fire of making our students over-stressed, overworked, and overtired. The research and our experience shows us that today’s students are coming in with more mental health issues than ever before, are more highly medicated, and as a generation are overly anxious and depressed. While we try to emphasize the importance of “take time for yourself, relax and reflect, family is your first priority, etc.” we are also sending conflicting mes-sages about all that we expect them to do to succeed in the field. “Get involved on a committee, do mock interviews, have your resume reviewed, find a mentor,” are just a few examples of the well-intentioned advice that overtime can pile up into an un-accomplishable to-do list. Our grads, like ourselves, also need time to just “be” and to be human in the moment.

So what can we do? We need to loosen the reins a little bit. We need to encourage our grads to pick one or two things and do them well. More often than not, we give graduate students a laundry list of conferences to attend, committees to jump on, projects to start, service projects to run, and jobs to apply for hoping they will grab onto one or two. However, more often students are taking advantage of ALL of these opportunities leaving them pulled in many directions and not doing well in any of them. In part, graduate school should be about just that – attending classes and performing at your assistantship with a couple of things sprinkled on. It does not need to be about filling up your sched-ule with every possibility for professional development as possible within your one year of graduate school.

We also need to be reasonable in our expectations when hiring. Not all of our students can afford to take on multiple assistantships, develop their own leadership seminar, do well in their classes, and have the perfect cover letter and resume. Expecting this goes against our core of social justice and is unfair to students who also had to work during graduate school to support themselves financially, or

I contend that we are fueling

the fire of making our

students overstressed,

overworked, and overtired.

Taking Pressure Off Our Grads

BACHA N EWSLETTER P AGE 3

Elections Information

those who had family or other priorities that may have taken them away from their classes or fellow-ships. We have to remind ourselves that life happens – in-cluding sick days, snow days, family deaths, and other sur-prises– and it will happen for our grads at sometime as well.

Finally, we need to be fair to the grads and new profession-als we supervise. Too often I hear, “give it to a grad to do” or “can’t we hire a grad to do X, Y, Z, that we don’t want to do in our job.” It is a thin line between finding meaningful ex-periences for our graduate students and simply dumping more work on them because they are there and we don’t have time in our own schedules to do it. When hiring a grad, we must make sure we have the time to adequately supervise and develop them as practitioners and not just praise the hiring gods you found someone to pick up our slack. Failure to do so will only continue this cycle of young, overstressed practitioners who will be un-able to develop healthy work habits when hired as professionals. This leads to poor service to our de-partments and more importantly, to our students.

The Boston Area College Housing Association will begin accepting nom-

inations for the 2015-2016 Steering Board on Monday, March 2,

2015. The timeline for elections is below.

2015 Election Timeline:

Nominations Accepted: March 2-March 20

Candidate Statements: March 20, 2015

Membership Voting Period: March 23-30 2015

Winners Notified: April 1, 2015

The positions open will be:

President Elect- (3 year term)-Must have served at least 1 year on

the BACHA Steering Board.

Secretary- (2 year term)

Member at Large-5 positions open (2 yea terms)

Co-Chair -New England Student Affairs Placement Conference

Co-Chair -RA Conference

Co-Chair-New Professionals

Membership Coordinator-(2 year term)

Technology & Social Media Coordinator- (2 year term)

Involvement on the BACHA Steering Board is a great way to begin your professional

involvement in the Boston area. Questions on elections should be directed to Greg

Mantolesky, Past President at past.president@bacha.org.

It is a thin line between

finding meaningful

experiences for our graduate

students and simply dumping

more work on them because

they are there

MARCH 2015 P AGE 4

Honor your colleague's contributions! – Nominate outstanding

residence life professionals for a BACHA annual award!

Each year at the NESAPC social in May we honor you, the BACHA membership, through our annual awards. We have four awards that are given out, and they are selected through membership nominations. Be on the lookout in early April for the official announcement for nominations for each of the award categories.

Kevin Duffy – New Professional Award. This award is given in honor of BACHA’s first president and founding member, Kevin Duffy and to recognize an outstanding new professional. The recipient of this award will have made positive contributions to his/her home institution, department and in the field of higher educa-tion. The recipient will receive a $200 scholarship towards their professional development for the 2015-2016 academic year. Criteria – The recipient of this award will be an individual who has been in the field less than 3 years and is employed by a member institution.

Service Award. This award is given to an individual who has dedicated much of his/her own time, effort and enthusiasm on the BACHA conference sub-committees or has volunteered his/her talents as a presenter at the BACHA annual conferences. The conference planning and execution was made easier due to this individual’s contributions. Criteria – The recipient of this award will be given to an individual who been a strong and active volunteer on any of the 2014-2015 BACHA sub-committees or has served as a presenter at any of the BACHA conferences and is employed by a member institution.

Outstanding Supervisor Award. This award is given to an outstanding supervisor who has provided lead-ership and guidance to his/her staff members. This individual challenges his/her staff to strive for excellence and guides them to fulfill their potential. Criteria – The recipient of the award will be given to an individual who has served as a supervisor for professional staff and is employed by a member institution.

Outstanding Membership Award. This award is given to a membership institution that has contributed to BACHA through active participation in BACHA events, strong volunteer efforts, and shared use of resources. Criteria – The recipient of this award will be an institution that is a current member of BACHA

BACHA N EWSLETTER P AGE 5

Attention CHOs: we are looking to schedule our first CHO dinner later this spring. If you have ideas and suggestions for locations and topics for us to discuss, please email Peter Wiernicki, Director of Residential Life at Lasell College at pwiernicki@lasell.edu

Save the Dates!

Announcements

Tuesday, April 28, 2015– #BACHAchat

Tuesday, May 26, 2015— #BACHAchat

TBD– ACUHO-I Summer Intern Social

We are still seeking volunteers to assist with planning the ACUHO-I Summer Intern Social. If you are interested, please contact Peter Wiernicki (PWiernicki@lasell.edu)

BACHA has over 275 individual members at 31 member

institutions. It is led by a steering committee of 16 profes-

sionals who meet monthly during both academic semes-

ters. Its annual events include the New Professionals

Workshop, the RA and NESAPC conferences, along with

the Fall and Spring socials co-sponsored events at

NASPA and ACPA.

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