Town Hall Feedback - 2015 Convention

Town Hall Feedback - March 2015

Members were asked to reflect on what they believe elected and appointed leaders are doing well as well as areas of improvements: 

DOING WELL

Elected and Appointed Leaders/Employees & Contractors for the International Office

• The leadership initiates contact with members.
• Accessibility of leaders (transparency with in the association)
• Not afraid to take calculated risks as an association (always willing to try something new) (x2)
• Everyone play a role-paths leadership involvement
• New leadership and execution leaderships (we like this: bus driver!!) Feeling the LOVE J
• Support from International (Central) Office
• Communication from IO about change, still room for improvement
• Executive Director’s (Cindi Love’s) openness to new ideas and encouragement
• Responsiveness to national issues even when not at convention/to needs and issues

Social Justice

• Social Justice advocacy-one of our stated values and priorities
• Inclusive and social justice driven social change
• The “T” circle
• All gender restroom terminology
• I/O integrating all gender restrooms and name badges with pronouns rather than leaving this to volunteers
• Cabaret on site and integrated into convention program, participation by leaders at the event
• Generally the support and acknowledgement of ACPA SCLGBTA’s accomplishments
• Social Justice efforts internally
• Using equity and inclusion lens for marketing; World Bank Model for Convention registration fees, E & I liaisons to convention team and deeper communication

Technology

• Using and providing access to technology
• Providing new navigations on access through technology
• Education of Social Media (i.e. Genius Labs)
• Investment and participation in technology updates & on demand platform
• Increased use, teaching to use, etc. of technology has been impressive
• Use of technology: focused on good parts of technology, feels focused

Convention/Conferences

• Electronic access for those not present
• Opening speakers-3 is great! Excellent choice of speakers
• Host great conferences
• Creating environments for all types of learners (Sessions; learning labs; feels very customized)
• Platforms integrated in Convention experience (engaging sessions: Pecha Kecha, ACPA Video on Demand, Genius Labs)

Operational

• Assessment driven focused on improvements through membership survey
• Transparency with budget (x2)
• Partnerships
• By laws changes are going into a positive direction
• Scholarship efforts
• Involvement in AC has been great

Research & Scholarship

• Thought scholarship is in depth, purposeful, evident through publications, websites, etc.
• Research-JCSD about campus
• Standing committees/coalitions, opportunities for scholarship/Research
• Expanding knowledge base

Membership

• Learning about membership
• Making sure convention is not only membership benefit
• Ambassador program is a great idea to involve new folks in association (x2)
• Reaching needs/engaging of all levels
• Investing in the future of SA Prof.
• The people, energy, openness of everyone; feels like home – community.
• Great connection with colleagues from around the country/world
• Provides lots of opportunities to share voices
• Lots of ways to engage around needs & issues, allows more voices to speak & reaches more learning styles
• Voices are being heard (supporting entity groups to give people experience outside of convention)

HOW CAN ACPA IMPROVE?

Career Recruitment

• Career recruitment (can we reconsider partnering with TPE) Address the model if Career Central stops
• C3-let go of in person placement and find ways to support full search, not just one step of process
• How to replace the placement model
• I think that ACPA has to ask some serious questions about convention placement activities. Are the resources expended worth the return? Can ACPA in ethically deliver what they promise?
• Career Central is outdated and ineffective. We need to leap frog to a new model
• Unclear on where we’re going with career (x3)

Operational

• So much change at one time can be overwhelming.  Need to be sure messaging is consistent, constant.
• Emphasis on association for student affair professionals and not an association for professionals dedicated to student development
• Processes are somewhat cumbersome. (i.e. awards) perhaps we could leverage technology better
• Website!!!

Membership

• Retention of senior members
• There are a number of leaders, elected and not, who are volunteering AND paying full price for a number of things; membership (and non-institutional membership), convention registration and other things. Can we please consider how this is sustainable for volunteer leaders, what opportunities being in meetings provided for professional education and development and for our finances?
• Ownership on the Standing Committee/Commission-what happens once I get involved?
• How people in the membership get involved?
• Outreach-what is the association doing to reach out to member institutions?
• What priority do we have for those who aren’t a member
• State Associations-NE entity-need to ensure all state members get local support
• Regional (smaller) opportunities
• Next Gen
• Data of those who attend, who are becoming professionals
• What is being done to outreach/support attendees post-convention?
• Add “NUFD type (no cost) element for under grads to next year
• Combine” next gen” with “grow” is there an opportunity there?
• Communications with nextgen about schedule, gatherings, locations, expectations
• Opportunity and space for educational and respectful disagreement instead of shutting voices down
• Program track of debates where participants can see respectful debate and disagreement

Social Justice

• We need to do more to educate members on social justice. We need to consider how we are providing regular and recurring training on social justice on all levels; in the IO to the Governing Board, to entity group leaders and all other members
• Perhaps it would be useful to capitalize on the relationship with SJTI in these trainings
• Perhaps trying to get a lot of sides- i.e. could we ID a few “issues” and have multiple groups working on the- i.e. disability/ADA, housing and RL, career services, psych services etc… All working on same issue from various perspectives
• Our social justice is not inclusive (awkward)
• Welcoming perspectives and values that are not considered mainstream to our culture

Conventions/Conferences

• Conference locations primarily in the east; Moving more west or central
• Format of celebrACPA-too much in one space; should be more open  Confusing dynamics to navigate between market place and entity groups
• Providing access through technology can provide a message that people don’t have to attend
• Program book is repetitive
• Difficult to find initial point at convention to ACPA prior to convention (intentional outreach to your program)

Research & Scholarship

• How to transition to next steps of editorial board/journal development areas
• Highlight the central office staff in the next Developments

Values

• Truly understanding what it means for us to be an international association
• Responsiveness with values alignment

ACPA Leadership Hour

During this time, ACPA Vice-President Gavin Henning provided an overview of the format for the discussion (open Q & A) and the Governing Board members were introduced along with the Executive Director.  Questions were asked and responses were recorded by name when identified. 

The first question was posed by Kristen McKinney, Chair-Elect, Commission for Assessment & Evaluation.

Kristen asked Vice-President Henning to give context to the proposed bylaw changes.

Gavin Henning responded:

We thought the by-laws would be set since revisions happened last year, but actually there were a lot this year.  Information was sent out with details to our entire member list. Association members will vote after Convention
 on these changes:

• State Divisions – New legal agreements conforming with IRS regulations, State sales tax requirements, U.S. Trademark filings and state insurance boards.
• Things we’ve been doing in process, but not written – i.e. elections in fall (in bylaws, happens in 
spring, so the change is meant to update so we are consistent with practice)
• Limitations on past employees serving on Governing Board, from legal recommendations (need 3 year break in employment service and volunteer service)
• Clarification about organizational members (i.e. non-College/University members who work in 
Higher Education) serving as leaders
• Gender neutral language (use to be incorporated into all future communications)
• Communities of Practice – new entity group to be added; position-level related
• Standing Committee for Grad Students and New Professionals will transition to this group
• Standing Committees
• Changing name to Coalitions (social identity based)
• Current name doesn’t make sense with existing structure anymore
• Also adding an elect year for the chairs (extending transition by a year) 

Frequency of changes? (asked by Allyson Logie-Eustace, Coordinator for International Divisions-Elect)

• As often as we need, requires 2/3 member vote; we try to bundle.
• Alcohol Policy Update (asked by Tara Loewenguth, Chair, Commission for Alcohol and other Drug Issues) Formerly, it was arbitrary how alcohol could be paid for by the organization
o Now, need to vet written requests.
• Pay it Forward Program was popular: a way for registered faculty to cover grad registration. Less than 10 faculty used the funds for themselves

Program Sponsorship

Awareness of sponsored programs (asked by Larry Mrozak, Chair, Commission for Recreation & Athletics)

• Folks who don’t understand the process are missing out on that opportunity
• One solution is to consider requiring proposals to go through sponsored programs process
 Reviewer Quality (asked by Tara Loewenguth, Chair, Commission for Alcohol and other Drug Issues)
• Feedback for declined proposals might not be relevant because reviewers are not qualified
• Program review process – is there intention of reviewing this?
o Response: Shawna Patterson, Chair-Elect, Standing Committee for Multicultural Affairs
• Yes, convention is aware of this; working on tracking and watching, will take a few years.
• 
Trying to be intentional about quality of feedback; looking at all reviewers – who is repeatedly engaged being tagged as someone who is maybe not prepared enough to review certain types of material
• Solution: get the content experts to be reviewers. Not just for entity groups, but also for general. Response: Molly Monahan, Chair-Elect, Standing Committee for Women
• If we include sponsorship awareness, will be linked in to experts, and may address opportunity Response: Matthew Antonio Bosch, Coordinator for State Chapters
• We need to be informing/promoting the different ways & opportunities to propose/submit Response: Heather Shea Gasser, Program chair for #acpa14
• Introduced policy to bolster curriculum, conversations ongoing for increasing sponsored programs
• Difficult to assign reviewers for general programs; might be an advocacy issues for the future o Is there a way to track type of program submissions, and then farm those programs to coalitions, and charge them to look at that? Or, is there a way to identify programs that are maybe entry/mid/senior and ask folks at certain levels to review each.  Response: Shawna Patterson, Chair-Elect, Standing Committee for Multicultural Affairs
• Might run the risk of tokenizing: making people feel targeted because of associated groups o Response: Heather Shea Gasser, Program chair for #acpa14
• One potential opportunity is using professional competency, using a pool of reviewers based on competence levels - Also ties to curriculum for convention
• Also a way to funnel programs into entity groups based on level of expertise o Response: Kristen McKinney, Chair-Elect, Commission for Assessment & Evaluation
• Potentially offer an opportunity to self-select areas of interest with reviewer sign-up

• Social Justice Educators Update (asked by Stephanie Bondi, Chair, Commission for Social Justice Educators)

Helping to live our values for social justice, involving more training for leadership.  This has been going well (to Director of E & I, leadership team, advisory board) to help create opportunities policies,and protocol for equity and inclusion


Charge: Look at policies/practices with an Equity and Inclusion lens, evaluate needs based on members

Example: Colleges and universities with whom we contract for space for events are often out-of-compliance with our stated need for all gender restrooms.   that shows that we still have work to do

• #ACPA16 Update (asked by Brian Hopkins, Chair, Standing Committee for Grad Students and New Professionals o Chris Moody will be coming for Town Hall to provide more updates
o Hotel rooms are averaging $135, and lots of food courts with inexpensive food options
• All hotels are across the street, and there are underground tunnels
o Most excited about building in cultural experiences – convention planning team being intentional
• Experience: initially nervous because non-French speaker, but English was prevalent
• May try to do cultural studies at some Canadian schools through CACUSS; they have been helpful o Free passport photos on Fri/Sat of #acpa15
o Response: Kathy Obear, Director of Inclusion & Equity
• Convention teams have been making incredible progress about equity and inclusion. We are being more and more inclusion about thinking about intended/unintended impacts.
• Someone with equity/inclusion lens continue to be on steering committee and sub-committees
• Plan for job search in Montreal (asked by Chad Mendala, incoming Chair, Standing Committee for Grad Students and New Professionals)
  Many grads/New professionals come for job search... how will we make sure grads have experiences
o Leap frogging existing practices; leveraging virtual placement; supporting the search process is key, since placement as it is in the world is changing; looking forward so grads are more prepared
• 
International Office Changes/Initiatives (asked by Shammah Bermudez, Chair, Commission for 2-Year Colleges) 

When Cindi first arrived, goal was to have direct contact with 1700 ACPA members by convention

• Wanted to hear and understand individual level, entity groups, as many individuals and groups as possible. This was accomplished and this is what Cindi reported.

We are challenged to be the “international” part of our name College Student Educators International. The good news is that there is lots of room to grow. The challenge is that we were not designed as a global operation is: our focus is internal, and we have been “fulfillment house” We are US Centric in structure and communication. This needs to shift to be more inclusive of international members.

• Different models exist for organizational effectiveness... “fulfillment house” is one. It had been 
reinforced by our culture, and as a result, when we did a good job, we were ok and when we were less skillful, it became “us vs. them”
• Over time, culturally we began to have a sense of not being collegial or relational
• Need to change that response; improve our effectiveness where we are “fulfilling” (research and scholarship, publications, professional development, networking) and use globalization as our test of accessibility and accountability. This one part of the “sieve” of our mission, core values and strategic imperatives will help us shift our thinking and how we perform as an association more than any other variable We are an association, here to serve members. That means asking what you care about, and asking how you want that to happen, and how to do that with excellence.

Had to shift to a belief system that echoed “what members want is why we’re here”

• Needed to figure out the clusters. i.e. equity and inclusion, research & scholarship
• Differences in what that looked like, and how it plays out. Disaggregated.

Willingness of members to discuss concerns with Cindi – creates a fuller picture of the Strategic Plan – put all points through a sieve, figured out if they match up to core values.

• If not, the Association is pursuing something that doesn’t have much gravitas
• Example: Commission says there’s a goal, want to do a partnership with some external thing.
• Asking how goal came about, and if it makes sense/feasible
• 
Amending objectives to be more in compliance with values/goals of org
• Moved team assignments to align with those objectives.
• Now 81% complete with strategic initiatives. Need to see if the sieve still holds the rest up
• Also involved asking how we fund all that activity. Entity groups echoed: it was not enough to 
amplify the content experts; needed to be adjusted. International Office strategy: LAMP (lead, amplify, mobilize, partner).
• Responsiveness is key to satisfaction

• Really reorienting who we are, what we do, and how we invest
• Allows entity groups to see creativity unleashed – passion showing through
• 
Convention Numbers Update (asked by Stephanie Bondi, Chair, Commission for Social Justice Educators)

We’ll be ok on the expense side. We’ll be net down after hotel rebates, about <350,000>. Based on that, we may need to adjust the budget (in May)

Membership revenue – income is lower because we have more grads who pay lower membership dues and state memberships are pending at this time due to the change in chapter status.

ACPA culture is that we don’t overspend the expense budget, so we have good discipline.

• Wrap Up (Gavin Henning, ACPA Vice President)

Any questions, open to email (gavin.henning@gmail.com) Thanks – this Association drives because of you.