Having been a part of student clubs and organizations for several years, I am very familiar with the huge rate of member turnover student groups experience from one year to the next. I originally found this refreshing, and noticed a resurgence of creative energy following every executive change up. High member turnover seemed to set the stage for change by bringing in new ideas and new perspectives, but it did not always guarantee that change would occur. Despite the continual desire for change and progress, I found that many student organizations remained stagnant. Many procedures would be maintained purely due to it “always having been done this way”. This was frustrating for me, as it seemed many traditions were needlessly bureaucratic and seemingly arbitrary. This brings me to the question many students and staff have asked themselves: Should we change or remain the same?
Although change can be good, it is not always easy. Change requires a lot of work and a lot of knowledge. You cannot walk into an organization and start changing things from day one. Change requires a firm understanding of the needs of the population you are serving, in addition to an understanding of the current resources at your disposal. This is the main reason change does not happen as much as one would predict. Knowledge seems to be lost from year to year. By the time students gain a firm understanding of their role, the year is over. It is easier for students to enter a position and use the wheel that has been left behind, than to engineer a new one. Although change can be difficult, it should not be avoided because of the above reasons. My recommendation to students and staff wanting to implement change is to first answer these three questions:
Change is good, as long as it is purposeful. Jennifer Halden Clubs Administrative Coordinator Central Student Association, University of Guelph
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This post is part of an ongoing series we will be running showcasing clubs that are doing innovative things acros the country. If you think your club fits that bill, then get in touch!
The Student Affairs Society (SAS) is a student organization based at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. SAS offers programs and activities for all U of T students who are interested in pursuing a professional and/or academic career in Student Affairs/Services and in Higher Education. The SAS was founded in 2014 by OISE students. In the same year, the Department of Leadership, Adult and Higher Education (LAHE) launched the Master of Education (MEd) Program in Student Development and Student Services in Higher Education. These events signaled a growing demand for teaching, research and discourses in student affairs. The main goals of SAS are to foster a sense of community and connectedness; provide platforms to share knowledge and resources; and to offer professional and research development opportunities for students, practitioners and scholars in the field of Student Affairs in Higher Education in Canada. A group of new and senior graduate students at OISE have formed the leadership team of SAS (the leadership team) this year. At the beginning of this academic year, the team decided collectively to organize events for students at U of T aimed at facilitating career exploration. Another goal for SAS program offerings was to create safe space for important and sometimes difficult conversations. The group serves as an important bridge for emerging professionals. Through the SAS, students new to the field have the opportunity to explore careers, and discuss topics of conversations such as equity, diversity and inclusion. The leadership team believes that these themes are critical not only for student success, but also for fostering a diverse and inclusive academic and professional community where everyone can flourish. With these specific goals and the broader goals of the SAS in mind, the leadership team has planned and executed various programs and activities for 2016. In the Field was an event where students were invited to speak with current practitioners working in student affairs and to raise any questions they might have. The purpose was for students to get hands-on knowledge of what it is like to be working in various roles in student affairs and provide them with information that help them make important career choices. In an effort to further support students’ career aspirations, SAS has also planned events such as Mock Interviews and SAS Goes to CACUSS (Canadian Association of College and University Services) in the upcoming semester. Within the past few years, SAS has grown from a small student group to a thriving online and in-person community. Much of this success has come from understanding our audience, and providing opportunities for practitioners to engage in our events. By opening up opportunities, we have created space to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Furthermore, members have had the chance to engage informally with professionals in the field. If you'd like to get learn more about the Student Affairs Society, visit our website: studentaffairs.sa.utoronto.ca, or connect with us by email ([email protected]) to be added to the mailing list, and follow us on Twitter: @SASocietyOISE. Cassidy Gong Michelle DeJardine, Manager of Public Engagement (Youth) at Plan International Canada, was kind enough to share some of their practices in working with their “Because I am a Girl” clubs across Canada.
Q: Is your programming consistent across your clubs, or do they have considerable autonomy in deciding what to do? If the latter, how do you balance this with the need to uphold organizational standards? A: Our Because I am a Girl Clubs have quite a lot of autonomy for how they would like to run their Clubs. They use educational toolkits located at http://plancanada.ca/resource-centre to guide them as they plan out their year, fundraising goals and which initiatives they would like to focus on. Q: Do you maintain relationships with club members after they graduate? If so, how? A: Often Club members join other initiatives at Plan International Canada when they no longer keep their Club active. Many past Club members have joined our Speakers Bureau and our Youth Advisory Council. Also, Club members that have graduated High School and have opted not to start a Club at their University still fundraise for Plan International and keep in touch through their own fundraising initiatives or through sponsoring a child – which is really exciting for us. Q: How do you manage the succession in club leadership from year to year? A: I reach out to Clubs at the end of the school year to see if the Club leader or teacher supervisor are planning to continue their role for the next school year or if someone else will be assuming the role. I reach out again in September to confirm any change overs. Something I’ve learned in my short time as a student group admin is that students – and especially those who are running student groups – are a lot more capable than we think. It’s important to remember that they are capable adults, despite being greener than us, and to make decisions based on an understanding of them like peers in this way. This peer-ish mentality also makes it easier to enforce accountability later on, if the group crosses a line: hold their hands too much, and blame can more easily be put on the administrators instead of the students. I graduated in 2015, so it wasn’t so long ago that I was one of those students running a student group, jumping through the hoops that I now set. Often, it’s still surreal for me to think of myself as an advisor or authority, because I feel like more of a peer to them than anything. This feeling, along with my experience as a peer tutor at the campus writing centre, is what helps encourage me to think instead from a student perspective when developing policy and procedure updates.
Take, for instance, our campus’ student group recognition procedure. Completed annually, an incoming student group executive team is required to submit updated information about the club: names and contact info for the new executive team, the number or roster of current members, signing authorities for the club, that kind of thing. To facilitate this process, a student group president or other exec leader must complete a 5-8 page electronic form through an online portal. Review, completed by our staff, happens within 2-4 weeks of receiving the forms. This is required to permit the club to apply for grants, host events and reserve spaces on campus, among other privileges. Depending on the nature of the student group, the student may have to provide additional documentation from any external organizations with which their club is affiliated, and/or provide contact information for faculty advisors. The greatest delays in this process are these last two items: currently, if a group is affiliated with an external organization, they have to complete an agreement letter to ensure that the organization will maintain adequate distance from the student group’s operations; if a club has a faculty advisor, we contact that faculty to confirm, similar to a job reference. If either of these third-party entities are slow to respond, this holds up the student group’s recognition process. Coming in to 2017, we’ve taken this 5-8 page form and boiled it down to 3-4 pages, depending on the student group type (a fraternity versus a dance club have slightly different requirements), which in turn has simplified our back-end administration records. While some groups have slightly different recognition requirements, most of the info we ask for is the same and the onus is put on the student group. Behind this change was a desire to provide students with additional autonomy and simplicity in the recognition process. By shortening this process with a few quick, but thought-out changes, we foresee the recognition procedure speeding up significantly. It comes down to trusting the students to figure things out and ask questions if they need additional clarifications, being intentional with the way we set and reset systems, and noticing when the same question crops up repeatedly. They’re smart: otherwise, we wouldn’t be seeing them. Kristin LaGrange, Assistant Program Lead, Student Group Services University of Alberta |
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