| Winter Quarter 2008 |
[Jan. 15th, 2008|10:10 am] |
There seems to be a lot riding on the next two weeks. As some of you know, I have applied to a few ACUHO-I (the professional college housing association) internships around the country and for a summer internship with my mentor in Scotland. Interviews for ACUHO-I begin this Thursday and extend into February and if I am invited to interview for the internship abroad, I will probably be interviewing in the next few weeks. I have never felt happier to have an assistantship with Career Services! Hopefully I can use some of that interview wisdom I dispense to students on a daily basis for myself!
I am trying to find ways to subside my anxiety and as it turns out, taking the equivalent of 20 graduate-level credits surely helps distract the mind!
On that note, I realized I have yet to share, in detail, my courses and projects this quarter! Silly me!
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My schedule courses:
Multiculturalism in Higher Education
Counseling
Spirituality in Higher Education
My internships:
Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards Intern: My primary charges over the next two quarters is to adjudicate hearings, create a creative sanction guide, work with the Conduct GTA to overhaul the current Academic Dishonesty Workshop, attend Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) meetings (which is truly a great learning experience, as OSU's CIRT team is one of the first campus networking teams and its leaders, the Dean of Students and the Director of Student Conduct, travels all around the country and world to help other universities set up their own crisis management team), attend Bias Response Team meetings, attend Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Team meetings and participate in the Alcohol Issues in Higher Education Conference in February. I would also like to create a town-gown committee or forum that would help build relationships between OSU students and Corvallis residents and address some of the issues that arise in college town residential areas (such as disputes over noise, partying, and so forth).
Office of the Dean of Student Life Intern: This is a two-part, long-term, open-ended internship, extending from last quarter to Spring 2009, when I graduate. Essentially, our Dean of Students really wants to create some momentum around student spiritual development at OSU. I was originally approached to conduct a "quiet space" inventory of the campus - you know, places students can go to reflect, meditate, contemplate, pray, or just have peace and quiet amidst the hustle-and-bustle of campus life. Because I want to create an area of specialization in Campus Ecology, I thought this would be a great project. However, once I met with the Dean and we started talking, this one-quarter, 2-credit project quickly morphed into a two-year internship to do whatever is necessary to create an Interfaith Center on campus. The way I envision it, the Interfaith Center would be a physical place on campus where students can learn more about spirituality, religion, and faith without pressure to join or commit to a faith or group, find private space to reflect, pray, and/or meditate, and meet other students of different faiths and backgrounds. Perhaps I would be going out on a limb to say public higher education in general shys away from spiritual education and yet we as Student Affairs professionals commit ourselves to assisting students to develop holistically. However, by not initiating conversation or efforts to help students better understand themselves and their spiritual beliefs (which can be and often is very different from religious beliefs), we send a message that spirituality has no place in academe. When, in fact, I might argue: "True education is always about learning to connect knowing with doing, belief with behavior..." (Garber, 1996, p. 43).
As I was saying: While my internship is a little open-ended because there is no way to tell where this project will go in the next two years, for now I know I will be inventorying quiet space, researching student spiritual development theory, surveying what efforts other colleges and universities are making towards assisting their students in this endeavor, meeting with student groups and the Religious Advisors Association to gain feedback about their visions for OSU, creating a website on spiritual development at OSU and facilitating a presentation to Student Affairs professionals next year about how we can support students through the stages of spiritual development.
Neat, right? If you are overwhelmed just reading about my internship, you should know how I feel about having to do it!
And finally, my projects for this term:
Campus Days Leadership Team: I am co-coordinating the two-day campus interview event for future CSSA students. This includes organizing student and faculty panels, pre-event communication efforts (aka calling the 100+ applicants before the end of this week!), arranging hospitality and transportation, and so forth. The bad news is we only have two more weeks to get everything done! But the good news is we have a great team of volunteers and after February 8, I am done with this project and can focus on my other projects!
Intercultural Career Development Conference: I am creating a presentation on how students who have been taught - culturally, socially or otherwise - to be modest can market themselves during the job process and still remain true to their cultural values. I am also creating a giant resource guide for marginalized students on where they can go for support and guidance during the job search process.
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I told you I was busy! But again, at least I do not have any time to sit around and panic about my Scotland internship interview! Plus, I am really passionate about my projects, so I am hoping I can use that to motivate and energize me through the quarter. I am also planning to take a giant break on Presidents Day Weekend, when Nick visits. It's sad that I won't get to see him for a full month and a half, but it is probably the only way I will be able to survive this quarter!
Garber, S. (1996). The fabric of faithfulness: Weaving together belief and behavior during the university years. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press. |
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