It's taken me a few days (ok, a week) to finally finish my ACUHO-I conference posts. Between catching up with work and the July 4th holiday, life got a little busy.
It was nice to take my time on the last morning- had a nice breakfast, checked out of my hotel, and dove right into sessions. I started with Moving Training into the 21st Century. Much like the Social Media session I had gone to the day before, it was pretty neat in terms of the ideas generated. I feel like, however, unless you considered yourself intermediate to advanced in terms of technology and social media, it might have gone over your head. It was certainly informative; as the presenter, Dan Oltersdorf from ACUHO-I Central put it, "We're going to have you take a drink from a firehose... try to keep up." I'm not sure how much of there was to take away for my home institution, except that there is value in up front costs for long term benefit with regards to things like software and hardware upgrades for your departments. There was definitely some good information in terms of considering whether or not moving to online curricula is good for your school and your staff, and then considering if this is just a one-time thing, a refresher course here or there, or to be completed in lieu of traditional training entirely. Very interesting points to consider.
The second session of the day was probably one of my favorite sessions at the conference, about Personality Clashes within the staff. This was a highly interactive, engaging program that can totally be taken back to your own campus and tailored to your staffs. We started by making small group discussions of one-word adjectives to describe an effective team and then shared these aloud into a master list. Then, we were introduced to four animals; this was essentially a Myers-Briggs redux that categorized people into four personality groups: Bears, Owls, Rabbits, and Turtles. Through this activity, participants self-identify with a particular group based on general characteristics of each group. Everyone broke off into their respective groups and discussed specific actions/behaviors of their own group, and the positives and negatives of working with that type of person.
After each question, each group was asked to share their findings and present. There was a lot of room to play around with the order of who presents as it relates to personality characteristics, and the presenter much be actively listening to pick up subtleties in the way each group described themselves as key indicators of that group’s personality.
We then came back as a large group and looked at the list of adjectives we made for an effective team and then determined with animal most closely represented that adjective. It was a very fun and quite informative way to see how diverse personalities on a team can contribute in very specific ways. The great thing about this entire presentation was that it could be taken back to your own home institution and tweaked as you needed to drive home issues pertinent to your institution.
I also went to a fantastic, informative feedback session from the Case Study Competition. It was great to digest the entire experience, and there was a lot of engaged discussion, from both participants and judges. I found out later that our team didn't win (I flew back before the closing reception), but I was still very satisfied with the whole case study experience.
In all, ACUHO was a pretty incredible conference; a very different vibe than from the NASPA conference I attended in Boston in 2008. I think not only being out-of-town, but traveling with coworkers made a huge difference in how I personally engaged in this conference. For NASPA, it was local so I just took the T in each day, and I was the only person representing my school, in addition to it being my first national conference ever. Still, both are essential professional organizations in the fields of student affairs and residence life, and I look forward to engaging with and utilizing them more in my professional work.
3 years ago
