Just Desserts: Closing the Book on Dissertation Club #1

The first dissertation book club is in the... well... in the books. Participants from around the country discussed Dr. Erin Kaplan's research about student conduct and how our processes do or don't contribute to a sense of belonging, retention, trust and more. Kurt and Colette break down lessons learned, themes they heard and ideas for the future. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this first venture. We're looking forward to many more!

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Theme music "Fuzzball Parade" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello and welcome to Ms. Behavior, the podcast for college student conduct professionals. My name is Colette.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

And I'm Kurt.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

And yesterday we just had our very first Ms. Behavior Book Club, the just desserts and dissertations book club. Kurt, can I just ask you what you thought?

SPEAKER_01 0:30

I I had a good time. I thought it was fun. You know, I'm a dissertation nerd from I don't want to say way back, but it's sort of been my jam for the past couple of years. So I have never actually read a dissertation on uh student conduct. So that was a treat. And what a great group. Kudos to you. You you rustled up 20 people. And I think that was your goal too, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

It was. We had almost 50 people registered. So I'm sorry to say we had said we'd have a recording and we do not have a recording. Uh, or at least I haven't figured out how to get to it wherever it is. But uh we're gonna have to just do some recapping right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

It lives in a cloud in an unknown location. Are we technology pop-pops now? Is that what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Is that I guess so.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

I couldn't figure out how to change the background of my screen yesterday, and I I felt like I felt like this is must be what it's like to be my dad. Because my dad. Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

No, it's not super intuitive, I will say that. Yeah. Um, because all three of us had some problems. So at the beginning, we just asked, uh, we did a little icebreaker to see who was working on dissertations, and there were not as many as I thought.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

No, and I, you know, I highly encourage anybody who is thinking about it to do it, or at least start exploring it. I think I was somebody who was out of higher education for, well, I work in higher education, but I was not in the classroom for about 17 years in between when I did my master's and my doctorate. And I kept saying next year, next year, next year. And I realized at some point, I'm gonna put this off until the end of my career if I don't do it now. There's there's never a good time to do it. It is going to disrupt your life, it is going to cost money, but the benefits are so great. I think it reframed how I think about the work that I do. And I think this is true of any any good doctoral program. It doesn't necessarily matter what uh topic you're pursuing or what your interest is. If you have a question that has been nagging at you throughout your career, a doctoral program is a wonderful place to explore that and truly become expert in it. And uh yeah, highly recommend.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

I found it so affirming and the the dissertation we chose told stories, which I think are so powerful. So I know there were folks there who had not read the dissertation, um, but I think they got a lot out of the conversation about um the importance of a relational model of student conduct.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Yeah, that was a huge takeaway for me as well. I think my first few years working as a conduct officer, I had a very uh transactional approach to doing the work. And I think it wasn't until I started working with you that I started to see the value in the relational aspects of what uh student student conduct can be. And that really shined through, I think, in Aaron's um dissertation. And particularly, you know, when we talk about working with students and the retention pieces of the work that we do in higher education, making sure, you know, no student comes to college to not finish. They come to finish. And I I firmly believe that everybody in a college campus plays a role in that. And I think um sometimes I think conduct officers can feel like they are on the outside of that, uh, as can other people on campus. But this brings that role back into the center of the conversation in a very meaningful way.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

I just reinforced to me that every student matters. And every student should have someone who knows them. And it can't be like I work in a community standards office with I'm part-time and two full-timers. We we're not gonna be able to know every student. So we're relying on residence life colleagues, and they aren't enough. Uh, but that that assumes like that everybody is making that effort to build the relationship and not just a short-time transaction, as you said, but can any student know that at least one person cares about them?

SPEAKER_01 5:06

I just wonder how easy or how hard an ask is that I you know, I I assume that people go into higher education because they like to work with students. I think uh, you know, there are obviously some exceptions where your college may be just a convenient employer in your town, but I I don't think most people work in a college and don't expect to work directly with students in some capacity. So to say, hey, we should be in the business of making sure that students know that we care about them succeeding and that they belong on campus, to me, it's not a stretch of reality.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

It's not. I one of the most heartening things I ever did was work with a um support person team. Uh, RIT, we called them student advocates. At Franklin and Marshall, we called them um conduct mentors, but they were trained folks, and so many of them worked in roles where they didn't get to meet with students very often. And yet they were surrounded by students, and for them it was incredibly meaningful, and they were so good at helping relieve. I think what Aaron pointed out, or I should really give credit that the students that talked to Aaron pointed out how anxious they were prior to their hearing and how little information they felt they had about outcomes that were possible or or likely for them. It actually proved, I've always said every student thinks they're getting suspended, except the student that's actually going to be suspended, who's in denial. And that was true. And like how much fear is instilled because we have an opportunity for transparency that we haven't taken advantage of.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

I also appreciated that Erin was thoughtful about the fact that uh the population that she interviewed was a four-year student population. And I'm always going to bring up the community colleges because that's where my heart is. So for anybody who is thinking about in the world of conduct, if you're considering a uh a doctoral program and you're looking, and maybe you work at a community college, this study is ripe for being replicated at a community college where you know we are working sometimes with the most vulnerable student populations who may not feel like they belong because all they do is we used to call them CPC students. They were car uh wait, no, PCP students, parking lot, classroom, parking lot, not PCP the drug. Um it was very much the case that we had students who would just show up and go to class and then get back in their car and leave and and go about their lives. And, you know, we know as uh as student affairs practitioners that that is not a great recipe for retention and success. So when you don't have residence halls, uh I think it can in my mind, residence halls were always the hub of where things happened and where you started to feel that sense you where you found your people really. Uh, and that doesn't exist on many community college campuses. So again, if anybody is feeling like they need a uh dissertation topic, uh building on Aaron study would be a great opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

It would. Also for special populations, she pointed out. I've always had a question about the disproportionate number of men of color who will not respond to an invitation, don't show up, and can sometimes get into a place where we're threatening them, like you better show up, or and like I think they have a story to tell that is important about why they're not coming. I I have questions about um women in our processes and how they respond to feelings of shame and um oh there's yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

You could just take what Aaron did and really replicate it in 20 or 30 different ways. I think about, you know, what are the what's the intersection of socioeconomic status and how how that would play out, uh, race and ethnicity, uh adult learners versus uh new first-time students. In community colleges, we are also seeing an influx of dual enrollment students. So we've got high school students on our campus, and what does that feel like for them? So uh I just think what a great opportunity to build on what is now a piece of literature that Aaron has birthed into the world.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yep. Anyone who would like a copy of the dissertation can just reach out to us at Ms. BehaviorCollege at gmail.com and I'd be happy to provide that. I think that um staffs could even skim it and have a great discussion as they're doing their strategic planning. Anyone who would not use this research, I just I I feel confident their practice would not be as good.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

You know, I right after the happy hour last night, I jumped into a uh meeting on a dissertation committee uh for somebody who's about to defend in August. And I was talking about the importance of the slide deck that she's working on and how it becomes a tool that she can use for future presentations and the importance of having an executive summary of your work that you can share with colleagues to help build interest. And that was something I um I should have asked Erin last night. Does she have her dissertation packaged in different ways that uh that we could help her get out to professionals who might want to use it as a discussion piece in a staff meeting or you know, as a training um opportunity, a case study?

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Yeah, even with us at one point she couldn't resist, like, hey, can I share my screen and share a couple slides? Uh, because she had visually had a conceptual framing that we were able to see at the defense that wasn't in the um dissertation proper. But for sure, just some key bullet points.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

I just want to give some kudos to Erin. I uh I think to me, she exemplifies a good doctoral student. She was so passionate about the work she was doing. And I think when you find a topic that really resonates with you, that one that nags at you in a good way and in a frustrating way for years, and you finally get to dig into it and become an expert in it, it just shows. And that was on full display for me with Erin last night. She just was so excited to share uh her findings and uh it was it was a great evening.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

It was very excited to get another one on the books for later this year. Uh if you've got a dissertation and particularly one that is specific to student conduct, and I I don't know about you, Kerb, but I've got a preference for ones that study the student experience. Yeah. Uh but I mean that could mean a lot of things, like having us be our best also, if that helps promote better outcomes.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

I also uh another thing that I really loved about her dissertation was to your point, the student stories. I think so many times uh I'm reading dissertations and they are quantitative. And, you know, I'm a numbers guy. I love quantitative, but more and more I feel like I'm seeing qualitative work coming out of doctoral programs. And I am starting to be drawn to the stories that I'm getting out of these. Um and maybe it's just partly that I'm I'm so far removed now from being a student that part of me craves understanding what is the student experience right now for this generation and how how is it different from the experiences I had, you know, back in the 1900s?

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Well, it's hard to uh read some of those stories and not think about yourself like, oh gosh, I could have been that hearing officer that did that thing. Or yeah, our letter templates still sound like there, and we think they're pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Was it Erin that said she had her students read the letters and de-spookify them, like make them sound less. Yeah, I what a great idea.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Mm-hmm. I remember uh we had a student advisory board at RAT, and we warned them ahead of time we were going to be sending them a charge letter. And uh they still, when they came to the meeting, they were like, Oh my god, when I got that letter, I one guy described as going through the five stages of grief all in one anger, denial, acceptance. And um one of the things I remember they they're like, when you list the charges, it's um for number one, alcohol, number two, failure to comply, whatever. And they they let it read it through this legal lens of like oh yeah, um two counts of failure to comply and three counts of and like oh no, we just it was just number one, number two, number three, and so we changed it to bullet points.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

You can almost hear a judge saying three counts of felony misdemeanor for noise violation.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

And and they did. Uh and I think somebody in the room yesterday was saying, like, oh yeah, we had a student r recommend that we move one line of things up to the top, and it may have been something like, we haven't made a decision yet. Oh you know, we would not make a decision without talking to you.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

I am curious about so when she was talking about making the letters less spooky, less scary, I can see that approach working for many of the letters because I think I've seen, you know, a quiet hours violation letter that looks like you you might have, you know, injured a small animal out in public or something. But are there letters that you kind of retain an edge to because of the severity of what happened?

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yeah, I think that there should be different letters. And that whole idea of being transparent about outcomes, that might be one thing that you do differently. With the support team I was talking about at Franklin or Marshall, I had an addition that I could make just as an option that said, this is a very serious case. We recommend um that you use all your resources, including a support person who is trained to help support you all the way through and come to your meetings. And so even though it was like, this is the big time kid, it also was and that whole challenge on support.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

This is serious and we want it to go well.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Uh so just having something like that. A lot of schools use Maxiant or a software program like that. It's easy to have those little things like, do you want to add the serious tag to this? Like, yes, I do. Add that paragraph, and it's one click of a button.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

I'm just imagining the challenge and support line going from green to yellow to red. And yeah. You may need something, you may need an extra tool up here or an extra resource that uh this person might not need. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

And you know, I made a little visual, I made a I wrote a blog article. I've started a blog for Ms. Behavior about what we talked to Professor Norcross, the music conductor, about with challenge and support, but instead it's um authority and humility that the bigger your title or the higher the consequence for something, the more humble we need to be. Like, oh yeah, we we might need to offer more resources or be more transparent in our communication. And we might have a lot more to learn from that student uh who's doing these really risky behaviors. Like there's probably a lot more to it than we would normally feel like we need to know in a case.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

I was excited that you had a reporter join us yesterday because I think helping people out in the broader community understand the work that is happening um in student conduct right now uh and the shift that I'm seeing as somebody who hasn't been in for a while. I think it's great that uh I don't know what will come of the reporter being there, but if it results in an article or even a post about um Erin's dissertation and the work she did, or the work that you have spearheaded here in creating space to talk about it, uh what a phenomenal opportunity. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Yeah, I I'm excited to see uh if scholarship has its day in student conduct. I found uh this was the magnificent Emma Whitford from Inside Higher Ed. I thought she brought a lot of humility and a lot of great questions about, you know, what do you people do? Are you faculty members? Are you administrators? It it's stuff we just assume people know. And of course they don't know. Why would they?

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Our parents don't even know. So right No, I I I love that she approached the conversation with curiosity and wasn't afraid to ask questions, as I'm sure a good reporter should not be afraid. No, I I it was uh it was interesting to hear the questions that she asked. For me, it was still like here's the gap between what the public knows about this community of student affairs professionals and the reality.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

It was fun too. She came to the first ever uh Ms. Be Happy Hour, uh, which was a smaller group where she could just talk to everybody almost like in a circle. And those were almost exclusively people who had not come to the book club earlier in the afternoon. And so they were sort of a fresh audience to just talk about student conduct in general. And I was learning some things. She she was asking about um protests and student conduct around protests and listening to different schools. Um, that was kind of fun.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

What I loved about the happy hour was I felt like it was a greatest hit of um our guests from It was. It was it was like a little reunion.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

And I kept forgetting they didn't know each other. They probably sort of did from listening to each other's stories.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

It was seven degrees of Ms. Behavior.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

We got some positive feedback about our ideas of a um Ms. Betraitor's special Halloween game, and um a request was made, and there seemed to be a consensus that people would want to wear costumes.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

I don't have a costume.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Well, I'm thinking you should have a Tam um to go like full full host, and I'm gonna get a black wig with fringe all the way down.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Oh, you're gonna be the Claudia?

SPEAKER_00 21:13

I can be Claudia.

unknown 21:14

I love the Claudia.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

I do forget that I do have the most expensive uh Halloween costume ever that I purchased, which is my uh dissertation regalia. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

I can see that fitting in with the Scottish theme. But uh I no one I I I thought I asked pretty openly, was this just a terrible idea?

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Some people had not watched Traitors, but Oh, I'm envious to go back and watch you know, a season fresh again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah. So we got some good data.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Love it, love it.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

And just had fun and interesting beverages and uh desserts.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

What was your d say your dessert again?

SPEAKER_00 22:02

I was it a I made a mug cake that is off uh it's it's a variation of one I found on the Weight Watchers AIP. So it's a smooshed up banana and I use um almond flour.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

An egg for to make it rise, uh some vanilla and so I cook that up in the microwave and it makes a little cake, and then I put some strawberries, I microwaved some strawberries and a dollop of vanilla Greek yogurt.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

That sounds amazing. Five point. I'm back on the Weight Watchers jam.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

So Oh nice.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

So misbehavior is good for you too. Is what we're saying.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

I also had a five-point snack that I ate because I was hungry when I got home, and I poured out my allotted number of dots cinnamon twist uh pretzels, and then proceeded to eat them all before uh before the event. So I was without uh a dessert.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

My sister was talking about those cinnamon pretzels while I was in Seattle with her, with thanks to you.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

I did have an idea of crushing them up and putting them on top of a peach and having it be like a peach pie kind of situation. So we'll see. Where did we get here?

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Yeah, I think this is a perfect place to sign off and go get a snack. Amen. Um so for everybody that joined our book club, we sure thank you. For future members, uh, we thank you in advance, and we look forward to getting another one scheduled for the fall and uh for everybody else. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Bye, folks.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Ms. Behavior is written and produced by Colette Shaw and Kurt Doan. Theme music was written and performed by Kevin McLeod from Incompotech.com. You can contact Ms. Behavior at Ms. Behavior College at gmail.com. That's MSBehaviorcollege at gmail.com.