Kevin Guidry has a great thought piece on technology in student affairs and how that fits into our current (and hopefully new) professional organizations. Joe Sabado from UC-Santa Barbara commented on that post and lamented about not knowing any other IT directors in Student Affairs.
I find myself asking myself this question all the time: Who are my peers?
I created this Google Doc to document to help capture that information. I know who a few of us are, but ask others to please add themselves to the document so we can really see who is part of this niche in the profession of student affairs. (Tip o’ the hat to the Student Affairs Collaborative – I basically just copied their Directory idea.)
As Kevin says:
There seems to be three groups of people in student affairs interested in technology: administrators who manage technology projects and groups in student affairs departments and divisions, student affairs scholars who study technology and its uses and impact, and student affairs professionals with interests in technology but a different primary focus.
Certainly the third group is very broad, and we know many of them follow the various blogs and hashtags on the topic, and many are members of the NASPA Tech Knowledge Community. The second group is likely very small…but would it be worth seeing who identifies themselves as such?
So, this is an effort to capture that first group: the geeky admins…some of us may be SA professionals first and geeks second. Others might be geeks first and SA staff second. In either case, identifying the members of this community might be helpful to us all.
Best of luck with this, Leslie! I think it’s a great idea and I hope that good things come out of it! Let me know if I can do anything to help.
Thanks so much for doing this Leslie! I look forward to connecting with other folks. And definitely let me know if I can help any also.
Kevin – thanks for getting the idea started.
Joe
Thanks, Joe. Would be great if you could tweet about this list to help get the word out. Appreciate it!
I thought I was the only one.
I’m an IT professional first (director of web and technology services), with over 10 years experience in Fortune 50 companies (web dev). I had no knowledge of the Student Affairs profession prior to starting at CSUN 5 years ago. It’s been an interesting ride, would be happy to chat any time.
Good to see this one come through. How about a student affairs IT listserv?