September 2015 News Digest

To increase our access to higher education news, I've put together summaries of articles from The Chronicle of Higher Education and The New York Times from September. The links to the full articles are included in the summary.

In higher education this month:

Obama Takes Steps to Make FAFSA Easier

The Obama administration is taking steps to allow students to fill out the FAFSA application as early as October. Students will be allowed to use tax data from two years prior.

This change will allow students to know how much aid they will receive much earlier. It will also make filling out the form and the verification process more simple.

Michelle Obama speaks at a FAFSA workshop 

1 in 4 Women Experience Sex Assault on Campus

A new study finds that 1 in 4 women experience sexual assault on college campuses. This study is one of the largest studies of its kind, with responses from 150,000 students at 27 universities.

Almost three-fourths of students said they did not report the assault because they did not think the assault was serious enough to report, they felt ashamed, or they did not think they would be taken seriously.

This is the first large-scale study to include transgender students, who had higher rates of sexual assault than women. Men also experienced significant rates of sexual assault, though much lower than transgender students or women.

Missouri Bars Undocumented Students from Scholarships

A new state law in Missouri will bar undocumented students from receiving the A+ scholarship, which pays for two years of tuition at a community college. This law will cause undocumented students to pay the highest possible tuition rate.

Governor Nixon unsuccessfully vetoed the bill arguing that it would punish students who did nothing wrong.

Individual schools will now be the only hope to alleviate some of the rising costs incurred on undocumented students.

 

Jay Nixon, Gov. of Missouri, speaks at an education conference in July 2015

More than a Degree

Credentials and badges are becoming more necessary as employers are looking for ways to measure skills. Employers want to see what transferable skills students have as their degree alone is often not enough.

Many job postings are now asking for additional certificates beyond a degree.

Humanities Ph.D. Programs Declines

There has been a recent decline in humanities Ph.D. programs while enrollment for other graduate programs have increased. Many schools like UC Berkeley have begun reducing the number of graduate students in humanities. UC Berkeley says this allows them to compete with other programs because students are able to receive larger fellowships and feel better supported.

Not all agree with this rationale. Some, including the Dean of Virginia Tech, believe we should be accepting more graduate students. She believes doctoral students are necessary to teach undergraduates, conduct research, and pass on faculty knowledge.

A Piece of UT Austin History:
The mascot of UT Austin, Bevo, was not always a longhorn. Bevo's predecessor was a dog named Pig.  He had the run of the campus, attending classes with students, going to out of town football games, and sleeping on the steps of the UT Co-Op.

Pig died in 1923 when he was hit by a Model T on the corner of 24th and Guadalupe. The student body held a funeral procession for the beloved dog.

Funeral Procession for Pig

In Memoriam 

Summaries written by Kelsey Thompson and Stephanie Nandlal

ACA September 2015 General Meeting

A great meeting to kick off the new academic year! The UTeach Urban Teachers Program was kind enough to sponsor this meeting held on September 16th, 2015 in the SAC Legislative Assembly Room. Full meeting minutes will be available on the ACA website.

Breakfast was so excellent that I was too busy eating to even take pictures of it. A mistake I won't make again! But there was a wonderful spread of Tacodeli tacos, fruit, and several jugs of coffee. Even decaf coffee!

After breakfast, our esteemed president, Sarah McKay, took to the stage, welcoming us all to the new academic year. I loved the quotes she mentioned. Remembering that "everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't" is an important way for me to think about approaching students and colleagues.

Unfortunately, I didn't snap to my duty of taking pictures as historian until several minutes into the meeting so there isn't a picture of Sarah. I hope that Bill Nye will stand in her place.

Bill Nye 

After Sarah welcomed us to the new year, we got to hear from our speakers. First, we heard from faculty members and students from UTeach Urban Teachers. Dr. Cinthia Salinas, Dr. Allison Skerrett, Dr. Randy Bomer,  and Dr. Anthony Brown spoke to us about the UTUT undergraduate and graduate programs.

Q&A with Dr. Salinas 

We also had several student speakers who were a joy to hear from. Their excitement for and engagement with the UTUT program was great to see!

Next up was Caitlin James with Admissions.

Admissions Information! 

All the way from John Hargis Hall!

John Hargis Hall

as far away as the moon!

Caitlin spoke about the admissions process that students go through and gave some updates on scholarships such as Texas Advance and Presidential Scholars.

She recommended that when prospective students have questions to direct them to their assigned admissions counselor.

Our President-Elect, Kayla Ford, came up next to give us some updates from advisory council.

She discussed how advisory council is both proactive and reactive in regards to making recommendations on advising trends as well as responding to ongoing items such as the campus carry legislation.

Finally, we ended with kudos and announcements. Several new folks were introduced. Welcome to ACA for all the new members!

In case you missed the kudos I announced, I've included them all below. Thanks for participating in kudos! 

From: Manny Gonzalez

“To Andrea Chytil Gonzalez for being a wonderfully, supportive resource and role model for first-year students, FIG mentors, and our daughter Layla.”

From: Sarah McKay

“Big huge enormous shout out to Jess Hust, who has been a rock star in helping me transition to the EVS program in the last week. She's taken so much time out of her busy days to help me get set up and start to understand my new work challenges. I would've crumbled without her wisdom, support, and patience with my incessant questions. Thanks, lady!!”

From: Rose

“Thanks, Tisha Monsey, for helping me and one of our shared students out at the 11th hour on the 12th class day. Much appreciated!”

From: Margo Cousins

“Kudos to Chase Dawkins!

In the past few years, his detailed proactive approach to registration advising has prevented most last-minute add/drop emergencies for biomedical engineering students at the beginning of the semester. His hard work is so appreciated by the students!

Well done Chase!”

See you next meeting on October 21st at the SAC Legislative Assembly Room! 

ACA Archival Project

As your new historian for the 2015-2016 year, I am excited to start off with a post about the work several of us have been doing with the ACA archives. Looking into the past seems like a cool way to move into the future!

Several boxes of documents dating back to 1984 have been sitting in the ACA storage locker for some time and over the past year or so, it has been a priority of the historian and all of the exec committee to preserve those documents for current and future ACA members.

Files to be scanned and organized

Last year's executive committee began scanning the documents and Josh Barham in particular has done a lot to complete that part of the process. With the documents scanned, we have been working on organizing the files into sections to be more easily accessed.

At least they had a good sense of humor about it!

There were also a couple photo albums with pictures from 1994 to 1998 and 2001 that I was able to scan and upload. There were pictures from NACADA conferences, past holiday parties, and other shenanigans.

 How beautiful! (NACADA 2000)

It has been fun to look through old documents and photos and learn a lot about where this organization has come from and see what shapes where it's going.

A huge thank you goes out to past executive committees who have saved these documents and preserved such a rich part of our ACA history!

Our goal is to make these documents accessible to all of ACA so be on the look out for that in the coming months.

ACA April and May 2015 General Meetings

Our April meeting was held on Wednesday, April 8th in the SAC Ballroom, and was generously hosted by the International Office and Study Abroad. The May meeting was held on Wednesday, May 6th in the SAC Ballroom and graciously hosted by New Student Services. Full meeting minutes will be made available on the ACA website.

Y'all know how these go; in the essence of time, please enjoy a smattering of photos for a Recap Wrap Up!


Some of our lovely members:



















Our fabulous Madame President, welcoming the group once again:





Some of our wonderful presenters:
















And the weird and wonderful things our presenters convince the ACA community do:










And finally, I'll leave you with this little video of Josh Barham reading part of his advising philosophy slam poem at the April meeting. Delightful!


That does it for Sarah McKay's stint as your ACA Historian for the 2014-2015 academic year. Thank you all for tuning in to read my little recaps and indulging in my penchant for silliness! It's been fun capturing moments of the advising community this year, and my hope is that it's inspired some lightheartedness for others throughout this advising work that sometimes gets so heavy. Keep on keepin' on, ACA!

ACA General Election for 2015-2016 Executive Officers

Courtney Sy - candidate for President-Elect

Kayla Ford - candidate for President-Elect

 

 

 

Sarah Talley - candidate for Treasurer-Elect

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sara Sanchez - candidate for Treasurer-Elect

Craig Gilden - candidate for Treasurer-Elect

At the May 6, 2015 ACA General Meeting, nominees for each of the elected officer positions were asked to make a speech.  We were fortunate enough to have two offices with multiple nominees and have asked each of the candidates running for a contested position to provide their written speech and a photo to give members who were not able to attend the meeting an opportunity to learn more about their interest in the office.

The two contested offices are President-Elect and Treasurer-Elect.  To read more about the expectations of each office, please review the ACA ByLaws at the following site:

http://www.utexas.edu/staff/aca/bylaws#executive


The candidate speeches and photos are in reverse alphabetical order within each contested office.

CANDIDATE SPEECHES

 
President-Elect
Candidate:  Courtney Sy 

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Courtney Sy (or Courtney Lockhart if you only know me from more than three years ago). I am an academic advisor for the Department of Anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts, a position I have held for 6.5 years. Prior to this role, I advised students in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. I attended UT as an undergrad and moved into academic advising shortly after graduating.

My involvement with ACA began almost immediately. Over the years, I have chaired Advising Expo and the scholarship committee, served on the exec committee as co-PR/Communications Coordinator and co-Vice President/Program Chair, and for the past three years, co-chaired the ROAD committee. I have also been involved with the ACA Pod program this year and absolutely love it! It has been so much fun meeting new friends and getting reacquainted with a few older ones.

I have been on this campus as a student and as a professional for 16 years, so I think that qualifies me to say I have been here for a while, and just as many of you have, I have seen UT change a lot. This is certainly a time of significance in the history of our University; we are transforming how we educate our students – and the world – in some tremendous ways.

We are building a medical school. We are using innovative technology in our advising offices and in our (sometimes virtual) classrooms. We have new policies, like internal transfer restrictions and transcript-recognized minors. We have new deans in place or on the way. We have a new System Chancellor. We have a new Vice Provost position that will certainly impact our advising practices. On top of all this, we have a new President beginning his term in a few short weeks.

Over the next two years, we will find out how the Classes of 2016 and 2017 measure up – will we meet our four-year graduation goal of 70%?

So, yeah, UT is changing in some pretty significant ways. Admittedly, it can all feel a bit chaotic at times. How we, as a community of advising professionals, navigate the chaos and work with the changes is up to us. And that’s where this organization is so necessary. It has been an invaluable resource to me, and my mission is to continue that tradition for all members. As President-Elect and then as President, I hope to help make sense of the uncertainty by keeping our community informed, forging new campus partnerships, and ensuring our voices are heard across the University and beyond. To accomplish this, next year I will start by leading an active ACA Advisory Council.

I am excited by the prospect of serving on next year’s executive committee, especially under Sarah’s leadership. I know I would learn a lot from her – and I hope, mostly for your sake, that her sense of humor rubs off on me! I hope to learn a lot from all of you as we collaborate not to just maintain our sense of community but to strengthen it. I am excited, and feel inspired really, by the opportunity to lead our organization through these uncertain times.

Thank you for the nomination – I am humbled and honored to even be considered for this position. Thank you for your time, and thank you for your consideration.




President-Elect
Candidate:  Kayla Ford

Good afternoon! I want to start with a few apologies. First, I apologize for missing the meeting today, but I am fortunate enough to be spending the day with my sweet little daughter Adalyn who was born last month....which leads me to my second apology: I am sorry if you find any errors or strange sentences in my speech, but I am living on just a few hours of sleep and I am typing my speech with my one free hand!

With that said, I want to really start by thanking you for the opportunity to run for the President Elect position again this year. I am honored and humbled and want to share with you today two areas that I would prioritize if I was elected into this position.

First, I would focus on community building. In this past year, I have really come to experience and further appreciate the power of community through my involvement in the ACA Pod program. The Pods have been a blessing for me as I have gotten to know my colleagues better, both in a personal and professional sense. I have gotten to learn random fun facts about my pod members, discuss our strengths together, visit their office spaces and lean on them for support/advice and I am so grateful for these developing relationships. Additionally, while I think it is imperative that we continue to build community within ACA, I also know that building community beyond ACA with campus partners is as equally important and I will strive to represent ACA well across campus.

The second goal for me as President Elect would be a focus on leadership. Leadership can be defined in many different ways....in fact every person likely has their own definition of leadership. For me, I see so many opportunities for leadership within ACA and I want to encourage members to engage in the organization through active leadership: this could be anything from joining a committee, to leading a project for a committee, to serving as a committee co-chair or even proposing a new idea/providing feedback to committees or the executive board.  The more ACA members we have that are actively engaged in the ACA community as leaders, the better we will be as an organization and the better we can serve the UT community and our students. I hope to see leaders emerging within ACA that are new to UT, new to advising, and also those that have been at UT for many years or in advising for many years. Leadership in many forms and on many levels will help us be the best we can be!

Thank you again for your time this afternoon and for the opportunity to run for this important position! Congratulations on making it through registration and I look forward to seeing you all soon again this summer as we welcome our new students at orientation!




Treasurer-Elect
Candidate: Sarah Talley

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day.  First, let me say I am touched by being nominated for ACA Executive Board.  I have a goal to become more involved on campus and within the advising community here at UT.  So I’m excited to run for Treasurer-Elect, and spend time learning all the numbers/things from my office neighbor, Josh Barham.

In my almost 2 years at UT, I have become more familiar with the work that we all do. Although it can be demanding, and sometimes seem that we have thankless jobs. By showing up to work every day, we all are making a difference within the machine of higher education, both here at UT and across the country.

Running for the position of Treasurer-Elect will allow me to work with amazing people across campus. In doing so I will be able to give back to the organization that helped make me feel at home when I first started at UT two years ago. I look forward to continuing the great work Josh and previous ACA Treasurers have done.

I’ll work to be diligent and organized with all the numbers/things Treasurer-Elect will encompass. As a part of ACA Executive Board, it is my duty to continue to create that feeling of connectedness for others who join and continue to be a part of ACA.

Thank you for your time.

Sarah Talley



Treasurer-Elect
Candidate:  Sara Sanchez

Thank you for the nomination for Treasurer-Elect.  Below are a few reasons that I would like to share with you regarding why I would like you to vote for me.

1. In my previous jobs as Office Manager for Breakthrough Austin and as a Program Coordinator for the Equal Opportunity in Engineering program at UT, I was responsible for handling large sums of money.  Through these positions, I managed multiple accounts and was responsible for purchasing, depositing checks, budgeting, and maintaining accurate financial records.  Through my experiences, I had to practice strong organizational skills and attention to detail to make sure that everything ran smoothly and was reported back to funders.

2. I like to respond to people very quickly which means that if you are needing money to pay for an event or are needing to get reimbursed, it will not take long to get a response from me.  My personal goal when it comes to email is to reply by one business day. I feel that being responsive enables trust.  I would take the same approach when it comes to working for you.

3. In my personal life, my family has followed the Dave Ramsey financial plan, which includes setting financial goals and zero based budgeting so every dollar is accounted for.  This is a very disciplined financial plan that involves a lot of creativity when it comes to paying off debt.  This has helped me to become very responsible when it comes to managing money.

4. This past year I was a member of the ACA scholarship committee and I was the chair of the HFSA Scholarship Committee.  I would like to be the Treasurer Elect to get more involved with ACA and to develop leadership skills.  I’ve been a part of ACA for three years and would like to get to know more people from across campus.  Please vote for me.



Treasurer-Elect
Candidate:  Craig Gilden

Good afternoon! Thank you for the opportunity to run for the position of Treasurer-Elect as part of the ACA Executive Committee. My name is Craig Gilden, and I have worked as an academic advisor in the College of Liberal Arts since 2011, starting with the Dean’s Office in Gebauer to currently working in the CLA as the advisor for the department of Geography and the Environment.

While I have served as the co-chair for the Advising Expo the past two years, for the most part my role within ACA has been more of a spectator than active participant. And to be honest, running for a position wasn’t really on my radar until I found out I had been nominated. But once I took a moment to consider it, I realized that this is a prime example of a concept I talk to students about all the time. Whether it is what classes to sign up for or what jobs to apply to, I routinely preach to students to be open-minded, and put yourself out there, as you never know which door will open for you and where it will lead.

In my experience with advising, I have gotten to know and work with some awesome people on a variety of interesting projects, but that has mostly occurred for me within the Liberal Arts community. For me, being nominated for ACA is a great opportunity to get involved and get to know the advising community on a campus-wide level. And if I didn’t take advantage of this professional opportunity, I wouldn’t be following my own advice. ACA is a tremendous asset and resource for our campus, and I am excited about the potential to be a part of continuing that legacy. I believe that my demonstrated ability to stay organized and meet deadlines across multiple projects would serve me well in the role of Treasurer. I am grateful and excited about potentially having the ACA door being opened to me and am hopeful that you will give me the opportunity to serve as Treasurer and on the Executive Committee. Thank you!