Knowledge Gained. Knowledge Earned.

Higher education continues to face many challenges and opportunities to support the needs of students, demands of society, technology advancements, and the changing economic landscape.  Having a solid understanding of the history of higher education, administration and organizational behavior, program and policy evaluations, principles and practices, administration in higher education, and how higher education has been shaped and transformed has helped me to confidently engage in discussions around policies and procedures at my institution. 

Increasing Student Retention: I have engaged in shaping policies and procedures at my institution relating to utilizing academic advisement to increase student retention. Decades of research show that quality academic advisement can increase student retention. The  proposal is to implement the Academic Advisement Inventory assessment, a nationally supported tool, to help understand students' perceptions and experiences with the academic advisement process to improve advisement practices to assist with increasing student retention.

• Example: Topic Proposal: Implementation of an Academic Advisement Assessment Tool

Digital Literacy: An Essential Life Skill. I have created a program evaluation to implement and evaluate a digital literacy course at my institution to support student success as it is seen by employers as an essential life skill, yet no course offering is available to students, nor are students assessed for digital literacy. This is especially important to align with the change of admission requirements, which provides access to students who historically would not have been admitted to the institution, to provide opportunities for students to be successful throughout their academic and professional journey as many instructors expect students to be digitally proficient.  

• Example: Program Evaluation for the Digital Literacy course

Democratic Principles, MOOC's, and Faculty and Staff Burn-out: I plan to continue to find platforms I can engage with to more in policy and procedure discussions at my institution by serving on the Academic Staff Senate.  While I have not yet engaged in shaping policy and procedure discussions at the state or local levels, my plan is to engage in discussions to shape and transform policies and procedures that support student success.  The engagement could include advocating, gathering or analyzing data, engaging stakeholders, or writing proposals for policy or procedure changes. I have included a few examples of topics of interest that I will be able to use to confidently participate in discussion to help shape and transform policies and procedures at my institution, and at the state and local levels. 

• Example: Analysis of Dewey Democratic Principles

• Example: Essay-Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC's)

• Example: Faculty and Staff Burnout

The Gift of Critical Feedback

The feedback I have received from my instructors has been invaluable and has helped to shape my understanding of the field of education. Instructors have provided feedback that has reaffirmed my existing concepts or perspectives, indicating my initial understanding aligned with the assessment to which I appreciated the validation the instructors provided.  Instructors also provided feedback that would challenge my perspectives; encourage me to dive deeper into my understanding of the subject or content by pointing out areas where I lacked depth or additional areas to explore to support my work; or deconstruct, problematize, and/or synthesize my work. This allowed me to reconstruct my work and gain a deeper appreciation for being succinct, yet gain a new level of depth in my work and understanding. 

• Example: As an example, I have received critical feedback on my topic proposal from my advisor which has been invaluable.  Within my topic proposal, I was missing a link within my literature review of how similar institutions organize academic advisement (e.g., faculty advisors, centralized advisors).  The feedback received helped me to explore additional critical areas for academic advisement that would be important to include in my topic proposal for my research.  I have also received feedback to be more succinct in my writing or to synthesize my ideas. 

 Forms of Evidence