Dr. Larry Braue – Veteran’s Affairs – http://www.veterans.usf.edu/
Patrick Romero-Aldaz – Fraternity & Sorority Life - http://www.usfgreeklife.com
CAS Standards: Fraternity and Sorority Advising Programs
I will post their blog responses as soon as I receive them!
Below are Dr. Braue's answers to the blog.
ReplyDelete1. Describe your career path, how you started and how you got to your current position.
I served almost 22 years on active duty with the United States Army. In 2001, I was assigned as the Assistant Professor of Military Science in the USF Army ROTC program. It was there that I discovered my passion for leadership development and helping college students succeed. I discovered that I had a greater influence on student success outside the classroom. I honestly believe that my students grew and matured more as a result of their out of class experiences. I knew at that point that when I retired from the military that I wanted to work in Student Affairs. Although teaching in class was very rewarding, the mentoring and coaching outside the classroom seemed to reap greater rewards. I decided to pursue my doctorate in higher education. At the end of my assignment at USF, I competed for an opportunity to be a Professor of Military Science. In 2004, I was assigned to run the ROTC department at Iowa State University. After 4 years at Iowa State I retired from the military, took a job at UCF as an associate director for academic support services. When the Director of Veterans Services position opened at USF, I applied and was offered the position…and here I am.
2. Explain the particular challenges of your work. What are the special rewards?
One of the biggest challenges is helping veterans that we call the “walking wounded”. These are veterans who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and/or Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The majority of veterans suffering from either of these conditions do not want to self-disclose to us or to the Veterans Affairs. That makes it very hard for us to help those students. Another problem is getting faculty, staff, and non-veteran students to understand the challenges and difficulties that veterans face as they transition from combat to the classroom.
The special reward comes when you help a student get the help they need and you watch them succeed. Working with veterans allows provides so many opportunities to help.
3. Are there any problems you've faced that you would now handle differently? Can you describe one of them?
In the process of taking over a newly established department for veterans, I believe I was a bit over-ambitious in implementing my ideas. There were so many needs that I felt needed to be met that we implemented a year’s worth of programs, events, and training in 6 months. We bit off more than we could chew. Although we’ve successfully implemented everything, it has created a tremendous workload for our office. Hindsight being 20/20, I’d have slowed the implementation of a couple of our programs and said “no” to a couple of outside agencies who asked for our involvement.
4. What advice would you give to a student preparing for student affairs work?
I would say that students should evaluate what is important in their life. If money is most important, they won’t find satisfaction in Student Affairs. However, if making a difference in someone’s life is important, Student Affairs work is the way to go.
Question 1 from Patrick:
ReplyDelete1.) Describe your career path, how you started and how you got to your current position.
I initially got involved with student affairs work in undre3grad at the U of New Mexico where I was a hard core res0lifer. I was involved in RHA at UNM, regionally and nationally and that introduced me to this field of study and practice. Upon graduation I had realized this is what I wanted to do and was in a fortunate position to serve on the national Board for NACURH, Inc. which afforded me an opportunity to meet and network with a number of great leaders in the field through conferences, etc. It was through these connections that I landed a last minute opening in the Graduate program at Virginia Tech where I also held a GA in residence life.
During my first year at VT I was also the national Chair person for NACURH so that continued to afford me some really great opportunities to network and build quality relationships that still assist me as a professional. In the middle of my First year at VT, I began learning more about Fraternity & Sorority Life as I was the only person in my cohort of 15 that didn’t have that experience in undergrad. I finally met with our Greek Advisor and fortunately for me she was able to match my interests, values, and philosophy with a new organization that was colonizing at VT at the time. Within a week I was a member and colony advisor to Delta Tau Delta. Even though I loved my experience being Greek I still didn’t see myself pursuing a profession in anything but housing and residential life.
Upon graduation I was offered a position at the University of Colorado at Boulder as a Residence Director. I oversaw a building of about 500 students with two living learning communities. At CU I also served in an ancillary role as the co-advisor for RHA. The RD position at CU was very different at that time and was primarily conduct and administration focused, there was little room or expectation or us to be programmatic or student developers and this is what I was excited about as a new professional. In December I performed a conduct review and learned that in the course of 4 months I had held 358 individual conduct meetings I began to realize that this position was not for me. I spoke with my supervisor and we began discussing what I needed and how we could make that happen. In April of that year I received a phone call from my supervisor from VT who asked if I would be interested in coming back to VT to lead their fraternity and sorority housing community. I said yes, applied and was headed back east after one year at CU.
My fiver year stint back at VT was like a high speed transit system. I returned in July of 2002 and served for one year as the Complex Director for the Oak Lane Community (the Greek Housing community) and began developing a very strong partnership with the Coordinator of Greek Life. In April of that year the division was restructured and an Office of Fraternity and sorority Life was created as a standalone office rather than under student activities. At the same time the coordinator decided to leave and I was asked to serve as the Assistant Director of Fraternity and sorority Life for a one year appointment. At the end of that year, I had to re-apply for my position and was fortunate to stay on. I stayed in that position working with our councils and our community to make some really great changes and growing astronomically. I served at VA Tech in the Assistant Director role until April of 2007 when I left to become the director of Fraternity & Sorority Life at Tufts University in Boston.
I was only at Tufts for about two and a half years. During that time I learned that not all institutions and cultures were for me. Tufts is an elite private institution with a high sense of entitlement. I don’t operate well in that environment, especially where FSL is concerned. As such I began look at new opportunities and that is what brought me here to USF to lead the Office of Fraternity & Sorority Life.
Question 2 from Patrick:
ReplyDelete2.) Explain the particular challenges of your work. What are the special rewards?
I think that’s as with many areas of student affairs there are lots of challenges to our work in addition to many rewards. I love to work with students to help bring about positive change in their environments. In fraternity and sorority life this can sometimes be difficult as we are constantly maneuvering national organizations, alumni, traditions, history and stereotypes, and our students so we have to balance all of that while engaging students in their own development and building communities of accountability and change.
Additionally, there is always the impact of limited resources and growing demands that impact our work. This directly impacts our ability to manage liability and help keep our students safe and secure when we often times don’t have the human or financial resources to everything we’d like to in order to support holistic development. H
In fraternity and Sorority life, the only thing that stays the same is that everything changes. I never know what I’m going to encounter on a daily basis or if that next phone call may be a major conduct situation or a chapter being awarded a significant award by a community agency. That’s what makes my work something I enjoy; there is no monotony and I thrive on that.
Questions 3 and 4 from Patrick:
ReplyDelete3.) Are there any problems you've faced that you would now handle differently? Can you describe one of them?
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is kind of unique, but will likely impact everyone in student affairs at some point, and that it managing internal search and interview processes. I’ve had the opportunity to do this twice in my career and it’s not fun and not easy. The first chance I had to do this was when reapplying for the Assistant director position at VT. While I certainly wanted the position the level of investment I had was minimal as I had already served in the position so I chose to just take it as it came and Trust the process. The second time I was actually applying for the Director position at VT. I was running the office and had invested myself in the role of the Director. When it came time for interviews the candidates had significantly more experience than I did and as such I wasn’t a primary finalist, but was still in the pool. I immediately changed my perspective in that I was looking for my new boss and begin thinking of what I would expect form that person. We brought two candidates onto campus and I hated them both. I was very critical of them and didn’t recommend them for the position. Fortunately no one else did either. However when the VP called them to explain that the search had failed, they both decided to file grievances because I had interviewed them and could have potential tainted the process. Now it was found that I didn’t necessarily do anything wrong , but the aggressive nature with which I had evaluated them, it could be argued that I had an extensive interest that may have skewed my evaluations and thus the process in total had to be redone. I share this because I had the absolutely best of intentions, but looking back probably went about things entirely the wrong way. In my years since, I’ve been able to check that portion of me and learn how to maneuver similar situations in a much better fashion.
4.) What advice would you give to a student preparing for student affairs work?
1. Learn early how small this field really is. You really never know who your supervisor or co-workers know or what they’ve done so manage the politics of that well.
2. Be open to new opportunities, what you think you should be doing for the rest of your life, may actually be the thing that burns you out.
3. Get involved in professional associations. My involvement in ACPA, NASPA, ACOUHO-I, and AFA has certainly helped if not paved the way for my continued success in this field.
4. Never forget why we do what we do. It’s very easy to get caught up in the day to day, but what really matters most is the difference we make in the lives of the students we serve.