In November 2022, I switched roles from being the advisor to multiple online graduate Education programs to being the Associate Director for the centralized advising center that serves incoming students to the university. Our primary focus is on freshman and sophomore students as we assist with onboarding them to the institution and their major/department. We determine each student’s college readiness course placement and math pathway. We facilitate support service referrals and explain procedures. Our team addresses probation and suspension issues. We facilitate referrals to career and major exploration services. The leading organizational change course could not have come at a more perfect time in my professional and program journey.
In my new role, I have only created one additional program section on my ePortfolio for one of the more challenging undergraduate majors. I still intend to expand the information and resources to include other majors and programs and more clearly designate my general information between graduate and undergraduate information to further expand my potential audience.
However, I have been working on our office culture and employee morale instead of expanding the innovation proposal. While I did not immediately make changes, I believe taking time to observe the day-to-day operation was an essential starting point. I am grateful that the action research I created for my innovation idea evaluates the highest impact areas we can target in our initial after a future revision of my implementation efforts.
“When we feel safe. When we feel that our leaders care more about us than a number. They care more about our lives and our confidence, and our joy and our skillset more than some short-term gain… we will respond in kind and we will offer our blood our sweat and our tears and we will make sacrifices of all kinds to see that our leader’s vision is advanced” (REDDOT X, 2018).
“Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress.
Working hard for something we love is called passion“
I began a test pilot of my innovation idea in my advising role (a personally curated resource of advising tips and knowledge). Advising.Blog was born to provide unlimited 24/7 access to an advisor’s information. From March 2022 through October 2022, I actively utilized my portfolio as an advising resource. I directed students to supplemental support that helped them onboard to the institution and their online graduate program. Seeing that my innovation idea was being utilized in the early pilot implementation phase was exciting.
No offense intended by using the term “nerd” because I am a self-proclaimed goofball, silly goose, and nerd. So, I want to share a little piece of that with you because it is an example of how this program has helped me live authentically and how I am beginning to share myself with my team.
If you are participating in the upcoming event, I ask that you stop reading here and don’t steal my awesomely nerdy idea. Agreed? Okay, let’s continue.
So, I may have mentioned in a previous blog that our institution is celebrating its centennial celebration (woot woot, centennial class!). Leaning into that 100-year achievement, this upcoming weekend, we will participate in a campus preview event. These are typically themed, and this fall’s theme is “A Century of Leaders.” Boy, oh boy, were we stumped.
We’d recently done a decade of leadership and struggled to think of something new. “Cheers to 100 years” and President Taylor for taking a picture with our booth at the Spring event. We showcased the 100 years of university presidents and had university annuals from the 1950s to the 70s for guests to view.
So, one morning, I was mulling over the theme. I kept repeating, “A century of leaders, A century of leaders, leaders, leaders, leaders, leaders, humm liters?!?!”
What if we created liter bottle people to represent a century of leaders liters. So, I pitched the idea to my immediate supervisor. Then, I pitched the idea in a staff meeting. Needless to say, I was met with many stares of “Are you kidding me?” but no one flat out said, “That’s stupid,” and no one offered a better suggestion, so away we went. In my head, I could hear them saying they were crafty and couldn’t possibly create 6people from 2-liter bottles. But I was prepared. I came armed with middle school assignments to create just such a thing. I asked them if they could think of anything else, and I came prepared with lists of distinguished alumni and a more contemporary top 25 most recognizable alumni. We began brainstorming who we could create and showcase as our entry into the prize-winning contest.
I feel so much like Dr. Harapnuik when he says he’s so sneaky in how he helps us learn, collaborate, and grow (COVA). My teams have worked together to create their “bottle buddies.” When I explained in the staff meeting that 5th graders were making these, I found that everyone stopped thinking they couldn’t. We just needed a little dose of Growth Mindset. I will see staff members wandering off with felt, hot glue guns, and any crafting supplies I and others brought to the office.
The culture is shifting. There is teamwork happening. It is so exciting!
I have selected Florene Miller Watson as my most recognizable alumni of LU to honor with a crafty creation since I visited the WASP Museum in Sweetwater, Texas.
My institution is celebrating its centennial year. Next weekend’s preview day/campus visit theme is A Century of Leaders. I went through a list of 25 Notable alumni of Lamar University and decided that I would like to research Florene Miller Watson. I felt I had a personal connection after touring the WASP Museum in 2018.
Here, I’ll share a few of my findings to compile some talking points about her.
After the war, she attended Lamar State College of Technology (now LU), majoring in secretarial science.**
“Florene lived her life cheerfully giving to others and always believing the best in everyone she met” (***).
““Do not undervalue your abilities. You have abilities that you haven’t had a chance to use. Now, find something you want to use them on and get after it!” (Soundbytes of the WASP***)
1 of 25 women of the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots (WASPs)*
Completed flight training by age 19*
Taught servicemen to fly*
Army service volunteer – moved aircraft from factories to bases*
Obtained a Master’s Degree in Business Administration*
Taught college for 30 years*
UH**
Howard College**
Frank Phillips College**
Distinguished Flying Corps Member in Krister Aviation and Space Museum, Amarillo, Texas*
National Medal of Honor, Daughters of the American Revolution*
Lifetime Achievement Award, Air Force Association*
1st woman inducted into the Texas Panhandle Veterans Hall of Fame*
Galveston Aviation Hall of Fame*
International Women in Aviation Hall of Fame*
Ninety-Nines International Forest of Friendship***
This is one of my most favorite videos! I share this with my team at least once a semester because I genuinely want them to recognize that they are world changers! That they may NEVER know the impact they have had on one of their students’ lives, but undoubtedly, there is a student out there who remembers them as the one who helped redirect their lives.
I am so excited to see this video here in the capstone course. It actually about made me tear up thinking about how this message being here in our final course of the program. I know I have said it before, but I think I will be saying it for a long time to come. I never dreamed I would be where I am today when I took the leap of faith to start this program. I thought I might end up with a degree, but I never considered what that might change about my professional life. I pictured myself doing the same job and continuing to help students in the advising capacity I was comfortable in for the last ten years.
This program, COVA, and CSLE have opened doors and a perspective on how I can help change the world. A little less than 1/2 way through the program, the ADL program made me confident enough to apply for a leadership position. Now, I am a “leader of leaders,” as 4DX described it. I have had senior positions within advising units, but this is my first time being the boss. I went from being a lead surgery scheduler (team of four) and an advising coordinator (team of five) to an associate director (team of 19 advisors, 2 admins, and 4 student workers). Thanks to Crucial Conversations and Influencer, I have stepped into my leadership role and operate from a position I believe can help us all join together to become catalysts for change. I will honestly report that I have not pushed my innovation idea in my new role because this first year has been about winning trust and observing the impacts that change can have on our advising unit. I assumed my role with a team with no leadership for several months (the entire leadership team quit together). The advising department was undergoing an ongoing restructuring, and there was now a new hierarchy. The advising unit was previously structured around individuals specializing in advising specific majors. This resulted in islands where individuals were experts on a single program or two. Instead, under my leadership, we were transitioning into teams of advisors who were specialists in clusters of similar majors.
As we have learned in the program, change is not typically well received, and we were asking these people to jump in with both feet on change at every turn. I have lost eight employees in my first year. Talk about heartbreaking. As someone new to leadership, it would be very easy to take this personally, but instead, I have recognized that I am building a team of visionaries. Those who stick it out through the leadership and structure change will be willing to take on this innovation project with me.
As I have brought in new team members, I plant the seeds for my innovation idea and ask that they join me in making observations with their fresh perspectives to help change the “this is how we’ve always done this” culture that tends to exist in higher education. It has been affirming to hear from them how much they believe the innovation ideas that will help us flip advising would have helped their educational journey. Many of my newest members are recent graduates. I have weekly meetings with my leadership team (four advising coordinators), and we have developed a great collaboration of a safe space to share challenges and explore opportunities for our advising unit.
Since I was transitioning into my new role in a new department, I did not push to also try to change how the team was advising. Nonetheless, this investment of time has allowed me to reflect on the most effective ways to phase into my innovation ideas. For example, we had an admitted student day event this past March, and I created a how-to video that the department is still using to show students how to register for the classes planned with their advisor. While this seems so simplistic, this was something our area has lacked. The program and my innovation helped me see that the most effective way to assist our leaders is to provide multiple inputs/formats so that they can each find what works best for them and their learning preferences. Internally, I have worked to create a team culture. I have allowed team leaders to select team colors. I have made all of the signage at events match these colors. I now have an incoming cohort of students who only know this restructured version of advising.
I hope the next incoming cohort (Fall 2024) will be phase two of my innovation plans. I want to continue implementing aspects of the flipped advising approach as I bring in additional collaborators from my advising unit and other stakeholders from the campus. I knew that taking on grad school, a new job, my first true leadership position, and an innovation would be too much. Instead, I have implemented several aspects that assisted me in my advising role and serve as an example of the potential. I have also learned so much about leadership through the program. I hope to begin the new year with a true 4DX approach with the team. We close for two weeks at the end of December, so I think I will send my leadership team home for the break with an assignment to come back in the new year ready to propose a wildly important goal for their team. I will also have to spend the break considering my wildly important goal (flipping advising) and the lead measures that will impact that goal. I really want to give each leadership team member a copy of 4DX in hopes they will read it over the break, but I am so resistant to the idea of being “that boss” who assigns homework. I used to hear of bosses who did that, and I would get offended at the idea. I am still trying to find a way to get through the material together in the workday so that I am not implying they should give up any of their personal time.
Honestly, I would love to send them all through the ADL program!
Innovation updates/Future Plans:
I have a working pilot of my innovation – an online advising resource at advising.blog, but I no longer advise those programs, so I am considering reworking the resources to include more programs and a section for undergrads vs. grads. I told my old department and the advisors working with my prior programs that they could continue referring students to my eP, but I do not think they have done so. I included my eP link in all correspondence but have stopped in my new role. I will spend the first part of my time after the program beefing up the information and resources section to again include my resource with others with the same excitement I did when using it daily in my advising role.
I also enjoyed the instruction designing course I created and can see how that would help us as we onboard new students to the university. I did share my Advising 101 course with a few team members, and I think opening up collaboration opportunities beyond just creating it myself will significantly impact our advising unit and students.
I hope that as I bring more team members into my innovation project and implementation, we will have many suggestions and ideas for future innovation for advising. I will take each of the strategies and skills we learned throughout the program to customize which strategy will fit our next phase/project.
The Advisor That Cares 