From my earlier post on my reprieve in Europe, it would seem that all we did was travel around in Luxembourg and Belgium... not so. The main purpose of the trip was actually this conference in Luxembourg entitled "Putting Students at the Center: A Transatlantic Dialogue on Student Affairs Practice." It was hosted by the Universite du Luxembourg and partially organized by a few people at Miami University of Ohio, which was how I was connected to it originally. I had extremely high hopes for this conference. I wanted to learn more about student affairs practice in Europe and what they were doing to address different students' needs. I wanted to know more about the profession in general and how I might fit in there somehow. I wanted to know more about the comparative models they were using in hopes of potentially sparking some research interests. I wanted to learn more about their preparation programs for people going into the profession and make contacts to potentially get myself into one of them.
The good news is that, in the end, I did come away with quite a few of these expectations being met. I had some great conversations throughout the conference and met some wonderful new people who are doing some pretty cool stuff. By far the most impactful thing of the conference was those individual conversations. I just wish some of them would have happened at the group level. I think the conference achieved what it set out to do, which was to facilitate a transatlantic dialogue on student affairs practice. But where the conference fell short of my expectations was the "next" factor. The dialogue was great and I learned loads about the emerging European system, but I just wish there was more of an emphasis on what would come as a result of the discussions being had. I guess that's part of the "activator" in me... I did come away with some great insights, however, which I'll share.
There was a lot of talk about the Bologna process for a greater European university system. Here is a link giving a bit more background info for those unfamiliar with the process itself. This is essentially a movement, established and developed by several conferences and papers, throughout Europe towards developing the "European Higher Education Area" which would essentially unite all European universities under one, semi-seamless system. We're not talking a SUNY- or UC-like system. The idea is that all universities would make their bachelor's and master's degrees more uniform in terms of the types of degrees they are at each school and what kind of course work goes into them (using a credit-system) such that students would have greater mobility within this higher education system. One of the ultimate goals is to allow students to actually move back and forth between universities and still earn a degree in 4 years without having to un-enroll, re-enroll, or take classes over just because of moving. In fact, the hope is that students will gain a greater sense of global citizenship and cosmopolitanism because of this mobility. For the most part, this process was completely new to me and I feel that the conference significantly increased my understanding of the European higher education system - something that's important if I ever intend to work in it someday.
One of the questions at the end of the conference (including one from my father who was in attendance) was "what do you most admire about the 'other' system" (a question for both US and European participants). Having just learned so much about the Bologna process, my top two answers were the height to which European Higher Education practitioners aspire and the desire (if not already an ability) for student mobility throughout the educational system. Regarding the latter point of student mobility, I know there are huge, legitimate political issues behind why the US doesn't do this and why European schools are arguing against student mobility so vehemently. Allowing greater mobility could be difficulty in determining who is allowed to go where, it could infringe on the individual autonomy of universities (via the credit system that they are proposing), it could effect the cost of education Europe-wide, and it could even effect student learning because of the lack of consistent coaching and mentor relationships (both peer and traditional models) if students moved around too much from year to year. However, there are some very promising and powerful potential outcomes if greater mobility was achieved, not the least being better research and innovation due to cross-pollination of thinkers and ideas. There are a lot of issues to work through, but how cool is it to even be able to strive towards something with so much potential? Regarding the former, I think American Higher Ed (especially student affairs) has become all too complacent with the current status quo. The US motto is "we're doing the best that we can" whereas the European motto is "we can do much better." I admire the latter. Instead of complaining about limited resources, rocky (if not non-existent) relationships with faculty, or lack of buy-in from the higher administration and decision makers, Europeans are trying to figure out how to combat these problems head-on in creative and innovative ways.
Speaking of high aspirations and creative and innovative practices, I had the wonderful opportunity of meeting and talking with the only UK representative at the conference. Funny enough, she was not from your Oxford's or your Cambridge's of the British schools, but from a little university named York St. John in the North of England with a student population of about 5000 which was self-proclaimedly not very selective or high achieving. The funny thing about this was that York St. John seemed to be the only university at the conference who was actually engaging in serious student-centered work. The woman that I met, Director of Student Services which at York St. John is quite well developed, described a method of inquiry-based learning matched by no uni at the conference, much less most universities in the US. She described student-led research which sparked the passions of students across all disciplines at York St. John. She described a Center for Creativity where students with an interest in something outside the classroom (or in for that matter) could come and work with full-time staff and access to resources to put together a program, a workshop, or anything which explored a topic or idea that the student was interested in pursuing... all in a collaborative setting. Okay, so maybe you've heard of these kinds of things before. They exist at a lot of different universities across the US. What's funny is that usually these sort of creative and innovative practices are reserved for only the top-achieving students at the most competitive universities - i.e. where these resources are best spent on the people who will have the most impact, not on the average I'm-still-trying-to-figure-out-life college student.
Although I didn't find much in the way of graduate preparation programs (or at least I found out that they don't really exist in Europe right now), I did come away with some very important insights regarding my own future graduate preparation. One of these insights came from talking to several current Miami CSP grad students in attendance. Many of them talked about either their desire to have gotten more professional experience before starting the grad program or their gratitude in having spent several years in the field getting practical experience before having started the program. All of these comments are leading me to believe that more time here in Doha is better. The second insight is just a general topic about which I've become more aware and more informed such that I could see myself pursuing it as a research interest in the future... potentially during grad school. As I've said we talked a lot about the Bologna process and all that jazz. There's a lot of literature out there about comparative education, but is there much out there on comparative higher education? Comparative student affairs? Not really, especially on the latter subject. One of the biggest differences in how students organize themselves. US universities have university-supported and organized student governments which in turn regulate clubs and organizations. European universities have student unions as completely separate, un-funded, un-supported, and non-reporting entities. This gives these students much greater autonomy in decision making and there tends to be much less of what the European practitioners called "coddling," but I wonder if these same students end up getting the same developmental outcomes as their American counterparts from their involvement in university life outside the classroom. The answer has the potential to significantly impact how US student affairs professionals go about their work. And where else in a student's life do we similar differences in growth between US and European models?
The other exciting thing for me during the conference was getting to meet a fellow Tartan grad of 1997. Anybody who knows me will say that I love my alma mater and that I'm extremely loyal to it. I love meeting graduates of the university from the past, especially those with whom I share the same kind of love and fondness for the school and our experience their. That was definitely the case with this person. She was one of the first "student affairs favorites" (if you will...), ended up going to Miami for CSP right after, graduated and worked at a bunch of different places until she landed where she is now at Cornell in Ithaca. We had a great chat about Carnegie Mellon - I love things like that which remind me how much I love my alma mater.
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