PROFESSIONAL ADVISING LEADERSHIP FELLOW
TRAINING PROGRAM
2003
REPORT
Professional Advising Leadership (PAL) Orientation Meeting
09/29. The time for me to embark myself on this new professional development experience had come. I was ready to accept the challenge.
At the beginning, I received a series of e-mails with the names of the participants and an overview of their projects. I only had a vague idea of the content and objectives of each proposal; therefore, it was a little difficult for me to clearly visualize them and try to connect my own proposal to theirs.
Before coming to the Washington, DC meeting I had my own expectations about the proposals. My goal was to find out more information about them during the first orientation meeting. To my surprise, the goals and objectives set during this meeting included a time for us to reflect and clarify our own goals for the research component of the PAL Fellow.
By the end of the day, I had a better understanding of the PAL participants’ projects or proposals. I was glad to know that most of us shared a common goal and that we were looking forward to accepting the challenge posed before us in the weeks to come.
Suffolk University Program
09/30. Today I flew from Washington, DC to Boston. When I checked in at the hotel, there was a message for me from Ms. Julie Schniewind, Director of Corporate Education at Suffolk University. She wanted me to contact her right as soon as I arrived to go to her office and go over my agenda for the week.
My agenda for that afternoon began with a brief meeting with Ms. Schniewind. She gave me the details of my schedule and made a couple of suggestions regarding some of my meetings.
Unfortunately, she could not spend more time with me at that moment because she had to attend a meeting. However, she kindly let me stay in her office until my first meeting and asked her assistant to help me in case it was necessary.
After she left, I knew that I was on my own and had to go over my schedule as planned. Everything was clear. It was just a matter of following the agenda Ms. Schniewind had prepared for me.
At about 02:45 pm (15 minutes before my first meeting) I had to go to the 3rd floor of the building to get settled in an office where I was given some space and access to a computer in case I needed to use one. However, when Ms. Schniewind’s assistant and I went up, the place assigned to me had several boxes and new furniture in it. The reason was that it was going to be renovated. So she made new arrangements for me and I was relocated in somebody’s office (Lou Greenwald, Assistant Director of Admissions). From there, I went up to the 5th floor for my next appointment.
At 03:00 pm, I was introduced to Ms. Ellen Driscoll, Graduate Admissions. To my surprise, Ms. Driscoll had a vast experience in visiting foreign countries as part of her job. She visited Bolivia a couple of times in the past with a university tour.
Ms. Driscoll has a very nice, outgoing personality that set the mood for a wonderful meeting. She kindly explained all the details related to her work in admissions and, at my special request, she showed me around her office giving me valuable first hand, on-site information about the different steps the applications to the graduate schools have to go through before, during, and after being admitted to Suffolk.
At the end of the meeting, she escorted me to the 3rd floor to the place where I would basically spend most of my time while at Suffolk.
At 04:00 pm, I was shown to the meeting room where I had an appointment with Mr. David Robbins, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences. Mr. Robbins, as Faculty Adviser, wanted to review my plan and discuss the outcomes. In addition, as the one responsible for writing a report letter of my visit to Suffolk, he wanted to know the details of my program in order to have a clear understanding of the objectives so he should know what it was required from him. Mr. Robbins also took some time to kindly explain the complexity of his job as the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
As a result of my meeting with Mr. Robbins, I was able to better understand the university structure at the administrative level, specially the work and position of the associate deans.
After that, Stani Sousek, a senior student at Suffolk was waiting to take me on a tour around the campus. This was a nice surprise to me because Stani is the son of a very good couple from Cochabamba. I really enjoyed not only talking to him about his experience in the university but also about his family whom I have not seen for a while.
This tour was special because everything took place in the middle of the Beacon Hill area. Suffolk University owns several buildings where the different schools, offices and residence halls are located. For me this tour was important because now I am able to share this experience to those students who think that universities and colleges always have a campus and a “backyard” right there with the rest of the facilities.
I also learned that it is important for us, as advisors, to have some time to interact with the students at any given college or university. They are the ones who will give us real, useful feedback for us to consider when advising prospect students.
Suffolk University Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations
10/01. Today my interviews began at 09:00 am at the Department of Alumni Relations & Advancement (fund raising). Ms. Paula Weafer coordinated my appointments. First I met with Ms. Kathryn Battillo, Vice President for Advancement who kindly shared with me the goals and objectives of her department. After my meeting with her, she decided that instead of meeting her staff one by one and since the purpose of my visit was common to them as well, I should meet them all at once.
So we did. I met with Ms. Ann S. Peterson, Senior Director of Development, Ms. Ellen S. Solomita, Senior Director of Alumni Relations/Annual Fund and Ms. Martha M. Hanlon, Senior Director of Operations and Research.
Although Ms. Battillo was clear in stating the goals and objectives of the program, I found the idea of meeting together with all her staff at the same time extremely useful. I learned that the Fundraising Program has two major goals: Developing and maintaining the relations with the alumni from Suffolk’s three schools: College of Arts & Sciences, the Sawyer School of Management and the Law School, and carrying out an Annual Fund Program called “Phone-A-Thon”, which basically consists in researching phone numbers and update the alumni information and take the chance to ask for a gift over the phone.
The staff’s functions are distributed in the following way: Ms. Hanlon is in charge of prospect tracking and reports, donor information systems and research. Ms. Peterson oversees planned giving, major gifts, corporations and foundations and donor relations and stewardships. Ms. Solomita basically does annual funds and alumni relations. All of them have set clear goals and objectives for fundraising.
At 04:00 pm, I attended my meeting with Ms. Marguerite Dennis, Vice President of Enrollment & International Programs.
Over a hot cup of tea and some cookies, Ms. Dennis explained to me the importance of her position and how she has to deal with enrollment and international programs.
I learned that Ms. Dennis is the author of several publications, including information booklets for the university. She kindly shared with me a paper she wrote and presented in the regional conference for advisers in Africa. Her work explains the high trends affecting U.S. higher education. She also includes topics such as higher education enrollment growth, diversity of higher education and the role of community colleges in the next decade, among others.
I am attaching a copy of her work because I think its content is important for overseas advisers and it can be used as reference in certain areas of advising.
She has also published an insider’s guide for international students on how to select a university and finance an education in the United States. The topics contained in this booklet are designed to help students and their families to ask the questions and obtain the important information Mr. Dennis believes will help the students to select the college or university, which will meet their needs. It also contains a useful list of Web sites for more information at the end of the booklet.
University Media Services / Ballotti Learning Center
10/02. Today I met with the administrators of Suffolk’s Web site. Anne MacDonald, Web Services Manager was already waiting for me in her office. Later on, Michael Schneider, Web Specialist, joined us.
Ms. MacDonald showed me to Suffolk’s Web site and pointed out the different sections and areas of interest. She also mentioned how the administration structure works for her department. I learned that her department does not manage the information or content of the whole site. She is only responsible of certain areas. There are some schools, like the School of Law, that administer their own site; therefore, they have control of the design and content of their page.
During our conversation, I brought up the issue of the difficulties international students encounter when searching the web pages of colleges and universities in the United States. One of them is immediate access to a page specially designed for international students, which can be located on their main menu or front page. In my experience, the most common problem prospect Bolivian students encounter from the beginning is that they have to search around the whole site before getting to the section of interest for them. This hinders them from getting to the places they want and sometimes confuses them to a point that they have to come to my Center looking for help.
My advise to Ms. MacDonald and Mr. Schneider was not only to make Suffolks’ web page a friendly international user web site (sometimes Internet services in my country are not that good to support graphics and fancy designs and, in most cases, students have to pay an hourly fee to use the service) but also include a section from the very beginning that would facilitate the access for international students and lead them through the whole process of getting information and eventually applying to the institution.
After such a productive exchange of information, I headed to my next meeting. I had to meet with Ms. Paula J. Westmacott, Director of the Geno A. Ballott Learning Center and with Mr. Timothy Brown, Test Center Administrator.
My first meeting was informative because I learned about the important services the Ballotti Learning Center (BLC) provides to students at Suffolk. Their services include a series of programs that are designed to help those students who, in some cases, require assistance to develop and use learning strategies and study techniques that can be applied to their entire academic experience. In other cases, BLC educational consultants will meet with students to discuss their study habits, academic history, learning styles, personal concerns and campus resources that may be of interest or benefit to them.
In addition to the services listed in their brochure, BLC staff collaborates with faculty and academic departments on both long-term retention initiatives and academic needs.
Then, I went to meet with Mr. Brown. His sharing his experience and knowledge in working with the College-Level Examination Program (among other duties) exam was very useful basically because testing will become an important component of my initial proposal. The College-Level Examination Program® or CLEP provides students of any age with the opportunity to demonstrate college-level achievement through a program of exams in undergraduate college courses. There are 2,900 colleges that grant credit and/or advanced standing for CLEP exams. Mr. Brown’s activities include counseling, providing information, scheduling those students interested in taking it and administering the test itself.
MBA Online Program / Second Language Services / Graduate Admissions
10/03. My last day at Suffolk. As someone said: When things started to get interesting, it was time to go back.
My first appointment was with Mawdudur Rahman, Ph.D., Professor and Director of the Frank Sawyer School of Management. Dr. Rahman kindly took the time to explain Suffolk’s MBA online program and the challenges of learning online.
The MBA Online is available to those qualified professionals from any location worldwide who find that online education is an appealing option for them. Some of the characteristics of the online experience will include online texts, streaming audio and video, threaded discussions, chat rooms, email and document sharing among others. More information is available at www.suffolkmba.org
My next meeting was with Linda Foley-Vinay, Director of Second Language Services. My interest in meeting with Ms. Foley-Vinay was to find out more information about the new Blackboard technology that was used in her department.
Blackboard Learning System™ is designed for institutions dedicated to teaching and learning, and provides the functionality required to successfully manage distance, Web-enhanced, or hybrid education programs. The industry's most popular teaching and learning environment, it features a robust setting for content management and sharing, online assessments, student tracking, assignment and portfolio management, and virtual collaboration. The Blackboard Learning System is well recognized for its ease of use and scalability, allowing clients to achieve widespread adoption in a supported environment. And like all of Blackboard's systems, the Blackboard Learning System is designed to integrate with existing administrative and authentication systems. For more information you can visit their site at: www.blackboard.com
Finally, My last meeting took me to Graduate Admissions. I had to see Judith L. Reynolds, Director of Graduate Admissions and Ellen M. Driscoll, Associate Director of Graduate Admissions. The three of us discussed the details of my program at Suffolk and some of the outcomes. Ms. Reynolds kindly shared important information about the graduate programs at Suffolk and about her department. I was also asked questions about the PAL Fellow and about my responsibilities as overseas education adviser. I took the opportunity to talk about OSEAS and what the Education USA Network represented. I also invited them to visit the educationusa.state.gov Web site to find out more information about this network. I found this a very important meeting since we exchanged valuable information for the benefit of both, Suffolk and myself.
To conclude, I must say that my experience at Suffolk, as part of the PAL Fellow Training Program, was extremely productive. Not only I learned about the University of Suffolk structure itself but I got to accomplish the objectives of my visit. Everyone at Suffolk was kind and helpful. There was always someone ready to lend me a helping hand wherever I went. I want express my gratitude to each and everyone I had the pleasure to meet at Suffolk. Thank you for your willingness to share your time and expertise with me.
College Board / Washington, DC Week
10/06. Back to Washington again. By now, going back to DC was like going back home. I felt positive knowing that I would share the rest of the week with my PAL fellows and complete the rest of my training.
I attended my training courses on Internet Publishing and Website Design given at Thomas J. Piwowar & Associates, Inc.
The Internet Publishing course focused on how the Web works from a publisher’s point of view and why websites can be hard to work with and what should be done to avoid problems. I was able to see the basics of coding HTML, evaluate page-building tools and compare manual to automated page-making methods. I also learned how to include graphics on Web pages and build hypertext links among other topics that helped me get the big picture of internet publishing.
The course on Website Design focused on how to define goals, to develop and effective audience profile and to identify and accommodate different audience segments. In addition, I explored the nature of the Web development process and how to manage it.
These two courses were important to my proposed PAL project because they focused on the topics and issues I needed to know in order to have to broaden my knowledge of the components required to design and manage a Web site. Although the training was not complete (there were a couple of courses I needed to take in order to complete the Web site management training cycle), I now have the basic tools to work on the development of my project.
USBT 20th Anniversary Meeting
10/08. Celebrating USBT’s 20th Anniversary next year has become a challenge for the members of the USBTAA Executive Committee, the U.S. Department of State’s ECA/A/S/A, and the College Board. The meeting scheduled for today was important because we discussed issues related to the activities and tasks to undertake for this special event. Detailed information about these activities will be shared with the USBTAA community through our Web site at: www.osvita.org/usbtaa.
Leadership Seminar
10/09. According to the general agenda planned for the next couple of days, the topics to be covered in the seminar were the following:
Part I - Leadership/Understanding Self
Part II - What is Leadership?
Part III - Leadership Competencies, Myths and Models
Part IV - Leadership and Educational Advising
If you take a look at this list, it seems simple words put together to form sentences. However, there was a lot more than just simple sentences waiting for us during the next couple of days.
Debbie Hefferon, Faculty Consultant (a very charismatic, charming, must meet person), was in charge of taking us through the whole process of re-discovering ourselves as persons, professionals and leaders.
The activities she planned for each section of the seminar were carefully selected to match, in most cases, the role we play as educational advisers. I was taken from identifying my leadership strengths and weaknesses through better understanding my own competencies as a leader and the competencies of others, to techniques to evaluate success. I even took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) and interpreted and understood my profile, which by the way is ISTJ.
I can go on and describe the content of the seminar in detail but then this will become a research paper and not a report. Instead, I would like to say that I enjoyed the leadership seminar a lot. I felt challenged and privileged at every moment of it. Now I think I have a better understanding of leadership and its various components. The experience and knowledge gained during the seminar and the opportunity to share the program with such fine professionals helped me see leadership from a different perspective. I highly recommend this seminar for future PAL Fellows.
Unfortunately, good experiences must come to an end. For us, the 2003 Professional Advising Leadership “Pioneers”, our mission came to an end too fast. But it is not over until is over, they say. Theresa Carroll, College Board’s Director of the International Education Office, kindly invited us to her house to share a moment of peace and good food. It was an evening to get away from the noise of the city and an opportunity to quietly enjoy a good conversation among us now that the program was over.
I would like to acknowledge the contribution and support of the people who made my participation in the PAL Fellow possible: Ms. Maria Julia Suarez, Executive Director BNC-Cochabamba; Ms. Rosemarie Arens, REAC for South America; Ms. Dorothy Mora, Program Officer, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs ECA/A/S/A, U.S. Department of State; Mr. Rolf A. Olson, Cultural Affairs Officer and Mr. Diego Ballivian, Fulbright Office, American Embassy in La Paz. Without their support this would not have been possible. Thank you.
Last but not least, The College Board. To Theresa Carroll Schweser, Janine Farhat and Carol Blythe thank you for your continuous support and for designing and administering this successful first PAL Fellow program. You definitely contributed to the professional development of the overseas educational advisers who were part of this challenging new program.
Rolando Ribera
Overseas Educational Adviser
U.S. Educational Information Center
Centro Boliviano Americano
Cochabamba, Bolivia
11/2003