Student Affairs Communications Group Minutes
April 30, 2014
Attendance: Kami Hammerschmith, Brianna McNall, Wendy Little, Jennifer
Edwards, Kent Sumner, Michele Ribeiro, Ruth Sterner, Aaron Schultz, Jennifer Viña,
Nancy Raskauskas, Dave Craig, Daniel Newhart
Next meeting of the Student Affairs Communications Group will be Wednesday, May
21, 2014, 9 a.m. -10:30 a.m., MU Council Room. Topic: Student Panel.
Today
Daniel Newhart, Director of Student Affairs Research, Evaluation and Planning
(SAREP), had a conversation with the group.
Daniel said with the new Student Affairs Marketing & Communications Director
being hired, connections between marketing and research will increase. He also said
with Enrollment Management moving out of Student Affairs, people in Student
Affairs are coming to SAREP for data. He said he needed our group to strategize,
communicate and tell the story.
Daniel said the accreditation process is coming soon. He said Student Affairs does a
good job in some places of gathering learning outcomes, but not across the board.
He is currently working to create a gateway in Qualtrics to capture survey
information and what Learning Goals for Graduates (LGGs) the survey connects to.
He is also working on a format in Qualtrics to compile the annual report, assessment
report and departmental highlights. All reports would be in Qualtrics, but multiple
people in a department could contribute.
It was asked who the audience is for these reports. Some may have multiple
audiences. Some audiences mentioned were the accreditation team, VP for Student
Affairs, Provost and President and the Board of Trustees.
He asked everyone to think of surveys more broadly and look at how they can serve
the Division and not just a single department. Look at what other data already exists
to support your questions or who could you collaborate with on surveys.
We need to look at how we can catalog our departmental learning and combine
numbers with our stories. The LGGs are based on AACU and since President Ray is
president elect of AACU, Daniel believes tying our learning goals to the LGGs will be
important.
Kent said he looks at comparative data (numbers), ties to Student Development
Theory (Astin, Kolb, LGGs) and personal stories when providing his reports.
We talked about whether we should have a common framework. The three
Healthy’s from University Marketing were mentioned – Healthy Planet, Healthy
Economy, Healthy People.
It was asked what data we should be putting on departmental websites. Daniel
suggested having dialogues with students about what they want/need from our
sites.
It was mentioned that many analytics in departments are collected by marketing
people, but may or may not be shared with assessment people.
Wendy mentioned that we held student focus groups a few summers ago to ask
about life skills, growth and development and community.
It was asked how can we teach the Division from work we are doing
departmentally? We need to try to capture what we learned in the annual report.
OSU Today is looking for graduation stories of students. If you have a student or
students to recommend, contact Theresa Hogue.
At the next meeting we will have a student panel. Wendy is looking for about six
students. If you have someone to recommend, contact Wendy. Questions to ask the
students include how they hear about things going on in Student Affairs, how many
times they have been surveyed, what do they want to see and what do they look for
on websites, what sites have they used in the past week, what they don’t like to see
or see too much of in marketing, what gets them to attend things, what’s the most
meaningful thing they’ve been involved in and how soon is too soon to advertise.
It was also suggested they be asked about the new Guidebook app and what they
would want to see.