An Invitation for Senior Student Affairs Officers

NASPA Annual Conference
March 8–10, 2010
Chicago, Illinois

Please join other senior student affairs officers (SSAOs) in an intensive, engaging, and productive experience at the 2010 NASPA Annual Conference in Chicago. This is the second annual Think Tank for SSAOs, and promises to feature energizing discussions and fresh insights. We will talk and work together on three consecutive days (Monday afternoon, Tuesday morning, and Wednesday morning) during the conference. Participants in the Think Tank will write two documents that synthesize the conversations—an article for Leadership Exchange and a more scholarly piece that may become a journal article or book chapter. All participants will be active co-authors of one of these documents.  

Our focus this year is on "Our Foundation, Our Future." Think Tank participants will explore the key elements of what is foundational to the student affairs profession, and what our future holds. This involves asking provocative questions about our past, present, and future:

• What are the foundational ideas that we most need to carry with us into the future?
• What are the assumptions, practices, and viewpoints that we need to leave behind?
• What does our practice look like today, and what lenses do we look through to understand our role?   
• What are some valuable lenses we may not be using? 
• How do we both predict and shape our future - as a profession and as American higher education? 
• What are our hopes for our students as we move into the future?
• Is our current practice aligned with those hopes? 

Our foundations as a profession are rich. Twenty years ago, Ernest Boyer presented his six principles of campus community in Campus Life: In Search of Community. His simple and challenging principles called us to high standards for our work and our campuses, and his ideas still guide our practice in powerful ways. More than 50 years ago, Esther Lloyd Jones and Margaret Smith described our work as "the deeper teaching" and called us to see ourselves as true educators. It is fitting that we explore questions of foundation and future on this anniversary of Boyer's principles, and with a keen awareness of the early thinkers who have shaped our work and our views.

Our current reality is challenging, and change is a constant on our campuses and in the lives of our students. We are reshaping our organizations and our assumptions. Higher education is responding to new calls for accountability and growing public scrutiny. Our future is both promising and complex.

In resonance with the conference theme of Live the Legacy, Be the Movement, participants will gather to explore the creative tensions between foundation and future, between our roots and our promise, as student affairs continue to build the profession. The Think Tank work will lead to tangible and thought-provoking outcomes, extending the conversation to our colleagues across the country and around the world. Please consider joining your colleagues for this engaging opportunity.

If you are interested in joining fellow SSAOs in this event, please complete the simple application found at http://www.naspa.org/divctr/academy/thinktank.cfm and return it via email to sgordon@naspa.org by December 11, 2009.