Nov 16th

Problem/What can be done better?

The issue that I will be addressing will be related to the job of an Student Success Coordinators duties and how they can be done better to achieve greater success. My solution, which will be shared later, can also be applied to the MSS as a whole, but for this exercise I will focus on the Student Success Coordinator's job to Advise BAC (see Shadow entry). I want to be more specific about which portion of Advising the BAC that I want to address, by first giving a summary about what was discussed in the classroom portion on Wednesday and about the Graduate Symposium that I assisted with on Wednesday as well. This will give the background information necessary to better understand the specific problem the way that I have experienced it.

CLASSROOM: In the classroom meeting on this past Wednesday, Nov. 12th, we discussed organizations as potential retention tools for ASU. We discussed how organizations help to uphold the standards of the university for its members as far as grades and retention. Through student organizations, THOUSANDS of students are embraced on a consistent basis by a group of peers that not only do the organizations work, but assists the student with financial stress, relationship problems, family problems and study habits(all problems that can lead to dropping out). This is an important tool for the university because there is no way for faculty and staff to advise a number of students that large CONSISTENTLY. The only problem is that most MSS organizations have organizational pride and loyalty but not school pride and loyalty. So doing the universities work of retention, is seen only from the organizations stand point. So, when it comes to other activities, unless they are deemed as mandatory by a higher coalition, organizations do not allocate time or man hours to initiatives driven by ASU itself. Then there was the suggestion to dedicate 10% of each meeting to the ASU itself, instead of just the organization. Things going on at ASU for the organizations to participate in could be: summer programs, campus tours, devil's advocate, being a senator for one of the colleges, being on the homecoming court, attending President Crow's Town Hall meetings.

MSS GRADUATE SYMPOSIUM: Hours later on the same day, the Graduate Symposium takes place and I was tasked with assisting with anything that is necessary. I had nothing to do with the planning of the Graduate Symposium so I was not sure what to expect. The vendors showed up and I, myself had the chance to talk to many of them about graduate school opportunities. The event was pre-planned well and I saw that basically all of the feedback that I remembered giving for the Organizational Fair earlier in the semester were corrected very well. The only problem was the very minimal participation. I went downstairs (Memorial Union) and tried to recruit students to come to the Graduate Symposium upstairs. It was a much harder task than I thought it would be, and I ended up only getting one person to come up. I was pretty embarrassed until I got help (EXPERIENCED help at that) to come with me and go try again, and that time we got zero! It was even hard to get students claiming that they are 100% sure that they are going to grad school to come to the symposium to get information. So in reflection of that event and what can go better, there is only one issue, which many times seems to be in post-event dialogue, "how to improve student participation." Which seems to be a reoccurring theme at MSS events, even though the ORGANIZATIONS within the MSS are having successful turnouts at events from Sunday through Saturday, every week. Why is the ASU organization that is responsible for all these successful individual organizations and coalitions, having low turnouts at events? In my mind, I believe that part of the problem was already addressed in the class session this same Wednesday morning.

My co-mentor asked me to summarize what all I had learned from the programs that I helped with, as well as what I have learned from the program and have it in document form. I knew that there was so much that I could write about that I have learned, that I wish I knew before or when i was chapter president of my fraternity. I needed to know was this only me that was lacking this training, or most other president's as well, the only training that I had missed that was required was the transitional workshop. I asked what the transitional workshop entailed and found out it was solely to help on changing leadership smoothly. So this confirmed that the lessons and teachings that I received about organizational management, is a privilege that only myself and the 3 other interns are receiving.



APPLICABLE THEORY

One theory that could be useful in this situation would be the reward valence theory. This theory says that a person's decisions are based on the rewards and punishments associated with the different courses of action. In simple terms an individual thinks of two questions:
1. What can you do FOR me?
2. What can you do TO me?

I will show how the correct application of this theory can be beneficial to the MSS situation that i posed earlier, and how it can assist in advising the BAC.

THE PLAN

The majority of the plan is to do part of the Success Coordinators job of advising BAC, plus other MSS organizations as well. The training that we got for proper goal planning, pre-programming, strategic planning, logical execution, use of resources etc., will be available for all organizations.

SECTION 1. ORG MANAGEMENT CLASSES
The classroom portion of the MSS program be made available for 2 members of each organization per week. THE FIRST SESSION, IS MANDATORY FOR THE PRESIDENT, VP AND ADVISOR. FUNDING for the next semester will be related to attendance at each meeting. So for each session you are eligible to REQUEST $100 the next semester, and there will be five total sessions. The rationale behind this is that organizations can already propose for up to $500 anyway, this will ensure that MSS is funding organizations that are trained and will be having quality planned events. From the organizations point of view, they are doing the reward valence and seeing VALUE to these sessions. The first session will be about programming. Basically the class itself will be the same presentation that was presented to me during the internship. The reasoning for only this one to be required and for those specific members to be in attendance is to get the leaders in there and to see the value of the classes that are going to be taught throughout the semester. From the reward valence, they will see the value first hand in the classes and are in a position to make participation regular for their organization.
The sessions will include only the organizational lessons that are already a part of the MSS Internship programming such as proper goal setting, planning/executing/reviewing events, recruiting. The order of the sessions will NOT be posted, only the times and locations. The rationale for that is to avoid the argument of "We know how to do that so we aren't going to this session". One of the sessions will be with the topic that I discussed at the beginning of the blog about organizations participating at ASU sponsored events (which includes the MSS Department).
The reasoning behind this whole section is to improve the quality of the programs and the efficiency of the organizations (advising BAC). The MSS Internship program will teach these things anyway, so on those specific days, if it were this semester, instead of a classroom of four, it would have a few sessions with a classroom of 30, and it takes no extra resources just a larger room.

SECTION 2: PARTICIPATION AT MSS EVENTS
This part, also will be rolling off of the reward valence theory. First, there will be a requirement that every organization has 20% participation at academic specific events. There will be sanctions for not meeting this requirement, which will be determined by a mathematical equation. 100/#of academic events for that semester. So if there are 5 academic events that semester, each one has a "value" of 20% of your allocated funds for the next semester. This will force organizations to communicate about the MSS calendar during meetings and be sure that they have a number of members attending. This may sound harsh, but if it was in effect on Wednesday, there would have been 50 students that know more about graduate school resources available.

SECTION 3: RECORDS
One of the MSS Interns will be in charge of the spreadsheet showing if the organizations met or failed the attendance requirement, along with a copy of the sign in sheets in the MSS office.

Hopefully after the first year of implementation, the fines for not going to the academic MSS events could end, since such a large number of students will have attended and be able to attest to the value of the events to incoming members.

AND THAT'S IT, my plan to improve BAC Advising and improve attendance at MSS events. I hope that I explained everything well.