This past week I attended the annual ACPA conference in Baltimore Maryland. It is by far my favorite conference in Higher Education to attend because I get to the opportunity to learn from, and interact with people from every area and every level in Higher Education. I can attend sessions on Leadership and sit next to a Union director, or I can attend sessions on assessment and rub elbows with a Senior Student Affairs Officer. ACPA allows me the chance to meet new people and expand my knowledge of all the functional areas of higher education, plus its just an all out blast. Who wouldn’t want to be surrounded by thousands of higher ed professionals for 5 days, they are quite a fun bunch. This year at ACPA was the first time I had the chance to present at a national conference, and overall it was a great experience. I presented on SPF (no not Sun Protection Factor) with Chris Conzen, Director of Campus Activities and Student Leadership Development at Suffolk County Community College. We looked at Bandura’s research into self efficacy and how to use specific positive feedback (SPF) to promote self efficacy in students. Overall the session was a success for being on a Monday at 7:30 in the morning. We had a great turnout with good interaction, and valuable insights. I was quite pleased. People even followed along with our back channel (#ChrisandKris) and interacted from home. If you are interested in looking at the Prezi portion of our ACPA 11 presentation, it is linked below, and feel free to check out the conversation on the twitter back channel.
Also, at ACPA I got to reconnect with some of my favorite people in Higher Ed, and meet tons of “new” people. I put new in quotes because many of the new people I met, I felt like I already knew. I participate in an online, social media based group (#SAchat) that allows higher education professionals from all over to connect with each other each day. At ACPA, I finally got the chance to meet many of these people “In Real life (IRL)”, and let me tell you, they were all fabulous!!!! I’m now even more excited to meet some of the others from #sachat , and hopefully soon. I even have an IRL list of people who I am most excited to meet (but we’ll save that for another day and another post).
Overall ACPA 11 was a phenomenal experience. In the twitter world people will often categorize their 3 best for the day, meaning their 3 best moments of that day, I couldn’t narrow down all of my ACPA experience to just 3, so I did my 7 best.
1. Spending a few day with @OberBecca and Kathy_Petras
2. Blog time with @EdCabellon, who is the best long distance support system and mentor a girl could ask for
3. Finally meeting @julieclarsen @laurapasquini @Laura_Ulmer- They are AMAZING women in higher ed and I would highly recommended following them if you use twitter.
4. Geeking out over a Web 2.0 presentation
5. Challenging gender baised marketing of the NCAA tournament at a resturaunt with some other student affairs peeps over dinner
6. Catching up with my Kent State masters friends
AND
7. Meeting the man, the myth, the legend… “@”man himself @tomkrieglstein. (and listening to his theories on makers, lol)
Our ACPA 11 presentation: Accentuate the Positive: Using Specific Positive Feedback for Student Success
