Showing posts with label colleges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colleges. Show all posts

Sunday, June 7, 2009

No more "status quo"


Most of us keeping doing what you've been doing. Why? It's easier than innovating, creating, taking risks to create something new. Trying new things involves the potential, maybe even likelihood, of it not succeeding exactly as we envision.

But we grow as leaders and our organizations improve when we strive to be better.

For example, ASGA discovered a new way to gather information that we store in our SG Database which include information on every student government in America. Our team literally researches information on every college and university in the nation, one at a time. It's time-consuming, exhaustive work. In the past, each of our data-entry team members might, on a good day, be able to complete research on five institutions.

However, in the last month, we experimented with a new system. This new system has led to us tripling our production. Each of now can complete 15 schools on a good day. This mean updating as many as 75 institutions a day. With 5,000 colleges and universities in the nation, we ideally need to be updating data on every institution twice a year. we were barely getting through once a year using the old ways. Now it's more realistic to get through the nation twice a year. That's exciting. We're better able to serve our members with better data on student governments everywhere.

Changing our methods was risky and potentially could have caused problems. But the risk paid off. ASGA is much deeper and more accurate now as a result.

All of us in Student Government must be willing to take risks when the reward and result could better serve our constituents. We can't be content with the status quo.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Holiday Break

Like many people in higher education, I'm looking forward to spending time with my wife and children over the Christmas break. The time between Christmas and New Year's is about the slowest time of the year for ASGA. Most of our members are home with their families and are enjoying a break from college and from their jobs in education. The number of e-mails, calls, and live chats slows to a trickle during this period. It's very quiet at our offices in Florida.

However, just like during the summer months, most colleges and universities remain open and some administrators and staff continue to work. While mid-December to mid-January is an "off" time for most student leaders and student affairs administrators, your institution usually remains open and continues to work on projects and programs.

Student Governments should be aware of this and make sure that they're in the loop on any decisions that are being made over the holidays and summer break. It's part of staying in touch so that you can better serve your constituents.

There's little worse than coming back from a restful holiday and finding that construction has started on a new building you knew nothing about!

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Working Electronically

At least two days a week, I work from my home. I take and make calls, send e-mails, answer questions from members all from my laptop in the living room at my house. My children are playing and working in the background the whole day.

Not only does working at home save money and time in traveling to the office (I live about 35 minutes away), I get to spend more time with my family! Sometimes, it gets pretty loud around here, but that's OK.

This new mode of work made me think how this could apply to student governments. So many institutions already offer on-line courses. Some, like Washington State, have a completely distance-oriented degree program. Their student government operates totally online, as their members never set foot on the campus in Pullman but are spread out across the nation. They hold their meetings online, take votes, present resolutions, do research, connect with their peers, and more, all from their computers.

Can your student government be more efficient in using technology? Perhaps some of your meetings could be replaced by online meetings. Perhaps some of your committee work could be replaced electronic reports.

I know for me, the option of working at home has been a blessing. As I write this, I'm at home listening to my children and wife work on Christmas cards and birthday cards for Gramma. I'm a part of the family, not apart.