One of the questions I’ve been asked multiple time is how to handle politics. Not Politics as in what happens in the legislature, but politics as in what happens in the university. The question is often asked with a hint of dismay. Politics is a word that we often associate with being somewhat smarmy. And yet, we…

When I worked at UTSA, I wrote weekly for the Student Affairs Newsletter. It was much like my essay in each of these newsletters though it was often specifically focused on items relevant to that campus or that group of staff. According to one of the directors in our division, a staff member asked him how…

Oklahoma City is the farthest north I’ve ever lived and while Lubbock and Dallas have their share of cold days and snow storms, I’ve spent most of my life in places that are warm more than they are cool. On rare occasions I’ve thought about moving north. Once when I was interviewing at a campus in…

I wonder if there’s any better opening to a discussion than this phrase. I wonder. It signifies an openness to possibilities. It implies a willingness to be surprised, to learn, to hear a different viewpoint or see a different perspective. It’s a link to the experience of awe, the feeling of joy, the innocence of childhood. I…

It turns out that the year 2022 will be a year of anniversaries for me. Every year is in some way of course, but this year is going to be one with a series of landmark anniversaries, you know those with a 0 in them. At NASPA this past week, I realized that I attended my first NASPA in…

Apparently, my spot on the introversion-extroversion scale shifted back toward introversion during the pandemic. Between that and the fact that I had let my TSA-Pre status lapse since I wasn’t flying anywhere, meant that I was a bit unprepared for my trip this week. In fact I whined about it a bit (or more than…

Success – it’s one of those words we all know and use. On campus we talk about student success quite a bit. But when I ask people to define it, the question often that question seems to stump them. I think because they assume we all have a common understanding. Surely it means that students are successful,…

Have you ever tried to find a quote, book, or article that you read in the not too distant past, but you have no way to find it? I certainly have and I’ve tried different ways to keep track of such things, but nothing really stuck until I ran across the idea of the commonplace…

Suddenly, books are scary – again. Books, those things that were going to disappear thanks to technology, are in the forefront of our awareness again. Discussions of banning books, removing books from school libraries, and even book burning are all over the internet. Which points out the irony of trying to get rid of physical…

There are many ways to mark the passage of time. There’s the watch hand, or rather the change of the digital clock face. There’s the calendar with large X’s on each day. Or worse, there’s wondering just who is looking back at you from the mirror some mornings. There are many more that we all…