Jill Creighton:     Welcome to Season 2 of ASCA Viewpoints Podcast, the podcast where we talk about the student conduct profession in higher education. I'm Jill Creighton your Viewpoints host. Welcome to the podcast Seann Kalagher. Seann comes to us as Chief Compliance Officer at Manhattanville College, and also the current President of ASCA. Hello, Seann.

Seann Kalagher:     Hi, Jill.

Jill Creighton:     I am really excited to talk to you today about your vision for the association going forward, but also just kind of about your general student conduct philosophy. For listeners, Seann and I have known each other for probably a decade or so, watched each other go from kinda mid-level and junior roles in student conduct to very different spaces where we are today. Seann, would you mind sharing with us how you got here?

Seann Kalagher:     Sure. Sure, I'll try to do that in a brief way. Yeah, so just assumed the role of President of ASCA. ASCA's kinda been a constant presence around my professional journey. I think I owe a lot to that affiliation with the association. I guess in short, educationally I did my Bachelors at George Mason University in Virginia. I went to law school after that, at Cornell, and I really had no thought that I would be entering higher ed as a field and/or student affairs in particular. Really, it was just through conversations with mentors and kind of assessing where I wanted to go that I decided to make a shift really right after I got out of law school.

Seann Kalagher:     I went into a Masters program in Higher Ed at Old Dominion University down in Virginia again. There is where I connected with the Grad Program Director at the time, Dennis Gregory, who was the past President of ASCA. I worked for him for a couple years and he made it very much a part of my job that I join ASCA and get involved, and that kinda started my journey throughout the profession. From there, I started the first time I guess professional role was at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. I started as an Assistant Director of Student Conduct and left there as the Associate Director. I was there for three years and then I spent almost nine years at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, where I grew up.

Seann Kalagher:     I'm from Connecticut originally. I started there as an Assistant Dean of Students and really focused solely really on student conduct and overseeing their conduct system. By the time I left I was Associate Dean and also served as Deputy Title IX Coordinator, and I had kind shifted a bit in terms of we had more staff that was working at Student Conduct and also just really kinda my focus areas kinda became a little bit broader within Student Affairs, particularly with Title IX as that grew in importance and grew in the amount of time we had to spend in terms of managing that system and cases in education and everything that goes along with that.

Seann Kalagher:     For the past just a little over a year now, I've been at Manhattanville College in Westchester County, New York. I serve here as a Chief Compliance Officer and as the Title IX Coordinator. It's been a really interesting shift from being really Student Affairs focused to being institutionally focused. I think part of what helped carry me through that is really being ... as a student conduct professional we are, by design, folks who are problem solvers. Our lens fits in a lot of different areas, particularly I do have legal background, but also just a background of writing policy and interpreting policy and working through difficult situations. As someone who works as a compliance officer at a small college that's really what I do.

Seann Kalagher:     People come to me with kinda difficult questions and thorny problems, and I try to help them see through that, whether that be through the lens of whatever, whether it be through the lens of federal or state regulations or just saying like, "Hey, here's our policy. What's the best way to approach this issue, given what our policy states?" I do a lot of that on campus. It's been enjoyable to kind of work now from an institutional level working with other vice presidents and other folks who serve on our presidents cabinet to see what exactly it is we need to do to move our institution forward as a group. It's been interesting over the past decade or more to kinda go from that very low level view of student conduct as an assistant director and just hearing case after case, and just kind of doing the work, and now really being kind of at a 30,000-foot level viewing things really systematically.

Seann Kalagher:     I think folks who work in student conduct have that kinda unique ability to do that because we're kinda both in the weeds and we can be out looking at things because we're working with systems all the time and evaluating them and seeing ways to make them better. I think that's kind of a unique thing that folks who are in our profession can bring to the table and it gives us a lot of options as we look kinda career wise where we can go, whether that's within Student Affairs or opportunities that are in higher ed, but outside of it a bit. That's kind of where I've gone. ASCA's been kinda the lynch pin throughout all those moves.

Seann Kalagher:     I met my supervisors from Roger Williams and at Quinnipiac ... the first time I had conversations with them were at ASCA conferences. That's how I met them and kinda got my foot in the door to go do interviews on those campuses, so ASCA's done a lot for me, and I'm hopeful to give back to the association to try to repay some of that.

Jill Creighton:     Can you tell us about how you got to the president seat? You talked about ASCA being a pretty constant thread in your journey. I'm curious how did that all start and how did you grow into the role?

Seann Kalagher:     I've been lucky to be at institutions that are supportive of involvement within professional associations. I know sometimes that's difficult. When we're doing work for associations as a volunteer leader we're taking time from somewhere. That could be from your institution. Also you're kind of borrowing time from friends and family and other obligations you may have. Roger Williams and Quinnipiac and Manhattanville have been all very supportive of my working with ASCA. I think early on I served as grad assistant at the conference, I think it was back in 2006, and from there I just looked for opportunities to get involved. Working up in New England, we had very active kinda local events, so getting involved in driving conferences, things along those lines, and helping organize those.

Seann Kalagher:     Up in New England, there are lots of other regional associations that we were able to partner with and put on events. From there, my initial kind of window into ASCA leadership was through the conference committee and worked on the conference committee for several years and eventually chaired the conference in 2014. For two years after that, I served as our co-chair for our public policy and legislative issues committee, which in 2014/15 was a really interesting time to do that, given all the activity that was going on in Washington and at the state level with Title IX related matters.

Jill Creighton:     Did something significant happen in 2014?

Seann Kalagher:     Yes. Yeah, a couple things. It was definitely an interesting time to be involved in that work. Then running for the Board of Directors and ... I had one unsuccessful run that you're aware of, Jill. We ran against each other back in it would've been the 2013 elections to start in 2014. Then I ran again, served for two years as Treasurer, and now going through my three-year commitment through the presidency track.

Jill Creighton:     I am so excited to see what you do with the association. Obviously, it's a weird time in our profession. Actually, I'm not really sure it's not ever not a weird time.

Seann Kalagher:     It depends on what's making it weird.

Jill Creighton:     This year what's making it weird is this very ambiguous sense of what might be next from Department of Ed, but that also doesn't take away from what we do for the core of our profession, in terms of development of students and decision making and accountability with young people. I'm hoping you can share a little bit about where you see the 2019/2020 board going, what that vision might be, and how you plan to lead us?

Seann Kalagher:     Sure. Well, I think the first place to start is really that the president really it's not about necessarily one person's vision of what ASCA should be. I think over the past several years, the presidency's really evolved into really being a steward of what the board's priorities are. That's been, I think, very successful over the past several years, the past several presidencies, including yours, in terms of that vision is really a shared one. I don't come in saying, "Here's what we're gonna do just in my year and then whoever's after me can do what they want." That doesn't really serve the association well, in terms of how we keep continuity and kind of achieve long-term goals.

Seann Kalagher:     For a large part, what we've seen over the past couple years, particularly when it comes to how do we open up opportunities that the association has, we really do acknowledge that our programs, from the conference to the Gehring Academy to other events we put on, we provide lots of professional opportunities for our members to really highlight the fact that we have a lot of experts in our association that have a lot to share. We've done a lot of work over the past couple years to open up those opportunities to as wide a net of people as possible, and we have more work to do in that regard, but that's something we need to continue. I think it's been to the great benefit of the association the past couple years to see new folks and new names and some of our really primary positions, in terms of conference presenting and Gehring faculty and things along those lines, so that will definitely continue.

Seann Kalagher:     I think you referenced kind of it's a weird time for the profession. What was released from the Department of Education related to Title IX, while focused on Title IX, has really put a lot of questions out there in terms of what does the future of our profession look like. ASCA needs to be in a position to be ready to not only answer that or help our members through that, but in order to really talk about what we do. I think that's a big focus of mine is how do we better talk to folks who aren't our members about what the realities are on our campuses and what does the work of student conduct look like.

Seann Kalagher:     As the association really started focusing on folks who ran kind of the what used to be termed judicial offices or sometimes deans of students, the term student conduct encompasses so much more now. We see that in our membership list, in terms of we have folks who are kind of serving those traditional roles as directors of conduct or assistant or associate directors and coordinators who just do the day-to-day casework, and meet with students, many a week, to going through and doing that work. A lot of us have done that, but we also have a lot of professionals that wear multiple hats, who have student conduct as part of their responsibility with other things. Particularly our colleagues who work at community colleges, we've seen a lot of kind of multifaceted professionals that have student conduct as one of like their suite of things that they have to do on their campuses.

Seann Kalagher:     Beyond that even, we have our folks who work in Title IX. There are more folks like me who have broader compliance roles, either within Student Affairs or institutionally that we see in the association, people doing case management work, threat assessment and behavioral intervention work and how that connects with other areas of campus like working with student accommodations and things along those lines. Those are all student conduct areas. That doesn't even go to mention all the folks who do work with student organizations and how conduct processes interact with those areas. I know we have good relationships with our colleagues in the fraternity and sorority world, but we have a lot of our student conduct folks who maybe their primary role is just doing organizational conduct on some of our campuses.

Seann Kalagher:     There are so many facets to what our work is. I think, from my perspective, we need to find better ways to talk about that and to present that information, not only to our members, but to folks who have a vested interest in what we do, but aren't the folks who are ASCA members who do the work day-to-day. I think that's something that we've always kinda struggled with, not just as an association, but as profession, is really talking about what the work looks like because it's so institutionally based. I mean conduct processes are very much wedded to and very much connected to institutional history, institutional values, and how do we look at that, in terms of what does a normal system look like, how do we make sure our systems value equity inclusion in them, particularly because of some of those historical ties and what kind of the outcomes that may come out of those systems.

Seann Kalagher:     There's a lot of different lenses here we need to look at. I've been really thinking about how do we present that out and how do we talk about things in a different way. To do that, we just need to be able to collect that information and really be face forward with our data and about sharing with our members and others this is what the profession looks like. Maybe by doing that we can also dispel some myths that folks have about student conduct and how things operate in colleges and universities.

Jill Creighton:     When you talk about this idea of, I frame it as, telling our story and something that we've been having conversations in the board room about for a very long time-

Seann Kalagher:     Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jill Creighton:     I'm curious how you frame that on your home campus now, so going from the expert on student conduct to now being a person who's looking at the much broader picture. As a cabinet level position now, how would you encourage folks in the profession, in the weeds, to frame their stories for their senior administration?

Seann Kalagher:     That's a really good question. I think a lot of it has to do ... framing it within the lens of the student experience. I think that's something that I know I talk about quite a bit in my institution of when we look at a process or a system is this designed for the convenience of the staff and faculty or is this designed for the convenience of the students who are really ... we don't have an institution without students. That's not only within student conduct, but I ask that a lot about a lot of things, probably sometimes it may aggravate some of my colleagues when I do that because maybe that's also kind of coming out of a Student Affairs lens, that's what I'm looking at.

Seann Kalagher:     I've also tried to use student conduct as an example of other things, too, to say like when we talk about, in term of, for instance, looking at faculty or staff processes, and I've often kinda said, "Listen we do this already in student conduct. Like you've got staff on this campus that do this work and understand how to do it, so if you wanna know how to build this system go ask them. They've gone through some of these growing pains that you're going through." I think particularly with some of the new Department of Education directives, it's actually been a ... I've been able to elevated that conversation to say we need to connect all these different processes on campus and take a look at them like holistically. Like what are we providing ... if we're gonna have, for instance, increased due process requirements, that's not likely that that's just gonna be contained within the Title IX zone.

Seann Kalagher:     That's I think one of the big things that we're all preparing for is the possibility that these expectations may go from there to regular student conduct, but are we talking about academic integrity, which on my campus is run by the faculty not by Student Affairs. Are we talking about our employee processes? Usually, when you go back to that, your student processes are closer to being aligned with some of those principles than sometimes your other ones are, so how do you start that conversation because those expectations when they hit, particularly for small colleges and community colleges, how are you gonna be able to process all of that with what the possible expectations might be?

Seann Kalagher:     Those are ... I think I've found that folks are receptive to those conversations. I also acknowledge that sometimes you'll have somebody that sits in that room that has that connection to student conduct and that kind of work. Obviously, if we have members here who are trying to have leadership on their campus to know more about what we do it's sharing our resources. It's making sure ... obviously, you can't make someone read something or listen to something, but making sure that it gets front and center in front of somebody like, for instance, the webinar we did about Title IX, the proposed regulations in December, I mean that's free. The link is out there and anyone can listen to it. That's not locked down just for members. We wanted to be sure that was out there for kinda public consumption, so it could be part of that larger conversation.

Jill Creighton:     How do we get ahold of that webinar, if we're interested?

Seann Kalagher:     It's on the ASCA website. It should be there kind of in our library of information. To my knowledge, it should be open to the public. You don't have to be a member to access it.

Jill Creighton:     That is really, really valuable. Where we're at, in space and time, the comment period either has just closed or is just about to close. As we move forward with that, I don't wanna spend too much time digging around in the guidance, but what do you foresee happening now?

Seann Kalagher:     It's a good question. I don't know how long the department's gonna take to assess all the comments. I think at the time we're doing this recording there were something close to 50,000 comments that were made. I know the department's gonna have to go through those. I mean they don't have to answer each one of them individually, but they do need to answer the concerns that were brought up in them, so how they decide to do that will be interesting to see. I mean they solicited comments on certain topics within the regulations. I think it's interesting to see what those topics are and also which ones aren't on the list. They weren't really soliciting comments about, for instance, the due process provisions that they put into the regulations, so that may not be something they're willing to budge on.

Seann Kalagher:     We'll see. I know there's a lot of advocacy groups out there really encouraging people to submit comments, and so I don't know how moveable the department is on certain areas. We'll just have to see. I am hopeful that some things may be clarified. If you listen to our webinar, there were some questions that were posed about we're not really sure what they mean by this or to the extent that they interpret this particular provision how far is goes. Hopefully some of those will be clarified because much rather have that clarified now than have to wait for an institution to be told either by OCR or the courts that they're doing it wrong when it may be a bit unclear upfront, so we'll just have to see.

Seann Kalagher:     The other part of that may be what the implementation date is. When they do release them they'll come with an effective date. Will that be for next academic year? Will they push it back farther? It's kind of unclear right now what that time table looks like.

Jill Creighton:     One of the conversations I had on a different episode of the podcast is about this idea of an extraordinary tone shift on how we educate our students about what our policies are, what they can expect from reporting, etc. I'm wondering with your Chief Compliance hat and Title IX Coordinator hat on, can you talk about how you're kinda starting to process through how you'll need to retool the presentation of our policies to our campuses?

Seann Kalagher:     Yeah. I think it's not even retooling how we present, it's also retooling who presents and in what way. There's that tone that you referenced within the guidance that really focuses on bias amongst the folks who are involved in the process. It really opened that question of what can the ... if you're a Title IX Coordinator, that guidance if it's kept as is or mostly as is, really puts the Title IX Coordinator in a position where you're ... the Title IX Coordinators aren't advocates in the sense anyway that they're not a victim advocate. They operate a process. they make sure that processes are equitable and fair for all that are involved in it. It does throw up some caution flags for folks who may serve as coordinators in terms of how you can present materials. That impartiality lens that they are really focusing on they really push that message over and over and over in the guidance, impartiality.

Seann Kalagher:     It's been seen a little bit in court cases, too, about sometimes an investigator or a staff member has been, "Well they may be bias because they did a presentation on something like rape culture", or something along those lines, so they may be biased against respondents. It's those type of things that I think staff need to be conscious of. That question becomes can the Title IX Coordinator do a presentation beyond just talking about your reporting options? Does that need to be somebody else who talks about other topics? I don't necessarily know what that answer is, but I definitely know that these are things that we need to think about because proposed regulations are very focused on bias issues and bias by the people making decisions.

Seann Kalagher:     The focus on training materials and making those accessible, that all goes into that concern that the department has. I know sometimes on campuses, particularly small ones, folks who serve as deputy coordinators wear a lot of hats in that context. They're often out there kinda doing presentations or presenting in front of advocacy groups or student orgs that work in that front, and so that question's out there whether that's doable under the current proposed regulations.

Jill Creighton:     Fascinating too because I struggled with that from a perspective of there's already bias in our society and a lot of the work that had been done to talk about things like rape culture or trauma-informed investigation practices was to balance the bias that already existed. I find it fascinating that there's seemingly a lack of equity in the law about equity in some spaces. I'm wondering what you thought about that?

Seann Kalagher:     That goes back to the root of the regulations to start with, in terms of about the perspective of who's writing them. It's been very clear from the outset that the Department of Education's been very focused on the respondent experience. Whether that's to the detriment of a complainant experience, I can't state whether that's the case or not yet until we kind of see what the final regs are. At the time that we're recording this we don't know what those are yet. It's a tough question to answer. I think part of one of the struggles a lot of campuses will have too is that we have a lot of states that have instituted the Obama era regulations into their state laws and regulations, and I work in one of them in New York, and how does that kinda push and pull from the federal government and the states play out. We're kind of still evaluating that. How does this effect our processes?

Seann Kalagher:     Yeah, I mean it's very clear the perspective in which the regulations were drawn. Even the piece related to ... I know in a lot of trainings and presentations and out there and kind of popular discourse is the conversation about false reporting. The incidence of false reporting is statistically small, but also the regulations put out there very clearly that you can't ascribe any credence to whatever role so inhabits in the process. If someone is a complainant the fact they're a complainant can't be given extra weight because they are the complainant. It seems like some of these points that have been brought up over the past several years and really pushed out there into the popular conversation are rebutted in kind of indirect ways, but rebutted nonetheless within the regulations when you read through them.

Jill Creighton:     Mm-hmm (affirmative). We've spent some time in the Title IX realm and that's where the student conduct focus has been drawn significantly over the last five years or so. Kind of zooming out a bit, where do you see student conduct going in terms of student learning, or the problems that we're seeing on our campuses, in the next couple of years?

Seann Kalagher:     That's a good question. I think where we see student conduct going is how it's integrated into other areas. There are ... not to say student conduct isn't a standalone professional function within Student Affairs, but it's difficult for us to do our work without collaborating with multiple areas to do our work in the best way we can. That means not just your Title IX folks, which we've talked about a lot, but there is that connection between student conduct and that work, but I think particularly when working with students with disabilities and the professionals that do that work, and how we work together with those professionals to make sure that we're doing right by our students who are going through our disciplinary processes who may have documented disabilities that they receive accommodations for, I think that's a large piece and also how student conduct works within our threat assessment and behavioral intervention realms.

Seann Kalagher:     Particularly when we talk about issues related to interim measures, if a student is judged to be a threat on a campus like how do we do that? What's the appropriate process for that and who's involved I that conversation? I think part of that is how ... student conduct has connecting points into all those areas and, as I referenced before, into our student organizations areas and working with student conduct related to student clubs and orgs. There's kind of a spiderweb of connectors that come out from student conduct to so many different spaces and that's really I think one of the most interesting things about the work we do, and also one of the things that I think our individual professionals can really put out there the most is that there are so many transferrable skills and experiences that you can collect as a student conduct administrator and a student conduct staff member that gives a lot of different opportunities for folks to not only interact with different areas of campus, but to pick up that experience that makes it possible to maybe have new professional opportunities open to you.

Seann Kalagher:     I think that's where that's going in terms of kinda some of the work that we do, but I think also you talked about student learning and, yeah, we need to be confident in having that conversation that student conduct is an educational process. I think the more we default to just ... not to say we shouldn't focus on process pieces, but if that's all we talk about then that's what really we're gonna become is just kind of process managers. Then that may make our profession look very different 10 years from now than it does now. We need to really be able to confidently speak about conduct officers as educators. Maybe part of that, too, is just looking at ... I know for folks like us that have been kicking around ASCA for a number of years, before the Title IX focus happened really around 2011 one of the biggest focuses we saw, if you went to our conferences and around ASCA circles, was looking at alternative dispute and restorative justice.

Seann Kalagher:     How does that conversation become kinda stronger again within our profession? That is one thing that's kind of been focused on a bit, too, even in the Title IX guidance is looking at informal resolution, so how do we kind of connect those pieces to talk more about that again? It was a big conversation in our profession for a few years. Not to say that the conversation stopped, but it got overshadowed by other things.

Jill Creighton:     Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, Seann, I wanna shift gears a little bit and talk a little bit more about ASCA itself. Most of our members have been in the profession and in the association for I think it's under three years or under five years. Folks like you and I are actually quite rare now, having stuck around a little while. I think that's always our goal, right, is that people get the skills that they need and then they elevate out. They elevate into dean roles or other parts of the profession, compliance like what you're doing. If I'm a newer professional, what steps should I be taking now to make sure that I'm setting myself up for success, not only my in day-to-day job, but also in the association?

Seann Kalagher:     I think a good step, obviously, gonna plug it, you should join ASCA. I know as a young professional, one of the things is kinda digesting the materials that we put out there. I know we put out kinda weekly law and policy pieces, and also looking at what regional opportunities are open for you. We don't talk about that, I think, enough at the national level when we're talking about ASCA, but there's a lot of regions and states out there that do great work and have both formal and informal get together and connections. I think if anything kinda draws folks to ASCA it's those connections. Whether that's through someone on your campus, if you're an assist director, a coordinator, you report to a director, it's what's the best way for me to connect with the other conduct professionals in our area.

Seann Kalagher:     That may be through in-person meetings. It may be a list serve. It may be just an email group that folks are asking questions and talking about things that are happening on their campuses and getting feedback on trends and policies and whatnot. I think a lot of those informal connections are what really strengthens ASCA. Maybe going to an event and then when you walk out you've got a few folks that you know now that you can chat with. Maybe they may be across the country. That's a huge benefit in an area where we know that a lot of our professionals are one-person shows on their campuses or they have very small offices. We're not like res life, we're not like student activities where there's often a large structure built in. For student conduct some institutions do have that, but that's more the exception than the rule. It's finding folks that kind of like institutions, whether that be regionally or institution type.

Seann Kalagher:     In terms of really dealing with that first introductory piece into the association, we talk a lot about the conference, but what we found is that the Gehring Academy in the summer is more often someone's first foray into ASCA. Doing that, if you're a new professional in student conduct, doing the foundations track, I can't recommend it enough. I know I did it myself back in summer of 2006 and I'm still connected with folks that I was in that track with. That's really been I think the experience for hundreds of our members, that they've gone to that event and they've walked out with a group of folks that they stay connected with.

Seann Kalagher:     Even if you have the opportunity to go to our conference, volunteer. That's one of the easiest ways just to ... I think you can do it usually online before the conference even starts. It's a great way to just meet some new folks and make connections and kinda find out what that avenue is, if you're interested in doing conference committee or finding out about other things that might be going on in your region or within the association itself.

Jill Creighton:     I'll give a quick plug to my favorite regional folks, which is the BACON Group, just because I think the name is funny and I'm a vegetarian, but I still love this BACON Group. It's the Bay Area Conduct Officer Network, so anyone like Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose. I'm just gonna give them a shout out because I think their name is great.

Seann Kalagher:     Well, yeah, I think that's one of the good things about ASCA, too, is that we do have a region and state structure, but at the same time we're open to letting our members be flexible in how they make those connections, particularly regionally. It's hard when ... as someone who has spent most of my professional career in New England, we don't really spend a lot of time separating the states. We kinda get together as a region because pretty much most of us are in driving distance to each other. When an event happening it wasn't like Massachusetts was running it, it's just like New England is running it. That's different though in a state like California where you're not gonna have ... a California meeting is like a national conference, everyone has to travel in.

Seann Kalagher:     Having those kinda regional connections, I know Florida is always very active, we have colleagues up in Michigan that have been very active, the D.C. area, so there are pockets around there and I know it's easier in some areas than in other, but if you're in an area where maybe there may not be a lot of ASCA folks around then connect with ... if you're able to connect with the association, go to one of our events, find some of those folks, and keep that electronic communication going because I think that's where a lot of the connectivity of the association comes from. It's, yes, to the association, but it's often just amongst all of us who do the work.

Jill Creighton:     Seann, as we wrap up our time together, do you have any final guiding thoughts for our members or for student conduct professionals?

Seann Kalagher:     Well-

Jill Creighton:     Wide open question for you.

Seann Kalagher:     Yeah. I would just say, I'm thankful that there's folks that do the work. It often can be thankless and it's really difficult. What ASCA has done for me is help me know that there are folks out there that I can connect with, even if it's just to vent, just to say, "You know, I've been dealing with this on my campus and it's really difficult", and knowing that I've made some of those connections that allow me to have that network of support. The support network for folks who do our work sometimes is not on your campus, it's somewhere else, and ASCA I think has done a good job of trying to provide that for our members. Just know that we know that the work that you do is hard and that it's okay to make mistakes.

Seann Kalagher:     I think all of us have gotten to ... I can look back on my career and take in a few times that I could've done things a little bit differently. What's helped me get through that, too, is obviously you wanna have good supervisors and things like that, too, but I've learned, too, from being part of ASCA and learning from my colleagues about better ways to do the work that I've done. Even things that I thought I was doing well. Just always being open to knowing that there may be a better way to do something because you can get kind of just cloistered on your own campus because our systems are kind of unique, and so you just think about the way things that you do at your place. Sometimes just going to a presentation and seeing someone do something that you do a lot and they do it in a very different way can open up so many different options in your head and kinda reinvigorate how you approach your work.

Seann Kalagher:     I'm always excited to go to the conference in February because from the point where I was an assistant director to now I come back with something. I'm like, you know what, that's something interesting that we could do that I wasn't thinking about. Just being open to that and kind of embracing those opportunities.

Jill Creighton:     Excellent. Seann, we always like to close with asking our guests what you are currently reading?

Seann Kalagher:     Well, I've got two kids at home, so a lot of my reading is done to them at nighttime before going to bed.

Jill Creighton:     Excuses.

Seann Kalagher:     Yeah. I commute into New York from Connecticut, so a lot of my reading, too, happens to be through audiobooks. I know my next book up. My audiobooks I try to rotate between something that's kind of maybe less intensive and just more fun and then I try to do something that is good for work and professional development, things like that. I'm actually about to start reading an audiobook for my commute, The New Education by Cathy Davidson, which is kind of about higher ed and the future of higher ed, which in my current role kind of looking at institutional decisions, so I kinda looking at that perspective.

Seann Kalagher:     I did just finish, a little bit ago, an audiobook, a book called The Culture Code, which was really interesting. I think it was by Daniel Coyle. It just kinda talked about successful organizations and kinda the common threads, whether that be ... I think they looked from companies to organizations to even like military units, like what are the common threads between groups that succeed and those that don't. To one of my daughters right now I'm also reading The Hobbit, so we are reading that together. My oldest daughter is a big fan of the Rick Riordan books like the Percy Jackson books. He has a bunch of series in that, so we're reading one of those right now. Those are my readings right now for you, Jill.

Jill Creighton:     Seann, if folks would like to reach you after the show airs how can they get ahold of you?

Seann Kalagher:     Sure. They can get ahold of me through ASCA. That's always available. You can go on the website and email our staff. Also, I'm accessible through seann.kalagher@gmail.com. Then you can find me on Twitter as well. My Twitter handle is SeannSA. That's my Twitter handle.

Jill Creighton:     If you'd like to reach the podcast you can Tweet us at ASCA Podcast, that's A-S-C-A P-O-D-C-A-S-T, or you can email us at ASCApodcast@gmail.com. Thank you so much, Seann, for sharing your viewpoint.

Seann Kalagher:     Thanks, Jill.

Jill Creighton:     Next week on the ASCA Viewpoint Podcast, we welcome Christine Simone. Christine currently serves as the ASCA Deputy Director, as well as the 2019 Annual Conference Chair. She'll be talking to us all about the conference and what we can expect as we make our way to Jacksonville. Hope you come back and ...

Jill Creighton:     This episode was produced and hosted by Jill Creighton, that's me. Produced, edited, and mixed by Colleen Nader. Special thanks to New York University's Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards and to the University of Oregon's Dean of Students team for allowing us the time and space to create this project. If you're enjoying the podcast we ask that you please like, rate, and review us on Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. It really helps others discover us and helps us become more visible in the general podcasting community.

Jill Creighton:     If you have suggestions for future guests, or would like to be featured on the podcast yourself, please feel free to reach out to us on Twitter at ASCA Podcast or by email at ASCApodcast@gmail.com.