Jill:               Welcome to Season Two of the ASCA Viewpoints Podcast. The podcast where we talk about the student conduct profession in higher education. I am Jill Creighton, your Viewpoints host. 
                    Hey podcast listeners, thank you so much for your patience with us this week in the slight delay getting the episode out to you. Unfortunately, I have been battling that cold and flu season all week and wasn't able to get this to you as soon as I would like. So, I appreciate you waiting on us and I hope that you love today's episode. 
                    Today's episode features Dr. Kevin Kruger. And Dr. Kevin Kruger draws on more than 35 years of experience in higher education. Since 2012, he has served president and CEO for NASPA, student affairs administrators in higher education. Prior to his role as president, Dr. Kruger worked for 18 years as the associate executive director, and served as both the chief operating officer and chief financial officer for NASPA. He's held a range of student affairs positions at Southern Methodist University and the University of Maryland. And as NASPA president, Dr. Kruger represents student affairs at variety of national forums, and is a frequent contributor to higher education news stories on the college student experience. 
                    Dr. Kruger has published and presented nationally on trends in higher education, student success, degree completion strategies for low-income and first generation students, technology and change management for leadership in higher education. He's a proud father of two children, one a college junior and the other a senior in high school. Dr. Kruger received his MA and PhD in counseling and personnel services from the University of Maryland.
                    Welcome to the podcast Dr. Kevin Kruger, president of NASPA. We're glad to have you Kevin.

Kevin Kruger:       It's good to be here, Jill. Thanks for asking me. 

Jill:               And today's conversation with Dr. Kruger is really going to focus on student affairs as a broad profession, and who our student are today, and that impact on the kind of process. So, I think a lot of times in student conduct we think of ourselves as very specialized, very niche, and sometimes even isolated and misunderstood by our other student affairs colleagues. So, I'm excited to have Kevin speak with us a bit on how we fit into the larger picture of what's going on with the profession. But as usual, we always like to start with our guest's journey into their current role. So, Kevin can you tell us how you got here?

Kevin Kruger:       Sure it's a little nontraditional ...Well it actually started off kind of traditional I was, like many student affairs folks, I was a involved with student leader as an undergrad. I was an RA and a orientation advisor, but at the time I that I was an undergraduate there wasn't a lot of conversation about student affairs as a profession. So it really wasn't until almost graduation that I kind of asked my hall director, how do you get to do this kind of work? And that opened up this idea that student affairs existed.
                    So I was a little, wasn't the most informed decision I must say, but I think it worked out okay. But I ended up going to the University of Maryland and started off in Orientation and I got my masters degree there. And one of those ...A little bit of my personality a little bit just the opportunity I had, I'm a high achieving person. My StrengthsQuest achiever is number one which may not come as a big surprise and one of my first practicums happened to be with the Vice President of student affairs. His Bud Thomas he was the VP of student affairs at Maryland and as a young person I was sitting across the desk from him and I remember in some of those early meetings coming out there like, "That's what I want to do. I want to be a vice president of student affairs." 
                    So really the early third of career was kind of progressing through a series of positions that I hoped would position me to be competitive for vice president's job. So I worked in Res Life, worked in admissions, worked in student activities, I was dean of students and I was really sort of moving up the organization chart to try to get to that position. And then got this sort of call out of the blue from, at that time the executive director of NASPA, her name Liz Nuss and a I had a loose connection with her through Maryland and she said that she had this job open. It was the number two person in the office, the assist executive director and would I be interested? I'm like, "Nah, not really. I really want to stay on campus." And she kind of got me to take the train down to DC and just have the conversation with her so I agreed to do that.
                    Then after two hours of that conversation I was like, "Yeah, I think I do want this job." And what intrigued me about NASPA at the time or the idea of working for a professional association was rather than sort of focusing on campused based issues, to have that opportunity to think more broadly about what's happening in higher education and student affairs more globally and to be part of a larger conversation around that.
                    So I said I would do it for two years and then I'm going to go back to a campus and fast forward I'm now in my 24th year at NASPA, so you see how that worked out. And in and along the way I was able to get, when the next executive director retired, Gwen Dungy, I was a candidate in the national search for this position and we named it President and I was fortunate enough to get the job. So the easy thing is I've stayed in student affairs, I haven't gone very far from that, but I still got very hooked into the kind of work that we do in professional association. 
                    I will say along the way, in connection to ASCA, I've been to a number of ASCA conferences over the years, not just as a presenter but also as an attendee. I was in a Dean of Students role was at that point what we called the [inaudible 00:05:45] officer, so I had quite a bit of student conduct responsibilities. And even going back to my first job out of grad school when I was the area coordinator at Southern Methodist University, I supervised the residential judicial board at the time. All the training and I sat in all the hearings. So I have a great appreciation for the hard work and the important work that conduct officers do and the role that that plays in student affairs. So, been fortunate to have that experience.

Jill:               I kind of wanted to start chanting, "One of us! One of us!"

Kevin Kruger:       Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. You know I worked in a lot of different functions so this "One of us" that kind of chant can happen in a lot of different places, but in this particular one, the conduct one was really important. 
                    I'll tell you a quick anecdote, when I was at UMVC and I was UMVC and I was in this traditional role and had this as part of my responsibility, just as you know, this isn't the always the most fun enjoyable part of student affairs work because you're dealing with very serious issues and, twice this happened, and I think most people who work in conduct have had something like this happen to them with a student we expelled from ...Or suspended, excuse me, suspended for a series of alcohol violations and a variety of disruptive issues and this person through the system a number of times. And of course, at the time, he hated me. I had disrupted his life. He came back two years later and talked about how that final decision of holding him accountable for his behavior was what got his life back on track and he realized he had some substance abuse issues and some emotional control issues and he came back to thank me for being somebody who took the hard stance with him and that, he believes, he got his life back on track.
                    That's just my one anecdote. I know that many of the people who listen to this podcast have had similar experiences that while in the midst of something that's really difficult we have this huge educational opportunity to help students manage some of the more difficult issues in their life.

Jill:               I think that moment that you described, that student that comes back and thanks us even though we may have removed them from campus for a time. Those are the reason that a lot of us are in this work. Them. Those true learning moments that the student who's not going to seek out a leadership role or other campus involvement. They're not going to find us otherwise. So I really appreciate that you had that joy moment too where the student comes back and maybe two or five years later, maybe you didn't think you had an impact at the time, but that kind of warm and fuzzy that comes back around, we need those wins so badly.

Kevin Kruger:       Yeah, well you know we do and I think they're coming easier when we're pure. When we're working with student leaders or a leadership program, that kind of thing, when these moments are a little more developmental in a positive way. But I think, I'm not ...Jill, I think at least in my experience when I talk to student affairs folks this this one of the reasons that we do this work and one of the reasons that, whether you're in conduct or res life or activities, whatever it is, one of the reasons we do it is that we know that, we have come to appreciate at least, that these sometimes micro sometimes macro interactions we have with students really do make a difference because of the time in life that they are. I think that just enough of them come back and express that kind of appreciation that I think it gives us the juice we need to keep going in the work because it can be kind of tough at times.
                    But you're right, I think that is a very common element and not everyone gets that kind of, "Hey, thanks" kind of thing, but we know in our heart that we are doing some really important work. And I think the other thing is, in conduct is that there some obviously very very serious things that occur on campus that have to have very serious consequences, but it's part of the fabric of the campus that allows students to make mistakes and to be held accountable for those mistakes and for their behavior and their judgment, but where the consequences don't have to be catastrophic and I think that that learning opportunity, those learning moments are also part of why we do the work that we do and why conduct is so important because you're really part of the educational mission here and that's ...Community standards and that part of the work as well, the educational part of the work I think is a lot of what draws people to it. 

Jill:               I think that's a great transition to the question of how do you, as kind of this, in your position, how do you see student conduct fitting into the larger fabric of student affairs in higher education today? 

Kevin Kruger:       Well, first let's say among the many functions of student affairs the work that conduct administrators today I think is more important that ever and maybe more important than ever than in a time that we've seen in the last 20 years. And I think that's out and you can certainly see that by ACSA's growth, you know the growth of the profession and in some ways even the accelerated professionalization of it. I think it plays a very critical role in the development of community. Adherence to community standards is a part of community and the nature that this is part of the educational process is think is really critical. 
                    Having said that, there's some really significant important issues that have emerged in our education that have put conduct kind of front and center. Probably the most emblematic of that is the context around sexual violence that we've seen on college campus over the last, since really April 2011 whenever we talk about that kind of threshold point I always want to ...I don't remind your members, but when I'm talking to external audiences, I remind people that college universities did not discover sexual violence as a challenge and a problem on April 2011, having said that I think that was a watershed moment for our industry in a really positive way in terms of increasing resources, increasing support services for victims. Tightening just our reporting processes up, creating a little more transparency/visibility for how students can report. I think the industry, our whole industry I think evolved. But student conduct is just really at the center of helping higher education deal with that issue. 
                    So I think that, in my observation, I think that's been a important role for the conduct profession. And it think that higher education and their students have benefited greatly from that work. I think that, just as a little aside, obviously we're all curious about when the final regulations are going to come out. But one of the components of that that I think I've heard may come out is the notion of restorative justice strategies as one part of the way in which we think about how we deal with the very complex issue and I think that's hopefully in the end be something that can be a very very positive thing for work that we do with students.
                    I think the other one is, conceptually right now, is around this really contentious national debate around free speech, activism and protest and how that also intersects with the work of conduct. I think this is really hard. I think that really fuzzy line between how students express themselves, in what format they express themselves and when that can and often does run into conflict with the code of student conduct and community standards. How we resolve that I think is increasingly difficult and is very much in the public eye. 
                    So I think as students navigate this period of time we're in right now where we have a great activist generation and we have a lot of issues that are kind of front and center in our campuses, how we resolve this in an educational way, yet still a team, still a [inaudible 00:14:25] to having some attention to community standards is really going to keep the conduct folks in the limelight in a lot of ways so the work that you do is even more important and more nuanced because these are also very difficult issues to sort out. 

Jill:               I want to acknowledge for our listeners that we're recording today. It's September 27th of 2018 and as Kevin and I are speaking the Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford hearing is happening in real time and so I think our mindset is fairly focused on that. So we won't release this episode until November or late October, but that's kind of where we are now. So as we talk about waiting for the regulations by the time this gets released we may have them and so I just want listeners to be aware of where were are in time.

Kevin Kruger:       That's right, that's right. Yeah. Well it's a good point and I think we'll have some space to have a look back on this Kavanaugh hearing, so who knows what the aftermath of it'll be, but I think it also reinforces for me, and I have to say that I have not seen any of the actual testimony, but the dynamics of this prosecutor being in the senate hearing and my concern is that this person will only ask questions of Dr. Ford and not Dr. Kavanaugh, kind of rings for me a little bit about some of the concerns that we have on campus about what will happen if regulations come out where cross examinations of victims of sexual violence will occur within our student conduct hearings and this movement that it seems to be, not just ...Clearly in sexual violence, but in general, that I think folks outside the academy struggle with how to understand the purpose of conduct processes on a campus and want these all to be replicating a criminal justice proceedings.
                    So I really worry, Jill, about the progress we've made over the last five years of really creating more pathways and more opportunities for victims to come forward that some of this, even the culture around the Kavanaugh thing, will have in a way that Dr. Ford has done, she had to move her family, that we're going to move it backwards in terms of creating this sense that victims of sexual violence will safe bringing it forward. 

Jill:               Senator Feinstein said something really poignant this morning which was, "This is a job interview for Judge Kavanaugh, not a trial of Dr. Ford." And I think that's a really important focus point. But the New York Times also did a really great piece this week on how young people are viewing what this means for them and I saw one of the quotes, something to the effect of, "What we're teaching our young men, specifically, is that you should make bad choices and you should be violent in your youth because it won't have consequences as an adult." And that is a fascinating lesson to hear from a high school student in terms of their interpretation. 

Kevin Kruger:       When you take a step back from things like this, for me at least, I think about this also in the context of me too movement because there's some really positive things that are happening socially for us in space in terms of, largely women but also men and transgender folks in college and outside of college, coming forward. So there's some things about that that are really positive, but then you almost feel like when you get ...Seems like any time we get something around congressional, senate, government we go back three steps. I don't know so it's hard to kind of see and we won't know until we look at back at this period like in two years from now and say, "What was the real impact of this?" Not just in our society, but also on campuses. 
                    But no doubt it's troubling in the kind of sub-messages that are sent particularly to young men is really troubling. We get ...I did a program here at NASPA yesterday that we had a group in and somebody, after I was done with my presentation, person said can you talk a little bit about what you think the impact of the national politics are in the work that we do on campus? And that's a ten hour conversation because it's hard to separate. We don't operate in a vacuum, we're operating in this sort of larger context and it's hard to sort of get a ...We see it day to day, but I think it'll be interesting when we look back at these four years in particular and see what has been the real impact on the work that we're trying to do into creating equitable and just environments in our campus. 

Jill:               And let's zoom out for a minute and I know you're current expertise is really on identifying who are students are that are entering our spaces now coming out of that larger global context and into our microcosms of our institutions and that our millennial generation has moved on. Our millennial generation are now our student affairs colleagues, they're in the working world, they are parents, not to say that our current students are not parents, but from a traditional age range, we're seeing a brand new kind of group identity come it. 
                    And I'll throw our traditional disclaimers out that as we talk about generations we are not intending to pigeonhole or marginalize all individuals of this generation into one subsection. But really to talk about kind of some overall trends that are shifting from how we worked with our millennial students to how we're now going to work with gen z.

Kevin Kruger:       Yeah. Yeah and thanks for the disclaimer. I do like the conversation about generations but we have to be careful about anything. It's an incredibly diverse generation of millions of people. So one simple set of statements or slides is not going to capture all that, so thanks for raising that. 

Jill:               So given that, kind of upfront, Kevin can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of the identities of our students that are entering college today?

Kevin Kruger:       Let me try to pick up on three quick things here and then we can dig into of a couple of them if you want. One is, in an incredibly positive way, every generation and every year of every generation is becoming more diverse in relationship to, I want to say, every identity. Certainly on racial and ethnic lines. This notion that as a country we're going to be a majority minority country by 2040 is a real stat that kind of is baked in and think that that means increasingly our freshman classes our transfer classes and students, even non-traditional students, are coming to us are going to be increasingly diverse.
                    I think that creates really a great opportunity for something that, there's a term that Joesph Aoun, who is the president of Northeastern, uses in his book Robot Proof, which is another subject, but he talks about these critical skills that we're going to need in the 21st century and one of them he labels cultural agility. And there's lots of different ways you can talk about the ability to get along, to interact with people who are different than you, but the cultural agility thing works a little bit which is this sort of ...To be agile, be able to be flexible enough to deal with multiple identities, multiple races, multiple ethnicities, different gender in the workplace, different socioeconomic backgrounds. This notion of this being culturally agile I think is really kind of cool and I think those opportunities will become increasingly frequent and also important as this generation kind of rolls through our colleges because it is going to be so diverse. So that's sort of one observation.
                    Second thing is that they, all the evidence suggests, that this particular generation is even more progressive than previous generations. And so I think that have a number of different effects for us. Our institutions as progressive as they might want to be, are still institutions and so I think students in this generation will be coming to our campuses pushing against our intuitions for historical practices around embedded institutional racism and faculty hiring practices and policies and procedures and you name it. So I think that is a really good outcome because I think I tend not to be of the mind that we should be afraid of protests and activism, in fact we should encourage it because isn't that what we want? We want students to be engaged in their own communities and participating actively in their own democracy, essentially? I mean what a great laboratory for that to place in college and universities. So, it's easy for me to say, I'm not a college president so I don't have students sitting in my office. Just that idea of students sitting in your office is actually a great thing. Don't we want to encourage that? 
                    I think the other aspect of this issue is that I think as students, as this generation clearly is more energized around a variety of social justice issues and progressive issues, they're going to be pushing against institutions in some ways and I think we should encourage that. I think we should celebrate the fact that students are courageous enough to sit in a presidents office or protest on the campus. And isn't that what we want to happen? So I think that's going to be an outcome of this generation, I think that's really positive. It's not going to be easy but I think that we should embrace that.
                    So one of the other things I want to say about that though is that, you can go back to the UCLA data, that have been tracking whether their students are liberal or conservative. It's really interesting that despite the fact that we think of this generation as sort of maybe being totally kind of progressive, students as freshman come in they identify about 33% or so or 35%, I think, identify as what they might consider to be liberal and then about 23 or 24%, I think, identify as conservative and everybody else in is in the middle of the road or kind of moderates. I think that in that little data point there's some really interesting things that we should extract as we think about the impact on the campus and that is that even if it is 23 or 24% are conservative, that's an important component that we have to pay attention to in higher education. That we cannot sort of create environments where the voices of our conservative students can't be expressed as well. I think finding some space for that is really important. 
                    One thing I'm going to comment on is I'm really interesting in Jean Twenge's work and those who of you who are listening if you've read I, Jean it gives you a kind of viewpoint in that. But she has been tracking since 1979 a series of questions that she asks 10th, 11th, 12th graders and one of her conclusions that she has kind of stumbled upon is that around the time when the iPhone was released around 2009 or so, she started seeing a real change in behavior among that's continued even to this day. And this behavior is everything from students that go out on dates without their parents, students who go out at all without their parents, drinking, pre-marital sex, drug use, a variety of things are sort of decreasing. And what's increasing is students that feel left out or lonely, which kind of gets to the mental health issues.
                    One of the things I think is going to be increasingly challenging for the conduct folks is, so we have more and more students coming out of high school without the kinds of experiences they historically have had. For example, drinking is way down in high school. When they get to college sometimes their first experience with alcohol may be at a college setting. They're not going on dates as much so some of their first early relationship experiences may be in college. So I think we are dealing with now a generation coming to us that has fewer of some of the maturational issues that maybe that had experienced in previous generations and now their first experience with some of this is here with us in college. 
                    So I think that from a community standpoint and a conduct standpoint, creates some additional challenges for us. So, yeah, this generation I think it's going to be interesting and one that will feel differently to us than some of the issues that we had and experienced with some of our millennial colleagues and peers who are now currently working on these campuses. 
                    And one last thing on the activism. I laugh sometimes because we want it both ways in student affairs. When students were not activists and all the [inaudible 00:27:17] was parking in food, we were bemoaning the fact about the apathy. And now that we have this generation who's really kind of activated around a variety of issues. I wonder and sometimes we're uncomfortable with the amount of activism there so it's kind of sometimes you can't make anyone happy. I don't know if that got at your question. 

Jill:               No, I think that's a great kind of overall profile and I want to share a couple of statistics that I know you've talked about before that I think are valuable when we think about gen z.
                    The first is a set of statistics about how folks have been feeling in the past 12 months and in the last 12 months, 86% of students have identified as feeling overwhelmed. 59% have felt loneliness. 54% have reported overwhelming anxiety. 42% have identified hopelessness and 32% have identified as so depressed they were having difficulty kind of generally functioning. And I think these are really important things to note because while we have this activated generation we also have a generation of student who, for one reason or another, we've created an environment that they were brought up in that's created this overwhelming sense of anxiousness or high need that wasn't there before. So how do you feel like that information will impact the work we do on our campuses? 

Kevin Kruger:       Well let me just take one step back for your question and also provide another layer of context. The mental health issues that you just mentioned which are obviously something that we are dealing with in college are not just college issues. They are, it's really a global phenomenon, it does not matter where I go in the world all universities I talk to are struggling with some of the same mental health issues that we are struggling with. 
                    And one more sort of contextual statement. It's not that students who go to college have it, our whole society is dealing with this. So this ...All we have to look at is very high profile cases like Anthony Bourdain to look at the impact of depression and anxiety and stress and suicide ideation is something that happens all over. You could make a case actually if you're struggling with a mental health issues and you're in a college age population, the best place to be is in college because of some of the supports that we have. 
                    Having said that this is a real issue, right? This is something we are dealing with and virtually every campus in America has seen increases year over year in the presenting of folks with serious physiological issues as well as just students who are struggling in general. Annual survey of the Association of Councilors and directors, they do a survey of counseling centers and now anxiety now is the number one presenting issue of students who come to counseling centers. Followed by stress, depression, number four is students who are taking psychotropic  medication and then number five is suicidal thoughts or behavior. So it's pretty serious stuff and I think this is the context around how students manage that stress, how they manage that anxiety. 
                    We do know for example, and I think this is something that intersects with conduct is that students that are struggling from a mental health standpoint, a notion that students self medicate themselves with alcohol or other drugs can be a contributor to a variety of behavioral issues. So I think this is really what makes conduct so important on campus is that it's not just simply, "You did this, here's the consequence." But it's the role that conduct plays in the fabric of the students life and an understanding of the complexity of the issues that students present. 
                    And so just like someone who comes into the health center and says, "I have a cold." That may also be connection to someone that they might discover also has a depressive issues or some substance abuse issues or it could be other issues that come around. Same thing for students who are processed throughout the conduct system. It's an understanding that students lives are very complex and there maybe other things that are occurring that would suggest that more than just a traditional sanction is going to be the appropriate outcome. When many of the students really are in really need of other kinds of support and help. 
                    Which really speaks to one of the things that I think has been one of the most positive things that we've seen in the last decade probably has been the emergence of a methodology and a practice around how we think about students in general and that we understand a series of isolated incidents may roll up to be a larger problem. And in campuses and the work that they do in creating crisis teams and response teams and entire case management approach of which conduct is a part of I think reflects an understanding of the fact that the students, the issues that they present are not just behavioral but they also can be psychological as well. And I think that understanding, it's really important in conduct work that your members do.

Jill:               I think that is a really appreciated perspective. Conduct officers, we've always thought of ourselves as educators first and as student resources and the conduct process happens to be the mechanism by which we're doing the teaching. But that wholistic approach is something that ASCA has been teaching from the very beginning in the 80's.

Kevin Kruger:       Well you know, yeah, just to add on that how important it is that students that interact with the institution through student conduct because that might be the very thing that connects them to the kind of support they need to address, whether it be a psychological issue or a addictive issue or a substance abuse issue or, for that potentially even suicide ideation. So when I think about this mental health issue I think, it's sort of simple thing to say, but it's just the truest thing is that you can't hire enough councilors to deal with this and at some point it really becomes a it takes a village kind of approach and that village is comprised of lots of key people but the conduct officers are one of them. 
                    Just as a quick little editorial, I wish we could get more faculty engaged in this was well because they have a window on students experience that sometimes doesn't get connected to the larger fabric of the campus around how we support students with psychological issues. 

Jill:               Well and ultimately whether you persistence goal is transfer, articulation or graduation the persistence piece is supported through large networks for our students.

Kevin Kruger:       Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I think that that's a ...In an era where resources are tight and everybody's now performance based funding and all these kinds of things and a sometimes under-appreciated role in the retention, persistence, degree progress equation is the way in which student affairs professionals touch students. And whether it be through conduct or the counseling center of even sometimes just the conversations that occur in the residence hall, all the resources that we provide I think are both important to the individual student, but they also are important to the students academic progress as well.

Jill:               Now one of the other stats that you shared which really struck me personally was that the average attention span for millennials was about 12 seconds, the average attention span for a gen z student is 8 seconds, so four seconds slower. Which is technically slower, I guess lower than the attention span of a goldfish which is about a 9 second attention span. 
                    So given that new information and our attentions spans getting shorter and if a YouTube video's longer than 30 seconds I'm not watching it, how do we get students hear us? 

Kevin Kruger:       That humorous anecdote is really at the heart of one the larger challenge of student affairs and see it both as a challenge and an opportunity. So let me talk about the challenge is, and this is not just student affairs but it's the whole way in which the university learning process intersects the students, is that the way students learn and their preferred learning modality is really not, the University largely instruction and teaching/learning has not caught up with this modalities. I doesn't mean that because students in this generation and probably the tail end of millennials as well all have kind of latched on to short YouTube videos as the way they are entertained and sometimes the way that they are educated. 
                    I don't know that we can actually reimagine our curriculum in that regard, but it does sort of point to, I think, this is really an overstatement, but University, college and universities as entities whether it be student affairs or teaching and learning are a lot more analog than they are digital and students in the millennial generation and then gen z are much more digital. So I think this miss-match can be difficult at times. 
                    Having said that, I think that if in fact this attention span, short learning and maybe going back to Jean Twenge, if this connection to our devices, clearly for this generation, is impeding some of the developmental opportunities or making students feel more lonely and left out then everything we do in student affairs in particular plays a counter balance to that. So every speaker, every movie, every educational opportunity, every leadership opportunity, every residents hall meeting, everything we do that gets students to engage with each other face to face is, in fact, a positive counter balance to some of the negative effects of technology. 
                    One of the things that interesting is that when young gen z's are surveyed much more than millennials they see the negative impact of technology. And I think in some ways they're looking for and are more open to some of the opportunities where things can be more analog or face to face and I think that creates ...That's the opportunity side for us and I that's a positive thing for us to think about.

Jill:               I really liked what you said earlier about your hope for more faculty engagement with our programs on the student affairs side. Can you talk about any successful models that you've seen where faculty have really engaged with student affairs for this success of their students?

Kevin Kruger:       Yeah, I think the first observation I'd make is that I've been around student affairs long time and we've been talking about academic student affairs collaborations or challenges for as long as I've been in higher ed, so this is kind of perennial problem and it's not a unique thing to say, "Well there's kind of academic and student affairs silos on campus." So it's just something that we kind of, I think we are challenged with it in lots of different ways. 
                    I would say this, before I give you examples. If we're going to have meaningful student affairs, academic affairs collaborations it's probably going to come from our side. And we can bemoan that, but think that is likely where it's going to come from because of the nature of the professoriate and where their attention is. So I think a lot of the outreach has to come from us. 
                    Having said that I think there are a some really good examples, actually. Some of the best ones are well established amongst campuses which is around civic and services learnings, civic engagement. It's connecting to the community. So I think it's a really powerful opportunity to take problems and issues that might express in the curriculum and then connecting students to a community experience that reinforces that or kind of more expands upon that knowledge. So I think that's a place where we certainly have seen a lot.
                    I think the other place is more emerging, Jill. And that is as an industry we are really becoming very focused now on containment issues. You kind of alluded to that earlier. And in particular I think that we are as a whole industry, sort of grappling with the fact that first generation students, low income students and students of color other than some sectors of the [inaudible 00:39:52] community, all attain a degree in six years or whatever measure you want to use, at a lower rate than their more privileged peers. And that is disparity which centers around family, sometimes about economics, sometimes about race and ethnicity is a real challenge for higher education. And I think what we know now as we bundle that up we think about containment, we also think about it in terms of student success that the calculous around student success clearly requires more collaboration and partnering between academic and affairs because academic affairs can't solve those problems nor could student affairs. So having that connection. 
                    So a great example of that is just take data. We know a lot now, more predicatively about the kinds of experiences that correlate to success for students. Many campuses doing a lot of date analytics and a lot of predictive analytics. They campuses that are doing this well are able to make sure that the data and the analysis of the data is not sort of siloed in one specific area. So, for example, if residence hall staff who are well trained can be aware of students who are struggling in a course or part of their academic life and they happen to live in the residence hall, there's opportunities for us to engage with them in that regard. There's campuses that are experimenting with student affairs staff having a cohort of low income first gen students that their coaching and mentoring with the technology that they academic advisors have so they can work effectively in that space.
                    So I think that around student success I think we're going to see even many more collaborative opportunities between academics and student affairs. I think some of that might lend itself to really a shift in our thinking about how we support students. Instead of thinking always from a population level that we stop thinking about the end of one and when you stop thinking about the end of one from a student standpoint, you simply need to have more people connected to that so we can intervene with that specific student in a way that is appropriate for that student.
                    I think it's a real potential and hopefully ...And as I talk to provosts and student affairs vp's I hear this dialogue around trying to find these linkages becoming more critical for the institution. 

Jill:               I'm really glad you talked about the need to support our first gen students and our low ses students and then I'll also add our dreamer students differently than we have traditionally supported the other campus populations and kind of going down to that n=1 level of what does this individual student need? I'm seeing a lot of work being done around food and home security on college campuses that hasn't been part of our lexicon before. 

Kevin Kruger:       That's right.

Jill:               But with all of that in mind I think it's still the great paradox of higher education where we talk about our field and our profession as the great equalizer for social identity and yet still haven't managed as a field to equalize our own house.

Kevin Kruger:       Oh, interesting. Well, yeah. That's true and I have two thoughts about that. One is we have a lot of work to do, right? 

Jill:               Always.

Kevin Kruger:       Always. Having said that I think we can be self critical of our profession at the same time we can acknowledge that within higher education student affairs professionals and the way they work with students are so far ahead of every other sector of the institution. We are the folks who are engaged in the difficult conversation about identity and race and ethnicity and sexual orientation. We are the ones talking about gender. We are the ones who are thinking about the experience of our dreamers, for example as you mentioned. So that's one thing.
                    Second thing and this hasn't been released yet, it'll be released by the time this podcast comes out. I just saw the preliminary data from a report that CUPA-HR is doing. They looked at student affairs around pay equity and diversity of the work force and that kind of thing and they clearly acknowledged that the most diverse sector of higher education institutionally is student affairs. We have made much more progress in terms of equity issues for women, for professionals of color, the pay gap is smaller between men and women. And so having said that, that's positive thing and yet we have a long way to go.
                    So we can't sort of simply say, "We're the best on campus." When we look critically at ourselves we can also say we have a lot of work to do internally as well. But I do think that one sort of component of that is I don't know any other real organizing effort on campus that actually pays attention to the student experience in the way that we do from an equity standpoint and a social justice standpoint. Again, not perfect, but I do think that that doesn't happen as intentionally in other sectors of the campus. 
                    And so that's a real positive thing to think that we should ...While we're working ourselves, also continue to understand the importance of that for our students. I think the equity agenda is probably the most important agenda that we face in higher education. It's not just student affairs folks, but I think many members of the academy have realized that we have failed a lot of students along the way in the last 30 or 40 years and that we have a lot of work to do in terms of really creating true equity in college campuses.

Jill:               It's an interesting push pull that I think a lot of us find ourselves in when we are working to improve a system that has oppressed.

Kevin Kruger:       Yes.

Jill:               But the question is always, do we improve a system that has oppressed or do we break the system and disrupt and start over? Which is always the million dollar question and one that we've heard in a lot of places. 

Kevin Kruger:       Yeah, I think ...I'll have to share and I hope I don't offend anybody by saying this, but I'll accept that, you can write me individually when I give you my email address. I think there's some generational differences about that. I think they aren't necessarily inherently bad. My observation is, not just our students, but student affairs professional who are young professionals who are largely millennials who also grew up in a time where social justice issues were critical during their key developmental years and so I think that our own generation of young professionals in student affairs are really appropriately inpatient with some of the structural institutional issues that are around oppression and racism and a variety of other issues. So that impatience, I think, does sort of lead us ..."Let's start from scratch. Let's break the thing."
                    When you have folks who are in privilege and power who are much more likely to say, "We hear you and lets think about some of the systemic changes necessary." But I think that sort of push and pull is operating every day on every campus and I think will increasingly be the nature of our work because the millennial population and this population that has this passion is the biggest part of student affairs right now. Not just NASPA, but go to NASPA and 8,000 people in the conference, half of them are under 32 years old and have a very different view of systems and institutions than the other half. So I think that half is going to get bigger and bigger as we go on the next five years. I think that issue you just raised, Jill, is going to be more salient for us and also more challenging.
                    I know we're out of time here but I think this gets at the heart of why maybe we have so much attrition in student affairs is because I think that some of our young professionals are very frustrated at the reality of institutional politics that they're dealing with. Particularly around some these issues around equity and social justice. 

Jill:               Well Kevin, I think you and I could probably ramble on for a really long time on these topics. So I am going to respect the time that we have and ask you to share with our listeners when you're reading right now. 

Kevin Kruger:       Oh, yeah. I love that question. I read a lot. Actually I read every day. If you've ever heard my speeches, I come in early in the morning and the first hour and a half of my day I read. A lot of it's higher ed stuff, but I'll tell you this is real wonky. I've got these two books I'll share with you. One I just finished it's called Measure What Matters and the little tag line says, "How Google bought out and the Gate's Foundation rocked the world with OKRs." And OKRs are objectives and key results, a way of looking at planning and organizing your work that a lot of fortune 500 and Silicon Valley is using. One quick element about it, it separates the conversation around how you're achieving objectives from compensation. I love the idea of separating that. So that's one thing I'm reading right now that I'm really engaged by. 
                    And just because I've been wanted to do this but I was so energized by Justice Sotomayor at the conference last year and I thought she was so amazing. I just finished reading her My Beloved World and her lived experience some of which she shared during the speech and in her experience as a young Latina and now a judge is really an empowering story. And the way she thinks about family and colleagues and mentors and the role that she plays it's a good read for anybody.
                    So those are the two that are high in my mind right now. 

Jill:               I am so bummed I missed Justice Sotomayor last year. If listeners want to get ahold of you after the show today how can they reach you?

Kevin Kruger:       Well I'm on Twitter @NAPSAPRES, P-R-E-S. That's probably one easy way to engage in dialogue and I'm active in Twitter and that would be one way. And I'm easy to be found. My email address in on our website it's kkruger kkruger@naspa.org. I don't have anybody that screens my email. I return all my email so if anybody was interested in side conversation about any of what I just said I would love the opportunity to do so and let me just conclude by saying that not only do I love ASCA because I think it's a great organization, but I want to just reinforce how important it is for all of you who are conduct professionals, how important the work is that you do. Sometimes it's not ...Often you don't get the kind of thanks and high fives that maybe you're activities colleagues get, but as we think about the most vexing challenges and issue that we deal with on college campus, your role is central and vital and I appreciate all that you do for that students with whom you work.

Jill:               We really appreciate the acknowledgement. We don't get a lot of it so when we get it I think we hang on to it. 
                    If you'd like to reach the podcast you can always email as ascapodcast@gmail.com. That's A-S-C-A-P-O-D-C-A-S-T@gmail.com or tweet us @ascapodcast.
                    Thank you so much Kevin for sharing your viewpoint today.

Kevin Kruger:       Thanks, Jill, I enjoyed it. 

Jill:               Next time in two weeks on the ASCA viewpoints podcast we welcome Laura Matthews. Laura serves as the director of student conduct at Lynn University in Florida and she'll be talking to us all about the collaboration tool kit guide that helps us investigate and partner with our student organizations when we are investigating student organization misconduct. And particularly fraternity and sorority life misconduct. We hope you come back and join us.
                    This episode was produced and hosted by Jill Creighton, that's me. Produced, editing and mixed by Colleen Maeder. 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 podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us others discover us and helps us become more visible in the general podcasting community. 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 @ascapodcast or by email at ascapodcast@gmail.com.