Find our team members in the following programs at the AFA Annual Meeting!
The Fraternity/Sorority Course Catalog: What you should have learned in graduate school
Thursday, 11/30 at 10:45 am
Dan Wrona, Brittany Barnes, Michelle Guobadia, Amy Vojta
What if your graduate program included all the courses you really needed to be a fraternity/sorority professional? What classes would be offered and what concepts and theories would they teach? You might study community organizing, operations management, first amendment law, or maybe even technology as a foreign language! Join us on a fun and enlightening walk through an interactive course catalog for fraternity/sorority professionals. We will cover a variety of topics that could better prepare you to do this work. Each hypothetical course includes a recommended syllabus for independent study to guide your ongoing professional development.
Common Pitfalls in Hazing Prevention
Friday, 12/1 at 10:30 am
Dan Wrona and Kim Novak
Create a zero tolerance policy. Show a scary video. Cite hazing statistics. Make students sign something. Increase penalties. These activities often describe the go-to approach for addressing hazing in a community or organization. But activities like these are rarely supported by research, local evidence, or good logic. In fact, they often make the problem worse. Join two professionals who have seen hazing prevention initiatives on dozens of campuses as they use principles of hazing prevention to critique common practices and provide more appropriate suggestions. Leave with an action plan for avoiding pitfalls like these in the future.
Using CAS Standards for Effective Professional Practice in Fraternity and Sorority Advising
Friday, 12/1 at 2:00 pm
Dan Bureau
AFA has benefited from long-time membership in the Council for the Advancement of Standards (CAS). This consortium provides a framework for 43 different functional areas in higher education, including Fraternity and Sorority Advising Programs (FSAP). This session will provide an overview of CAS, its functions and ways fraternity/sorority life professionals can use the Standards to effectively create offices, assess departmental effectiveness, conduct planning, and promote collaborations across functions in higher education. An emphasis of the session will be on the use of CAS to identify student learning and development domains and dimensions that are vital to FSAP.
As the Most Educated Community in the World, What Are We Doing with that Privilege?
Friday, 12/1 at 2:00 pm
Brittany Barnes, Ginny Carroll, Kaya Miller, Julie Hankins and Marguerite Bradley
We believe our story is changing sorority while changing the world. More than 240 sorority communities across the U.S. are engaged in a movement to help tackle the global crisis in girls' education through the Circle of Sisterhood Foundation. Sororities are working together – across affiliation - to create awareness about the issues affecting women worldwide while raising money to removing barriers to education for girls and women. The impact has been significant and the outcomes transformational. In 7 short years, barriers have been removed in 22 countries, 15 schools have been built in 5 countries, over 200,000 people have been educated about the global issues affecting women on U.S. campuses, and more than 1,000 student leadership positions have been created because of this movement. Come learn about how sorority women are driving this global humanitarian effort while demonstrating student learning towards important higher education outcomes.
Lessons From Over a Decade of Fraternity/Sorority Community Assessment, Planning and External Review
Saturday, 12/2 at 9:00 am
Dan Bureau
Over the last 15 years, the field of fraternity and sorority advising has strengthened our collective resolve to assess the experience of members in an effort to document key issues and compile evidence to demonstrate contributions. There are a number of ways people conduct assessment for their fraternity and sorority advising program (FSAP) and fraternity and sorority community (FSC). This workshop will summarize lessons learned through the presenter's experience of supporting fraternity and sorority life assessments for almost 15 years. The session will also address good and bad reasons to launch assessment efforts. Assessment models and the use of the CAS Standards as a framework for program assessment and review will be highlighted. We will also explore tactics to use evidence in planning for needed improvements that emerge as a result of assessment. Finally, participants will be able to identify how such a process could be enacted on their campus.
Learning traps: Rethinking educational strategies
Saturday, 12/2 at 2:00 pm
Dan Wrona and Angie Bong
Have you ever struggled with attendance, engagement, satisfaction, retention, or effectiveness of educational programs? These are common problems, and unfortunately we create them ourselves by falling into common traps in conventional thinking about student learning. This session will challenge you to reevaluate outdated assumptions while introducing research-driven strategies for student learning that are more appropriate for modern fraternity/sorority communities. You will leave the session with new perspective on training and development, and ideas for improving the educational programs in your community or organization.