FIU leads the way at NASPA-FL

Eric Arneson, Ph.D., (pictured fourth from left, in first row) poses with FIU staff and students at the NASPA-FL state conference.

One year after taking on the role as director of the Florida chapter of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), Eric Arneson, Ph.D., reports that growth in the professional association has grown across the state. Arneson, who also serves as assistant vice president for Student Affairs at FIU, proudly notes that FIU’s involvement has also grown tremendously.

For the last two years, FIU has had the largest delegation attending the state conference – more than 50 out of the 300 total attendees. On the national level, FIU sent 25 representatives to the national association conference, of which there were more than 8,000 attendees representing more than 1,750 institutions.

One of the goals for the state director was to increase the Florida participation in NASPA’s 27 Knowledge Communities, which allow for the exchange of best practices within a specific area of interest such as African American interests, women’s issues or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning (LGBTQA) inclusiveness. Arneson says participation in the Knowledge Communities has grown from about 35 to 140 participants in the past year. Notably, eight Knowledge Community Chairs are FIU staff. Arneson notes that some changes to the NASPA-FL board have helped increase interest from younger professionals.

“We’ve adapted to what young professionals like more, which is giving them freedom to create educational opportunities on their topic areas,” he said. “Things like webcasts and posting scholarly articles within the communities have worked.”

The board is now made up of 17 people from different universities – community colleges, large State University System schools, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, all different types of schools – and that creates a unique networking opportunity and, focuses on collaboration and learning from each other.

Eric Arneson, Ph.D., (lower left) with some members of the NASPA-FL state board.

Arneson also established a case study competition at FIU last year. Students were asked to submit the case study and, as an incentive, the winners got to attend the state conference.

“It brings practical experience, student development, learning theory together with the best answer academically and practically to solve the problem,” he said. “It creates a lot of excitement on campus and we want to expand that to include all schools.”

Attending state and national conferences and hearing feedback from other schools supports Arneson’s notion that FIU’s Higher Education Administration program prepares graduates very well for the professional world.

“I had one colleague at another school that said to send them all of the FIU people we can,” he said. “We feel that we’re much more hands-on than other universities and our grads feel a special tie to FIU because of that.”

With a year left in the role, Arneson plans to focus the rest of his time on continuing to build those Knowledge Communities, growing the community college presence at NASPA-FL and cultivating undergraduates who want a career in student affairs. FIU’s undergraduate fellows program (NUFP) is a robust program with about 21 students.

“Some students still don’t realize you can have a career in serving and developing students,” said Arneson. “What we want to do is connect students with an interest in student affairs to students at other schools with the same interest. We create virtual organizations where they can connect with each other and create their own network as they’re looking to get into the field. We want to see NUFP programs across the state grow even more.”