Hello SAAL Blog readers! Here is the next installment of our conversation series getting to know the leaders that make up this wonderful group of Student Affairs Assessment Leaders and learning from their personal stories. I joined the SAAL blog team after starting a new role as the Director of Assessment, Data Analytics, and Research at the University of Delaware. Being new to the role, I reached out to others who have been doing this work for a while. Given SAALs mission and vision center, in part, on the creation of a thriving community, I thought I would share with you a bit of what I learn from these conversations as well as some information about the humans in these roles, the faces behind the listserv emails so to speak.
Each conversation has been an hour long, so I’m not going to share all of what we talked about. I’ll share a bit about who these individuals are, some of their thoughts and advice, and hopefully give you some new ideas to ponder in your own work, with my own take-aways following the recap of our conversation.
Renée Delgado-Riley (she, her, hers)
Director, Assessment & Research
University of Oregon
In her current role: 8 Years
Also serves as: Student Affairs Assessment Leaders President
Tell me about your journey into student affairs assessment. How did you get here?
I've always been very curious. I'm a first-generation college student originally from New Mexico. I was the first in my family to go to college. Their number one motto, like everyone in my family from aunts, uncles, grandparents is like, "If you don't want to be poor, go get your education because no one can take that away from you." I didn't want to struggle like my family members did. Higher education was culture shock for me on lots of levels. I was fortunate that I went to a Hispanic Serving Institution and there were other people who look like me with similar challenges. I became a parent young, while in college. The job I had at the time was not supportive, so I found a job on campus which was very much supportive of me being a parent. I started to get involved a little late in my college career.
As I was getting involved, I started connecting with more people. Eventually my advisor recommended I apply to the Ronald E. McNair undergraduate research program. I was like, "They'll pay me to do something I'm curious about? Absolutely." I got into the program and I just fell in love with research. I fell in love with the curiosity. My first study was exploring gender etiologies and dating behaviors and fraternity and sorority life. That was very big project, right? I started getting mentored through some of these advisors and I realized, "You know what? A career working at this institution would be really kind of cool." And so, I just started positioning myself and doing more things. I presented a poster session on my research findings and the Associate Vice President was so fascinated and impressed that I did this all within eight months. And then, what started as like a casual poster presentation conversation turned into a lot of meetings, I had with him just talking about the research that I was reading and how it informs some of their programs. Within four months of those conversations, he created a professional internship position for me. And I was hired on to primarily share research effective practices because he wanted to make sure that the programs her oversaw were changing with the students.
So, my first year in the profession, I got a good deep dive into the field of student affairs. And I just kept falling more in love with the profession. And I was even more passionate because these were programs that I participated in and I don't think I would have ever finished my degree without them. These programs, which led to McNair, which led to research, led to my student affairs job opportunities. I had that fire and passion very early on, "I want to be a role model. I want to help other students like me."
How I got to where I am now is I had been going to the NASPA persistence and assessment conference I remember someone coming up to me and their badge said director student affairs assessment. And I'm like, "What is that? Is that a job?" And I brought it back to my campus and our VP said, "Yeah, I'm starting to see that too. How about you be our inaugural director?" No one really set me up for the importance of relationships. I was very technical at the beginning. I was like, "Oh, we all have to have assessment plans. Here's an assessment plan, fill it out." There was none of that relationship back and forth.
I don't share this story with many people, but I didn't know what grad school was. I knew that there was like law school and medical school. When I went into my first McNair meeting with our advisor, in addition to talking about my research, I had that down. I was like, "Oh, this is what I'm going to do." But then she was like, "Well, where are you applying to grad school?" And I literally burst into tears because I didn't know what grad school was. I had no idea. McNair preps you for grad school. And I was clueless.
What advice do you have for me as a new director or someone new to this field?
I always think what could I tell myself years ago, right? I think first off connect with the people, build those relationships, learn from them. Because sometimes our work can be very technocratic, and I think it's important to demystify the complexities that it's not that difficult. What we're learning about is understanding what our students need, so we can share that with each other. In a systematic way we can better the experience for students. We all want the same thing. Meeting with the people, I think that is so foundational.
The second piece is connect with other people in the field. I always say SAAL because I feel like SAAL as an organization was built for the niche of this unique experience. I mean, I've been the lone person on my campus doing this work. Finding those spaces have really helped because I know I can go and ask a question. I know I can go reference a Structured Conversation. I know I can contact somebody, and they’ll help me. As I'm navigating some challenges, I reach out to folks in the field. I'm like, "Hey, do you have 30 minutes to have a Zoom conversation?" And we'll connect. I wouldn't be able to do that without SAAL.
Obviously very human-centric advice, but I think it's critical especially in the world that we're in today and all the crap that's happening in our environment, political climate, and geopolitical. All this stuff is just affecting people's psyche. And I think it's important. People are a lot more on edge, especially with the anti-DEI policies happening around the country. I just feel like there's so much out there already. We don't need to make it unnecessarily hard on our campus. It's already hard being in a bureaucratic system. Let's work together.
What’s the biggest issue/change you are watching in the field right now?
I think this pivot to centering the humans around the work. I'm seeing a lot of that. I think early on, it was very technical and it still is. There's still that foundational piece. But to make that run smoothly, prioritizing and cultivating these relationships is critical. I was mentioning, reflecting on earlier in my journey, I made a lot of mistakes because I didn’t have an assessment mentor. They told me, "We want an assessment plan for every unit and program. And we want you to do training. We want you to talk about this. We want to use data to tell our story," but no one talked about the importance of having just casual conversations with these directors and coordinators and the value of learning from them. Initially, I stepped into a situation where there was a mandate in place, creating a power dynamic. However, I lacked the authority to direct the unit directors to take any action on my behalf.
As much as people want to believe in things like mandating, that can be hard. And no one set me up for that. I feel like I'm seeing a shift recently where people are like, "Yeah, 90% percent of our job is relationships. That's important. We should prioritize that." I've talked to probably about five people in the last couple of weeks who are all in similar roles as me across the country who'll say, "I'll hire someone with a great skill set and attitude and who's warm and friendly and welcoming over somebody with the technical skill set because that is valued a lot more." I'm also seeing a lot more shifting in the way that we use data. It used to be like you write a report. You might have printed it out, shared with a couple of people or sent it in an email. But now, it needs to be more active. I think why we're seeing a huge surge in data visualization and how to use it to make decisions.
And the culture building piece we’re asked to do takes time and it takes spending time with humans. There are so many times my day is full with just meetings but I know that's important at the end of the day. When I started here, it took a long time to get some of the success behind our organization because I was spending so much time on the infrastructure.
I loved this feedback and insight so much from Renée. I had a search for an analyst position this year and really struggled with this tension personally as I was navigating applicant materials. Hiring, especially when you have a small team and can’t necessarily hire specialists, is a challenge. Reflecting for yourself on the culture of your organization, the stage of culture-building you are in, and identifying the skills you need most now is so important to do. We have all probably worked with a colleague who was excellent at what they did, but they didn’t have an open and welcoming personality and weren’t fun to work with, and we know what that can do to an organization. With assessment often still being in the process of getting people on board, this can be a critical characteristic to consider in the hiring process.
I also feel like we're finally getting respected beyond just data. I feel like a lot of folks when they think of us, they're like, "Oh, you're the data people." Data is a component of what we do. It's a process. To bring that to life, we also need to have a lot of strategy. I always feel like I must predict the future. What are the key trends right now? How do I pre-position myself to have some of these things, so our VP is ready to have those conversations? Strategy is a huge skill set that I've seen over time. Early on in my career, I would have never imagined leading strategic planning or thinking about strategy. And now fast forward, it's a huge component of what we do.
Our jobs are particularly challenging because most people in our field begin their careers as floor or hall directors and gradually move up the ranks. Along the way, those who supervise them have typically gone through similar experiences. When they get to some of these higher-level positions, deans, assistant deans, AVPs, VPs, they've had this traditional student affairs career development, but often we do not have that experience. Frequently, we are the experts in our division when it comes to assessment, not senior leadership. When they're guiding us, they don't always know what goes into our job. If you experience misconceptions and you get that misalignment with what you think your job is as compared to your VP - that's hard to navigate. So, you're trying to educate them while you're trying to do your job, which is challenging.
What do you do in your spare time?
Now that all the kids are grown and out of the house and my youngest one is almost finished with her first year of college, it's amazing how much time you get back.
Parenting is hard, period, no matter what phase you're in. I mean, I still am a parent. It's just in a different way now. But I realized since she moved into college how much time I got back. And so, it's forced me to do more self-care than I've ever done in my life, which is terrible that it took me 18 years to get here. I do prioritize my health and fitness a lot more than I probably have in the past. But I like to keep busy. I have terrible ADHD, which is good and bad. I tend to get involved in a lot of things. I do a lot of volunteer work outside of my professional work. And I have a lot of hobbies. Anything from art to crafts to cooking and baking and canning and preserving and homesteading stuff and sustainability. And I have a podcast. I'm helping a former colleague start a public charter elementary school in an area of town where I grew up, which is a highly impoverished area. I think it's going to be good for the community.
If you weren’t impressed with Renée well before reading this piece, I bet you are now! It was so wonderful getting to know her background and how she comes to the work and the stories, care, and empathy she brings to assessment and her role as SAAL president. I feel like she had an uncanny ability to put into words some random thoughts that had been floating in my head and made a lot click for me and helped to build my confidence in how I am approaching my work. I also loved her recognition and naming of power – power in the national landscape and legal system and how that is affecting some of us and our campuses as well as the power of our divisional leadership and the local challenges we can face navigating those relationships sometimes. So much of what we do is both local and national, we affect single student interactions and university policies. It’s clear from our conversation that she’s become adept at navigating these different pieces of our work, keeping them both in her mind, and finding solutions. And what a great SAAL president giving the organization a shoutout!
This series is meant to highlight and lift-up those who are working in assessment full-time on a campus with at least some of their time dedicated to student affairs or co-curricular assessment. Know someone you’d like to learn from featured in the series? Leave their name in a comment and I’ll do my best to connect with them!
This blog post was written by Sophie Tullier, blog team writer and Director of Assessment, Data Analytics, & Research at the University of Delaware.