Episode 18 Transcript

CSU, Chico Orientation and New Programs

Time: 38:30

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

chico state, students, orientation, support, campus, first generation students, student, shawn, people, called, talking, generation, moon, year, programs, virtual, summer, population, education, podcast

SPEAKERS

He-Lo Ramirez, joshuah whittinghill, Teresa Hernandez, Shawn Ryan, Introduction Music

He-Lo Ramirez 00:00

Heytanayem nikki yam sa He-Lo nikki Mechoopda Maidu. Hello everyone. My name is He-Lo and I’m a Mechoopda Maidu. We acknowledge and are mindful that Chico State stands on lands that were originally occupied by the first people in this area, the Mechoopda. And we recognize their distinctive spiritual relationship with this land and the waters that run through campus. We are humbled that our campus resides upon sacred lands that have sustained the Mechoopda people for centuries, and continue to do so today.

Introduction Music 01:02

Introduction Music

Teresa Hernandez 01:11

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to our podcast first generation one of many. We are excited to share another Chico State resource for you all today and to learn a little bit more about the topic of our conversation. Before we get started, we are first generation one of many, our mission is to create an archive of discussions with end about first generation student experiences in and out of the classrooms. We hope to continue raising awareness and understanding provide voice for students and alum as well as present resources for faculty, staff, and students working for and collaborating with first generation students. So today, I’m all as always, I’m joined by my co-host, joshuah whittinghill. Hey, josh, how you doing today?

joshuah whittinghill 01:50

Great, Teresa. I was just talking with our guests right before this that he and I both share an affinity for baseball and spring training started again yesterday. So if you’re listening to this at some point after the month of March, it’s the regular season probably started by then. But so yeah, so I’m excited for that. And the weather is definitely reminding us of spring. Now. I know both both of my kids the other day, we’re just laying out in the backyard going I just love this weather the sun is out. It feels so good. So so it’s a nice refreshing time for sure. So just to go with our traditional, I have a couple of quotes on for today, that sort of connect to our guest and the topic he’ll be talking about. The first one comes from the Mexican artist, Octavio Paz. To us, the value of a work lies in its newness, the invention of new forms, or a novel combination of old forms. The discovery of unknown worlds, or the exploration of unfamiliar areas and worlds already discovered revelations and surprises. And our second quote comes from Malcolm X. Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. And looking at both these quotes, they really connect to what our guests does, especially what he did over the last year with reinventing a whole entire program at Chico State and engaging students and families along the process and preparing for education since we’re all connected to education. And the if you haven’t guessed already, our topic for today is Orientation and New Programs. And our guest is Shawn Ryan. Welcome Shawn. How are you today?

Shawn Ryan 03:44

I’m doing well. Thanks for having me.

joshuah whittinghill 03:46

Awesome. Yeah, we’re so glad you’re here. So to share with the listeners a little bit about Shawn before we jump into talking. Shawn serves as the coordinator at Chico State Orientation in New Student Programs. It has been a part of the Chico State community for a little over a year, but was serving in a similar role at Sacramento State for seven years. Shawn served four years in the US Air Force immediately after high school and earned his bachelor’s degree at Oklahoma State University with the financial assistance from the GI Bill. He has a master’s degree in counseling from Kansas State University and taught English two years as a member of the Peace Corps in the Republic of Moldova. Shawn loves working in higher education and supporting first generation students in the transition to college and transforming their life through a college degree. Wow, you have quite the experiences of things in education over the years.

Shawn Ryan 04:40

I didn’t share my best part, which is I love higher ed so much. I talked my wife into this. She was a therapist, and now she’s an Advisor in BSS. So that’s my proudest accomplishment.

joshuah whittinghill 04:51

Oh, wow. So you have some very informed and I’m sure lively discussions at home then.

Shawn Ryan 04:58

We do we certainly do. Non stop.

joshuah whittinghill 05:01

Oh, good. All right.

Teresa Hernandez 05:04

Well, we need to have her on. On our next episode for sure. All right, Shawn. So we heard a little bit about your role at Chico State and what you started in prior to working remotely. So what was last year’s experience like for you? How did it go? And what are some things you can share with us about what you’ve learned?

Shawn Ryan 05:24

Yeah, last year was incredible, and so many ways, the learning experience, but one of the biggest lessons learned is that I I’d only been on campus for three months when when we went to lockdown. And the biggest experience was how the campus community came together. Again, I worked at a previous CSU. And Chico State really is different. I mean, folks came in this summer, and we’re going, What can we do? How can we best onboard these students? When you think of all the faculty, all the departments we work on just for summer orientation, not one was late or missed, missed the orientation session. That’s, that’s incredible. We just Go Virtual. For a whole orientation team, we just lost one student, one of our peer advisors, our students, because they got another job, the other ones decided to stay because they wanted to help them support other students. It was just so impressive. And it’s it’s such a it’s such an impressive community coming together. But there’s also the thing of just when I think about what happened this past summer, it was also the opportunity for us to take a step back and examine what we’re doing, what have we historically have done and what can we do better? And I think one of the biggest lessons learned is that we were able to look at some data beforehand of who was coming to orientation and who wasn’t. And I think one of the key pieces was, we’re able to figure out or had the big lesson learned that just because something is available, doesn’t mean it’s accessible. And looking at our data, we noticed that we had a great orientation program historically, but there were some serious inequities and who was participating who wasn’t. If you were, if you were a first generation student, you’re seven percentage points less likely to participate. If your Latinx you’re, 9.8. If you were African American, you were 17.8% less likely to participate. Almost four in 10 of our transfer students who are participating, if you’re from LA is what 25%. So there was a lot of inequities. And coming together, we informed the campus community of some of these inequities and the campus was going, What can we do? Obviously, the virtual environment got rid of the logistical barrier, students could now participate logistically that was an issue. They help support us financially. And we’re happy to say there’s a variety of interventions that we did, but we’re happy to say those those equity gaps that existed, they diminish significantly, because of all these interventions and support from the university. And for the the first generation that declined significantly, if you were the Latinx dimensions 9.8, that reduced to 2.3% equity gap. If you’re African American before 17.8, that reduced to 2.5. So there’s a lot of different things that that happened to intervention. And it wasn’t just orientation was the whole campus community coming together. But it was the opportunity to re-examine what we were doing, and how we could do better. So not sure if I fully answered your question I get I get, I get bogged down the data that I really like. But that’s, that’s something that was really, really helpful this past summer.

joshuah whittinghill 08:43

Oh, that’s, that’s great, because I and I flashback in time when you’re talking about these things, because one of my first roles on campus was as a co-director for some orientation for a couple of years. And you and I got to meet over the summer to kind of talk about some of the things that happened in the past some of the things we tried to do, because those were issues and data that we tried to address over the years. But like you mentioned, just having a Go Virtual really helped to take away some of those those barriers and challenges. And so I can only imagine moving forward, you’re probably already planning and working on ideas that orientation specifically and new programs as well but orientation more that onboarding, the beginning of your experience as a student and a family going into this, that it the in person is fantastic, and it provides certain things but but orientation, is it gonna is it gonna have to be something then that always has this virtual element now to help keep equity in mind.

Shawn Ryan 09:38

Yeah, one of the quotes you use, the first quote you mentioned was talking about different world. And one of my one of my hobbies is astronomy. I love astronomy. I love the star therapy. I love just looking at the stars. And one thing I was recently reading is there’s a solar system that’s not too far from ours. It’s still very far away, but still not too far from ours in the context of space, that is about the same distance from its co star that we are from our star. And it could support life. But the difference is, the planet doesn’t doesn’t rotate around 24 hours like we do. So only one side of the planet gets the sun and the other half does not. Which means that there could be living creatures on this planet, potentially, that one side only know what the sun is like, and the other side are still living, but they’ve never seen the sun, they just know darkness, but they’re, but they’re, but they’re alive, the faster the what I’m getting at is, I’m on one side of those planets, where I just I can’t fathom having students not participating in orientation, ever being being optional and charging. And I don’t think us going forward, that that’s not having a process that is virtual and in person option, I think that’s where we’re gonna go in the future of having some accessibility for all students that that confirm their enrollment one attend that Chico State.

Teresa Hernandez 11:01

Yeah, I think back to to my last because I was also an academic advisor different four your institution. And we would do, we would also work on orientations for every single day, whenever we’d having different sessions. And I would talk to some of the parents of these first time freshmen students, and some of them would just give us like, just tell us their stories of what it took for them to get there, just these crazy drives for hours and you know, staying an economically perhaps not being able to have enough money to stay in the city. So they would drive six hours just to through the night, get their kids there and then go back the same day, or you know, it’s just incredibly difficult for some families to make it in person for something as important as orientation, especially with the added stress of that’s your chance to get your courses. And you know, not being able to get the classes you need and things like that. So that would be ideal for students now and in the future.

Shawn Ryan 11:58

What I could just say that so that one of the key populations that is was really concerned about when we went virtual, and we were going to have to pay. So we were the first CSU, that were able to waive our fees this year, completely. Few other CSU has followed us. And and I didn’t know what it was going to do these equity gaps, and they significantly decreased. So moving forward that you know, that’s where we want to go. But the my first concern was, was to the transfer student population, because four in every 10 that confirm their enrollment, we’re not going to orientation. And they were thinking, why am I going to pay for advising? Why am I going to go on a tour of campus, I’ll figure it out. I’ve done it myself. And and, and I’m thinking that orientation is so much more than that, but they just don’t know, they don’t know about the course that they assume is going to be articulated in some way. They don’t assume that they assume that their GED is done. When it’s not. They, they assume that they know certain things, or that they the importance of orientation, start building those relationships, because they don’t have a lot of time here. So they need to start thinking about the next step post Chico State. And so I thought about as well as transfer students that we need to get them in connected with the advisor connected with their department, the Career Center. So with all population, so I’m just thankful we’re able to do that this past summer.

Teresa Hernandez 13:07

Yeah.

joshuah whittinghill 13:09

So looking at that forward vision of what’s coming up, what are you doing currently to prepare the orientation staff and prepare for orientation in new programs of the next school year?

Shawn Ryan 13:22

Yeah, so one of the things is we’ve realized last year is that we can have a great program. But if it’s if we’re not getting all the students that want to participate there, then the program is not meeting our full ideal. So So priority number one is, is getting as many students as possible. So we have a mission statement. That’s it’s based upon Arizona State, but defining ourselves as measuring ourselves success as the most students that we can include and help succeed. And so that’s been our first priority. So we’re looking at students, once you confirm their enrollment, how can we follow up with you? So you Once you confirm your enrollment, they get an assessment, they get a little survey and asked if they have any concerns. As we know, sometimes students will 16% of our students they confirm their enrollment, never enroll. So think about these are students that are that are, you know, made it they graduated high school, they apply, they were admitted. They said yes, I want to come to Chico State. Now some of those students decide to go to a different institution, I would beg and say probably a good chunk of those students don’t make it here because there was no intervention earlier. And so we’re trying to outreach a little bit earlier to build those relationships, because we found some of the students that the graduate high school and then they get a they get a you know, financial aid verification letter, or they get a immunizations or some other requirement for housing, and they don’t know how to navigate that. They don’t have the support network, and they don’t have yet a strong relationship with the university. So we’re trying to reach out earlier. So we’re signing our peer advisors, they’re starting earlier. They’re gonna they’re calling they’re checking in way before orientation that the historic model had been, you know, orientation as an event, we’re trying to change that to an A process. So we’re onboarding throughout the whole summer. So let’s connect let’s outreach to build that relationship that leads up to, to orientation that that specific day and we follow up after, I am thankful to say for this summer, again, we use this this data, and we showed the university and and we kind of restructured our cost. But we need a little financial backing from the university. And we submitted our proposal, we had a couple of conversations with the with the President about or the support staff, the budget office, and they have been nothing but supportive, that they they are even supporting us financially to make orientation cost free again. And that’s some people might be hearing that for the first time, we haven’t publicly announced that we’re about to this week that you know, any student that confirms their enrollment, that wants to come to Chico State transfer first year students, we’re going to work with you, we’re going to get you a formal onboarding experience. Because if you think about that, in the end, we’re looking at our equity gaps at the end of graduation, well, it starts orientation is not the end all be all, that’s one part of it, of getting students a formal onboarding experience. And so we can do that, again, that the virtual won’t be about logistical barrier won’t be a factor nor nor will be the cost, it’ll will be a factor. So we’re going to continue building those relationships. But those two key barriers that have historically been a part of orientation, this year, again, won’t be a part of that process.

Teresa Hernandez 16:29

That’s amazing to hear that that’s gonna happen again, for incoming students this upcoming year, which is also super exciting. I’m happy for them. And see, I know you were talking about orientation. So we know that first time freshmen and also transfer students are you know, students who ultimately are benefiting from the orientation process that they’re going to be experiencing in Chico State. If there’s students who are listening to this podcast, who want to come to Chico State, how does that process work? Do they act to access your services? Are they reached out to from orientation programs? Or how should they know how to get started in the sense?

Shawn Ryan 17:06

Yeah, great question. So initially, admissions is communicating with them, even up until right now, letting them know that next steps. And so admissions is sending out emails, we’re gonna send out emails and postcards to the students, and then the student. So definitely do that. Because the sooner sooner your register registration will open on April 1. So students can register them, we recommend registering as soon as possible, because you’ll get an earlier session, and you can register earlier, which is, which is great. But so you should check your email. And then check your postal mail, because you’ll get a postcard and then we will call you as well. So those two let’s find out, but they can contact the orientation office, that Chico State orientation district Programs Office as well. And we can help students register, but check your email, the instructions will be included.

Teresa Hernandez 18:01

Right. Definitely. Thank you.

joshuah whittinghill 18:03

And there will be a link in the show notes to the Orientation New Program website. Because also on there one great resource you have on there is just a checklist, right for the for first year students and transfer students a checklist of things to consider and go through that are also personal checklist of things to do. But also things connect to the campus as well. That’s a great resource there. So that will be there for sure. Now, we’ve talked a lot about orientation as this process. But can you share a little bit about some of the things you’re doing in the new programs area?

Shawn Ryan 18:37

Yeah, and josh, you’ve been a part of it too, with connection courses, which we have peer mentors assigned to certain courses, working with faculty and supporting students throughout the first semester. The new programs aspect is, is an extension of orientation. So we know that we can’t just oriented oriented take you one day, we have to support you throughout that semester. So we have the connection courses. But we also started a program called big cats last semester, and we identified students that were not part of a formal support program, and we paired them with a mentor. And so they were checking in every other week. But the students, they would do some activities with the students. We reached out to 500 students or 500 students that weren’t part of a formal support network. And all of them had access. It was a challenge. It was the first time we were doing it. It was virtual. But we had a lot of lessons learned. And we’re going to do something similar to that we’re actually partnering with some colleges, again, to support students not just at orientation, but throughout that first semester.

joshuah whittinghill 19:36

And you mentioned the connection courses that that’s been a great experience. And even last fall doing it virtually was wonderful. The peer mentors and the meetup sort of the peer mentor, advisor and supervisor coordinator was another student but they came up with some great ways to help engage students in a number of different activities. And it was it was over 10,000 or so possible combinations that students could have engaged with, if if they were free 24 hours a day just to do that, but that’s how many different possible activities were set up and available to students either synchronous or asynchronous to kind of learn about themselves, and learn about fellow first year students. And also, last fall was the first time there was a transfer connection course. And so that helped to transom transfer students also have another avenue or way to engage and interact with the campus as well. So a lot of great things coming out of orientation and new programs for sure. And hopefully, some of those things will be bolstered a little bit in the fall, we know some students will choose to come to courses that are offered for them in person. So that’ll that’ll do that. I know, my my connection course that I’ll be teaching will be a hyflex course. So there’ll be some students who will not be able to come to campus if they’re in town, and then that’ll add some exciting features for students, I think in the fall for sure. Now, okay, this is a long one, you’ve already done some of this, but let’s go into this and see if there’s any more come out there. So, you know, you have since you’ve been on campus been an amazing addition to our campus and to the Wildcat community, and to Chico as well. One of the reasons, it seems that you connect so much, and you and you are this amazing asset that you just live for data, we’ve heard you share a handful of different data so far, because most of the times I get to talk with you, you’re always pulling out different points of data around orientation, new programs, and around campus in general as well to help address different issues, whether it’s equity, diversity, inclusion, or engagement, some of those things. So do you have a couple of other data that you have gleaned from orientation new programs that you’d like to share with listeners?

Shawn Ryan 21:52

Yeah, well, I think this is just and I just want to take a quick step back, I’m thinking about your first quote, just talking about different worlds, that it’s been such a really unique time for all of us to take a step back. And think about where we’re going and, and and who we are where we want to be. And I when you talk about different worlds that that term has just stuck with me. I think about it. For those of listeners, if you’ve heard of the famous image called Earthrise, it was, I think, was called Apollo 11, that the first time it was going around the moon, they took a picture of the moon and you could actually see earth for the first time as like late 1968. And up until that point, folks had been you say we take care of this earth. But it wasn’t until that that image was seen by the rest of the rest of folks on earth singer from a different perspective, different lens, that we realized we had to take care of Earth, we need to do a lot better. And not long after that Earth Day started and we celebrate today, do we still have ways to go? Absolutely. But that image was was things that started it. And I think that, you know, that last year for a lot of us was an opportunity to kind of take a step back and really examine who we were where we want to go, what we need to do, and I think with us for orientation is is providing, you know, continued support throughout the whole transition in the onboarding process. As I mentioned before, there’s 16% of our students that confirm their enrollments, they want to go to Chico State, and they never enrolled. I did some some research at my previous institution, contacting those students and saying, what what happened, why didn’t you enroll, and of 40% little or 40% of those students from that population. They’re heartbreaking. There were things that students wanted to wanted to enroll. But they they just struggle they, they they again, they couldn’t navigate financial aid, they weren’t sure what to do regarding immunization records. They they struggled with one student actually called housing. And instead I’ve just read there’s a deposit for housing, is that true? And the student worker on the other end said, Yes, it is true. It’s $200. And so the incoming students said, well, thank you and hung up the phone and said, I can’t go to college. And that’s why she didn’t go not knowing that you couldn’t defer that fee, you could waive that fee. So those are the things that we’re trying to reach out earlier. And often. It’s a population some people call it summer melt, I call it opportunity melt. Because summer melt is I’m not gonna go Chico State cuz I want to go to UC Davis, I want to go to go to Butte and instead, opportunity melt. So students that wanted to come here, and that they didn’t have the network and they needed support. And we can’t wait until orientation. We have to do that early. We have to build those relationships and connect with them earlier. And so that’s what we’re trying to trying to do. I would say that the data that I shared before about those equity gaps, ironically, the only thing I shared that we got more students that attended orientation that participated. So across the, as a percentage from students that confirm their enrollment to enrollment, all the populations went up except the African Americans students population which we’re examining. But if you are first generation, if you were Latinx, if you were to more races, you attended orientation at a higher rate, and you’re enrolled at a higher rate considering all the obstacles folks face, and this isn’t, this isn’t like orientation did everything this is the campus community came together and said, Let’s onboard these students properly. And I was just so impressed. From first generation, there was a gap of 3.9%. For the past four years, the first generation students from confirming their enrollment to enrolling they were 3.9%, less likely than a non first generation, this year for the first time, they actually flipped slightly. If you are first generation you buy it by a hair, it was pretty close, but you are more likely to enroll than a non first gen. So there are a lot of variables this past summer, there were there were a lot we get that but reaching out providing additional support, removing some of those barriers, again, campus community coming together. These are practices that we’re just going to continue because we’re realizing that they work and they support students, they just wanna say one of the things when we call these students and we’re checking in with them, you know, if they don’t come to orientation, we call them up. If they say, hey, I’ve decided to go to Butte as opposed to Chico, we say, absolutely, is there anything else that we can do to help you, we’re not trying to convince students to come here at all, we want them to be successful wherever they are. And so but we realized there’s a population of students that need that intervention need that support earlier. And that’s what we’re trying to do.

joshuah whittinghill 26:41

And it’s great as you were talking, I was thinking of a number of different things. But I think moving to remote education, has has raised awareness around a number of these different obstacles and challenges and situations and experiences that students and families are having. Because a handful of people were having them, they were part of discussions in certain silos, if you will, right on campus, just because of the the group of students like with EOP, or the Chico Student Success Center, TRIO working with first generation students marks explicitly, a lot of these conversations have been around. And we’ve been trying to do things for the people we’re working with. But now we’re seeing this, just expand, which is great, because like you’re saying many people are jumping in and, and I’ve been working with some faculty and staff in different areas where I talk about first generation and just the sheer number of how many first generation students are on campus. And they’re blown away, they say, Oh, I have no idea there was so many. And so when you say there was a flip, some of that is is just in part that we have so many first generation students now, I’m the last number of years increasing to where I’ve shared before on this podcast and a few other podcasts, I’ve been a part of that. first generation students is the largest student group on our campus, right. And so so then if we’re doing things, geared towards freshmen, right, students, we’re also then helping other groups of students as well, in the same way, some of the old adage of if you if you if you help or support certain groups, it just lifts everybody up in different ways. So it’s great to see that happening on our campus and hearing that it is happening. And go ahead, john.

Shawn Ryan 28:15

Sorry. No, it is. And it’s, it’s, you know, what you’re saying is just our population, we’re not the same population of students that we were 510 years ago. And so we can’t continue to do things our practice, that they were 5, 10, 15 years ago that it wasn’t set up and design for the population of students are coming in. And so we need to re examine and use that data about what can we do better and, and I think even though the challenge that we have now of going virtual, and everything we’re trying to balance is that there’s the opportunity to make positive change, I mean, to Go Virtual and support as many students, we want to be able to do this, if we didn’t Go Virtual. One of the, my people that I love, too, is Mike serral. He’s the president of Paul Quinn college, famous, famous very, very inspiring person. He talks about what what we do in this period will matter beyond this period. And so using this time to, you know, support our students. And one other thing, so I’m talking a lot about astronomy, you got me going with that, quote, when I, when I first think about when we went to we were planning to go to the moon, for the for the first time, it was the Eisenhower administration was planning and setting everything up to go to the moon. And when the Kennedy administration came in, one of the things they asked they said, Where are you at? And we were planning to actually go to the moon and we’re putting so much investment in the camp can Kennedy administration said, Okay, that’s great, but how are you going to get back? And they said, we’re going to figure that out after we figure out how to get there and they said no, no, that there are no runways on the moon. To get back to the moon. You actually have to fly on the backside and you have to use centrifugal force to bring you back to Earth. And so they said whatever we need to do that that has to be included in the plan to get To The Moon. And so I use that analogy. And I like to think about that is because sometimes we think about access, even orientation, we think about access. But the getting people back is being successful, you know, to graduation. So we can’t just think about, like, let’s get people to the moon, let’s get people to orientation, we also have to think about how to make sure once they’re, they’re successful, and so and get them back, you know, to graduation, get them on a path to graduation, where they want to be. So we’ve been spending a lot of time discussing the access and opportunity and getting students to the moon, getting them to orientation, but we’re not forgetting the point trying to revisit, how can we make sure that they’re on a path to success once they’re here, to make sure that they’re included, that they’re belong, that they understand expectation, so they, they know where to go to get their books, they know where to go to navigate campus, that’s, they don’t understand the question, they feel comfortable that they have some place to go. So I just want to add that to that. We’re not just like, let’s get them here. We’re also going okay, let’s get them here. But let’s, let’s work with our campus partners and community to get them on that path to a successful trajectory moving forward.

joshuah whittinghill 31:07

And before we move forward with more of the discussion, Shawn, I hear Rumor has it you don’t work by yourself. So would you like to share a little bit about your about the team you work with in orientation new programs?

Shawn Ryan 31:19

Yeah. I could not do this by myself. I have a team of professional staff and student workers that are here help with their extraordinary I mean, I have Victoria Militar-Tweedie. That’s incredible. She’s our, our budget analyst that helps us out with supporting the program. I have Leanne Woods, who’s our assistant coordinator. Last year one she was a graduate student, well over a year ago, and one Graduate Student of the Year for our region, which is all California, it’s Nevada, Hawaii and Nevada. And this past year, one of our co-directors, joshuah mentioned a co-director before one of our co-directors, Jacob Sloan, just one student, undergraduate undergraduate student of the region. For again, for count all of California, think about all the colleges in California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii. Yeah, the work that we did, there’s no way that I could have done it by myself. It’s because I surround myself, I got fortunate, my predecessor hired some wonderful people that have continued on that legacy. But yeah, Jacob just on Saturday was named the undergraduate student of the region. And our student coordinators are our student support staff has just been outstanding and supporting our new students throughout this whole process.

Teresa Hernandez 32:36

That’s amazing. Congratulations to her earning as well. And I know I’ve worked with some of your your peer mentors some of your team also during orientation. They’re amazing students who do genuinely really care about the support and working with the incoming students. So you have an amazing team besides you, which is awesome. And now to wrap up as tradition. So we always like to receive or hear about any recommendations from not only us, but our guests and these So do you have any for us today Shawn, anything you’d like to share to our listeners?

Shawn Ryan 33:12

Yes, it’s more more towards the the staff that I have staff in higher education. I’m pretty boring person. I just mostly read about higher education because I love them and fascinated with the topic. So one of the things that if you get a chance when a great movie came out just before the pandemic was called unlikely you unlikely you, which I think it’s going to be in the notes. It’s a great movie just talks about how we need to restructure higher education, support our new students coming in. I think anything if you’re interested in more understanding what we can do better. If you listen to Tim Renick, just named Tim Renick from Georgia State T Tim as an R E N I C K he’s he’s wonderful. Ellison Michael Crow is the president of Arizona State. Another book, New Education by Kathy Davidson’s a great one. Breaking Through the Access Barriers, another good one. Change Leadership in Higher Education. So there’s, there’s a Lives in Limbo. It’s another good one just thought about. So there’s a lot of great books for folks that, again, I really just fixated on, you know, higher education in astronomy. And so certainly, once they know, but I think if you’re if you’re thinking about working in higher education, what can we do that there are other models out there, some schools are doing some fantastic work. And a lot of it is just trying to be understanding of what they’re doing, and how can we implement some of their work and some of the things in adaptive to be successful here at Chico State.

Teresa Hernandez 34:40

That’s awesome. Thank you so much for that. And so we guess definitely, as you mentioned, they will be in our show notes so our listeners can access the links or the names of the different movies and books and that you’ve shared with us today. And josh, what do you have for us today?

joshuah whittinghill 34:56

Oh, gosh. Oh, well, of course, the Orientation and New Programs website. So that’ll be in the show notes as well. But I have two, I like to share one of them is the website daring to live fully. And there’s been a lot of discussion, you know, in the last 10 months around kindness and generosity and empathy and being open, but they have one of their pages is specifically a list of 17 ways to be kind to yourself. And I’ve found that to be a really useful and helpful site to go to. Sometimes I go there a couple times a day. Other times, I don’t need to go as often. But it’s been really nice and to share with other people, and then even have discussions around how are you being kind to yourself, that’s been a an uplifting site there. The other one in the spirit of SHawn’s love for astronomy. And it’s another thing, I guess that we’re learning about each other now, because I’ve always been fascinated by astronomy as well. And I have this app on my phone that I use with my kids. And some of the neighbors I show them, but it’s called sky view. And there are other versions of it, different names. But sky view is available on iPhones and androids in Google Play for Android and the App Store for iPhones. But what it is, is any time of the day, sun out, not out, whatever, it doesn’t matter, you can open up the app and just point it, and it shows you what constellations and stars and galaxies and satellites and planets and everything out there. So you can just put it down at your feet and see what’s below you in the sky. So it’s a really fun app to us as well. So those are my two for the day. How about you, Teresa?

Teresa Hernandez 36:36

Yes. So let’s see, as I the listeners probably know, I’m a huge podcast fan. Sometimes I prefer it over music, which is probably tied to say this, um, but I do love music, though. So don’t get me wrong. But um, one of the podcasts that I’ve actually started listening to recently, apart from my usual roles is called the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard. So it’s Dax. Dax Shepherd is the host of this podcast. And he essentially is interviewing just a variety of different people. So he is an actor. So he has access to, you know, a plethora of people to come on his show. And so he’s interviewing them getting to know a little bit more about them. And it’s just I think I really liked the fact that you get to meet and know about not me, but to get to know about just people, you might look up to some of your favorite actors, or even people that you don’t even know about, which is awesome. He also incorporates, you know, not just celebrities, but others who are kind of doing behind the scenes work for community and society. And you he’s kind of eliminating their work in those specific sections, which is great. So that would be my podcast recommendation for today. Awesome. And with that, okay. Also, thank you all to our listeners. And appreciate you tuning in again to a yet another episode of first generation one as many. As before, make sure you check the Show Notes for this episode and have access to everything talked about today. And if you have any questions, you’ll know where to reach us. So thank you to our guests. Shawn, thanks so much for joining us today and taking some time out of your busy day to talk to josh and I about all the amazing things you’re doing for for Chico State, and we hope to have you back on it soon. Thanks for Shawn.

Shawn Ryan 38:27

Yes, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.