NIU last hosted the Student Affairs 101 Conference in 2021, drawing an impressive 70 people despite the lingering circumstances of COVID-19.
Four autumns later, the event returned to DeKalb – as did a crowd. A big crowd.
More than 180 people representing 16 institutions of higher education spent Oct. 24 in the Holmes Student Center.
Presentations covered topics from “Cultivating a Digital Campus Community” to “Culture, Empathy and BELIEVE: A Ted Lasso Approach for Modern Leadership” to “Who We Were and Who We Will Be: First-Generation Students in Academia” and much more.
Anika Patel, assistant director of Academic Advising at Northwestern Medill School of Journalism, delivered the keynote address.
Jenny Guzman-Vieyra, meanwhile, smiled while breathing a sigh of relief.
“I think it went absolutely great,” says Guzman-Vieyra, a second-year M.S.Ed. in Higher Education and Student Affairs candidate who chaired the planning committee.
“We wanted to get a lot of undergraduate students, and sometimes that’s very hard in the beginning of registration,” she adds. “There weren’t a lot of sign-ups, and I was like, ‘What if this flops?’ – but we had a really good turnout.”
Credit a human tendency to “leave things to the last minute,” she says: “That’s what ended up happening. Once we got the final count, that’s when I got really excited. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, a lot of people are going to see what the rest of the committee and I have put together over the last year.’ ”
Guzman-Vieyra led a group that included classmates Juana Naa Akosua Appiah, Crystal Camacho, Peregrin Capriglione, Teslin Kerley, Olivia Newman, Amanda Quiñónez and Sovannak Ra.
Department of Counseling and Higher Education faculty Quortne Hutchings and Gudrun Nyunt, along with program adviser Danae Miesbauer, mentored and supported the graduate students and assisted with planning.
Student Affairs 101 introduces and explores that dynamic field by bringing together aspiring and current professionals from across the Midwest. Graduate programs across Illinois, including NIU, Eastern Illinois University, Illinois State University, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and Western Illinois University rotate hosting responsibilities each year for the “day of learning, connection and community-building.”
The conference allowed the HESA program to strengthen partnerships with local and national associations in the field, connecting with the Illinois College Personnel State Chapter to promote the conference as professional development opportunities for student affairs practitioners within the state.
“I’m incredibly proud of our planning committee chair, Jenny Guzman-Vieyra, for her outstanding leadership in planning the Student Affairs 101 conference,” Miesbauer says.
“Through her organizational skills and communication skills, she brought together our student committee and led their collective efforts to put on a conference that had a record turnout of attendees,” she adds. “We had an amazing conference celebrating the impactful work we do in student affairs and our commitment to professional development and collaboration.”
A 2024 NIU alumna from Joliet who earned her bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in counseling, Guzman-Vieyra is aiming for a career in orientation – a professional path confirmed during a summer internship working in that office at the University of Minnesota.
Her leadership of the Student Affairs 101 conference provided its own lessons, and not those covered during the presentations to undergraduates who “got their wheels turning” as they explored their master’s degree possibilities.
“What did I learn? I feel the biggest takeaway was networking with folks. I think I’ve grown a lot from last year’s conference, where I went and I was just there. I very much stayed with my group and didn’t make much of an effort to go out talk to people,” Guzman-Vieyra says.
“This year, I definitely came a little bit more out of my shell, especially because I was working with so many campus partners to get this all together,” she adds. “I did push myself to talk to the other host school faculty, just kind of connecting, especially because I’ll be on the job market come May. I wanted to see where I could plant those seeds.”
