Saturday, June 27, 2015

Today's Discussion for EDHE 606 - Week 1 and 2

Today's Discussion!
EDHE 606: Higher Education Career Development
Dr. José Chávez and Dr. Phe Bach
Drexel University Sacramento

1a. Carl Sagan's Famous 'Pale Blue Dot'

1b. Carl Sagan's Famous 'Pale Blue Dot' Quote in "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" (HD with subtitles) 

2. Donald E. Super's Career Development Theory

3a. TED: Simon Sinek - "The Golden Circle" Clip

3b. Start with why -- how great leaders inspire action | Simon Sinek | TEDx (completed version)

4. 5 Questions to Discover Who You Are and What Will Make You Happy 

Week 2: Discussion Board Post

1. Please comment on our discussion or any insight on today's lecture on career personality type.

2. What was the most meaningful and influential from this discussion over the executive weekend and/or week 2 course literature?
5 Questions to Discover Who You Are and What Will Make You Happy - See more at: http://tinybuddha.com/blog/5-questions-discover-who-you-are-and-what-will-make-you-happy/#sthash.2BOGWzqp.dpuf

9 comments:

  1. Posted by student TMF - 1. During our lecture and discussion during our executive weekend, on Saturday, June 27, it was interesting to see how many different career development theories may be utilized and applicable throughout one’s life. The concept of self-actualization is especially a topic of interest to many students as the process is in-progress for most as education is being pursued primarily for most for the sake of career development or career advancement.

    2. Two of the most influential and meaningful components of Week 1 and Week 2, included lessons from Dr.Bach’s lecture. A lesson that it is always important to put life, ourselves, and our visions of a perfect world into perspective by referring back to concepts that were visited via the “Blue Dot”. The truth be told, giving back to our community, to our beloved planet, and to one another, is essential to the field in which we aspire to become great leaders in. In reflecting upon this video clip, it brings to mind not just how diverse the world is, but also how it depicts the magnitude of our similarities as human beings striving to survive, to grow, to learn, and the importance of appreciating what we have and the need to take care of it all.

    The Golden Circle is growing in popularity as it is on TED talk, in lectures for leadership, and in many marketing courses. This concept of understanding, sharing, and marketing the “why” an institution or business does something (e.g. Apple) versus the “what” and “how”, is very effective in selling any service as it yields buy-in quicker as stakeholders always need to buy into the “why”. This model is meaningful and influential as it can help in career development, marketing, understanding one’s own level of buy-in, and also aiding one in making sure they are the proper fit for the institution in which they are aspiring to become great leaders in.

    Finally, it is important to note that all self-assessments (e.g. communication style self-assessment and personality assessments such as Myers Briggs) will aid students in finding and selecting an area of interest where they will naturally flourish or provide enough insight to aid the student in ongoing personal and professional growth and development.

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  2. Posted by student MZ:

    1. In this week’s lecture, “Career Assessment”, I was able to take the Type Focus Test through Drexel University. In taking this test, I was able to identify my personality type (ISFJ) and how it falls within certain careers. Based on my personality, careers that best suit me are those that are structured and that offer the opportunity to work by themselves at times. I found this suggestion to be very true in my case being that I am an organized person in general and enjoy working by myself; in such, a job that offers this will be highly suitable for me. Overall, I feel that this test was helpful in terms of allowing me to identify my personality type, the clarity of my choices, and the types of jobs that go well with my personality. This was something that I had a bit of trouble putting together before so I truly appreciate having the opportunity to take this test.

    2. Discussion during our first executive weekend was very thought-provoking. That is, I feel that we were all pushed to consider future careers by identifying our top positive qualities. The exercise conducted by Dr. Bach, “Identifying Positive Qualities”, was very helpful in terms of narrowing down our most positive qualities. In all truth, every time I tried to create a list of my positive qualities I always found it to be quite challenging. I knew that in order for me to identify my future career choices I needed to tie them in with my top positive qualities but somehow this was always a struggle for me. For this reason, I found this exercise very helpful!

    I also enjoyed learning about the various career development theories. In particular, I found Super’s Developmental Self-Concept Theory as the most descriptive in terms of my career growth. Super’s theory addresses career maturity through developmental stages, which explain how ready we are in terms of tackling our developmental tasks. Interestingly, I have always mapped my career growth and perceived them as stages. With Super’s theory, I am able to see how my career development has progressed and if I am on track with my development. While I found Super’s theory very helpful, I believe that applying or incorporating other career development theories to my career growth with be beneficial as well; being that they each offer something different that can always be applied.

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    Replies
    1. Hi MZ (Student responding RN),

      Thank you for sharing your results on the Type Focus Test through Drexel University. I haven’t had the time to take this test at the moment, but I do plan to do so before we start week three. Based on your response, it appears you enjoyed this test quite well as your response is highly reflected on how your results validate your core employment ethics. What’s really amazing about this process, students and other professionals can use this as a career guidance to help find the best fit-match jobs for the individual. Interesting finding Mayra, you should discuss this process in our next class so our cohort members can complete a Type Focus Test. Question: Have you taken the Strength Finder 2.0 personality assessment? I know we brushed upon this information in bit during first executive weekend, but I also believe this will be a helpful resource to find your top five strengths that describe your personality characteristics. I personally found this personality assessment quite interesting and helpful because it helped point me in a direction where I can succeed and better assist others.

      Secondly, I too agree with your standpoint on Dr. Bach’s activity with “Identifying Positive Qualities.” It was both interactive and insightful to hear about our top qualities and what our peers had in common with others. In correlation, having the time to reflect why our qualities pertain to our personality is also a great technique to help reinforce our characteristics. We can take this opportunity to apply to practice while working in our work environment and graduate experience. All in all, great job and thank you for sharing!

      Student response from RN.

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  3. Student post from RN.

    Question 1:

    This week’s reading on, Are You Aware how Your Personality Type Affects your Behavior, is an insightful read that corresponds to our insights on career personality type. Throughout the reading a lot of the information discusses the importance on how each individual functions and how ones personality is best described through interactions. Therefore, learning about our personality type helps us understand and identify why certain areas in life come easily to us and others are more of a struggle. In addition, having to learn about other people’s personality types helps us learn how to function with other individuals. This process becomes a working mechanism of understanding people’s strengths and weaknesses in order to support the person’s needs. So in order to help us become more familiar of what our personality types are, I included the four categories that suits our natural preference that describes our characteristics.

    Please look at the different personality types below and see if you can identify your traits. Now I know many of us have probably taken a personality assessment once or twice throughout their lifetime, if so, what were your results for personality type?

    Personality Types:
    A) Extroverted or Introverted
    B) Sensing or Intuitive
    C) Thinking or Feeling
    D) Judging or Perceiving

    Question 2:

    From my personal opinion, I thought it was extremely meaningful from our first executive weekend to delve into the Common Human Development Models and read about the different theories that represent our career development trait. Based on this model, looking back at my decision from class by choosing the Krumboltz’s Social Learning Theory of Career Choice was highly represented around my career opinions. One of the key points from Krumboltz’s Social Learning Theory of Career Decision Making, predicts that people choose their careers based on what they’ve learned. I too agree with this standpoint because many of us encounter everyday learning experiences through our interactions with others or our location that helps shape our career path in a direction that focuses on our career decisions. For example, what we’re learning through our graduate school experience, our employment position and perhaps the interactions we make amongst our environmental setting helps caterer our direction for career exploration. For many of my cohort members we’re already in a position of career preference, while some of us are still exploring new opportunities in higher education. But throughout each day, we’re working in a setting where we apply our practices through the career we vision ourselves. Such as, customer service support, higher ed learning, and applied leadership. This is still learning experience for many of us, and we will gain a lot of support from one another by learning through this course.

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    1. Hi RN (TF responding),
      You do a great job summarizing the readings this week. I am curious to know whether or not you agreed with the personality type you ended up getting with the assessment at the end of the personality test? I found that I have shifted since the last personality test I took (same one taken five years ago). Although I found differences in my results, I do revert back to my belief that we do tend to move around the spectrum based on what we have learned, our environment, our experiences, and our personal and professional growth and development. As I pondered on the personality test results, I also began to develop my own theory. Just as our reading discusses how our personality type affects our behaviors and we tend to seek out careers that best fit what we have learned (Krumboltz Social Learning Theory of Career Choice) as well as our personality types, would it also be true that our careers, work, and life experiences help influence our behaviors and also impact our personality type results?
      As for our Cohort and your assessment of career preference, I find that the more I learn about higher education career options, the more I want to explore and not limit myself to particular opportunities. I agree that we do have a strong support system among our peers and we will gain a lot of support throughout this course of study from peers, mentors, administrators, colleagues, alumni, and friends.
      TF

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  4. Posted by KF Week 2
    The Type Focus personality test revealed that I am considered an INTJ which is Introversion, Intuition, Thinking, and Judging. According to the Type Focus results, this type of personality is described as someone who understands complex relationships and uses these insights to organize their world in logical ways (Type Focus, 2015). To quote the description from the website, it states that “they believe in themselves and won’t be swayed easily from their viewpoints. When they go into action, they are business-like and at times impersonal. INTJs like order and can be determined in their drive to see their inner vision realized. Being visionaries, INTJs enjoy the complexities of new challenges and become bored quickly with unchanging routine. They are independent and may appear a little difficult to get to know until a deeper relationship has been established” (2015). I definitely feel that these type of tests can be helpful but as Peter Vogt points out in his article, too often, people who take career tests may misunderstand them or misuse them and can mistake them for being more than they really are (Vogt, 2010). I think that it has some great insight but on some minor notes felt it was a bit off.
    Out of the many careers listed for this type of personality, three that seemed I feel could see being a good match include professor, organization builders and administrator/manager. I think this type of assessment has helped me see a bigger picture of career paths. One that draws a longer path of possible careers for my future. By this I mean that I don’t think these would be positions I would be assuming in the short term but hopefully something I can achieve after I build more experience in the field of higher education. Ideally, I see myself seeking positions related to academic advising at first and then possibly program directing/managing and possibly even instructing.
    As for what I felt was most meaningful from our lectures so far is learning about the variety of career development theories and then covering topics of personality types and how those play into career development theories. I personally felt more of a connection with Super’s Model Development Self-Concept Theory which focuses on how career development correlates to your life stages.
    References
    Type Focus. (2015). Success Through Self Awareness. Retrieved from:
    http://www.typefocus.com/self_assessments/personality_results
    Vogt, P. (2010). Use Career Assessments Wisely – Or Not At All. Retrieved from:
    https://learn.dcollege.net/bbcswebdav/pid-3584185-dt-content-rid-15137129_1/courses/43059.201445/TT_EDUC606_s_dca33_ImportedContent_20121218031925%282%29/MT_EDHE606_dca33_ImportedContent_20120312092530/Week%201/Required%20Podcast%20%26%20Reading/embedded/Use%20Career%20Assessment%20Wisely.pdf

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  5. Posted by student - KCF - Week 2
    During our executive weekend, I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Bach’s exercise where we narrowed down our most favorable personality characteristics. I just found it very fascinating to learn how each one of us perceived ourselves according to the adjectives listed and then being able to identify the ones that we felt defined us the most was simply intriguing. I feel this exercise really helped me get to know my class mates a lot better.

    After taking the Type Focus personality assessment test, I was not surprised to see that my scores reflected that of an ENFP (Extraversion, Intuition, Feeling, and Perceiving) because the last two times I took this type of test, I received similar scores. The last time I took the test I scored at ENFJ (Extraversion, Intuition, Feeling, and Judging), and the time before that I had a score of ENFP which was the same as this time around. In reviewing the interpretation of this score, I agree that it captures my personality type fairly well: friendly and creative (E), sensitive (N), compassionate (F), inquisitive, independent and flexible (P). It was interesting to learn that a few of the matching occupations that corresponded to my personality type were: religious work, nursing, counseling, writing and restaurant work. Outside of the religious work, in the past I have either considered doing or have done all of the jobs listed. I’m now looking forward to taking the expanded Myers Briggs personality assessment, just to see if I come up with similar results once again.

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  6. Week 3 Discussion Post - Higher Education Positions by KMF

    After looking into some areas of potential places of employment, one that I came across that I had not considered before was an Associate Superintendent or Superintendent of a school district. I was aware that these positions require advanced degrees within education but I had never personally considered this a career path. I am also aware that these positions usually come with experience in a role as principle which is another path I had not really considered before because I have been focused on postsecondary education. One website which was helpful is www.topschooljobs.org which have a variety of positions listed. Another position that I found on this website which I have not considered (as well as not knowing anyone in this position) is Deputy Chief of Schools which states that a master’s or doctorate degree is strongly preferred. The position states that “the Deputy Chief of Schools is responsible for managing a portfolio of schools within the UNO Charter School Network and is accountable for the schools’ academic success” (www.topschooljobs.org). As I previously mentioned, I really seemed to have not considered this area of employment because I’ve been focused on higher education.
    Another area that I was aware of but had not focused on was government positions. During our Student Development course we had guest speaker LeAnn Fong-Batkin, Education Programs Consultant at California Department of Education. She shared valuable information on higher education positions involved with government agencies. Because this was an area I hadn’t looked into much before, I decided to revisit it using the California Department of Education’s website http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/di/jb/ssojob.asp. One job opening that came up is Associate Governmental Program Analyst and another for a Consultant position.

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  7. Week 3 Discussion - Posted by Student RN:

    One of the areas in higher education that I’ve not considered as a potential place of employment until now is working for the financial aid department. There is a great need for prospective and current students to understand the fundamentals and the importance of applying for financial aid to help cover the cost of tuition, for those meet eligibility. Having this conversation of financial-literacy should start as early as primary school. Students need to understand what the differences are between scholarships, grants, work-studies, loans, and subsidized vs. unsubsidized loans, and how these resources can apply to them. There is much more information that is discussed in today’s system of higher education on how students can obtain this information to help pay for college. But the point of the matter is, finding experts to answer financial aid questions and provide assistance becomes very limiting throughout the community. For this reason, that is why I would consider working in the department of financial aid in order to help students become more familiar of the resources that are available to assist student’s post-secondary dreams. All in all, we don’t want student’s navigating away from the higher education system because of the cost of tuition jeopardizing their goals. Obtaining a college degree is worth much more than not having a degree. The degree itself will eventually pay off the student’s debt.

    A couple useful resources that I’ve been using to job search are all based through online websites helping me research higher educational positions. It’s really important to start looking at these websites as early as possible as jobs in higher education both part-time and full-time are posting every other month. But the most important resource that I’ve found to help my job search overall, is by connecting with the professionals who I already know. Having the advantage of working for three higher education systems has been a plus for me. I’ve had the honor of scheduling informational interviews from time to time and discussing professional growth opportunities for my field of interest. Please see below for more information on the websites I used for job searching:

    • Indeed Job Search
    • LinkedIn Job Postings
    • 2year and 4year college websites. (The link on Human Resource/job search tab).
    • Informational Interviews. (One on One meetings).
    • Contacting my professional network in Higher Ed.

    Useful resources that I’ve been researching for my topic on Enrollment Services falls all within the category of the following: customer-orientated services, outreach and recruitment, admissions and records, application assistance, new student orientation services, assessment-testing, basic residency and non-residency services, student scheduling for courses and financial aid. What’s great about the topic of my choice that I am currently in a position where my job allows me to do this work. I’ve been researching other California Community Colleges and looking at the Human Resource section under job opportunities of Enrollment and Outreach Services. Please look at the two bottom links for more information discussing the job position as a Director of Enrollment Services at different community colleges in California.

    • http://www.cabrillo.edu/services/hr/documents/DirofEnrollSvcs.pdf
    • https://jobs.sjvc.edu/summary/20150702184810g1sd7UnMdce_job_dsc.pdf

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