A Sustained Impact in Higher Education - Adventures in Advising

Karen Lewis, assistant director of the English Undergraduate Studies Office at the University of Maryland College Park, discusses serving as an administrator and advising students. She addresses the dynamics of advising different student populations, and how NACADA leadership prepared her for her leadership role on campus. The guest host is Chris Kirchhof, University of Pittsburgh. Chris and Karen will also promote the NACADA Annual Conference and what to expect this October!

Stay up to date on the conference through the NACADA Blog!

Follow the podcast on your favorite podcast platform!

The Instagram, and Facebook handle for the podcast is @AdvisingPodcast

Also, subscribe to our Adventures in Advising YouTube Channel!

Connect with Matt and Ryan on LinkedIn.

Transcript

Matt Markin  
Hey, welcome back to Episode 101 of the adventures in revising podcast. I hope you're doing well. This is Matt Markin, and on today's episode I'm joined by two fantastic advising professionals. First up is Chris Kirchhof who is doing double duty today as not only returning guests but also as a guest host. Chris serves as the director for undergraduate recruitment and transfer student services within the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Chris currently serves as co chair for the 2024 NACADA annual conference to be held in Pittsburgh this October. Chris has previously served on the NACADA Council as a regional division representative and has held leadership positions in both the regional and advising communities division. Chris holds a BA from Providence College in history and secondary education, and a master's in educational leadership from Central Connecticut State University. Chris, welcome back. 

Chris Kirchhof  
Thanks for having me on, Matt. I always enjoy the conversation and looking forward to today's episode. 

Matt Markin  
Absolutely. And in Chris's bio, it was mentioned he is co-chairing the 2024 NACADA annual conference this October. So we are definitely going to talk about Pittsburgh, but we can't do that without our next guest. And that is Karen Lewis, also a co-chair of the Pittsburgh conference. Karen is a previous guest on the pod. The last time she was on it was promoting other NACADA stuff. And yes, we'll be chatting about conference promotion about we never got to interview Karen and learn more about her background and everything she's done in advising like we got to do with, Chris. So Karen Lewis has over 25 years of experience in the field of academic advising. She currently serves as the Assistant Director of English Undergraduate Studies at the University of Maryland College Park. Prior to taking on this administrative role. She served as an academic advisor at the University of Maryland, University College, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Walden University and University of Maryland College Park. She is passionate about assisting transfer students with their transition between institutions and is proud to have led the team that developed the Transfer Success Seminar at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has been an Academy member since 2002, and has held multiple leadership roles in the organization including Maryland liaison region conference co chair, global awards, chair, region, chair and region division representative. Karen holds a Master of Arts and Education policy planning and administration with a higher education emphasis from the University of Maryland College Park. Karen, welcome back as well.

Karen Lewis  
Thanks so much, Matt. Excited to be here. You know, I'm a big fan of the podcast.

Matt Markin  
And I appreciate that you both are amazing individuals support the podcast, he's so much and advising. And so Chris has got to co host with me getting to interview you, Karen. So I'm gonna turn it over to Chris to kick us off.

Chris Kirchhof  
Alright, so Karen, I've known you for a long time. But for those who are meeting you for the first time, can you talk about your journey and path in terms of working in higher education?

Karen Lewis  
Well, this will take a minute because I recently celebrated 25 years in higher education. So this is my pathway. I've listened to a lot of people talk about their pathways on this show, so I'm prepared. My journey actually started my senior year of college, all of the during all of college, I was studying to become an entertainment journalist. But I waited, I did something you're not supposed to do that I now know, which is waited till my last semester to do an internship, a journalism internship. And I realized that I absolutely hated it. I was naive. And I didn't really realize that when you submit an article, the articles edited to like the voice of whatever, you're right, whoever you're writing for, it wasn't my voice and it was sort of like disappointing to me. And I learned that that's just the way it is. And I don't know, I couldn't I couldn't take it. So I started looking for other opportunities. And I went to my own academic advisor and he said, you know, you're so active on campus, I always use campus tours, we have all these different campus jobs. You know, college student personnel is a career you should really look into that. And the same week, I took my resume to the Career Center, and they said the same thing really should look into costume personnel. And so while I'm not quite sure why I chose advising per se, I started applying for advising jobs. It took me about a year to land one at University of Maryland, University College, which is now University Maryland, Global Campus. That was a really great place to start. First of all, I had tuition remission to earn my master's degree while I was working there. They also train people super, super thoroughly, which will come up later, very grateful for all that training. I've learned a lot in their usgc serves mostly working adults and military. They do evening weekend and online classes to serve those populations. And I was working with a lot of students that were older than me that was I'm 23 years old. And I did get a lot of how old are you? Do you even have a bachelor's degree? What what makes you qualified to really advise me on my classes. So it's kind of a good good like humbling experience to start with, I guess. And after that, I was very lucky to get a job at UMBC, which was my alma mater, I was working in the information systems department there. And it was such, it's just a wonderful, wonderful nine years, I had such a great experience, because I got to work with students literally from the time they walked in the door to orientation, teach them in our first year seminar, advise them all the way through, hug them at graduation, it was really wonderful. But unfortunately, my position there was eliminated due to budget cuts, which is how I end up working briefly at Walden University, which is a for profit University. And I'll just say, their policies didn't really align with my beliefs, which is why I did not stay long. But I did get to advise for a Master of Science in Nursing Program, which was unique as my only experience working with graduate students and helping them along in the process, especially the students usually for nursing, they were usually very deep into their career hadn't been going hadn't gone to school for a really long time and had this kind of a steep learning curve to even learn how to use like an online content management system for courses, walking them through all that was really good. And I was lucky to get a job that University Maryland College Park and College of Engineering, and I was the transfer coordinator there for several years and that involves at that, College Park engineering is what they call a limited enrollment program. There's a gateway to get into the program. And I was there to help both internal and external transfer students successfully get through that gateway and move on into engineering, or if it wasn't possible to help them find alternate paths, and then ended up in the job I have now, which is the Assistant Director in the Department of English. And I have been there now for 11 years because time flies.

Matt Markin  
And I'm looking forward to hearing more about like the professional development training, as well as talking about transfer students. But yeah, it's kind of like, you know, your journey, a lot of times if I guess, roadblock happens, you pivot, and then you continue on. But yeah, I can connect with you on that the college level in terms of waiting until the last semester last year to to something, you know, I always had, like my advisors or counselors telling me like, go to the Career Center, go here, start looking at what's going to happen after you graduate. And I was like, No, I'll worry about that later. And then you graduated. I'm like, What am I supposed to do? Like we told you to go to these resources? But you know, you're mentioning that at the end that your assistant director for English undergraduate studies, what does that role all entail for you?

Karen Lewis  
It's huge. It's huge. So when I first took the job, I knew that I would be running the advising office. So I hire, and train and oversee, oversee all of the advisors in the English departments advising office, and the staffing model currently is graduate assistants and professional track faculty. Some other campuses will call them lectures, so like non tenure track faculty, and they're all part time. And they also have, the department wants to share administrative roles. So each person can only stay for no more than three years. So I'm kind of constantly like hiring, training. It's a it's a wheel of hiring and training. So of course, that is the main part of it. But I also do commencement planning. So I'm in charge of the departmental commencement ceremony. I assist with the departmental scheduling. Like if there's aren't enough seats in English three, or one that everyone needs to take. I'm the one that says, hey, we need to add a section to this part of it. I oversee students that are on off site internships, I do Transfer Credit evaluations for transfer students handle recruitment events. And I also do them advising for multiple minors in the department. And I'm sure I'm forgetting about scholarships and awards as well. I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting. It's a big job.

Chris Kirchhof  
It's so funny, Karen, to hear you talk about, you know, your pathway throughout higher education, because I always find that, you know, when we talk with new advisors, or people new in the profession, they want to work with students and they want to be involved and help students but then as you move up, you start to move away from students and starting to do all of the other things in administration. So it's really great that you're still having that passion of just working with students, especially like one on one sounds like a lot of like different areas there. Talk to me about like working out with English students previously working with engineering students and working with translators. How are how are those populations different than that? not asking you to pick one. But what what population is the most maybe rewarding to work with? I just dumped it on?

Karen Lewis  
Oh, that's a deep question each each was worrying in its own way, I would say. So working with information systems majors at UMBC, over a very long period of time, I really got to know the students and where my office was placed. They felt very comfortable just popping in and talking to me about just about anything, you know, to the point where I kept food in my office, because they'd wander in and be like, I'm hungry, I need food. So I'm not going to class and be like, here's a granola bar, go to class, but what are you doing? So I got to know the students really well. And they just talked to me about like, their whole lives, which, which I loved. And I'm still Facebook friends with a lot of their students to this day, like I'm keeping up their lives and watching them get married and have kids and it's so it's so rewarding that I was able to build those relationships, engineering, a slightly different and but what I noticed, across the engineering students was just a lot of competitiveness and stress. They the students all were competing against each other instead of working collaboratively, because they're all thinking about the future jobs. And my GPA point. My GPA is one point higher than this, to get this scholarship to get this, I mean, this internship and this job and all this stress. And so I was trying my best to just support students through that stress, I had a lot more students that were maybe not even doing poorly academically, but just really weighed down by all the difficulty in the major and the competition from their classmates, English has been a great population, actually, it's been a completely different environment, period. Because in my previous like STEM fields that I worked in, every, all the professors were Dr. So and so I went to the English department, and immediately, you know, it was oh, call me, Bob, I'm not Professor this, I'm like, they're a lot more relaxed. And the students are a lot more relaxed too. And we like a lot about this major is that really, you are going to get full gamut, you know, the perfect 4.0 student to the students that are struggling and everything in between. And I know my advisers really enjoy the variety of being able to work with every single type of student that we have an English Department. 

Chris Kirchhof  
It's so fascinating working with, with engineers, they're binary thinkers, things are right and wrong. And then you go to work with an English major, and it's an art it's really is, you know, what is good for one person might not be with the other. So they really have to take a just a wide eyed view of everything. It's, it's always kind of interesting to see those differences that move the students don't see, you know, what, as they're going through their time. 

Matt Markin  
You were talking about the competitiveness, Karen, with the engineering students. And this, it's kind of different, I think, with least nursing students that I work with, our nursing program here is impacted, and it's very competitive, they're competing against, you know, to get into the program, a lot of the students in our nursing program will end up saying they end up working together and they become really good friends with the other nursing students wants their in, because now they're trying to support each other to make it through the program. But you know, another you know, from your bio, another group that you're passionate about is transfer students and I was looking at, you maybe hear about your where that passion comes from with assisting transfer students, and maybe tied to that is the Transfer Success Seminar that you are a part of?

Karen Lewis  
Alright, so yeah, that's, that's a really good question. And I think, I think that my passion for assisting transfer students came from the fact that my very first job was at University of Maryland, Global Campus. Most of the students coming in do have transfer credits from somewhere. And as I see, like, work with a lot of militaries that we have to seek transfer credits from all different places. And a lot of the they accept a lot of non traditional type credits as well. So a lot of experience with Transfer Credit evaluations there because we did Transfer Credit evaluations, they call them tentative evaluations. But we did transfer credits evaluations for students before they even applied, like they wanted to know how close my how many credits you're going to accept. And we also, were trained in the code of Maryland regulations, which is the COMAR and this these are regulations that dictate transferability between institutions in the state of Maryland, what the rules surrounding what you can and can't require someone to take for a bachelor's degree, etc, etc. But I found out a lot of people don't even know what the COMAR is much less what's in it. So the fact that I had that training, moving forward, put me in a position of authority to be able to educate other people and sort of from go be me a go to person cuz you're like, Hey, you, you know these rules. Can you explain them to me, please. But another thing that I did very early on in maybe the first or second time ever went to anakata annual conference was I went to a session hosted by Tom Grites, and he had just written a book called The transfer student companion. And I, at the time I did not know, he was, you know, Tom, great second ever president of naqada was just like, hey, this person is really speaks to me, he wrote this book, I would really like to talk about starting a Transfer Success Seminar, I went up to him after the session, and he was so nice to me. And he gave me his card. And when I went back to my office even sent me the first chapter of his book, which wasn't even published yet. And he, he really encouraged me to ask if it was something I could get started because UMBC had first year seminars, but they didn't have a trencher seminar. And to my surprise, they said, Yes, put a committee together and write a syllabus. And we'll do it. And so like this is digging very far back because it was offered for the first time in fall 2008. But just the fact that they're still offering it, and I'm sure the content has changed over time. But I'm just really proud that I actually did something there that's, like, sustained over time that is helping these students.

Chris Kirchhof  
So Karen, you mentioned before about you work a lot with like new advisors, or people new to the profession and advisor training, can you talk a little bit about that experience, and what have been some of like the most rewarding pieces of that work?

Karen Lewis  
I think I was very lucky, when I started my job, I did not realize that there was going to be like a hamster wheel of concentrating in this position. And my predecessor had left a training manual behind, which of course has evolved over time, the University of Maryland has their advising system set up, you have a departmental advisor, but then you have a college level adviser. So every student has two advisors. And basically, we are only supposed to advise for English major requirements. And that's it and just stay in our lane and not advise on anything else. And they go to the college level for everything else. So in that aspect, it's not as difficult to train the advisors in the content requirements because there are fewer variables, there are fewer things that I'm teaching them about just teaching them about things related to the English major. Well, we have two English majors technically, because we have a separate track for English education, and the minors that we offer, just have to worry about that. But then it's just the bigger picture of university policies, the NACADA core competencies, the importance of advising the bigger things that I'm trying to build out, because at some point, I don't remember which anakata conference I was at. But I was just talking about how you know, when you go, as you were saying earlier, you go into administration, you have less student contact, you don't go home, at the end of the day feeling quite as good. You know, when you're working with students who have these days, you're like, I helped somebody day, this is amazing. And you don't feel the same way. When you're like yay, I added some seats to English three, or one. You know, so I learned that what I should be taking, like pride in is training my advisors well, and hoping that I am kind of raising the next level of advisors. And I'm happy to say, so I have been there 11 years now. So a lot of people have come through my office, and several of them have decided to pursue advising full, full time and our full time advisors now. And in fact, one of my previous advisors now has a higher position than me at Johns Hopkins. And I'm like, good for you. That's amazing. get satisfaction out of that. So I tried to do. And I mean, the training is not just about what we have in the manual, which is online now. But like, it's ongoing, right? I keep my door open at all times. And I mean, now with a lot of people working virtually, and we're not all in office at the same time, my door can be the Marco Polo app, where it can be, you know, Google Chat, but everyone knows that I'm accessible to them as things come up. 

Matt Markin  
Probably some people listening might be like, I never got any training. I wish I had that.

Karen Lewis  
Right.

Chris Kirchhof  
Or the training was here's the course catalog. Yeah, exactly.

Karen Lewis  
Right. But now nobody even knows the course catalog even exists. That's what one of the things I'm responsible for is updating our portion of the course catalog every year but it's fully online and students don't even know it's there. Why? Why am I doing this? I'm I do miss the paper catalogs.

Speaker 1  
A lot of us remember the actual physical catalog that that we were given at orientation. But Karen, you're talking a little bit about anakata time greats in the kind of conferences, did the both of you meet each other at an aquatic conference? Or how do you both know each other?

Chris Kirchhof  
We were trying to figure out one time, like the NACADA origin story, and I think we met at a regional conference, it was back in I think, 2011 I think I was new to NACADA and just starting to dip my toe into leadership. And I think Karen was coming off. You were coming off the the regional conference, chairing that. So I think we just kind of met in the circle. And then from there, yeah, we just kept seeing each other conferences. So then it becomes a, oh, hey, there's Karen. But then, you know, having mutual friends in the association, knowing Tom Grites, knowing some of the other leaders in within the region, that was kind of able to just kind of help, you know, collaboration working together. And then Karen was region chair when I was hosting our regional conference. So we've had a lot of opportunities to work together on those sort of regional projects. 

Karen Lewis  
I'll just take this moment to say, like, working with Chris is great. And at this point, we've had several opportunities to work together. We think alike in a lot of ways, which is helpful, we're able to get things done quickly and efficiently. I feel like it's really rare to find someone that you can work with so well. So I mean, I'm grateful for his friendship, but also for just that, the way that we can work together to accomplish things.

Matt Markin  
Great collaborators. And so Karen, can you talk a little bit more about your NACADA experience?

Karen Lewis  
Okay, that's lengthy to Matt, are you sure? So, um, sometime in 2006, one of my co workers was chosen to chair the 2007 Baltimore annual conference, and she called me and she said, I'm chairing this conference, would you like to be on the committee? And I thought, Okay. I'd like to be on the committee. So it was on the I was the concurrent sessions chair for that committee. That particular experience was really wonderful. And so it was on that committee that I met my friend, Susan Fred, and I pulled her aside and I was like, can we just talk for a little while, like, I knew at that time, she was global awards chair. And I was like, I just want to know a little bit more about how to get involved. And she helped me from that perspective, but also at that conference, I learned that the Maryland liaison position was about to open up. And so I threw my hat in the ring for that, too. I ran unopposed. And so in a flash, I was the Maryland State Liaison and on the global awards committee reading awards, you know, very, very quickly. And from there, I can't, it's been so long, but I can't think of a time where I haven't been doing something, actually wrote it all down. So I mean, I have a lot of physicians. You know, we talk about the different ways that you kind of like grow up in leadership. So I definitely grew up in the region. So not only was I a Maryland liaison, I was a region chair for the conference conference, that co chair, I was sorry, I was regional conference co chair for the conference in 2012, in Annapolis, and I was region chair, and region Division representative. And all of those positions were really, really rewarding. I like working in the regions, because it's just really more like hands on grassroots you're working with, like passionate people who just want want to help and educate others and pretty, pretty amazing, and at times hard work, but also some great resume building work. As a regional conference co chair, I oversaw a committee of 15 people, you know, as region chairs overseeing a huge steering committee, and those are ways to develop personally your leadership skills that you don't necessarily get in your regular position. I have also served as a mentor for the Emerging Leaders Program. I have been on tons of committees the Professional Development Committee, Finance Committee, the awards committee, sustainable Leadership Committee, also been asked to be on some task forces and workgroups. The most notable would be the the region review workgroup where we kind of examined the entire region structure and made recommendations for ways that it could change and grow. And most recently, I was just elected to the Board of Directors after running for More times I made it. Yeah. So significant pain to know that if you run and you lose, don't give up, just stick with it. K

Chris Kirchhof  
Karen, you always tell, you've told the story in the past and I was wondering if you share it with the listeners, there's a direct like A to B line between some of your anakata leadership and then getting a position at the University of Maryland in terms of working with commencements. Can you talk a little bit about that? And as kind of an inspiration for people who are out there like, oh, I want to get involved. But how is this going to help me out? 

Karen Lewis  
Oh yeah, absolutely. I definitely think NACADA involvement clinched me getting this job. And the department's been hugely supportive of anything I've wanted to do for the association. When I interviewed for the assistant director position, it was, of course, as all interviews seem to be now like a two part process. But in the second part, I met with the department chair and undergraduate studies director. So those are both faculty members. And I would say they were absolutely floored, they did not know there was a professional association for academic advising. They're very impressed to hear that that existed, they were even more impressed to know that I had voluntarily been doing things for them. But specifically, the fact that I could say that I had co chaired a regional conference, I'd also done a state drive in as well, that let them know that I was going to be able to handle running commencement, because it was just a huge thing in their mind. And believe me, the person in my position was every single aspect of commencement isn't going to find someone that had some, some event planning skills. And I think the fact that I've run that conference really, really sealed the deal.

Matt Markin  
And you were mentioning, you know, that one of your most rewarding things within NACADA is working within the regions. Do you feel like the one of those leadership positions in the region? Is your favorite leadership role so far? Anakata? Or are you the type of person that your favorite leadership role is going to be the next one?

Karen Lewis  
It's, it's really hard to pick a favorite. I mean, I will, I'll say two things. The first is within the regions. I think the best thing I was able to do in conjunction with Gavin Farber is to start this no mentee left behind movements. So when I became region chair, I found out that we were getting many more applications for mentees for our mentoring program that meant mentor applications. And so people were going on matched every year. And I thought, why why are we doing that? Let's let's make a commitment to get a mentor for everyone that wants one. And Gavin had just come on as mentoring chair and he just has like a whole font of knowledge about mentoring. And he he is amazing. And he's he came up with the no mentee left behind hashtag. He made sure that we had mentors for every mentee. He even continued the program through COVID When we were all at home, so when there were virtual virtual regionals, we still had a mentoring program, and he even set one up for region one as well. And the no mentee left behind movement is still going today. So I'm very happy about that. Like my favorite, if I hadn't been my favorite role is probably gonna be my very first one, which was the 2007 Baltimore conference, because I met so many kind people like there was a real synergy with that committee, we all got along very well. And it was old in time. So we did a lot of things in person together, you know, like not, not via zoom or not. We, we met a lot, we met frequently, and we all got hungry. And I mean, I made some lifetime friendships out of that. And obviously, meeting Susan was one of the greatest things that happened to me, I don't think I'd be sitting here today. Without her she was such a great friend, such a great support. And she was my roommate at every every conference that we were both at together from that point forward until until she passed away. 

Chris Kirchhof  
This is probably Karen the longest that you and I have ever been in a room together without this topic coming up. So I'm going to mute my microphone for 30 seconds and just let you pontificate on the greatness of the Baltimore Orioles. For those who don't know, Karen is a gigantic baseball fan. Obviously being in Maryland Orioles. And with myself growing up in New England being a Red Sox fan, we've had some arguments and tips and fights in the past not as much as the Yankee fans in the cotta, but um, I'm just gonna let you go and riff and about about them. So go ahead.

Karen Lewis  
No pressure. Well. I will tell you, my brother said to me recently, you're not a baseball fan. You're just the Baltimore Orioles fan. So obviously, yeah, there is a lot of spirit in Baltimore around the Orioles. And I'll admit for there were a few years there where it was very bleak, where I was not watching as many games but last year, it just started to become so exciting to watch this team again. And like they have so much energy so much hustle. So much dedication they they come through in the ninth inning in a clutch like quite often and so it's like you can never count them out. You want to watch every second To the game, it's exciting. You know, it was great to make the playoffs last year even though it sort of ended quickly. But I feel amazing about this team. And I think they'll go the playoffs again this year like I think there there will be a World Series in our future. But I just, I am keeping a good thought for Felix felt Teesta that he recovers from his Tommy John surgery and comes back strong because we need him back, ASAP.

Matt Markin  
I think they're currently second right now in the AL east?, 

Chris Kirchhof  
And that division is a meat grinder with all of the different teams in there. And it's hard for me to ever be upset about the Orioles because Camden Yards is so beautiful. And it's such a nice stadium. It's kind of hard to like to bash them. Although I will try sometimes. 

Matt Markin  
and how's your team doing Chris? Are they they're third right now?

Chris Kirchhof  
We're about 500. So it's it's it's been a little bit of a rough patch on terms of injuries. At one point we only had with the Red Sox, I think it was for starting pitchers and our entire infield and most of the outfield injured. But you know, hey, you persevere. It's a variable. And that's one of the things I love about baseball. It's just a long season. And it is allows you to have like a soundtrack for the summer and just kind of ride the highs and the lows, and most importantly, just kind of, you know, be outside and watch. It's it's nice living in Pittsburgh, being a national league city, I can have like an American League team and a national league team and the twain shall not meet. So that's kind of like sometimes.

Karen Lewis  
I know you're a baseball fan, too. But that says, I appreciate what Chris was saying. There's a new game every day. Like don't be upset because there's another game tomorrow. about it.

Matt Markin  
That's the nice thing, right? It's like always some game and yeah, there's gonna be ups and downs. 

Chris Kirchhof  
You're not married to have to watch all 162, although I try. But you do not have to. You can miss a couple and it's okay. And you just kind of casually follow along. And you know, all are welcome, basically. 

Matt Markin  
Yeah, absolutely. No, I love living in California, especially southern California get plenty of baseball teams to choose from mine, of course, is the padres, which are currently second, but they seem to disappoint a lot. But they to come in the clutches in the ninth inning a lot of times. But I think that was great to learn more about you, Karen. And Chris, thanks for CO interviewing with me on this one. But let's transition over to Pittsburgh for the annual conference. Plenty of conferences and higher education for individuals to choose from. My favorites always been the annual conference for NACADA. So tell us more about the 2024 NACADA conference in Pittsburgh.

Chris Kirchhof  
Yeah, so this is going to be in October, late October, the 27th to the 30th, downtown Pittsburgh, at the David Lawrence Convention Center. So right on the river, if you've never been to the city, it is really in the heart of downtown. And it's a very, very small flat, but a very accessible downtown. And we're we're looking forward to working with all of the different hotels and restaurants and different universities in the area to really help showcase the city. Because I think for people who are coming to Pittsburgh for the very first time, they're going to find that it's vibrant, and a lot of things to do. And our theme for the conference plays on a couple of different pieces of the city. So it where the title for the conference is a beautiful day in the bird championing advisors as helpers. So we took the aspects of Pittsburgh being known as the City of Champions with the Steelers and the Pirates from the 70s. But also merging it with Fred Rogers. So Mr. Rogers was actually from this from Latrobe, Pennsylvania right outside Pittsburgh. And he has a statue downtown and really has a lot of influence in connection with the city, because so much of his shows were produced there. So there's a lot of different Mr. Rogers theme activities throughout the city. And we're going to try to highlight some of those causes and some of the just philosophy because he was an educator, he did help people. And you know, in, in this day and age, you need a little bit of kindness. And you need a little bit of, you know, neighborly help. So we're hoping that to draw upon that inspiration as we go through the conference. 

Matt Markin  
Awesome. I love that connection to it. And I think from what's on the website, you already have keynote speakers, is that correct? 

Karen Lewis  
We do and um, I definitely would like to thank our own conference committee as well as the NACADA Research Committee for helping us with this because I would say this is one aspect of the conference where Chris and I were like, oh, like, what do we do? So they were incredibly helpful. Our keynote speakers the opening keynote is going to be Dr. Jasmine Lee. She is from the Baltimore Maryland area. She's the vice president of equity and inclusive excellence at Goucher College in Maryland. And our closing speaker is Dr. Dana Winters. She is the Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs at St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania. And she's the former faculty chair of the Fred Rogers Institute. My goal with both of these keynote speakers is that I hope you will leave from both of these sessions feeling like you have had a warm hug. And while I don't know the specific topics, that is the the, I have told them, that's the vibe that we want. We want to create the very like Fred Rogers warm and fuzzy but for this whole conference, so looking forward to seeing them both. 

Matt Markin  
That's gonna be awesome. And I like that you do have like the opening keynote and closing keynote as well. And you know, Chris, you were talking about all the connections of like the theme to be in in Pittsburgh at the conference. So for both of us, or what else makes it special to go to this conference?

Chris Kirchhof  
Well, I think for me, this is the first time in close to 15 years that region two has been able to host an annual conference. And for those of you who are not in region two, we're geographically the smallest region, we have a lot of colleges and a lot of the cities, but we're very close to the organization. So we're hoping that that closeness can be expanded throughout the conference. And like I've said before, the city of Pittsburgh is it's a great downtown, lots of restaurants, lots of areas to shop and explore. When where you are with the convention center, we're going to be right on the river overlooking the famous bridges overlooking the the point that we call it the point, but it's where the the Three Rivers meets. And then also, you'll see the sports stadiums there. So it's going to be really exciting. Late October is going to be a fun time, and weather wise. So we're looking forward to that we have an opening reception. We can't give a lot of details on but we're gonna tie in a lot of the aspects of the city food and the city culture and some of the fun to just really help give people an authentic Pittsburgh experience.

Matt Markin  
And of course, you mentioned sports. Is there any do we know of anything going on during the time of the conference sports wise?

Chris Kirchhof  
So I had some gray hair because, you know, we're taping this at the end of May. And we weren't sure when the football schedule or college football schedules were going to come out and how that was going to align. And we were really the because the conference starts on a Sunday. We're like, Oh, no. Well, there'll be a Steelers game disrupting traffic. Well, no, there won't be one on Sunday, but there'll be one on Monday night. So for those who are coming to the city, you're going to on that Monday, experience, kind of an authentic Pittsburgh game day, it's going to be very active, we were going to be giving recommendations of where can people go to if you're not interested in the in the game, being able to experience game day, and just kind of get that authentic experience of what it means to be, you know, from Pittsburgh, I think the as a city, we're unique. We're the only city in the country where all of the professional sports teams have the same colors. So you'll see that black and yellow all throughout. So we're going to incorporate that into the conference. But really try to get people you know, let people when they leave Pittsburgh feel that they saw and felt everything that they could within the city.

Karen Lewis  
We can't give a lot of details and things are going to be a surprise, but our hospitality is working really, really hard. So we are working on some alternative sort of sessions that people can attend during lunch breaks, and some after hours sessions that are that you've not seen in previous conferences. Basically lot, lots of options. Very, very exciting.

Matt Markin  
Yes. I'm more excited now hearing about both of you talking about the conference. And of course, there's deadlines. Of course, Chris was mentioning that this episode is being recorded right now at the end of May. By the time listeners are taking Take a listen to this. It's going to be end of June. Is there anything coming up? That as an attendee or someone that is looking to attend the conference that they should know about?

Chris Kirchhof  
Yeah, so the for registration, the first earlybird registration registration deadlines going to be September 12. So for those of you depending on when your fiscal budgets, if they reset July one or at the for the calendar year, take note of that because after September 12, the registration price will go up another tier on October 10. And then after 10, the 10th There's a third bump with that. So just be for attendees please be cognizant of that. But September 12 will be the earlybird deadline. And then in regards to hotel all hotels are up on the website right now. So there are, I think, nine different choices for individuals out there. There are ranging in price from 199 to 225 at night, and each of the amenities are going to be up on the website, Karen and I had the pleasure to be able to get to tour each of the sites. And honestly, there wasn't a bad one there. They're all great, they're all walkable and each have their own little quirks and details. They're gonna be really cool throughout the city.

Matt Markin  
And you're mentioning that the hotels, a lot of them are walkable. So are we saying that quite a few of them might even just be right across the street or right nearby.

Chris Kirchhof  
So there is one the Westin will be connected to the convention center through through skybridge. But then most of them are under a 10 minute walk and sit the city Pittsburgh's very flat. So it is not a strenuous walk by any stretch. And each one is going to give kind of a little bit of a different view of the city. If you're at the, I believe the downtown towards the point, you're gonna have a wonderful view of the city and Point State Park. But then the ones closer to closer to the convention center are also going to have great views of like the Strip District or the Heinz History Center, and all of the different bridges.

Matt Markin  
Anything to add in terms of the conference, or how about your experience so far?

Chris Kirchhof  
I will say it's been in terms of planning. I don't wanna speak for Karen, but it's been a great experience working with the conference committee. They are absolutely enthusiastic about showcasing both region two and showcasing the city of Pittsburgh to attendees. But then also working with and the kind of executive office so far, Dana McNary and Farrah Turner have been wonderful as far as planning, and really taking a lot of the pressure off of us as as conference chairs, but still making sure that we're involved in the decision making aspects and we're really looking forward to being able to showcase a city that maybe a lot of people haven't been to before.

Karen Lewis  
I'm very grateful for the opportunity. And I do I'm very excited for people to see how awesome Pittsburgh is because I think some people just think of it as you know, steel town, but it's, it's such a great like cultural destination, people are gonna love it. But I also want to add something that as I've been talking to other NACADA members I'm noticing they're not aware of which is we have been posting a ton of conference blogs to the NACADA blog. So I don't know Matt, if like you maybe can put put a link to the NACADA blog in the in the notes for this podcast so that people can access it. Once you're there, there's a link, you can click on where you can receive an email every single time a new blog posts. We've been posting blogs every two weeks about different aspects of the conference. And we're going to continue to do that all the way up into the conference so that people can learn about like fun things to do in Pittsburgh about the sessions about all sorts of things. So just want to put that out there.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, absolutely. I'll definitely include the link in the show notes. And one more question, you know, we're talking about like in person needs to do and Pittsburgh being physically at the conference? Is there going to be a virtual component potentially for attendees? 

Chris Kirchhof  
So there will be a virtual component to the conference for people who aren't able to travel or attend. And there'll be sessions up there. But then also our health and wellness committee is working on some different activities, to for those people to be able to network with each other and possibly attendees at the the physical conference to be able to get that experience. So I would say stay tuned, though, that registration would would be up as well. And people can get more information directly through the website on that one.

Matt Markin  
Well, the time flies, Karen, you're mentioning time flies at your institution, how long you've been there. Time flew with with this interview. We covered a lot of information got to know you a lot better. Karen got to promote the conference. I'm looking forward to being there in October. So Chris and Karen, thank you so much for being on the podcast.