October 2024 Newsletter
Click Here to read the October 2024 edition, featuring a member institution's Kindness Day celebrations, using AI for professional development, this month's Fun Five List, and more!
Upcoming Roundtable: Anticipating the 2024 Presidential Election Results
After-Hours Virtual Roundtable
Anticipating the 2024 Presidential Election Results
Tuesday, October 29, at 7:00 p.m. Central Time
There is a lot at stake for higher education in next month’s presidential election. Criticism from all points of the political spectrum has colleges and universities treading carefully up to and beyond November 5th. One wrong move and a President's or Provost's Office can stumble into a dark thicket of distraction that's hard to escape.
Space is limited. Pre-registration is required.
Join us Tuesday, October 29, just one week before election results start rolling in, for a special after-hours virtual roundtable. Kai Swanson, NAPAHE member and Special Assistant to the President at Augustana College, will facilitate a conversation with the Hon. Cheri Bustos, Former Congresswoman for Illinois’ 17th Congressional District, and Kristen Shahverdian, Program Director for Campus Free Speech at PEN America. Together, we will discuss plans to prepare students, faculty, and staff on college campuses for election day.
Session Facilitator
Kai Swanson
Special Assistant to the President at Augustana College (IL)
Before becoming a PA, Kai Swanson spent nine years in the newsroom of WVIK, Augustana College's public radio station. Thanks to the station's proximity to lowa and its caucuses, Kai got to cover a couple of presidential elections up close and personal. On campus, he's helped students from across the political spectrum channel their passionate beliefs into effective activism. Kai currently serves as Special Assistant to the President at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.
Special Guests
Hon. Cheri Bustos
Partner at Mercury (Washington, D.C.)
Former Congresswoman Cheri Bustos is a Partner at Mercury, working across our Washington D.C. office while also leading our firm’s operations in Illinois. As a former senior member of House leadership with a long career in both the public and private sectors, Bustos brings 20+ years of experience in politics, journalism, healthcare and communications.
While representing Illinois’ 17th Congressional District for the past 10 years, Bustos held powerful roles in leadership, serving as Co-Chair of the Steering and Policy Committee during her past term in Congress; Co-Chairing the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, playing a key role in Democrats taking the majority; and chairing the General Farm Commodities and Risk Management Subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee.
Bustos served on the House Committee on Agriculture for her full tenure in office; six years on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; and four years on the House Appropriations Committee. While on the House Appropriations Committee, she served on some of the most powerful subcommittees: Defense; Labor, Health and Human Services and Education; Energy and Water; and Military Construction and Veterans Administration.
Outside of her public service work, Bustos has helped advance the next generation of Democratic leaders, protecting the Democratic House majority in the 2020 election cycle as Chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). In that role, she helped raise a record-breaking one-third of a billion dollars for the organization.
Additionally, Bustos is the founder of Build the Bench, a program focused on identifying and training individuals interested in running for office at all levels. She is also a Founding Board Member of Elect Democratic Women, which raised close to $10 million in the 2022 Election cycle.
Bustos is a Spring 2023 Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland in College Park, and a Master’s in Public Affairs Reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield.
Kristen Shahverdian
Program Director, Campus Free Speech at PEN America
Kristen Shahverdian is the program director of campus free speech at PEN America, developing campus engagements and public events related to free expression and education. Before joining PEN America, she was a senior lecturer at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and previously was an adjunct professor at Rowan University and Temple University. She served as a project manager for the Philadelphia Folklore Project, and facilitated workshops on how to teach representations of violence in art at Moore College of Art & Design, Common Field, the College Art Association and Dance Studies Association. She is also a writer and editor at the online dance journal thINKingDANCE. She received her BA in history and dance from Hamilton College, her MFA in dance from Temple University, and her MA in socially engaged art from Moore College of Art & Design.
Election Special Cocktail
POTUS Punch
- 2 oz Tito’s Handmade Vodka
- 1 oz Fresh Lemon Juice
- 1 oz Orange Juice
- 1 oz Grenadine
- .5 oz Simple Syrup
- 4 Fresh Blackberries
- Garnish: blackberry
Muddle berries, add ice, add remaining ingredients. Stir and pour over ice.
For a non-alcoholic "mocktail" alternative, substitute Starry or similar.
Kindness Day at WWU – A little bit of sunshine in a dark world
Kindness Day at Western Washington University
A little bit of sunshine in a dark world
Written by Melinda Assink
Executive Assistant to the Provost and Executive Vice President at Western Washington University
I am not going to lie or sugar coat things. Last academic year was tough; Crappy, really hard, exhausting. I know not every university or college had to deal with the things that we did (die-ins, sit-ins, protests, demonstrations, encampments), and I know a lot of folks went through even harder situations, but the global consensus among administrative professionals in higher education seems to be that they are exhausted from an increasingly active student, staff, and faculty population over the last few years. The world is hard, and it gets more difficult all the time; with global pandemics, divisive elections, gun violence, wars, genocide, the list goes on and on. It is easy to feel deflated and hopeless, and unfortunately, looking ahead to a future of continuing conflict, many of us might feel stress and despair. I hope to share today about an event we have been doing the past several years that adds a little bit of sunshine back into our world in the fall, International Kindness Day.
Officially, Western’s 2019 celebration of Kindness Day was a product of a summer working retreat for the Senior Management Administrative Resource Team (SMART). SMART membership includes the Assistants to the President, Vice Presidents, and Assistant Secretary to the Board. In an effort to provide a positive experience for our campus community during what can often be a stressful time of year, the committee set up four different Kindness Booths around campus in the morning to distribute buttons with kindness messages, collect kindness sticky notes, and also served hot cider and hot cocoa. In the afternoon, there was also a Kindness Fair in the Viking Union Multipurpose Room with many activities including therapy dogs (fan favorite), rock painting, a Kindness Wall with all of the sticky note messages, and students from Professor Christie Scollon’s Psych 377 Positive Psychology class presenting information and activities about the science of kindness.
Barbara Sandoval
Former NAPAHE Board Chair and Senior Executive to the President at Western Washington University
Behind the scenes, several years ago, a familiar face, former NAPAHE Board Chair and Senior Executive to the President at Western Washington University, Barbara Sandoval, had an idea. She realized that we needed to do something to bring some sort of positivity to campus. Tensions had been rising on campus for several months after some racially motivated threats against our Associated Students President, a sit-in in the President’s Office, and additional frustration among members of our community. Barbara brought her thoughts to our SMART retreat and collectively we realized that what we needed was more kindness in the world. In doing a little research, we ran across International Kindness Day, falling every year on November 13. This date really resonated with the SMART Team as it is also the time in the Pacific Northwest that the weather starts to get wetter, darker, and more depressing, and for us on the quarter system, about the time we start to have midterms and stressed students. Barb instigated an activity that has been super powerful and continues every year since. “Kindness Day allowed us the opportunity to bring positivity to our community and get people to think outside of their own struggles and about what they could do to make a difference. We want to get across that it is the smallest things, like smiling at someone; to just be kind instead of being so navel gazing and looking around to see what else is out there. We wanted to ebb the flow of negativity, and after brainstorming as a team, we put together a proposal for the President. He liked the idea and pledged $1,000 for us to start with and build other partnerships with faculty, students, and other offices on campus. We worked well as a team. As we moved onto the next year, I wanted to give someone else the opportunity to lead, and share that experience.”
During the COVID pandemic, our event pivoted online with conversations on kindness from a variety of university leadership, staff, faculty, students, and community members. In the years since, we have included some more events in the spring around our ‘study week’ before finals, and continue to evolve our Kindness days to reach more members of our community. Current committee chair, and Executive Assistant to the President, Rayne Rambo is dedicated to continuing this legacy of kindness, outreach, and joy.
I feel strongly that kindness is a universal language, and I love getting to tap into it and remind people, kindness is free!! I witness the joy and impact of kindness each time we host a kindness event. As humans we are hard wired to be kind, show kindness, and promote kindness. Everyone always leaves with a smile, and you can't help but feel a little lighter, and loved.”
This year, in anticipation of a stressful few weeks of elections, we decided to pivot our WWU Kindness Day to November 1 in order to inject more kindness, healthy well-being, and positivity before election night. The ‘Kindness Krew’ has grown in size including folks from many other divisions on campus, and we attract a wide variety of participants in the activities of the day, including the spouse of our University President and mental health professional, Uzma Ahmand Randhawa. As Uzma said in her reflections on the 2021 Kindness Day, “It is an important time to remind ourselves about the positive impact of spreading kindness on campus and in our communities and to recognize why it matters now more than ever. Kindness towards oneself and others has a tremendous healing power. It brings harmony and happiness in social groups and reduces isolation. Scientific studies on kindness also tell us that it has the power of bringing change to our emotional and physiological levels. Kindness releases Oxytocin which promotes cooperation and closeness and makes us happier by literally activating the brain’s reward circuitry, while strengthening our social connections. It is also worth mentioning here that kindness is contagious and can create ongoing waves of its benefits.”
Remember, a Kindness Day can start small and build into a big change.
If your institution would benefit from a Kindness Day event, please feel free to reach out to