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Its been a while since I've posted any new material so I thought I'd share one of the projects that has occupied my time recently.

From 2006 to 2008 I had the opportunity to serve on the Executive Board of the Association of College & University Housing Officers, International (ACUHO-I). It has been one of the most powerful professional development opportunities in my career. The quality of the people I worked with on the board & in the central office was truly impressive.

When my term ended on the board I knew I wanted to stay involved, but was I was unsure of how I would make that contribution. Fortunately, I was invited to the ACUHO-I Knowledge Summit in September 2008. It was there that an opportunity presented itself - The Credentialing Task Force.

The Credentialing Task Force was created to explore new ways to provide more in-depth professional development opportunities for student housing professionals. The group has been in place for more then three years and the outcomes are becoming very real now. Assessment has been the first area of focus and a series of courses are now being developed.

Creating a course is an impressive process. The DACUM method has been adopted to develop the courses. In the fall a group of student housing professionals developed 51 tasks split into six categories that are required to carry out assessment in student housing. This past week another group of people, including me, further defined the tasks involved and we now have 189 tasks identified. Each task includes the desired outcome, the resources required, knowledge & skills required, behaviour needed, decisions to consider, cues to help guide decisions and errors that would result if the task is not done correctly.

Digging this deep into an issue is not normal work in the life of a staff member in higher education. I would imgaine that few people in our line of work have identified processes with nearly 200 tasks ;-)

"This is hard!" was our slogan as we worked toward adding content over our three days together. It was awkward work at first, but in the end we painted a very clear picture of what is involved in developing an assessment plan.