The University of Oklahoma • Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Comunication
NEW FACES FOR NEW CHALLENGES: The Gaylord College’s Student Services office staff (from left) Dawniel Stewart, Heather Spencer, Matthew Cravatt and Kathy Sawyer keep students on track for graduation, help them secure internships and guide them toward career opportunities.College strengthens advising staff
Expanded Student Services Center offers specialized advising and career guidance
Say the word “advising” in front of many OU students, and they may well grimace. Images of full waiting rooms and overworked advisers might just be popping up in their heads as they stress about getting into the right classes before they close.
Take them to the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication Student Services Center, and those images are replaced by scenes of students sitting in comfortable chairs watching a large plasma TV screen, raiding candy bowls or lounging on couches and thumbing through magazines.
The newly expanded Student Services Center serves as home base for students and graduates who seek information or services concerning admission, graduate programs, internships, student organizations, scholarships and events. Handling that large order of information are four individuals, three of whom are new team members who hope to combine their experiences, skills and passions as former journalism students to help OU students in a friendly environment.
With three advisers and one internship and career coordinator – as well as plans to hire an undergraduate secretary this year – the center is able to highlight the “service” in student services.
Frederick Blevens, former associate dean of student affairs in the Gaylord College, oversaw the Student Services Center. He says when he was seeking individuals to fill the three new positions, he looked for those who could stay calm and collected while communicating well with students.
“I think the biggest thing is that when they’re going through 25 or 30 advising sessions a day, it’s just coming at you at 60 miles an hour, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang,” he says. “What I really wanted to find in advisers is their ability to be able to sit there and tolerate that and work their way through it. Every student is different, bringing a different set of problems at a different time, different semester and different sequence in there every 20 minutes. How do you get their problems solved and send them on their way and get the next one? You’ve got to be juggling all sorts of things in your head as you’re going through that 20 or 30 minutes. It’s a pretty short time to solve all the student’s problems for that semester. We think these people are going to be able to do that.”
Heidi Puckett, an adviser from February 2005 until taking a position as associate director of admissions at the Oklahoma City University School of Law in fall 2006, says the advising load has been divided according to majors and specialties to better serve students.
Before this year, two advisers, Puckett and Mary Anne Hempe, who now advises in atmospheric and geographic sciences, worked with all five majors: advertising, broadcasting and electronic media, journalism, professional writing and public relations.
“It was really a relief to have a fresh staff of motivated people help us serve the students,” Puckett says. “They have lots of experience that they can use to focus on the needs of each specific student. The more advisers there are, the more they can help students.”
She says a significant portion of the center’s time and focus has always gone to planning such events as Sooner Saturday, OU’s biggest recruiting event of the year, and JMC Jumpstart, the Gaylord College’s annual welcoming event for freshmen.
High school students and freshmen aren’t the only groups requiring the staff’s time and effort.
“Graduation also takes a lot of work, whether it’s clearing students for graduation or people graduating with distinction or honors,” Puckett says.
Kathy Sawyer, adviser for public relations students and former manager of the Student Services Center, says she recalls working in Copeland Hall when Student Services was essentially two people, two offices and a single couch.
“The additional advisers and the internship and career position are going to help our students by leaps and bounds,” she says. “We’re looking at being able to do job fairs, which we haven’t been able to do in the past. We handle many internships, and now with one person dedicated to just that, I think we’re going to see the internship and job opportunities increase tremendously. Quicker advising will also take place with the additional help. We hope we can get students in and out of here quicker.”
One-third of the additional help is Matthew Cravatt, advertising student adviser. He brings to the position experience as an event and education specialist for the Chickasaw Council House Museum between 2001 and 2005. However, with experience in oil drilling, water well drilling, oil production, water purification, marketing, English tutoring and newspaper writing, he says he feels ready to address most student concerns.
“I like working with young people,” he says. “I do understand some of the things that are at stake here. I understand that it took me five years to get my degree. I was raising kids and working. I’m all for getting your degree in four years, but if you need more time, I understand.”
Cravatt, who earned a bachelor’s in mass communication at East Central University in Ada in 1999, says he looks forward to supporting students.
“Personally, I have one long-range goal,” he says. “That is, 20 years from now, I will have affected students enough that they will remember me. There was that Mr. Cravatt in the Student Services Center and I could go to him with any problem. If not solve it, he could at least listen and understand. For the Student Services Center, I want us to be able to handle all the situations that come up in good time. I also want students to become comfortable coming in here.”
Dawniel Stewart, journalism, broadcast and professional writing adviser, still remembers what it was like to be an overworked journalism senior in 2005, nervously entering the advising office at the University of Texas.
“It’s a very tough and demanding field, and I was able to experience that,” she said. “So I know where these students are coming from whenever they come in and they’re frazzled. They’ve got deadlines and interviews to do, but on top of that they’ve got home life, class and extracurriculars. It’s hard to juggle it all when you’ve got so much going on at once.”
Stewart says she has learned from her experience how important it is to speak openly and honestly with people and to listen well.
“Whenever I meet with a student or I am speaking with a student, I recall how I felt speaking with an adviser,” she says. “In order for the person on the other side of the desk to feel comfortable, you have to relate.”
Blevens says he was most struck by Stewart’s degree and her experience in multicultural advising. He says her engaging personality also made her an obvious choice.
Stewart says she gained insight into helping students while working with the Multicultural Information Center at UT.
“It was such a diverse working environment that it allowed me to be able to see different perspectives – how different individuals of different backgrounds viewed their experience on a college campus and how they would handle situations that would come up regarding their degrees or their extracurricular activities,” she says.
Heather Spencer, internship and career coordinator, is proud of her contact list. In her two oversized binders and on her thumb drive, she has more contacts than the OU campus has squirrels.
Combine her experience as a reporter at The Oklahoman’s Norman bureau, a senior announcer/producer at KGOU and a college recruiter at Oklahoma State University in Oklahoma City with her various newspaper and advertising internships, and how she came by her impressive contacts list becomes clear.
“I’ve done four of the five degrees,” she says, laughing. “Either I can’t figure out what I want to do, or I just want to do everything. I know what each discipline is looking for. I don’t have awards in different things. I don’t have a well-known name, though a lot of people do know who I am. I’ve got tons of contacts. I just went out there and did stuff. I wanted to see what I was interested in, and I’ve always come back to higher education. I do think everything has kind of culminated into this one position.”
Spencer has as many ambitions and goals as she does contacts.
“I’m going to help students get the internships and get them the jobs and help them write great résumés and cover letters,” she says. “We’re going to be having workshops on all these different things. We’ll be working on improving confidence and building an image. We’re revamping the Web site to make it easier to go through so students in a particular discipline – say, PR – can go in and say, ‘OK, I just want to go in and look at the PR internships,’ and they can click on PR and scroll down. That’s what it’s all about in the long run, helping the students.”
Spencer has big goals for Gaylord College: She wants it to be the go-to place for media outlets, she says.
“It’s a big job,” she says. “It’s a big vision. It’s a challenge for me. I’ve been chomping at the bit to get in here, let me tell you. I loved my last job and loved working with the students at OSU, but, wow, what an opportunity.”
Blevens says the Student Services Center will continue building its programs while maintaining its focus on serving as the primary conduit between the college and its students. The three women and one man now providing those services and working together to figure out more and better ways to help students will make that happen, he says.
“They have a passion for this work and a commitment for helping students and making a difference in students’ lives,” he says.
And that, no matter how you define the word, is what service is all about.
