and the upcoming election, how the student union is still like that hub. And so what are you seeing or how are you seeing the involvement that the union is having to play a part? Jessica, one of the things I would say is, and we may get into this a bit more, but maybe five or six years ago, we began to see again, how global and local and national issues absolutely affect our students in profound ways, right? That has to do with social media and other things, right? Bring it in, but it also has to be with what it is to be at an institution just outside of Washington, DC, right? You potentially are gonna be able to speak at a national stage about whatever issues that you find important. So we also recognize that oftentimes in issues of free expression on campus, we were putting police on the front line and we wanted to do that differently. So one of the things that happened in the union was we started talking about what if we could create a response team of faculty and staff that were trained, that could be on the front line with students, learn de-escalation of circumstances, how you provide support and help for free expression to occur in a way that allows a variety of voices. At the same time we were doing that, we were also talking about something called narrative four, right? Where we could sort of help people have story exchanges. And part of that got even more important after COVID, right? Because people didn't know how to be in each other's company necessarily. And so I think the student union, we've become really important across the campus with regard to issues of free expression, with regard to how do you get students to operate in community. And so as local and national and international issues heat up, the sense of comfort, the training that our folks have had puts us on the front lines often of campus issues or world issues that are affecting our students and staff. And I think that's made the union not be of a building necessarily, but be the ethos of a place. Well, thank you so much for that. You know, as I've been learning more about you and the work that you do, how do you leverage your relationships with the students and the campus partners to foster that sense of community? I mean, here you were on the weekend, working with the Student Government Association. So how do you create, how do you leverage those relationships and how do you then kind of lean on those, especially when you have some significant events that are happening throughout the country and internationally? Absolutely. Jessica, one of the things I would say is I'm the product of a small liberal arts college as an undergrad. And so I was absolutely the beneficiary of engagement on the part of my faculty members and student affairs staff members who knew my story and often would point me in the direction of resources or would engage in these meaningful life advising kind of sessions. I brought that mindset into the work I do at a large research one institution, right? In order to sort of help students become leaders or to engage the campus, you have to be in relationship with people. And what I would say of my own home institution is that this is a really relational place. So for instance, when we wanted to talk about could we evolve a posting policy, a single posting policy on campus last spring because we all had our own rules and we would benefit from a single policy. Like you call your friends, the associate dean in that college, the director of libraries and that, right? And you bring people together and often the reason they come is because you ask them. And then you begin to sit around that table with some student leaders and others and you begin to sort of let those great minds percolate and come up with something. And I think we are a better institution when we evolve policy between folks who are seeing their part of the campus and then bringing that to a conversation of both. I also think that's very true of students. I have benefited from students who held the mirror up to my face and said, do you really think this is working, Marcia? Or, you know, advocated to have a program that we were sponsoring end so that they could do a teach-in, right? There are moments when you are the beneficiary of students' activism, but there are also ways in which the fact they tell you what they're going to do and you get to be in that conversation is because you've already crafted relationships. You know, I think this last year in particular, I have been in awe of our student leaders as they wrestle with issues in Gaza, in Israel, and also in Ukraine, right? But that it isn't just a story of their, it is a story of their own hearts. And so taking time to listen to those stories becomes really important. Remembering students' names, asking how they're doing, both academically, maybe at home, you know, how's their family, if family is affected by what's happening in the world. I think we are better people when we can make this institution work for students who are attempting to wrestle with global and local issues that are affecting them deeply. And that affects their ability to be scholars and leaders. And so how do you call on friends at that point in academic settings to help the student who's struggling because the effect of global world, national issues is so great on them? And there are extraordinary allies across the campus who step into that. Wonderful. You know, if you could maybe share what, maybe an example of, you know, something where it could have went left, but when you stepped in because of that relationship, it ended up being okay. Because the folks that are gonna participate in this are gonna be a mix of like advancement professionals and educational leaders. And so some advancement professionals may not have the privilege of being, you know, on campus, but, you know, being able to know someone like you to be able to, you know, understand the importance. So do you have something that maybe you could share with the group? Sure. One is, I just wanna give kudos to my friends that are both leaders of institutions and in the world that interfaces with alumni and parents and others, because I think you've been on the front lines too, right? That in some ways the emails and other things that are coming your direction that have demands about how the institution should go right, left or forward, that is weighed heavy on staff. And I recognize that. You know, an example I would give you is there was a moment this past spring when students at the University of Maryland wanted to voice their concerns about what was happening in the Middle East. And I think we were also watching what was happening nationally, right? And so you see the markers at your own institution and you wonder if this is, right? And I happen to be blessed by some amazing colleagues, a person named Kedrick in particular, and he had gone out with me, James McShay, my immediate supervisor, we'd gone out to talk to about 100 and some students. And you make this spur of the moment decision, right? The space you're sitting in is reserved by somebody else. Like you can't be here, but where can we go? So that together we can figure this out. And I remember, you know, taking a group of about a hundred students to a different location. And one of the things I said is, I'm gonna stay with you all day and we'll figure this out, but we're all going home tonight, right? And I think particularly because of what was happening at other institutions where, you know, they would tell you after the fact that they sort of drew a line in the sand and said, don't cross this line. And it said to us, you know, as long as you're talking to students, keep talking. You know, my best strategy at that point was we're gonna stay in this conversation, but we're all going home today. And there were moments where I wasn't so sure that was the most brilliant idea I'd ever had. But I also know that like there were colleagues who were in that with us. You know, I happen to have 13 colleagues who are chaplains who sometimes will step in depending on who the community or communities are. They were present, other colleagues from student affairs. We were improvising, right? But in that improvisation, we probably started building a foundation for what would be this way in which we would engage with each other and that we would go home at night. You know, like I loved later in the spring, students would say, I'd say, all right, you guys, it's like nine o'clock, we're going home. By then they knew I lived outside of Baltimore and they'd be like, oh yeah, you gotta get to Baltimore. And, you know, then other colleagues from student affairs would come out at nine 30 to make sure that, you know, folks were on their way or might need a ride. And it really became this way in which we honored the boundaries, but we also honored that we were in this to try to figure it out collectively. And, you know, for the most part, I was, again, in awe of my colleagues, but also student leaders. That's fantastic. That's wonderful. You know, with the Adele H. Stamp, you have a lot of scholarships that you guys- We do. Offer, yeah, like over a hundred, which is wonderful. And so in your experience with donors, what do you think is probably the most effective way to engage them as we're, you know, they're watching and seeing, you know, how the dialogue, excuse me, about these contentious issues. So how do you, you know, what is some of your advice about engaging or communicating with donors? Yeah, it's interesting. I do think one of the advantages I have sometimes is that I may have known some of the donors for a very long time, right? And I may have even known them when they were undergrads. So there's a reference point that we can talk about issues that may have been particularly important in the generation they were a part of. In other ways, it's really important to just listen, right? Similar to students, they've got a viewpoint or a frustration that they need to just tell you. And like to make it disappear is probably totally wrong. But to listen, there are ways in which I think sometimes we have to say to each other, we're gonna disagree on this, or they're all our students, right? You'll come to maybe that conclusion. I also recognize, like for the last 30 years, I've been on the board for the Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington, DC. I hang out with Vietnam era vets, right? And I know that one of the things they would tell you is people told them when they came home from Vietnam to not talk about your war experience, put it away. No one wants to hear it. This is an unpopular war, right? And it festered, and it took decades before they could finally tell their story in a way that people really appreciated their courage and bravery. I think sometimes when we tell people, we don't wanna hear you, no one cares, it festers. And so how do we make space for that conversation, right? And it may mean that trustee meetings or that you stop the forward momentum of meetings and you actually take time. And maybe it has to be structured, right? In a way that allows folks to speak to some one other person or a small group, and then it gets a little bit bigger and gets a little bit bigger, because I think some folks will be silenced just by the size of the group. But I think if you don't allow people to share their stories or their dismay or how their identities influence the way they see this, I'm often reminded that, probably one of the most powerful things you can do is say, tell me more, right? Tell me more, as opposed to, here's our institutional statement, tell me no more, right? And I think for donors in particular, they wanna be heard. one of the large groups of people we have scholarships for are veteran students. And I think in the waning days of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were ways in which institutions were moving in directions that folks who had given their last full measure, some of them, friends of those individuals, were in our classrooms and were hearing things in a classroom about an unpopular war again, and they felt like no one cared. And I think sometimes you have to recognize that the institution speaks, even if you're not saying anything, right? It happens in classrooms, it happens in, you know, dialogue, in messages that get assigned to you as an institution that may not have ever been said. So I think how do you create space for a very refereed, almost, dialogue between advancement people, donors, whoever that organization is, because their voices need to be heard. That sounds, you know, it's really interesting how you talk about giving people space and to have that active listening. You know, you've run a lot of different teams, you have a fantastic team. How do you teach or how do you guide your staff in being able to have those types of skills, be it if they're engaging with, you know, the various donors to the stamp or even the students? What are some of your thoughts around developing your staff? Yeah, at some level you model it, right? And in other ways, you teach them skills. So Narrative 4 is a good example. Ten years ago, a group of artists and musicians, among them Sting and Colin McCann, started this what would become a global program that afforded people these story exchanges that were structured and an opportunity to put empathy in action, right? That I was going to listen to your story and you were going to listen to mine. And we were going to go into a small group and I was going to represent Jessica's story. For that brief moment, I got to hold your story and you represented mine. And then we took all the lessons we learned from that exchange and we left our stories in the hands of the owner. We've done that with parents on parents philanthropy boards. I use it as a pedagogy in the classroom. Our students that are coming in sort of an undecided major are going to do that. It is one example of where when I teach a group of staff members to facilitate Narrative 4, like a couple hour, three hour training about facilitation, it's not just about Narrative 4. It's also how do you afford people an opportunity to share their story? What does empathy and action look like? How do you provide resource to people who don't recognize you got to give the story back? Like it isn't yours to own and share. So I think sometimes it's the short term thing. I think professional development associations become really critical, right? So, you know, institutes a case does gives you a set of skills that maybe you're thinking is going to be useful in my day to day work. But in reality, if I translate it slightly, I take it into this other arena. Or maybe it's what you put in the, again, the agenda for that training, because the world is changing. The other piece that I would say is. We also live in interesting times where events and world and local issues and national issues affect the people who are working, right? And you want to you want to speak out, but you're in this really difficult place because you are the institution. And so how do you even talk about self-care? How do you talk about what you do with that pent up frustration you're feeling because of who you are and how you're standing in the space? So I think those are important things to even talk about. Sounds good. You know, as you guys are or as you, but as schools across this country are preparing for. I'm sorry, are preparing for the election. What are you sharing with your staff about, you know, potential crisis or just, you know, just in that aspect of what we don't know, what we don't know, but we know we have to be prepared? What are some of the things that you're sharing? That's right. So I chaired a committee here at the University of Maryland this summer just looking at, you know, sort of how do we prepare for the fall, both elections, protests, that kind of thing. And one of the things we did as we thought about elections was both make sure you've got really good resourceful site. So we happen to have a really engaging TerpsVote website that helps students that want to vote or help students who may be out of state know when they've got to register. But, you know, it takes you to TurboVote. It gives you an opportunity to be a poll worker, all of that. So engagement allows you to learn. So how do you make all that information readily available? The other is we have an elections website on campus that's picking up news articles that may include our faculty and staff that's giving you information about just all the stuff that links into how to vote and where to vote and all the rest of it. Those resourceful places, I think, are really critical because I think this may be the first voting instance for some students and first presidential election for those who may have voted at midyear. The other piece is polling places. So how do we prepare campus for polling places? We have two actually on campus. The other piece is what do we do on the front side that makes you an educated voter? Because goodness gracious, you can watch, you know, social media and think you know everything, but you may not really know the truth about everything. And so, you know, what are the ways we have a working group of faculty and staff and students who plan everything from debate watches to ways in which we're going to come to your freshman class and teach you what we know. Having said all that, there was a session just last week that ACE was doing and conjunction with university attorneys, you know, we're also trying to help faculty and staff who happen to be state employees. Right. There is an overlay of academic freedom, but we're state employees. Know what the ethics are, right, of being a state employee in an election season. So it's really helpful to walk through that because, again, an employee may be the first time they're working at a state institution or this institution. So helping you to understand that, including, you know, for faculty, I think the conversation about in the classroom, outside of the classroom. And that was a big discussion in that piece that was being done last week by university attorneys and ACE. The thing I would say is our school, our school of public health is also planning some things in the aftermath of the election. You know, in 2016, after the election, we had planned to do, you know, like come, if you wish, lunch and just anybody who wanted to come, who needed to be in community to talk about the aftermath of the election. It was a very interesting launch because I think it was far more emotional for so many people than they had anticipated. And I was grateful we were there. So school of public health, the folks in Terpsvote and other are planning events that will happen in those hours and days after the election, because I think, you know, after any major occurrence, there are ways in which people feel it personally and need to wrestle with that. I think it's a combination of education, equipping yourself with information so that you can be a good body electorate. You know, the one thing I would say is, how do you also think about, and I think about all your colleagues that are in the work that you all do that are speaking for the institution, right, that, you know, a lot of institutions have decided not to say much. Right. And so in not saying much, you're probably saying a lot. Right. And so how do you have those football games where, you know, donors are coming in conjunction with, you know, staff that's working in development and suddenly everybody's talking politics? And how do you both enter into those conversations with some knowledge and some skill, but also exit to care for yourself? Because it's another occasion where, you know, maybe you bit your tongue the whole time you're having that conversation with someone you really admire, but you see the world differently. That's awesome. I'm going to do my final, my final, which is a follow up to that. So say that you have staff who have experience, you know, engaging in a conversation where they've had to bite their tongue and they've exited and then they come to you and they want to talk about it. Can you maybe speak to those who supervise staff and how to engage with, you know, a person who's out there sometimes on the front lines and helping them as they, because we're dealing with a lot of young folks, too, in this space. And it's, there's a challenge of, you know, of that. Maybe what's some advice you could give to those managers? Yeah, one is, I think, you know, my most memorable supervisors were the ones that thought about the tasks I was supposed to do, but nurtured the relationship at the same time. And so, yes, we've got these 15 things we need to do by tomorrow. But what I just experienced at that football game or trustee meeting or whatever has left me like really depleted. And so we need to talk about that so that you can begin to do the kind of tasks that are best approaching deadline. Some of that is going to be one on one, right, with a lot of those sort of opening questions about, tell me, you know, what's making your heart hurt right now? Or, you know, if you could change one thing about the event we just did yesterday, what would you change? Or, right, not assuming that they had a fabulous or not so fabulous time, but, but really trying to give them space to say how they're reacting or interacting with you. The other piece that I would say is. How do you equip young professionals to not only have the conversation with their immediate supervisor, but to have that conversation with colleagues in a way that is both good at listening and also good at owning your own perspective? It is, you know, one of the things I often say is sometimes I think we want to pretend like we can speak for everyone and particularly in identity based politics. Right. I'm speaking for all people who, you know, are right handed or whatever. I think we've got to teach people to use a lot of I statements. How do you help, you know, colleagues say, tell me how you're doing. Right. Like leaning into, tell me about you. And, you know, owning that not every instance is easy. I know that last spring, one of the things I said was I brought 42 years at the University of Maryland into this. Like that's going to be different than somebody who's doing this for the first time. So one other thing was, I would say, come with me. I'd like you to sit on my park bench with me because I just want to talk with you. And quite honestly, in the response to members who are out at student protest, the relationships that got built between two colleagues who didn't know each other until they were both assigned to work the same hour gave folks an opportunity to be in community. And so, you know, looking for those spaces where you witness what you witness together and maybe have those moments when you can almost process it on the spot. I was on my undergraduate institution's board of trustees, and I remember the president of the institution at the time said to me, Marsha, you will never be my biggest donor. And he was right. Like I would be very generous, but I would never be as big as donor. But he said, you know, higher education better than any of these folks. Right. And so I think we bring gifts, right, to talk about ways in which we may have witnessed things like this, ways in which it requires a certain skill or language or sort of community of care. And so part of what you know about higher education, part of what you know about what happened 10 years ago, five years ago, last year, is really important, particularly with a new professional who's walking into this for the first time without those reference points. Wonderful. Oh, my gosh, this has been perfect. I want to say thank you so much for the time. I'm going to stop recording.

student union

free expression

voter resources

community dialogue

political climates

staff well-being