As orientation season ends another begins, Welcome Week!  Many campuses are buzzing with fresh new faces of faculty, staff, and students.  Their optimistic attitudes about the possibilities of the fall semester, coupled with an eagerness to feel the spirit of campus pride, make this the most vibrant time of year! Welcome Week is a special time.  Welcome Week indicates that its the beginning of a new academic season.  It is also a time where colleges and universities typically have the attention of all its students.  Students often expect to be oriented at the beginning of the year through a host of events and activities that help remind them about the numerous resources and services available. 

I once had a friend, who is a police officer, joke that I must have made someone mad to have the responsibility of working with both parents and Greeks at Ohio State.  Though I had never really given that much thought, from an outside perspective, I can respect that opinion.  As we all know, many of our colleagues on campus have a skeptical view of family involvement in higher education.  When you couple that with the perception about sorority and fraternity communities and the reality of the major risk management issues these organizations have faced, I can understand the sentiment.  As you can guess from my story, I have the relatively unique position of working with both parent and family engagement and our sorority and fraternity community at Ohio State.  Though many family relations offices are in Student Affairs, I have not met many professionals who also directly work with student activities, especially sorority and fraternity life.  Though my role does have unique challenges (if your role doesn’t let me know if you’re hiring) it also offers unique opportunities to strategically engage families.

It’s that time of year…when parents are trying to navigate the mixed emotions that come along with launching their college students. Here’s a poem from AHEPPP Associate Member Kelly Radi that describes one mom’s approach to move-in day. She has generously offered to allow AHEPPP members to share it with your parents and families free of charge, as long as you cite Kelly Radi as the source, mention Out to Sea: A Parent’s Survival Guide to the Freshman Voyage.

As a graduate student in Higher Education and a parent of three middle/high school students, Hanan offers her professional and personal view of this book.

For parents who don’t know how to stay involved with their college student, “The iConnected Parent” guides parents in building this connection by creating close communication and strong relationships. The authors—Abigail Sullivan Moore, a New York Times journalist, and Dr. Barbara K. Hofer, a researcher and psychology professor—provide information from a real data and professional research conducted at Middlebury College and University of Michigan. This book is a mixture of information and advice from professionals and parent experiences about how to stay connected while giving their children own space to grow up.  

I started the Office of Parent and Family Programs at Western Michigan University in 2006 and built it from the ground up. Prior to 2006, we had a dues-based Parents Association that had about 400 members. The current database of family members connected to the department is over 17,000 and it is now known as the Office of Family Engagement. I was a one-person office up until this past year when I was given a graduate assistant who works 20 hours per week. I am sharing this insight with you from the perspective of “lessons learned” in the hope that you can find a nugget of advice from my experience.

Establishing a partnership with your campus development office can be key to providing resources to enhance your office and student success. Depending on your reporting structure and campus priorities, you may need to first determine where current partnerships exist. Check in with your supervisor to understand who in your division may already have existing relationships with development staff.

In August of 2018, I moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan from North Carolina to pursue my Master’s degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs Leadership. As a recent graduate and convenient store cashier, I had no idea what I was getting myself into but I was excited to take on the challenge. I was lucky enough to not only have the opportunity to be in graduate school, but also to have a job that would give me experience and help me pay for school…but could I actually do the work?

CAS Standards and national family program surveys provide evidence that parent/family programs nationwide are increasing in both number and scope in higher education, most markedly since the beginning of the 21st century.  Since its inception ten years ago, the Gonzaga Parent/Family Office has established an excellent track record in programming, communication, and services for parents and families; because of this established reputation, four years ago it became clear that training student leaders to work with families would benefit the university, students and families.

Program Description

Five years ago, the University of Houston joined hundreds of colleges and universities across the country who began to hire full-time professionals with mental health backgrounds in their Deans of Students offices to support students struggling with their mental health.

Many people underestimate the impact of sending a written message rather than a text or email. As parent and family program professionals, we are well aware that a card or package from home can change the course of a student’s day, week, or even semester.

Here at The College of Wooster, our students are invited to participate in the Friends of International Students (FIS) Host Family Program. This is a non-residential host family program with the goal of connecting students with local families who will support their experience here in Wooster and to provide an opportunity for cultural exchange. It is run through the International Student Services branch within the Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) here at the College, with the help of a number of volunteer coordinators who are active within the Wooster community.

For many parents and families, especially for those with first-year students or those who are first-time college parents, Family Weekend is an eagerly anticipated opportunity to reconnect and enjoy time together while exploring their student’s “home away from home.” For some students, however, Family Weekend can be an uncomfortable or even painful reminder of family who will not be visiting, whatever the reason. Especially on a small campus of about 2,000 students, it is quite obvious who has visitors and who does not.

As I reflect on another year of Family Weekend at the University of Houston, I am reminded of all the people on campus I am lucky enough to call campus partners who make my job (and my life) easier. In a role that has Parent and Family Programs as fifty-percent of my responsibility, I came in knowing that in order to be successful and serve parents and families effectively I would need help. In fact, my sanity depended on it! 

Like many of us, I spent the last few weeks of the summer leading our New Parent Orientation, responding to Facebook posts (what size sheets to they need again?), or speaking to parents on the phone.  While their inquiries vary, I really feel that they are all asking one basic question.  How am I supposed to do this?   How do I both stay involved and detach myself?  How do I support them when I don’t see them every day? What should I do when they encounter a struggle?  My experience is that while students seem nervous at the beginning of their time in college, the parents are even more nervous about the transition—their own transition to parent of a college student. 

Established in 2006, the Dinner Dialogues program helps create a meaningful experience for students at the University of South Carolina. For some students, it can be difficult to create connections on campus. The Dinner Dialogues program was created to offer a unique way for students and university instructors to interact throughout the semester, in a more casual atmosphere than the classroom setting. It also allows students to get off campus with their peers and have genuine conversations with the people they see two to three times a week–about more than an assignment. 

Because of its terrific reputation, the program has grown from 20 Dinner Dialogues in 2006 to 117 in fall 2017. Supported by the Parents Annual Fund, professors can apply to host their undergraduate class in their home for a meal, receiving reimbursement up to $10 for each student. 

To meet the needs of our largest international population and serve our domestic Spanish-speaking families, the University of Wisconsin-Madison launched a variety of translated services in Chinese and Spanish, including translated websites, a phone and email service in Spanish and translated newsletter content. 

At the University of North Dakota (UND), our email newsletter is something that has been sent out monthly for many years. Parents have always appreciated the content and never complained about the format, yet the emails were simply coming through to parents as text in an email. There was no color, no photos, etc. Our Marketing and Creative Services team on campus had recently launched a weekly student email called “Student Life Weekly.” I envied how colorful it was and how much of an impact it was having on our students. Believe it or not, after conducting numerous focus groups and surveys, our students said that they prefer to receive information from UND via email. Hence, Student Life Weekly was launched.

Do you remember the thrill of opening your mailbox and having snail mail addressed to you? Not a bill. Not a coupon for the new restaurant nearby. A letter from someone with your name on it. It brought such a sense of joy each time it happened to me growing up. Now today, I think our inboxes seem to have adopted the same thrill. When it’s not junk mail, spam, or another all campus email about the big game; a personal email from someone special seems to provoke the same glimmer of joy as that intentional letter once did. So here at University of Memphis, we offer parents and family members the chance to support their student and give a little nudge of encouragement through our Hugs from Home program so that their student's inbox can have that special subject line: You have a Hug from Home!