By Debra M. Benton, Immediate Past-President of Ohio ACRAO and University Registrar at Ohio University.
Ohio ACRAO held its 89th annual meeting October 7-9, 2015, at Maumee Bay State Park on the shores of Lake Erie. OACRAO held its first meeting in 1926 and has been meeting annually ever since except for 1934.
In an effort to reduce costs OACRAO has been meeting in the Ohio state parks on a fairly regularly basis and the members seem to love it! This year we were able to dine outside, enjoy a campfire by the lake, meets some birds and reptiles, take a night hike, and be led on a morning nature walk! The state parks invite a relaxed atmosphere and encourage members to spend
time getting to know and learning from one another.
This year we were fortunate to have AACRAO President-Elect Paul Kyle join us for the full conference. In addition, Brad Myers, AACRAO Past-President, was with us, too. We are fortunate that Ohio has so many members involved in AACRAO as it makes our organization stronger.
We featured our first ever AACRAO Keynote Address. Paul Kyle gave a very interesting presentation on WWII Navajo Code Talkers: Lessons Learned on
How to Recognize and Change Institutional Culture. It provided some great history lessons and also made us think about how our campuses may be perceived by our students who are navigating the higher education environment. Do we talk in code? Should we change how information is provided to our students?
Hopefully we have all thought about how we can decode the information on our campuses so that our students understand.
Other highlights from the conference included workshops on Veteran and Military Connected Students, and College Credit Plus – Where are we now? For each workshop we were fortunate to have experts from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Ohio Department of Higher Education, respectively.
Lastly, we had 40+ members share their expertise by providing sessions across a broad number of topics. We had presentations on One Stops; Speaking in Public; Why You Need to be a Data Wizard in the Registrar’s Office; What’s in a Name – Implementation of Preferred Name and Pronoun; Strategic Staffing: Can I Clone My Best Employee; Admissions and In-State Residency; Domino’s Can Track a Pizza, but Can You Track Your Enrollment Goals; State Authorization Update; Best Practices in LGBT Record Management; Transfer Students Panel on Best Practices; and DACA-Current State/Future State. Those are just some of the sessions offered. Many of these presentations were outstanding!
Ohio ACRAO also revealed their brand new website at the annual conference. Thanks to our AACRAO colleagues our website is now part of the AACRAO website. We want to thank AACRAO for their support of the state and regional organizations. We are fortunate to have a national organization that is so supportive of the state and regional organizations. Please check out our website at http://www.aacrao.org/state-regional-aacrao/ohio and provide us any feedback.
For me personally, this was the 25th annual meeting since I joined in 1991. I believe I have missed only 1 or 2 meetings in the 25 years. Serving as President this past year has been a great experience. I’ve got to meet more members and helped to guide the organization toward the future. I was fortunate to attend OACRAO as a new graduate student in the College Student Personnel program at Ohio University in 1991. Then Ohio University registrar, Larry Terrell, was the OACRAO President that year, and my mentor, Bill Jones, encouraged my participation. I am so thankful that those two men introduced me to this organization where I have formed friendships that will last a lifetime. I hope that you are reaching out to your mentees and graduate students to encourage participation in your state or regional organization.