Nice to meet you! I'm Nick Weber and I am a current higher education professional with expertise in Housing Operations and Student Involvement.
As a higher education professional, I value a willingness to learn, opportunities for improvement, and technological integration. I currently play a big role in the housing assignments software for a residential population of 5,200 students and I have learned through my experience that I truly value finding ways to make technological business practices for students more equitable for students. I value the opportunities to change policies to keep up with our ever-changing student population. I thrive on any ability I have to improve a technological process to better meet the practical needs for students during their stay on campus. Yes, I see the value in the programmatic facet of higher education, but I find myself working my best with operational functions that keep the university experience up and running. In terms of internal factors, I truly think that my approach to higher education has been shaped from my experiences as a student leader on campus. I believe my professional experiences in residence life has been a submersion into the operational end of higher education and what it means to work with students as customers while simultaneously providing an educational experience too. I think having to walk that line as an educator and operational professional helps me e much more direct in my interactions with students. Externally, I do feel there can be something said about my limitations in only experiencing college as a professional or student at just Montclair State. While my institutional knowledge is extensive, a part of me is limited in only working with this specific campus. I often find myself having open discussions with students that tend to get to the point much sooner than an interaction with an educator would go. I am very service oriented and work to give students all their options to resolve an issue and then challenge them to solve it independently. My personal narrative that students are often challenged to work through independence for the first time definitely influences my work. I am very aware that I have to approach our upper-class students differently than our incoming group. I am very patient with our new students and always ensure they leave any experience with me as a professional with the tools to succeed on their own. I am very aware that I probably give our upper-class students a less patient experience as I want to ensure that they leave campus with the ability to navigate their own struggles and face them head on. Whether it is as something as simple as doing a room change or something as complicated as an irate family member, I always work to keep the student at the forefront of reasoning and decision-making in my work. I want to be mindful of where they come from, how they wound up in my office, and what they need to do to resolve their challenges either with me or another more qualified staff member. I often do not see the students I work with, but I am able to get up every day knowing that I was able to provide a resource for a students and enabled them to make their own educated decision during their time on campus. I rest easy knowing I am a problem solver for students and more than often a guiding resource to get them to their own finish line. I would say that my experiences at Montclair State University, both as a student and professional, have truly shaped my approach to diversity as a leader. I believe because of how in-depth I was educated and exposed to diversity across the board on this campus has truly taught me to think in a much broader scope than my own as a cisgender gay male. I have been exposed to the different types of diversity within students I work with, I have learned to approach students expecting them to be so much more than they appear. I expect the students I work with to be an intersection of a handful identities, no matter how many they choose to share with me. Specifically, my professional experiences in working with students with diverse levels of ability, financial status, sexual orientation and gender identity uniquely influence my everyday work. |