Meet Haley: Higher education and student affairs

I'm from Kalamazoo originally so I've been here like my entire life and I did my undergrad program here. WMU is just a good like mix of feeling like big and small at the same time and I think like Kalamazoo in general is kind of like that. And I'm a more of an introvert so I like that combination of like taking me a little bit out of my comfort zone. but at the same time like being familiar with WMU so that was attractive to me especially for grad school.

I was applying for grad school in 2020 and it was just weird, scary and I didn't know what to expect. But the HESA program has been the main reason I love grad school and I would recommend it. Even for someone like me who doesn't know if they want to build a career in student engagement yet, the program is extremely versatile and I feel well prepared for like other things too. 

I had the opportunity to be a learning assistant in a race and gender issues course in the philosophy department at Western so it was a really cool opportunity given  I did my undergrad in philosophy and communication studies. Being part time learning assistant didn't quite meet the requirements of a field experience, so I continued in a position that I had held in the admissions office. But I learned some new things and did more like shadowing and projects over the summer.

I advise an RSO called WMU's Campus Activities Board (CAB) as part of my role in the admissions office. I'm helping them create a podcast that we're going to call "podcast CAB" where it'll just be like a quick blurb that'll air on our campus radio station every week. The core goal with this podcast is for CAB members to give them like a platform to market and promote themselves to the rest of the university. But also bring more of a human element into their message, where they're like "here's my name, here's my role in CAB, and here's why I love it." Just like letting the other students on campus get to know them more as people. I'm hopeful the podcast will survive beyond me after I graduate.

WMU offers something called a WMU Signature and it's something that you do as a project that you submit to the university and get  a specialty put on your degree. So the capstone in the program isn't actually something that goes on your degree but basically what I've been telling people is if they coordinate their capstone with a WMU Signature they can have that like relevant pathway on their degree. They then can explain to employers like yeah this was my project in arts and culture. There's like eight different ones and they're cool because it kind of gives you a way to like prove that you did that capstone project right on your degree.