Kristin Koch had a bigger role than normal at the recent National Association for Campus Activities Institute.
Koch, the Director of Student Involvement at Peace, helped lead the NACA Programming Board Institute as a recruited facilitator. The event took place the week of July 22 at the University of Louisville.
Koch was personally requested by the Association to serve as the Advisor Facilitator at this conference to teach other advisors from around the country the best practices in programming, advising students, and event planning.
NACA is for anyone who works in a campus activities role at any college. Koch serves on the research and scholarship committee for NACA, which looks at current research in campus activities, funds grants for those who want to do research in student activities and makes sure people are up to date on what’s going on on college campuses.
NACA has a Program Board institute as well as a Student Government Institute. Koch has attended NACA conferences in previous years and presented at both the program board and Student Government Institute.
“It was fun,” Koch said. “I would say my favorite part about my job here is supervising people, specifically full-time staff. It was fun to be the advisor facilitator because I got to be the person who walked them through the institute.”
Koch explained a lot of the graduates who attend are fresh out of college and in their first job, or at least in the first three years of their careers.
“Just being able to do the curriculum with them and also hear what is hard about their jobs, what are they facing right now,” Koch said. “Just hearing what challenges they are facing, give them advice.”
Even though she was in a different role as a facilitator, Koch was still able to learn a bunch while in a different role.
“I am still in activities, I still meet regularly with students, so I’m not super removed from students in my role as a director,” Koch said. “I supervise someone who also is fresh out of school and is a new professional. While I work directly with students, she works that much more directly with them and is more on the ground with them. The biggest thing I learned was how to better supervise and support her.”
