UWL Assistant Director

Dear Brenton and Kayla,

Congratulations! If you are reading this, it means that you are a Co-Director of UW Leaders. These transition documents are meant to help you find your way and manage the program. We have included information about our own experiences running UW Leaders, including what we wish we knew. You may already know a lot of what is in this document; however, we have included everything we can think of off the top of our heads because we know how difficult it can be to come in as a new Co-Director and have a thousand things on your mind. We should have shown you the Google drive folder we put all past transition docs we can find in. When you make transition docs yourself, feel free to copy paste or even just add onto this one. This will ensure that information does not get lost in the cracks of UW Leaders between Director teams. Information that is not important or relevant at the time may become extremely relevant with the development of new projects and with the changing trajectory of the program. Therefore, it is important to keep the history of UW Leaders in one place when handing the program over to the next team.

Transitioning is no easy task, and I know that it might seem overwhelming at the beginning, but know that with your co-director by your side, you two will be able to navigate all of this together! Don’t let all of the logistical stuff catch you off guard: I know that both of your visions of the program will shine through if you give enough care, intentionality, and energy to it. As the past director and assistant director said to us, this program has 21 years of tradition embedded in it, but that tradition becomes even richer with the improvement and innovation that you have the power to bring to it. I encourage you to be open and embrace the changes that the program needs – take charge and be confident in your ability to lead, but also take the time to ask questions and ask for guidance from your co-director and the other mentors! If you continue to lead with values of a growth mindset, intersectionality, and empowerment, you will have a whole team that will support you!

The most valuable thing you and your Co-director can be is a team – communicate, listen to each other, and support one another in your goals! Your lived experiences and knowledge are so valuable to this program, if you share them with your Co-director it will make the program so much stronger. There will be some difficult decisions and situations you will encounter. While it might be a little rough learning how to navigate conflict together, I know that if you communicate and be honest in your thoughts and beliefs, it will create trust that will make navigating these situations a bit easier. No challenge will be insurmountable if you collectively tackle it, and go in with the mindset that overcoming those challenges is what gives the program it’s leadership essence. I’ve grown so much through this program, and I know you both have too.

It’s been amazing seeing both of you grow throughout the years and Ronnifer are so incredibly excited to see what you do next year as UWL co-directors! We wish you the best of luck, Kayla and Brenton, and we know that both of your passions for this program will empower you to make this program a truly warm and inspiring community, as it has been for us this year. If you ever need anything– advice, reassurance, or a coffee break to bounce ideas off of –  we are only a text or call away! 

With that, please know that we believe in you! You got this! And if you choose to read the advice below, know that we are speaking from our own experiences and from what we know about UW Leaders in the past; what you choose to do with UW Leaders next year is your decision, and we know it’s going to be great. 

Best,

Ronnifer

#TeamRonnifer2020

**Note that everything is case sensitive**

UW Net ID

• accesses email and catalyst. You’ll need to go in and change the name to say “UW Leaders Assistant Director Jennifer Li” because my name will still be on it if you don’t!

User: asuwola@uw.edu

Password: Leader$lead!

ASUW Slack:

• Communication w/ ASUW

User: asuwola@uw.edu

Password: UWLeaders2018!

Doodle Poll

• Used for scheduling for interview times
• Can also “When2Meet” but you don’t need an account for that and that’s better for small group trying to find a communal time

User: asuwola@uw.edu

Password: JamesDean2014

ASUW 121 Office

• Code: 1952, This might change next year so I would ask someone in that office!

**Note that everything is case sensitive**

Website ( http://uwleaders.asuw.org/)

• Log in with your ASUW NetID

Instagram

• Post pics of Mentor staff, retreats, app deadlines, whatever your heart desires!

User: uwleaders

Password: Leader$lead!

Facebook 

• Use your personal Facebook account, you will be added as an administrator
• Use your personal Facebook account to make cohort page

HUB Reservations (http://hubres.uw.edu)

• Check w/ HUB to make quarterly group sign-up times

User: asuwlead@uw.edu

Password: leadersuw18

Free Classrooms (https://registrar.washington.edu/classrooms/reservation-guidelines/)

• Email times@uw.edu with dates, times, and potential rooms

Evan’s School Reservations (http://evans.uw.edu/about/reserve-room)

• Reserving the Parrington Commons or any space in Parrington

User: uwleaders

Password: lead1213

Resource Center (Printing Code)

• Used to print and make copies in the Student Resource Center (First floor of the HUB)

Code: asuwlead-uwl

SAO Office  (Printing Code)

• Used to print and make copies in the SAO Office

Code: 1271

ASUW Office Printer

• Located in HUB 121
• Need to connect your computer to printer w/ the ISBN number taped on the printer. I would recommend this for any last minute/emergency meeting printing!

• Here is your Transition Folder! (you can also access this in Google Drive)
• Attendance– I like to use a google spreadsheet so that I can easily check people in during meetings and make note of missed meetings when they email me ahead of time. I’ve put this in the “Transition: Amber to Jennifer” folder in google drive. I would recommend establish either yourself or Roshni as the one in charge of attendance so that only one person is dealing with missed meetings and keeping track of time conflicts! Be strict on this! If someone tells you by word of mouth that they wont be there, ask them to shoot you a quick email so you have something in writing to reference! If someone asks their mentor to pass the message along, tell their mentor to have them email you. Takes a few weeks but people catch on and it makes your life easier and holds the Leaders accountable. I was also strict on having them email me with advance notice but they could text me if it was an emergency, but throughout the year I had people texting me right before the meetings. If you’re stricter with this earlier on, you might not have that happen. If you don’t establish that your email is the place to have conversations about attendance then your email, texts, FaceBook messages, etc will be flooded. If I noticed people missing a lot of meetings, I would contact them and check-in!
• I would also take time for yourself to establish boundaries. Give people a time when they could message you for different things. I had people texting me at 1am or emailing me at that time expecting me to respond back. I would respond the next morning, but if you’re uncomfortable with them texting you that late, tell them! You have agency and your own schedule too!
• Social Media– Marí and I split responsibility with posting on the Facebook and Mentor/Leader groups. I would make sure you and Roshni talk about who is going to do this throughout the year, as we fell behind with instagram posts. Nat and Ali last year tried to make 3-4 posts a week about programing, leadership practices, etc and I wish we had done this! From the start, it would be good to establish a primary mode of communication with mentors– we used a Facebook page and Group Chat for this, but you could easily use a text chat (so everyone has each other’s numbers) and can call each other. This also might improve mentor team cohesion!
• Weekly Emails– We send out 1 email a week- 1 on Tuesdays with reminders for the Wednesday meeting with announcements, action items, and info for the next week. Marí and I chose one person to send the email (Marí did this)  and then we kept this for the whole year. We struggled with people actually reading the emails, because they would text us in the Facebook chat for details that were included already in the emails. So if they contact you and clearly didn’t read the email, kindly refer them to their inbox. That way, people will know that they should pay attention to these!
• One-on-Ones & Surveys– During winter quarter you will meet with every leader for around 20 minutes (I would recommend this time as you have a lot of students to meet with). I used a google sheet for these and scheduled them during my office hours in the 131 office! Though you could easily do these anywhere else.  I would recommend you budget about a two-three weeks for these, if you offer too many times on your google sheet people will pick the latest times and your one-on-ones will drag on foreveeeeeer. I had people cancel on me last minute too, or just not show up (which was annoying, your time is valuable too!) While I didn’t take nots, I suggest you do this because it’s good to gather feedback for mentors. Some of the things I asked I put in a google doc for you in the transition folder. This is a good time to check in about mentor pairings (either how they feel about the process or how they feel about who their mentor pairing is), ask how they felt about the retreat, feedback on programing, etc. Traditionally, we also do one-on-ones in spring quarter but we did not do this this year. I think in the future it would be good to do this to get an idea about how people are exiting the program! I also administered an anonymous survey at the end of winter quarter, this was really great to get honest feedback about workshops, mentor relationships, feelings about program, etc.
• Budget– I kept track of how much we spent and on what on a google spreadsheet. I put a copy of this in the transition folder is well, make sure you create a new one with the updated budget info because your budget increased for next year! THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT BECAUSE ASUW BUDGET OFFICE IS ALWAYS A MONTH BEHIND SO YOU CAN’T ASK HOW MUCH YOU HAVE LEFT.

• Reach out to mentors early on if you want to do mentor spotlights on social media!
• Start planning your Fall Quarter workshops.
  • By September we had an overview of what we wanted to cover each week and which workshops we needed speakers for so we could reach out early.
  • By the start of the school year we had the first two workshops completely fleshed out, and then from then on we tried to plan a week in advance.
• Get ready for Dawg Daze!
  • Message your mentors to see if they’re available to help! We spoke at the ASUW Info sessions hosted by OVO, and then also hosted our own UWL specific events.
  • There’s an ASUW Open House as well that you’ll want to be at!
• Start planning an overview of the year
  • We found it really useful to have a timeline of the year sketched out. This included application open/close dates, when we were reviewing apps, when we were doing interviews, etc. This would also be good to have for your own personal reference! I put a copy of our timeline in your folder as well.

• I would suggest reserving the board room for the Fall mentor training NOW. You can reserve the board room at any time but it books very quickly. We had so much trouble with this as HUB rooms are competitive. There are specific dates that you can reserve HUB rooms (usually 2-3 weeks before the quarter starts ) so I would ask the HUB front desk when those dates are as soon as possible!
• You will be planning mentor workshops with the Director. This involves making the timeline and contacting any guest speakers you would need for the week. You will also get to dictate the flow and content of the curriculum, so consider asking Roshni to meet about that. We planned each meeting 2-3 weeks in advance, depending on if we brought in a speaker. 
  • Weekly mentor meetings range from application prep, workshop planning, to actual training. The actual training this year was not as prominent but I think it is important to talk to mentors about mental health, boundaries, foundations of mentoring, etc. It would be good to bring in professionals for this! Last year they brought in several speakers including Jen Self, Megan from Health and Wellness, as well as Patrick (SAO advisor). You can see our schedule on the google drive.
• We made a mentor resource guide the first week, including mentors photos, what majors they were, what they were involved in, and what they had specialized knowledge in.We also did a running google drive. Like instead of printing agendas and things. This does raise the issue of allowing laptops at meetings that are open all the time. We made people close theirs if we weren’t using them and while that sounds like a lot, it made a huge difference in terms of participation. Set boundaries from the get-go during these meetings as we had a lot of people doing homework and other things. 
• Mentor Retreat (I would recommend doing this closer to the start of the quarter!)
  • We went to the HUB, ordered Chipotle, and created community guidelines, Clifton strengths (talk to Patrick!!!), and some team building activities. You can do roundtables here too!
• APPLICATIONS
  • Goes live the first-second week of school and stays open for a month. Make sure you talk to Roshni and establish what the grading criteria will be. We spent several weeks talking about how apps would be scored so that we were prepared to talk to the mentors about this.
  • You and Mari will each read half of the Leader applications (100+) and assign around 20 per mentor. The D or AD plus 2 mentors should read each app. Our app review process (along with everything else) is in our google drive if you want to see how we did it.
  • Ensure that you also discuss WHO gets an interview (what score must they have) and how will you handle representation (i.e making sure that you have an adequate number of sophomore and transfer juniors being given an interview….these two groups tend to score lower than freshman so if you go purely off scores you will miss them).
  • More information on Applications in the “Leader Apps” folder in your transition folder!
  • Winter Retreat at Camp Killoqua (or as I like to call it, camp Quinoa!) (see cohort feedback)
    • Speak to SAO Advisor (Patrick) about getting the weekend booked ASAP.  You have a large portion of the budget already allocated for this retreat and we increased your budget so that this year you don’t have to ask for donations. If you end up needing extra funds though specifically for the retreat, we reached out to Kimberly (a past alumni of the program), you can see our email to her in my emails! We worked it out so that retreat would be completely free. This needs to be reserved before the end of Fall Quarter.
    • Make schedule (we did this over winter break). You can see our mentor and leader schedules in the Winter Retreat folder in your transition docs!
    • Snacks are a MUST, we bought 3 boxes of chips, 2 bags of cuties, (I wish I would’ve baked goods to bring, make sure you ask for allergies!), assortment of granola bars. We asked mentors to bring their favorite snacks to share! We had just about the right amount of snacks for everyone for the whole weekend, if not extra.
    • Whatever number of people tell you they need sleeping bags/blankets, bring at least 5 extra. People also forgot pillows and things!
    • Cabin Assignments – do google survey to make sure people are comfortable w/ co-ed rooms and assign cabins accordingly. We made sure we deliberately split up people from the same organizations (Greek Life, same Dorms, UniteUW) in order to help build new relationships. Assign 2 mentors per cabin.
    • Talk to Patrick about UCars, he will book them!
    • Costumes for the lip sync competition are a must! We had mentors bring wigs, animal suits, etc.  There are speakers at the Camp! 
  • MAKE SURE TO CHECK THE HUB RES WEBSITE TO SEE WHEN TO RESERVE ROOMS FOR WINTER QUARTER MEETINGS. The date is typically during dead week or finals week. Try and book as many free rooms but its also worth paying for a few medium/large rooms if necessary because HUB rooms are typically more conducive If you can’t get all your rooms in the HUB you can always book free classrooms (info in the log in section) or use mentor connections to rooms in the dorms or department buildings.

• Retreat!
  • Book the ASUW Board room for Friday evening to store bags in. We didn’t do this this year, but instead kept people’s things in our office… that was difficult!
  • We met with mentors about 30 minutes before leaders arrived to give them a run down of the weekend. Mentors had the schedules for the weekend, and leaders were instructed to check in with their cabin leaders on Friday.
  • Like mentioned above, keep snacks stocked. One of the complaints about the location was that the food wasn’t too great, and so we went through snacks pretty quickly. One thing you can think about is doing breakfast on campus at camp Killoqua but doing lunch and dinner by doing off campus food. This will probably save you money as the camp food does cost us and probably tastier! Talk with Patrick as he has ideas about how to get off campus food onto the Killoqua campus! Also think about bringing Emergen-C, hand sanitizer, cold medicine, and tissues because people always get sick at retreat.
  • Round Tables: As hard as it is, you have to keep to a tight schedule. If someone goes longer than the 5 minutes we skipped over questions, and we tried our best to sit near the front so people could clearly see how much time they had left. Try to keep them to 8 people maximum before taking a break. I sat at the back raising my hand to give people a signal that they had 2 minutes left, then cut them off with a zero at the end. You might want to leave 1 minute for questions too!
  • We are huge advocates for Clifton Strengths!! You can decide whether you want to do this or something different next year, but try to incorporate some sort of leadership topic into the retreat. I think people really enjoyed having a good mix of fun but also leadership based activities.

• Workshops:
  • We used the first meeting as a logistical one with a few getting to know you activities, since retreat is the biggest thing on everyone’s minds! You’ll need to divide leaders into cabin groups, and make sure that mentors and leaders exchange contact info during the meeting as well. This is a great opportunity to add everyone to a Facebook Group so everyone knows what is going on for retreat. Last year, they provided folders with printed schedules, a packing list, and a basic overview of the year. All of that can be found here. We just made a packing list and added it to the facebook group and printed it out for the first meeting. 
  • We used second meeting as an opportunity to get to know the mentors better! We also wanted to be really intentional with how we talked about the mentor mentee relationship and discussed boundaries, expectations, etc. It may feel uncomfortable, but we thought it was necessary to directly address what the relationships may or may not look like!
  • This year we also pushed mentor pairings off a week and had leaders choose after the third workshop. This was due to feedback that leaders in previous years felt rushed to pick, and we also wanted to emphasize that the mentor team as a whole is available, and that you’re not just tied to one mentor. However this can be changed based on what you think is best!
  • Reach out to your mentors early and set up when2meets so you can start discussing their workshops! Marí met with mentors two weeks out and found this to be a good time, especially since some workshops will probably need more tailoring than others and you want to get them feedback as early as possible.

• Mentor-mentee pairings:
  • In the past leaders have emailed the director or AD their top 5-7 preferences and why, but this year we changed it to a Google Form which I think was super helpful. This way we were also able to ask other questions such as “what are you looking for in a mentor”, giving us a more well rounded idea of which mentor was the best fit. We also asked for preferences in no particular order, which I strongly advocate for because I think a ranking system almost automatically sets up some mentors to fail. Be mindful that some mentors will not be selected at all (I was one of those mentors that no one requested!) But this is okay! Remember that you are pairing people so that they can help each other grow– pair people you think will mesh well together and have similar interests!
  • Everyone has a different pairing system. Marí and i used a google doc system to pair mentors. Then we started narrowing things down by who gave more in depth reasonings for their preferences as opposed to others who gave surface level ones, whether we believed the mentor could truly offer what the leader what looking for, and lastly what the mentors indicated they wanted in the mentor survey.
  • Be prepared for some mentors that will not get picked that often, if at all. I think this is why it’s super helpful to ask other questions in the Google Form you send out, since some leaders can actually really benefit from a mentor that they didn’t even think about choosing.
  • We did this on a Sunday afternoon and called every mentor together that night to solidify that they felt comfortable!
• Service:
  • For MLK Day of Service, we used this really great website. They’ll list a bunch of activities for both large and small groups. I highly recommend looking at the beginning of winter quarter or even during winter break for opportunities, since they fill up fast and you’ll want something that can handle such a large group of volunteers.
• Joint Programming:
  • I wished we worked more with SARVA and JCC during winter. At least get the ball rolling early on if you want to co-host events, since it requires two weeks to get advertising designs and for us it took three weeks or more to plan the actual structures. You can also pair with the Q center and other entities! Don’t be afraid to reach out!
• One on Ones:
  • Marí and I both had one on ones this quarter, I with leaders and Marí with mentors. I helped leaders connect to mentors during Marí’s one on ones, while also getting some feedback regarding retreat and the program. Mine were about 15 minutes each.
  • Marí’s one on ones were 30 minutes each since there are less mentors!
• TSHIRTS:
  • In past years, we used Kotis Designs to coordinate the t-shirts. They did an ibuy system so that the more people that bought shirts the cheaper the shirts became. You can email Kotis (cody.bruton@kotisdesign.com). We had a mentor do the design for us but you could also ask ocomm (this will probably reduce your stress of having to get the design from the mentor in a timely manner). This year we had two of the mentors design shirts and they handled creating them since they had a business that already created clothing products. In the future, I recommend you take this as you and Roshni’s responsibility earlier on during winter quarter so they get done sooner!
• Miscellaneous Meetings:
  • During winter we had to present to the Finance and Budget Committee and Personnel Committee to advocate for more paid hours for y’all as well as an increase in the budget. You may or may not have to do this again, but winter also includes a lot of meetings with different entities and applications regarding what you hope to see for next year’s time.
  • The director also has to attend things like one on ones with the VP, Director caucuses, meetings with the personnel director, one on ones with entity liaisons, info interviews with OVO’s interns, and meetings with other campus entities that will randomly reach out.
• Leadership Projects
  • Start leaders on this early and follow up with them routinely. We found a lot of leaders this year switching their projects late and generally confused about what was expected of them. While we had a workshop early in winter, try to keep bringing this up during workshops and in one on ones. They will need to submit a final idea by the beginning of Spring quarter, so they should have a rough idea by the time they finish Winter!

• Spring Retreat– We did this the second weekend of spring quarter (make sure you check dates of Easter and Passover, they typically occur around this time! We booked the Ethnic Cultural Center this year which was a wonderful space. [THIS NEEDS TO BE BOOKED DURING WINTER QUARTER] and had a single day retreat. This a pretty low-key retreat compared to winter but is a chance for everyone to reconnect. You can find the agenda in the transition drive!
• Spring Celebration of Service with the Carlson Center– If they don’t reach out by the first week of spring, send them an email!
  • Marí took the lead on this (it’s better to have one point of contact) to make sure we were set to have all the Leaders present and to coordinate having someone come talk to the Leaders before hand.
  • During Spring quarter we basically brought up spring celebration at every meeting whether that be to talk about projects, talk about the presentation formats, elevator pitches, or pestering the Leaders to fill out their surveys. Stay on top of this!!!
  • Come the day of the Spring Celebration we assigned all the Mentors to review 4-5 Leaders presentations and fill out survey sheets which we returned to the Leaders after the event. You can find this form in the Google Drive!
• Meetings- Mentors were in charge of all of the meetings this quarter (wooooooo! This link has the rooms we booked and topics).
  • We had to be creative with the rooms winter quarter as the HUB was not able to fill our requests, so if you need to, use mentors to help you book departmental and HFS spaces!
  • We met with mentors 2-3 weeks before their workshop to review their outlines, figure out if we needed to collect/buy any supplies, etc. These are the same meetings you did last quarter! Mentors can start slacking off a bit this quarter so stay on top of your mentors! They might need a little more motivation this time of the school year!
• New programming w/ SARVA and JCC (Diversity Commissions)We would recommend partnering with these commissions during a weekly Wednesday meeting or partnering with these entities during the big months of their programming. Overall, entities WANT to partner with UWLad students love hearing their perspectives and insights on diversity, inclusion, privilege, ally/alliance, and personal experiences.
• ALUMNI MIXER:
  • We had the event in the HUB, which was perfect. We used a large meeting room, used the 8 HUB cocktail tables, and used the black velvet backdrop for pictures.
  • Talk to Justin (HUB Director) about using the Discretionary budget to pay for food. You can find this email in your inbox! We asked for $215 and then we went to Costco with Patrick the day before the event! We had the perfect amount of food! Use online list of Costco Prices to project how much everything will cost and then give an estimate to Justin. Food we had:
    • • 2 sandwich trays ($40 each)
        1 costco cake ($30)
        2 packs of La croix (24 per case) ($9.49 per case)
        Veggie Tray ($20)
        Fruit Platter and pack of grapes ($20)
        1 pack Costco Krinkle Cut Chips ($3)
        Pita Chips and costco hummus ($10)
        Giant bag of smart pop popcorn ($4)
        2 pks Kirkland Brand Tortilla Strips and salsa (Heinz 2 pack) ($4 each/ $5 each)
        Kirkland Jelly Beans ($17) (so we could fill the little jars…this was very cute and popular!)
        Plates ($3)
        Napkins ($3)
        Cutlery ($14)
  • On Amazon we ordered balloons (purple and gold balloon weights are in the office!), cloth tablecloths (in the office), name tags, and some other fun decorations. 
  • We started inviting alumni a month prior to the event. We used mass emailing list, sharing on old UWL cohort Facebook pages, UWL Facebook page, word-of-mouth! We also made an invite with all the info in order to share the info in a cute and concise way!
  • During the event we made a speech about the program, had “facilitated mingling”, had a few mentors speak, had a ppt with 20 years worth of pictures, and had cute posters for people to sign! I would recommend reaching out to Lincoln Johnson (Former adviser of UWL) and Ivan Barron (Founder of UWL) to speak– we tried this year but they both were occupied. I would reach out a month early! Both of these emails you can find in your inbox too!
  • LIT SPOTIFY PLAYLIST
  • Have Ocomm come and take photos, you can fill out a service request form here
• LAST MEETING: GOODBYE AND TEARS
  • Mentors spoke about their mentees for 3 minutes, Amber and Marí honored the seniors, we all ate pizza and cried.
• Miscellaneous:
  • The hiring and transition process starts! You will be working with a personnel committee liaison.  
  • End-of-the-year comprehensive anonymous survey. We will leave you the link when the 2019 one is one!