dean of student life Archives - Page 5 of 5

This blogpost series is called Holidays and Holy Days to inform our OSU community about significant religious or spiritual observances. If you know of a significant holiday or holy day coming up, please communicate the information to Hannah Pynn hannah.pynn@oregonstate.edu in the Dean of Student Life office.

This week celebrates the holiday of Diwali.

Context

The Indian festival Diwali (also called Divali and Deepavali) is translated into the Sanskrit definition of “row of lamps” and is often referred to as the Festival of Lights. Diwali, the five-day festival celebrated on one of the darkest night of the year, celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil, and is one of the most important festivals of the year. An official holiday in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname, Malaysia, Singapore and Fiji, Diwali is celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains around the world. Diwali begins on 13 November.

Diwali marks the beginning of the Hindu New Year, commemorating spiritual peace, familial relationships, and hoping for good things to come in the next year.

Significance

Diwali is celebrated by Hindu’s as the return of the Lord Rama from a 14 year exile. In celebration of his return, people light small lamps to light his way home after he defeated the evil of Ravana and his armies.

Janism observes Diwali as the attainment of nirvana by Lord Mahavira, a spiritual leader who valued meditation, the respect of all living things, and giving up earthly comforts for the sake of spiritual peace.

Sikhs also celebrate Diwali as the mark of Chhorh Divis, when their sixth guru Guru Hargobind Ji, released 52 Hindi kings from prison.

The spiritual significance of Diwali asserts the Hindu philosophy of good over evil, that humans have “the awareness of the inner light” that brings joy and peace.

Rituals/Traditions

Lighting innumerable small lamps, candles, and lights
Visiting family
Fireworks
Wearing new clothes
Exchanging special sweets with neighbors
Going to the temples as a family
Decorating homes with flowers, colored sand, and lots of lights

Additional Resources

President Obama is the first president to officially observe the holiday of Diwali. Take a look at his Presidential address wishing people a Happy Diwali. Presidential Happy Diwali

This is a short animated video that illustrates the story of Lord Rama and his victory of light over darkness. Lord Rama – Defeat of good over evil

National Geographic shows footage of beautiful sights in India during Diwali celebrations.

National Geographic Diwali

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/12/diwali-2012-festival-of-lights-photos_n_2115208.html

http://www.diwali2012.in/

Continue reading →

Hi! My name is Maria Garcia and I am fifth year student here at Oregon State University. I am from Hermiston, a small town in Eastern Oregon. I am very excited to be interning at the Office of the Dean of Student Life this term and even more excited to be receiving my bachelors in June! It has been a long journey but definitely worth the struggle because of the opportunities I have received.

Because of the very busy term, I like to take some time to relax in the Memorial Union and enjoy my surroundings. Besides interning in the office, I am also taking a few classes, including a cardio kickboxing class to ease away the stress! One of my biggest goals is to go to graduate school to obtain my masters and I would love it if it were in the College Student Services Administration (CSSA) here at Oregon State. Meanwhile, the drafts after drafts of resumes and personal essay questions will continue.

Peace and diversity in the Memorial Union

Working in the office has been quite enjoyable (as I have wonderful colleagues and supervisors)! I am currently working on a few projects, the first one being researching and compiling data on other dean of student life/student affairs websites and comparing it to our university and other peer institutions. This has proven to be quite a challenge when I dislike their website and can find nothing positive to say and bring back as an improvement to our own site. Nevertheless, the final product of this research will definitely contain a lot of information to consider when making improvements to our website and office.

Furthermore, what began as a summer internship with a couple of students creating videos to establish a more inclusive environment for students and easy access to a visual tool, has now expanded into this term as well. I am co-creating captioned videos with other interns in the office to offer students the opportunity to learn a little more about services identified as imperative on campus. Through this project, we hope students and families will be able to easily navigate our website and find the information they need. Our intention is to ensure that students are aware of everything our Office of the Dean of Student Life offers and create an enjoyable college experience.

Finally, I am also working with my internship supervisor, Kim McAloney, to try to establish a few Students of Color meetings where students interest’s can be met. Because my personal interests lie in student affairs and because I am in the NASPA Undergraduate Fellow’s Program (NUFP), I have targeted my meetings to students with these same interests. Currently, this is still a two-times-a-term project, but hopefully next term it will grow.

With all these projects, and the other projects currently underway in the office, it has been quite busy around here! I enjoy listening to the updates other interns have in our weekly meeting and establishing a cohort between our DOSL team as we engage in icebreakers.

I can’t wait to see the advances we make this term! Fall is here and besides the rain, it is time to appreciate the hot chocolates, yummy pastries and the changing color of leaves.

-Maria Garcia

Hello! My name is Hannah Pynn, I’m the Graduate Assistant for the Dean of Student Life (DOSL) at Oregon State University.

Now that the rain is here, it finally feels like fall in Oregon. Since this is my first term as a grad student, the rain gives me a good excuse to settle in every evening with a cup of tea and a stack of books to study for my College Student Services Administration (CSSA) masters program. The CSSA program is a masters program that studies student affairs and higher education, which means that maybe some day I’ll be a Dean of Student Life myself! For now, I’m focusing on writing lots of papers and absorbing lots of information about how to serve college students.

As the Graduate Assistant in the office, I am working on several campus-wide initiatives that focus on the community and holistic development of every student on our beautiful campus.

Everyone Matters @ OSU is a global social media campaign that promotes inclusivity and non-judgement. Check out how you can voice your thoughts on why YOU think Everyone Matters @ OSU.

I am also a coordinator for the Interfaith Community Service Initiative which is a campaign that aspires to initiate meaningful dialogue between religious and nonreligious individuals, bringing together students from all walks of life under the common umbrella of community service.

When I go home, I go home to a mansion that is the home of about 130 women. My husband and I are the House Directors at Kappa Delta Sorority and this is our fifth year living in the residence. We love our KD ladies. This is us at Mock Rock last year, the huge KD philanthropy event that raised over $35,000 for child abuse prevention locally and nationally.

I’m looking forward to continuing my work in DOSL for the next two years. I love when people visit me at work, so feel free to stop by to chat in Kerr A200.

Hannah

Hello everybody! I previously wrote a blog during my first week I started my internship here at the office of the Dean of Student Life. I cannot believe that 5 weeks already pass by and today is my last day of work here in the office. This journey has been a self discovery process for me and I am so thankful for the opportunity. The experience of working full time and managing my own schedule as long as I was getting my work done has been a new experience for me.

Part of my internship experience included having the opportunity to be a part of the Professional and Managerial Internships in State Employment (PROMISE) summer internship program. The PROMISE program allowed me to connect with other interns around campus while given the opportunity for learning and growth both professionally and personally through professional development presentations and dialogues.

Moving forward I am excited to see friends and family back home and being able to start planning and preparing to attend graduate school within a graduate program in student affairs here at OSU or potentially another school around the country. Thanks to the exposure of my work at OSU and the people the people that I met, I have learn some of the areas where I can improve and that are going to affect me in my future academic goals if I do not make the effort to rectify it. I am taking these coming up year to prepare for graduate school by taking a few classes such as research methods, writing and grammar. I am also going to start doing some readings to start familiarizing myself with the materials in student affairs programs and a portfolio to help me with my graduate school applications.

All in all, I really enjoyed my time here in Oregon, meeting new people, visiting local places, the nearby cities, and specially the coast. I am really passionate about social justice efforts towards understanding and inclusion. For that reason I am happy to know that my research findings such as best practices and recommendations for both the CRF program and the international student population are going to put into use starting next term. I am also exited to know that after I am gone any student interested in learning about graduate school and the process to get into a graduate program can have access to the graduate school guide that I was able to put together.

Big shout out to all of you that made an impact in my experience here at OSU.

Hello everybody my name is Joel Orozco and I am the NUFP (NASPA Undergraduate Fellows Program) intern with Oregon State University of the Dean of Student Life. I am originally from Chihuahua Mexico but I went to school in Denver Colorado. I recently just graduated from Metropolitan State University of Denver and I am currently doing my search to apply to a student affairs graduate program.

My journey at OSU has been very rewarding so far. I started working for the University Housing & Dining Services (UHDS) office for the first 3 weeks of my internship by helping with initial student development research and comparison school interviews to designed the curriculum for the community relations facilitators (CRF’s), which is a peer mentorship program that is intended to embrace diversity and address social justice issues by having creative events within the resident halls at OSU.

A week ago I was moved to the office of the Dean of Student Life to work on two exiting projects. The first one has to do with a resources guide for graduate school with a focus on student who want to pursue a career in higher education and student affairs. The guide contains information from broad topics such as types of programs, financing, and application process to more specific topics such as terms and definitions, things one should know before grad school, and a section on knowing the details.

My second project involves international students and the office of Disability Access Center. The purpose of my project is for me to gather accurate information in regards of international students with disabilities cultural competencies when it comes to disabilities. I have been looking at the literature in a couple different databases and interviewing other schools and individuals to hear their feedback and to see how individuals from other disability centers in direct contact with international students are approaching this issue.

All in all, I have really been enjoying my time in Corvallis meeting new people, the nearby cities, and specially the coast. I am passionate about the work and research that I am doing and I am so thankful for the opportunity to be here!

Go Beavs!!!

I am so excited about my work in the Office of the Dean of Student Life as the Coordinator for Student Life programs! This week, I was full of excitement! Part of my work is coordinating the NASPA Undergraduate Fellows Program (NUFP), a mentoring program for undergraduatestudents from historically underrepresented populations who are interested in exploring careers in student affairs and higher education. Stay tuned for more information about NUFP off of our website. As part of NUFP, we have two NUFP interns at OSU this summer. The interns are Isaiah Iboko, who just graduated from Grinell University who is working with UHDS and Joel Orozco, who just graduated from Metropolitan State College of Denver. Joel worked for UHDS for his first two weeks here on campus and this week transitioned to our office! It’s exciting to have so many amazing students and interns working with our office this summer!

My name is Sophie, and I am the PROMISE intern with Oregon State University’s Office of the Dean of Student Life. I am also a recent OSU graduate, and will be entering OSU’s College Student Services Administration Program next year with an assistantship in the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards.

This summer I am working on a variety of projects, with the foremost being a continuation of my work from the academic year. I had an internship with the Office of the Dean of Student Life during Spring Term,and I created videos for OSU campus resources (Dixon Recreation Center, Valley Library, Counseling & Psychological Services, Student Health Services and Office of the Dean of Student Life). As of this past week they are all captioned for accessibility, posted on YouTube, and are also posted on the up and coming new Dean of Student Life website (which should go live in a few short days). This summer I will continue making more resource videos and creating PDF “cheat sheets” for the existing videos.

Another large project I will be working on is updating the National Association of Student Personal Administrators Undergraduate Fellowship Program (NUFP) program at the OSU campus for the 2012-2013 year. NUFP is a mentoring program designed for underrepresented students interested in pursuing student affairs as a profession. I am updating a syllabus for a AHE 499 NUFP class, creating OSU-NUFP promotional material, connecting with current NUFP Scholars, and filming a NUFP informational video. For anyone interested in a future profession within student affairs and higher education please let me know by leaving a comment!

In short I have some exciting projects on my plate! I will also post the links to the YouTube videos soon in case anyone wants to spend a few minutes learning about some helpful campus resources.

Happy Monday 🙂

Summer term is in full swing in the Office of the Dean of Student Life. We are busily working on some exciting new projects for the OSU community. This summer we have two students working in the office, Sophie, who is a PROMISE Intern and myself, Jeffrey. This blog will be updated by us on a regular basis. We will also have some guest writers such as, Mamta- Dean of Student Life, Tracy- Associate Dean of Student Life, Kim- Student Life Coordinator and maybe some other surprise appearances. We are excited to share some of what we do with you all!

So once again, I’m Jeffrey and I am currently the Student Support Programs Lead for the Office of the Dean of Student Life. I am going to be a Junior in Human Development and Family Sciences & International Studies. This summer I will be working on some projects such as, finalizing and maintaining the Dean of Student Life website and blog, preparation work for the NASPA Undergraduate Fellows Program (NUFP) for the OSU campus, Video Projects, the Everyone Matters @ Oregon State campaign and also some other small projects.

Last week I was at the NUFP Dungy Leadership Institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. This week I tried to be knowledgable with the projects that I am doing and coordinating with Sophie for tasks. I also finalized the website and it will go live next week, please check it out! We also started to brainstorm more video ideas which are all extremely exciting! That is pretty much what I have been doing this week! Check out the blog next week, Sophie will be kicking it off with what she is doing this summer!

-Jeffrey

Dean of Student Life

Tag Archives: dean of student life

Holidays and Holy Days – Diwali (Hindu)

This week celebrates the holiday of Diwali.

Holidays and Holy Days – Samhain (Wiccan/Pagan)

Maria Garcia, Intern

Hannah Pynn – Graduate Assistant

NUFP Summer Internship 2012- Reflection at OSU

Introducing NUFP Intern Joel Orozco

Week 3- Introducing Kim!

Week 2: Introducing Sophie!

Week 1 of Summer!

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