From presentations to awards to team bonding to networking, it was an incredible first higher education conference experience at National Association for Campus Activities (NACA) Live 2022! A group of 9 staff and students from the University of Florida traveled to Kansas City, Missouri for a week of learning and sharing at NACA’s annual conference.
I was thrilled to have my conference proposal accepted and share Extreme Makeover: Programming Board Edition on a national stage. Highlighting the process I underwent to evaluate and retire the Reitz Programming Board and the time that followed creating, building, and launching GatorDays in its place. A great deal of strategy, benchmarking, and risk went into the organizational structure, vision, branding, and governing documents of the group, and sharing the successes it has shared in its first year was so exciting and encouraging. I am not afraid of trying new things for the sake of bettering something that isn’t working, and GatorDays is a group that I believe will serve as a national benchmarking model for other groups realizing their programming boards are failing as well.
About a month before NACA Live, I was shocked and honored to have learned that I was named the C. Shaw Smith Outstanding New Professional Award recipient of all professionals who had been in the field for 1-5 years. Having a supervisor who was proud to nominate me and a national leadership team that was impressed with my work is so incredibly humbling, and I was so excited to be recognized at the annual conference for the award. I was announced onstage and then attended the award reception on the final evening. Bringing this distinction back to UF has me more energized than ever to continue the innovative and worthwhile work we are doing in the Gator Nation!
That is a wrap on my first year in my role and my first conference! I am so thankful for the platform I have to learn and create change each day, and I look forward to continuing the momentum in year two.
