Final Post

Getting the opportunity to intern at Pre-Law and DGS has been rewarding. There are many things that I learned about throughout the semester. I learned a great deal about myself and what I enjoy doing. For the most part, social media is not something that I enjoy doing. Still, I appreciated getting the chance to work with social media because I got first-hand experience realizing how difficult it seems for higher education to have a presence in social media. It makes me question whether higher education should venture into those areas. Perhaps other schools have it figured out but with a lack of literature, it is hard to determine how best to reach students. I also learned about the importance of having people with different skills surround you in your work. I helped on projects that I was stronger in than other people in the office. However, there is no way I could have advised a student about law school as well as the pre-law advisors because they know unique information that I could not have learned. Being aware of strengths and weaknesses will be important for me in my work. I will need to strike a balance between giving a student information that I know a lot about and giving the student information that I don't know much about but by helping them, they wouldn't have had to go talk to another person on campus to get information. I also learned that advising takes a lot of practice to be good. To some people, it may come across as a simple job, but students face complex issues or have complex and unique situations that make every student a challenge for an advisor. No two students are alike and no two appointments with students will go the same. Knowing that, I hope that academic advising stays interestng.

I felt very welcome and warm at DGS and Pre-Law. Both offices want the best experience for their interns and they always told me how much they valued my efforts. It would be a good place for someone to intern at again. I recommend that if someone would like to intern at either office, that they sit down with their supervisor and develop concrete tasks that they will be doing. I bascially created my internship and what I was going to be doing but it would have been nice with a little bit more guidance. This way, the intern also will discover if this internship is where they want to be.

April 22-26

This week, I read how Astin's theory of student involvement relates to student's use of Facebook. One of the tenets of Astin's theory is that involvement requires physical and psychological energy. College students use Facebook a lot and research has been conducted that looks at length and frequency of time that students use Facebook during the week. It is clear that students are invested in Facebook. Another tenet is that involvement occurs along a continuum. On Facebook, students can be more or less involved in all of the functions that the social media site offers. The third tenet is involvement has qualitative and quantitative features, meaning student use of Facebook can be measured quantitatively (how often do students use Facebook) or qualitatively (how does using Facebook affect your school work). Development is proportional to quality and quantity of involvement, the fourth tenet, has not been examined in relation to Facebook. We do not know how Facebook affects the development of students. Educational effectiveness is related to capacity to increase involvement, which is the fifth tenet, means that Facebook and other online tools need to be assessed for involvement and effectiveness. There is question whether Facebook should be used for faculty and student interaction. From my point of view, I don't think Facebook would be the most ideal location for faculty and students to interact. I think a Facebook profile is personal, and although the pages may not be set to private, I think that Facebook could alter the way a faculty member views a student or vise versa. However, I think that Facebook could be used in very smart ways, such as finding students like you that are interested in similar things or it could bring students together who are in the same class to study. Thus, I think we need more research on the topic to determine in what ways Facebook could be maximized for student use. I predict that it will be difficult to measure these issues.

At DGS, I finished all of the slides for the TV lobby, preparing them for summer. I also brainstormed ways that Pre-Law could enhance the internship experience for future graduate students. I went to two staff meetings and also worked with a friend on transferring the playlist for the CDs into iTunes. I had the final supervision for the internship class so I got the chance to reflect on my experiences as a pre-law intern. Overall, I have enjoyed working at Pre-Law. Updating the TV lobby sign actually wasn't too boring and I enjoyed designing different slides. It gave me the chance to be creative. However, I don't think that social media is my strong suit. I think there are other people more innovative to do that job. My recommendations and final reflections will come in next week's blogpost.

Heiberger, G. & Harper, R. (2008). Have you facebooked Astin lately? Using technology to increase student involvement. New Directions for Student Services, Winter 2008(124), 19-35.

April 15-19

This week at DGS and Pre-Law, I did most of the usual activities: updating social media, attending staff meetings, updating and making edits to the newsfeed, and putting together visually appealing slides for the TV lobby. I also went to a pre-law workshop on the topic of preparing resumes and personal statements for law applications. I thought the presentation was very informative (and well-attended despite the awful weather). The pre-law advisor did a nice job of giving specifics. I gave her on critique afterwards because about 3/4 of the presentation was about the personal statements and the resumes seemed tacked on at the end. I just told her to clarify at the beginning of the presentation why she has broken the presentation down like that so that the students understand and do not feel like resumes were an after thought. I also am working on getting the CDs made for the  advisors. I helped the Pre-Law intern divide up law school look books also. There is a small pre-law waiting area with pre-law look books that students can get information from. We get so many every year but they are becoming pointless because most of the books can now be found online. I helped the intern organize them . It seemed like a waste to have so many look books when students can find them online. Plus, it seems very expensive for the schools to create and distribute.

I spent about 12 hours this week at DGS, Pre-Law, reading, and blogging.

This week I read about a class that incorporates content and theory with civic engagement. As a part of the class, the students have to go watch public court cases and reflect on all aspects of the experience. It is up to them to navigate the courtroom and the proceedings and how to figure out when and where to go to observe. Students report having learned a great deal from this experience and many students earned an internship directly from observing because they met public defenders, judges, etc. while observing. Many students were surprised at how welcomed they were by people who work with the courts. This type of class is the exact example I discussed in my book report. Students reported that they learned whether they wanted to pursue law or not, and I think a real-world experience like this class offered is something that UIUC should implement. The director of Pre-Law now does a course similar to this, but more students should have access to the opportunities to learn in a real-world context and be able to apply what they learn in the classroom to that opportunity. Unrelated to this article, this type of course could also improve relationships between the university and the community, which is good for the reputation of the school.


McLauchlan, J. S. (2011). The courtroom as classroom: Integrating civic engagement in public law courses. Journal for Civic Commitment, 17, 1-17. 

April 8-12

This week at DGS, I went to two staff meetings and met with two of the advisors about the social media and news items that DGS has implemented this semester. We discussed that DGS would do a big push in the fall to get students connected to the social media pages rather than getting the word out slowly over the summer. I am going to prepare some twitter posts that DGS could use this summer or throughout next semester that would hopefully lessen the job of the next person who takes over this job. I told them that the social media job actually takes longer than they would expect so having an advisor do it would be a lot f work. We briefly talked about having an undergraduate intern do the social media for the office. The goal is to streamline the advisor's efforts. They each create newsletters every week but the newsfeed is in hopes of replacing all of their duplicate efforts. Per usual, I kept up with the newsfeed and calendar. After the meeting with advisors, I went back and made edits to these tools based off of the feedback from the advisors. Last week I also asked the advisors if they have been using the newsfeed or calendars. Only a handful were at the meeting but none of them had been using it. This was somewhat of good news because I noticed that our calendar of events was getting a lot of hits, which means the advisors that weren't there are using the calendar a lot or students are using it. I think students are using it a lot because some events have over 200 views. This is really good news moving forward with the calendar. I emailed web services to ask them about how to change some of the webtool settings if possible so I will be working with a student on that.

I also am in charge of putting together a CD of relaxing music for the advisors. As a part of the CARE committee, I brought up the idea of making a playlist that advisors can use when they are stressed. This idea was presented to the CARE committee last semester but I am being asked to make it now. I also am updating the TV in the lobby to welcome students for the summer. This week I spent around 12 hours at DGS working on the various projects and reading/blogging.

Olivas (2005) argues that low enrollments of minority students into law school is like a river, rather than a pipeline or pool, because when schools provide resources, become creative and willing to chance, much like how rivers transport nutrients and change over time, then we will see better outcomes in enrollment opportunities. Olivas (2005) talks about the enrollment numbers for law school compared to med school and business school and it is just so interesting that less then ten years ago, law school applicant numbers were doing so well and now they are so low. I feel like the law profession has changed drastically since this article was written. Further, different policies and demographic changes  are said to affect the flow of the river of minority students into law schools such as costs, debt, career options and the heavy reliance on LSAT scores because minority students historically do not perform as well on the LSAT. Olivas (2005) argues that the education system will not be able to grow if we do not take time to properly educate these students. I found this interesting because while educating them properly certainly needs to be done, there is no mention of changing the exam or eliminating its use or the problems that the LSAT raises for students of color. I would be interested to see Kezar's deconstruction and reconstruction of admissions policies and programs for students.


Olivas, M. A. (2005). Law school admissions after Grutter: Student bodies, pipeline theory, and the river. Journal of Legal Education, 55(1), 16-27. 

April 1-5

This week in Pre-Law and DGS, I maintained twitter, facebook, the news feed and the DGS calendar. I also read about CollegeConnect, a program that Pre-Law was thinking of bringing to campus for students. This program is very new but is attempting to help students network and get outside of their comfort zone. There is a curriculum attached to the program but it is in its early stages of implementation nation wide. Also, I watched a webinar on financial aid given by Heather Jarvis, who is a nationally acclaimed expert in student financial aid. She gave this webinar to illinois students back in March but made it available for a month. She walked through different financial aid options for law students and financial aid repayment options and the costs of law school. I found her presentation to be incredibly informative and something all students should have to watch, regardless if the student is going to law school. I learned a lot about student loans. After talking and reading about financial aid literacy in 574, this webinar is something that could be implemented into a literacy course or program. I also went to the staff meetings this week and the DGS staff meeting brought in the advisors in the Art and Design program, which I was thankful for because those majors are hard to advise students on, especially students in DGS. I found out that some students in engineering or pre-med want to do art minors because there is something called "medical art" or something to that extent or they want to illustrate for medical textbooks. I didn't even know that existed and I will come across students in my advising position that might want art in their curriculum so the advisors were very helpful in explaining their program.

YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are amongst the most popular forms of social media but YouTube is most often used in higher education. Social media has been implemented into classrooms and it is being used as a communication forum for students and instructors but there is still a gap in knowledge about social media. Also, social media has the potential to overwhelm students with information, a lot of time must be put into social media, when there is an online presence of an educational entity, there is a loss of control over what is posted and communicated, and since any service can create a Facebook page, there may be misinformation across groups or students might get the same information several times but from different groups. The lack of research regarding social media and higher education has left educators confused about how best to reach students in the ways that students want to be reached.This article speaks directly to my own frustrations. From the research I have gathered, nobody actually has a formula for how social media should work and practices that are most effective in higher education.When asked at the beginning of the semester to discover the social media problem and determine how best to reach students, I knew I was asked a loaded question. I am a student and I don't even know. I only have my opinion about how I get information, which could be totally different from other students. Some students follow blogs, some don't. Large-scale nationwide research needs to be conducted to determine the problem, using myself as a case study wouldn't help. I also do not think that a solution to the problem is using many social media sites in hopes of reaching the most students.

I also read about Speech/Communication departments and whether this major is adequately preparing students for law school. Communication is a main skill that law schools are looking for but the law schools admit that the departments are not preparing the students well enough for law school. Law school admissions deans and advisors in communication/speech departments  filled out surveys and the two entities agreed that lawyers should be able to relate to others, work with differing opinions, and be articulate and forceful in their communication styles.They also both thought that critical analysis and logical reasoning were skills undergrads should have when they graduate. Interpersonal and negotiation skills were also important to both groups but more important for the Communication departments. Also, oral advocacy skills was more important to the Communications department and not important to law schools. A major problem that is discovered in this study is that law schools do not think Speech/Communication majors are prepared for law school while the Speech/Communication advisors do they their students gain skills for law school. The author gives some recommendations based on the findings: law schools and Speech/Communication advisors need to communicate about the major and what is expected of law students, advisors must give the reality of the major to students in that it might not be beneficial for them if they are looking to go to law school, and more research should be conducted. This article is old so I would hope by this point that departments and law schools are talking to each both about what is expected of perspective law students. The pre-law advisors talk to students about appropriate majors, but they talk more so about the skills that students must gain. The dean that visited from Loyola's law schools said that over 50 different undergrad majors were represented in the law students their school had. That is impressive and encouraging. This article also gets me thinking about how students must be prepared for law school in the classroom and I wonder how much faculty would care if they are promoting these skills. I imagine that some faculty will value certain skills over others and are they really trying to get students ready for law school? I see that there might need to be some potential buy in so that professors are on board with efforts to develop students who would be ready for law school.

 Ratliff, A. F. (2011). Are they listening? Social media on campuses of higher education. Journal of the Australian & New Zealand Student Services Association, 38, 65-69.
Matlon, R. J. (1990). Perspectives on academic advising for pre-law students: View from law schools and the speech/communication discipline. ACA Bulletin, 73, 29-38. 

This week, I spent 2 hours and 15 minutes in  staff meetings, 10 minutes finishing up the pre-law flyer, 2 hours reading and blogging, 40 minutes updating the TV in the lobby, 1 hour and 15 minutes posting to social media, 40 minutes reading through CollegeConnect, 2 hours posting to the News Feed and webtools calendar, 1 hour and 15 minutes listening to the webinar

March 25-29

This week at DGS and Pre-Law, I finished a flyer for social media for DGS. I made it in hopes that they could either give them to the students during summer registration or they could use them next semester if they decide to do a social media push. I sent it to the director of admissions so I may be making edits. I also made further TV lobby slides for National and International Scholarships (NISP). NISP gives me information and wants me to format it in an appealing way. I also went to the DGS and Pre-Law staff meetings. At the DGS meeting, we talked about summer registration, and I saw how they were improving their system from last summer. It was neat to see the changes and how the advisors continue to be innovative and student-centered. Like usual, I kept up with the social media pages for both pre-law and DGS and added appropriate entries to the news feed for DGS. I also worked on a blog post for the Pre-Law blog. I am writing a post for later in April about networking tips. Dean Bloomquist of Chicago Loyola School of Law came back in March and I went to hear her talk with interested students. She talked about networking so my post is inspired and based on some of the suggestions to the students. One of the Pre-Law advisors is doing a presentation in April but she says she always has technical difficulties so I went to the room and checked out the technology so that I can teach her how to use it.

This week, I read Leaving the Law: Occupational and Career Mobility of Law School Graduates. This paper explores the reasons why people who have a law degree do not practice law. Less than 2% of people who graduates law school are not practicing law but wished they were practicing law. There are also people who only work in law part-time and the reason they do this is because they could not find a job that worked for them. Less than 1% of law school graduates have given up finding a job because they have worked so hard to find one but couldn't. Around 2% of law school graduates are looking for jobs but can't find one. However, in 1993, 16% of law school graduates were employed but were not in the law profession. One reason why people with law degrees do not practice law is because they are not interested in it as a career any longer. Also, those who do not practice report that there was not a job in the field. Women do report leaving the profession for family matters. I think these are all reasonable but important for students considering law to think about. I recently had a conversation about women in the law field and how many leave the profession to have a family. One of the pre-law advisors left practice so that she could raiser her family. We discussed the societal implications of women leaving their practice to have families. I think it is hard for a 22 year old to decide between law school and starting a family when they don't know where they will be in their life in 7-8 years. Putting in time and effort towards getting a law degree and then stopping so that a family can be raised is a real issue. 

This week, I spent about 1.5 hours in staff meetings, 1.5 hours working on the news feed, 45 minutes updating and posting to the the pre-law and DGS social media pages, 1 hour and 15 minutes reading and blogging, 15 minutes checking the technology for the pre-law advisor, 2 hours designing the NISP powerpoint, 1 hour and 15 minutes creating the social media handout

Baker, J. G. & Jorgensen, B. K. (2000). Leaving the law: Occupational and career mobility of law school graduates. Journal of Legal Education, 50(1), 16-34. 

March 11-15

This week at DGS and Pre-Law, I spent about 45 minutes posting information to the Pre-Law and DGS facebook pages, Twitter accounts, news feeds, and calendars. I shadowed one of the Pre-Law advisors in an appointment with a student. This was a first-time appointment so it was good to hear how an advising appointment goes when the student is not in the process of applying to law school yet or if they are going to apply at all. I also went to the Pre-Law staff meeting and the DGS staff meeting. At the DGS staff meeting, the Business Minor advisors talked with us about changes to the minor, which will be helpful to me because many of the chemistry students want a business minor. I also worked on Pre-Law and DGS social media quarter sheets in hopes of presenting them to some of the staff to see if they will want to use them in the future to hand out to students. This quarter sheet would be passed out to students when they come in for appointments. I also worked on the National and International Scholarship PowerPoint slides. I was asked to take information and format it in a feasible way.

Posting to social media: 1 hour
Staff Meetings: 1 hour 45 minutes
Shadowed and debriefed: 1 hour
National and International Scholarships PowerPoints: 2 hours
Pre-Law and DGS social media quarter sheets: 1 hour
Reading and Blogging: 1 hour


This week, I read Exploring the Use of Blogs as Learning Spaces in the Higher Education Sector (Williams, 2004). The article discusses  some of the benefits to blogging, such as active learning, chances for critical thought, and a chance to thoroughly and thoughtfully carry conversations with others. The article also presents data on two MBA courses that used a blog to promote dialogue on issues related to the classes they were in. Overall, the students enjoyed the blog and would like to see more blogs being used in future classes. However, some students were hesitant to contribute to the blog because they were nervous about posting and what others would think of their post. The blog at Pre-Law does not act now as a forum for dialogue, but it does act as a form of knowledge dissemination. I wonder if the blog would get more followers if it was a place for dialogue and students could talk to each about law school, share news with each other, etc. I have a hard time believing though that students would go out of their way to post to each other, for potentially the same reasons as Williams and Jacbos (2004) finds that the MBA students are nervous to post. Also, I think students would be unmotivated to post information to the blog because that would require going through the process of posting. I think this could work if students were reading news on law school, but overall I do not think it would be successful.


Williams, J. B. & Jacobs, J. (2004). Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 20(2), 232-247. 

March 4-8

 This week at Pre-Law and DGS, I maintained the Pre-Law and DGS Facebook pages with upcoming events and news. I also posted more information to the DGS Newsfeed, calendar, and Pre-Law Twitter. I went to a Pre-Law event which hosted the Assistant Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Loyola Law School in Chicago. The event introduced Loyola's Law School to interested students and the students got the chance to ask her questions. I also checked in on several student records. I could not meet with many of them because they are on probation but I analyzed their records to determine how I would advise them on their situation. I also went to the Pre-Law Staff meeting.

I spent about 2 hours reading and blogging, 1 hour and 15 minutes at the Pre-Law event, 3 hours posting news to the various social media forums, 1 hour and 30 minutes reviewing student files, 30 minutes at the Pre-Law meeting, 45 minutes doing administrative things (emails, preparing for meeting, etc.), 2 hours brainstorming ways to get the DGS Facebook and Twitter page off the ground to start either this summer during summer registration of this coming fall.



This week, I read
A Forked River Runs Through Law School: Toward Understanding Race, Gender, Age, and Related Gaps in Law School Performance and Bar Passage. 
The Bar Passage Study collected data on law school GPAs and Bar passages rates for law students. One of the findings is that minority students have lower Bar passage rates and they also have lower GPAs coming out of law school. These students also graduate at lower rates than white students. Barriers such as language, lower social capital, discrimination on campus, first-year law school events (getting married, getting sick etc.) and family all contribute to the lower success in law school. Women face barriers with law school at the entrance. They score lower on the LSAT compared to men but they do better in undergrad and in law school. Law students who are older have first-year GPAs that are lower than traditional aged law students. Law students with disabilities or with lower SES scored lower on the LSAT. One interesting finding is that when LSAT scores, GPA of law school and GPA of undergrad are held constant, the law school ranking does not influence the likelihood that a student will pass the bar exam. The main point of this article is that law schools do not help close the education gap that disadvantaged groups of students experience as they leave their undergraduate education and enter law school. I don't think this is shocking but it is troubling. Like the recent news on financial aid says, law school is getting more expensive, and this could also possibly put the disadvantaged students at an even further disadvantage of completing law school. Clydesdale suggests that law schools diversify their faculty because students do better in classes with a faculty member from a disadvantaged background. However, I question where these faculty members are going to come from if they aren't completing school as successfully as white students. Also, it appeared that rankings did not ultimately impact the results of the Bar exam.This relates back to the first article I talked about by Kamin (2006). Rankings matter to students.....but should they really matter if, assuming grades and LSAT scores are the same, they are going to get the same score on the Bar anyways?  It is clear that the educational achievement gap is present not just in primary, secondary, and higher education, but it prevails in law school as well. I don't think this should be surprising to educators. 

I also read Retention Issues in Legal Education: The Roles of Undergraduate Educators of Academic Support in the Law School. This article gives suggestions on how law schools and undergraduate institutions can support their students better. Law schools identified a need to help students when they were starting to see a decline in applications so they were forced to take students with lower academic success.  The article exposes a flaw in the undergraduate curriculum claiming that institutions do not prepare students for the writing and communication skills necessary for law school. From my experience with advising, there are students who do well enough on the ACT or AP exam and therefore already completed their composition one requirement. Thus, those students are already down one English class that could have helped them towards law school. I did a fair amount of writing during undergrad but I imagine that different majors require different amounts of writing so many students do not experience much writing. Therefore, the article suggests that undergraduates take more courses on writing, that they have practice in standardized testing, and that institutions start helping young people gain basic skills. The article also describes academic support programs that have been established at law schools to help support students. These programs facilitate workshops, help students develop skills, and provide tutors for students. The article also identifies a need for collaboration between law schools and undergraduate institutions so that students are better prepared for law school. From what I can see, our Pre-Law advising office has many great relationships with law schools. Many deans of law schools visit on our campus to meet with groups of students to talk about their law school and how to get in. I am unsure however about what universities are doing to improve the level of writing ability of its graduates. The pre-law office does promote classes that help improve skills needed for law school, but it is ultimately the student's responsibility to enroll in those courses. However, I will agree that there are structural forces in place, such as students being able to be exempted from the composition one course, that do not force graduates to be better writers.

Calleros, C. R. (2008). Enhancing the pipeline of diverse K-12 and college students to law school: The HNBA multi-tier mentoring program. Journal of Legal Education, 58(3), 327-240.

         

         Clydesdale, T. T. (2004). A forked river runs through law school: Toward understanding race, gender, age, and related gaps in law school performance and bar passage. Law & Social Inquiry, 29(4), 711-769. 

Feb 25-Mar 1

This week at DGS and Pre-Law, I went to a Financial Aid presentation. The presentation was given by two Financial Aid advisors and it was incredibly informative. They talked about the "Satisfactory Academic Progress" (SAP) that students must be making towards a degree or else their aid was taken away from them. The policies and petition processes involved in SAP were discussed. This presentation was specifically for advisors across campus. I also posted news to the DGS newsfeed and webtools calendar. Both systems are not intuitive and are difficult to make aesthetically pleasing, so I worked with the honors director to attempt to improve the way that it looks. The webtools calendar and news feed went live this week so now at least the work I put in to it will be seen. I also updated the Pre-Law and DGS webpages with relevant news and pertinent deadlines. With the help of the pre-law advisor, we crafted a message to the admitted students inviting them to join the Pre-Law facebook page.(There is an admitted student U of I facebook page) We want more followers for Pre-Law on Facebook but asking the admitted students to join the page is tricky because the advisors get calls from parents wanting their freshman to meet with them. However, the freshman are not allowed to make an appointment until after they have gone to a pre-law orientation workshop. Therefore, we had to balance inviting them to join without suggesting that meeting with advisors is a good step to take. I worked with the pre-law advisor and graduate intern on getting information out to all advisors across campus about an upcoming webinar on financial aid I also attended the DGS and Pre-Law staff meetings. Finally, I updated the PowerPoint that plays in the CCAAS lobby (that thing is never 100% correct). One of the staff members showed me an article about a DGS student who is on the Illini Chess Team. The team made it to the national championships. I emailed this student to see if he is interested in being highlighted on the powerpoint. He has agreed, which is exciting.

I read Toward Promoting Diversity in Legal Education: A Model Program for At-Risk High School Students which discussed a program that was a collaboration between law students and high-school students. The law students would mentor the high-school students while introducing them to the law profession. This was in hopes of motivating these students to get through school and go to college.The 4 week program is called Law High. The program has not collected data to determine if it has been effective in its mission. They do not really want to gather data either because it would cost money, they do not want to put the students through the study, and they are not sure how they would define success in the program. I think it would be hard in the current economic environment for a program like this to be sustained over time without data to prove its worth. On the other hand, the program only costed $250 because the law school students volunteered their time. The $250 was spent on food for the high school students. I think this program is a great example of a way for universities and institutions to collaborate together, especially on such a low cost project. This article was written in 1999 and mentions issues of affirmative action, which, as we discussed in class, has been in the news recently. If diversity is an issue at the undergraduate level, then it most certainly must with law school applicants and attendees. I wonder how much a program like this helps to ameliorate the structural forces in place that disadvantages students of color in access to higher education. I think, like other programs, this is one that only breaks the surface. However, at the very least, some of these at-risk high school students will have heard for perhaps the first time, that they could be successful in college, and that could be exactly what one student needs to get to college. 
 
I spent about 1 hour and 30 minutes at the Financial Aid presentation, 1 hour and 30 minutes in staff meetings, 1 hour and 30 minutes updating the PowerPoint and corresponding with the DGS student, 2 hours editing the news feed, 2 hours gathering information and preparing the webtools calendar, and 1 hour and 30 minutes doing social media outreach. I also spent 40 minutes reading and blogging.

Feb 18-22

This week at DGS and Pre-Law I worked on gathering information for the new DGS newsfeed and calendar. I am working in webtools to create more resources for DGS students online. Thus, I have been collecting relevant news and relevant dates for these resources. I also have been maintaining the Facebook and Twitter for DGS and I researched relevant articles to be used on the Pre-Law Facebook page. I spent a majority of my time attempting to figure out the TV Lobby computer software. The software is not user friendly and when the slides are on my computer, they look different once they get to the TV, so I have done lots of editing of the TV Lobby slides. I also attended the Pre-Law and DGS staff meetings. At the Pre-Law meeting and over email I asked several times how I could help with programming. Thus far, I have not been given much to do. I plan to attend an upcoming pre-law program to see how they run. Because they have a graduate student in their office already, she does a lot of the blogging and she is working on a collaborative workshop with the law school at Illinois.

This week I spent about 1 hour reading and blogging, 2 hours in staff meetings, 5 hours working on the TV in the lobby, 1 hour research for the Pre-Law Facebook page, and 2 hours working on the news feed and calendar on webtools.

This week, I read about law school rankings that are given out by the U.S. News and World Report. The author, Sam Kamin, makes the point that administrators do not like the ranking system, which is based mostly on LSAT scores, and they would rather have faculty produce better and more useful scholarly work. However, administrators cannot deny that there is a structure in place that makes rankings important to people. Kamin states that since the rankings are mostly based off of LSAT, there is a lot of competition to be ranked the highest and that brings out questionable practices by law schools. Kamin also make the point that students see the rankings and try to get into the top schools, yet because the schools are ranked on LSAT alone, the student does not thoroughly explore what school is the best fit for them. The current system of rankings, according to Kamin, does not privilege other characteristics of someone, such as race, ethnicity, work experience, etc. What I find interesting about this is that education is using a standardized test to basically categorize students. Example: If you do very well on the LSAT, then you go to the "best" schools, and thus your are the smartest of all law students. What about the students who are brilliant but do not do well on standardized tests? What about students who do not use the same semantics and lexicon as that used on the LSAT? I do not know much about the LSAT, I am only assuming that it was written for an Anglo-American. Throughout graduate school, we have had numerous conversations about the problems with rankings. I see the case of law school as very extreme and frankly, alarming. After sitting in on appointments with the pre-law advisors, I could tell that they do not push students to go to law school nor push them to go to certain law schools, but rather give them the skills and information to make the most informed decision. I think this is one way that pre-lad advisors can move away from the power of rankings, and more towards student agency in deciding what is best for them.

Kamin, S. (2006). How the blogs saved law school: Why a diversity of voices will undermine the U.S. News and World Report rankings. Indiana Law Journal, 81(1), 375-381.

My first few weeks at Pre-Law

I started my internship in the Pre-Law Advising Office a few weeks ago. Since then, I have been working on a few things while also giving a portion of my time to DGS. So far, I have shadowed two of the pre-law advisors in a few appointments which gave me a glimpse into how their advising compares to DGS advising. From my brief experiences with Career Services, it appears as if pre-law advising is similar to career advising. I also have been to staff meetings for both Pre-Law and DGS, which has been a great introduction to hearing about what different resources pre-law brings to students. Since I know nothing about law school, I feel like I am behind in the learning curve, so I have done some reading on law school and admissions information. I have done a considerable amount of research to determine how best so market pre-law services on social media. I tried polling students on the pre-law facebook page and I have read a lot about blogging, tweeting, and facebooking, but unfortunately, I found little relevant, scholarly literature on best practices for social media within education and more specifically student affairs.

I also have been given reigns of social media for DGS. I created a twitter page and have taken over Facebook. I also have created a webtools calendar and newsfeed so I will begin to post to those soon. I have attended a few meetings regarding a strategy for DGS marketing. Since these strategies are new, we know it could be a slow moving process. I also learned how to use the software that updates the DGS lobby TV (which also has a learning curve).

I also looked into the literature regarding pre-law advising. I was a little upset to find that there is not much about best practices in the field. The literature I did find will be used for my academic plan.

So far, I have interned for 38 hours the past 3 weeks. I start my full time job on May 1st, so I need to average more than 10 hours per week.