MSHE Retreat

Virtual Student Development Retreat

The MSHE retreat is a weekend-long event that occurs every year during the first few weeks of the Fall semester for the incoming Cohort of the MSHE Program at Cal State Fullerton. The retreat is only for the new students in the program and is intended to help them get to know each other and work on personal and professional development skills.

NOTE: This retreat is usually an overnight event at a specific destination. This year, however, because of the COVID stay-at-home orders, the retreat was a Virtual event through the ZOOM software, and it was only a few hours long.

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Term: Fall 2020

Learning Domains:

• Personal and Professional Development

• Leadership

• Education

Learning Outcomes:

• SWiBAT make at least 2 honest and meaningful connections with another student.

• SWiBAT reflect on personal and academic experiences of classmates and their effects on the students' current strengths and challenges as a learner.

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Reflection

This was the first Retreat that I ever attended and, although it was virtual, it had a significant effect on my perception of my cohorts. The activities and interactions were clearly created to help us get to know each other while providing opportunities to expand our Educational field knowledge. As usual, I was timid. It took a while for me to feel comfortable opening up and speaking freely to the various groups. My shyness is something that I have been actively trying to improve on. The Retreat provided many opportunities for me to practice my socializing and expressive skills with my new classmates.

I was able to create at least 1 meaningful connection with my classmate Cesar. He and I are in the same study group, and we speak often. However, our conversations are typically about classwork and not about our personal experiences. During the Retreat, we were placed into several breakout rooms together. Because of this, Cesar and I shared several events from our lives that affected our lives until this semester. We learned that we experienced many of the same challenges that most Latinx students endure. And in the end, we determined that those experiences, unhappy as they may seem, are what drives us to work in Student Affairs today.

The most significant part of the Retreat to me was the sharing of the Lifeline with each other. This was an activity that we completed with our Advisors. My Advisor is Dr. Currie, and we had met as a group before, during the MSHE Orientation. This meeting, however, was far more intense. My classmates and I took turns describing one or more of our most significant positive and negative life events. My classmates shared some very personal and very traumatizing life events. As much as I wanted to respond with an equally meaningful event in my life, I could not. What I should have talked about was an event that involved the suicide of someone very close to me. This is something that I am still trying to work through, so I was not able to speak about it with them. Nevertheless, I did open up about my personal views and some genuinely saddening things that I have witnessed while working in Higher Education. Our discussions led us to understand the various challenges and privileges that affect the lives of us all. Students are expected to function in school, but sometimes there are very harsh realities that prevent them from being successful. Some of us are better off because our privileges help us. Yet, we are often blind to see how we're privileged. More often than not, it is necessary to have a personal and honest conversation with our peers to learn about ourselves.

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Evidence