International Student Affairs - Please engage

I maintain two blogs - Pursuing Leadership and this one - Global Student Affairs. The Global Student Affairs blog has been slow to catch on but I hope the activity will increase. Four things have happened that revive my interest in posting and interacting here:

1. The 2012 Qatar Study Tour and Young Professionals Institute - First launched in 2010, the QST and YPI was a resounding success in 2012. This particular initiative brought two graduate programs in Student Affairs and Higher Education (University of Maryland and Colorado State University) together with student affairs educators in Qatar for two weeks of immersion and inquiry-based learning.
2. The NASPA/ACPA Arabian Gulf Conference - The Gulf Conference was the 6th in the region and the first to combine sponsorships from the two major U.S.A. student affairs organizations. 180 educators from 10 countries and 29 higher education institutions came together for an extraordinary time of listening to each others' progress in advocating for student affairs as an essential element of higher education in the Gulf.
3. The 75th anniversary of the "Student Personnel Point of View" - After much consideration over the last four years, travel and study of different institutional approaches to student affairs, I wrote a Journal of College Student Development (January/February, 2012) article entitled "The Student Personnel Point of View: Catalyst for 75 years of dialogue."
4. The three above conditions have stimulated interest in Qatar Foundation creating a Certificate in Student Affairs to help our colleagues in Qatar learn about student affairs work and to develop a knowledge community to help us do the best we can do.

So, the time is right to bring more attention to this blog in order to foster some conversation. I will offer comments in subsequent posts about the 2012 Qatar Study Tour and the 75th anniversary of the "Student Personnel Point of View." I invite you to join the conversation with the QF Certificate group who will be invited to read and post on a regular basis. All are welcome, wherever you are. Those of us working in the international arena are all trying to do our best work and we need to be able to converse with and learn from each other.