008 - The Expectations and Satisfaction of Residents with Autism | Dustin Grabsch [Article Review]

April is World Autism Month, so this episode aims to share the stories of residents with autism. To do so, we are joined by Dr. Dustin Grabsch from Southern Methodist University who published an article last year in The Journal of College and University Student Housing exploring the expectations of residents with autism to increase satisfaction with the on-campus living experience. We discuss the five themes that emerged from the resident interviews including academics, campus housing, community, roommate expectations, and the student experience. Throughout the episode it become abundantly clear that professional staff need only think just a little bit deeper to find small-scale and simple ways to better support residents with autism. Plenty of resources are provided for staff to explore on their own time to increase their individual knowledge and skills surrounding the topic.

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Connect with Dr. Dustin Grabsch on LinkedIn

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Resources Mentioned

Understanding the Expectations of Students with Autism to Increase Satisfaction with the On-Campus Living Experience [Journal Article]

003 – Resident Assistant Hiring Decisions [Podcast Episode]

Hiring Decisions of Graduate Assistant and Full-Time Hall Directors on Resident Assistant Recruitment [Journal Article]

Autism Speaks [Organization]

Texas A&M Explores Living Learning Community for Those on Autism Spectrum [News Article]

Talking Stick [Magazine]

College Autism Network [Organization]

Students with Asperger Syndrome: A Guide for College Personnel [Book]

College Autism Network Training Courses[Training Courses]

FEMA Independent Study Courses [Certifications]

Committee on Publication Ethics Cases [Organization]

Transcript

J.C. Stoner: 0:01

Welcome to the SWACUHO Podcast. I'm your host J.C. Stoner. This is our second article review where we hope to make research more accessible to our regional housing staff. Our first article review was episode three, with Dr. Craig Seager at the University of Central Arkansas, about RA hiring decisions of full time and graduate level staff. April is World Autism month so this month's episode aims to support the mission of the Autism Speaks Organization and sharing the stories and provide opportunities to increase understanding and acceptance of residents with autism. To do so, today we are talking with Dr. Dustin Grosh, who last year co-authored an article in "The Journal of College and University Student Housing" titled "Understanding the Expectations of Students With Autism to Increase Satisfaction With the On-Campus Living Experience." The article, of course, will be linked in the show notes. To amplify the voices of students in housing with autism, after his introduction, Dustin and I will jump right into the article exploring the lived experiences of residents with autism. We will then circle back around to some of the professional development and transferable skills associated with writing for publication. Dustin is a proud first generation college student and holds a bachelor's, master's and doctorate degree in leadership related fields. Originally from Warren, Michigan, Dustin enjoys boating, hiking, DIY projects and writing in his spare time. He currently serves students as the Director of Academic Initiatives at Southern Methodist University. As the Director, he oversees the Faculty In Residence program with the 11 Residential Commons facilitates, the Peer Leader program with over 85 student leaders, leads an interdisciplinary social science research team comprised of students, faculty and staff, and lastly works with the Engaged Dallas Student Directors and four other academic and student affairs offices to offer Engage Dallas, a playspace community engagement initiative benefiting south and west Dallas. Dustin, welcome to the show.

Dustin Grabsch: 2:10

Thanks, J.C. It's so good to be here.

J.C. Stoner: 2:13

We're really glad to have you. Your article explores students with autism and their expectations with campus housing and the college experience. Where did the idea for this research come from?

Dustin Grabsch: 2:23

I was actually talking with Hannah Melton and Carly Gilson. They're the two co authors on that. Dr. Gilson is at Texas A&M at the time as well and as Assistant Professor of Special Education. And Hannah Melton was a Graduate Hall Director with us at Texas A&M when I was there at the time. And we had just launched a new spectrum LLC. So an autism based living learning community that got quite a bit of national media attention when it first launched, which was a partnership with our disability resource office, as well as our special education area in the College of Education. And then, of course, residence life. And so we have that new program going and Hannah, our Graduate Hall Director, who was unable to join us tonight, really had that idea of wanting to kind of explore and do that as an independent study in her graduate program. And so with her willingness and kind of time and energy devotion, we kind of came up with this idea of really framing it around, what are the student experiences and expectations of living on campus? And so, J.C., I know, we talked about a lot in higher ed and student affairs about the concept of managing students expectations, right? Like we're better able, if we know their expectations, we can manage them if they're too high or too low, or meet them in the middle. And that is essentially what the impetus was for this, we wanted to understand what expectations residents with autism were coming in with so we could better manage their expectations and be realistic about what Housing and Residence Life staff can provide them when they're on campus with us.

J.C. Stoner: 4:01

So what specifically about it made it important to research?

Dustin Grabsch: 4:05

One of the things when Hannah and I were really digging into the literature, one of the things you'll find around students on the autism spectrum is that the sample sizes tend to be pretty small, because it's hard to get at that demographic of students because of different ways in which folks on the spectrum identify, whether they're formally diagnosed with the disorder in the DSM, and they have that official diagnosis, or they might be on the spectrum but are choosing not to receive, you know, disability accommodations. So you see in the literature, it's very hard to get a hold of that group. And then you also find that when you're asking traditional, like quantitative methodologies or questions kind of in a survey scale, you don't get at that depth of insight that students lived experiences really have with them that they can unpack with you. And so the time intensive process of sitting down and really getting in and digging into what on campus life is like, takes a little bit of time. And so we really saw a big gap there. And realizing too, that we had this new living learning community that we were kicking off, we were trying to also better inform maybe how we could market the program or get more folks interested, both families and parents, and then also help inform future programming of the Living Learning Community. So for all those reasons, it really led us to, to dig into this topic.

J.C. Stoner: 5:27

You mentioned the gap and not having interviews or qualitative data to really inform this. So why was interviews the way to go, then?

Dustin Grabsch: 5:36

You know, every housing operation is a little different. We did see some Talking Stick articles that if you haven't checked out Talking Stick in a while from a cool, I highly recommended, they had some pieces predating our publication on students with autism. And what they were talking about is different architectural design or things like that. But a lot of that was just based off of recommendations from like the College Autism Network, or other types of like nonprofits, or organizations, they have a lot of recommendations for students and families who are sending their resident or student off, who identifies on the spectrum to college, they have a lot of resources there. But you will find pretty quickly that it's just anecdotal things, there really isn't research that can be generalized, or that has been operationalized to the larger housing profession. And so we really wanted to give voice to that. And in our mind, too, we wanted these solid recommendations about what were expectations, how are they met, and how are they not met? And if they were not met, let's dig into it. And we really needed that space through an individual interview process. And really, I don't know, you know, not to stereotype. But in my experience working with students on the spectrum, they tend to be very straightforward, and to the point in their answers. So sometimes if you have to ask the question in different ways to really get at the meat of the experience, because they're really no nonsense and give you exactly what you asked for. And so sometimes the questions we were asking on a survey, or an open ended response really weren't getting what we had intended to, and that was probably us asking a bad question. But we had to have that space to ask those follow ups.

J.C. Stoner: 7:19

That's so interesting, I'd never I'd never thought about that possibility of like, the robustness of the examples provided or the richness of a very blunt direct statement versus someone who just likes to talk about it. You mentioned that part of the the challenge with exploring students with autism and their experiences is recruiting participants in that challenge. How did you go about recruiting participants such that you were able to conduct your research?

Dustin Grabsch: 7:53

My colleague, Dr. Gilson, who I mentioned is an Assistant Professor at A&M and focuses on special education and specifically students on the autism spectrum. We really leaned on her because Hannah and I had never done research methods related to this special demographic of students before. And so we really wanted to lean on her expertise. And we went a lot of different directions there about, you know, asking the question about formal diagnosis, contacting Disability Services and asking them to send out invitation for the research for folks that are registered that have that disorder that's on their records. So we went a lot of different ways with this. And we ended up with, we really wanted to open this umbrella up to get anyone who identified and so what we ended up doing, is actually asking an entire census, so all students who lived on campus at A&M, excluding the Corps of Cadets, which ended up being around like, a little over, like, almost 9000, I want to say, if I remember correctly, students, and we had them answer one screener question, do they identify as a student on the autism spectrum? And we didn't ask about the disorder and the diagnosis specifically. We had a bunch of students reply about a 14% response rate there and about 79 of them had indicated that they identify on the spectrum. And we ended up completing interviews with seven of them. There was a lot of scheduling things or folks that didn't show up or didn't follow up with us after we tried to reschedule but talk with seven and we ended up reaching data saturation with that.

J.C. Stoner: 9:27

And then what did you find any limitations with your sample?

Dustin Grabsch: 9:31

Oh, for sure. I think the two that we noted in the manuscript were A&M, if you're not familiar with the institution is prodominately White institution. So all of our participants were White identified. So that was limiting in the diversity there with racial regard. And then also, we noticed that our sample had no first generation college students in it. And so there's some limitations there with just kind of those layering and intersectional experiences of students that we weren't really able to get at with our sample in particular.

J.C. Stoner: 10:03

Looking back, is there any way, if someone was to conduct this research again with, was it a recruiting issue? Or was it just a sample issue?

Dustin Grabsch: 10:12

So if I recall correctly, those 79 that indicated they were on the spectrum, honestly, we, Hannah and I could have probably followed up a little quicker or been more on top of getting those things scheduled. A lot of it was scheduling, and it was near the end of the semester, and you know how it gets with finals and folks trying to get ready for the holidays or leaving. And I think we ran up against that, and that likely impacted recruitment. So my recommendation would be try to time it in that beautiful period right before midterms or right after midterms. But you know how hard it is to get into those beautiful little spaces in this semester?

J.C. Stoner: 10:50

Well, and when those faces do occur, sometimes you want to take advantage of among other ways.

Dustin Grabsch: 10:55

Oh, for sure. Like, you know, maybe a little bit of R&R, right?

J.C. Stoner: 11:00

Let's jump into what you learned. Your article says that four main themes came out of your interviews. So what was first up that you all learned?

Dustin Grabsch: 11:09

We really kind of categorized or themed the findings and remember, again, what we talked about in the beginning, this was about managing or understanding expectations related to housing. So we identified that the students we talked to had expectations for housing related to academics, related to the academic support programming and services. We also had things related to campus housing, and just the community they were able to create, as well as roommates, which was its own category related to the overall student experience. So to dive a little deeper in each of them, the first which was related to academics, we found that students had expectations mainly around transitioning to college and kind of academic degree programs and experiences. So a lot of questions from students around majors and minors. And assuming that both housing staff and everybody that they were interacting with at the university had basic understanding of degree programs, majors and minors, and as we know, as housing staff, we don't specialize in that area and we didn't quite meet the expectations that they had, in answering some basic questions that, you know, mainly students would turn to their Academic Advisor for, but as someone like myself, who works in academic initiatives, or academic support programming within Residence Life, we also identify that students had expectations related to residential tutoring, and the community computer labs on campus and kind of the expectations around types of software that were available to their like that might be accommodating to them. Or being able to access those kinds of spaces that were like lounges, or academic study spaces that were more individual that could block out noise. Because as you know, with autism, sometimes some students or spokes on the autism spectrum, have difficulty with noise cancellation, or get distracted easily or need some space that's really, really quiet for them to focus. And we found that sometimes our academic support environments in the residence halls are all centered around groups, and community. And that might not be always the best for students on the spectrum. So that's really what academics talked about for us.

J.C. Stoner: 13:28

When you talk about the expectations related to advising or knowing the things that are more academic based, do you think it was the there was an expectation for housing staff to know that or just the point of contact they were talking to?

Dustin Grabsch: 13:45

Yeah, I think it was the point of contact. But when we were, you know, J.C., that brings up a good point, because we were asking them about why was it built in to housing? And I think what they assumed is because we were agents of the institution, right?, we were part of the university that they expected us to have more of an understanding than we did. And I think that's where the disconnect, because if you lived off campus, they don't expect you to know anything about the university because they're not affiliated. But I think with our affiliation, came some sort of expectation there.

J.C. Stoner: 14:20

Yeah. And I think that that's one of the challenges of having such like, impactful frontline employees that have day-to-day, night-to-night interactions is you know, that point of contact, there's a higher expectation I would imagine of knowing everything. And despite having two week long trainings and day in and day out that it's becoming hard to know everything at the universities as they continue to grow and offer services especially on related to students on the spectrum or have other needs that in generations gone by weren't as prevalent or noticed. Or acknowledged, I should say.

Dustin Grabsch: 14:58

Yeah, acknowledged. That's a good good distinction there. And I do think with this group too is like, you know, I got to remember this was at Texas A&M, which is really huge, like 66,000 total students, we're talking an on campus population of over 11,000, versus where I am now at SMU, where we're talking about 3600 and we're a little bit more of a generalist institution. And I think that that expectations are a little different, because larger institutions have to be very siloed. But in doing so, who are we missing out? Who we're not acknowledging, in our process because of that? And how do we cross train and get back to those roots? Where we have in student affairs as being a generalist?

J.C. Stoner: 15:37

I think that's such an interesting point. Because the scale of it because you're right, like at a huge institution, it really, it has to be about volume, it has to be about silos. I mean, it I say it has to be it shouldn't be, and it should be about how do we promote and empower each individual student, but it's so hard to do when there's 9000 people living on campus versus like, my first professional job was at a school of 400 on campus in our heyday. And it was so much easier to know and interact and provide for every individual student and know the unique needs that they all faced. So I think that's an interesting challenge that I hadn't really thought about until you brought that up.

Dustin Grabsch: 16:16

Yeah.

J.C. Stoner: 16:18

So what was the next theme that came about?

Dustin Grabsch: 16:21

So the next one was really related to campus housing, and, you know, the expectations that students talked about with that really related to what are the advantages, and the perceived disadvantages that came with living on campus. And students, you know, these probably will sound really familiar to you, and probably to the SWACUHO nation that's listening in right now. Like, they're gonna resonate with some of these advantages. So like, I can walk the class, I don't have to wake up really early to get to my

8: 16:47

00am. The students also talked about the convenience of work orders, and not having to worry about that kind of maintenance function, or really dealing with contractors coming into their apartment or dealing with those things. They also talked about cost and the savings that came with living on campus with not having to have a car, or things like that. So we're all familiar with those, I would say probably, we've heard maybe those things come up with campus housing,

J.C. Stoner: 17:11

And in everybody's marketing material. Those are the things!

Dustin Grabsch: 17:14

Those are the things! Roll out of bed and go to class. Exactly. So that's what we emphasize. But one thing that came up as an advantage that was unique to the students we talked to is goes back to that concept of noise again, that we talked about earlier. And I just want to read an excerpt from Chuck, who was one of our participants. And Chuck was commenting on the advantage he perceived by the university publishing quiet and courtesy ours as a policy. So he goes, "because I've known some people who are especially dealing with sensory overload or meltdowns in that situation, I've known some people who are offput by noise, or more offput by certain visual elements that stimulate them. For me, it's always about always a noise, continuously loud is usually what drives me off or away." So Chuck was really talking about how like, you know, we don't, I think like RAs going around, going on rounds at night that enforce quiet hours, or enforce courtesy hours, that might not be there for other types of, you know, off campus properties. And I think those enforcement's and regular enforcement's and that policy really made it attractive to Chuck in some of the other participants that we talked to. So, you know, those were really it. And then they also, you know, talked about this idea of space as being a potential benefit or advantage. And they talked about the idea of like amenities in the room. And they also talked about like WiFi and having access to technology like that, in a consistent way. And so those were some of the things related to campus housing, more generally, the students discussed as advantages and kind of some of their expectations there.

J.C. Stoner: 18:58

And then the next theme was community?

Dustin Grabsch: 19:01

Yes, that one, we broke down into some subsets, J.C. We talked about campus climate, their ability to connect with their peers, and then we get into RAs in particular. And so just to kind of boil that down a little bit, our students talked about the generally like, welcoming environment. When they visited campus. They felt like the on campus living environment was very supportive culture, people were very gracious and sociable. And then also the idea of the campus culture, like the traditions that were happening in each of the residence halls, or the unique nature of the commons councils or Community Councils, excuse me, those things were kind of speaking to them. And they talked about this idea of like peer connections, as well. They wanted connecting with their peers. They didn't want to be just with other students on the spectrum. They wanted to connect with other students that were neurally diverse in different ways than themselves and make it sure that they didn't feel alone, until they talked about that need or that desire to connect with others. And that's why they might have looked for a roommate to the potluck system, or kind of put themselves out there in a different way. And then they also talked about kind of the dimensions that Resident Advisors played, having like a mentor on the floor, having someone that would be like convene the group or put on events or programs for them to socialize. But those things kind of came up as, as expectations to just have this sense of community overall.

J.C. Stoner: 20:32

I thought it was interesting that it was I mean, it was almost like halfway through the article before Resident Advisors or Resident Assistants were even mentioned, which I think is an important point that it really like focusing on the the needs and the expectations of students with autism, it really is a system issue. It's not, they weren't talking about their RAs needing to do more until, you know, halfway through. So that was, I think that's neat to think about, it's like sometimes a lot of things get passed on is like, our RAs need to be doing more, or they need to be more educated. It's like, Well, maybe if we look inside, at the systems in place, and the spaces and the facilities first that that's a good place to start also.

Dustin Grabsch: 21:12

Yeah, we I don't know about you, JC but I always feel like it's a pile on for live-in staff, unfortunately, like we're always expecting them to do more with less or the same amount of time. And honestly, like when I do this kind of analysis and stuff I'm really looking for, like, let's think about it in a systemic way, like in systems thinking, who else could we tap to help support and meet expectations of students on the spectrum, and this was an example where facilities can play a big part in it at the beginning, even how we market and some of the policies that are not necessarily always in the hands of the live-in, staff members, but set by administrators or leadership of a department, for instance.

J.C. Stoner: 21:53

Or even just how we like retool, like, quote, marketing and handbooks about spaces. And I mean, I love that example about the quiet hours and courtesy hours, because it's so common in every, every place I've ever been in every place I've ever heard about has those. But if we reframe it in such a way that it's like, oh, here's an additional value to that, other than just its quiet hours and courtesy hours as it is commonly done. So I love that I think like looking, like you, the systemic things are the usually have the most downstream impact, instead of piling on like you said to the the live-on staff who already have enough to do.

Dustin Grabsch: 22:34

Yep, exactly.

J.C. Stoner: 22:37

Chuck talked about roommates or people down the hall, but roommate expectations was the theme all on itself. So what did you learn about students with autism and their expectations for the roommates?

Dustin Grabsch: 22:47

Yeah, like, I think it goes back to, you know, students on the spectrum just want to be like the average student, the normal student, right. And they're going to have those unique challenges of how they connect and some of the ways in which they communicate or interpret nonverbal or verbal cues and how they respond to noise and visual stimulation when they're on the spectrum. And so I think we kind of recommended a little bit more care or time be spent within the roommate agreement process, where there'll be a little more opportunity for sharing and being a little more vulnerable. Of course, this is based on the student on the spectrum, being willing to identify in that way, or potentially putting themselves out there in that way, and their vulnerability there. But having some prompts maybe on the roommate agreement that talk about noise, because I think often we talk about like when guests could visit in the room noise might be on that little questionnaire we have them fill out in the portal when they're getting roommates selection. But noise doesn't really come up, I think, on the form, at least on some of the ones I've seen more recently. So I think we can think about space, we can think about noise, visual stimulations, like if people have lights, you know, or things like that. And then ways in which noise can be mitigated, maybe between you know, the types of fabrics that are used, or if there's a window, could a curtain be hung, that could be noise dampening in some way? I think we just got to think about space and roommates a little bit different, but really lean into those conversations, and really help them develop communication strategies. Because if if I was a student, and putting myself in my 18 year old self again, and I'm standing across from my potential roommate, and they told me that they're on the spectrum. At that point in my life, I would have not known what that meant, or how to really respond. And I think in a lot of ways, we've got to realize that communication is going to look different and need to be different for the message to be clear and get across. And so how can we facilitate that with our roommate agreements, and with our RAs?

J.C. Stoner: 24:51

I agree with you that I've not seen a lot that that overtly talked about noise specifically, but usually it's like veiled under something else of like "How late are people allowed to come over?" Or "do you like to study with music?" Where it's like it's in there maybe implied, but it's not direct enough to get at the heart of what you've been talking about.

Dustin Grabsch: 25:17

J.C. I'm so glad you brought that up because you use the word like, like overt, right? In my experience of working with students on the spectrum, you have to be a lot more overt in your communications, rather than suggestive or open ended. Because you're probably not going to get at the real root of something or the real issue of a conflict unless you're very overt. And I think this community of students really responds well to that direct form of communication, which is not how we are trained as helping professionals. We're trained to be softer, we're trained to be open ended. But I think we got to remember our emergency management training, our crisis response training, very, like direct questions. Very, like, yes, and no are totally okay with this group. You know, and leaning into that directness a little bit more. And that's that is somewhat unnatural sometimes to how we're trained as professionals.

J.C. Stoner: 26:12

Well, and probably I imagine confidence of delivery with yes, or nos that sometimes just like a hard "Yes" is it with confidence is more than"Well, ohhhh, I don't know. No, that could be this or that or the other." And I would imagine that, even if it has to be a little bit more ambiguous, like with a level of confidence probably would be beneficial. And you talk about the overtness, and I think about some of the roommate agreements I've seen, I've talked about, like, "how are we going to address each other when there's conflict?" Or "when I when you do something that upsets me, how do we talk about that?", like, I can imagine that's probably something that should be included, to be talked about very specifically with students with autism, because someone who's not on the spectrum might not appreciate or get it because of the everything you just said, of the the softness and the way. So I think that that would probably be something worth exploring.

Dustin Grabsch: 27:13

Yeah, no. J.C. I know our SWACUHO Nation couldn't see me. But the whole time you were talking, I was nodding my head like "Yeah, exactly." And I just want to point out, because we're talking about this theme of communication that kind of leads into that last step, which was just kind of focusing on this concept of the overall student experience. Caleb, one of another one of our participants, talked about this concept of like, even students on the spectrum come to college, because they want personal growth and development, just like every other student that shows up on our college campuses. And Caleb talks about that the person on an autism spectrum should expect to improve upon themselves, for them to improve with their communication skills, is going to have to be a must for them to grow as a professional. So I think maybe some communication improvements sort of session would be very helpful. He's talking about possible ways we can do programming, but even in our roommate agreements, and the conversations we had, we know, college students that are not on the spectrum, need help with communication just as much as students on the spectrum. So now, why not lean into those kind of dialogues and those types of communications together?

J.C. Stoner: 28:23

Well, if you talk about like the programs, and you know, we're educators, so everything seems to be an education problem. Like if you're a lawyer, everything's a legal problem that I think sometimes we in our profession and housing and student affairs, we often like, "oh, we just need to do more programs to educate people more," and sometimes going back to our whole systems processes like, "Well, why don't we do a little bit more education within the roommate agreement or be a little bit more direct or the quiet hours in the handbook?", like, you know, we can be a little bit more intentional in those areas that can demonstrate that attention to those educational moments, without doing like the programs that might foster awkward moments or not be done well, because we're not experts in facilitating on certain things.

Dustin Grabsch: 29:12

Exactly. Pass it along because not everything needs a screwdriver to fix it. Right. We need different tools for those things. But I also just think it's important to recognize that like some of the struggles that like all college students face is not exclusive to non, you know, or neurodiversity, as well, like students on the spectrum have those similar struggles or wanting to grow and develop in similar ways that other students do. And so it's always important to have that like asset base mindset and not only deficit, that this community is coming in with unique contributions to the community, but also wants to grow and develop in similar ways as well and has something to offer the community too.

J.C. Stoner: 29:48

That's great. Are there any other things that came out within the student experience?

Dustin Grabsch: 29:54

Yeah, you know, I was always so funny because I sometimes feel like man, I wrote the this a lot better than I'm talking about it right now. And I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of stuff that I'm like, "Oh, I'm sure there was a lot more because I remember writing all this." And it was like, Oh my gosh, well...

J.C. Stoner: 30:10

it's especially funny because you have to trim it down to 5000 words, or whatever the limit is. So like, so much gets cut out. And then it's like, oh, this is the way it is. And now I'm expanding it back again.

Dustin Grabsch: 30:20

Oh, my gosh, exactly. I think I always have that problem of they always want it to be shorter. And I'm like, how?! It's all important, you know, especially when you're like talking about students lived experiences, you're like, I can't have that, you know?

J.C. Stoner: 30:33

There's so many stories and quotes I want to include.

Dustin Grabsch: 30:36

Exactly. You know, I think we touched on it, but probably not as explicitly as we could have. But under that overall student experience, you know, we point to some expectations that the students had for staff education. So just as we might have, like SafeSpace programs for LGBTQ identified students, or students that are undocumented, and being allies, we might also want to offer similar type of ally forming programs for students on the spectrum. And that could also maybe lead to potential like round robins, or conference program sessions in RA training, or professional development sessions for full time staffers as well. So how do we create maybe ally programs for students on the autism spectrum, was potential there. And we also just talked about this desire. And I think everyone feels this, I know, with my own identities, I feel this, it's like you want it to be recognized that you're different. But you don't want to be treated drastically different. And I think that sentiment comes out in our student narratives as well for this project in particular, and they talk about that with the RA interactions and kind of what they're looking for. And I'm sure, I hope, you know, SWACUHO, you go in and dig into this and read into it a little bit more, because they say it so much better than I could ever say it as well. And so we have some quotes from Rebecca, and others who kind of talk about that concept of wanting to belong, but wanting to be recognized as a little different as well.

J.C. Stoner: 32:09

I love that. I think I think that's an important point of like, people want to be acknowledged for their differences, but not necessarily treated differently for them. So I'm glad that came out. And there definitely are some great passages from the students and in their voices itself. So are there any powerful stories that weren't able to make the cut in the final article?

Dustin Grabsch: 32:32

Oh, yeah, quite a bit. As you might imagine, when you're trying to keep focus on the housing experience, and the living on campus experience, things like dining came into play and the noise that's produced in dining facilities. And this, one of the participants talked about, like, strategically waiting until the last 10 minutes before a dining facility closed, to go eat because it was the most quiet, but then, you know, dining staff would have already thrown out the food or would have started the closing procedures early, and how they missed multiple meals for that. So like you have some rich stories that go beyond just what you know, was the scope of this study. But I think what was also interesting is like all the students in this study told us they were either satisfied, or very satisfied with their on campus housing experience at Texas A&M At the time, I would love to get some students that would be so direct, and tell us we're not meeting their expectations and see what other things we were able to, you know, unearth with that and what we could be doing better as a field as well. But yeah, lots of rich stories. But that one just sticks out to me about the dining halls in particular.

J.C. Stoner: 33:52

Is there anything that you would hypothesize based on what the satisfied or highly satisfied students said, for people that were dissatisfied?

Dustin Grabsch: 34:03

I think it would go around where, you know, where are those expectations that we talked about today? I think one of them is if the roommate situation went really bad, I'm sure that would have impacted them. If noise was really out of control in their building, I'm sure we would have heard about that. If our academic support programming and residential tutoring and computer labs that we have in the residence halls don't have the right stuff, I'm sure we would have heard a little bit more about that. So just as we talked a lot about the advantages kind of in this paper or the themes of the expectations. Imagine the inverse and I think that's where we would have really seen that dissatisfaction potentially play out. But I do think there's ways to be improving like we talked about setup of spaces a little bit different, training for sensitivity and inclusion around students on the spectrum. There's still ways we can we can grow and improve I think still.

J.C. Stoner: 34:57

The story about the student with dining is heartbreaking. And it's something that, to be completely transparent, I never would have thought about, like how that story ended until you shared it. And it's also one that in reflection, it's like, it should be totally obvious if you think about it through the lens of like, noise concerns. And like, it makes complete sense for someone to wait for the end of the dining hour. And then now think about it one step down, it's like, I know, we shut down programs when it starts, right, like everybody wants to get out of there. So now dining staff are doing what they normally do and getting done early, or starting to take meals out, because they're not making a whole fresh pizza the last five minutes, and it seems like it should have been obvious to me that that was happening, but I didn't. And I think that's an important takeaway here is if we all just think a little bit more, from a lens of the things that you shared, like I can, I can probably now think of a lot of things specific to noise. And I know there's a whole lot more to, like, students with autism than just noise, but programming, you know?There's so many things that are like now just popping into my head.

Dustin Grabsch: 36:13

J.C. when I was a student leader, you know, back, I've never was an RA, but I was an RHA and things like that when I was a student, I remember my number one recruitment tool was blasting the music in the lounge and see who showed up or, you know, make it like a club and put on some like lights, you know, and those were the ways I attracted residents to come out to the program, you know, or, you know, put amplified sound between the two buildings. So when they walk out, they would come to the program. Some of those traditional ways we recruit might be actually excluding some students that not all of them want the lively, loud music blaring programming, some of them might want the quiet discussion, or the the time to reflect or, you know, a wellness-like activity where you can do meditation or yoga, like some folks might want that quieting space, you know, and when we set up, you know, study spectaculars, in our residential communities at the end of the community, often they're all done in group settings, again, how are we also creating spaces when we create those study focused programming for individual study or study that's quiet, you know, in diversifying that some people like public studying some, like private studying some, like semi public, you know, studying spaces, and it just caused me to recognize my privilege, recognize that, like, what I would have liked, as a student may not be speaking or catering to, you know, diverse students nowadays, and even at the time, the folks that I was excluding, inadvertently, at the time as when I was a student leader.

J.C. Stoner: 37:48

Well, I think that's a perfect example. And not to put you on the spot of like, "You're the problem." But yeah, that's how systems replicate themselves. And you, you say now, and I know, we're all guilty of it, the type is like, You created this environment where potentially excluded people, and then all the people that then got hired and recruited is like, this is how we do it. And so then they recruit that same way. And I think, again, that to be like, You're the problem, because it's, it's a system issue. It's the it's systemic. And yeah, you know, I think there's a higher level of acknowledgement of that. And I think your research gets really, really into that. So I appreciate that.

Dustin Grabsch: 38:25

Yeah, of course, of course. And, you know, there's just so much that this study, like started for me and my own personal work and reflection, about like, what I, as someone who is not on the spectrum, and trying to think about like my own college experience, and what I thought was ideal living on campus, it just caused me to rethink some of that, because I liked the groups, I liked the loud, I liked that kind of programming, and I'm realizing that no, we we need to create space for at all, it doesn't all have to look the same, it doesn't all have to fit the model, because you're going to be catering to these different groups.

J.C. Stoner: 39:04

That's another thing I appreciate about the article to connect to it. I've liked that a lot of the things, and you mentioned this directly, is like a lot of things are things that non autistic students would comment about, but then it so it made it easier to just like take a little bit step forward and now add in this extra layer of being a student on the autistic spectrum. And so like I felt I was able to easier connect to that, again, as a person who doesn't identify as being on the spectrum that I connected to all these things you talked about, and then oh, there's this additional layer. And I thought your article did a nice job of kind of leading into that. Let's talk about like small scale, localized application. We've talked throughout about some things that departments could be doing or looking at, is there anything specifically we haven't talked about that you think departments could be doing to better manage and support the expectations of students with autism?

Dustin Grabsch: 40:02

Yeah, we we name a few things. So just some of those little training things like just as we have optional developments for ally programs, considering one for students with autism, we kind of talked about that a little bit of training for staff would go a long way and just kind of creating a baseline, modifying some forms, to focus on noise and kind of the way communication flows in those settings. We also go into some other things like, there's, you know, just as there's like, you know, the what is it US News and World Report rankings, there are also groups that do like the top 25, universities and colleges, for students on the spectrum, they kind of have like their own guide of like, what they look for. And some of those could be things, those criteria could be operationalized by Housing Departments. So I would potentially take a look at at that we reference that in the article. There's also a book that was published in 2009 by Wolf and colleagues that's really focused on students with Asperger syndrome, which is like one component on the larger autism spectrum. But they have a guidebook for college professionals, and we reference one of the worksheet activities that we felt would be really applicable. And so there's lots of resources with that one. So for instance, that particular worksheet helps not only I would say, students on the spectrum, but any college student anticipate negative interactions and experiences. So when they're starting off in their experience, what's everything that could go wrong with living on campus? Let's think about disaster planning, what could all go wrong? And then talk about strategies proactively, right? So we talked about building resilience with our students. And this worksheet that Wolf and his colleagues proposed, specifically around triggers that might relate specifically to students on the spectrum is super important. So there's lots of great, like tangible resources you can do. And if you're a hall director, or live-in staff member, or have students who care about our mentoring that are on the spectrum, great resources within that book, and I would recommend that.

J.C. Stoner: 42:09

your article also mentioned the college Autism Network, and trainings provided there.

Dustin Grabsch: 42:14

Yeah, lots of great resources like like, just as we would say, like, what is it called canned bulletin boards that like RAs can just like print and go, there's lots of those types of resources on their website, in addition to like, great videos, first hand accounts and experiences, those kinds of things. Definitely, I'm glad you brought that up as well, J.C.

J.C. Stoner: 42:34

I love those kinds of things. Because it's like, there's a slew of like emergency response trainings through FEMA that are free. And I just think of those college Autism Network and all the things that they have there, it's like, on-demand training that people can self direct, like professionals can go at any time in any place. If they want to make this a priority. Like, it's super simple to do to get even just a baseline education through these like micro trainings or, you know, macro trainings, in some cases.

Dustin Grabsch: 43:05

Yeah. And J.C., I really want to take a moment because I know as you mentioned, at the beginning, this month is Autism Awareness Month. And so I do want to challenge SWACUHO Nation who's listening today, like, what are you committing to? What's that one thing, you're going to go out and learn for yourself, maybe it's maybe reading this article even or like, go in and finding your own kind of resources, or looking into some of the things that we talked about today. What's your one thing you're going to commit to this month to make yourself a better professional for students on the spectrum, or better support them, and be able to kind of expand your network a little bit in that ways if you haven't already been connected really well to this awesome student community on campus.

J.C. Stoner: 43:46

I love that. You heard it here, the challenge from Dustin. We will link to a lot of those resources in the show notes so we are taking away any barriers for you to achieve that challenge.

Dustin Grabsch: 43:58

Love it, love it. Love it.

J.C. Stoner: 43:59

And then do you see any like metric based, like administrative outcomes for departments who want to integrate some of this into maybe their annual assessment or reporting, like what can be measured from a department level to achieve some goals they might set up?

Dustin Grabsch: 44:15

Yeah, so I think going back to those courtesy and noise hours, like often we give verbal reminders or things like that. And I also think RA staffs and others don't really take those as seriously, right. Like, they kind of let them slide or"Oh, it's not too loud. I don't want to knock on that door." But like tracking those kind of noise violations. You can also do what's called environmental assessments, which is really popular with libraries, right? So they use what's called like auto ethnography. These are not auto ethnographies, but they do those like environmental assessments, like participant observations where they walk around the library and track student usage in spaces so they like tally at 8pm who's using what room? I think it's super important to look at our spaces. Like what are actually being used or utilized around the clock, and maybe retooling some group spaces that might be more advantageous to individual studies, and set up cubicles or set up like, you know, I'm thinking about lots of hotels now, J.C., you walk into hotels and like business centers aren't really a thing anymore. There's like individual rooms where like their own locking door and their own individual workstations. I'm thinking about spaces like that, where it's like you can do individual or like, someone else can join you in that small room. But it's really meant to be more individual focus. And I think we're such community builders. But we realized that like even community builders need to retreat and recharge the batteries individually. And I think we need to analyze spaces. And those could be some metrics that universities could use around tracking noise elements, looking at kind of those environmental assessments. And I'm just thinking to is like, how do you ask about students on the spectrum in your demographic questionnaire elements on your assessments that you already send out? Often we focus on race, gender, first gen status, those kind of are the main ones international students. But are you asking the question if they identify in the spectrum? And how can you just embed that one question and look at maybe their experience is decidedly different? Because you can now sort your data based on neurodiversity?

J.C. Stoner: 46:22

Yeah, anyone doing Skyfactor assessments, put that in as one of your five bonus questions you get to choose.

Dustin Grabsch: 46:29

Yep, great suggestion.

J.C. Stoner: 46:31

And you talk about the space. And I think about furniture. And I know a lot of the furniture that's being marketed these days for like community spaces is, is highly modular, and can be configured to be public access space, or community space, but also you turn it a particular way and now it's it more isolated deskspace. So some of that could be considered for anyone planning for future renovations or furniture "refreshes."

Dustin Grabsch: 47:00

Exactly, those are great, great recommendations, too. And there's a lot out there like you know, and honestly cheaper, sometimes those individual spaces, so get get creative, and make sure you're catering to all and you're not just doing the same one, you know, same type of space in all your buildings.

J.C. Stoner: 47:16

Definitely any closing thoughts about the article itself, before we get into some of the skill application of writing for publication?

Dustin Grabsch: 47:24

I just want to close with saying, like I mentioned, Hannah and I, it was our first time ever working this intimately with this demographic of students. And I'm so glad I did, like for my own professional development. It really did open up a whole new student experience on campus that I was so ignorant about. But I will say, I'm so glad we had Carly able to kind of guide us through the process. And so I just want to throw out there, when you feel the most ill informed, or the most lacking of confidence or imposter syndrome, like that's that I wish I would take advantage of those and step in there more and get kind of this immersive experience like this project was able to do for me. And so that's just my closing comment is like this project was something Hannah wanted to do for class. And it ended up being so transformational for my own professional development and learning. And so just step into that unknown, lean into it. And even around demographics of students who never thought you would interact with or don't interact with on a regular basis. It's just such a great way to immerse yourself in the community.

J.C. Stoner: 48:31

Well, and I think there's a there's an interesting point here about the value of you keep going back to like this was a project like, I think there's a really big value in like, doing like, we're all doing things like why are we not doing more like actual research on the things we're already doing? Like we all have such rich data sets, that there should like we should all be publishing more about the outcomes of these instead of like, the anecdotal conversations at the hotel bar, you know, through an email or whatever that, you know, there's a very, there's a value to getting that out there in a more structured and academic sort of ways, isn't there?

Dustin Grabsch: 49:08

Yeah, well, I think you name it like when I go to the SWACUHO award ceremony, sometimes I hear about innovations and things that are going on or going in on some of the presentations at SWACUHO, even on a regional level. I'm like, "Yes, that's publishable." And I just don't think people know how innovative or creative their work is, and how it's easily turned into a publication. They just need that little bit of nudge or mentoring. And I just want to say like, if you think you're doing something innovative, think about publishing about it, because it's probably needed in our field. And there's so many times where I'm like, somebody has got to have talked about this before the literature and I go out there J.C. there's nothing out there! And I'm like, that is just heartbreaking because I'm like, we've been doing this for years as a field and no one's talked about this or published on this, like process or simulation that I know every campus has done at least five times, you know, like, I'm just thinking right now, J.C. and just to, to illustrate, we've done Behind Closed Doors forever, right as a field, such great professional development, you go and look, there's very minimal publications on behind closed doors. And so I'm excited, we might be doing an experimental design using the traditional Behind Closed Doors method. And then artificial reality simulations for training RAs and comparing which one students learn better on. And like, those are things that are like helps us innovate our work, but then also we can prove it, right? If we're going to do it anyway. Why not? And this stuff happens everyday around us the I think just people need that nudge to like, this is worth sharing.

J.C. Stoner: 50:50

Oh, absolutely. And Behind Closed Doors, what a great applicable example. I did a program a number of years ago, just about how to assess Behind Closed Doors, like in a more effective efficient instead of like, two weeks of analyzing qualitative data that, like I'm thinking about now it's like, there's something I can do to publish that? You know, that there's something there that is more than just a conference program and nothing against conference programs, because they're, they're important in all but I mentioned this on Craig's episode, people read the journal aren't always the people who go to the conference. And they're not always the people who read the Talking Stick. And so there's also a value to having different audiences to spread the message out there.

Dustin Grabsch: 51:33

Oh, for sure. And I just love if you haven't dug into the ACUHO-I journal, they do such a great job, they make it more engaging with the text font they use. They have discussion questions. I use those in my staff meetings, like we're doing, like my staff meetings, we're going over different student development theories at the beginning is our check in, which is weird, I know. But the other thing is like, we also have these where we go into discussions, they have the discussion already in the back of the article for you. How easy professional development we can get?! So you're right, there's just so much out there that I think people just need to realize it's so easy to make part of the practice, you know?

J.C. Stoner: 52:09

What did you think of the discussion questions for your article?

Dustin Grabsch: 52:13

You know, it's so funny, because you never really see them until it comes out in the journal. And sometimes they're, you know, very, very different in that way. I really appreciated how they pulled from the existing literature about autism spectrum. And then just thinking about some of those citations were from 2008. And how much has changed in that short time. So I think the group that developed it, so Jamie Workman was the one who developed these, and they did a great job at kind of like what they were doing there. But I really liked how they started getting at campus partnerships. So just as I told you, like, potentially bringing in a new ally program to talk about students with autism, or how to create a students on the spectrum, LLC, what type of partners would you need? They kind of get into some of those logistics and planning conversations, which are really good about starting to operationalize what was found, and I think they did a great job there on the questions.

J.C. Stoner: 53:10

Yeah, I'd love what I've when I published an article, I love reading the discussion questions, just to see what my first audience member actually took away from it. And then I was like, "Wait, but why didn't you ask about this?" Like, that was the one takeaway, I thought everybody would go. And apparently, I missed the boat on that one.

Dustin Grabsch: 53:27

Mm hmm. And what resonates, it's beautiful to see it. And that's, that's part of the processes you get to see and get to engage people in a very different way with with publishing.

J.C. Stoner: 53:38

What was the feeling you got when you saw your first article in print?

Dustin Grabsch: 53:43

Oh, my goodness, I think I'll go back to that feeling, you know, that imposter syndrome that I talked a little bit about earlier, like, Y'all, I was the student who had like a 1.8 GPA. My first semester, I was about to get kicked out of college, like I was that guy on campus. And writing was never my strength, like, and now after my undergraduate program, and my masters and my PhD, I feel like I'm a strong writer now, which I would have never said as a as an undergraduate. And so to see something published, where I wasn't confident in my writing, and to get to a point where I felt confident about it, and realize there's ways if you're not confident about your writing, to still publish, and be part of groups and teams, research is not a solo endeavor. And to see it in print, I finally got over that apprehension about my writing and that it wasn't good enough. And that was a awesome moment to have for myself. It wasn't even about the topic. It was more about just the process of writing and feeling confident in it. And that's probably what I took away from my first publication there.

J.C. Stoner: 54:48

well, and it's we've said on a number of occasions on the podcast, it's like once you get your first one done, it makes it a lot easier to do the next one.

Dustin Grabsch: 54:55

Oh, for sure. You get a you get into your own rhythm, your own process. You understand what parts of the research process you love, and what parts you want to outsource, you know, and I still outsource editing, like I still find other people to edit, you know, like, you just learn your style. And when you're doing it with teams, it's a way to collaborate way to do professional development just in a different way.

J.C. Stoner: 55:17

It's just like supervising, you know, delegate the things you don't want to do.

Dustin Grabsch: 55:20

Heck, yes. Isn't that good supervision?

J.C. Stoner: 55:23

That's my understanding of it. What's your favorite part about the writing for publication process?

Dustin Grabsch: 55:29

Oh, my gosh, I am a curious soul. Like I have, like, literally, I'm holding it up... You can't see it, SWACUHO. I have a little journal that I carry around with me everywhere. I'm showing J.C. It literally, it's full of ideas. It's just like random curiosities. Like when I first got to SMU, I'm like, Why does everyone multiple major? Like everyone has more than one major here versus when I was an undergrad everyone just had one. It was hard to multiple major here, everyone's doing it. So we did a study on why students multiple major, you know, like, another one was on like, you know, we had a curiosity on like, is Behind Closed Doors effective? So I talked about that possible study there. We did another one on right now we're in the middle of data collection about social class looks very different in college, right? Like, how do you determine social classes normally inherited by your family, but what determines social money or social capital in a currency way, when you're college students, so we're focusing on this idea of discretionary spending, how much money students have on a monthly basis beyond the necessities to participate in social life, and like we're doing a whole study on that, because SMU, I don't know if you've heard is known for being kind of a, you know, a little bit more expensive school. And so we're interested in digging into that with more students. So curiosities, that's my favorite part is getting to explore those questions and get to explore them in a meaningful way.

J.C. Stoner: 56:54

I love that because Craig Seger, very similar comment, like this laundry list of ideas that are just out there, and some are better than others, and some are valid and some are not. But a lot of them are just kind of fun to think about, and then some get legs and others don't. So, that's great. And you you got a lot that you said, you're you're working on. Your interdisciplinary research team is a part of that, right, that you all publish a lot. So how does this work?

Dustin Grabsch: 57:23

Yeah, so y'all know high impact practices we talk about in our field all the time. Like, we probably think about things like study abroad, or internships and stuff like that, but one of them is undergraduate research. And I think a lot of people in student affairs, just outsource that and said, "That's not us. That's academic affairs to do undergraduate research." Why not create played employment positions for students to do research for your department and help you with your assessment work. That's what I did. Essentially, I didn't want to do it alone. So I'm mentoring students on the process. And essentially, that's where it started was just getting students who are interested in data analysis. And using software like Tableau, or R, or Python, or SPSS, whatever the skill need was related to the data, they're a lot more proficient at some of that stuff. So essentially, I'm able to mentor, they are doing a high impact practice and getting employed, which is layering, you know, emergent high impact practice and an established one. And then we get to explore these curiosities that we have within housing within the university environment, etc. And it's just a lot of fun to not do it alone. And now, our department offers it not only from students, which I can employ, but we also offer it as a committee assignment as part of our departmental structure, where staff can now opt into the research team for professional development for particular projects. So now it's a professional development avenue as well, for our live-in and mid level staff.

J.C. Stoner: 58:56

Staff that opt in... How do they manage the job duties and other responsibilities? Like is opting into this mean they don't have the opportunity to do something else, or is it like a committee structure? Or is it outside the work hours?

Dustin Grabsch: 59:10

it's within the committee structure. So if we say that you have to be on two this year, it counts as one of your two. So we build it in that way. But we do have some staff that have been here a while that kind of gets special approval from their supervisors, because they're on the two committees already, but they want to do a third through this project. And like one, the social class one, Alexander Renz, he's a residential community director here, and in the higher ed program, and so he has an interest in it. Not only that, but also in school. And we were like, yeah, come on, bring the idea. Let's go. And so we get to do that kind of project together as well. So it's really cool in that way that I have the support of my supervisor and the department to count this as part of one of those assignments.

J.C. Stoner: 59:55

With all the people involved. My real question is how do you go about determining authorship order.

Dustin Grabsch: 1:00:03

Hmm. So funny thing that you brought that up, I actually went to NASPA and ACPA hosted like a collaborative research session. And basically, they talked about that concept of author order and how you get credit, right? Luckily, I'm not in a staff, I'm in a staff position, I'm not in a faculty position which requires me to be first author on everything. So to me, it's more important for like the students to experience first author and what it means to be a corresponding author with a journal, and what those responsibilities look like. So often we, we being like the staff, like push them, or the faculty involved, push them to the leads a lot of the time, but you're right, it is it is a discussion early on. And we bring it up two or three times normally, through the project period, as a way of just honestly assessing, right? Am I contributing? What are my contributions to this project? And it's a great like self reflection, and sometimes people feel guilt and shame, which motivates them to do their part a little bit more, while others are like, "You know what, I'm fine being last, because I'm really not sure what's going on," like, you know, like, it's whatever it is.

J.C. Stoner: 1:01:13

"I'm just happy to be here!"

Dustin Grabsch: 1:01:14

Yeah, I'm happy to be here! I'm learning about like, regression analysis, and I'm still like, whoosh, you know, like, whatever it might be. And so we have two or three times we talk about it, but it is intentional. And it's good practice to talk about it and bring it up early. And for me, it's like sometimes the two has the idea. But not it goes beyond that. It's like who can operationalize the idea because operationalizing the idea is the hardest part.

J.C. Stoner: 1:01:40

Absolutely. I worked with the an author once and I, it was it would have been this person's first article. And I said at the beginning, I was like, at the end of this process, when we're all done, you and I are going to have a conversation about who deserves and we're each going to make a case. Yeah. And we'll decide at that point. And I part of it was just to do it right, and but also to challenge this person to articulate what it was they did their involvement, and you know, their contribution, because I think that's such an important part is like, you weren't just a tag along like you were a valuable member of this team. And I want you to be able to articulate when someone asks, when you're talking about your article like, "oh, yeah, of course I did. These are all the things I did." And I think that's just such a valuable piece, especially for like young authors, or first time publishers that you weren't just along for the ride,

Dustin Grabsch: 1:02:29

You're already doing the mentoring that I talked about, you're getting them to articulate the transferable skills and their impact, and you're doing that through an author water discussion, and you're, you're prepping them for the next conversation they're going to have in the interview when the resume is being reviewed. You know, like, that's exactly what you just did there is helping them articulate their contributions on a team of researchers, you know?

J.C. Stoner: 1:02:51

yeah, the interesting thing is like this person had a job interview, and it actually came up in the job interview about the article and had the elevator pitch all ready to go. And I mean, it was great. There's, I can't remember what it is now. But there's some like online forum for like, researchers, where they write in about, like, complaints about authorship order or contributions or things, and it just is hilarious. Every once a year, I'll go on there and read it. And it's like, I mean, it's a legit place. It's not just like a Reddit post, but it's like a legit organization and I'll have to find where it is again, but I love reading that stuff. Because it's just the politics and those kinds of things. It's just like navigating anything in the job.

Dustin Grabsch: 1:03:33

Oh, my gosh, and, you know, it gives me some sensitivity as someone who works with faculty, in my role, like now I have insight into some of the weird things that they spend an hour talking about, and I'm nodding my head, I'm like, I'm not quite sure why this is so important to them, and why they're frustrated. But now I have a little inkling. Yeah, that is frustrating, like when someone doesn't pull their weight on a research project, or yeah, that hurts when something you spend a lot of time on, and your first author on doesn't get the credibility or the weight because it was just a weird journal that was published in and not recognized by their field, you know, like, I understand some of those concerns now. And I think I'm a better collaborator, because I have those kinds of insights, as well through through my work with this with this team. So lots of lots of new politics. But the one thing I'll just throw out there too, for folks that are thinking about getting into research, like think about the academy, you work at an institution of higher ed, what is its currency? Its currency is what is written. It's what what makes a report what makes you know, the final cut of something, what's published, that's the currency of academia, that's going to be what causes change. And so for me, like this topic around students with autism or other marginalized communities, you can amplify voices and student experience through publication because that's the currency that the academy listens to. And I think that is often what I like about it is that you can really cause change through what you write. And that's really what motivates me to kind of do this kind of work and to write it up. But you know, it also helps me just be a better contributor to the field, you know, as a whole.

J.C. Stoner: 1:05:18

Absolutely. And have you ever received any feedback or comments about change that any of your work has inspired?

Dustin Grabsch: 1:05:25

Oh, my Yes. So earlier, this or like, late, late last week, I had an article that published in the College Student Retention, and it was about characterizing why students were leaving the university. And it's one of the first studies that is at a private school, right? So and it airs some little bit of laundry, some dirty laundry, about you think we have our business processes down on some of our departing student processes. We don't, it's a lot more messy. And when you have a researcher that's looking through stuff in a very systematic way, you start finding gaps. But that's the beautiful thing about practitioner scholars, we are action researchers, we are doing the work and trying to inform our inform our work through a methodical systematic practice. And we found a lot of gaps. And some of the people who were responsible for those areas felt some kind of way. But it's done for improvement. It's not done to point fingers, it's done to so look, we have work to do. And all institutions have areas of growth, they just have to be more open to it. But boy, I was I was pointing those out a long time ago. But it took till the publication for that to be taken with some credibility.

J.C. Stoner: 1:06:45

I love everything about that, because it's so true. And even just the skills involved in like, qualitative research, like, you know, you do an annual assessment. It's like got some open ended things on it, like, professionals typically focus on the one hysterical comment, and we got to resolve that. But like, if you actually look at that with a qualitative researcher lens, that's like, oh, there's a whole bunch of like non hysterical things that are thematically aligned, that oh, we should be addressing this instead of this one thing that there you go.

Dustin Grabsch: 1:07:18

And, and honestly, those things that those hysterical, like comments or suggestions or those really big outliers, that's what we would call them in the research process that outlier, those things get all the way up the chain to leadership. And that's often all leadership hears is outliers. And so they're forming themes off of outliers.

J.C. Stoner: 1:07:39

Yes!

Dustin Grabsch: 1:07:40

We that are more touched with the data, not saying that our leadership is out of touch. But I'm just saying that we that are in the data that are mining it that are going through it in a systematic way, we're seeing the true themes of the student experience. And we've got to do better about amplifying those themes, not theming, the outliers.

J.C. Stoner: 1:07:57

Building themes off of outliers, I never thought of it that way. You are so right. Because the further up you move, like the less involved in the day to day like you only hear the outliers, whether they're the extreme positive or the extreme negative.

Dustin Grabsch: 1:08:10

Exactly.

J.C. Stoner: 1:08:12

Well, and you talked about writing the currency of like academia, but I think there's also a currency like for an individual. And you talk about reports, it's like, most Student Affairs divisions have like an annual report that every department fills out and it's got Okay, now list all of your staffs presentations. And typically one of those is lists all your staffs publications, and in most departments, or Student Affairs divisions, like that one's pretty sparsely filled. And so if you are to publish something, there's a currency there because of the scarcity. If your name is associated, like I guarantee your VP is going to see your name on 100 page report, because that's a very interesting and powerful category to be associated with.

Dustin Grabsch: 1:08:55

Exactly. So you're finding out that you're going to get recognized in a different way than you thought. Right. And I think you're right, that is a scarce area on the reports. And I'll also point out too, with with universities moving towards R1 or R1 focuses, we're having conversations here at SMU, how can we get into Academic Impressions, which is, if you're not familiar with that, it's a software where faculty track their publications, their service, their teaching, that kind of stuff. But why couldn't Student Affairs, who might be adjunct faculty, in different departments contribute publications to the overall metric? And so we're talking about ways where we can benefit our academic partners, maybe not in a huge way, if not a lot of us are publishing but in some way, we're going to contribute to some sort of metric that matters to the larger university. And it's cool to think about that in that way as well that like, yeah, it's tracked in our in our regular annual reports with our division, but what are other ways we can get it out there to maybe benefit the institutional outcomes as a whole?

J.C. Stoner: 1:09:59

Yeah, absolutely. As we wrap up the show, what's the most memorable piece of feedback, positive or negative that you've received from a manuscript reviewer?

Dustin Grabsch: 1:10:10

This goes back to my first ever publication. You gotta got to come back with me in time J.C. I'm going back to like undergrad, okay? I'm, I'm a end of my sophomore year going into my junior year, we're publishing what motivates students to participate in a residential leadership Living Learning Community. I'm working with two faculty members. One of them who's highly relational, like everything's great. My cheerleader, the other faculty member, very task oriented, brash, direct communicator. Okay?

J.C. Stoner: 1:10:39

I already see where this is going. This is great.

Dustin Grabsch: 1:10:42

Right? Okay. I thought I was doing great, because the only person I was talking to the whole time was my cheerleader. But then I went into someone that actually read everything I wrote, which was different. My cheerleader cared about me in some type of way personally. But the other task oriented one cared about me in a different way and showed their care, through a really red manuscript that looked like it was dead, that something died on it, because that's how I red it was. But that kind of feedback that taking feedback as a form of care that someone took care to read your work. And she pointed out to me about how I write in a very inactive voice, and not an active voice and pointed out all the prepositional phrases that I use that dilute my sentence structure. And this might sound really crazy to talk about on a podcast. But that piece of feedback, like changed how I wrote and how I was mindful of it now. And it wasn't like I hadn't gotten that kind of feedback before in my class. But it felt different. Because I was doing this as like an extra curricular thing. And I cared about it in a different way than my class assignments. And so it resonated. And that was the most beautiful thing, just working on how to write in active voice. And realizing that markups like that is a form of care. And that opened me up to really hearing that feedback for the first time.

J.C. Stoner: 1:12:10

On the last episode, we talked about, do you want compliments? Or do you want feedback, I'm just glad you had both of those and individual people there to provide that for you.

Dustin Grabsch: 1:12:18

Oh, you do need a little bit of both. Because when you're doing for the first time you need that cheerleader in your court, but you also need someone who's technical and going to point out the flaws in your logic. And that was the beauty of that duo for me. And we're not always that lucky on the reviewer process to have reviewer one being the relational one and the reviewer two being the technical, but we can only hope that it balances itself out a little bit.

J.C. Stoner: 1:12:40

My first final paper in my doc program that I wrote, It was like a 15 page, something or other... it was about cultural capital and student affairs programming. And I remember reading the feedback on it. And I loved the professor gave it to me, and on page eight, there was a comment off to the side said, "Well, it took eight pages, but your paper is finally starting to get somewhat good." But it was absolutely, I mean, he was absolutely right. It you know, to be able to take and I think that's such a neat thing about the anonymous blind process is like, there's a whole lot of feedback I've received in papers I've written or manuscripts for publication. And sometimes being able to take feedback like a champ is one thing, but also then being able to respond to stuff you don't necessarily agree with is also a skill to develop.

Dustin Grabsch: 1:13:25

And J.C., you pointed out too it's like, it's so important that you put yourself out there, you're putting yourself out there in a very different way than you ever have been. Right? And I think also in student affairs, we're

J.C. Stoner: 1:13:37

Oh, yeah. And sometimes just reading those the used to talking about the fluff and the big picture. And very abstractly, you know, we want to increase students sense of belonging, you know, we talk about we talk about the world that way, but then when you actually operationalize them, like I asked my staff like what a sense of belonging mean, and they can't even define it. And then when we actually do a research study, now we have a seven part subscale, which breaks down sense of belonging into in group homogeneity, lack of perceived loneliness, centrality, identification, now we have operationalize what the definition of sense of belonging is, that's, that's the the gap we're filling here, right? We're so used to talking abstractly in our field. And we got to realize that when we write, and we do assessment and research, we've got to get very technical and narrow and specific. And sometimes it's, it's hard to do that because we have half of our team that's the outgoing big picture group. And then we have a technical team. And meeting in the middle is the hard part, but it's so necessary for the work. survey instruments about belonging, like I'd studied mattering. And just reading the survey itself gives you like tangible things to target because you know, there on the survey that it's these four categories that actually make people feel like they matter. And so even just doing that much is going to help people operationalize those things.

Dustin Grabsch: 1:15:03

Exactly. And that's the point of what we do, right? We're scholar practitioners, we operationalize the new knowledge that we're creating. And that's, that's the beauty when you can, you've been so specific, you've been so thorough, you've been so methodical, that now you have a true recommendation. And you've thought about it in a way that like, now you can move it now it can help move the needle, and the needle might not move much, but don't get discouraged. It's still movement in the right direction. You know, my, my dissertation thesis advisory says, your dissertation is just going to be a pimple, a pimple in the new knowledge, it's going to be so small and obsolete, and doesn't look so cute. But eventually, like another layer will form and your pimple will now be part of the literature, right? And be encompassing. Someone else will be the new pimple down the road. And that's kind of what it is little pimples we're creating to kind of expand this like larger construct of knowledge. And I'm like, okay,

J.C. Stoner: 1:16:02

That's fantastic. I love that. Just so the SWACUHO listeners know that you're more than just a professional and you do more than just write.

Dustin Grabsch: 1:16:12

Yes.

J.C. Stoner: 1:16:12

In your bio, we mentioned that you like DIY projects, what's something you're currently doing yourself?

Dustin Grabsch: 1:16:18

Yes. So back in March, I just bought a new condo here in the Dallas area. So I've been doing some home improvement stuff. So I recently retextured my downstairs half bathroom, painted in a nice like nature green. So I have a little retreat oasis, put a new little sink fixture in there that's walnut. It looks great, J.C. It looks great right now. So that was my, my most recent project. And then I like Google. So I changed out all my light fixtures switches to be like things I can control on my Google app. So now my whole house can respond to me when I ask it to. So it's the only thing that really listens to me, is my Google Assistant. So that's who I hang out with most of the time when I'm outside at work.

J.C. Stoner: 1:17:00

So any closing thoughts before we wrap up?

Dustin Grabsch: 1:17:03

No, other than J.C., I really appreciate this the opportunity to talk about something I care about, like that's the beautiful thing about research people care about what they spent time researching. And so it's always a great conversation starter. And I hope it inspired somebody in the SWACUHO world to take advantage of that challenge. I talked about earlier learning about something about the students in the autism community that they wouldn't do some of that professional development, but also no like, J.C., myself, we're like wanting to be those scholars in the field and contribute in the ways we can and do research work, and so find people to collaborate with. And I know I'm open to it. And I would love to connect with others that listen to this and want to connect on these kinds of topics.

J.C. Stoner: 1:17:43

Yeah, absolutely. And you heard it here first, from a capital standpoint, you've got an offer out there. So don't let it slide through. If it's something you're really interested in, like, take action.

Dustin Grabsch: 1:17:54

For sure. But thanks again for the time J.C.

J.C. Stoner: 1:17:57

Oh, it was my pleasure. This was a ton of fun geeking out a little bit. But to our listeners, I definitely want to thank Dustin for spending time with us diving in deeper to help us understand the lived experience of residents with autism. I highly recommend reading the entire article to gain an even more robust understanding of what students with autism expect out of and the satisfaction with the campus housing experience. This episode wraps up another four episode block and by the time it airs, we will have already begun recording and editing the next block of episodes. The podcast continues to find its footing with each episode and that is largely due to those of you who have reached out provided feedback or connected via the swacuhopodcast@gmail.com email address. I am seeking volunteers to help out with scaling and elevating the podcast. Specifically, I'm looking for people to write reflection guides, recruit and solicit guests, develop topic outlines, and even edit episodes. It isn't glamorous work, but it is important work with plenty of associated skill development. If there's one thing I've learned about professionally growing in the field of student housing, it's at the best skill development with the most long term benefits actually come from the gopher tasks and honing the fundamentals. Take it from me, you need absolutely no experience to get involved with this podcast since guess what? I had none when the whole ordeal began. And with that, I say to you, good day.