Reflections On My First NACADA Conference

The following post was written by Andrew Cangiano, Mercer County Community College, Trenton, NJ and first time NACADA conference attendee. 

This past week I attended my first NACADA conference when I went to the Region 2 conference in Dover, Delaware. Despite the inclement weather we faced (thanks Nor’Easter), the show went on without a hitch. It was a fantastic three days for a number of reasons.

For me personally, it was a chance to expand my professional network, as I was able to meet and speak to so many amazing professionals. Everyone in NACADA is super friendly and is more than willing to share advice or talk about anything of interest or importance. I will admit that going into the conference I felt somewhat intimidated because I am pretty new to the advising field and I am really just dipping my toes in the water so to speak. However, I found everyone from the steering committee to the presenters to all the attendees to be amazingly professional, as well as amiable. I was able to meet professionals from all different types of schools – community colleges to Ivy League institutions, and people at all different points in their respective careers.

The workshops were outstanding as well. I attended many interesting sessions, including one run by my colleague at Mercer County Community College, Andrew Millin, titled “13 Reasons Why: Discussing the Differentiation of Counseling and Academic Advising.” I was able to attend a pre-conference workshop called "Job Search Bootcamp" where I received information about how and where to look for jobs in higher education, as well as assistance with fine tuning my resume and cover letter. Every session I attended was informative, most were highly interactive, and I left each one armed with knowledge I never had before. It’s almost impossible not to learn at a NACADA conference. Even during breakfast there were poster sessions where presenters talked about different trends in advising.

There were a number of big takeaways or themes that I found during the conference and one was the importance of self-care and emotional well being, which was stressed by a number of the presenters, along with the keynote speaker, Bobbi Barends. She spoke on the importance of thankfulness and shared her personal struggles and triumphs in working her way to becoming the Vice President and Campus Director of Delaware Technical Community College.

A third reason to attend the conference is that these people know how to have a good time. We had many networking and community building events, from the welcome reception, to Bingo, to yoga, as well as dinners and going out dancing (it helps when you are at a casino). The ability to enjoy yourself with like-minded people was amazing. For anyone in academic advising who is wondering whether or not to check out NACADA, I can not more highly recommend joining this organization and becoming as involved as possible. If you are hemming and hawing about attending a NACADA conference, do it! Start small and attend one of the upcoming drive in conferences. You will probably wonder why you didn’t join sooner!