Law, Policy, & Governance (LPG)

Initial Reflection

This class will provide me the knowledge of laws and regulations that are made through a higher education system. This class should give me the skills to be able to use this in any of my future roles. It should also help me enforce the policies of the institution. I should be able to enact critical applications at the department level as well as the institutional level. Those applications should be mindful of regional, national, and international contexts. 

LPG Competency Reflection

Law, Policy, and Governance is a very important matter when it comes to higher education. I did not fully understand coming into it how important things truly can be. Something that I am shocked by is how unprepared I was for the class. I had no background on FERPA, due process, tort law, or even the Cleary Act. In my position there are a lot of these that would be useful had something arisen with my students. Thankfully they did not. It was scary the first day of class repeating the words “I will get sued”. That just seems out of reach for me but I understand now that everything I say and do could be used against me when it comes to students and their parents. I also feel that in my K-12 education I really did not get a good grasp of the amendments and my rights. This class really helped me with those things.

I still have some much to gain from furthering my law, policy, and governance skills. Such items are understanding the governance processes and policies at my institution. Each institution runs so different compared to the other. Even schools within the same systems just work very differently. So when we think about UW-La Crosse compared to UW-Madison their policies on everything will be different. So that is something to keep in mind for future roles is because it worked this way at one institution, does not mean it will work at a different location. I find it difficult to tangibly understand how my position fits into everything when talking about law and governance. Policies seems to be more interesting to me or easier for me to understand. Laws here in the United States can be difficult to comprehend. It will be important for me to continue my growth in those areas especially so that I can be useful to students and colleagues as well as preventing myself from possibly being sued.

Something I feel very drawn to is working on my civic engagement and doing this together with my students. In campus activities students want to work together and be present on campus but it seems that they also want to be present in the community too, so thinking of ways to incorporate that in my future positions will be important to me.

For artifact I am using a group project myself and another classmate put together about free speech. In both my history class as well as the law class I learned how important free speech is on college campuses. The artifact is about a case study we looked into and how there are ways to and ways not to restrict free speech.

Final Reflection

There is a lot to unpack with Law, Policy, and Governance. There is a lot to think about when you are a decision maker at an institution. Something I learned from the Organizational and Human Resources class is that as the Dean of Students there is a lot of decisions to be made. In that position law, policy, and governance is very important. It is important to know the laws in conduct cases, when there is a crisis and what the protocols are for that because there are potentially some big areas for negligence. That is why having protocols and and specific instructions are policies are important as the Dean of Students. the area in which I need the most growth is going to be the theoretical principals of leadership. I just feel I have not put the most effort from this class into this area. Only because I have been trying to grasp the different kinds of language and statements used in laws and policies so that I can understand them to their fullest. 

Lastly, my second artifact is from a learning challenge that I completed. This was on a case study about free speech and whether or not students can hangout symbols that may be offensive to others.