Ep. 8 - Aric Faulkner - Emerging Voices

🎙️ Emerging Voices: From TRiO to Trailblazer – Featuring Aric Faulkner

In this inspiring episode, Matt and Bri sit down with Aric Faulkner, academic advisor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Grainger College of Engineering. From his early days in the TRiO Upward Bound program to teaching ESL and now guiding future engineers, Aric’s journey is all about mentorship, resilience, and paying it forward.

He shares how his experiences shaped his passion for advising, the lessons he’s learned from his special-needs pup 🐾, and why confidence, compassion, and community are the keys to student success. We also dive into his adventures in the NACADA Emerging Leaders Program, his advice for new advisors, and his dreams for the future of academic advising.

If you’re looking for a mix of heart, humor, and hope, this episode will leave you motivated to invest in students!

*Emerging Voices is a spinoff of the Adventures in Advising podcast!

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Hey, and welcome back to another episode of Emerging Voices. This is Matt Markin from CSU San Bernardino, and with me, as always is...

Bri Harvie  
Hi guys. I'm BriHarvie. I'm the Associate Director of Academic Advising at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.

Matt Markin  
And on today's episode, we get to interview Aric Faulkner. Aric is originally from Peoria, Illinois. He is currently an academic advisor for the Undergraduate Programs Office at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Champaign Grainger College of Engineering. He started working in academic advising at UIUC in June of 2021, in addition to being an academic advisor, Aric has taught English as a second language as well as ESL citizenship classes at the Urbana Adult Education Center. Aric earned his associates degree in foreign language at Illinois Central College. He then transferred to Illinois State University, where he earned both his bachelor's degree in Spanish and his master's degree in College Student Personnel Administration while working on his master's degree, Aric also completed a graduate certificate in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Aric moved to Urbana Champaign in summer of 2020, to begin his role as an ESL instructor. A year later, he started as an academic advisor at UIC, and has loved this profession ever since. Aric joined the Emerging Leaders Program and has had a wonderful experience. He is giving deep consideration to academic advising as a long term career, and Aric looks forward to learning and growing more in this profession. Aric, welcome.

Aric Faulkner  
Thank you so much for having me here today, and thank you to everyone who's watching or listening.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, thanks for joining Bri and I on this and we want to throw this first question to you so we've heard the formal bio. We just want to know more about you. Can tell us in your own words, tell us your path in higher ed, your journey. What's your origin story?

Aric Faulkner  
Yeah, so my origin story with higher ed really started at the age of about 13 or 14. I was in an assembly in my middle school one day, and someone came into the assembly. They basically presented the TRIO Upward Bound program to our middle school. As we were about to graduate, we were transitioning to high school, and it's a high school support program to help prepare high school students for college. For those who are not familiar with TRIO Upward Bound and so when I turned about 14 and finished middle school, I went into the tree Upward Bound program. Spent all four years of high school there. It made such a huge difference in my life. It really inspired me to have a career in higher education, because I spent a lot of time like going to summer institutes and learning more about the coursework I would be taking each year in high school. I spent a lot of time traveling around to different colleges and universities around the country, as well as historical sites, like going to civil rights museums in the south and just different opportunities all over the country, but really it was the advisors and the mentors who really assisted me throughout each step of high school and helped encourage me and support me through each step of the way, and helped lead me to degree completion or achieving that high school diploma and getting into college and learning how everything works and or at least having a head start, or sort of an introduction to how things work in colleges and universities. And so that is a little bit about my origin story. I don't think I would be where I am today if it weren't for the true Upward Bound program. And in closing, going from true Upward Bound, I stayed with trio as a student support services student throughout my two years at the community college and my couple of years at the university to finish my bachelor's. And trio made such a big difference in my life. It really helped me get that college degree as well. And I feel forever indebted to trio and so my origin story really comes through the TRiO program.

Bri Harvie  
That's so heartwarming to hear, and it's so nice to hear success stories coming out of programs like that. Do you feel like looking at kind of the trajectory of your career? Do you feel like your time in the TRiO program is what led you into some of your work in like teaching citizenship classes and teaching English as an additional language and helping other people hopefully find their path into education. Do you think that's where that tie came from in your career?

Aric Faulkner  
Partially, yes. I think some of it has to do with just trio and how they inspired me to explore different options in different career fields and different major disciplines and be able to explore what I wanted to achieve in the world and in my life in general. I do owe a lot of that to trio and some of it was just kind of intrinsic motivation, like I really felt like as someone who speaks another language, I wanted to work with people who come from all over the world. I've always wanted to work with people from different countries, different languages, different backgrounds, different personalities, different cultures. That's kind of an environment that really fuels me, and so I've always found, like this interest in multiculturalism and diversity, equity, inclusion, a lot of different buzz words that are out there today that tie into these types of work and these types of communities that I've been involved with and with trio I remember growing up in high school and going to tutoring sessions and going to some of those Saturday institutes and summer institutes. And I always told myself like I want to be like these people, and I want to help others achieve their goals, and I want to help others attain college degrees and be able to open more doors for more opportunities for themselves and their families. And I really think that I've done a good job so far with achieving some of that throughout my career trajectory, but there's just so much more work to be done in the world to help others and to be able to help move others forward in the world. So, yeah, I would honestly say that trio played a role in kind of my career trajectory that I'll continue talking about throughout this interview, and how I got to where I am, and just kind of what's inspired me to be who I am.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, no, I love that story. And yeah, the inspiration that you got from the TRiO program, and in a way, kind of a full circle moment, you know, being able to bring everything that you were able to gain from it, and be able to give back, you know, to the community, to the to the students, and then hopefully see them thrive and graduate and you know, have a very positive future now with your work as an academic advisor, can you tell us a little bit more about the College of Engineering and like, what, what your your typical role looks like, your day to day, your responsibilities?

Aric Faulkner  
Yes, so I started working for the College of Engineering, and the third or fourth week of April, it was right after NACADA Region Five that I transitioned the Region Five conference. Before this role, I was working in what we call a division of exploratory studies, so working with undeclared students in the first and second years who are exploring different majors and working on what they need to be able to declare them. And so as I've transitioned to Grainger, it's a whole new context. It's a new environment. It's a new side of advising. My day to day looks the same some days and it looks different other days. That's one of the things that I love about advising, that there can be some consistency, but there can also be a lot of diversity in the experiences that we have. And I start my day to day. Let's see. I don't have to be in the office until between eight to 830 but I actually get there by about 745 in the morning, just to get my coffee started, get my day going, start my checklist, start reviewing some emails, doing things that helped me get organized and get ready for the day. From the morning on through noon, I could have meetings. I could have appointments with students. I could have drop in, express advising with students. I could have administrative tasks to work on, projects to work on, maybe things going on with NACADA or ILACADA, which is the Illinois Academic Advising Association. So there's a lot going on, but then at noon, we take our lunch break. I work in an office. I'm very grateful to work in an office where we really honor our lunch break and we don't really have any responsibilities that we have to do over lunch, and we don't come back to continue with our responsibilities until about 1pm so we get an hour long lunch break, and then the afternoon can look very similar to the morning, with the different tasks and responsibilities that I described. And then I go home around 4:35pm and that is one of the highlights of my days, not because I'm leaving work, but mainly because I get to see my dog. She's laying right next to me sleeping right now, but she might jump up in my lap and make an appearance today. We'll see nobody's excited.

Bri Harvie  
I'm so excited. So this might be the most. Important question we've ever asked in one of these interviews, what kind of dog and what is her name?

Aric Faulkner  
Her name is Coco, and she's a pit bull. She is a very interesting dog. She's deaf and she is special needs dog. She's reactive and needs a very controlled environment to be able to manage a lot of her sort of behavioral concerns. She's not aggressive or dangerous or anything. She just wasn't really socialized as a puppy. So now that she's turning eight years old this year, she's not 100% sure on like, how to interpret a lot of people and a lot of things and how to socialize with them properly. So lots of smooth introductions and sometimes a little bit of sedation on the side is is kind of how I have to manage her.

Bri Harvie  
That sounds lovely, and I am going to be sad if we don't see her at some point. Okay. So I ask a totally out of left field question, knowing that you have a dog with some special needs and that needs a bit of additional support. Hopefully you're not sedating people. But what do you find goes both ways? What do you find you apply to your interactions with your dog that you can also apply with interactions with people that you're interacting with through your role, that are maybe also reactive or in heightened emotional states. Do you find that there's similarities in approach?

Aric Faulkner  
Yes, I had a job interview in the past where I actually gave a presentation on lessons that I've learned from my dogs. I used to have two other dogs and three at the time, but the two seniors have passed away, and now I just have cocoa. And when I spoke about lessons that I've learned from Coco, I talked about communication being different with her, as opposed to with a hearing dog, and having to teach her hand signals to be able to communicate with her, and pointing in different directions and just different things with my hands, you know, pointing to sit down, pointing to come here, chest, to jump like just different things that I've taught her to be able to communicate. But even then, I think more importantly, I've learned skills like empathy, compassion, adaptability, flexibility, open mindedness, honesty, transparency, and just working on, like, how I can bring those skills into interacting with other humans. So like, when I go into experiences with students and different interactions with students in my office, I try to always listen with an open ear. Be open minded, be honest with them about what's going on from the advisor or the college side of things, to help orient them on what their options are before they make decisions, but also trying to encourage them to be honest with me as well about what their situation is, by modeling honesty and not necessarily telling them they have to be honest. I mentioned like compassion, empathy, open mindedness. I like to go into my interactions with my students with a very open mind and not making assumptions about who they are, just because I've read some data in their profile. You know, there's so much information or additional data that we gain from just speaking to our students or emailing with them or talking to them over the phone. And so in closing, working with Coco over the years to sort of teach her and work with her dog trainer to teach her more and in more effective ways. A lot of the skills that I mentioned have really applied to my interactions with Coco, but also interactions with people inside and outside of work.

Matt Markin  
Now, have you presented this as like a conference session?

Aric Faulkner  
No, I've never thought of that. Wow, that's a really good idea.

Bri Harvie  
I it would sell out. I mean, we don't sell tickets, but it would sell out anyway, standing room only.

Matt Markin  
I definitely could see this being a conference session, and just like, Bri is saying, like, yeah, if we did it, if we sold tickets, yeah, it would, for sure sell out. I would be, you know, I'm sure Bri and I would be, like, the first in line to go to that session. So, yeah, I think we really suggest, yeah, think about maybe doing this and submitted as a proposal for a conference session, you know, maybe both regional and annual conferences, and for ilicata as well. And I think a lot of pet lovers too would go to it just because as well. But anything that's combining something that's not necessarily can be seen as related to advising, but you're relating it to academic advising in real life. I think those sessions are phenomenal, and people can gain a lot, a lot of great tips from So, yeah, think about it.

Aric Faulkner  
I still have the presentation say. So I can go back and tweak it and update it and add more to it. So I'll think about that for some time and let that sort of grow in my mind and see where I can take it. Thank you for the idea.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, so kind of have it marinate a little bit. And yeah, and we look forward to seeing the progress of that and and hopefully get to attend that session one day, you know, so, you know, you got your associate degree, you know, you then you transferred, you know, based off your educational path. And, you know, I was kind of interested to know, like, what's your advice that you would give transfer students? You know, you have, maybe those that are, are at a two year school right now that are thinking about transferring. But then you also have those you know, by, you know, we're recording this in June, you have a lot of new transfer students coming in for the upcoming fall semester. Any advice that that you have for for students?

Aric Faulkner  
Yes, specifically with transfer students, I think with just about any student, I would recommend following like, your passions, your interests follow, where your values are follow, where your skills lie. Explore a lot of different options that are out there. Like, if you want to take a course in this discipline, that discipline, explore them both, and explore more beyond that, but try to find a major a career, a job, a future that aligns with your passions, your values, your skills, things that are going to help you feel fulfilled and happy in work that you do in the future. Because that, to me, is the key to success. Yeah, absolutely.

Bri Harvie  
And like you said, thinking about what you want your life to look like your future. So not just thinking this is what the next two to four years, or whatever are going to be for me. But what do I want post graduation? Life to work to look like, knowing that you do have transfer students, but you're also in like a fairly you're in an engineering school, so there is a job that comes with that. Do you how do you have conversations with students who maybe finish engineering but don't want to be an engineer, or are in a program because they love the program, but don't want the career attached to it? How do you approach that conversation with students about what their options are?

Aric Faulkner  
I think it really comes down to a few different things. One, working with students to identify lots of different interests. So when it comes to major exploration, we have some students who want to do maybe computer engineering or electrical engineering, and then the same department at my university in my college, and so we help them sort of maybe explore the two through their coursework. They may be interested in other majors in the College. It could be mechanical, it could be industrial. It could be we have multiple, multiple majors of engineering in our college, but I think it's it comes down to also exposure. So number two, exposing them to different opportunities, like we have a research office. We have an engineering career services office to help with the exploration and the preparation for internships. We have lots of advisors that are departmental we have lots of advisors that are college level. We have faculty mentors assigned to some students in some of those departments. So three, it comes down to also support like, who is there by your side and going on this journey with you and helping you see your success through and who is guiding you in the different directions. The way I describe myself to students is, you know, you're the one in the driver's seat making the turns and deciding where to go, but I'll be your GPS system, and I will help guide you along the way until you reach your destination, which is degree attainment. But even beyond degree attainment, going back to the career piece, I usually would refer students to the engineering career services team or the general career center on our campus to help explore different career pathways inside or maybe outside of engineering. Sometimes those could come with skills assessments. Maybe it comes with a handshake profile and exploring different opportunities in different online platforms, or exploring opportunities on LinkedIn or indeed, or different internet databases that are reputable with other career pieces. I've found that, you know, especially in the first year or two, a lot of students really don't know exactly what they want in terms of a job or a career in the future. They think that, for example, computer engineering is going to lead to a job in software development or hardware development or something of that nature. And it's if they don't get into the computer science major they want computer engineering or electrical engineering or something that's going to lead to a similar major or similar path. Pathway in their career, and they have a general idea of what their job in the future or their career in the future may look like, but they don't. Most students that I interact with have not really solidified exactly what they want, and so it goes back to exploring interests, values, skills, passions, desires, hopes, and you know, whatever they want to achieve in the world. So finding different ways to tap into that, explore that, think about that. Take time to be introduced to different opportunities, through RSOs, through events on campus, through internships, through research. There's so much more that colleges and universities offer their students these days. I think that helps students answer some of their questions and figure out a little bit more exactly what it is that they want.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, I think you said it perfectly that you know, it's like a lot of times. Students may not know exactly what they want to do, but it's an exploration piece that's so important in the very beginning. Now, as an advisor in the College of Engineering. Do you, do you start working with these students, like at orientation, or once they start at in the first semester that are the first term that they're there? And then also, how is faculty used as well within advising? Do you solely do the advising, or do some of the faculty is there like a handoff piece at any point?

Aric Faulkner  
So we have, at least in our format where I work, we have different levels of advising. So we have the college level, we have the departmental level, and then we have that sort of faculty mentor that I mentioned. So at the college level, during the summer, we help fill in with the huge demand of students that we have to serve in terms of playing the courses for the first semester and working through the new student registration appointments and addressing different concerns and worries and questions that they may have, and helping them get started on the right foot, Right and headed in the right direction from the beginning, figuring out what's appropriate, thinking about all their credit that they're bringing in, if any, and determining what they're going to take and how they're going to achieve their their goals of attaining their degree and their particular major. Thankfully, where I work, we have something called curriculum maps, and it's basically every engineering major has a curriculum map where you can see the whole four year plan mapped out, and what courses go in what order, and what are prerequisites or co-requisites or courses that follow, and it's color coordinated, and it's very well organized. So I'm grateful that we have those types of tools to share with students so we can help guide them through their journey. But aside from that, college advisors we work mainly with like policies and procedures related things at the college level. So if you can think of a policy or a procedure like wanting to drop a course past the deadline, wanting to withdraw, wanting to do grade replacement, wanting to get registered for something, but need an override, wanting to apply for what we call an overload, which is taking more than 18 credit hours, wanting to apply for an under load, which is what we call taking less than 12 all those things are at the college level, so that's kind of what I work With throughout the fall and spring semesters, the departmental advisors mainly do the like course planning in future semesters, beyond the summer, the first new student registration appointment. And they also are like the go to advisor for a lot of questions that students have. Students usually come to us for what I mentioned, like the procedural things, the policies at the college level that they need help with. But we're not always their go to advisor for what you would think of as your go to person and your advisor. Then we have faculty mentor. And to answer your question about how faculty are utilized, it depends on the department. Is what I've been learning some departments have faculty mentors set up, and I've learned that some do not, but for the ones that do, each student is to be assigned a particular faculty mentor in their department, and so they may have additional requirements to meet with those faculty mentors in addition to meeting with their departmental advisor to do their course planning at least once a semester. And then for us college advisors, we do express advising, usually in the afternoons, Monday through Friday for the fall and spring semesters and in the summer, we sort of reduce our hours, but we split them between mornings and afternoons, but we make ourselves accessible to students in person, online, by phone, and whenever a student drops by for Express advising or scheduled appointment. Sometimes Express advising can be a short five minute appointment. Sometimes it takes more than 30 minutes to get through. What we're discussing and dealing with, and then for scheduled appointments are usually 30 minutes. So that's more of a traditional format that I'm used to in the previous unit that I worked with. But I think it's really a collaboration across the college, and that's the way ideally for me it should be for any college or university, is for faculty to collaborate with advisors, advisors to collaborate with faculty, administration, to collaborate with both and both, to collaborate with the administration. I think it's really important that communication is flowing in all different directions, so that we can all inform ourselves of what it's like to be in each other's roles and what it's like to manage our case loads and also be able to interact with our students from the roles and perspectives that we bring to the table. Students, usually, I'll go back to the point person ideas. Students usually have at least one point person, or one go to person, or many students do, I shouldn't say, I shouldn't imply that all students do, because some some students struggle to find that point person on their campus to go to, but when they have that point of contact, it's really beneficial to know that there's someone in your corner who can support you and mentor You and just sort of guide you through the process each step of the way. One of the reasons why I got into academic advising was because when I was an undergraduate student, I had a mentor in the NASPA undergraduate fellowship program who was an academic advisor at the time, and she told me one day, it's really important that as you move forward in your life and in your career, that you pay it forward, that you pass the torch to the next generation of students, and that you're there for them, and you got them through their journeys. You help them reach their goals, and you help them attain their degrees. And if they choose not to continue, and they don't want a degree anymore and they change their career path, then you should still support them in achieving whatever their goals are, and help guide them in the right direction, wherever they're headed, however you can. So I share that because when I think about student success and I think about how we like help students reach their goals, and why I became an academic advisor. When I think about that, it always brings me back to that moment, that conversation with that mentor of mine who was an academic advisor. And so I'm sharing all of this because I think academic advisors, faculty, administration, staff, etc, all across academic affairs and across Student Affairs, we're in this journey together with our students, and it's really important that we take that kind of approach.

Bri Harvie  
I absolutely agree, and I feel like that notion of cross campus collaboration and pan institutional support for students is so critical, and it's, I think it's easy sometimes, to get bogged down, and this is my caseload, my role, my scope. That's your caseload, your role, your scope. Instead of saying, at the end of the day, it's about the student experience, and we're all here to support students. Nobody works in higher education for the money, right? We're here because we're passionate about the work that we do, and so focusing on, on the why, on, on what we can actually do to support the students so critical. So I love that, and I love the idea of pay it forward to those new students too. I want to circle back a little bit to you're talking about why you became an advisor. You're still relatively new to the role of academic advising. I'd love to hear a little bit about what your first little bit of your tenure in advising has been, life and been like, and what advice you would give to new advising professionals or people considering making the switch into academic advising as well.

Aric Faulkner  
So the first part about what my experience has been like. It's been really incredible. I have had some really amazing, outstanding, phenomenal opportunities that have come across in my life, and a lot of things that have happened in and outside of work, because of the role that I play as an academic advisor and because of the job that I have. And some of those example, examples, or like, milestones that I've been able to achieve are, like, becoming a homeowner, buying a house. You know, that has been huge, especially in today's day. You know, our economy just is very difficult to buy a house. And I was able to do that. I'm single. I don't have a partner or anything like that. So doing it as a single person is even tougher, I think, when you're basing it on one income as opposed to two other milestones, I've been able to achieve. I've been able to travel to conferences, regional, annual illicata conferences as well. I've been able to network and meet a lot. Of awesome colleagues throughout the profession. I've been able to apply to emerging leaders and get accepted and be selected for this program and be able to meet even more awesome people in this program. I also traveled to Africa for the first time, which was a dream of mine for many years. I went there in December and stayed for about three weeks, and it was just an incredible life changing experience. And I wouldn't have had all this without being where I am in life as an academic advisor. And so going back to a little bit about what my experience has been like, I have learned a lot about NACADA, ILACADA. I've learned about NACADA core values and like, different competencies and the theory, the philosophy side of things, you know, the conceptual part of advising. I've learned a little bit about the relational and the informational parts of advising and just how those three are intertwined to be able to do our best job and advising, I've learned a lot of day to day things and practices that I have for like how I operate in my job and how I assist students, how I organize myself, how I get through the day, especially when we're In appointments or express advising, or whatever it is, for hours at a time, with just back to back appointments all day and just only our lunch break to really take a break. I've had a really interesting experience because I wanted to be an academic advisor for many years, and I just wasn't getting any interviews until spring of 2021, and then I started my first academic advisor role in June 2021 when I was selected for a position my previous position that I mentioned. And so I'm sharing all of this because I would like to inspire other people who are thinking about that transition into advising, or who are working towards advising from grad school or undergrad or whatever it may be, to really think critically about their why and how exactly they want to support students As an academic advisor, and think about, like, the stability and security of having a position an institution like mine and in an office like mine, where, like, I feel so secure and with so much stability in my job that it feels safe and comfortable to be able to afford my home and take care of Coco and live a good life, both inside and outside of work, because that's that's really what it's about. It's like we have our full time roles, but we have other roles and many other hats that we wear in life. And what I want to inspire people to do is try to find that balance and that fulfillment in as many areas of life as possible, to be able to be a full, fulfilled, healthy, happy, well rounded person. And I had a thought just a moment ago about how one of the things that I brought to the Illinois Academic Advising Association ilicata Was this new student award that we created maybe about a year or two ago. I've been on the E-Board for about two or three years, and I joined the organization in 2021 when I first became an advisor. But I joined the E board because I wanted to get involved, and that's like super key to some of the advice I would give to new advisors and to people looking to transition into advising from wherever they are, is to get involved in the profession. Get involved in professional associations, get involved in committees at your institution. Get involved in other things that you could be doing outside of advising, because it'll help you build transferable skills. But I got involved myself with ill cotta and Nakata. And with ill cotta, I pitched the idea of creating a student award that was approved by the executive board. And so this year, we actually have our first recipient for the award. Her name is Jessica, and it's an award that will help, sort of like seniors and graduate students and maybe juniors as well, sort of explore the field, the profession, the organization, and attend our conferences, attend our monthly meetings, get our email communications, attend additional events that we may be hosting with some reimbursements for like the travel expenses, the lodging expenses, and different things that are going to support an undergraduate or graduate student to be able to do some of these things that I'm mentioning with the organization. And we have our first recipient for the award, and I'm so happy because we. Um, we basically created this award because we all agreed that we wanted to help change the future of the profession in a positive way, and like, help bring more people into the profession and inspire more people to pursue this profession and and be able to help orient them in their transition into the profession. And in addition to getting involved, I would give the advice that people should just look for different support systems. Find a mentor, find someone who can help guide you in your direction. Because the guidance, the mentorship, the support, it's never ending. Just because you graduate and get your degree, whether it's a bachelor's, a master's, a PhD in edu, a JD, or whatever degree you can imagine, it doesn't mean that you're going to stop learning or you're going to stop growing. You're going to continue to learn and grow throughout life, and it's important that you have people who can guide you through your journey. So that's a lot to share, but that's what I would share to that question about giving advice to new advisors and people who are looking to transition into advising?

Matt Markin  
Yeah, no, it's great advice. And not only for new advisors, those that want to transition to advising, but I think it's also great reminders for those of us that have been in advising for many, many years, and congrats on on getting that award off the ground. I mean, a lot of times it just starts with an idea, and this following through with it, and now you have your first recipient, and that's so fantastic to hear. So yeah, again, congrats on that. And you know you're talking about involvement. And of course, this is the emerging voices series for the Emerging Leaders Program. So tell us about why you applied to ELP. What was that driving force that I was like, Hey, I should apply for this.

Aric Faulkner  
Whenever I tell this story, I always tell people that I was 99.9% sure that I would not be selected because of how competitive the reputation of this program is. And I was like, I'm going to apply anyways. They're not going to choose me, but I'm going to apply because I feel like I'm a great candidate and I have a lot to offer, and being me being selected just goes to show like, don't doubt yourself, you know, just go for it and apply anyways. And so I applied for that reason. I had a conversation with my supervisor, who gave me the supervisor letter. I had a conversation with a mentor from the Nakata Region Five mentoring program, and they both told me, like, Hey, don't doubt yourself. Like you should apply for this you'd be great for this program, and you just never know what's going to happen. You should try anyways. And so for me, it was about not doubting myself and wanting to pursue an opportunity that could introduce me to a lot more opportunities and help open a lot more doors in the profession and in my career in general. I wanted to explore this program a little further, because, as I mentioned in my bio, or as you mentioned in my bio, Matt, I'm interested in pursuing advising as a long term career. And when I came across this program through conversations with my previous supervisor and seeing it online on the Macau website, I just knew it would be a great opportunity that I had to apply for. I knew it would help me achieve the goals of learning about the structure of NACADA. I knew it would help me network and meet people across the world, in different countries, who are in advising, and be able to explore the profession further and learn how this profession works in the many different hats that we all wear, but the many different perspectives of advising that we all bring to the table. I applied also because I wanted to be in a program that would help me grow with another mentor. I mentioned that I had a NACADA Region Five mentor already, but I think having more than one mentor can be healthy. It can be beneficial to have different perspectives from different people guiding you. I have one mentor who has experience in this. I have another mentor has experience in that, and together, I can become more familiar with both, right? So for me, it's about a lot of different things, but those are the main reasons why I applied.

Bri Harvie  
It's awesome, and I love what you said about having different mentors. It's almost like that idea of like having your own personal board of directors, right? You want different people with different skills all at your table, helping you make good life choices, thinking about like we're already 10, nine ish months, less than a year, more than a half a year into your first kind of year in the program. What are your goals for the second year? What are you planning to do in the back half of your ELP tenure.

Aric Faulkner  
in the second half of the program? I want to write for NACADA. Um, I set that goal in the first half, and I kept going back and forth with it, even since before I was an ELP, and I was like, but I don't have time for a writing project, but I'm not able to do it, because I have this going on in my life. I have that going on in my life. And then recently, maybe last week, I submitted my first draft for the nacotta blog, and I want to write for academic advising today. At I have an idea. I don't want to say it right now, but I have a sort of a draft for something that I wrote for a pocket book in the past, and it was not accepted at that time, but one of my mentors, my ELP mentor, actually Mike, he encouraged me to consider revisiting that writing piece that I saved and maybe turning it in, turning it in for 81 day. So that's something that I'm considering and trying to figure out in my mind how I want to approach that before I jump into it. But I accomplished the goal of submitting one draft to the blog. So that was something I feel very proud of. Because, like I said, I went back and forth about the writing goal for a very long time, and then I was like, you know, I'm just going to do it. And I did it other goals that I have for the second half of my tenure in the program. The program, I want to continue going to the annual conferences and being able to network with the ELP cohort in person. It's great to communicate with people in WhatsApp and have some people on facebook, and be able to see people in monthly zoom calls and all that. But there's something that's so humanizing and so like fueling to me to be able to interact with people in person. So attending more annual conferences to see everyone is is another goal of mine. And then I joined the Region Five steering committee. So I will, I have the goal of continuing with that. I'm the Illinois liaison, so I'm kind of in between Ellicott and the cot Region Five steering committee, and like just keeping the information flowing between the two associations in terms of attending their meetings and giving updates in both directions. Let's see other goals that I have. I literally just did my goals activity with Mike not too long ago, and I'm forgetting what the other two goals were in this moment, but I think one of them had to do with, oh, now I remember one of them has to do with sort of taking a pause to feel out how the changes with the advising communities are going to happen, and then getting involved with them once they're reformatted and relaunched. I went to Nakata Region Five back in April, and I learned that we're shrinking from like 30 something, 40 something, advising community down to like 16, what I call clusters. And so I want to see how that pans out, and then decide which one I'm going to join and how I'm going to get involved with with them. Because I've been involved with the region division. I've been involved for a while. I was a region five or Illinois liaison for Region Five in the past, and I got re elected recently. And then I want to learn about the advising communities division. I want to learn more about the administrative division and like maybe join an advisory council, a council or an advisory group one day. So I have lots of different pieces of involvement. I just kind of want to be everywhere and just go all around just to learn as much about the association as I can and just inform myself on what different opportunities are out there, and how I can help out and get involved and just grow and learn even more.

Matt Markin  
What you're doing already is a great way to do it, which is kind of dabble here and there, and that might strike an interest somewhere else or or build a network or connection with with another person. So yeah. I mean, you're you got a lot on your play, a lot of goals that you've already accomplished, lot that you're working on what you're thinking about. Yeah, so more power to you on that. Love it. And as we kind of wrap up, let's end with another Emerging Leaders Program. Question is, you know, like Bri was saying, we're not a full year into the program, but has ELP, has this program helped contribute to, like, your growth as an advisor, helping you in your career now as an academic advisor?

Aric Faulkner  
Yes, it has helped me in more ways than one. We probably don't have enough time to go over all the ways that it's helped me, but I'll mention at least a few. So the first thing that came to mind is my confidence as an advisor. It's really helped me grow my confidence and like grow. And like me, believing in myself and like me, understanding the profession and what I'm doing, and understanding how I do my job and being confident about it, because I'm not gonna lie, the first year, like the informational, relational felt fine, but the conceptual learning about different theories and and different pieces of the conceptual part of academic advising, it was so hard to understand back then, but it's a lot easier to understand now. When I have conversations about it with people, I have done a number of things in my two positions as an advisor to be able to like help others become aware of NACADA and ilocata opportunities. So that's another great thing that has happened and has helped me grow and learn. So I share different opportunities. I talk about ELP, I talk about conferences, I talk about the monthly brown bags or the monthly meetings that we have with the ILACADA. I think it's just been a really positive experience. Another thing that has been really positive for me in ELP is just like that networking piece when I first joined NACADA in 2021 I went to conferences and I saw so many people like gathering and talking with each other, and I could see the real humanizing connections of friendships, right? And I didn't have that in the beginning, but I feel like I have it now, because I have a cohort of people that I can rely on, and a court of cohort of people that I can reach out to and talk to and text them on WhatsApp if I need to my pod mate Haley, or my mentor Mike, or maybe some others who I had the chance to hang out with at Region Five conference, or perhaps annual conference in where were we? Pittsburgh last year. There have been many opportunities and many blessings, many things that I'm just so grateful for that have happened in my life, and ELP is one of those guiding lights or guiding forces in my life that's really driving me in the direction of getting to know this profession more and better and kind of faster. To be honest, there are some people that I've interacted with in the profession who aren't very aware of Nakata goals or not goals, but NACADA resources, NACADA opportunities for involvement. And so I can talk about advising communities, I can talk about region steering committees. I can talk about advisory councils. I can talk about ELP and conferences and scholarships and all these different opportunities that the Association provides. And if it weren't for ELP, I don't think I would be as aware of all of these things that I'm mentioning.

Matt Markin  
Wonderful. Yeah, good to hear. And in a way, like you're, you're a great ambassador of advising, and also NACADA and the Emerging Leaders Program. Aric, thank you, and I want to thank you so much for for being on with us and and for us to get to know you a little bit more too as well. Great, great interview, a lot of great tips that that you gave as well. So thank you so much for being with us today.

Aric Faulkner  
Thank you so much for having me here today. It's been great chatting with you. I really enjoyed my time. Bye, everyone.