Volunteer Opportunities:

The Adult Learners Commission needs people who want to get involved and do specific tasks within the large organization. Have we got some volunteer opportunities for you!

Each year at the National Conference, during our Commission meeting we pass around sign-up sheets for volunteers to help out with various activities that involve varying amounts of time and a variety of skills or interests. This year, we thought that it would be helpful to provide you with a listing of some of these opportunities ahead of time so that you can think about where you would like to become involved.

We also recognize that many of our members cannot always come to the national conferences, but they could participate in the Adult Learner Commission through these volunteer activities if they knew about them. So, here are some of the Adult Learner Commission activities where we could use your help!

• Writing articles for either the national NACADA newsletter, ACADEMIC ADVISING NEWS, or the Commission's newsletter. Our Commission newsletters are usually issued once or twice a year. Articles could include reports of your regional meetings or reactions to great sessions you attended at the Conference. You could share research or information about successful programs. You could critique a recent publication in the field. There is a great deal of flexibility in this volunteer opportunity. The Academic Advising News is published quarterly and the lead article is always related to a critical issue in advising. The Board sets up a rotating schedule so each Commission commits to one lead article about every two years. In addition, short Commission reports and news from each region are included in each issue. If you enjoy writing, this might be a good one for you.
• Reading proposals for presentations at the National Conference. This is a small committee (usually 4 or 5) who read all the proposals submitted for program presentations that relate to adult learners. These readers evaluate the proposals based upon pre-determined criteria and submits their reactions to the Chair. This occurs once a year in February involving a fairly intense commitment of time over a short period of time (one week to ten days) to read 30 or so proposals.
• Regional Liaisons. The Commission needs volunteers to connect with other Commission members in your region to encourage them to:
  • submit proposals for presentations at regional meetings;
  • set up informal meetings or dinners for Commission members during the regional meetings;
  • connect with other Commission members to encourage them to attend both the regional and the national conferences.
• Regional Conference Helpers. We need volunteers to participate with regional planning committees to help plan the regional conferences, to make sure the adult learner issues are included, and even to schedule an Adult Learner Commission meeting during the regional meeting.
• Submit proposals for Conferences. You have attended good sessions and know what you liked and you may have seen a few where you thought you could do better. We always want to have good quality presentations both at regionals and national conferences so that the issues of adult learners are brought forward for discussion. We would love to have a great presentation about adult learners at each time slot on the conference schedule. The only way to have that is if you and your colleagues submit well thought out proposals. If you are a rookie, you might consider doing a regional presentation first to get some experience. If you get good feedback, polish it up, and submit the idea for the national conference. If you have a great successful program, share it. If you have done some research on retention, tell us about it.
• Special Projects. From time to time, the Commission needs help for special projects that might be either short or long term, but that do not occur on a regular basis. For example, Commissions publish a monograph or a handbook (such as we are doing now). There are also special projects beyond the Commission, such as NACADA's advising video, with which you might want to become involved. Watch for information in this and other NACADA publications.

To volunteer, contact the Commission Chair.