Meet the Blogger: Brenda

By Brenda Bethman

As a child, I always had multiple answers to the “what do you want to be when you grow up?” question. There seemed to be too many options available for me to be able to settle on one. I was convinced that doing only one thing would prove to be boring. The only thing I knew for sure is that there had better be plenty of books involved as I have never been far from a book since I learned how to read.

I am happy to say that I achieved both goals. After college, I worked as a stage manager and dresser in the theater, waited tables, bartended and finally went to graduate school for my M.A. and Ph.D. in German literature, with the intention of becoming a tenure-track faculty member. Life, in the form of graduate assistantships working in the administrative side and getting married to someone in the same field, intervened, however, and I eventually made my way to where I am now: Director of the Women’s Center, Acting Director of the Women’s & Gender Studies Program, and Affiliated Faculty in German in the Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I also teach for the Honors Program and the College of Arts & Sciences first year experience program. It’s definitely not dull and there are indeed a LOT of books in my life!

Along the way, I also picked up an affinity for computers and social media. I’m young enough that I took a programming class in high school and old enough that I still used a typewriter for my papers until my senior year in college (using the all-in-one Macintosh computers available in the lab at Dickinson). The first computer I owned was a Tandy running Windows 3.1. I’ve been through any number of desktops and laptops since then, running all flavors of Windows, finally circling back to Apple just recently. Over the years, I’ve also served as unofficial tech support to friends, family, and colleagues.

While I was reluctant to get into social media at first, I have since enthusiastically embraced it and at last count, am in some way responsible for 4 Twitter accounts, 5 Facebook pages (plus my profile), and 5 blogs. Not to mention Flickr, YouTube, and multiple email accounts. I am excited to count this blog as part of that list and look forward to engaging with you all here!

Meet the Blogger: Kristendom

By Kristen Abell

So, who is Kristendom? Kristendom is the online alter ego for me – Kristen Abell. I started blogging for myself around four years ago on my blog Kristendom. At that time, I had grand visions of blogger stardom and wasn’t really sure about how much I wanted people to know about my “real” identity. As time went on, my online identity and my real identity merged in cyberspace, as they most often inevitably do, but I enjoyed the “Kristendom” title so much, I decided to keep it.

I’ve always been a bit of a computer geek. I like to think that I know more about computers and technology than your average person, but I’m still definitely not as savvy as I’d like to be. I find that the more I learn about technology, the more I realize I have to learn. But hey, at least I’m willing to make the effort – even if the time is hard to come by. So I’m still learning to speak geek, although I’d say I’ve passed Geek Speak 101.

I’ve been in student affairs for over ten years now (yikes! Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess), serving in a variety of roles – mostly housing with some women’s center work thrown in for good measure. I currently serve as the Associate Director for Residential Life at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The beauty of working at a slightly smaller school I’ve found is that I get to wear a number of hats. Tech guru extraordinaire for our Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Division is one of the hats I get to wear, and it’s allowed me a little license to explore some of my tech interests on work time. I have a very basic understanding of HTML and web design, a better-than-average knowledge of social networking, and a smattering of other skills/interests in various technologies.

Because of my interest in all things geek, I was lucky enough to get recruited to manage the website for Region IV-West of NASPA, as well as serve as the representative for the Technology Knowledge Community. Earlier this year, the same person that recruited me for NASPA mentioned that I should consider doing a blog on technology, and that was the beginning of Kristendom Talks Tech.

One of the things I love love love about the internets (by the way, this is how I frequently refer to the internet, mostly by way of mocking a certain former president when he spoke of it in the debates) is the creation of the blogosphere. I have long had aspirations of being a writer, and I believe that I’ve found my voice and preferred medium through blogging. I might never stop now! I’m extremely excited about this opportunity to work with some other women who have similar interests in technology and student affairs, and I hope that we can all share a little of our wisdom and promote women in technology at the same time.

Blog Introduction

By Kristen Abell

How it all began… Back in August of this year, Ed Cabellon posted on the Student Affairs Collaborative with information for graduate students, listing a number of technology and social media blogs…not one of which was a blog by women. Shortly after this, Brenda was nice enough to send Ed Kristen’s tech and student affairs blog, which he quickly added to his list, but when we all started looking around for other similar women-authored blogs, we noticed a definite lack. This required a happy hour meeting-of-the-minds for Brenda and Kristen, and so the Student Affairs Women Talk Tech collaborative blog experiment was born.

The Bloggers After a general call out through the #sachat community on Twitter, through Kristen’s tech blog, and through Facebook, we were able to gather a few women interested enough in writing about technology and student affairs to start our little experiment. Since technology is a secondary (or completely unrelated for some) part of our job descriptions, it’s taken a little while, but we’re finally here. Over the next couple of weeks, each of us will be posting an introduction to give you some more information about who we are and why we’re interested in technology and its relationship to higher education. Suffice it to say, we’re a pretty fantastic group of women who would love nothing more than to share our expertise (or geekiness) with the world.

The Blog So we’re off to a running start. We’ve got a few ideas for some regular features – a little link love, some best practices, book reviews, etc. – along with whatever strikes our fancy in the tech or student affairs world on a particular day. We’d love ideas, suggested links or books, and even more bloggers (if you’re interested, drop us a line as sawomentalktech@gmail.com). We hope you’ll help us make our experiment a success…and show everyone that we really are ready for women in technology.

[Photo Credit: Young Woman Blogging, after Marie-Denise Villers by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, Creative Commons license]