Palmer's Hall of Honor - Advocates

When I first started this blog over a year ago, I put up a post that I labeled “Hall of Honor,” mainly because I couldn’t think of a better name. I told a little about two great bosses from my past, Sheldon Nord and Dick Mandeville. I meant to throw new “Hall of Honor” posts in here but kind of lost steam until MelodyJoy’s adoption got the blog rolling again. Now I’d like to revisit this idea.

This time, my “Hall of Honor” inductees are people who have been advocates for me, who have encouraged me and helped connect me with new opportunities. My inductees are Bill Katip, Chant Thompson, Saichi Oba and Jim Rawlins.

Bill Katip

Bill Katip is now the provost and senior vice president for academic and student affairs at Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania. That title alone should tell you something . . . he basically runs that place. I met Bill in the late 1980’s, though, when he was the VP for Academic Affairs at Western Baptist College in Salem, Oregon. I was an admissions counselor in my first professional job and one day Bill very simply asked me if I had thought about graduate school. Graduate school? Hadn’t really crossed my mind.

Bill pulled out a book that listed master’s degree programs in student affairs administration and looked at it with me. It was the first time that it occurred to me, “Hey, I could do this for a career.” Prior to that, admissions was just something I was doing because it was a good job while I waited to see what else might come along.

A year later, I was enrolled at Oregon State University pursuing an M.Ed. in College Student Services Administration and working in the financial aid office. I don’t know where I’d be today if Bill hadn’t taken the time to ask me that simple question, but I’m pretty sure it’d be someplace different.

Chant Thompson

Chant Thompson is the executive director of the North American Coalition for Christian Admissions Professionals (NACCAP). It used to be called the National Association of Christian College Admissions Personnel but, y’know, there were those Canadians and then along came a new membership category for high school counselors and, bam, a new name was needed.

I first met Chant when he was in charge of admissions at Huntington College in Indiana. He also was serving as the president of NACCAP when I attended my first NACCAP conference. Shortly after that, he left Huntington and did his first “act of advocacy” for me: He suggested that Huntington consider me to replace him. Now, it’s always possible that his motivation was to make sure that Huntington brought in someone who would do a horrible job so that the College would realize how much they missed him . . . but, in any case, I ended up meeting with the president in O’Hare Airport for a couple of hours, blowing the interview, but learning a lot about how to interview better.

Later, when I felt the need to leave Western Baptist College, Chant was one of the first people I contacted and he helped me connect with job possibilities around the country.

Perhaps most importantly, Chant has given me free rein to be involved with NACCAP, even after I left Christian higher education. He has never failed to make me feel welcomed and valued. Anytime that I think it may be time for a career move, Chant’s one of the first people I call, because I know he’ll look out for me.

Even if he never did anything else for me, Chant would always have a special place in my heart because of one simple incident: One Christmas while we were in Kentucky, Chant mailed me gift certificates for three different fast food joints. No big deal, I suppose, but that gesture meant so much to me at a time when we were counting every penny. Those McDonald’s bucks and so on meant that I could take my kids out for a fun dinner several times. I’ve never forgotten that. He is a genuinely caring guy who looks out for others . . . and a very bad fantasy baseball player.

Saichi Oba

Saichi Oba (“I’m not just a member of the Weird Name Club, I’m the president!”) preceded me as Director of Admissions at Oregon Tech. Interestingly (well, at least to me), I had interviewed for the director position at OIT back around 1997 and didn’t get the job but Saichi came out on top in that search process. When I interviewed again at OIT in 2000, Saichi was leaving to return to Alaska, where he now works for the University of Alaska system in Fairbanks, and I chatted with him briefly as part of the interview process. What goes around comes around, I guess.

Saichi makes this list because of the favor he did me about a year after I arrived in Klamath Falls. He was a member of the board of the Pacific Northwest Association for College Admission Counseling and nominated me for one of the “college delegate” positions. Now Saichi didn’t owe me nothin’ but he was looking out for me and for Oregon Tech. By getting me into the delegate role, Saich guaranteed me the opportunity to attend the National ACAC conference all-expenses-paid for three years and the chance to get deeply networked with other admission leaders around the Northwest. I’ve always appreciated Saichi’s friendship and support, which he has expressed in a number of ways over the last six years.

Jim Rawlins

This, in a way, leads me to James Rawlins from the University of Washington. I got to know Jim when we both served on the PNACAC board. It was at the Boise conference in 2003 that I let my colleagues know that I had accepted a position as Assistant VP for Enrollment Management at Indiana Wesleyan University. I was very excited about this move but reluctant to leave my friends in the Northwest.

At the conference social, a rockin’ affair held at the Basque Center in downtown Boise (http://www.basquecenter.com/), Jim sat down next to me and said how sorry he was to see me go, in part because he thought I might be in line to serve as PNACAC’s president in the not-too-distant future. I was flattered and intrigued and disappointed at letting that opportunity pass by.

Over the course of the next two weeks, circumstances caused Jeannette and me to realize that a move to metropolitan Marion, Indiana, was not the right thing to do. My boss, Joe Holliday, and others at OIT were very gracious in letting me “unresign,” as flakey as it made me feel. But two years later, Jim, along with Ann Nault and the nominations committee, asked me to serve as PNACAC’s president. Without Jim’s advocacy, I never would have had the chance to take on this role and have some great new experiences.