By Erin O’Sullivan

Every once in a while, #RecChat likes to step out of the Twitter-sphere and extend its reach beyond 140 characters.

This month’s chat was one such instance.

NIRSA President, Kathleen Hatch, and NIRSA Board of Directors member and Chair of the Strategic Values Steering Committee, Alex Accetta, joined RecChat crew members Earl Cabellon, Bill Ling, and Will Moore in a live Google Hangout to discuss NIRSA’s Strategic Values.

RecChat-ers were able to watch the live stream video via Youtube, while also following along, and voicing their thoughts and resources, via the hashtag on Twitter. Between these two mediums, and the many engaged and talented contributors, this #RecChat session produced a robust and viable resource that will be of great use to members as they prepare to “harmonize our values” in NIRSA 2014 and well beyond.

If you missed it, the recorded Google Hangout is available on the RecChat Youtube page and the Twitter transcript—packed with resources and ideas from fellow members—can be accessed through the NIRSA Community Library.

The hour long event was filled with great information from start to finish! After briefly discussing the paths they each took to reach their current leadership roles in NIRSA and the field of collegiate recreation, Kathleen and Alex began the discussion by offering insights into how these six Strategic Values came to be.

Before the Values were made clear, “there was something missing,” Kathleen said. “What’s the fabric that defines our actions? Not the what we do, but who we are and how we intend to lead.” And the need to articulate such values—in a concrete and tangible way—has never been stronger than now.

At a time when higher education is dealing with budget cuts and finance issues at all levels, setting the Strategic Values for NIRSA, and by extension collegiate recreation, “helps us understand our value, our impact on students” in a way that can be shared with higher education colleagues, which is “really pressing right now,” Alex said.

Making this case within higher education starts, of course, with getting all of our collegiate recreation peers on the same page. “We’re challenged to lead beyond the ‘field of play,’” Alex said. “If we’re just worried about how shiny our floors are or the risk management of our climbing walls then we’ve missed the mark.” Ideally, he said, “this work will get embedded; we won’t have to point out that we should be equitable, sustainable, and so forth.”

This word cloud shows the most utilized and discussed terms from the #RecChat tweets, occurring simultaneously with the live Google Hangout.

And that seems to be just where we’re headed. “If we all do our part,” Alex says, “it adds up to a culture change.” NIRSA members seem ready for just such movement; according to Kathleen, the early feedback is that “we struck the right chord.”  She herself is embodying this shift: “When people ask what I do, I say, ‘for starters [my team and I] manage the largest classroom on campus and we happen to be experiential educators.’”

As we look to NIRSA 2014 and beyond, it is conversations like this—involving the entire spectrum of NIRSA voices and experiences, from the President to undergraduate students—that will ensure these Strategic Vales are embedded into the fabric of the association and the field. In turn, this will embed collegiate recreation’s undeniable value into the minds and conversations of all in higher education.