The Overseas Association for College Admission Counseling was established in 1992, and current President Joe Giacalone shares the latest news from the organisation and how admissions officers are operating after NACAC’s pro-agent decision.
The PIE: What is OACAC?
JG: OACAC is the international affiliate for the National Association for College Admission Counseling. We’re essentially a franchise of NACAC. There are 23 different affiliates, all of them are in the United States, and we’re the international one.
It’s grown significantly, definitely. I think it has to do with the fact that people are becoming more interested in diversifying their student bodies.
The PIE: How long have you been involved with OACAC?
JG: I got involved in 2008. And when you’re elected president, you’re in a term for three years. So first you start off as president-elect for one year, then the next year you’re president and the third year you’re past-president. Right now I’m in my presidential year. My term started on July 1 and goes to June 30.
“I love this organisation, and I had been involved because I wanted to give back and volunteer, and through the years, I realise that I really wanted to increase my involvement”
The PIE: What was your motivation to run for president?
JG: I love this organisation, and I had been involved because I wanted to give back and volunteer, and through the years, I realise that I really wanted to increase my involvement. Knowing people that had been through the presidential cycle before and talking to friends and colleagues, they found it to be tremendous professional development and that was something that I was interested in – the fact that I can be a part of something and be a leader in an organisation that I love.
The PIE: What are you hoping to achieve in your presidency?
JG: The board is a group of people that are there to keep the organisation running and we wouldn’t be an organisation without our members. There are ways that we could better our processes, create greater succession plans for people that roll off the board, so that we can continue with the work that we’re doing. I would like to see more people get involved at the national level with our national affiliate.
We’ve just changed the name of the organisation to the International Association for College Admissions Counseling and will be working with outside companies to help to rebrand the organisation and usher in this new phase of the organisation.
The PIE: What inspired the name change?
JG: This is not a new idea. This was an idea that was kicked around or discussed earlier, but it didn’t make sense for the organisation at that time. And as I was sitting around the board table a year ago and just listening to the passion of our board members and hearing about all the new things that were going on, the work that we do, the members that were coming in, not just from the US and Canada but from all over the world, I didn’t feel that our name accurately represented what we did.
“As we’re looking to create more global partners we needed a name that represented who we were”
And as we’re looking to create more global partners we needed something that represented who we were. So we had a discussion at the board to consider the idea of a name change. We are a membership organisation so we went out to the membership with a vote and they voted in favour of it, so we’ll be changing the name this year.
We’re excited and clearly the majority of our membership agrees that it’s time to do it. And I look forward to working with the board on this journey of figuring out how we’re going to position ourselves. We’re right at the beginning.
The PIE: Will anything else change with the name?
JG: The core of who we are as an organisation will remain the same. We are expanding what we offer to our members and I think that’s what’s needed. We’re a very conference-based organisation where everything revolves around one conference because it’s the biggest event and I think we are doing a better job at creating more opportunities to engage our members throughout the year. So we will offer more webinars for our members, we’ve created our regional institutes around the globe, so we had one in China this August, we will have one in the UK in the spring of 2016 and the fall of 2016 we’ll be in Africa. We want to offer more to our members.
The PIE: What big international changes have you seen in admissions over the last few years?
JG: Well I would say the biggest change would probably be the update on the use of agents in the statement of principles and good practices. That happened last fall. NACAC and OACAC follow the same statement of principles and good practices.
“Ethics when reviewing applications and what you do when you have fraudulent transcripts or test scores are current issues in admissions”
In a way what it’s done is it’s opened up a conversation on per head recruitment that is non-traditional in the United States. I think it’s been going on for a while, but now there is a conversation happening about it and what we can do about it. So essentially the new rule will allow people to use agents but they have to do it in an ethical way.
And our national organisation, in collaboration with us, has created documents and guides so to speak on helping universities navigate this process as well as families and students to navigate this process and understand what the options are for applying to university.
I think the great thing about working in international higher education is that there are always new issues coming up and topics to be tackled. I think you have similar topics that transcended the years but take a different form.
Ethics comes up when reviewing applications and what you do when you have fraudulent transcripts or test scores. We just need to continue the conversations about making sure that students are taken care of and we’re looking out for the students’ best interests.
The other thing that has come is there are big challenges with cheating on standardised tests.
The PIE: Do you think the use of agents has changed?
JG: I certainly think the use of agents has changed, particularly the way people do recruitment within the United States, because this practice is common outside of the US. It’s a different type of recruitment model and it’s unregulated. And there are people that are working hard to try to regulate it but it’s very difficult to do so.
We’re in the beginnings of conversations about how we can better serve our students that are utilising the agents and helping universities find the right agents because there are agents out there that are doing good work. And there are some that are not working in ethical ways. Ultimately it’s the student that suffers, and this is what we’re trying to avoid.
The post Joe Giacalone, President, OACAC appeared first on The PIE News.