Rick’s Bio

Bio in Brief

Rick Olshak is currently an Associate Dean of Students at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. He also serves as chair of NCHERM-CR, an autonomous division of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management (NCHERM) focusing on developing and implementing comprehensive conflict resolution systems and restorative conduct practices on American college and university campuses. He is currently completing his doctorate in educational administration and foundations from Illinois State University, and his dissertation is focusing on the preparedness of student affairs practitioners to manage conflicts and to assist others in conflict management.

Rick’s involvement in higher education conflict management systems spans his entire twenty-two year career in student affairs as both a student conduct officer and as a student affairs generalist. Rick has extensive training on mediation and other forms of conflict resolution, and has implemented conflict resolution programs at Illinois State University and at SUNY-Cortland, in addition to assisting in the development of a program at Georgetown University. Rick has served as a community and court mediator, and provided consulting services in student conduct practice, conflict resolution and mediation, and assessment to educational institutions and professional associations across the nation. In addition to his role with NCHERM-CR, Rick is also a past president (2001) of the Association for Student Conduct Administration (ASCA) and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA).

Professional History

Rick is originally from upstate New York, spending most of his youth in Schenectady, part of New York’s Capital District. A 1981 graduate of Mont Pleasant High School, Rick completed a bachelor’s degree (1988) in public communication from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, where he was a two-year member of student government, a three-year member of the men’s tennis team (NAIA), and served as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper (Inscape) during his senior year. Rick then pursued a master’s degree in college student personnel at Western Illinois University in Macomb, IL. After completing his coursework, Rick moved back to the east coast, becoming Coordinator of Student Judicial Services in the Office of Student Conduct at Georgetown University in Washington, DC in June, 1990. Then in 1993 Rick moved back to New York to serve as Assistant Director of Residential Services for Judicial Programs at the State University of New York College at Cortland in New York’s Finger Lakes region. In 1996 Rick moved back to the Midwest to become the Director of the Student Judicial Office (renamed Student Dispute Resolution Services in 2000) at Illinois State University. During this time, Rick wrote and published “Mastering Mediation: A Guide to Training Mediators in a College or University Setting” and became active in the leadership of the Association for Student Judicial Affairs (now ASCA).

In 2004, Rick was promoted to the position of Associate Dean of Students and was charged with, along with Associate Deans Jill Benson and Rick Lewis, assisting the new Dean of Students (Dr. Janet Paterson) in creating a Dean of Students (DOS) Office out of five previously independent offices. This working group met throughout 2004 and early 2005 developing an organizational structure, budget, and personnel plan, and the office opened for business on July 1, 2005. In his current role as Associate Dean, Rick is responsible for supervising Community Rights and Responsibilities (student conduct and conflict resolution), Greek Affairs, and the Students’ Attorney, in addition to spending approximately one-third of his time as the advisor to the Student Government Association. Previously, Rick has supervised: Off-Campus, Nontraditional and Parent’s Services, Student Transitions (Orientation and Commencement), and DoS Marketing. In addition, Rick serves as a “Dean on Duty” to respond to individual student crisis situations. He handles individual and organizational requests to return to the University following disciplinary suspensions, and coordinates the DOS investigations team for registered student organizations. Rick serves as a member of the Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) and is the chair of his unit’s cultural competence group and is deeply committed to issues of staff cultural competence and social justice.

Rick’s full curriculum vitae can be found here.

Personal

Rick has three children (daughters Sydney and Jadah, and son Sean). Outside of work, Rick has many interests, including: reading and writing (both fiction and nonfiction), hiking, cycling, travel, movies, music, history, fantasy and science fiction, sports, and technology.