My name is Brent Latta. I have more than 15 years of experience in student affairs in higher education, including residence life, career services, enrollment management, and freshmen program.
I am from Birmingham, AL. I am a graduate of Furman University at the undergraduate level and the University of South Carolina at the graduate level. While my undergraduate degree was in biology, my graduate degree is in Student Personnel Services in Higher Education with a cognate in College & Career Counseling. As a liberal arts undergraduate student, I learned how to become engaged in my campus community to best understand my strengths and weaknesses, my skills, and my occupational interests. Through that process, I discovered the options of my career field in Higher Education. I have had many years experience in Residence Life at just about all levels. Additionally, I have been involved numerous years in First Year Initiative Programming, whether through Residence Life, Career Development, or through Orientation.
I currently serve as a Career Counselor, specializing in working with students who are major-changers either by choice or by academic necessity; students who are preparing for the job search; and working with the School of Nursing and Education on job preparation. I have been very active over the years in the Alabama Counseling Association and the Alabama Career Development Association, acting as treasurer and historian for the later. I also served two terms as Chair for the Statewide k-12 NCDA Career Poetry Contest.
As Samford University is expanding its School of Health Sciences, I decided it would be good for me to further my professional development and researched the NCDA Career Development Facilitator (CDF) program. It has been a perfect fit for me as this particular version allows me to be a working mom of four and pursue the certification at the same time. It has been very helpful for me to re-visit some things I learned in grad school; review situations and projects that I frequently work through in the office; and stretch my abilities and knowledge in order to best help my clients. I believe that having done these things in a concentrated fashion will allow me to better serve my clients going forward and be a valuable resource to other professionals in my office. My instructor, Marie Smith, has done a fantastic job throughout the process. She answered so many questions for me prior to my beginning the program and was very patient with me as I had to work around some things to begin the program. She has provided excellent guidance throughout the process.
Outside the office, I am a wife and a mom of four wonderful children who all enjoy soccer. I spend a great deal of my free time at the fields but all the while making sure none of us miss any University of Alabama Crimson Tide football games. I enjoy running, most sports, cooking, reading and traveling. I am also very active politically in the local area and have served on several campaign steering committees.