New OSAL Director Brings Global Experience
In his freetime, Joseph Granado enjoys playing volleyball and trying out new restaurants.
After traveling across three continents, helping more than 30 universities, and connecting with thousands of students, Joseph Granado found himself joining the Chaminade University of Honolulu ohana.
In July, Chaminade hired Granado, 31, as its director of the Office of Student Activities and Leadership. His position is responsible for a number of tasks, some of which include guiding students toward more ambitious leadership roles and managing more than 40 student-run organizations with budget planning for desired events. Though a great deal of work is ahead of him, it will be a familiar ordeal as he experienced similar scenarios.
“I think we are the heartbeat of the university, and we basically set the momentum for how the campus is going to be for the year,” he said.
Granado loved two activities growing up in Midland, Texas: volunteering and science. Those interests led him toward teaching Sunday school classes at his local church and participating in extracurricular events at his high school.
His passions would eventually see him becoming a science teacher at Warren High School upon earning his bachelor’s degree in Biology at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2011. Multiple interactions with his students would then inspire him to pursue a career more focused on direct student aid.
After obtaining his master’s degree in Education at Texas A&M University in 2014, he worked with multiple organizations advising students from various backgrounds. From July 2014 to July 2019, Granado was a student advisor for associations, such as Sigma Pi fraternity, Reality Changers organization, and Seeds Training group, working throughout the United States, Greece, and Malaysia.
In each setting, Granado makes an effort to soak up the new environments by visiting their historical sites, trying exotic foods, and participating in local festivals. Throughout his travels, however, Hawaii has always been a destination that he wanted to visit. The tropical climate of the island, rich culture of its residents, and the tightly knit bond of Chaminade’s student population were more than enough to attract an experienced director who had never before visited the state.
With Chaminade being one of the smallest universities on Oahu with the total student count at around 2,000, Granado believes that he and OSAL will have major effects throughout the campus.
Within the first month of the fall semester, Granado began to develop ideas of how campus life could be improved for both the school’s students and staff. One practice that he would like to implement is a dedicated training period for club officers unfamiliar with the process of establishing club activities.
He often found that only one or two individuals in a club know all the needed information to establish an event, thus handicapping an organization if that person or people are unavailable.
“There would be moments where I need to stop everything I’m doing just to make sure officers are on the same page,” said CSGA House of Representatives chairwoman Josephine Iose. “[Granado] and I have been working more to not have that happen again.”
Granado wants to ensure that students have an enjoyable college experience while knowing how the system operates. With his extensive background in student interaction, he looks to use his past lessons and incorporate them into his current objectives so that students avoid any road blocks when designing desired events.
“The last thing I would ever want anyone to feel is feeling like they weren’t a part of something,” he said.