Month: February 2013

The Search for Perfecting Student Affairs Competence

Dan

In today’s Inside Higher Ed, Maria Stewart addresses perfectionism and the inability to acknowledge mistakes. The article couldn’t come at a better time because I’ve seen a few examples lately of folks in our field aiming to defy reality:

Student affairs professionals are not superhuman. We make mistakes.

I believe Dr. Stewart’s points apply well to us: admit the mistake, explain the reason why it was mad, determine how it will not happen again, and seek forgiveness. These are all things we can do better. We can be transparent about our faults. We can receive forgiveness and deal with those who will  not accept our apology. I think the biggest problem is when we are called for the mistake and then our hubris emerges: it was not a mistake. It was someone else’s fault.

And we make the same mistake again.

When considering our competence and confidence to do this work, we have a lot of expectations on us: attend to the distinct needs of diverse populations of students while also doing what is best for all. We have to mitigate risk and attend to the law. We have to abide by ethical principles. We have to act in alignment with student affairs values and principles. If we are doing these things, making the effort, and the mistake happens, then we learn from it and move on.

I believe that if we ground our work in an intentional way and exercise due diligence, then when the mistake occurs most will be willing to forgive and most likely the majority will at least forget.

What have been your mistakes? How did you move on from the mistake? What did you learn?

 

The Student Learning Focused Advisor

Dan

I finally finished reading “Learning is Not a Sprint” edited by Darby Roberts and Kathy Collins. The books’ great overall but I feel two of the chapters are particularly important for student affairs professionals to read.

In chapter five Katy King explains the responsibility student advisors and student employee supervisors have for helping students learn. Based on the DEEP (Documenting Effective Educational Practice) project conducted by higher education scholars in 2005, she identifies 10 strategies to promoting learning in advising and supervising roles. I won’t dive into the ten practices, as you could buy the book and it would make this blog too long, but King argues that all we do should focus on learning. Period. She writes that filling the roles of mentor, teacher, supervisor, leader and follower can help students learn from those who advise and supervise them. King does well to apply several concepts and frameworks to basic advising strategies. She ends with the resolution that this is a shared journey between advisor and student and it is one that each person will be all the better for as a result of experiencing.

In chapter six Krista Jorge Bailey brings forth the concept of the “student learning focused” advisor/supervisor. She explains that student affairs professionals have an obligation to develop the skills needed to teach the students with whom they work. She acknowledges that this may be a difficult process, as it’s a paradigm shift for many. She explains John Kotter’s Leading Change model, which has been applied in so many different contexts including higher education. Through providing tactics for each of the eight steps of the change process, Bailey helps us to see how we can better integrate learning.

I’d recommend reading “Learning is not a Sprint” for these two chapters alone – both can aid in increasing your competence and confidence to enact the ACPA/NASPA Core Competencies of Student Learning and Development and Assessment, Evaluation and Research. I believe these chapters by King and Bailey bring forth great ideas to integrate learning approaches into our work.

Have you read “Learning is not a Sprint”? What are your thoughts about key takeaways?