Kaity Werner
Aspiring Student Affairs Professional
Assessment, Evaluation & Research
Personal
Foundations
After completing an assessment of my development within each of the ten professional competencies for student affairs practitioners outlined in the 2010 Professional Competency Areas for Student Affairs Practitioners. The four competencies that I would like to further enhance are: (1) Personal Foundations, (2) Assessment, Evaluation, and Research, (3) Law, Policy, and Governance, and (4) Student Learning and Development.​ For each competency area I have outlined my perception of my deficiencies and gaps in competence, what I would like to learn, and why I believe enhancing this competence will be beneficial for my professional development.
Competencies to Develop​
Many student affairs professionals would attest to the fact that attaining balance between one’s personal and professional life is an incredibly difficult task for new professionals in student affairs. Personal balance and wellness has been a challenge for me throughout my time in the CSP program at BGSU. I have taken great initiative to implement strategies that will increase my personal wellness, but I realize it is vital for me to continue developing this competency to be an effective, happy professional. I am very passionate about the housing and residential life functional area, and I love the challenges, opportunities for professional development, and breadth of experiences I have through my work. However, working in the residence halls can be an exhausting, frustrating position as well. Therefore, personal wellness is essential to avoid burnout.
As a new professional, there will likely be many new stressors and forces competing for my attention. I will be exploring the culture and expectations of my new role, developing my professional identity and capacities, and striving to do excellent work that meets the expectations of my new supervisor and team. As such, I will probably feel obliged to work extra hours, put in additional effort, and push myself to my highest level of achievement so I can start my professional career with excellence. In light of this expectation, it will be incredibly important for me to enhance my competence in personal foundations. I should reflect on my personal values, my goals and aspirations, and the boundaries and personal activities that will ensure my personal wellness. I have demonstrated strength in this competency this past academic year by integrating physical fitness into my regular routine and reflecting on positive occurrences to keep my spirits up even on stressful days. I would like to continue utilizing these tactics that have proven beneficial this past year, and develop additional strategies and skills for my professional foundations competence.
Throughout my time as a graduate student, I have continually felt that my competence to complete adequate assessments, evaluations, and research has been limited. Therefore, I would like to enhance this competency after graduation and actively seek out opportunities that will help me develop relevant skills. I feel I have two main strengths in this area that I would like to maintain post-graduation. First, I believe I am proficient in creating surveys to determine student satisfaction with various programs and experiences on-campus. Second, I am skilled at evaluating staff members; I am well-versed and capable in providing positive and constructive feedback as well as ethically and accurately evaluating supervisees and my supervisor.
Beyond these two strengths, there are many limitations and deficiencies to this competency that I would like to remedy and enhance. I would like to learn how to create effective assessments of learning outcomes for student programs and training sessions as well as how to better write learning outcomes for my initiatives. I would also like to enhance my ability to analyze data and research. I have conducted survey assessments in the past that received great response rates; however, I struggled to analyze the data using different statistical functions in SPSS. I know and understand basic tools for analyzing data, but I am not skilled at utilized some of the more complex analytical functions. I also hope to retain and enhance my skills at conducting research. Throughout graduate school I have had to utilize library databases to conduct searches of past research and literature. I would like to enhance my ability to conduct this sort of research, as well as to more efficiently find research that will best meet my needs. Lastly, I would like to publish a research paper within 3-5 years of my professional career. Therefore, I hope to gain the necessary competence to prepare me to effectively conduct a research project that is publishable.
Proficiency in assessment will be critical for my success as a professional because assessment is an important tool to analyze outcomes of one’s work on student success and satisfaction. To be an effective student affairs practitioner, I should be able to prove the value of my work; assessing the impact of my work will help me to depict the importance of my work and functional area, and request additional resources and support to accomplish my goals. Competence in evaluation is important because I will continue to supervise a staff and be supervised throughout my career. It is important to provide staff members with accurate, constructive feedback that can help that individual continue to develop and ensure success of the team. Lastly, competence in research is necessary for my professional development. I will need knowledge and skills in research to effectively conduct a research project that I can publish.
A common theme throughout the foundational documents of the student affairs profession is that the role of student affairs practitioners is to support student success and provide opportunities to holistically develop students. With this in mind, it is imperative that I enhance my competence within student learning and development throughout my experience as a new professional. My supervisor told me once that it is much easier to be student-centered and to utilize theory in one’s practice during one’s graduate assistantship because graduate students are actively learning and seeking opportunities to connect learning to practice. Once practitioners have been in the field for a few years, and as practitioners move up to mid-level positions with little direct contact with students, it becomes easy to slip out of the practice of utilizing theory as a framework and considering the student perspective when making decisions. In light of this perspective, I feel it is critical that new professionals in student affairs enhance their competence in this area and continue to be passionate and knowledgeable about theory and student development.
I strive to be a practitioner that utilized a student-centered approach in my work. Therefore, I should continue to seek opportunities to learn about different student populations and their experiences, new and expanded student development theories, and current trends affecting the student experience and student learning. Competence in this area will allow me to provide the necessary challenge and support to the students with which I work, to consider implications for students when creating policies and making institutional decisions, and to meet students where they are at. Through my graduate coursework, I gained a proficient understanding of student development theory, by which I understand various theories and can apply them to different student experiences. There are a handful of theories that I tend to utilize the most based upon my work with first-year traditional students, such as Schlossberg’s Transition Theory and Chickering and Reisser’s Seven Vectors. However, I want to additionally enhance my understanding of, and ability to apply, other theories that I do not consider often to ensure that I do not forget about these theories and how to apply them in practice.
Furthermore, I want to enhance my ability to support and encourage student learning. Through my work in residence life, I focus a lot of my energy on creating programs and initiatives to help student develop skills in areas such as confrontation, conflict management, effective communication, managing emotions, healthy decision-making, and personal wellness. I have started to take more initiative to create programs that facilitate student learning in an academic sense, such as an Academic Challenge program that provided incentives to students who utilized the learning resource center on campus and demonstrated participation in positive study habits. I would like to learn how to continue to support student academic success in my work as a new professional and make student learning a priority.
Student learning and development is the overarching purpose of higher education and our work in student affairs. Therefore, to be an effective practitioner that best meets student needs, I must continually work to enhance my competence in this area. I think that successful administrators are able to see their work through multiple lenses, including a student-centered lens that allows the administrator to consider the impact of their work and decisions on student success, satisfaction, learning, and development.
The legal landscape of higher education is ever-evolving. Therefore, it is critical that student affairs practitioners are continually abreast of new legislations, policies, federal and state laws relevant for higher education, and legal trends. I would like to enhance my knowledge and abilities within the law, policy, and governance competence throughout the entirety of my career, but particularly at the beginning. In the CSP program at BGSU I had the opportunity to take the Law for Higher Education course. Through the course I learned about tort law, contract law, and negligence; how to read a court case and identify key components; considerations regarding affirmative action; faculty contracts and academic freedom; and emerging legal issues in higher education. I feel that the competence I gained from this coursework provided me a solid framework by which to understand conversations about legal issues in higher education. However, I also believe that my competence is foundational and can be enhanced.
I would like to continue to learn about legal trends and issues in higher education, such as recent considerations regarding undocumented students, the continued legal conversations about affirmative action, and legal considerations regarding on-campus gun policies. I believe it is important for administrators to keep current on these and other major legal discussions to predict and better prepare for any institutional changes that may occur as a result of legislation changes. On a more personal level, I would like to learn more about institutional processes for seeking counsel and legal support. Throughout my career I will have many opportunities to make big, tough decisions that can impact individual student lives, such as those decisions in judicial hearings. As such, it is fully possible that a student could choose to sue me during my career. I want to be prepared for this possibility and have a firm understanding of my rights and responsibilities if taken to court, my resources from the campus, and institutional expectations. I would also like to continue to explore the intricate details of legislation such as the Jean Clery Act, Title IX, and FERPA to ensure that I am in complete compliance with these laws.
Lastly, I would like to gain the competence to propose and develop institutional policy changes that best meet the needs of students. Every institution has their own organizational structure and hierarchy as to who makes decisions that impact departments or the whole institution. I would like to learn the skills and techniques to be an effective policy developer and to successfully create positive change at my institutions in the future. For instance, I recently spoke with an administrator in my current role about my desire to incorporate wording about cyber-bullying in the student code of conduct; although I feel I was well-prepared to have that conversation, I was not adequately prepared to get solid buy-in from the administrator. Therefore, I want to become competent at writing proposals, arguing proposals, and writing policy based on such proposals.
As outlined above, enhancing my competence in law, policy, and governance will allow me to think ahead as an administrator. Higher education administrators have many work responsibilities competing for their time and energy, which may leave less time to explore and review federal, state, and local legal trends and the emerging legal issues that can impact their institutions. Knowing this in advance, I would like to a proactive administrator that actively seeks out knowledge of current legal trends and potential implications for my practice and institution. By making this a priority, I hope to be an insightful practitioner that can offer valid and relevant input when making institutional decisions regarding policies and legal concerns.
Student Learning & Development
Law, Policy & Governance
