I was dragged out of my mini-blogging retirement by tonight’s #sachat. I’ve heard this debate many times about how to leverage respect from administration for what folks in student affairs do. I wanted to share my opinion but was feeling a little stifled by the 10 million people involved in the chat as well as the 140 characters so I figured I would share my thoughts in longer form.
First, this discussion about developing “street cred” if you will for student affairs is essentially asking how you get administration (a nameless faceless entity, i suppose) to understand what we do. The inherent assumption is that they don’t understand or that they do understand but they don’t think it’s valuable. If we were going to stereotype the view of student affairs both within and without of student affairs, I believe that stereo type would be that we’re “in loco parentis” style baby sitters, we create play time for our kids, and we hold their hands and try to protect them from the big bad faculty. As with most assumptions, this is unfair. Some of the big bad faculty are ALWAYS looking out for students, and some within student affairs favor the approach of throwing students to the wolves over a touchie-feelie approach.
Personally, I find this argument about “admin doesn’t understand what we do” a little tired. If they don’t understand what they do, they’re no different from most people at high levels within organizations. They understand in theory what we do, but they don’t know in detail (isn’t this what that new TV show is about?). Here’s a realization that I think we all need: THEY DON’T NEED TO KNOW WHAT WE DO IN DETAIL. It’s not their job to know the details of our job, it’s our job to know the details of their job. I’m almost certain that most of us have only a basic idea of what our chancellors and VPs do on a daily basis even though we might like to think otherwise. To think that it’s their responsibility to understand every intimate detail of every job on campus is childish.
Second, without fail, the first answer to “how to gain respect” is assessment. Don’t think I’m about to slam assessment; I love assessment, and frankly I don’t think we assess enough. During my internship in grad school in student affairs assessment, the assessment reports that I looked at were PATHETIC and an absurd joke. Most departments in student affairs don’t take this seriously and most of these reports barely get looked at because they don’t actually assess anything that carries weight at a cabinet meeting. VPs might like reading anecdotes, but it’s hard to imagine a meeting at the VP level where an anecdote about how a students heart was touched is read; it’s not that they don’t care, it’s just that they have bigger things to handle. Another problem with assessment – as an old quote says “there are lies, damned lies and statistics”, sharing a bunch of stats does nothing because it’s so easily manipulated.
Third, I think student affairs speaks a different language than the rest of the campus. One of the main critiques you hear of faculty on research campuses is that they don’t have time for students because they’re doing research. However, I would frame it a different way – they’re doing research because that’s a huge part of their job – big difference. When we’re talking about “i had 15 students come to my workshop on getting along with my roommate” and they’re talking about 9 journal articles they got published, we’re really talking on two different planes.
So, what’s my point?
I think I’m essentially arguing for the progression of student affairs as a profession. We’re not that old, not nearly as old as the faculty profession and I think the discussion of “how to gain respect” evolves out of a desire to take our profession from something we can be proud of on the campus, not just in our staff meetings or in our student affairs christmas socials where we’re making christmas bags for our students with glue, yarn and glitter.
I have a couple suggestions, but I don’t think this is a comprehensive list.
- what does the faculty use to establish their value to a campus? I argued on Twitter that faculty establish value by publishing, bringing in students (recruiting), research grants and revenue from research. If I were to summarize these thematically, I would call it “money and prestige”. My question is how can student affairs bring money and prestige to the campus through our work. I think the answer will be different for each office so I’ll not make more specific suggestions.
- If we’re going to do assessment, it needs to connect directly with the mission of our office AND our division and meet scientific research standards. Most of our assessment is a joke because we don’t know how to be research scientists. Clearly this is time consuming, but if the profession is going to progress I think this is an area we clearly don’t bring our A game currently. Do it right, connect with the standards of real research scientists or don’t do it.
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Jeff,
You make some excellent points. I agree with you completely that this is a tired argurment- I believe the way to gain credibility and respect on our campuses is to first exude respect for ourselves and our work. We need to collect data and tell our story. While scientific research may well be the only kind that some faculty on some campuses will “hear”, I think many of us don’t do any assessment at all out of fear about an inability to do it in scientifically correct ways. In my experience, whenever someone starts with simpler forms of assessment – even observation – and takes the time to document the results, comfort grows and they can gradually do more complicated forms. i would also say that qualitative data can be very powerful on the right campuses – mine for example,especially with some of the senior most leaders.
I would add to your comments about senior administration- if they spent the time necessary to understand the details of what people do at the unit level, they would not have time – or the vision – be effective institutional leaders. I think unit directors need to hone their ability to write executive summaries and convey the key elements of their work, accomplishments and challenges in concise terms that translate more broadly. Also, we ARE administrators, so when we talk about administration as “them” it just highlights a disconnect that doesn’t help our case!
As for faculty respect, that can only come from one on one contact and building relationships and understanding. I think we sometimes forget that we are the generalists by training and faculty are specialists – their success comes from being experts on often very narrow subjects. Why would we think they can understand the nature of our work unless they were involved student leaders themselves while in college – and then to what level?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Cathy
Jeff, thanks for writing this. When I was a new professional, I also shared your sentiments above. However, with experience (at both a private and now public institution), here are some of my “seasoned” thoughts to your post:
1. Generally speaking, I think colleges have a better understanding of what Student Affairs does today. The gap of understanding SA has shrunk. The difference now, in 2010, is that with smaller budgets come a greater scrutiny for what’s most important at the college. Since teaching and learning is at the core of a Higher Education, the faculty are thought of last in budget cuts, which greatly affect the rest of us.
2. I wholeheartedly agree that assessment is the the key in showing the added value we bring to a college education. There are many challenges with doing assessment well. First, we take one or two classes in Grad School on basic assessment, and leave it at that. Out assessment books stay on our bookshelves collecting dust. Second, our plates are so full that assessment falls to the bottom and we easily lose sight of it in our day to day work. Third, when we do assessment, it is rarely up to par with what faculty would expect to see. I’m guilty of this and need to be better, but finding time when is my challenge.
Overall, I value your perspective and your passion. I think we’ll get along just fine at ACUI this weekend…. HIYO!
Cathy and Ed,
Can I first say that I continue to have my mind blown by Bridgewater State’s social media community? What’s in the water up there and where can i buy it??
If I were to combine some of each of your sentiments with my own, I think my comments about pushing the profession forward on assessment are relevant. Lack of comfort comes from not knowing and as Ed astutely pointed out, lack of knowing comes from lack of being taught. Two ways to learn: mentoring and classes. Think of an academic degree and the level of feedback and instruction that is required to master thinking like a researcher; we don’t have that as a focus in our profession and I think it is to our detriment. I can’t speak to every institution, but in my limited experience, it seems that the younger crowd is the one pushing the assessment cart. I think this is a good thing and shows that our grad schools are banging this topic home. However, I still think we have a long way to go.
Ed, I liked what you had to say about budgets, but I think it’s far more complex than that and probably worthy of a couple beers and a couple hours to break it down Dr. Jack Style as bill simmons might say. However, I find it interesting that you argue that they understand what we do yet “teaching and learning” is considered separately. Again, I feel like there is room there to push the profession forward. Instead of “in loco parentis” professionals, is there room for us to become the teachers of life skills or something along those lines? I think we do this already but I don’t think it’s clearly defined (at least not in my minimal experience).
Cathy, I actually thought about mentioning executive summaries. I hinted at it with my mentions of what might be relevant at a VP meeting. I like the idea of hammering home money and prestige points and treading lightly with the assessment data. Make sure that what we’re sharing has the “BaM!” value, if that makes sense. If you have any resources on how to write executive summaries, I would love to get my hands on it – my email address is on the contact page and I see you’re following me on Twitter.
Cathy, also allow me to disagree on the faculty issue. While I do agree that one-on-one is great; I don’t personally agree that our profession shouldn’t be able to walk in a room and win over a group of faculty with what we do for a living. In theory, we should know the students at our institution better than anyone (i emphasize in theory), wouldn’t sharing things that would help them connect with a mystifying younger generation perk up their ears? As I said, I think being able to hammer home money and prestige points (research, publishing, recruiting and revenue) are the selling points that brings clout into that room.
I think we have a lot to offer, but I hope to push our profession forward rather than hear the same Rodney Dangerfield “i can’t get no respect!” discussion over and over. Thanks for listening
Hey Jeff,
I missed the #sachats today but will definitely be going back to read and catch up. I had the opportunity to get a peek into the academic side of the university for 2 years as a student organizations coordinator for Penn State’s Smeal College of Business. It was an eye-opening experience (for me and for some of the people I worked with).
It should surprise no one that the most knowledgeable professors and administrators in the college when it came to understanding student issues and what goes on in Student Affairs were also those that advised student organizations. I had the honor of working with some of the best of these during my time at Smeal. (Not all of them were great, but most of them were.)
I came to understand a few things about how some of these advisors were viewed. a) Their students absolutely loved them, b) they spent a lot of time talking with their students about life and taking an interest in them, as we do in Student Affairs, and c) many other professors disdained them for this, and actively discouraged some of them from continuing with such “distractions.”
There were several common types chosen to work with students: First-year seminar teachers (most of whom were adjuncts and/or academic advisors who picked up classes), new faculty who were given the task so that others could work on their books, consulting and conferences, and c) professors closing in on retirement.
Going from Residence Life, one of the touchy-feeliest places at most universities, to the business school (a veritable sharktank)forced me to accept some pretty big shifts in thinking and in making my case for programs, services, or really any change in the status quo. I realized quickly that I had to learn their language, learn their programs, and change some of my professional habits (how I dressed, when I made off-hand comments or jokes, how I approached colleagues, superiors, alumni, students and corporate representatives, among other things.)
While I definitely agree that more assessment of our departments and programs is necessary, we also need to assess ourselves and make sure that our staff are ready to not simply argue a point, but to pay attention to how we PRESENT our arguments, our departments and ourselves.
Thanks for putting your thoughts out there. This should start a good discussion, and I’m looking forward to following it.
Thanks for writing this Jeff and for coming out of retirement. You’ve inspired me to do that same!
So instead of leaving a response in this reply text box. I’ve wrote a response in my blog to share some thoughts on what you wrote.
http://ginesesgenius.blogspot.com/2010/02/re-developing-respect-for-student.html
Thanks again and can’t wait for this discussion to continue on.
Joe
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I’m late to the game here, but wanted to say great post…
I like what you said about the assessment needing to connect with the mission of the office and wider standards. We have to connect with our values – not just the “required things.” What you measure is what you get more of. So we want to make sure we’re measuring the right things!
I know in a ResLife context, when you talk about money and prestige, our biggest strengths are value added through retention and affinity – how students connect and will value their experience once they’re gone. If we can find ways to really measure those, we’re golden.
And finally, I think it’s important to keep it simple. The truth is, most people who are in ResLife (and probably a lot of other student affairs fields) are in them because of skill sets that have NOTHING to do with being good at research. We need to get better and do it well. But we should also keep it simple and do it wisely so we can focus on it as a part of and not the whole program!
Jon,
BINGO! Love it. Well said.
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