Learning Outcome Narrative - Areas for Growth

Running head: LEARNING OUTCOME NARRATIVE: GROWTH 1

Amy Bergstrom

SDA Program E-Portfolio

Learning Outcome Narrative: Areas for Growth

LEARNING OUTCOME NARRATIVE: GROWTH 2

Areas for Growth (LO 1, 3, & 9; Artifacts C2, C3, H1, H2, I, & K1)

While there are many particular areas that I need to grow in as I move into professional

roles in student affairs, I believe my areas for growth largely come down to experience. Before I

started in the Student Development Administration (SDA) program, I worked in journalism, a

field that also requires experience to be successful but that features skills such as interviewing,

writing, and editing that can be taught in a classroom. Student development requires an important

foundation, which I have developed in this program, but it truly requires practice, which I will

only get as I have new experiences working with students and facing scenarios I have not

previously faced. This is part of being a practitioner-scholaror even a scholar-practitioner as I

begin my own research endeavorson Komives (1998, as cited in Komives & Carpenter, 2009)

continuum of work roles. As I continue in the field, I will seek growth as I experience other

colleges and universities, experience challenging situations, and formalize hard skills.

Experience Other Colleges and Universities (LO 1; Artifact C3)

Although I have sought opportunities to experience other higher education institutions,

my major interactions have been at my undergraduate institution, Colorado State University, my

graduate school, Seattle University (SU), and my internship site, Cornish College of the Arts. I

have learned a great deal from these institutions, but I also need to understand additional

institutional types. In particular, additional experience will help me to grow in SDA learning

outcome (LO) 1, understanding the foundations and emerging nature of the Student Affairs

profession and higher education. This learning outcome means understanding how student affairs

developed as a profession, the role student affairs plays currently in various institutions, and the

impact of the field within the larger context of higher education.


During my undergraduate experience, I had a vague idea that student affairs existed,

primarily because some of my classmates in a leadership program were planning to pursue

careers in the field. However, I really did not understand what the field was about, even as I was

a student involved in student affairs offices. Even when I realized that I would like to work with

students and needed to pursue a masters degree, I did not have any idea what would be involved

in my education. My first class in the SDA program, Foundations of the Student Affairs

Profession, helped to ground the rest of my experience, and many of my classes, including the

Capstone seminar and Leadership and Governance in Post-Secondary Education, have helped me

explore the role of student affairs within higher education.

The role of student affairs within specific institutions is something I will continue to learn

about as I experience different schools. In addition to my own educational experiences at

Colorado State, SU, and Cornish, I also was able to learn about practices at other schools during

the Best Practices course, in which we visited several different campuses and compared their

student services for students from traditionally underserved backgrounds (Artifact C3). I was

able to see how actual programs at institutions align with theory and research about how to best

serve students. For example, Tacoma Community College has special programs for students who

are parents, which helps adult students feel that they matter to an institution (Chaves, 2006). As I

continue in the field, I will seek to learn about the role of student affairs at the institution I work

for, and I will also use my network with professionals at other colleges and universities to better

understand the role in those contexts and in higher education overall, so that I may serve students

the best way possible.


Experience Challenging Situations (LO 3; Artifact H1 & H2)

During my two years in the SDA program, I have encountered a few scenarios that were

mildly challenging. For the most part, though, I have not experienced any major crises. While I

certainly am not looking for crises, I also know that they are a real part of working on a college

campus (Miser & Cherrey, 2009), and therefore, I need to be prepared for them. I cannot really

grow, though, in this area, until I actually face challenging situations, which will help me in my

development in LO 3, exhibiting professional integrity and ethical leadership in professional

practice. This learning outcome is about acting with integrity, leading guided by personal ethics,

and leading guided by professional ethical standards.

I believe in acting with integrity in everything I do, a commitment established in my life

long before the SDA program and that will continue as I move forward professionally. Integrity,

I think, is related to my personal sense of morals and doing what is right. Ethics, on the other

hand, although not necessarily strictly defined, is more related to codes of behavior. When I

worked in journalism, my behavior was guided in part by the code of ethics of the major

association, the Society of Professional Journalists, which emphasizes points such as minimizing

harm and acting independently (Society of Professional Journalism, 2014). Although there were

a few discussions of ethical dilemmas during my coursework, such as in Leadership and

Governance and through the ethics paper in the internship class, I still have a lot of room for

growth in establishing my own ethical standards specific to working in student affairs.

I also need to become more familiar with ethical statements from various professional

associations in order to help guide my practice as part of the larger body of student affairs

professionals. This need is evident in my professional competency assessments (Artifacts H1 and

H2). At the beginning of the SDA program, I had no familiarity with this competency, and


although I think I grew in my understanding over the course of the program, I still recognized

when completing this assessment during Capstone that I need more familiarity in this area. As I

become more involved in professional associations, I will spend time getting to know the ethical

statements and use those to form my personal ethics code.

Formalize Hard Skills (LO 9; Artifacts C2, I, & K1)

One of the great strengths of the SDA program is that it has helped me to be a reflective

practitioner who is focused on care for students and helping them become world changers.

However, as I indicated in my reflection on the portfolio (Artifact K1), I have not had as many

opportunities to grow in harder skills that are part of the backbone of student development and

support the rest of my practice. As I gain experience in the field, I will formalize the skills

outlined in LO 9, understanding issues surrounding law, policy, finance, and governance. This

means understanding how these issues affect higher education, understanding my roles and

responsibilities in these areas, and successfully navigating within their frameworks.

Before I started the SDA program, I admittedly had little idea of what it actually meant to

be a student affairs professional. I really just wanted to support students and see them grow, but I

did not know what that entailed. In particular, I was not aware of the influence of such issues as

law and governance in the daily work of student development. The Leadership and Governance

course was one of my best opportunities to understand such issues in higher education. Learning

about the different organizational theories, such as collegial and bureaucratic (Manning, 2013),

gave me a better picture of the different relationships within higher education, which I explored

in my case analysis paper on adjunct faculty organizing (Artifact C2). Understanding the

different theories allowed me to analyze the case from multiple angles.


Understanding my roles and responsibilities and how to navigate those is an ongoing

process of cognitive learning combined with experience and reflection. For example, the Higher

Education Law class exposed me to a lot of potential legal issues. I then had an experience

during an internship where I was concerned about the safety of my students while we were

traveling, as well as my potential liability should something have happened to them. Fortunately,

nothing happened, but I processed the experience with my supervisor afterwards to get a better

idea of my responsibility and alternative solutions should I be in a similar situation in the future.

I realize, though, that I still need a lot of experience in these areas of law, policy, finance,

and governance, which is why I have incorporated them into my five-year professional

development plan (Artifact I). In particular, I will seek opportunities in my professional

development to develop skills in human and organizational resource management, such as

managing a budget and participating in hiring processes. I will also seek to stay up-to-date on

important issues in higher education by reading the latest literature and participating in webinars

and workshops. I will be intentional about incorporating these topics into my conversations with

my supervisor and other colleagues, so that I can continue to develop in these areas.

Continued Growth

As I move out of my role as a graduate student and continue in the field of student affairs

as a professional, it might be tempting to keep my head down and focus solely on the job at

hand. However, I know that there are a lot of areas where I need to continue to grow as a

professional. This will require me paying attention and seeking out opportunities to expand out

of my daily responsibilities. I want to be the strongest professional I can be so that I can serve

students in the best way possible, and this will mean that I will need to pursue experiences with

various colleges and universities, so that I can discover what works well. I will also need to


prepare myself for challenging situations and build my hard skills. Focusing on both of these

things will help me build my toolkit so I can help students navigate their own challenges. I will

use my professional development plan with the help of my supervisor to find areas to focus on

during each academic term and year. And I will look to my colleagues for enriching

conversations, to help me process my experiences, reflect, and grow as a professional.


References

Chaves, C. (2006). Involvement, development, and retention: Theoretical foundations and

potential extensions for adult community college students. Community College Review,

34(2), 139-152.

Komives, S. R., & Carpenter, S. (2009). Professional development as lifelong learning. In

McClellan, G. S., & Stringer, J. (Eds.), The handbook of student affairs administration

(pp. 371-387). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Manning, K. (2013). Organizational theory in higher education. New York, NY: Routledge.

Miser, K. M., & Cherrey, C. (2009). Responding to campus crisis. In McClellan, G. S., &

Stringer, J. (Eds.), The handbook of student affairs administration (pp. 602-622). San

Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Society of Professional Journalists. (2014). SPJ code of ethics. Retrieved from

http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

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Learning Outcome Narrative - Areas for Growth