Running head: PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY STATEMENT- DEC 2015 1

Personal Philosophy Statement- Dec 2015

Daniel Vorwerk

University of Northern Iowa

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When I wrote my personal philosophy statement the second week of the semester, my

opening line read, “I have always viewed student affairs as a profession that is all about the

students,” and that statement remains true now that I am a few weeks away from the end of my

first semester in the program. That is really the only part of my original two pages of text that I

would stand by confidently now that I have spent a semester studying the profession.

The idea that I attempted to argue in my original statement was that student affairs has

grown so big as a profession that there needed to be a division between the administrative side

and the relational side of the profession. I made the argument that places such as an office of

admission solely work in the administrative side of student affairs, with little student contact

other than admitting students based on some numbers on a piece of paper and maybe an essay or

two if the institution required it. On the other side, I argued that an office of academic advising

conducts their business in the relational side of student affairs because of their close interaction

with students and the role they play in a student’s life once they are on campus. To conclude my

argument, I stated that administratively focused student affairs offices worked more for the

success of the institution while relationally focused student affairs offices worked more for the

success of the student.

As the semester progressed, I still saw both administrative and relational sides of student

affairs as I studied institutions of higher education both big and small. What became evident as

the glaring flaw in the assumptions I made in my original personal philosophy statement, though,

was that I believed that this separation in sides of the profession occurred horizontally across an

organizational chart, with different offices or departments functioning as either administrative or

relational. What I now know is that all offices and departments are operating with both

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administrative and relational tendencies with the difference occurring vertically in each office

silo rather than across an organizational chart.

In my Organization and Governance class with Dr. Jamie Workman, I learned a lot about

how institutions operate and function through their organizational charts. Analyzing the

organizational charts of different institutions such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the

University of Northern Iowa and Wartburg College made it apparent as to why administrative

and relational sides of student affairs exist. Professionals operating in higher positions within

student affairs offices (directors, associate directors, etc.) typically have less interaction with

students because they spend a lot of their time overseeing staff while entry level professionals,

no matter what area of student affairs they work in, spend a lot of time working with students.

When I wrote my first personal philosophy statement, I was focused on how I saw the

profession, not how I see myself fitting into the profession. The biggest part missing from my

personal philosophy statement was the personal part; I didn’t include it. Therefore, over the past

few months that is what has changed the most in my view of the profession; it has been a change

from viewing the profession as something that I am working toward but rather, something I am

already engaged in. My understanding of the administrative and relational sides of student affairs

has been challenged through interactions with professionals like Dr. Jon Buse, Vice President of

Student Services at Kirkwood Community College, who is in a position of higher authority but

still makes sure that his entire day has a focus on the students at his institution. The same goes

for Dr. Leslie William, Dean of Students here at UNI, who, in class a few weeks back, shared

with us about her role as the Dean. Even though she did not specifically articulate that her focus

is always on the students, you could tell through her demeanor and attitude that the students are

the reasons why she does what she does.

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I know I still have a lot to learn about the profession before entering as a full time

professional in a few semesters. However, given the change in my mindset with the profession

and understanding that the role of a student affairs professional is to always seek to put students

first, I am excited to continue to learn and grow as I progress through the program.