As a scholar-practitioner, I leverage the multidimensionality of my professional and personal experiences, empirical research, and personal values to inform my understanding of and approach to student affairs administration. For example, as a well-trained researcher, I have the skills to review, produce, evaluate, and apply empirical knowledge in diverse environments and contexts. I strongly advocate for social justice-oriented practices that align with diversity, equity, and inclusion aims that create and maintain belonging and engagement among students with historically underrepresented identities. Additionally, my understanding of student affairs administration is multilayered because of my rich (para)professional experiences that have allowed me to support prospective students, student-athletes, students seeking support with writing, residential students, orientation advisors/leaders, resident assistants, students going through the student conduct process, student government/residence hall association leaders, and student members of a student conduct board. These experiences are further supplemented by my unique leadership experience within the university environment, which provides me with an “inside look” at the entire operation of higher education.
Accordingly, my approach to student affairs administration is guided by multiple “critical” frameworks, including Paulo Freire’s pedagogical model, which seeks to disrupt the fallacies associated with the banking education model. For instance, I actively situate students as partners in organizational change, holistic learning, and program development. Students are essential stakeholders in all significant development efforts, change, and progress. Furthermore, my student affairs approach is intuitively guided by the idea that students must be active partners and leaders within their development—principal perspectives--that hold together the field of student affairs/student personnel—as evident in the foundational, unifying documents of the field, including the Student Learning Imperative, Learning Reconsidered, and the Student Personnel Point of View. Thus, with these frameworks in mind, I prioritize developing student engagement, student leadership, and self-authorship by creating opportunities for students to exercise agency in ways that benefit their personal, academic, and professional goals.
Finally, as a student affairs administrator/staff member, I contribute to students’ growth and development by embracing and affirming partnerships between student affairs and academic affairs. Thus, when education and development happen co-curricularly, students are the ultimate champions of what we know as higher education.