The Need for Counseling Skills in Student Affairs

Student affairs (SA) professionals have advanced from being generalists to specialists. Protivnak, Paylo, and Mercer (2013) discussed the perceived value of counselor preparation by functional area. We pose that counseling skills are used by student affairs professionals across a variety of functional areas. In the current mixed-method study, 60 individuals across five functional areas completed an online survey indicating the use of counseling skills in their respective roles, and five participants were interviewed to explore counseling strategies used in each functional area. The majority of participants indicated that counseling skills are indispensable.