(Re)Orienting College Educators Toward Institutional Transformation

What do senior student affairs officers (SSAOs) expect from new professionals? What are emerging college educators learning in graduate preparation programs? Where is the gap, and how can we work together to fill it? As a vice president for student affairs (VPSA; Segar) and a faculty member in a student affairs and higher education graduate preparation program (Robbins), we often find ourselves on the receiving end of these questions, which we recognize as rooted in well-intentioned efforts to improve the quality of educational practice. The conversations that flow from these questions, however, often reinforce dichotomous thinking that actually undermines our collective capacity for change (Blimling, 2011). For this article, we sought to disrupt dichotomous thinking, to present a different way of understanding the influence of organizational dynamics, and to (re)orient college educators toward building our collective capacity for institutional change, equity, justice, and liberation.

DISRUPTING DICHOTOMIES

The question of what new practitioners need to know is not new to student affairs and higher education. In our varied professional roles over the years, we have observed and participated in this conversation on our own campuses, at professional meetings, and in the literature. At our own institutions, we talk about it in the classroom with graduate students as they work to connect their coursework to their experiences in assistantships and practicum settings and in meetings between graduate preparation program faculty and senior leaders in student affairs (with some individuals serving in both roles). We talk about it at annual meetings of student affairs professional associations and gatherings with educators in similar roles. And as it is our profession, we have been reading and writing about this topic for decades. The evolving nature of this conversation is evident in changes over the years to the Professional Competency Areas for Student Affairs Educators (ACPA & NASPA, 2015) and the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) standards for master's programs in student affairs (CAS, 2019).

We are sympathetic to both the sustained interest in the preparation of new educators and the insights of SSAOs. What emerging practitioners learn in graduate school often becomes a foundation that can inform their practice and professional identities throughout their careers (Perez, 2016). SSAOs are likely to have this foundation plus years of experience, often at multiple institutional types and from numerous organizational vantage points. Our concern is that the dichotomy between graduate preparation programs and senior leadership appears to be rooted in the assumption that SSAOs, in all of their power, are up against new professionals full of the idealism they were taught. Certainly, VPSAs and other SSAOs are in positions of power, and new members of organizations may indeed be more idealistic than more seasoned members. But VPSAs can be idealists, new professionals can have power, and not every graduate preparation experience fosters the idealism usually associated with a cutting-edge curriculum (Freeman, 2012). New professionals and SSAOs should not be pitted against each other: engaging in hierarchical, dichotomous thinking reinforces the white supremacist, settler colonialist logic that undergirds the history of higher education in the United States (Quaye et al., 2018). We would like to think that both groups want to achieve the same outcomes and are trying to navigate systems and realities none of them created. Yet, without a common understanding and perspective, they may believe that resolutions rest within themselves alone. We need to challenge hierarchical and dichotomous ways of thinking about student affairs educators so we can redirect our collective attention to what matters: working together to transform institutions of higher education toward equity, justice, and liberation.

CENTERING INSTITUTIONS AS SITES FOR TRANSFORMATION

In our 45 collective years as college educators, we have observed how student affairs settings perpetuate institutional norms. Practitioners often consider organizational roles separately: leaders, such as SSAOs, and newcomers, such as new student affairs professionals. However, we need to examine the organization comprehensively if we are to work toward institutional transformation (Kezar, 2018). For starters, we need to understand the "middles" of student affairs organizations—not just the extreme points of the roles of SSAOs...