Professional Initiative: Examining Your Entry Level Experiences

1. Professional Initiative: Examining Your Entry Level Experiences Amber Cardamone, Drexel University Callie Rimpfel, The University of Scranton MACUHO 2012

2. General Overview • Why you are here? • What are you hoping to achieve? • New Professional Skill Sets • Importance of Competencies • Overview of NASPA Core Competencies • Self Assessment • Preparing for the “Next Step”…SMART Goals • Brainstorm…Experience and Practical Application!

3. Skill Set for Entry Level Professionals • Presenting/Training • Advising • Program Development/ Planning • Problem Solving • Mentor • Supervision • Flexibility • Interpersonal Relationships • Time Management • Multiple Tasks • Written Communication • Oral Communication • Collaboration • Teamwork/Building • Counseling • Multicultural Competency • Organizational Skills • Critical Thinking • Leadership • Goal Setting • Creativity • Evaluation/Assessment • Conflict/Crisis Management • Research • Publications • Technology • Financial Management NASPA Journal, Vol. 42, no. 3

4. Professional Competency Areas for Student Affairs Practitioners • Advising and Helping • Assessment, Evaluation and Research • Equity, Diversity and Inclusion • Ethical Professional Practices • History, Philosophy and Values • Human and Organizational Resources • Law, Policy and Governance • Leadership • Personal Foundations • Student Learning and Development

5. Competency Overview • Advising and Helping: • Addresses the knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to providing counseling and advising support, direction, feedback, critique, referral, and guidance to individuals and groups. • Assessment, Evaluation and Research: • Focuses on the ability to use, design, conduct, and critique qualitative and quantitative AER analyses; to manage organizations using AER processes and the results obtained from them; and to shape the political and ethical climate surrounding AER processes and uses on campus. • Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: • Includes the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to create learning environments that are enriched with diverse views and people. It is also designed to create an institutional ethos that accepts and celebrates differences among people, helping to free them of any misconceptions and prejudices.

6. Competency Overview • Ethical Professional Practices: • Pertains to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to understand and apply ethical standards to one's work. While ethics is an integral component of all the competency areas, this competency area focuses specifically on the integration of ethics into all aspects of self and professional practice. • History, Philosophy and Values: • Involves knowledge, skills, and attitudes that connect the history, philosophy, and values of the profession to one's current professional practice. This competency area embodies the foundations of the profession from which current and future research and practice will grow. The commitment to demonstrating this competency area ensures that our present and future practices are informed by an understanding of our history, philosophy, and values.

7. Competency Overview • Human and Organizational Resources: • Includes knowledge, skills, and attitudes used in the selection, supervision, motivation, and formal evaluation of staff; conflict resolution; management of the politics of organizational discourse; and the effective application of strategies and techniques associated with financial resources, facilities management, fundraising, technology use, crisis management, risk management, and sustainable resources. • Law, Policy and Governance: • Includes the knowledge, skills, and attitudes relating to policy development processes used in various contexts, the application of legal constructs, and the understanding of governance structures and their effect on one's professional practice. • Leadership: • Addresses the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required of a leader, whether it be a positional leader or a member of the staff, in both an individual capacity and within a process of how individuals work together effectively to envision, plan, effect change in organizations, and respond to internal and external constituencies and issues.

8. Competency Overview • Personal Foundations: • Involves the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to maintain emotional, physical, social, environmental, relational, spiritual, and intellectual wellness; be self-directed and self-reflective; maintain excellence and integrity in work; be comfortable with ambiguity; be aware of one's own areas of strength and growth; have a passion for work; and remain curious. • Student Learning and Development: • Addresses the concepts and principles of student development and learning theory. This includes the ability to apply theory to improve and inform student affairs practice, as well as understanding teaching and training theory and practice.

9. Self Assessment • Self-awareness is essential for growth and success. What competencies are you strong in and which ones are lacking? • Rate each of the following competencies or characteristics according to the following scale: • 2-An absolute strength • 1-Something I am at least okay at • 0-A weakness • NA-I have no idea because I’ve never had to do this • Strengths: What evidence do you have that you can share with prospective employers that these are areas of expertise or strengths? • Weaknesses: What can you do in the next few months to a year to make it at least a 1?

10. SMART Goals • Specific: • A goal that is clear and unambiguous. It must tell a team exactly what is expected, why is it important, who’s involved, where is it going to happen and which attributes are important. • Measureable: • Concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of the goal. If a goal is not measurable, it is not possible to know whether a team is making progress toward successful completion. Measuring progress is supposed to help a team stay on track, reach its target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs it on to continued effort required to reach the ultimate goal = MOTIVATION! • Attainable: • Realistic and reachable outcomes. The goals are neither out of reach nor below standard performance which allows to the development of the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. • Relevant: • Choosing goals that matter and drive the team, department, and organization forward. A goal that supports or is in alignment with other goals (i.e. mission, learning outcomes) • Time-bound: • Grounding goals within a time frame and giving them a target date. A commitment to a deadline helps a team focus their efforts on completion of the goal on or before the due date. This part of the S.M.A.R.T. goal criteria is intended to prevent goals from being overtaken by the day-to-day crises that invariably arise in an organization

11. How Do You Obtain these? • Networking • Find Mentors • Shadow Colleagues • Cross Collaboration • Collateral Assignments • Academic Partnerships • Attending Conferences • Advise Student Groups • Professional Involvement • Ask for Constructive Feedback • Search Committee Involvement • Presenting or Writing for Publication • Start Departmental Projects or Initiatives • Take advantage of your benefits…continued education • Become a Committee/Knowledge Group Member or Chair • Read…The Chronicle of Higher Ed, ListServes, Inside HigherEd • Intentionally apply competencies to your job! • Other Ideas?

12. Resources Professional Competency Areas for Student Affairs Practitioners- NASPA.org Entry-Level Competencies of New Student Affairs Professionals: A Delphi Study – Burkard, Cole, Ott, Stoflet- NASPA Journal Vol. 42, no 3.

13. Questions? Amber Cardamone – alc329@drexel.edu Callie Rimpfel – callie.rimpfel@scranton.edu Please fill out the electronic evaluation!