Student Affairs Personnel: Partners or 2nd Class Citizens?

Abstract

Pick up almost any college catalog and you will note th t the college prides itself on catering to the whole individual?to his development as a social, physi cal, spiritual, and emotional, as well as an intellectual person. Professional literature, too, abounds with refer ences to educating the total person. There is undoubtedly a growing recognition that self-actualization depends not only on mastery of a body of knowledge about the world around us, but also on an understanding of one's self. The important role to be played by a body of pro fessionals whose work will complement the educational process is already accepted in theory and actually exists in practice: a dean of students, a student activity di rector, a residence hall director, counselors, placement personnel, and perhaps psychologists and consulting psychiatrists. What does not yet exist in most cases, however, for this body of professional personnel is the recognition and academic status accorded to the other professionals in the institution, namely the teaching faculty. The question that then arises is: will it be pos sible for colleges to attract and retain professionally trained and gifted people in the student affairs areas if they are not accepted as equal partners in institutions of higher education ? Many leading universities offer graduate degrees at the master and doctorate levels in counseling and guidance, student personnel administration, etc. It is now generally recognized that professionally skilled, full time personnel are essential if these functions are to be carried out effectively. People wanting to enter these fields recognize the need for specialized training. How ever, it is already an accepted fact that many bright graduate students, who show a keen interest in student affairs, are being advised to steer clear of this field be cause they may, under employment as registrar, director of admissions, counselor, or one of a number of posi tions, will discover that they do not have the same rights and privileges as their teaching colleagues. Under these circumstances, there seems little doubt that the student affairs profession will lose many capable recruits to its ranks. The trained student affairs person with professional skills and graduate studies as lengthy as those of his teaching colleagues, may find himself without either rank or tenure. In present practice, if he is to have the privi lege of rank or earning tenure, he must be assigned to a department such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, or in some cases a department related to the area of his undergraduate work. This often presents difficult and serious problems. For example, the student affairs per son, in most cases, is working twelve months a year and an excess of forty hours per week in student affairs and cannot teach, write and research within the department. Therefore, other faculty members within the department often question the person's right to be there and wonder, sometimes quite vociferously, if the person belongs. Feelings often become even more exacerbated when pro motions are being contemplated. Problems inevitably arise over such questions as whether the student affairs person should meet the same criteria for promotion as do his colleagues who are teaching and doing research in their areas of speciality. The faculty member with large classes who finds from college reports that an excellent student-teacher ratio of his department can be attributed to the inclusion of student affairs personnel who rarely have time to teach, becomes resentful. Problems affecting the morale of college personnel obviously detract from the primary goal of the college, that of serving the student. It becomes essential to work out a more satisfactory way of giving the student affairs person the status and security that he should have in keeping with the level of work that he performs. As stu dent affairs personnel become an increasing proportion of the professional employees of institutions of higher learning, it becomes of paramount importance to enable them to enter into a real partnership in the academic community. It appears to the writers that certain measures could be taken immediately to bring about a resolution of the problems. First there is the problem of nomenclature. Cur rently, student affairs personnel in many cases refer to themselves and are referred to by others as student per sonnel workers. There is certainly nothing wrong with the term worker which came into vogue many years ago before specialists were educated in the student af fairs areas. However, by withholding the term faculty, which refers to a branch of learning in a university, the 115