This study examines career planning programs and career services offices at colleges and universities in the United States as viewed by senior student affairs officers (SSAOs). Findings from a 1979 study of career services offices (CSOs) were compared to the current findings. Additionally, new areas of research were examined in order to provide…

This study examined student affairs and services staff members' perceptions of their work relative to items developed from the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services' (CACUSS's) mission statement (CACUSS, 1989). Using data collected from student affairs and services staff members at English-speaking…

The purpose of this study was to increase awareness of the perceptions of student affairs professionals regarding the most frequent and challenging concerns facing college students today. Using the Delphi method, 159 entry-level and mid-level student affairs administrators from institutions across the country were surveyed about their perceptions…

This study explored whether latent phenomena could be identified to classify students based on their patterns of involvement in cocurricular group experiences. The sample was comprised of 11,209 seniors from 50 institutions. A total of 4 latent factors were identified and students were classified into one of 8 latent classes. Findings offer new…

Student affairs personnel are often charged with the task of creating a sense of community on campuses. Sports is among the many activities that historically have been used to meet this need for community among students. Yet, how and when a sense of community is created within a sports context has not been appropriately addressed in literature.…

Career paths in student affairs generally follow a conventional course: graduate degree to entry-level position, progressive responsibility until middle management, and then a decision to remain, work to advance, or change fields. Studies on factors influencing career advancement have enlightened qualitative considerations individuals face when…

Over the last several decades student affairs and assessment scholars who study college impact have utilized a number of different research design and statistical procedures in an attempt to control for the characteristics and propensities that lead students to self-select themselves into a particular intervention or experience. This is…

"The Student Personnel Point of View" (American Council on Education, 1937) has been a catalyst for dialogue on the purposes of student personnel and student affairs work for 75 years. Through analysis of the writings of Esther Lloyd-Jones and E. G. Williamson, two of the most prolific scholars of the early years of student personnel work, the…

For this study, 1,884 adjudicated college students provided their impressions of the educational value and procedural fairness of their disciplinary experiences. Results indicated that a strong correlation exists between perceived fairness and educational value. Differences in students' perceptions emerged in regards to age, gender, and GPA, among…

In recent years, change has become a common catch phrase. The mantra of change ushered in America's first African American president and reawakened within Americans a call to social and civic awareness as well as engagement not seen since the 1960s and 1970s. Key constituents to the change movement were college students whose experiences in higher…

In this study, we build on two recent works (Gaston-Gayles, Wolf-Wendel; Tuttle, Twombley, and Ward, 2004; Slocum & Rhoads, 2008) that examine faculty and staff work with student activists, but expand the scope to include new questions such as why and how they partner with students, the impact of institutional context, and what role it might play…

This article focuses on understanding how identity development is conceptualized in student affairs. The need to understand the person, context, and interactions between the two advances identity theories as relevant to student affairs practice. The more practitioners understand how students make meaning of their identities, the better they are…

The purpose of this article is to review the extant student affairs diversity literature to better understand the trends and development that have occurred over time. By assessing the trends, scope, and direction of the multicultural literature, perhaps student affairs professionals will be better able to capitalize deliberately on the important…

In this paper, the author summarizes the role and contributions of the scholarship and institutional research about student engagement and its relevance for student development professionals and others committed to enhancing the quality of the undergraduate experience. The presentation is organized into four major sections. First, the author…

As student affairs professionals increasingly move toward developing their students into active citizens that are committed to both social justice and systemic change, it is important for these students to have a keen awareness of the basic concepts that underlie social justice. The authors argue that fundamental knowledge about the concepts of…