Over the last few decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of student service personnel, yet demand has outstripped this growth leading to turnover and low employee satisfaction. Scholars and practitioners alike have called for increased levels of empowerment of these workers, but the outcomes of this approach need further…

Professionals within the field of student affairs administration provide essential support services to students within American higher education. As a profession, it is important to understand the way in which new student affairs professionals are socialized, supervised, and prepared for the demands of student support work. This arts-based,…

Using a constructivist paradigm, this qualitative study investigated the impact of social identities on how professionalism is learned, practiced, and challenged by new professionals in student affairs. Collaborators in this study included 25 recent graduates of a student affairs professional preparation program. Findings suggest race, gender,…

This multiple site case study explored staffing in student affairs divisions and the experiences of practitioners. This research study used Creamer and Winston's (2002) Integrated Model of Staffing Practices to structure the case study and analyze the data. A systematic approach to staffing is necessary to provide student affairs staff the…

A vocation is an individual's sense of being called to pursue a given profession. Vocations are typified by passion, absorption in work, a desire for prosocial work, and a tendency to sacrifice for the vocation. Vocations have been linked to both advantageous and adverse effects, including the propensity for vocational workers to suffer workplace…

High employee turnover in higher education has been an issue for decades, and successfully integrating newly hired staff (NHS) into their new job and the organization can be challenging for human resources and leadership. New employee orientation and onboarding programs can assist NHS. The author of this paper conducted a Utilization-Focused…

Collaboration between academic and student affairs professionals is an important means of increasing student success; however, historical divides between these units have made implementation of these efforts challenging. This quantitative study sought to evaluate the perceptions of faculty and student affairs staff towards collaborative efforts…

Student counselors and tutors guide students' choices of study profiles (subjects) within Dutch secondary education. This study addressed three research questions: (1) According to counselors and tutors, what factors should inform students' study profile choices? (2) Into what types can the views of counselors and tutors be classified? (3)…

This phenomenological study aimed to better understand how new student affairs professionals perceived their sense of self-efficacy and how it impacted their career satisfaction, especially during the COVID-19 global pandemic. This study examined the lived experiences of new student affairs professionals. Data were collected through a series of…

This qualitative study examined the manifestation of work-related stressors that SAPros of Color who provide direct services and support to Students of Color working at a large, tier-one research institution experience. Additionally, this study explored participants' self-care behaviors and strategies used to cope and probed for potential…

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore how mid-level student conduct professionals (SCPs) made meaning of their professional and mid-level leadership experiences during their institutions' immediate responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study draws on sensemaking as a theoretical lens and literature related to mid-level…

Throughout history, people have united to demand change and accountability in the face of injustice. Although freedom of speech and assembly rights have been essential in uplifting and empowering marginalized communities throughout history, it is important to name the existence of speech that seeks to expand rights and speech which aims to…

Student activities are an important part of the student life experience on college campuses (Barham & Winston, 2006). Student activities professionals are key to helping students become, and stay, engaged during their educational experience (Komives, 2019). While student activities staff provide care and support, the staff themselves are not…

This study sought to understand education support professionals' (ESPs) experiences early in the COVID-19 pandemic, including how they were feeling about their roles in education, strategies they were using to cope with unprecedented times, barriers they encountered toward maintaining SE health at work, and opportunities they identified as…

Scholarly literature and collegial conversations about early-career professionals' preparation for and contributions to the student affairs field are often framed from a deficit lens (Ardoin et al., 2019; Kuk et al., 2007; Dickerson et al., 2011), noting how early-career professionals need support in establishing their professional identity and…