Leadership skills and abilities are essential for student affairs administrators and educators. Through a narrative approach, this book addresses current issues in leadership and administration for student affairs from a variety of perspectives. Lessons, tips, and strategies for student affairs professionals at various levels are provided. Letters from new professionals in the field of student affairs are included, offering insights to graduate students on the challenges of leadership that occur when entering the profession. Additionally, these letters can be used in the classroom as case studies. The book is structured into three parts that include letters to graduate students from new professionals, mid-level managers, and senior/retired administrators. Part I focuses on making the transition from graduate student to new professional, navigating a new campus culture and environment, setting and maintaining boundaries, creating a work-life balance, the importance of campus and professional association involvement, and looking beyond traditional student affairs roles to serve students. These letters will be a valuable tool when evolving as a leader in student affairs. Part II explores the supervisory relationship, ethical dilemmas in higher education and leading colleagues, using challenge and support with students and colleagues, and preparing for the next steps for moving up from new professional to mid-manager. These letters contain the knowledge, skill, and insight to train graduate interns and supervisees new to the student affairs field. Part III studies the letters written to mid-level managers from senior/retired student affairs administrators. The importance of building relationships throughout the leadership journey, forming a professional identity, understanding the importance of budgets, the importance of leading with integrity, and the significance of strategic leadership is stressed. Reflection and Action exercises at the end of each chapter will enhance the knowledge, skills, and wisdom for the reader to map out the journey in becoming a competent leader in the field of student affairs. This book will be an excellent student affairs resource for entry-level, mid-level and senior-level professionals, and college administrators.

Looking to foster student leadership competency development? With this volume, you'll gain the latest research, resources, and tools to do just that. There are many factors to consider when providing educational experiences that foster student leadership competency development. But, the process of designing, facilitating, and assessing these experiences to be both effective and meaningful can be elusive and challenging. In this volume, a variety of scholars offer diverse perspectives and nuanced expertise that address the following questions: What leadership competencies are the most critical for students to develop? How can we ensure students are ready to develop leadership competencies? What instructional strategies and program design elements can we use to effectively enhance leadership competency development? How do we help students and educators track and measure leadership competency learning and growth? The Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Student Leadership explores leadership concepts and pedagogical topics of interest to high school and college leadership educators. Issues are grounded in scholarship and feature practical applications and best practices in youth and adult leadership education.

The purpose of Theory of College Student Development is to provide readers with new theoretical knowledge or a reminder of the foundational and evolving theories that professionals can utilize for understanding and making sense of students’ behavior. Its primary focus is on the integration of knowledge, skills, and application of such theories in such a way as to emphasize utility and application. A unique component is its emphasis on professional competence, professional identity, and theoretical application. Unlike previously published case study books designed to reach student development theory, this text utilizes a single case that allows readers to see how a range of theories are applicable to this one case. Theories presented for application include both foundational and evolving theoretical perspectives. The twelve chapters have been written by both faculty and practitioners. Each coeditor and chapter author brings unique perspectives and lens of viewing theory and application, representing their experiences, talents, and expertise. It features authors who represent the best of the best, and these authors challenged us to be more innovative as we reimagine the evolution of student development theory. The editors had two specific audiences in mind: faculty and higher education practitioners. With over two hundred graduate preparation programs in the United States, most offering a student development theory course, this book will help graduate faculty, both new and seasoned, with a mechanism for teaching theory in a fun, relevant, and innovative way.

This book is a valuable resource for graduate students in student affairs preparation programs and anyone working in the field of student affairs. It provides readers with a comprehensive guide to the integration of technology in student affairs, drawing on the expertise of leading scholars and practitioners in the field. The chapters in this book explore the many ways in which technology can be used to enhance student engagement, support, and learning outcomes. The topics include the history of technology in student affairs, digital identity, integrating high-tech with high touch on campus, ethical issues with technology, technology and risk management, consideration of the need for social media liaisons in student affairs, technology competency and adaptability, and case study on technology decision-making. Whether you are a seasoned professional or a new practitioner, you can gain a wealth of insights on how to use theoretical models to address digital identity, convert traditional campus functions to technological approaches, apply a conceptual framework for ethical technological practices, enhance campus and community engagement through the development of a social media liaison, navigate technological competency and adaptability issues on campus as well as to identify legal issues arising in daily practice and learn risk management skills. The knowledge, skills, and wisdom provided in this book will guide you not only to incorporate technology into your work but also empower you to leverage technology in innovative ways to better serve the needs of your students and advance the field of student affairs.

Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.

From the Preface: “The primary audience for this book is first-generation college students. Whether they are in two-year or four-year colleges, I give the readers an example of the power of a parent’s dream, the positive and negative outcomes of a student’s hard work, the stuff caring teachers and supportive school administrators are made of, and the significance of resilience, tenacity, and self-growth. Hopefully, my story will give those who read this book a dose of what stick-to-itiveness means up close and personal…. My foremost message to first-generation and other-generation students is to ask for help when you are stumped, seize whatever opportunities to help you improve, and do your best work. Secondly, this book is written for teachers, school counselors, nurses, and other personnel who help students during their educational journeys. Their assistance can be helpful or hurtful to whatever generation of students they are helping. What they do to students and how they do it matters hugely. Thirdly, this book is written for professional helpers who are not school-related but who want to become better helpers in other careers. Lastly, this book is written for people who are not professional helpers but are curious about the travails and struggles of poverty-stricken people like me and my family…. I have had a long, tedious journey from illiteracy to literacy, from segregation to desegregation, from poverty to affluence, and from disliking people who came from cultures different from my own to loving them. Nonviolent theories and behavior were like a river flowing through my life, slowly during my childhood and adolescence and rapidly after I enrolled in college. The Civil Rights Movement is the name of that river. It was the foremost foundation upon which I built my philosophy of helping other people. So, of course, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was my hero, role model, and guide. His words and strategies of change are generously sprinkled throughout the later chapters of this book….”

The approach to motivational interviewing discussed in this book will be useful to student affairs professionals and academic advisors working in a variety of higher education positions. It begins in Chapter 1 by providing a description and a brief history of MI, noting some of its connections to counseling and social psychology. Chapter 2 explores in more detail the spirit of MI—the key relational components that the professional using MI is attuned to. This interpersonal attitude can be summarized within four key principles: partnership, acceptance, compassion, and evocation. Chapter 3 presents an overview of some contemporary models of academic advising and student affairs practice. Chapter 4 covers the basic MI skill set, which is referred to by the shorthand OARS. Chapter 5 discusses the four processes in MI conversations about change: engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning. Chapter 6 elaborates on the evoking stage and provide an expanded discussion concerning “change talk” and “sustain talk.” Change talk refers to student statements that express a desire, need, or readiness to change, while sustain talk refers to student statements that indicate maintenance of the status quo or a reluctance to change. In addition to providing more in-depth definitions of these concepts and examples of student statements, strategies are presented for increasing or evoking change talk and softening sustain talk. In Chapter 7, intermediate to advanced MI skills are addressed to prepare the highly motivated staff member for higher-level training that can be obtained through workshops, observation, and coaching. Chapter 8 puts everything together in two case examples. Chapter 9 provides some additional exercises that can be used to practice and develop MI basic and intermediate skills. Lastly, some brief concluding remarks are provided in Chapter 10.