ACPA & NASPA Professional Competencies Snapshot
• Exhibit active listening skills.
• Establish rapport with students, groups, colleagues, and others.
• Facilitate reflection to make meaning from experience.
• Facilitate problem-solving.
• Facilitate individual decision making and goal setting.
• Challenge and encourage students and colleagues effectively.
• Know and use referral sources (e.g., other offices, outside agencies, knowledge sources), and exhibit referral skills in seeking expert assistance.
• Identify when and with whom to implement appropriate crisis management and intervention responses.
• Perceive and analyze unspoken dynamics in a group setting.
• Facilitate or coach group decision making, goal setting, and process.
• Conduct individual professional development needs assessment and group assessment of organizational needs.
• Mediate differences between or among individuals and groups.
• Appropriately mentor students and staff.
• Demonstrate culturally appropriate advising, helping, coaching, and counseling strategies.
Past students from Cornell University reflect on my supervisory style.
As one of the graduate advisors for the student programming board, University Activities Organization (UAO), at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) advising and helping is the foundation of my internship experience. Each week I facilitated one-on-one advising meetings with two Vice Presidents, six Co-Directors, and two practicum students, in addition to attending Executive Board and Leadership meetings. As a Head Resident at Cornell University in the summer of 2012, I facilitated weekly staff and one-on-one meetings with my Residential Community Advisors (RCA).
To demonstrate proficiency in this competency one of my advisees from Bowling Green State University and two of my RCAs from Cornell University discuss my advising and supervisory style in the videos above. The students reflect on goal setting, building a rapport with me, developing community, and mediating conflict. Their videos serve as primary accounts of my development in this competency, providing first-hand experiences that illustrate my supervisory and advising style.
Developing My Advising and Helping Skills
I view advising through a student learning lens, through which I create and provide students with integrative learning opportunities utilizing inquiry and autonomy. I believe that establishing explicit expectations with my students at the beginning of each academic year serves as the foundation to effectively achieve this. During this conversation with my students, we discuss the implications of these expectations for their position as well as how to tailor them to the specific needs of each student. A key theme of this discussion is autonomy and what that will look like for each student. As an advisor and supervisor, I respect the autonomy of my students to make their own decisions. This is an important aspect of student inquiry – I provide students with experiences but do not give them answers. Rather, I challenge them to make their own informed choices and reflect on their experience. Facilitating this reflection helps students make meaning of their experience, which subsequently informs their behavior. For example, I worked closely with a Co-Director who struggled to hold students accountable. Rather than provide her with solutions, I asked guiding questions, such as “Why do you think they’re not completing assigned tasks?” and “How are you delegating tasks?” to help her reflect on the problem. From this reflection, she was able to discern possible solutions specific to her group. In the following weeks she utilized some of these ideas and slowly saw improvements. It is from this method of guided inquiry and reflection that I believe learning occurs at a deeper level.
During my advising sessions, I also believe it is important to develop a personal rapport with my students. One way that I achieve this is by having quick “Post-It Note Conversations” with them. At the beginning of every meeting I ask my students to write down a number between one and ten representative of how they feel (ten is exemplary) as well as draw a picture of their day or week on a Post-It note. Students then share these numbers and drawings, providing me a quick snapshot of the student’s life that week. This activity provides me with information that assists me in providing appropriate support and a fun and engaging way to begin my advising meetings.
Additionally, I expect that my students will take ownership of their experience, be active participants in their learning, and hold themselves accountable for their own development. This expectation begins with the process of setting realistic goals for personal and group development. These concrete goals provide myself with a roadmap that guides my advising, provides a vision for my students, and holds students accountable for their development. For example, at the beginning of their term, I had UAO’s Executive Board members participate in a mini-retreat with the goal of establishing SMART goals for the new academic year. Beginning with a reflective exercise analyzing the organization’s performance that year, students drafted a set of goals to guide their term. These students then created personal goals and looked for connections between these goals and the organizational goals they had just developed. Over the course of the year, the students frequently reflected on their progress in achieving their goals. As a result, these students held themselves accountable, allowing the other advisors and myself to provide intentional leadership development experiences for the organization.
Ultimately, as an advisor I challenge my students, develop a professional and personal rapport, provide learning experiences, and hold them accountable in a variety of ways. Student learning is woven throughout all of these experiences in the form of active inquiry. I expect my students to challenge themselves, ask questions, integrate experiences, and seek out opportunities. Described by my students as “supportive,” “genuine,” “professional,” and “strong,” my practice is student-centered.
A collection of past Post-It Note Conversations.
UAO Executive Board members draft goals for the 2012-2013 academic year.
A student from BGSU discusses my advising style.