Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Amy Bergstrom
SDA Program E-Portfolio
Learning Outcome Narrative: Areas for Growth
Areas for Growth (LO 1, 3, & 9; Artifacts C2, C3, H1, H2, I, & K1)
While there are many particular areas that I need to grow in as I move into professional
roles in student affairs, I believe my areas for growth largely come down to experience. Before I
started in the Student Development Administration (SDA) program, I worked in journalism, a
field that also requires experience to be successful but that features skills such as interviewing,
writing, and editing that can be taught in a classroom. Student development requires an important
foundation, which I have developed in this program, but it truly requires practice, which I will
only get as I have new experiences working with students and facing scenarios I have not
previously faced. This is part of being a practitioner-scholaror even a scholar-practitioner as I
begin my own research endeavorson Komives (1998, as cited in Komives & Carpenter, 2009)
continuum of work roles. As I continue in the field, I will seek growth as I experience other
colleges and universities, experience challenging situations, and formalize hard skills.
Experience Other Colleges and Universities (LO 1; Artifact C3)
Although I have sought opportunities to experience other higher education institutions,
my major interactions have been at my undergraduate institution, Colorado State University, my
graduate school, Seattle University (SU), and my internship site, Cornish College of the Arts. I
have learned a great deal from these institutions, but I also need to understand additional
institutional types. In particular, additional experience will help me to grow in SDA learning
outcome (LO) 1, understanding the foundations and emerging nature of the Student Affairs
profession and higher education. This learning outcome means understanding how student affairs
developed as a profession, the role student affairs plays currently in various institutions, and the
impact of the field within the larger context of higher education.
During my undergraduate experience, I had a vague idea that student affairs existed,
primarily because some of my classmates in a leadership program were planning to pursue
careers in the field. However, I really did not understand what the field was about, even as I was
a student involved in student affairs offices. Even when I realized that I would like to work with
students and needed to pursue a masters degree, I did not have any idea what would be involved
in my education. My first class in the SDA program, Foundations of the Student Affairs
Profession, helped to ground the rest of my experience, and many of my classes, including the
Capstone seminar and Leadership and Governance in Post-Secondary Education, have helped me
explore the role of student affairs within higher education.
The role of student affairs within specific institutions is something I will continue to learn
about as I experience different schools. In addition to my own educational experiences at
Colorado State, SU, and Cornish, I also was able to learn about practices at other schools during
the Best Practices course, in which we visited several different campuses and compared their
student services for students from traditionally underserved backgrounds (Artifact C3). I was
able to see how actual programs at institutions align with theory and research about how to best
serve students. For example, Tacoma Community College has special programs for students who
are parents, which helps adult students feel that they matter to an institution (Chaves, 2006). As I
continue in the field, I will seek to learn about the role of student affairs at the institution I work
for, and I will also use my network with professionals at other colleges and universities to better
understand the role in those contexts and in higher education overall, so that I may serve students
the best way possible.
although I think I grew in my understanding over the course of the program, I still recognized
when completing this assessment during Capstone that I need more familiarity in this area. As I
become more involved in professional associations, I will spend time getting to know the ethical
statements and use those to form my personal ethics code.
Formalize Hard Skills (LO 9; Artifacts C2, I, & K1)
One of the great strengths of the SDA program is that it has helped me to be a reflective
practitioner who is focused on care for students and helping them become world changers.
However, as I indicated in my reflection on the portfolio (Artifact K1), I have not had as many
opportunities to grow in harder skills that are part of the backbone of student development and
support the rest of my practice. As I gain experience in the field, I will formalize the skills
outlined in LO 9, understanding issues surrounding law, policy, finance, and governance. This
means understanding how these issues affect higher education, understanding my roles and
responsibilities in these areas, and successfully navigating within their frameworks.
Before I started the SDA program, I admittedly had little idea of what it actually meant to
be a student affairs professional. I really just wanted to support students and see them grow, but I
did not know what that entailed. In particular, I was not aware of the influence of such issues as
law and governance in the daily work of student development. The Leadership and Governance
course was one of my best opportunities to understand such issues in higher education. Learning
about the different organizational theories, such as collegial and bureaucratic (Manning, 2013),
gave me a better picture of the different relationships within higher education, which I explored
in my case analysis paper on adjunct faculty organizing (Artifact C2). Understanding the
different theories allowed me to analyze the case from multiple angles.