CAPSTONE
Our Role in Student Attainment
Practice Zealousness and Patience, Overcome Fear
By Gwendolyn Jordan Dungy
Executive Director, NASPA
As I prepared to deliver a presentation, titled “The Missing Pieces of the Student Attainment Puzzle: The Student Affairs Perspective,” I quickly turned to the familiar lens of our profession and our role in completing that puzzle. It is commonly accepted knowledge that:
• Student affairs engages in collaborative efforts
across higher education institutions to help students
achieve outcomes that lead to graduation.
• Student affairs engages all educators in the shared
responsibility of student attainment of high-quality degrees.
Gone are the days, however, when umbrella statements like
these are enough to explain our work and the value of student
affairs in the higher education enterprise. The quest to make
higher education accountable and efficient has left no stone
unturned. The student affairs profession must clearly articulate its role in the student attainment puzzle, and we need to
actively engage our colleagues, our campuses, and our communities in the process.
For many leaders in student affairs, words such as assessment, efficiency, and accountability foster images of daunting
tasks, and the concept of aligning academic and student affairs
outcomes conjures images of unsurpassable mountains. Yet,
we must equip ourselves with the tools necessary to make the
climb successfully. We must tap into all available resources and
begin to garner the tools necessary for this adventure. As you
begin acquiring new knowledge and pursuing new perspectives
in the area of student attainment, remember the following:
Student affairs is a significant piece of the overall
student attainment puzzle. You are not in this alone. The
entire campus must work as a team to address issues related
to student attainment and divide responsibilities for different
pieces of the puzzle. All educators are accountable for student
attainment.
Be zealous, yet remain patient. We must be purpose-
driven educators and administrators who are zealous in finding
effective strategies to help students succeed. At the same time,
a certain amount of patience must accompany the process.
As one blogger recently noted: “We must understand our
role as subservient to the mission of the college. This involves
sublimating our own ego to get the various elements of the
college to work in constructive and collaborative ways to ben-
efit the whole…Doing the job well involves patience, belief
in the mission, patience, a thick skin, patience, an ability to
handle ambiguity, and patience” (Inside Higher Ed, BlogU,
“Ask the Administrator: What’s Your Motivation?” Dean Dad,
March 2, 2009).
