What level of writing skill do employers expect of student affairs professionals? How important is writing to the field of student affairs and what does research has to say about it?
Questions About Student Affairs Writing Education and Experience
-What undergraduate majors to student affairs graduates or professionals have upon entering graduate school or the field?
-What grade point averages do student affairs graduates or professionals have when entering graduate school or the field?
-More specifically, what grades in English courses and writing courses do new professionals or graduates earn?
-What writing training do graduate students in student affairs receive? Based on my program at WIU-- I wrote reflection pieces, case studies, research papers, debate materials, note cards for reading responses, group projects, counseling transcripts. There was probably more than that...
-What makes student affairs professionals competent writers?
Research Ideas About Student Affairs Professionals' Writing Practices
-Compare curricula for graduate programs in higher education programs in the United States.
-Compare academic and grade point data, if I can obtain it, from schools that admit students for graduate school. This would need to be done anonymously.
-Interview or survey students in graduate programs (new professionals, mid-level managers, senior administrators) to see if they can assess their writing skills.
-Present some sort of a field test for writing to graduates, new professionals, mid-level managers, senior administrators
-Survey groups of professionals at the different levels to see if their writing changes over time-- as a graduate what do you write? What are the mid-level managers writing? And the senior administrators? I'd need to think about the way I characterize the various levels in the field.
-Qualitative versus quantitative-- historical study of curricula in student affairs programs may be a way to look at changes in programs over time. Has there ever been a "writing for student affairs" course in any programs? That might be something good to take stock of by reviewing some program websites to see if I can find that type of a course. As a course, what would writing in student affairs look like? If it does not exist, should it?
Technical communication and student affairs thought: both have credibility issues in their fields, though tech comm has done a better job advocating for itself because it is the breadwinner of the English family. With its practical, measurable outcomes, tech comm does a better job justifying itself than does student affairs. Student affairs could borrow techniques from the technical writing field to strengthen the writing of graduate students and student affairs professionals at any level.
Student affairs folks need to be better about telling the student affairs story to students, senior administration, the faculty, and the community that surrounds the campus. Various ideas in technical communication could serve the field of student affairs. This idea of storytelling is important and people need to be able to understand what student affairs people do for students. Student Affairs professionals need to be able to communicate these messages using methods that are appropriate for the audience and are designed for maximum rhetorical effectiveness. Ideas of accountability are perforating student affairs conversations and the need to chart, graph, explain, demonstrate through financial documents and the pressure to perform and report on that performance is real.
What I Write in My Student Affairs Job
- Contract drafts
- Requests for proposals
- Financial documents
- Supervision documents, such as evaluations and written disciplinary letters
- Emails
- Monthly reports
- Policies and procedures
- Operational documentation the job positions
- Position descriptions and justifications
- Organizational charts
- Help desk tickets
- Website content
- Justification pieces to senior administration (most recently answering the question about why we use Federal Work Study to support campus auxiliary operations)
Forming A Hypothesis...or Just Spit-balling
Graduate students entering a program in student affairs come from various educational backgrounds and therefore have varied backgrounds in writing. This variation poses problems for the student affairs field if graduates and new professionals are not taught using writing standards in student affairs programs in the united states. Without this standardization for writing in the field, new professionals are unprepared for the various types of documents and arguments that can be made using the skills that technical communication education provides.
Side Note
This is a post I wrote using the Write or Die website, so it may ramble. If you have not seen the website, Write or Die challenges you to a free-write session where there are consequences for taking your fingers off of the keys. I set the "punishment" on the most forgiving level and just watched as a pink background flashed on my screen when I took too long to write. More aggressive options are available. One setting undoes typing that you have on the screen if you are not typing fast enough. I like the site because I focused on getting my ideas out there. I did not worry about writing coherently. Hence the apology at the start of this post. I have attempted to clean it up a bit, but I not spend too much time on the rewrite. Mostly, I'd like to keep my writing in as few places as possible, so I am adding the Write or Die speed-write, I mean free-write, session to these blog pages.
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