Competencies for Higher Education and Student Affairs Professionals

Professional competency areas for student affair educators are set by ACPA and NASPA. These can be found here.  For the purpose of this class, I will be focusing on Technology, which can be found on pages 33-35. Technology competency is described as "The area focuses on the use of digital tools, resources, and technologies for the advancement of student learning, development, and success as well as the improved performance of student affairs professionals. Included within this area are knowledge, skills, and dispositions that lead to the generation of digital literacy and digital citizenship within communities of students, student affairs professionals, faculty members, and colleges and universities." 

The ways in which I have achieved competency 1 is through my pitch with my Justice School and destination postcard. Both of those artifacts that I created have the same theme of helping students as much as possible. It begins with meeting students where they are and then going forward from there. For the destination post card, I encourage students to get connected with a resource on campus that is dedicated to first year experience. Having this resource available to them can help students as they transition into college and connect with other students. Once connected with other students, a sense of belonging begins to develop and that increases students overall academic performance. 

My pitch also connects with this because the school I dreamed itself is focused on Social and Restorative Justice, which strives to promote equitable and inclusive practices. This is evinced through things such as the workload menu I attached in my discussion board that UC Irvine has been utilizing, which I would use in my Justice School. 

There are several ways in which I meet this competency, the primary one being taking this class! This class connected me with other educators across the state of Vermont, which is so important for our little big state. This was furthered through doing collaborative work with other educators such as creating a podcast with another student in the HESA program and a K-12 educator. We also worked on several collaborative pages such as WeVideo, Diigo, and Wakelet. On these platforms, we were able to curate resources that were not only beneficial to our work, but potentially and most likely beneficial to others work as well! 

I spoke about this in one of my blog posts, but technology has really allowed for educators to find best practices and solutions to problems by reaching a larger population than they might in their local community. For example, a problem that I might be having with student engagment post-pandemic could have a solution from someone in California! Without technology and digital learning communities, we might not have a way to connect with one another, However, I am also in several Facebook groups for student affair professionals that have allowed me to connect with others in the field as well. What is extremely beneficial about this class being a digital learning community is that we are all working with Vermonters and each state has its own unique problems and solutions. I have really enjoyed being able to see the K-12 educator perspective because I want to work with students as they transition into college, so being in this class with those students has furthered my education. I think that this will be extremely beneficial to me as I begin to work for VSAC, which is a government program that helps Vermonters with college.

The ways in which I meet this competency is through the podcast that my group created and blogging. Podcasts have become an extremely popular technological tool, especially in the education setting. My first year working in First Year Experience, we created a podcast called "What's the Tea with FYE" in which we discussed what it was like for us to go back home for Thanksgiving break our first year. So, when given the option to create another multimedia project focused on restorative justice, I wanted to make a podcast. In the podcast, we discussed the use of restorative justice during transitional periods in education. This also links back to competency 1, which is about providing equal access to tools necessary for student success. 

The other way in which I meet this competency is through blogging. Blogging is extremely popular and something that I come across a lot when I am cooking. Having noticed this in the kitchen setting, I have also been looking at it as a way in which educators can communicate with one another. One of my professors blogs on Twitter, and so having a dedicated page for my blog this made sense to me. I plan to continue with blogging after this class ends. 

The ways in which I meet competency 4 is through most of my course work, but mainly my podcast and pitch for The Justice School. The podcast that I created with my group highlighted the use of Restorative Justice in educational transitional periods, which can be a very difficult time for students. Restorative Justice encourages a holistic framework for working with students, primarily being proactive in the work that we as educators do. For example, creating systems in place to deal with an issue before the issue even arises. This is shown in residential life with the chain of order for responding and reporting an incident. This competency is furthered through the podcast my group made because we chose to do it in a podcast form, which is more accessible for students. A lot of people like to listen to podcasts while walking or driving, which means that these are not something that need a lot of focus such as reading an article does. 

My pitch for The Justice School also meets this competency because it is focusing on implementing Restorative and Social Justice within schools. Again, these forms of justice involve looking at students as holistic people and emphasis how high impact practices such as learning communities, research, internships, etc can provide educational experiences for students outside of the classroom.