Articulate the historical contexts of institutional types and functional areas within higher education.

• Illinois State University | EAF 462: Organization and Administration of Student Affairs Function in Higher Education | During this course, I learned about different institutions, their organizational structures, and their functional areas within higher education. One of my favorite parts of this course was getting to visit a campus that was drastically different from ISU and learn about their structure and organization. My group visited a small, private, religiously affiliated institution, which taught us a lot about budgeting, history more marginalized groups, and organizational structure.

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Describe the roles of faculty, academic affairs, and student affairs educators in the institution.

• Illinois State University | EAF 462: Organization and Administration of Student Affairs Function in Higher Education | This course helped to identify the different roles between faculty, academic affairs and student affairs within the institution. It also identified the competition between roles in the institution and how, despite the competition, each role works with each other to serve the student. Academics and in-the-classroom-work builds on what student affairs can bring to the overall experience that the student will get while attending college. We believe that without one, the overall experience will breakdown completely.

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Articulate the history of the inclusion and exclusion of people with a variety of identities in higher education.

• Illinois State University | EAF 428: Foundations of Student Affairs Practice | This class helped to identify the inclusion and exclusion of different identities throughout the course of our history. Identities such as minorities, women, lower-class individuals, etc. Our history is very late in including these types of individuals, and when the history does tell their stories (if it tells their stories correctly or at all), it is clear that it was difficult for them to move in the same way that those who were not discriminated against did.

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Explain the role and responsibilities of student affairs professional associations.

• Illinois State University | EAF 428: Foundations of Student Affairs Practice | The role of professional associations in student affairs is to have a space where professionals in the field can come together and form community within their specific functional areas as well as their geographical areas. This can bring about not only community but change within the different institution types. 

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Articulate an understanding of the ongoing nature of the history of higher education and one's role in shaping it.

• Illinois State University | EAF 428: Foundations of Student Affairs Practice | Within this class, we had the opportunity of learning about the history of student affairs and essentially where we as graduate students in this program come from; who has really pathed the path for us. We also had the chance to think about how we will continue to change this profession for the better. We took time to understand how our values and ethics make a big difference in how we will work toward changing the way student affairs currently works, and we tried to imagine what it will look like in the future. At that time, not one of us could have imagined that what we perceived as "normal" student affairs would drastically change in only four months. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the time to think about how we would work through changes, even if we had no idea those changes would happen so soon.

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Model, encourage, and promote community by reinforcing the long-standing values of the profession.

• Illinois State University | EAF 428: Foundations of Student Affairs Practice | Within this course, we learned that values such as educating the whole student, care for students, service to students and to the university, community, and equality / social justice are all important to the profession of student affairs. These values are some that I keep at the forefront of my daily work with other professionals and with my students.

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Contribute to the research, scholarship, and expansion of knowledge within the profession.

• Illinois State University | Summer Practicum, Dean of Students Office | While working in the Dean of Students Office during my summer practicum, I was given the opportunity to work on various research projects for the office. These projects included benchmarking leadership minors at other institutions and bringing information back to our campus, researching identity-based leadership programs to bring to campus, as well as helping the office better understand COVID-19 restrictions for fall 2020 and how we can use those restrictions to keep our students safe and also give our students a great semester.

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Engage staff in critically examining history for contemporary meaning.

• Illinois State University | Summer Practicum, Dean of Students Office | While working in the Dean of Students Office during my summer practicum, I worked on researching history for our four Diversity Advocacy Organizations on campus: PRIDE, Black Student Union, Asian Pacific American Coalition, and Association of Latin American Students. For this project, I worked with the Assistant Dean and Coordinator of Diversity Advocacy at ISU to tell the unspoken history of exactly why these student groups were brought to campus by these students and how far they have come since their founding dates.