Learning Outcome Narrative: Strengths

(LO 2, 4, 5, 7, & 9; Artifacts A, C-2, C-3, D, E-1, E-2, & G)

Throughout my time in the Student Development Administration (SDA) program, I have

had many opportunities to develop, enhance, and practice my skillset as a Student Affairs
practitioner. This work has place in my classes, professional career, conversations with peers,
mentors, and friends, as well as many other opportunities. While many of them did not
necessarily occur in the classroom, what I learned directly through the SDA program greatly
enhanced my development in many areas.
I entered this program to transition from a career in engineering and manufacturing. My
professional identity and my strengths were centered on producing tangible results. In my
relational nature, I was not satisfied in the work that I was doing. During my time in this
program, my professional identity and strengths have been deconstructed and reshaped with a
relational focus. Now, I use new and old strengths to excel at work that truly fulfills me: serving
students, developing relationships, organizational development, and social justice. In order to
accomplish this work, I have developed strengths in: anticipating needs, building robust
programs and services, and process oriented thinking.
Anticipating Needs (LO 2 & 7; Artifact A, C-2, & G)
I have found that one of the most valuable ways to serve students, to improve an
institution of higher education, and be an effective professional, is to anticipate needs of others
such as students, my coworkers, the department, and my own. One of my strengths has always
been observing and taking in information, but through my time in this program, I have learned
how to process and use that information. When I first began my work at the University of
Washington Bothell (UWB) in the office of Student Engagement and Activities, my supervisor
Sam Al-Khoury framed my work of serving students around the skill of anticipating needs.

Solving problems before they happen allows us to be more high impact are sustainable in our
practice.
One of the most significant ways I have been able to anticipate needs and serve students
has been by utilizing assessment, evaluation, technology, and research to improve practice,
Learning Outcome 7. In my work at DigiPen Institute of Technology, I am developing housing
information and administrative management software that will be used to collect data and
support decision making (Artifact A). In order to develop such software, I must anticipate all the
types of information we will need, how we will need it to be presented, and how we will need to
collect it. Such software allows my team to more efficiently and effectively organize ourselves
and access information about the students we serve. Through this work, we have been able to
assess and better improve response to facility maintenance affecting students basic needs,
intervention of critical incidents around mental and emotional health, and pipelines for housing
applicants with disabilities to reach Disability Support Services for accommodations.
I have also demonstrated this Learning Outcome by anticipating the needs of myself and
my successors by developing detailed documentation of programs like those I managed at UWB:
Professional Leadership Certificate, Student Government Elections, and Etiquette Dinner
(Artifact A & G). This documentation elaborated on the research, learning outcomes, pedagogy,
and processes for developing and building on these programs. My successor, Samantha, was able
to hit the ground running with these programs when stepping in after my departure for DigiPen.
Through many experiences working directly with students, and in my classes such as
Multicultural Perspectives I have been exposed to better understanding of students and student
issues, Learning Outcome 2. By better understanding the differences and specific needs of
different student populations, I am better able to anticipate their needs and serve them

individually or adapt programs and services to make them accessible. Within my Synthesis
Memo #1 (Artifact C-2) from my Multicultural Perspectives course, I articulate how I have tied
understanding and anticipating needs to the topics of power privilege and oppression as well as
the Cycle of Socialization (Adams, Blumenfeld, Castaeda, Hackman, Peters, & Ziga, 2013).
When I think about the needs of students, I consider the intersectionality of many developmental
theories, the context of the institution, what my institution and departments goals are, and craft
my responses and work to a best fit for the student and situation.
In my work at DigiPen, I often ask the Resident Assistants (RAs) I supervise to have
difficult conversations with a diverse student population with many developmental and identity
based needs. I set up my RAs for success by giving them a script or talking them through the
flow of the conversation. I frame these conversations not around the task at hand, but as a
developmental conversation informed by the RAs developmental needs and the needs of the
student they are connecting with. By understanding students and student issues, RAs develop
skills in communication and conflict and residents receive the services they need.
Developing Robust Programs and Services (LO 4 & 5; Artifact C-3, E-1, E-2, & G)
As I have developed programs that anticipate and meet the needs of students and college
campuses my work has taken pre-existing programs, policies, or procedures and molded them
into something robust. I characterize this work as something that not only addresses current
needs, but anticipates future needs and has flexibility to adapt. They are built with a theory base
but also consider the unique context of the school and determine what pieces of theory to use to
inform practice in a practical way. Programs that utilize sustainable resources or that are well
documented can easily be carried forward, picked up by new staff, and improved upon. Robust
work is clear, effective, and accessible to their target population and expands opportunity to those

whom it does not necessarily target.

Robust work is sustainable and can be carried forward by other practitioners and built
upon. Through my internship with the Center for Student Involvement at Seattle University
(SU), I was asked to recommend leadership programs that would be accessible to all students,
particularly marginalized populations that were given equitable access to leadership relevant to
their identity and experience. This goal for their leadership program aligned with Learning
Outcome 4: foster diversity, justice, and a sustainable world formed by a global perspective and
Jesuit Catholic Tradition. Through my research of peer institutions and my final
recommendations (Artifact C-3) I demonstrated this Learning Outcome. I identified programs
that centered on the students identities and experiences as the medium for learning and growth,
which allows them to be highly sustainable for the university, and highly accessible for diverse
students. Through such programs, students can self-author their own experience and define
leadership for them self. By using their current roles and commitments to practice and
demonstrate leadership, these programs would be holistic, be accessible to diverse student
populations, and would serve as a sustainable and high impact practice.
Another high impact program, which I managed, was the Professional Leadership
Certificate, which I had previously implemented in my work at UWB (Artifact G). I managed
this program through my role at UWB and recommended it as a leadership program to SU during
my internship (Artifact C-3). Through both roles, I made sure to articulate how the program
could be used to fit that school, demonstrating Learning Outcome 5, adapting student services
to specific environments and cultures. Whereas UWB has a significant commuter and transfer
population and the Student Engagement and Activities office has a history with this program and
partnerships in place to support this change, SU has a Jesuit education context and the Center for

Student Involvement was starting from scratch with such a program. Using my understanding of
these differences, my work differentiated how Seemillers Leadership Competencies (2013) as
well as Kolbs Learning Cycle (1984) are utilized in workshops and experiential learning to
foster leadership and soft skill development.
Of all the work I have accomplished during my time in the SDA program, I am most
proud of this program. This program attributed to the most significant growth, through my
professional work and internships, in my NASPA and ACPA competencies (Artifact E-1 & E-2).
Not only did I intersect development and learning theories with research for a diverse student
population, but I developed my leadership, communication, and collaboration skills in addition
to, multicultural competence, technological, research, and teaching skills. Through my
partnership with the Career Center, collaboration with IT, and relationships with students, I
developed this program which has clear purpose, value, and momentum to grow and better serve
student development.
Process Oriented Thinking (LO 7 & 9; Artifact D & G)
Making the transition into Student Affairs and higher education from the engineering and
manufacturing profession has been a challenging one. I have struggled to learn to see the world
and conduct my work through a relational lens, but I have also been given the opportunity to use
my process oriented and problem solving mind in a more fulfilling way. By focusing on growth,
learning, and relationships I now use my strengths in ways that are far more fulfilling to me
personally. In the past I have used my strengths to create systems, procedures, policies, and make
decisions focused on profits and efficiency for the sake of savings and cost effectiveness. I now
use these skills to create programs, procedures, and administrative decisions that ultimately
benefit student learning, community development, and increased value of student experience.

I have been able to apply my technical skills in several ways that demonstrate Learning
Outcome 7, utilizing assessment, evaluation, technology, and research to improve practice. First,
in my role as Program Assistant for Student Engagement and Activities, I developed programs
such as the Professional Development Series with learning outcomes based on Seemillers
research around skills employers desire in new graduates, as seen in Artifact G, my planning
binder for the program (2013). When developing all of the workshops, I decided on learning
outcomes that I and the participants themselves would assess over the course of the entire year
long series.
To foster engagement and accessibility in this program, I employed technology to record,
edit, annotate, and post the workshop videos online along with course management software.
Any student that desired to participate would have access thanks to a course management portal
that hosted recordings of workshops, reflection questions, and discussion boards. Using this
technology, I was able to manage this program for an entire year all by myself and make it
accessible to students with disabilities and our many commuter students. This technology also
allowed me to conduct assessment at the end of each workshop as well as the end of the
program, I was able to demonstrate student learning and growth as well as gather feedback.
Using this information I made recommendations on improvement and sustainable practices for
the future of this program.
Through many of my classes, such as Leadership and Governance in Post-Secondary
Education, Higher Education Law, and Higher Education Finance, I have been able to learn more
about issues surrounding law, policy, finance, and governance, Learning Outcome 9. Through
my work with as a Resident Director for Housing at DigiPen, I have been able to put this
knowledge to practice as described by the DigiPen Dean of Students, Marshall Traverse, in my

Professional Letter of Promise, Artifact D. In this work, I have managed budgets of events, and
developed a brand new eSports program proposal and budget, as well as supported development
of the Housing department budget. I have incorporated my knowledge of law and governance in
administration, such as FERPA and HIPA, Title IX, as well as liability and duty of care, into my
work with our housing program. It allows me to respond to parents, students in crises,
collaborations with faculty, staff, and administrators, developing processes and procedures, and
train students with effectiveness and haste.
References
Adams, M., Blumenfeld, W.J., Castaeda, C., Hackman, H.W., Peters, M. L., & Ziga, X.
(2013). Readings for diversity and social justice (Third edition). New York: Routledge.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and
development (Vol. 1). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Seemiller, C. (2013). The student leadership competencies guidebook: Designing intentional
leadership learning and development. Jossey-Bass.