RUNNING HEAD: Strengths

Learning Outcome Narrative: Strengths

Nicolas Lee

Seattle University
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Learning Outcomes Narrative: Strengths

(LO # 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; Artifacts A, B, C1, C2, C3, D, G)
My time during the Student Development Administration program (SDA) has given me

the opportunity to learn about myself personally and professionally. Having done two years of an

Americorps service term doing College Access Support with 11th and 12th graders, I knew I

wanted to elevate my own knowledge and skills by attaining a master’s degree. I chose SDA for

my graduate studies because I knew that this program would give me the tools to become a better

practitioner. As I reflect on my time at Seattle University, I have been able to understand how

my own values have evolved and grown. I still believe in centering the needs of students and that

supporting students is my first and foremost goal as a student affairs professional. However, I

have been able to expand this idea to realize that Community is not only a way to find support,

but can be utilized to create support for others. I have always valued community, but to take it a

step further and have it be an active agent in supporting students is powerful. With community as

my most central value, I have been able to name Care, Advocacy, and Collaboration as

strengths that I have learned and refined during my time in SDA.

Care (LO # 2, 4, 5; Artifacts B, C1, D)

Through my different professional and educational experiences in the SDA program, I

have been able to take my work to a deeper level. Being part of a community to me means that

there is not just a sense of belonging and connectedness, but it also means that I must Care for

those individuals that make up my community. This level of Care informs my work and how I

look to support students. Through LO #2, I have learned that to support students fully, I must

honor and understand the multiple identities that students hold and fight to dismantle the

institutional barriers that devalue those identities. In order to fully understand students, it’s not

enough to know their identities. Students have stories and experiences that affect them as whole

people. As an integral part of my practice, I see students as the multiple, intersecting identities
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that they hold and look to understand how these intersecting identities shape their lived

experiences (Crenshaw, 1989). As I state in my Integrated Mission Statement (Artifact B), by

centering these intersecting identities and the lived experiences students hold; I look to empower

students to inform and make change and work for and with them to challenge societal norms.

This is exemplified through my graduate assistantship where I oversee our front desk and

program assistant staff. I make sure that I listen and understand the struggles and experiences

that my students have gone through so that I can not only support them but give them

opportunities to build on skills they hold and develop and grow in the ways they want to. In this

way, I have been able to work with them on creating programs and maintaining our spaces that

supports other students to feel empowered to challenge theses barriers in their own way and see

them as the whole persons that they are.

By placing my focus in the first two stages of Baxter Magolda’s (2014) theory of Self-

Authorship, I have been able to develop my own practice in supporting students through

understanding their own identities. I want to work alongside students to be able to author their

own educational experiences so that they are just as involved in their educational choices and

understanding as I am. When thinking about LO #4, I have used Self-Authorship to develop my

own ways of self-reflection so that I can actively push and support students in their own

reflection in order to engage in critical thinking and challenge global and societal issues. One

way I have been able to be critical and reflect on the nuances of our society myself is through my

Devil’s Advocate Paper (Artifact C1). Through this paper, I was able to look at the issue of

Affirmative Action and have a nuanced perspective on arguing against my own personal opinion

in a way that still kept to my own values by centering student experiences. By modeling and

practicing these skills, I have been able to support students in their own reflection process and
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push them to develop these same reflective skills. This, in turn, gives students the ability to think

critically and challenge the societal norms that govern all of us today and challenge the ways

society continues to oppress and devalue marginalized peoples and students.

Another major part of my practice is being able to serve all students in different ways and

in different capacities. When looking at LO #5, I keep myself accountable to diverse student

populations by understanding the different educational environments that students find

themselves in and being flexible and quickly adapting my practice to meet diverse student needs.

In my Letter from Internship Supervisor (Artifact D), my site supervisor, Peggy Arcadi, for

my NODA internship at Cornell University says “[Nic] was extremely skilled in the role of

offering professional support and leadership to [the Orientation Steering Committee (OSC)].” I

was able to support the OSC in understanding their own needs as well as think deeply about the

needs of diverse student populations through specific sessions that I created and incorporated

into their training prior to orientation. My internship was only 10 weeks long so I made it a point

to focus on understanding the campus and institution I was at and meet students to better

understand the challenges and barriers they face as new students begin their Cornell Experience,

which informed the trainings and sessions I developed. This also prepared me to be specific and

flexible when it came to orientation itself. In a weeklong orientation, I needed to be ready to

focus on students and listen to what they needed. By working with my students, I was able to

tailor trainings to not only prepare them to serve diverse student populations, but to also provide

them the tools they needed throughout orientation as they began to meet and support new

students. By being attentive and having a strong connection with my student leaders, I was able

to support them throughout the week and create a strong network of support for students.

Advocacy (LO #4, 7; Artifacts A, C3)

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In order to further build and support community, Advocacy is an important part of

contributing and being active in my community and the community around me. Through LO #4,

I have looked to think critically about the connections that I have with my students and the

global society we live in by being direct and focused on change with it comes to institutional

barriers. Looking at my Resume (Artifact A), I have utilized my graduate assistantship to reflect

deeper on these dimensions and put my own reflections into practice. Specifically, I have

practiced creating space for folks to talk about different global and local topics and issues. I have

also used these skills for those who have needed space in times of anger and pain for different

communities such as the President of Seattle University denouncing the SU Drag Show and

LGBTQ+ students on our campus. Spaces can be used for support, healing, and critical

conversation and I have made it a key part of my own practice.

One important theory that is key to my graduate experience is Pope’s (2004) Model of

Multicultural Competence. The first stage, Multicultural Awareness, has always been apart of me

because of my own identities as a Multiracial, Chinese American as well as my own growing up

in Hawai‘i. The cultural and ethnic diversity I have always known amongst the Asian American

community and in the stolen Kingdom of Hawai‘i has always been an inherent part of my own

perspective. In regards to the second stage, Multicultural Knowledge, I have gained opportunities

to build my knowledge of understanding the systematic ways that society upholds white

supremacy and oppression throughout my graduate studies. In particular, looking at LO #7, I

have looked to stay connected to current literature and knowledge, understand the ways we can

implement programs and change and continue to grow through continued exploration.

Specifically, I have been able to serve the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI)

community in understanding the ways that we are marginalized and the nuances in how we are
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used as tools to uphold white supremacy through harmful stereotypes, like the model minority

myth. Through the AANAPISI scholarship over the last 10 years: A resource guide (Artifact

C3), I used the opportunity to research my community and create a piece that those who look to

support the AAPI community using Title III grant funding for Asian American and Native

American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) can understand how these funds

have been used in the past to create culturally relevant and responsive programs to provide

support and resources to the culturally diverse populations within the AAPI community. This

allowed me to understand my own community in a deeper way and think critically on future

directions by providing suggestions and potential areas of research for future and potential

scholars to further support the AAPI community. These potential areas are points of departure

for me to reflect on how I can move forward in pursuing future research and where I can

continue to build on my own work and knowledge I have gained through these experiences.

Collaboration (LO # 6, 8; Artifacts C3, G)

Lastly, community also means Collaboration and working together to create change and

support together. In line with Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth, I have discussed the

ways I look to center student voices and highlight the lived experiences that diverse student

populations hold as they begin their educational journeys. By uplifting others, it not only creates

change but it creates meaningful connections and mutual support so that the change we make is

powerful. Through LO #6, I have learned how to take initiative, build mutual and supportive

relationships, and uplift voices and others’ experiences to create change. As I have described

prior, the AANAPISI scholarship over the last 10 years: A resource guide (Artifact C3) is

also a collaborative effort to build consistent and reliable resources for those in my community to

engage in advocacy. By reaching out to members of the AAPI community to contribute and give

voice to their experiences and knowledge, this guide is not just a result of my peer’s and my own
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work. It is a collective call to action to encourage and give guidance to those who want to

explore this work to understand where our community is now and where we need to go to

continue to work towards change. This piece is also iterative as we intend to continue this project

so that we continue to invite members of the AAPI community to contribute and engage with so

that we can have a point of departure and direction in AANAPISI research. Being multiracial and

growing up in Hawai‘i, I have known from a young age that there is no singular Asian American

experience. This project has given me the voice to out and highlight how the AAPI community is

not a monolithic group and highlight the rich and diverse cultures that make up my community.

In order to lead effectively and collaborate with others, it is imperative that I am quick

and responsive. In LO #8, it’s important that I understand the lived experiences and realities of

diverse peoples, which allows me to tailor my communication so that I can connect and invite

others into conversations. When looking at my Social Justice Issue Blog (Artifact G), I gave

light to the crisis in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Irma and Maria and emphasize how the

barriers that Puerto Rico is facing is because of the United States’ past of imperialism and

colonialism to keep control over this community. By claiming Puerto Rico as U.S. lands, the

U.S. continues to control these people by denying them sovereignty and maintaining control on

the political and financial structures of Puerto Rico. In keeping the territory status, the U.S.

denies Puerto Rico the ability to seek financial support from the U.S. government and continues

to other these people. In the wake of the damage done by the two hurricanes, this leaves Puerto

Rico with no support and the people in a state of desolation. Through this blog, I have been able

to communicate and speak out about these issues so that others can understand the severity and

depth of this relationship. This has allowed me not only educate myself but to create a tool to

give knowledge to others to also understand the nuances to these issues.

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References

Baxter Magolda, M. B. (2014). “Self-Authorship.” New Directions for Higher Education,

(166), 25-33.

Pope, R.L., Reynolds, A.L., & Mueller, J.A. (2004). Multicultural competence in student affairs.

San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture is capital? A critical race discussion of community

cultural wealth. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69-91.

doi: 10.1080/1361332052000341006