Areas of Growth

(Learning Outcomes 2, 4, 5, & 6; Artifacts B, C1, C2, C3, D, E, G, & J)

A prominent theme in my growth throughout the SDA program has been learning to be an
effective advocate for students. Entering the program, I thought advocacy meant fighting battles
on students behalves. However, I have since learned the importance of challenging students to
self-advocate so they can develop self-authorship, making their own meaning of life experiences
and determining how they want to respond to obstacles (Baxter Magolda, 2008). Self-advocacy
is not always enough to affect necessary change, though, and in the face of institutional power,
students may need administrators to take more active advocacy roles. Navigating when and how
to step into this more active role while ensuring that students individual voices are still heard has
been a focus within my professional growth.
Serving Students: Learning Outcomes #2 and #5, Artifacts G, C2, & D
Learning Outcome #2, understanding students and student issues, is a fundamental
part of my development as an advocate for students. A critical part of addressing this LO has
been exploring my own student identity and its unconscious effect on the assumptions I make
about students experiences. As an undergraduate, I faced academic and social challenges;
however, these were alleviated by my natural academic ability and parents who supported me,
both financially and with their own experiences navigating colleges. Starting the SDA program, I
saw the student experience through my own lens, which was wrought by my many privileged
identities. Reflection assignments in my classes, including Student Development Theory and
Social Justice, have challenged me to explore my identities so I can recognize how they bias my
assumptions about students circumstances. Knowing these biases helps me develop strategies
for challenging them so that I can support students through the full range of their experiences.

A second dimension of LO #2 is using research to learn about common student issues and
coping strategies. In Student Development Theory, I learned how students salient identities
affect their college experiences and can be obstacles to students achieving their goals (Bondi,
2012; Evans, Forney, Guido, Paton, & Renn, 2010). I also developed Artifact G, a workshop
grounded in research on how learning styles can affect academic performance. This artifact
demonstrates the use of research to understand a broad issue that affects students. It also shows
my ability to use my research and understanding to advocate for students by educating others on
how to effectively support them. Artifact C2, my sexual assault crisis opinion paper for
Leadership and Governance, uses research to explore some of the critical issues that institutions
cause for students. This project helped me recognize that being an effective advocate and servant
for students sometimes means challenging my institutions on students behalves.
The final component of LO #2 is understanding students as individuals. As an academic
advisor, I rely on the Appreciative Advising model to build relationships with my students, which
entails creating rapport with them through an exchange of stories and experiences, and learning
about their hopes, goals, strengths, and challenges (Bloom & Martin, 2002). When students share
their stories, I learn about the unique set of issues each one faces, and help them develop coping
strategies tailored to their specific needs. This level of understanding also allows me to determine
whether a student needs to be self-advocating, or if I should take a more direct advocacy role.
Understanding students and student issues is a key part of serving students, so as I continue my
professional journey, I am committed to ongoing self-exploration and continuing to learn about
students challenges on the general and individual levels.
Learning to be a more effective advocate for students has required that I also develop my
abilities within the context of LO #5, adapting student services to specific environments and

cultures. Prior to the SDA program, I was aware of general differences between private and
public institutions, but in my Leadership and Governance course, I learned about the diversity of
structures within an institution and how they influence my work. To be an effective professional
and advocate for students, I must understand how the services I provide need to be adapted based
on a specific colleges resources, institutional culture, and student culture (Kuh, 2009).
My experiences as an intern in New Student Orientation at Presbyterian College (PC)
provided ample opportunities to learn about adapting student services to a new campus. PC is a
small school with a small staff, and I quickly learned that using resources effectively meant
getting creative with what we had. While I had the support of other staff members, my mentality
in this environment was that if something needed to get done, then I was going to learn how to
do it myself. This spirit is exemplified in Artifact D, a presentation of the leadership training I
developed for our Orientation leaders. We only had two days for on-campus training, but my
supervisor wanted us to do some work with them throughout the summer. In response, I created
online communications that embedded training around leadership development and supporting
student transitions. This was a creative use of campus resources that allowed us to prepare
students to fully engage with training once they arrived on campus.
Adapting services to institutional culture provides another facet to LO #5. Coming from
Seattle University, where social justice is deeply embedded in institutional culture and diversity
training for student leaders seems like a given, it was odd to step into PCs culture, where these
were valued by staff but not institutionalized. When my supervisor and I decided to include a
diversity training for our Orientation leaders, I developed it with the understanding that the social
justice concepts and language ingrained at Seattle U would be new to many of PCs students.
Given that social justice is an integral part of my own educational experience, I had to challenge

my beliefs about what students should already know in order to provide a training that fit within
the institutional culture and met students at their level of multicultural competence.
Finally, being able to adapt services to student cultures is critical. This can entail targeting
the general student culture, or specific subcultures on campus. In Adult Education, I collaborated
with other students to learn about tailoring advising approaches to nontraditional students. As a
traditionally aged student who primarily works with other traditionally aged students, my
knowledge about the needs and culture of nontraditional students was limited. Working on this
project, I learned more about the unique culture of nontraditional students and how to use that
knowledge to frame my advising strategy when working with these students.
As an advocate for students, what I have learned about adapting student services to fit the
resources and cultures of campus communities is invaluable. If I want to be effective in this role,
I must be committed to learning about the specific resources and cultures at my institutions so
that I can identify the best strategies for leveraging change.
Diversity & Social Justice: Learning Outcome #4, Artifacts B, C1, C3, E, & G
As I have explored how and when to engage in active advocacy throughout my time in
the program, LO #4, understanding and fostering diversity, justice and a sustainable world
formed by a global perspective and Jesuit Catholic tradition, has deeply impacted my approach.
I am non-religious and knew little about Catholicism before Seattle U, so I was unsure what to
make of this LO as I came into the program. However, as I learned more about Jesuit values of
education, social justice, reflection, and service in my Foundations class, I realized how deeply
these resonated with my personal belief system. Although I am disconnected from the Catholic
faith, I have integrated Jesuit values into my personal and professional mission statements
(Artifact B). These principles are also strongly reflected in Artifact C1, my Student Affairs

Philosophy, which was my first opportunity to explore how my Jesuit education informs my
practice, and helped me frame my advocacy as a commitment to serving marginalized students.
Pope, Reynolds, and Muellers (2004) framework of multicultural competence gave me a
structure for growing as an advocate for students. I have dedicated myself to developing my
awareness of my own identities, my socialized biases, and how these influence my work; my
knowledge of others and the challenges associated with different groups and identities; and my
skills for collaborating on common goals across diverse identities (Pope et al., 2004). My growth
within this framework is demonstrated in Artifact C3, which includes how I define social justice
and incorporate it into my professional practice, and in Artifact G, the student development
theory workshop my group developed to teach others how to work with diverse learning styles.
I had the opportunity to take my growth in this area beyond campus into my internship at
the University of Puget Sound (Artifact E). In this role, I advocated for better treatment for
survivors of sexual assault by recommending training improvements for conduct investigators
and hearing board members. These recommendations are designed to challenge participants
biases toward and assumptions about survivors, and educate them on how to offer survivors just
treatment through the conduct process. This was a valuable learning experience for me because it
allowed me to hear and include students self-advocacy into the advocacy work I was doing on
their behalves. As I persist in my development as a professional and as an advocate, I am
committed to nurturing my multicultural competence and continuing to use the foundations of
my Jesuit education to fight for social justice in higher education.
Leadership: Learning Outcome 6, Artifacts C2, D, & J
Although I was called a student leader as an undergraduate, I did not think of myself that
way since my role as a Peer Advisor did not fit with my image of leaders as charismatic authority

figures. However, as I have moved through the SDA program and become increasingly
committed to advocating for students, shifting my perception of leadership and meeting LO #6,
developing and demonstrating skills in leadership and collaboration, has been critical to my
growth.
Leadership in Education I was highly influential in shifting my leadership paradigm. As
documented in Artifact J, my Leadership Philosophy, this class helped me identify the leadership
frameworks I use in practice. I resonate with both the political framework, focused on
negotiation and coalition building, and the human resource framework, focused on service and
support (Bollman & Gallos, 2011). Exploring these frameworks has helped me better understand
my strengths and weaknesses as a leader, and how I can leverage them to improve my support
for students. Artifact J also challenged me to define leadership and recognize that it is often nonpositional. As an academic advisor, this perspective has helped me encourage students selfadvocacy by inspiring them to see themselves as leaders capable of instigating change. My
learning in Lead I also strengthened my ability to support student leaders by providing me with
tools to design leadership development programming to stimulate students growth (Artifact D).
My crisis opinion paper (Artifact C2) added another dimension to my understanding of
leadership as I analyzed and critiqued University of Montanas response to its sexual assault
crisis. My research on this topic gave me new insight into the pressures and complexities that
high-level leaders face in their decision-making processes. As I move forward as a professional,
understanding the dynamics of high-level decision-making will fortify my ability to advocate for
students because I will be able to make informed decisions about when students self-advocacy is
the best leverage for change, and when it is more appropriate to apply my own skills in
negotiation and coalition-building to support them.

References
Baxter Magolda, M. B. (2008). Three elements of self-authorship. Journal of College Student
Development, 49, 269 284.
Bolman, L. G., & Gallos, J.V. (2011). Reframing academic leadership. San Francisco: JosseyBass.
Bondi, S. (2012). Students and institutions protecting Whiteness as property: A critical race
theory analysis of student affairs preparation. Journal of Student Affairs Research and
Practice, 49(4), 397414. doi:10.1515/jsarp-2012-6381
Bloom, J. and Martin, N.A. (2002, August 29). Incorporating appreciative inquiry into academic
advising. The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal, 4 (3).
Kuh, G. D. (2009). Understanding campus environments. In G. McClellan & J. Stringer (Eds.),
The Handbook of Student Affairs Administration (pp. 59-80). San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass.
Pope, R. L., Reynolds, A. L., & Mueller, J. A. (2004). Multicultural competence in student
affairs. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.