This qualitative study explored how supervisors in student affairs describe their supervisory learning journey. Supervision is an important facet of the student affairs profession, yet there is an apparent lack of intentional supervisory training and development for these professionals. This study endeavored to understand how supervisors in…

Early career professionals' attrition in student affairs have been reported at rates as high as 60% before year five in the last few decades of literature. Retaining these professionals is vital to the sustainability of the field (Winston Jr. & Creamer, 1997). This study explores experiences and retention in the field of student affairs,…

The purpose of this study was to explore how emotions and identity development create pathways for White deans of students to understand their responsibility in fostering a campus community that is equitable for all. From the frameworks of emotional intelligence and White identity development, I illustrated the nature of the varying, often…

This qualitative study grounded in feminist theory uses narrative inquiry to explore the stories of 26 senior women student affairs leaders. We tell the collective story we heard participants bring forward by describing plotlines that reverberated across their accounts. We call these plotlines: "Experiencing Communication through Gendered…

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of student affairs staff members, with no formal counseling background, in their work to support student care, defined at the site of this research as the spectrum through low-level well-being to high-level mental health concerns. Additionally, focus was given to the actions that could be…

This multiple-case study sought to understand how senior student affairs officers engaged in crisis leadership and decision making during the COVID-19 pandemic's first year. Five themes emerged from the research: (a) influence of institutional structure and culture on decisions, (b) uniqueness of COVID crisis decision making, (c) engagement and…

The study aimed to achieve two main objectives: first, to investigate the presence and nature of emotional labor within student affairs; and second, to explore the correlations between emotional labor and both individual and organizational well-being among student affairs professionals. This research examines the intricate interconnections between…

This study examined whether there are statistically significant relationships between academic advisors' demographic characteristics, advising-related variables, institutional variables, organizational context variables, and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used a national sample of academic advisors' survey data collected from February to…

This study explored the experiences of women leaders who graduated from a student affairs master's degree program, and advanced to positions of vertical movement to roles of increasing responsibility, wider influence, and greater accountability. Specifically, exploration of this progression, and the influences on their experience of lateral…

The purpose of this dissertation was to understand the experience of higher education crisis leaders while facing an unprecedented crisis. COVID-19 thrust senior student affairs professionals, who most often serve as crisis leaders on small college campuses, into the position of decision-maker guiding the campus response to the pandemic. The…

Decades of established research have focused on the attrition, workplace trauma, and career burnout of student affairs (SA) professionals working at colleges and universities (see N. J. Evans, 1988; Herr & Strange, 1985; Perez & Bettencourt, 2024; Walterbusch, 2019). The purpose of this generic qualitative research study (Khalke, 2016) was…

The intent of this narrative dissertation was to uncover how staff members in divisions of student affairs experience bullying, how it has affected their trust for the profession and their colleagues and supervisors, and how the power dynamic within workplace bullying has an effect on the experience for professionals. It is important to recognize…

Racism is an ordinary, everyday system of oppression with which People of Color contend. Black people navigate a particular form of racism that is rooted in anti-Blackness, which describes a hatred white people, non-Black People of Color, and even some Black people exhibit toward Black people. Black people working in student affairs are not immune…

The purpose of this narrative study was to understand the stories of senior student affairs officers (SSAOs) in New England in navigating their roles with multiple stakeholder groups during the closing of a college or merger with another institution. At the heart of this research was understanding the ways in which SSAOs made sense of their lived…

This article reports the challenges of eLearning faced by under-resourced students in a Zambian public university during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. The article further examines the interventions made by the university to mitigate the challenges of eLearning faced by under-resourced students. The article is based on empirical data derived from an…