Today's academic and social environment creates uncertainties, new roles, frequent changes, and challenging situations for student affairs academic leaders. The purpose of this study was to explore how student affairs academic leaders described their recent challenging experiences in addressing student drug abuse in higher education. The…

The purpose of our research was to use Day, Harrison, and Halpin's, (2009) theory of leadership development as a premise to investigate how students' constructive development is related to their leader identity development and understanding of leadership. Baxter Magolda's Model of Epistemological Reflection (MER, 1988, 2001) was used to understand…

The purpose of this qualitative comparative case study was to understand how front-line student services staff experience transition from a traditional model of service to an integrated model of service. There were three fundamental questions framing this research study: 1. What strategies and support systems were utilized by staff making the…

This study examined the use and perceived effectiveness of standards published by the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education in student affairs units at a community college in the Southwest. The available literature mainly addresses use of the CAS standards at four-year rather than two-year colleges. The study investigated…

Entry-level student affairs staff are the profession's future and seasoned professionals must lay a strong supervisory foundation. Supervision has received little attention in the literature even though practitioners spend substantial time supervising. Although an important role, many seasoned professionals are ill prepared for this task. This…

This study examined the application and perceived effectiveness of the Council for the Advancement of Standards (CAS) in a community college Student Affairs Division. The two research questions were as follows: (1) How does a Community College apply CAS standards? (2) What is the perceived effectiveness of applying those standards? A case study…

With the rising number of major crises on college campuses today (Security on Campus Inc., 2009), institutions of higher education can benefit from understanding of how social networks may be used in times of emergency. What is currently known about the usage of social networks is not integral to the current practices of crisis management that are…

The main research question of this study was: How do student life offices at four diverse Catholic colleges and universities create an environment that is expressive of a Catholic way of life? This research question was operationalized by two research sub questions: How do senior student affairs officers, mid-level student affairs officers, and…

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an organization development (OD) philosophy that utilizes and builds on past successes, using these as positive momentum for future change. AI provides student affairs with an alternative and generative approach to improving their organizations' processes and culture. As student affairs professionals look to the future…

The Luke Principle states that the successful implementation of any organizational change requires a counting of the costs (Ousley, 2003). As developers do not construct a building, nor do governments go to war, without counting costs, administrators in higher education should not reorganize units or merge departments without counting costs. This…