The South African Association of Senior Student Affairs Professionals (SAASSAP) hosted a three-day conference on "Ramping up engaged scholarship, gender equity, and enhancing leadership in student affairs practice" at Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha), from 2 to 4 December 2021. The meeting, which was attended by…

Student affairs practitioners and researchers are well positioned to contribute holistically to student success and as such could play a strategic role in the transformation of higher education. The aim of this article is to illustrate that a key strategic objective of student affairs is to contribute significantly towards student success. This…

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the abilities or lack thereof of many higher education institutions to adequately support the academic and co-curricular needs of students in times of crisis. In this reflective practitioner account, Schlossberg's Transition Theory is used to analyse the transitional experiences of students amid the Covid-19…

Students' psychological well-being constitutes a critical issue that necessitates support and dedicated intervention from student affairs professionals. Positive psychology, focusing on future-oriented prospective thinking, offers valuable insights and methods relevant to student affairs. This article leverages the principles of positive…

The advent of COVID-19 and the consequent imposition of a national lockdown from March 2020 in South Africa spurred South African universities to introduce new remote ways of delivering their curricula and offering extra-curricular activities. Some of these new modes of delivery tended to disadvantage already socio-economically disadvantaged black…

Many universities are hosting and enrolling international students as an important aspect of their internationalisation mission of higher education. However, many international students experienced significant problems adjusting into a host culture and social milieu. Informing this qualitative study were 45 international students in a top-tier…

Most first-year university students experience serious academic and adjustment challenges, which remain undetected until it is too late to provide meaningful intervention. Universities are therefore developing academic support systems that can assist in identifying students who experience learning challenges early on, and provide quality…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on faculty and student affairs practitioners which has changed the future of higher education worldwide. This reflective practitioner account looks into its impact on practitioners working in student affairs, some of which is not immediately visible, but unfortunately very significant and will…

The global pandemic caused by COVID-19 has impacted every facet of our lives and challenged service delivery to students within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The Centre for Student Counselling and Development (CSCD) at Stellenbosch University (SU), South Africa, is situated within the Division of Student Affairs (DSAf) and the centre's…

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…

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the challenges that present obstacles to equitable learning and development in higher education in various parts of the world. African higher education and Student Affairs and Services (SAS) are faced with a set of challenges that are in part related to the resources within the institutions and in part due the…

Student affairs administration in Chinese universities is characterised by a dual-layer system of governance, with student affairs practitioners, i.e. advisors to students, being supervised by either central university administration or by affiliated colleges. In the last decade, government-oriented developments have achieved great success in…

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown measures that were widely implemented in response to the pandemic forced many of the forms of engagement and activities promoted by student affairs and services staff among students at universities to be curtailed or transformed -- at first, so that they entailed no interpersonal contact and later so that…

Pathways into student affairs careers may not always be clear or well defined. Often, student affairs professionals experience unconventional beginnings. Formal and informal relationships with faculty, staff and students in higher education may eventually inspire a career in student affairs. This process of socialisation positively influenced my…

In January 2016, the International Association of Student Affairs and Services (IASAS) offered a global professional mentoring programme that would link student affairs leaders internationally with new graduates and early career professionals in student services. Protégé participants were primarily new graduates of preparatory programmes in…