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Foundations of Student Affairs Practice: How Philosophy, Theory, and Research Strengthen Educational Outcomesreviewed by William Altman - 2003 ![]() Author(s): Florence A. Hamrick, Nancy J. Evans, and John H. Schuh. Publisher: Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco ISBN: 0787946478, Pages: 384, Year: 2002 Search for book at Amazon.com The purpose of college in the United States has changed greatly over the years. Once a place dedicated to preparing young men to become community leaders by providing them with a liberal education in the arts, literature, and the sciences, institutions of higher learning now educate men and women of all ages in a myriad of liberal arts, technical, and commercial skills. However, we seem to be returning, at least in part, to the Renaissance ideal that college should contribute to the student’s total personal development. As a result, student affairs, which once concerned itself primarily with counseling and guidance has come to be a full partner in overall student development. In Foundations of Student Affairs Practice: How Philosophy,
Theory, and Research Strengthen Educational Outcomes, Florence
A. Hamrick, Nancy J. Evans, and John H. Schuh of Iowa State
University provide a history of this evolution of student affairs,
a context in which it may be understood, and a loose blueprint for
how we may put current research on student development to use in
our own institutions. The book integrates student development
theory, philosophy, and practice with special attention to
measurable outcomes. In only 384 pages, it is a relatively compact,
yet comprehensive look at student development from historical,
psychological, social, and pedagogical points of view. Many
different professionals will find this book extremely useful.
However, because of its comprehensive nature, and a great deal of
redundancy (about which more later), different readers will want to
approach it in different ways. The book is divided into three parts. Part One furnishes a
background for the rest of the book, beginning in Chapter One with
a look at the various kinds of missions which drive different
colleges and universities. The authors examine not only the mission
statements of the institutions, but also the historical events and
progression of philosophies that shaped them. In Part Two, they
provide information about how student affairs practice can
influence specific student outcomes. Finally, they present
recommendations for current practice, and possible trajectories for
further research in Part Three. This is a book to be read backwards. Researchers will find a wealth of open questions in Chapter
Eleven, and will find that by beginning with that chapter, followed
by a careful reading of the relevant chapters in Part One, they
will be able to set up a meaningful research trajectory for their
future work. Student development professionals may best be served by
beginning with Chapter Ten, for a good overview of methods via
which they may approach their work in an outcome-based, assessment
oriented manner. This chapter serves as an excellent introduction
to the implications and suggestions provided at the close of each
chapter in Part Two. Perhaps the best advice offered in Chapter Ten
is attributed to Weick (1984) – that large-scale problems may
best be solved not with a large-scale solution, but with many
small, targeted programs. The authors also discuss the need for
programs to match the priorities and culture of each institution,
and stress the benefits of collaboration by stakeholders across the
university (i.e. student affairs, faculty, development, senior
administrators, and students) and in the larger
community. Student affairs professionals and faculty working directly with
students will do best to progress to the “Implications”
sections at the end of each chapter in Part Two, depending on which
areas of student development are of most interest. Each chapter
sets out a number of useful approaches to designing programs that
will work directly on each area of concern. Senior institutional
officers and development officers will find these sections of
special interest and will be able to use the suggestions presented
in their work as well. In Chapter Five the authors discuss many different student
development theories with a focus on the evolution of
students’ identity. The implications section at the end of
this chapter is especially good, in that it ties together much of
the information presented with suggested courses of action for both
student affairs staff and members of the faculty. Chapter Six
provides a number of recommendations with regard to the effects of
college on students’ development as citizens. Chapters Seven,
Eight, and Nine address the student as a developing “educated
person,” “skilled worker,” and “life skills
manager,” respectively. For readers requiring more background it would then be helpful
to read the beginnings of Chapters Five through Nine. This will
provide a more complete foundation for the suggestions of the
authors, and may spark new thoughts in the reader, who will already
have been primed by reading the ends of these
chapters. Finally, for those who want a more thorough grounding in the
history of the field and how it has come to its present state, Part
One of the book offers an excellent introduction to the evolution
of the mission of higher education (in Chapter One), the history of
student development as a field (Chapter Two), the influence of
environmental factors on student development (Chapter Three), and
the evolving role of student affairs as a field (Chapter
Four). Chapter One examines some historical developments in American
post-secondary education that gave rise to different sorts of
colleges, fulfilling a variety of different missions. These include
the traditional liberal arts institutions, state colleges,
community colleges, and colleges developed to serve particular
populations or fields. In Chapter Two, the authors provide a relatively comprehensive,
if compact, view of human development. In order to provide the
widest possible spectrum, however, they do so in a fairly cursory
way. The feeling is not unlike that of running through a gallery of
paintings at top speed, and attempting to glance at the various
masterpieces as one passes by. Unfortunately, this approach suffers
because there is little attempt to integrate the different points
of view presented. We can see, for example, that the paintings we
are passing seem to be related, but as yet, no one has told us how,
nor what, that should mean to us when we reach the next gallery.
While there is some synthesis in the discussion section of this
chapter, it would be more helpful to include it during the
presentation of the original material, to help the reader make
sense of what is otherwise a prodigious mass of
information. Chapter Three discusses research focused on the effects of the
campus environment on student development. The chapter begins with
students’ needs for challenge, involvement, and validation.
The authors then discuss the physical setting of the campus and how
people congregate and organize themselves in groups. This is
followed by a review of theories concerned directly with creating a
positive learning environment. Chapter Four relates the role of student affairs in the learning
process. Here Hamrick, Evans, and Schuh make the case that
the field of student affairs must move from the periphery to the
center of the higher educational enterprise. If we view learning
holistically, we must acknowledge that much of what is learned in
college is learned outside the classroom. This implies the need for
a “seamless” environment, in which every part of the
campus environment – housing, activities, etc. –
contributes to the ongoing development of the students. They make
the case that for this to happen, graduate education of student
affairs professionals must be multidisciplinary, including many
areas of study, such as human development, counseling, learning
theory, etc. My only real unhappiness with this work is its redundancy. It
seems that this book was actually designed so that the individual
chapters might stand alone as individual monographs. In assembling
this book, much could have been done to reduce this tendency by
assuming that a reader may recall information from chapter to
chapter or refer back to previous information as needed. In future
editions the authors might also be encouraged to reorganize the
text so that readers will be able to get the most out of it without
having to skip about between chapter endings and
parts. In all, I found Foundations of Student Affairs Practice: How
Philosophy, Theory, and Research Strengthen Educational
Outcomes to be an excellent synthesis of information from
several disciplines. I especially recommend it to professionals
entering the field of student development, and faculty and
administrators looking for a good introduction to the
field. References
Weick, K. E. (1984). Small wins: Redefining the scale of social
problems. American Psychologist, 39,
40-49.
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