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Outside the Box: Staffing for Success Outside the Field of Student Personnel
By Deborah Kohl, Coordinator for Community Development, Jardine Apartment Complex at Kansas State University
In a phone interview for a highly selective internship a candidate recently asked me “How closely does your staff resemble your residents?” I smiled to myself and prepared my answer, one which I have been given plenty of opportunity to share this hiring season. Complexes such as mine (we house residents from 48 different countries, including students pursuing graduate and undergraduate degrees, post-doctoral researchers and staff; married students; parents and their children; transfer students and traditional undergraduate students) face a great challenge in finding staff members to represent all facets of our community. We have the task of strategically seeking out candidates who are not your normal, run-of-the-mill college student personnel worker, a practice that raises eyebrows in some circles of the profession, but with which we have been met with unprecedented success and the ability to serve students at a unique level. Even as these lines are penned, professionals in the field are engaged in interviews at placement exchanges across the country, creating a prime opportunity to examine the benefits of staffing “outside of the box”.
Hearing Forgotten Voices and Seeing Multiple Perspectives
In a profession where we pride ourselves on advocating for our residents, we often become insulated from those who think differently about our communities than we do. For example, those of us who serve non-traditional populations in apartment communities have a number of residents who are not students at all but are constituents because a spouse, partner, or parent is studying or researching at the university. There is no office on campus to hear these voices, and our staff members become their single and solitary representative to the larger community. Being willing to staff up with students who are married, have children, or are from an underserved or underrepresented populations on campus allow those groups to have a voice at the table and provide us with rich perspective in serving that might otherwise be silenced. One of the outside of the box hires we have made recently is a gentleman whose family has been overseas for the majority of his time on staff. He left his wife, daughter, and newborn son to come to the States to pursue his degree in agronomy, and it has been eye-opening for our undergraduate student staff to learn through him the challenges that a number of our residents undertake when they leave their home countries to study. This new perspective has given them a concrete example to draw from as they approach their residents with a fresh awareness that there is often a layer of experience of which we do not know, and we cannot jump to assumptions about a student’s reaction to any given experience or policy without first seeking to hear their voice.
Refreshing Student Development Theory
Supervising graduate staff members who are not studying student personnel allows us the opportunity to dust off all of the theoretical underpinnings of our belief systems and explain them in layman’s terms to our staff members who may not be schooled in Chickering, Perry, Holland, or Astin. Being able to explain how to understand our student populations through the student development lens is a great opportunity for us to clarify why we choose to operate the way we do, to be challenged on our “right” way of supervision, and to expose our staff members to a style they may never get elsewhere in academia or industry. On several occasions we have had staff members from other disciplines on campus comment on how many opportunities for growth we give our students, how hard we work to be developmental, and how personally we take each individual we serve. When this observation translates into action as the supervision of undergraduate student staff takes place, and change in practice becomes part of professional identity for our future accountant or animal scientist, the lives of their future students or employees are enriched.
Impacting the University
Graduate students who are pursuing assistantships in housing outside of the field of student personnel are likely committed to their field of study in a unique way. For many of our students the graduate degree they are seeking while with us will allow them to teach in the classroom, supervise a laboratory and interact with students in a way most housing professionals never will. We are able to impact the way a future professor will interact with students in lecture, individual meetings and recitation when we give him/her the opportunity to serve alongside us in our communities. If we have been able to clearly identify the value in approaching students from the developmental perspective we carry, and have given them opportunities to practice what we preach, students and offices outside our realm of influence can be positively impacted. How often do we wish for partners across campus to see things more developmentally? Staffing outside of the box gives us opportunity to develop those partners for the future.
The Long-Lasting Effects
The long-lasting effects of allowing ourselves the freedom to incorporate varied perspectives into our teams is one of the best gifts we can give ourselves and our profession. Being true to the call to represent diversity may require us to stretch and grow, to be developmental with ourselves, and to learn some new procedures for working with students. There are challenges that have to be overcome when choosing staff members who are not studying the traditional set of classes on the schedule we may be used to, but the benefits to the communities and universities we serve are real and these candidates deserve a second thought.
About the Author
Deborah Kohl serves as the Coordinator for Community Development for the Jardine Apartment Complex at Kansas State University. In her eighth year at the complex, she works with a truly diverse staff to build relationships and serve residents at the end of phase one of a $104 million redevelopment project. You can learn more at www.housing.k-state.edu.