Assessment: The “Wild Card” in Student Affairs

Abstract

Assessment is a core competency in student affairs, but scholars in the field of higher education and student affairs know little about how practitioners perceive and approach learning about assessment. In this study with 20 students in a student affairs master’s program, I found they perceived assessment as the “wild card” and had trepidation about learning assessment. They also viewed it as meeting accountability obligations, securing careers, or improving student services. Participants’ prior experiences also informed their assessment notions with implications for graduate socialization.

Acknowledgment

I want to acknowledge Blanca E. Rincón’s valuable contribution to this project and reviewers’ feedback on this manuscript.

Notes

¹ The racial categories on the questionnaire included Caucasian, not white, but to be consistent throughout I use the term “white” throughout. I do not capitalize white, “since whites do not constitute a specific cultural group” (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1244). The questionnaire also included African American as an option, but I use the term Black here to be more inclusive and to be consistent throughout this work. Students could also select “other.” While five students identified as Latina/o or Hispanic (Latinx was not a common term yet when this study took place), they also marked different racial groups such as: Hispanic, Latino, Caucasian, and mixed. In this work, I only listed the Latinx students within this one identity group recognizing there is racial diversity within this diaspora.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Connecticut [Scholarship Facilitation Fund].