Last month, I wrote about my general experience researching, applying to, and working while in graduate school. (Check out Part 1 in this series.) In this month’s post, I continue to explore my graduate school experience by highlighting the core courses (and some important electives!) that I still benefit from today.
Foundations and Functions
Known by many names, Foundations and Functions essentially translates to “History of Higher Education.” In this course you learn about different models of higher learning, historical roles of the higher education employee, and how these two have evolved over time. I valued this class because it taught me a lot about history that I was simply not aware of and knowing where the profession has been can help us recognize cycles and trends to predict where the field is moving.
College Student Development
This course is hands down the course that I draw from the most to this day. College student development courses look at past and present theories of how adolescents learn and grow in the college environment. These theories take into account various environmental, interpersonal, and social identity factors. Theories won’t help you predict or explain students’ behavior 100% accurately 100% of the time, but they are a helpful stepping stone on your never-ending journey to understand others better.
Educational Environments
This has always felt like a really underrated class to me, since it highlights something so very “hidden in plain sight” in our everyday lives. In environments, you learn about the different physical and social spheres on a college campus and how they impact the day-to-day life of both students and staff. You’ll leave this class wondering, “how does the physical layout of a residence hall help or hinder intentional interaction?” and “what is the impact on college students when the identities and experiences of their administrators don’t align with theirs?”
This course made me a much more observant person!
Multicultural Competence
Multicultural competence is another core course that serves to help future student affairs practitioners better understand increasingly diverse college student populations. The learning curve for this class is highly variable based on each student’s lived experience, but you will always be challenged to see the college experience from perspectives other than your own. The biggest takeaway from this course for me was that practicing multicultural competence isn’t just an addition to the work of a student affairs practitioner. Rather, it informs every aspect of your work so that you can serve students well, no matter their background.
Statistics and Research
Transparently, I don’t have much of a memory of my statistics and research courses (two separate courses), since I already had a relatively strong educational background in these two areas. Additionally, one was almost fully online, and the other I tested out of completely.
However, becoming comfortable with research and statistics principles is incredibly important when it comes to the assessment competency. From what I’ve observed, keeping up with assessment skills is a fairly low priority for housing professionals unless it has a lot to do with their day-to-day work. After all, who has time to worry about Qualtrics data and PowerBI dashboards when your building is literally (or hopefully metaphorically) on fire once a week? But assessment isn’t something that’s just going away; it probably drives most, if not all of the decisions university leaders have to make. I do a fair amount of assessment in my current role, but even when I was an RD, understanding statistics and research helped me ask better questions and have a more critical eye regarding higher education news and trends.
Higher Education in the Media
This course was a special elective I took initially due to my undergraduate background in film and animation. In this course, we engaged with the portrayal of colleges and universities in film, TV, literature, and even music. While I wasn’t initially expecting it, this course helped me realize that the portrayal of college in the media is a huge driver of initial expectations of the college experience, especially for those with limited exposure to higher education.
Crisis Counseling
Crisis counseling was an elective from the counseling department that I chose to take in anticipation of working in a position with on-call responsibilities. We learned and practiced all sorts of counseling skills and techniques when responding to a person in crisis. My biggest takeaway from this course was learning to “sit with the silence.” For many (myself included), silence during vulnerable moments can feel really uncomfortable, and so we feel the need to fill the silence with word vomit, which is usually the last thing a person in crisis needs. This course really helped me effectively respond to others in heightened emotional states without getting my own emotions entangled in the situation.
Mental and Emotional Disorders
Much like crisis counseling, this was also a course offered by the counseling department which I chose as an elective. By the time I took this class, I had already completed half of my graduate program, and I had noted a sincere lack of education on neurodiverse conditions for housing employees. I found it hard to draw the line between the role of a counselor and my role as a graduate RD, especially when students sometimes expected me to be both. While it certainly isn’t our job to diagnose and treat students with histrionic personality disorder, bipolar II, or anything else, understanding mental and emotional disorders helped me set boundaries with and better support neurodiverse students.
Teaching vs. Training
In preparation for this post, I reached out to colleagues to ask if they took any impactful courses during graduate school that they wanted to highlight. This one comes from Paul Brown. He took a course that highlighted the differences between teaching and training as well as effective strategies for both. The end goal of educating others is the same, but because the format and motivation for engaging with the two are different, they need to employ different strategies and skills to achieve their outcomes.
