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At the time of his death, Dr. Adam Peck served as Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs at Illinois State University. During his 25 years in student affairs, he served in a variety of other roles, including assistant vice president and dean of students at Stephen F. Austin State University and director of student life at Saint Louis University. Adam was unique in that he was a student affairs professional who met the criteria of being a practitioner-scholar, an administrator in which research, contributing to it and consuming it, plays a significant role. Dr. Peck not only wanted to engage in scholarly pursuits, he needed to because he believed writing clarified his thinking about complex issues and guided his practice. On the morning of September 30th, 2022, Adam died from injuries sustained in a pedestrian accident. He was 49 years old. His name may not be well recognized in higher education, but he was not one for fanfare or the spotlight. Yet, he did his best to help students succeed. As highlighted in this article, to those who knew Dr. Peck, he was a storyteller. He told and enacted stories of caring, curiosity, compassion, scholarship, and intellectualism -- a life lived well. This article is his story as well as the story of how the campus activities profession must continue his work.

Advocacy and activism have become frequent topics of recent research. In this study we sought to discover whether there are patterns of advocacy and to identify patterns so that advocates and activists might broaden their skills to increase effectiveness. Through engaging with 26 participants and using a conceptual framework of archetypes, findings revealed patterns of advocacy to be warm hearts, risk takers, liberators, path makers, rescuers, tempered radicals, and 9-5ers across faculty, staff, and students. Patterns were influenced by power, risk, and goal. Recommendations include individual, group, and institutional first- and second-order change interventions.

Though promoting student advocacy has become an essential part of leadership education, few studies explore development of advocacy in leadership education. This article offers how distortions, an aspect of a Black feminist reframing of dissonance, is related to existing leadership education literature. It then introduces students' voices demonstrating the importance of the realization of distortions in student advocacy development and links distortions with how power communicates and upholds systemic oppression. Finally, we offer practical recommendations based on a case scenario that utilize Black feminist perspectives of dissonance in refining student advocacy leadership education. Such insight prompts more effective strategies in student advocate development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though literature on student veterans and service members' (SVSM) transition to higher education has increased, absent is literature on the transition of non-veteran student affairs staff who work with SVSM. Using an acculturation model as a conceptual framework, this study explored strategies and processes used to adapt to working with an unfamiliar student population at a community college and research institution. Strategies included hiring a "savior" to avoid acculturation stress.

While all students encounter difficulties in transitioning to college, the experience is more pronounced for first-generation college students (Terenzini, Springer, Yaeger, Pascarella, & Nora, 1996). Definitions of "first-generation college student" differ across scholarly studies. Understanding this population's gains in critical thinking skills is essential for helping faculty and administrators to provide better academic and social support. In this article, the authors contend that how "first-generation college student" is operationalized has implications for understanding the critical thinking skills that these students gain in college. They sought to examine the role that parental education has on students' critical thinking gains over 4 years of college. Given the lack of consensus about how to define first-generation status, they also investigated how the influence of parental education varies when operationalized in different ways. Data was collected from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNS; Center of Inquiry, n.d.)--a longitudinal, pretest/posttest design study that examined the effects from participation in liberal arts college experiences on both cognitive and affective student learning outcomes varied by institutional selectivity, size, location, and control. Data collection for the WNS occurred in three waves for each of the three cohorts (2006- 2010, 2007-2011, 2008-2012). A series of ordinary least squares regressions was used to test if parental education influenced students' gains in critical thinking over 4 years of college while holding the aforementioned precollege, institutional, and college-level variables constant. Despite the challenges first-generation students face in higher education, findings suggest that first-generation college students show significantly higher gains in critical thinking over 4 years of college when compared to their continuing-generation peers. While first-generation students in the study's sample started with lower precollege critical thinking scores and average ACT scores, they had significantly higher gains than their continuing-generation peers.

Using members of professional associations who are a part of the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) consortia as a sample, this study investigated who uses CAS Standards, how and why they are used, and whether CAS Standards are associated with enhanced student learning. Using a quantitative analysis, this study found that 61% of the sample had heard of CAS, vice presidents were significantly more likely to have heard of CAS than those with other job titles, and CAS materials are used more as guides than for self assessment. Only 24% of the sample indicated that they measure learning outcomes, and of those 41% stated that there is a connection between student learning and CAS Standards. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

Though advocacy and activism have been frequent topics of research, few studies explore this work across campus roles, meaning inclusive of students, faculty, and staff. A more holistic understanding of advocacy would pave the way for more effective social justice efforts. Researchers used hermeneutic phenomenology to engage with 26 advocates finding that identity influences advocacy; advocates work for, with, and to others; and advocates take risks with consequences associated with their identities. The American Counseling Association's Advocacy Competencies extended the analysis to reveal the lack of alliances in cross-campus advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entry-level student affairs staff are the profession's future and seasoned professionals must lay a strong supervisory foundation. Supervision has received little attention in the literature even though practitioners spend substantial time supervising. Although an important role, many seasoned professionals are ill prepared for this task. This study identified valuable supervision practices noted as valuable by entry-level professionals and whether those practices included synergistic supervision. Implications using the framework of Bronfenbrenner's ecology model are offered. (Contains 3 tables.)

For over 30 years, the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) has developed and promulgated standards of practice for quality programs and services. The standards are designed intentionally to promote student learning and developmental outcomes through a self-assessment process. CAS has coalesced professional expectations from 40 member associations, emphasizing the integrity of campus programs through comprehensive structural soundness and ethical excellence. In this chapter, the authors start with a review of the role of standards in professional practice, addressing how the CAS approach is foundational to the integrity of quality professional practice. Then, their discussion moves to the various CAS resources that ground student affairs practice in integrity. The chapter ends by exploring challenges CAS faces to ensure quality programs in student affairs. (Contains 1 exhibit.)

Continued competition for precious resources in higher education, along with the simultaneous increasing expectations of higher education by parents, students, and other stakeholders, has forced institution administrators to look for significant alternatives for funding. In conjunction with these pressures, the U.S. Congress is pressing colleges to reduce tuition costs. Student affairs divisions within these institutions are attempting to gain support from central development offices and academic affairs units for their own fundraising efforts. In fact, even student organizations have been engaging in fundraising efforts "with certain restrictions." Due to the dearth of literature describing fundraising practices at comprehensive institutions, the authors of this chapter conducted a multisite case study to uncover current practices. Their findings lead to recommendations and possible best practices.

In this article, the authors share an approach to enriching student learning through building on relationships among faculty, student affairs educators, and administrators. As their examples suggest, campuses where academic and student affairs educators work together most effectively have broad representation on campuswide committees and other decision-making bodies, ensure participation of faculty and student affairs educators in a variety of course-based and cocurricular activities, sponsor joint research and scholarly endeavors, and create opportunities for collaborative oversight and decision making on use of institutional resources such as buildings and endowments.

Theories of cognitive, racial identity, affective, psychological, and moral development can be helpful in designing college student leadership training programs. Course design must take a variety of learning styles into consideration so as many students as possible can successfully understand the material and integrate it into their leadership practices. (MSE)

This article is based on Barry Posner's book "The Leadership Challenge." Ten "commitments of leadership," behaviors utilized by leaders, include search for opportunities, experiment and take risks, envision the future, sell others on vision, foster collaboration, strengthen others, set the example, plan small wins, recognize individual contributions, and celebrate accomplishments. (MLW)

In a hermeneutic phenomenology study, the main purpose of which was to explore how White graduate students made meaning of being White, race-related guilt was found to be a prominent [...]