A President's Perspective on Student Services Delights and Debits. ERIC/CASS Digest.

This digest focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of the student affairs profession in higher education. The strengths of student affairs include diversity and involvement. Student affairs staff are trained in many different disciplines and are located throughout the campus. The diversity of student affairs professionals is seen as the thread that enables the needs of students to be met and the mission of student affairs to be realized. Student affairs professionals nurture students' involvement in learning and ultimately facilitate the total undergraduate experience. Weaknesses in student affairs are also described. Student affairs professionals must become purposeful in learning and contributing new skills to participate at more central levels of the institution. Suggestions for becoming partners in the campus milieu are provided. Because of the lack of institutional awareness, the goal of student affairs professionals to be accepted as legitimate academic leaders with upwardly mobile tracks is often unrealized. The digest concludes that student affairs has a strong future in serving students, and an even stronger one in serving its institutions. (NB)