Nature of Student Affairs Work at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, The

Journal of College Student Development, Nov/Dec 2006 by Hirt, Joan B, Strayhorn, Terrell L, Amelink, Catherine T, Bennett, Belinda R

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The purpose of this study was to explore the nature of work for administrators who serve students at historically Black colleges and universities. We employed one element of Hirt's (2006) conceptual framework to describe professional life. The Hirt model explores professional life through three components: the nature of work, the nature of relationships, and the nature of rewards. Our study focused solely on the nature of work for administrators at HBCUs.

The nature of work refers to the shape, breadth, and scope of the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of administrators who work with students. Three constructs are associated with this perspective: pace of work, how work gets done, and the work environment. Pace of work is measured by the degree to which change occurs, the level of stress involved, and the degree of balance between one's personal and professional life. How work gets done refers to the processes and/or procedures for accomplishing work. Working on a team, using creativity, and taking risks are a few of the factors associated with how work gets done. Finally, the work environment refers to the setting in which work is conducted and whether it tends to be collaborative, friendly, hostile, or positive, for example (Hirt, 2006).

METHOD

A mixed method approach was employed to collect data. Respondents completed a pencil-and-paper survey and participated in one-on-one or group interviews in which they expanded on their survey responses.

PARTICIPANTS

Data were gathered from a total of 70 HBCU professionals who worked at over 25 HBCUs in the United States. Eighty-nine percent (89%) were African-American, 6% identified as multi-racial, 2% as White, and the majority (67%) were females. They represented a mix of professionals across several functional areas including admissions, advising, career services, residence life, student activities, and counseling. Participants in our sample also had an array of educational backgrounds and ranged in age from 20 to 70 years. Sixty-three percent of respondents graduated from HBCUs and almost half (44%) graduated from the HBCU at which they were employed at the time of the study. Table 1 shows demographic characteristics of participants.

INSTRUMENT

The National Professional Life Survey consists of 69 items designed to elicit information about the nature of professional worklife as measured by the conceptual framework (i.e., work, relationships, and rewards) (Hirt, 2006). Twenty-one of these items measure the nature of work. The nature of work exercise consists of pairs of words that describe various work environments. For example, word pairs include high stress/low stress, team oriented/individual oriented, and theoretical/practical. Respondents are asked to rate the degree to which a particular word describes their work environment using a scale of 1 (favors word A) to 6 (favors word B). The instrument was used in previous research (Hirt, Amelink, & Schneiter, 2004).

PROCEDURE

We used two procedures to collect data. First, we attended a national conference of administrators who worked with students at HBCUs. While there, we conducted a focus group with 30 HBCU student affairs professionals. During the focus group, participants completed the National Professional Life Survey (NPLS) developed for this study and talked about their responses in the group setting.