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

Pace of Work

The pace of work refers to the relative speed at which work is conducted and change is enacted in one's job, the level of stress involved in one's work, and balance between one's personal and professional life. The pace of work at HBCUs can be generally described as positively challenging and highly stressful, but change is difficult to institute.

Most respondents (80%) described their work as positively challenging. It requires one to "stretch and grow" within reasonable limits:

I would say "positively challenging". . . . because there are a lot of things that have happened. We're actually going through some transitions as far as staffing within our department and so it kind of creates a situation where some of us take on different tasks that we may not have worked with-you know, different areas that we are working on to move the department forward. And so in some ways it's challenging because you're overwhelmed with a lot of different tasks and a lot of things that are going on. And then sometimes it's always "positively challenging" because we're a growing university and we have a lot of projects going on relating to the growth. I would say it's "positively challenging" because we're moving towards becoming more proactive.

These challenges led respondents (74%) to rate their work as highly stressful. They reported that they tend to work long hours, juggle multiple tasks at once, and have few support staff members. For example, respondents noted that their work is "very stressful, especially having to be on call 24 hours a day" and "getting telephone calls at 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning, not knowing what the issue is" imposes a "high degree of stress."

Note that the source of stress stems from limited resources in terms of staff or funding. The lack of resources is an overarching theme in our findings as these comments suggest:

[My work] is so TIME-CONSUMING ... I work from 7:30 to 10:00 every single day of the week and often have to come in on weekends. ... I don't have a lot of layers of staff. I do it all. And so that's where my stress comes in-the inability sometimes to balance work and play.

I think we are slow to get monies from the state. I think we are paid less than other people in our positions. And they always base things on the number of students you have, the number of programs you have, the number of sports events you have-and that's why you have less. But we are doing the same thing. So that's not good. So it's based on ... I'm thinking of HBCU schools. So it's always less. We do the same thing within the same environments, but on a lower scale.

Oh, the lack of resources. Not getting our fair share of the pie has always been [a problem for HBCUs]. . . . Between now and 2025 there's some HBCUs out of the 103-some of them are going to fail.. . . They're just . . . well, you see [name of one HBCU that just failed]. Some others are in trouble. [Name of another HBCU] down in [name of state] is already closed. And [name of first HBCU] is on the way [out]. They're not going to make it.