"Principles of Good Practice" for Academic and Student Affairs Partnership Programs

Journal of College Student Development, May/Jun 2008 by Whitt, Elizabeth J, Nesheim, Becki Elkins, Guentzel, Melanie J, Kellogg, Angela H, McDonald, William M, Wells, Cynthia A

While academic and student affairs partnership programs have been championed as a means to enhance undergraduate education, research documenting the characteristics of effective partnership programs is sparse. The Boyer Partnership Assessment Project is a qualitative examination of academic and student affairs partnership programs at 18, diverse institutions. This article identifies seven principles of good practice for creating and sustaining effective partnerships, and discusses the implications of these principles for higher education research and practice.

People collaborate when the job they face is too big, is too urgent, or requires too much knowledge for one person or group to do alone . . . Only when everyone on campus-particularly academic affairs and student affairs staff-shares the responsibility for student learning will we be able to make significant progress in improving it. (American Association for Higher Education [AAHE] et al., 1998)

To a five-year-old with a hammer, everything is a nail, (source unknown)

Many challenges face higher education in the United States, including dwindling resources, rapid technological advancements, and demographic changes. Most disconcerting, perhaps, is the loss of public confidence in higher educations ability and/or willingness to achieve the educational outcomes it claims. Colleges and universities have been called upon to address these accountability concerns by focusing more intentionally and systematically on undergraduate learning and success (ACPA, 1994; Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University, 1998; National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges [NASULGC], 1997, 2000; U.S. Department of Education, 2006). Partnership programs-programs developed and offered via collaboration between academic and student affairs units-have received notable attention for their potential to create seamless learning environments (AAHE et al., 1998; Blimling, Whitt, & Associates, 1999; Kezar, Hirsch, & Burack, 2001; Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, Whitt, & Associates, 2005; Pascarella &Terenzini, 2005; Schroeder, 1999a, 1999b, 2004).

Despite this attention, little research has been conducted to identify aspects of effective partnership programs (Kezar et al., 2001; Magolda, 2005; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). The Boyer Partnership Assessment Project (BPAP) was initiated in 2001 to address these research gaps; the focus of this article is to identify and describe characteristics of effective academic affairs-student affairs partnership programs.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Among the critiques aimed at 4-year colleges and universities from voices within and beyond the academy is that these institutions have become too fragmented by disciplinary and functional specializations to educate students effectively (Blimling et al., 1999; Boyer Commission, 1998; NASULGC, 1997, 2000; Schroeder, 1999a, 1999b). For example, organizational boundaries have had a negative impact on undergraduate education:

We have created an intellectual landscape made up of mineshafts, where most of die mineworkers are intent on the essential task of deepening the mine without giving much thought to the need to build corridors connecting the shafts (and the miners). We have become so poorly connected that we have gready fragmented our shared sense of learning for both students and faculty. (NASULGC, 2000, p. 41)

The divide is particularly distressing given the unequivocal evidence diat students learn most effectively in seamless learning environments (Pascarella &Terenzini, 2005). Such environments are characterized by coherent educational purposes, comprehensive policies and practices consistent with students' needs and abilities, and a widely shared "ethos of learning" (Kuh, 1996, p. 136). Seamless learning environments blur the boundaries between in-class and outof-class experiences.

Academic and student affairs partnership programs have been championed as one means to bridge the academic, social, and affective elements of students' experiences by creating seamless learning environments and engaging students in their own learning (AAHE et al., 1998; Blinding et al., 1999; Kezar et al., 2001; Kuh et al., 2005; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005; Schroeder, 1999a, 1999b). By their very nature, partnerships require educators from both inside and outside the classroom to collaborate to consider students' educational experiences. Thus, partnerships create crossfunctional, interdepartmental linkages that combine resources and expertise to address the learning needs of students.

Moreover, recent research on educational effectiveness has fueled the notion that partnerships may be productive strategies. For example, Project DEEP, a comprehensive study of educationally effective colleges and universities (Kuh et al., 2005), identified six conditions common to these institutions, including shared responsibility for educational quality and student success. At the DEEP institutions, "effective partnerships among those who have the most contact with students -faculty and student affairs professionalsfuel the collaborative spirit and positive attitude of these campuses" (Kuh et al., 2005, p. 157). Thus, partnerships may have a positive impact on learning and the educational climate.