ACPA/NASPA Competencies: • Assessment, Evaluation and Research • Advising and Helping • Ethical Professional Practice • History, Philosophy, and Values • Human and Organizational Resources • Law, Policy, Governance • Leadership • Personal Foundations • Student Learning and Development • Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion • Technology
Assessment, Evaluation and Research From my experiences of working at Asian Pacific American Student Services (APASS), I have been actively engaged in various projects that have improved my assessment, evaluation, and research abilities. For example, I performed observations and focus group interviews with former CIRCLE participants, and I've assessed previous year's surveys on the effectiveness of the program. Additionally, I helped with assessing its learning programs, services, and personnel as fieldwork intern by overlooking the staff, and assisting with ongoing projects aimed towards advocating for API needs. Additionally, I reviewed APASS's annual report, which covers its expenditures, resource allocations, missions, goals, objectives, as well as areas of advocacy, and I was able to provide commentary as to how APASS was meeting its departmental goals and how that aligns with USC's values. A couple projects I performed under APASS includes assisting with the Native Hawaiian Conference and facilitating the discussions for Alternative Spring Break- Manzanar. I also created learning outcomes, assigned readings, and designed targeted questions to challenge the participants. In terms of research, I analyzed different cities around Southern California in finding community centers for smaller API groups, and gave a snapshot summary on what past organizations granted scholarships to "minority populations" and showed how significantly API students were neglected. By designing this research project, I was able to help my APASS advisor in providing a tangible document that can be shown to scholarship organizations to prove the vital need for scholarships to the API community.
Advising and Helping Advising and helping is such a transferrable skill in student affairs, and I feel beyond blessed to have attained these skill sets in the PASA program. While working at the Career Center, I was able to provide effective counseling to individuals and groups, whether that meant speaking to a group about career services, tips on landing positions to international students, or career tips for juniors and seniors. I also assisted with benchmarking different careers programs at other universities to understand best practices of counseling interventions, and collaborated with other campus departments in reserving rooms to make presentations. Another example I attained advising and helping skills includes my experience being an ACUHO-I intern at Pepperdine University this past summer. During my time as an intern, I collaborated with other campus departments to address the issues of mental health and consulted with various offices to see how they could address mental health issues should it come up in their respective offices.
Ethical Professional Practice In ethical professional practice, a major example I believe I was able to develop this skill set is in my current position as an English Language Program Teacher at the Office of International Services. Here, I was able to provide consultation to students regarding ethical issues in the classroom, and address how students need to still register for the classes despite it being free. Another example would be my role in Graduate Student Government, where I serve as the Director of Communications. In this role, I am most focused on being ethical with my funding allocation, email communications, privacy and confidentiality with my messages, and professionalism when communicating with external stakeholders. I have my own ethical guidelines which are outlined in my job description, this has been most helpful for me whenever I updated our newsletters, social media, and other forms of communications to effectively engage with student organizations and staff members. Some of the conversations I had with other senators include issues revolving around institutionalized racism and mental health issues, while fostering inclusive language to encourage a safe space. I think in supporting ethical development, it was critical for me to address the culture in our workplace by stating my role in graduate student government is focused on both advocacy and social justice. I pay attention to my constituencies and take the necessary steps to make change on-campus.
History, Philosophy, and Values Having taken the Foundations in Higher Education course my very first semester in program, I really reflected on the changes and influences our very founding colleges have made to institutions of higher education today. A lot of my professional development in the program has focused on participating in developing new approaches in tackling various problems. This is evident across the board for each of my graduate assistantships. In addition, regarding partnering with faculty and teaching for research in the profession- I think this is something that is helpful for any student affairs professional. As a current American Culture Class Instructor under Orientation Programs, I have found myself inviting speakers from various departments to speak on topics of the week. I recognize that I do not know everything and I don't claim to either. It is important to know how to be collaborative with departments and being strategic with limited resources. I was able to execute my creativity in this role.
Human and Organizational Resources In human and organizational resources, my skill sets were truly challenged and embraced as an ACUHO-I intern at Pepperdine University. I was on the recruitment committee in interviewing full-time Resident Directors for the academic year, and I intervened with employees regarding performance issues and behavioral expectations. I was particularly keen with the newly selected Resident Directors who did not come from a faith-based background to remain open-minded, uphold humility, and recognize how their identities can still play a role in shaping students in the institution. I think more than anything, the one area I kept bringing up to one of the hired Resident Directors was identifying with Pepperdine's missions statement, and reviewing the five values of Housing and Residence Life. I found it particularly important to evaluate the effectiveness of my fellow co-workers and speaking up when I realized there's a need that has not been met. I like to assess the strengths and weaknesses of my staff, and for each meetings, I would address our highs and lows and let the Residence Life staff know that we were all in this together.
Law, Policy, Governance I have grown the most in this area by taking the Legal Issues in Higher Education Administration course. I have a stronger understanding and confidence in managing institutional and personal tort liability, being consistent with civil rights and affirmative action law, and being up-to-date with state and federal laws. The only time I was posed with needing stronger legal understanding was when I was an ACUHO-I intern this past summer; I almost took a student's phone when having to speak with a parent. Luckily, I was reminded that answering a student's phone is illegal and I had the parent directly call the office phone. Another legal issue that I almost embarked on was releasing confidential information to a parent via the phone. I quickly realized due to FERPA, only the student has access to his academic materials and only he can grant permission to his parents. Moving forward, I'd love to grow in my understanding of the governance system and ensuring that programs being developed are aligned to emerging trends of higher education law.
Leadership In the area of Leadership, I have seen myself grow in this area across all of my positions. This is most notable in my roles with Gradaute Student Government, PASA Network, and the English Language Program. Whenever I have to delegate tasks for events, organize schedules, or order supplies, my leadership shows because I focus on teamwork and collaboration within all of my roles. I put a strong focus on facilitating ongoing development, implementing assessments to review past performances, and establishing a culture that advocates for individual leadership.
Personal Foundations My personal foundations are ones rooted in mentorship, growth, learning, and relationship building. I consider myself a really patient individual focused on ensuring greatness for each individual student I mentor. I know how to mediate between my personal and professional life, and seek environments where personal growth is promoted. I am also keen on exercising mutuality within relationships and recognizing that growth is not immediate. As an ACUHO-I intern, I directly supervised eight RA's and would constantly check-up on each one to make sure that they were handling their personal, academic, and social lives well. This is something I see myself constantly doing in my professional life. On the topic of learning, I will still be doing informational interviews with student affairs professionals so that I can gain a better understanding of what different functional areas entail.
Student Learning and Development If anything, this is the strongest area PASA prepared me in - both inside and outside of the classroom. I love being able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of my co-workers so we can be a cohesive unit. I believe in unity and ensuring that we play on our strengths. A lot of the theories discussed in this program are based on how to stronger develop our students and understanding where they are coming from. I particularly find these theories useful when interacting with administrators regarding policy and practice. In my fieldwork position with APASS, where I facilitated the pre-trip session for ASB-Manzanar, I fostered an inclusive community and promoted a safe space atmosphere for discussion.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion I facilitated talks on gender, power, race, sexuality, oppression, and privilege in my role as an APASS fieldwork intern, and I also created strategic plans that continued development of diversity initiatives such as identifying which school districts more scholarships should be dispersed among API individuals, benchmarking different programs that would improve diversity, and providing assessments over the CIRCLE program. I was most focused on demonstrative tolerance and providing responsible acts for an inclusive environment throughout my roles in APASS.
Technology Technology is the basis for which our society and landscape resides. In my role with Graduate Student Government as the Communications Director, I have collaborated with Recreation Sports to develop videos that would help publicize its availability to all graduate students. I have also leveraged social media as a platform to engage graduate students about all the different professional, social, and academic events around University Park Campus (UPC) and the Health Science Campus (HSC). I have also developed competency in using Symplicity while at USC's Career Center. Symplicity is an online platform used for intaking walk-in students need career counseling, and enables the counselor to take note on what the session entailed (for example, how long it took, what resources we directed them to, and what the session was about). While a Graduate Assistant at the School of Social Work, I was heavily involved with using SalesForce, Qualtrics, and SiS for generating student reports and identifying how many slots were available for any given course. I was also mandated to help with D-clearance of student courses and reviewing quantitative data based on student scores. I also used EBI, which is a system used primarily in Residential Education to review surveys and assessments based on residential student experiences. Most recently, I served as a guest for an NACPA student affairs month video talking about why I chose to pursue a career in student affairs.