Question: Interview Assignment: Student assignments of functional areas for Interview with a Student Affairs Professional: You may contact a student affairs professional at anycollege/university, preferably do not select UWA. If at all possible, interviews should be conducted in-person. Please request no more than 30-45 minutes of the professional's time and plan your interview accordingly to be respectful of their time. Students may not interview an individual from a different functional area of student affairs, outside of the area they were assigned, without the permission of the professor.
ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES:
Interview with a Student Affairs Professional: Students will be assigned by the instructor one chapter from Part 4 of the textbook by Schuh and Upcraft relating to "Programs and Services." The chapters in Part 4 include a discussion of program/service areas in student affairs such as Office of Financial Aid, Greek Life, Counseling, etc.
TASK: You are to make a scheduledappointment with a practicing professional serving in the program area relative to the chapter and conduct an interview covering the administrator's role, mission of the office, and any formal or informal assessments that may be conducted and/or a discussion of why assessment is not conducted.
If possible, please conduct the interview in-person at a nearby college or university. If an in-person interview is not possible or feasible, you may conduct the interview by telephone, e-mail, or go to meeting, or skype.
Please select an administrator that is at the level of a director. If the director is unavailable for an interview, please ask who he or she would recommend within the division, unit, office to interview for this project.
1. Assignment Part I (50 points): You will informally present your findings using a PowerPoint or Prezi, as a visual aid, on the scheduled day in class. You will also need to provide the class with a handout on your presentation.
• Each presentation should be designed to last approximately 10 minutes. Students should use 5-6 slides with no more than 7 lines of text per slide (Please do not use a font size smaller than 20). Students are expected to develop creative and visually-appealing presentations.
• A handout or handouts to accompany your presentation should include more than merely a copy of the presentation such as a copy of your PowerPoint slides. Students may want to provide brochures from the office where they visited or list important facts/information about the office in their handout such as the office's services, mission, vision, goals, etc.
2. Assignment Part II (50 points): You will also submit a 2-3 typed-page summary of what you learned about this office and its assessment practices and relate this to the assigned text chapter. This paper should be very well written and focused because of its brevity.
Guidelines for contacting a student affairs professional in your assigned functional area:
1. Contact and set up the interview well in advance of the deadline for this assignment just in case the individual may need to reschedule or to account for any unforeseen issues that could occur.Identify and contact your potential interviewee by the second week of class to schedule an appointment.
2. First, begin with an e-mail to introduce yourself and describe the reason for correspondence.
3. Inform the individual that this interview is for a course project.
4. Treat the e-mail as a formal correspondence in terms of using appropriate grammar, graduate-level writing, appropriate salutations, etc.
5. Introduce yourself
6. Note that you are seeking an interview for a graduate class assignment
7. Describe briefly the nature and content of the interview such as the length of time involved and the content you will address.
8. If the individual is not able to meet with you, request another contact within his/her department that you could contact.
9. If the individual does not respond by e-mail within a reasonable amount of time such as 48 hours within a regular business week, you could follow-up by telephone.