Graduate preparation for community college student affairs officers

This study identifies 25 competencies deemed by research and community college student affairs leaders to be critical to the success of community college student affairs officers and measures the extent to which these competencies are important and their rate of acquisition due to graduate education preparation. It examines the perceptions of the graduate faculty of the two most academically related graduate fields---community college leadership and student affairs administration-and current community college senior student affairs officers. Respondents revealed that there is agreement between the graduate faculty and practitioners on the importance of the competencies, but a respectable amount of disagreement between the three groups on the acquisition of those competencies through graduate education. A significant gap was reported between all but one of the competencies (Leadership Theory) when comparing importance and acquisition due to graduate education.; All competencies were rated higher in importance than their rates of acquisition due to graduate education except for one---Research Models and Methods---which was reported to have a higher acquisition rate from graduate education than its rate of importance. When the three groups were compared to each other, significant differences at the .01 level also appeared. Differences between community college graduate faculty and community college student affairs practitioners highlighted the focus of community college graduate preparation on executive leadership while differences between community college practitioners and student affairs graduate faculty were noted on Institutional Culture, Student Demographics and all but one of the Individual Development competencies. Major findings of the study noted (1) a major gap between the average reported importance level of almost all competencies and the acquisition of those competencies due to graduate education; (2) no apparent difference between the importance of the competencies in relation to two-year versus four-year institutional preparation; (3) no immediate need for separate community college student affairs graduate preparation programs; and (4) with notable positive feedback from the practitioners to the graduate faculty of both programs, improvements of cross-exposure between the fields of graduate study should prepare graduates from either program to be successful in the field of community college student affairs.