The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2 - 113

The Competent Housing Officer: Evolving Perspectives

ACUHO-I's body of knowledge
is the culmination of decades
of research and practice but
itself depends on adoption
and utilization by housing
professionals and their
supervisors . As we look forward
to the next step in the evolution
of competencies in student
housing, it will be critical
to continue discussions on
leveraging the body of knowledge
in practice .

The SPPV's follow-up report (American
Council on Education, 1949) emphasized that
student personnel staff ought to be hired and
retained based on professional competence
rather than aptitude or personal disposition.
More centrally, the document introduced a
deepened philosophy of student affairs work
that included higher education's role in democracy, international and cross-cultural
understanding, and the leveraging of postsecondary education toward the solution of social
problems (American Council on Education,
1949; Roberts, 2012). The two SPPV documents, then, pivoted from the functional to the
philosophical, elevating the field in terms of its
social significance, but perhaps further com-

plicating the already complex task of codifying
what it is that student affairs personnel should
know and be able to do.
The early attempts to describe professional
competencies within student affairs tended
toward the general. Newton and Richardson
(1976) asked current student affairs administrators to rate the competencies demanded
for success in their work, finding the highest
rated competencies to be "general ones, applicable to any work settings," including leadership, interpersonal communications, and
developing an awareness of self and others
(Saidla, 1990, p. 4). Ostroth (1981) found that
just four competencies were viewed as being
"absolutely essential" (p. 8): the ability to work
cooperatively with others, to exhibit interpersonal and communication skills, to work well
with a diverse range of people, and to display
leadership skills.
Despite a changing social, political, and
technological landscape, Lovell and Kosten
(2000) found that little had changed in the
field's understanding of professional competencies in the three decades preceding publication of their meta-analysis of 23 studies.
Skills and traits such as personal integrity, cooperation, administration, management, and
facilitation dominated the literature. But these
competencies do little to describe the functional responsibilities associated with student
affairs work as it is experienced on a practical level. Further, Lovell and Kosten found a
surprising lack of consideration for emerging and future needs within the field. Topics
such as technology, changing demographics,
and assessment were rarely mentioned in the
23 documents they examined. Further, private

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2

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