The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2 - 115

The Competent Housing Officer: Evolving Perspectives

their graduate preparation work, their personal values, and the needs of the divisions
in which they worked. Burns recommended
placing more effort on staff development
through cross-training, or "transitional educational modules" (p. 11), whereby staff could
craft personal development plans to develop
knowledge and skills across multiple student
affairs functions.
Indeed, Dunkel and Schreiber (1992) recognized a "need to introduce the [housing
and residence life] field to undergraduates,
to deal with new professionals' expectations,
to confront occupational factors that promote
burnout, and the need for 'life-long' career
development" (p. 19). To that end, they were
the first authors in the empirical literature to
recognize the particular needs of housing professionals as distinct from the larger body of
student affairs administrators, asserting that
housing administrators should place more
intentional effort toward directed professional
development plans. Dunkel and Schreiber's
brief article opened the door to a new body
of function-specific research in the student
housing field.
Still, Dunkel and Schreiber's (1992) efforts
to identify housing officer competencies were
limited to the extant literature of the time,
none of which offered specific insight into the
particular experiences of housing professionals. They drew 49 competencies from an extensive literature review, asking then-current
SHOs to rank them in terms of their importance to the success of campus housing staff.
Still, housing officer competencies were conceptualized in general terms, including items
such as interpersonal communication skills,

staff selection, and motivation. Dunkel and
Schreiber's findings would directly inform the
50 competencies that became the foundation
of the ACUHO-I National Housing Training
Institute (NHTI) beginning in 1992 (Dunkel
et al., 1991). Those competencies were later
expanded to 57 based on the work of Porter
(2005a, 2005b).
Though described as referring to seniorlevel skills (Dunkel et al., 1991), Dunkel and
Schreiber's (1992) original study asked SHOs
to rank the importance each competency has
to the success of the "effective housing professional" more broadly (p. 21). While extending the competency conversation within the
housing field, this ambiguity left unanswered
questions concerning the breadth and depth of
competency achievement required for success
in the housing field at the graduate student,
new professional, mid-career, and senior/executive levels.
As higher education, and consequently
student housing, grew in the following years,
little empirical research emerged to extend
our understanding of professional competencies within the housing field. Problematically,
housing is perhaps the largest recruiter of entry-level staff within student affairs, yet the field
offers few opportunities for advancement to
mid- and senior-level positions (Dunkel & Schreiber, 1992). It is unsurprising, then, that it
would be graduate students themselves whose
work, primarily through dissertation-level
research, would shape the emerging conceptions of housing professional competencies.
We consider these developments through the
themes of specifying functional competencies
and professional development planning.

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

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