Global Competencies in Student Affairs/Services Professionals: A Literature Synthesis.

Students' interactions with student affairs personnel should provide opportunities for students to reinforce their global citizenship, since many opportunities to practice such citizenship are provided in the co-curricular (e.g., service learning, leadership development, negotiation of differences). As such, student affairs personnel need to be able to demonstrate their own global competencies in order to best serve the diversity of students enrolled in universities and to reinforce students' global citizenship. However, global competencies may not be so easily understood or identified. Using grounded theory, this article presents a synthesis of a broad literature review in order to identify and evaluate global competencies that could be applied to the profession of student affairs. In addition, this article illustrates the complexities that may come from determining whether expected competencies are categorized as awareness, knowledge, or skill.  As international trade agreements spread and events around the world appear to illustrate that boundaries are permeable, the need to educate students, faculty, and staff about the impact of globalization and the nature of global citizenship becomes increasingly important (Love and Estanek, 2004). In some venues of higher education in the United States, institutions have sought to refine curriculum and faculty preparation so that faculty and students alike can embody characteristics of global citizenship. Global citizenship, although its importance is not disputed, has been difficult to define (Hunter, 2004) and moreover; difficult to operationalize. In one effort, the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU Fitzpatrick and Whillock, 1993; Freitag, 1999; Neff, Walker, Smith, & Creedon, 1999). While it is commonly understand that the majority of university students' learning will occur within general education classes and within their chosen discipline, these students' interactions with student affairs personnel should provide opportunities to reinforce their global citizenship, since many opportunities to practice such citizenship such as service learning, community service, leadership development, and peer advising are provided in the co-curricular (Kuh, et al., 2005; Love & Estanek, 2004; Manning et al., 2006; Sandeen & Barr, 2006). As such, student affairs personnel need to demonstrate their own global competencies in order to best serve the diversity of students enrolled in colleges and universities and in order to reinforce their learning of global citizenship (Hamerick et al., 2002; Love & Estanek, 2004; Sandeen & Barr, 2006). However, prior to being able to identify such competencies, one must be able to articulate what those competencies are. Using grounded theory, this article presents a synthesis of a broad literature review in order to identify and evaluate global competencies that could be applied to the profession of student affair. Review of Literature In order to identify global competencies, a grounded theory analysis of a comprehensive study of literature was completed to determine key characteristics of global citizenship. …

Field of study: Education