Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs

Effectively address the challenges of equity and inclusion on campus

The long-awaited second edition, Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs: Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion, introduces an updated model of student affairs competence that reflects the professional competencies identified by ACPA and NASPA (2015) and offers a valuable approach to dealing effectively with increasingly complex multicultural issues on campus. To reflect the significance of social justice, the updated model of multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills now includes multicultural action and advocacy and speaks directly to the need for enhanced perspectives, tools, and strategies to create inclusive and equitable campuses.

This book offers a fresh approach and new strategies for student affairs professionals to enhance their practice; useful guidelines and revised core competencies provide a framework for everyday challenges, best practices that advance the ability of student affairs professionals to create multicultural change on their campuses, and case studies that allow readers to consider and apply essential awareness, knowledge, skills, and action applied to common student affairs situations.

Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs: Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion will allow professionals to:

• Examine the updated and revised dynamic model of student affairs competence
• Learn how multicultural competence translates into effective and efficacious practice
• Understand the inextricable connections between multicultural competence and social justice
• Examine the latest research and practical implications
• Explore the impacts of practices on assessment, advising, ethics, teaching, administration, technology, and more
• Learn tools and strategies for creating multicultural change, equity, and inclusion on campus

Understanding the changes taking place on campus today and developing the competencies to make individual and systems change is essential to the role of student affairs professional. What is needed are new ways of thinking and innovative strategies and approaches to how student affairs professionals interact with students, train campus faculty and staff, and structure their campuses. Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs: Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion provides guidance for the evolving realities of higher education.

Foreword xi

Preface xv

About the Authors xxv

Acknowledgments xxix

1 Multicultural Competence and Social Justice in Student Affairs: Parallels and Intersections 1

2 Multicultural Competence, Social Justice, and Inclusion in Student Affairs 23

3 Multicultural Competence in Theory and Translation 63

4 Multicultural Competence in Administration and Leadership 85

5 Multicultural Competence in Helping, Supporting, and Advising 123

6 Multicultural Competence in Assessment, Evaluation, and Research 153

7 Multicultural Competence in Ethics, Law, and Policy 181

8 Multicultural Competence in Teaching and Training 207

9 Multicultural Competence in Technology 235

10 Reflection and Practice through Case Studies 267

Case 1 – Escalating Tensions (Written by Durgham Alyasiri) 272

Case 2 – Being the Only One . . .(Written by Kristian Contreras) 274

Case 3 – Let the Diversity Committee Handle This (Written by Jhane Cummings) 276

Case 4 – Campus Diversity Work: Strategic or Immediate? (Written by Lacretia Johnson Flash) 278

Case 5 – If We Can’t See Native Americans on Campus, Are They Really on Campus? (Written by John Garland [Choctaw]) 281

Case 6 – Self-Reflection. Now What? (Written by Henry W. Lewis III) 284

Case 7 – Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day (Written by John Wesley Lowery) 286

Case 8 – HBCU Legacy and I Still Don’t Belong (Written by Robert T. Palmer and Jalil Bishop) 288

Case 9 – Who’s Training Whom on Social Justice and Inclusion? (Written by Rosemary J. Perez) 290

Case 10 – Civility Is Not My Goal(Written by Robert Reason) 292

Case 11 – Anti-Jewish or Harmless Prank? (Written by Amy L. Reynolds) 295

Case 12 – When a Speaker’s Comment Derails Diversity Training (Written by Windi Natsuko Sasaki) 296

Case 13 – The Language of Competence (Written by Cha Ron K. Sattler-Leblanc and Cecilia Grugan) 299

Case 14 – Perils of Technology (Written by John Sauter, Jr.) 302

Case 15 – Mixing International Students and Politics (Written by Hannah Suh) 304

Case 16 – Classroom Hostilities (Written by Sherry Watt, Laila McCloud, Steve Malvaso, and Charles Martin-Stanley) 307

Case 17 – Inclusion Pushback (Written by Matthew J. Ardila-Weigand) 310

11 Conclusion 313

References 331

Name Index 371

Subject Index 381

RAECHELE L. POPE is an associate dean and associate professor of higher education and student affairs in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.

AMY L. REYNOLDS is an associate professor of counseling psychology in the department of Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.

JOHN A. MUELLER is a professor in the Department of Student Affairs in Higher Education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs: Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion is the long-awaited revision and expansion of the 2004 groundbreaking book, Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs. Although the literature and practice on social justice and inclusion in higher education has matured since the initial book was published, these issues have grown in complexity, and campus administrators still struggle to create multicultural and socially just campuses that welcome, include, and engage all students. More often than not, practitioners, administrators, and faculty still receive limited or ineffective training that helps them to actually develop the awareness, knowledge, and skills to work effectively with all students. Moreover, they receive even less training that would help them address the organizational, structural, power, and privilege issues that prevent the creation of multicultural and socially just campuses. Fortunately, Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs: Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion examines all of these issues, guiding readers who want to develop their multicultural and social justice competencies and enact change at the individual, group, and institutional levels.

Like its classic predecessor, this book presents a comprehensive portrait of both the competencies necessary for effective student affairs practice and how each of those competencies must be infused with multicultural awareness, knowledge, skills, and actions. Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs: Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion offers an updated version of the Dynamic Model of Student Affairs Competence—the principal conceptual element of the book—which is now more closely aligned with the ACPA NASPA Professional Competency Areas for Student Affairs Educators. This book also highlights the action steps—built on requisite awareness, knowledge, and skills within each competency—that are needed to create the multicultural campuses we seek.

Written by Raechele Pope, Amy Reynolds, and John Mueller—all recognized by their peers as authorities on multicultural competence, social justice, and creating multicultural campus environments—this important book is based on the authors’ years of practice, teaching, research, and consulting Comprehensive in scope, Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs: Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion contains the most current theory, useful models, and research-based findings. Additionally, this book offers practical strategies, best practice exemplars, and case studies to help the reader more clearly recognize both the challenges and potential solutions.