HESA students
Meet members of The Vermont Connection.

The University of Vermont's Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration (HESA) graduate program is among the top programs in the country preparing student affairs professionals to collaboratively transform higher education. 

We welcome full-time and part-time students with various levels of experience and backgrounds. We enroll a relatively small cohort each year to promote strong and enduring relationships with fellow colleagues, award-winning faculty, and campus partners. Committed to the future of the nation’s higher education system, we challenge students to make their graduate education an unparalleled learning experience.

 

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HESA Program Mission, Core Values, and Learning Outcomes

Mission Statement

To develop practitioner scholars through academic and professional preparation whose commitment to reflection and social justice will transform higher education and student affairs in the spirit of The Vermont Connection.

Core Values

Academic and Professional Preparation

Through partnerships between faculty and student affairs professionals, we promote excellence through academic and professional rigor. We cultivate the knowledge and skills necessary for success in the profession through the synergy between classroom and experiential learning as conceptualized by philosopher and UVM alumnus John Dewey.

Social Justice

We are committed to pursuing social justice as both a process and a goal to dismantle individual, institutional, and societal oppression. Grounded in the ethos of HESA, UVM, and the profession, we strive to transform student affairs for more equitable and inclusive opportunities in higher education.

Reflection

We foster reflection of self, others, and contexts as a critical component of growth in professional practice. Through critical consciousness we strive to improve higher education and student affairs with an aim toward promoting individual, institutional, and societal change.

The Vermont Connection

The Vermont Connection is a collegial network of former and current students, faculty, and student affairs professionals with the shared vision of uplifting community through relationships. The spirit of The Vermont Connection weaves together the history, present, and future of UVM HESA. 

Learning Outcomes

As reflected our mission statement and core values, the four program learning outcomes embrace the ACPA/NASPA professional competencies expected of emerging professionals in higher education and student affairs administration.

  • Understand, analyze, and apply the evolving body of scholarship and knowledge that guides student affairs practice.
  • Develop, analyze, and apply professional skills and values that guide student affairs practice.
  • Recognize, analyze, and act upon individual, institutional, and societal inequities in the pursuit of social justice and inclusion.
  • Synthesize knowledge, practice, and social justice and inclusion of self, others, and context.