UVM 1969-1998: Reflections on a Program and a Profession

Robert H. Minetti

The year was 1969. Wing-Davis-Wilks had just opened. Harris-Millis, while still unnamed, was under construction. The Living/Learning Center was in the planning phase. Students were housed in rented buildings at the Sheraton-Cupola Motel, the Jeanne Mance Nursing School, and a building at Fort Ethan Allen. Converse Hall opened as the first coed residence hall at UVM and had a female graduate student as its Resident Advisor. Most of the women’s halls had "house mothers," but that model was rapidly giving way to women graduate Resident Advisors. Jackie Gribbons was the Dean of Women, and Gloria Thompson was the Assistant Dean and Director of the women’s residence halls. Dick Powers was the Dean of Men, and the men’s halls were under the supervision of Assistant Dean Michael Lapides. Since Converse was coed, nobody knew to which Assistant Dean the Resident Advisor should report. Hal Woods was hired as the first director of the Volunteer Programs Office, an innovative program at the time, and Rich Hansen became the first full-time, professional Director of Student Activities. The College of Education received its second class of graduate students pursuing degrees in Counseling and Student Personnel. Most of my fellow classmates wanted to consider it to be the first class - since only two students entered in 1968!

In 1969 student life at the University was in transition. The big event of the fall was Homecoming, complete with floats that took weeks to assemble in the dairy barn. Many students started demanding that the University increase the diversity among the faculty, staff, and student body. Meanwhile, Greek letter organizations protested the cancellation of the traditional, and alarmingly racist, Kake Walk Weekend. In the spring the green was filled with angry students protesting the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, making other issues on campus seem irrelevant.

While "student personnel workers" existed on American campuses for decades before the unrest of the 1960s, some might argue quite effectively that what we call student affairs did not become a profession until that time. Those of us graduate students who entered UVM in 1969 were about to become part of a significant evolution in college administration. A fundamental change in the relationship between the university and its students had just begun. In 1969, I was a first-year graduate student in UVM’s Counseling and Student Personnel program. Like many others in student affairs at that time, I struggled to help define what the field was all about. From 1969-1998 I would see student affairs go through many changes as it evolved to become the indispensable part of higher education that it is today.

To understand where student affairs was going, one must first understand where it had begun. Prior to World War II, the American university resembled the traditional English-based institution of higher education. Faculty were "local" in their orientation and participated in the life of the campus both inside and outside of their classrooms. In addition to fulfilling their roles as instructors, faculty were the coaches, the career advisors, the counselors, and, in some cases, the resident faculty advisors. However, the need for research centers focusing on the advancement of science and the professions (law, medicine, engineering, and business) fundamentally changed the American college after World War II. Students on the GI Bill, in addition to being older and seasoned by their military experiences, were focused on developing professional skills and competencies. Federal research dollars became available and contributed to the change in faculty orientation from "local" to "cosmopolitan." Faculty focused on their academic disciplines and became less interested in the extra-curricular life of the campus. A more Germanic university emerged.

When the post-war baby boomers arrived in the mid-1960s, they brought a dramatically different set of experiences and expectations from their GI predecessors. The relative affluence of the 1960s presented higher education with a rapidly growing population of students who could afford to attend college full-time, live on campus, and participate fully in campus life. The expectations of students were in conflict with those of the faculty, as the faculty were less likely to see coaching soccer, advising fraternities, or attending social events as being within their scope of responsibility. Therefore, universities had to rely on others to meet the emerging expectations of students. To meet these challenges, some universities, especially those in the mid-west with large colleges of education, began to train people to provide services and co-curricular programs for students. While the profession which we now refer to as "student personnel," "student affairs," or "student development" began in the 1930s with the creation of the Student Personnel Point of View (American Council on Education, 1937), most colleges and universities look to the events of the 1960s as the point where their student life staffs began to take shape.

When I entered UVM in 1969, higher education students did not have their own academic department. Rather, we followed the counseling curriculum, were encouraged to participate in a graduate assistantship (most were in the residence halls), and took the seminar taught by the Dean of Men which focused on student personnel in higher education. The national events of the day (the Viet Nam war, the Cambodian invasion, the Kent State killings) coupled with controversial local issues (Kake Walk, parietals, alcohol policies) provided us with a hands-on environment for learning and a de facto curriculum that challenged us then and sustains us now. The issues of the day confronted our values and beliefs, forcing us to address difficult issues from the very beginning.

During the second year of our graduate study, Ken Saurman began teaching in the department. He quickly earned the support, friendship, and academic interest of Bob Nash. Professors Saurman and Nash developed a core of courses which began to distinguish the higher education students from the counseling students. Soon the academic team was complete with the addition of John Moore and Chuck Case, who brought their interest in management systems theory to the developing curriculum. With Jackie Gribbons’ introduction of the practicum experience, the program was on its way to becoming the nationally recognized program that it is today.

When we "hit the job market" in 1972, we did not have the network that greets today’s graduates. Rather, we huddled in Jackie’s hotel room at the NASPA conference and compared notes. We marveled at the large programs with their "alumni events" held in rented ballrooms. We made due with a few gallons of Almadene which were kept on ice in Jackie’s hotel room tub! However, Ken and Jackie, along with Gloria Thompson and John Moore, persisted in presenting us to their colleagues. We all managed to get jobs and launch our professional careers.

In the almost thirty years that UVM has prepared student affairs professionals, the program has grown to be one of the country’s best. Not only has the academic curriculum become one of the most sophisticated and challenging, but the student affairs division has become one of the most admired. The synergy between the classroom and the profession has been remarkable.

My connection with UVM continued through my doctoral studies at Michigan State University. The questions of what competencies were required of entry level student affairs professionals and where the competencies were learned had perplexed many of us in the field. I decided to investigate these two questions in my dissertation. Through affiliation with UVM, MSU, and Bowling Green (a program selected because it required all students to hold a paid assistantship), I had the good fortune of having the faculties at several universities test my hypotheses relative to professional competencies, and their relationship to classroom instruction and practical experience. The UVM faculty were most supportive, and assisted my research by allowing the program (then called "Organization and Human Resource Development") to be included in my study.

What emerged as an important finding of my research was that faculty, students, and practitioners all endorsed a graduate training program that combined academic activities with the experiences of graduate work assistantships. UVM seemed to provide a well-developed blend of both experiences. Most of the graduate students were engaged in paid assistantships that had a direct connection to the academic program. Moreover, the graduate students at UVM had the undivided attention of the graduate faculty. They did not have to compete for attention as did Master’s degree students at institutions that offered doctoral programs.

Then, as now, the UVM graduate was well prepared to enter the student affairs profession. In the 1970s, student affairs professionals developed their own place on the university campus. Most colleges and universities developed divisions of student affairs with a dean or vice president reporting directly to the president. As student bodies became more diverse, the student affairs profession became increasingly important to the mission of our universities. Increasing numbers of women, students of color, older students, and international students presented new challenges which universities were not prepared to manage. Student affairs staffs offered the services and activities that were rapidly becoming essential to the "collegiate experience." The changing attitudes towards sexual expression, drug and alcohol use, and the students’ role in university governance created opportunities for us to use our counseling and student development skills to advance our profession. Slowly we earned the respect and confidence of our faculty colleagues. On many campuses our activities and programs were seen as legitimate educational opportunities and experiences.

The "zero population growth" movement of the early 1970s had a significant impact on our profession in the late 1980s. For the first time since World War I, the pool of college-aged people began to shrink. For many universities, enrollment issues became critical. Our tuition-dependent institutions realized that attracting and retaining students was critical to the academic and financial health of the academy. Academic leaders quickly learned that students were attracted not only to the strength and reputation of academic programs, but also to the quality of residence halls and residence life, the variety of student activities, the quality of food services, the recreation programs and facilities, the career opportunities for graduating seniors, and campus safety. Today the student affairs profession is increasingly seen as central to the mission of the university. Without a well-developed and comprehensive campus life program with sophisticated student support services, universities will not achieve their goals. We have come of age as a profession and as valued colleagues of our faculty counterparts.

Interestingly, as we become more central to the mission of the academy, I suspect that we will begin to lose some of our professional autonomy. When the original deans of men and women reported to the chief academic officers, we formed our separate identities and defined our independent relationship to the academy. However, as we relate more collegially with our faculty counterparts, we will lose some of our independence. This is a good thing. This emerging relationship with faculty sheds some of the old stereotypes associated with student affairs professionals. No longer perceived as the touchy-feely hand-holders, we are valued as educators who genuinely and legitimately complement the learning that takes place in the classroom. My advice to colleagues is to embrace and encourage this new relationship. If we truly are interested in educating the "whole person," we need to be on the same team as the academic staff, not a supplement to it. Loss of a special identity will require some degree of professional mourning, but it will bring forth a new character of professional that will complement student learning and create a synergy between the curriculum and the co-curriculum, which has not been experienced to date in higher education.

Our profession has come a long way since its infancy in the 1930s. It has survived a number of transitions and must continue to change with the emerging and changing needs of our students. The UVM program has experienced its own transitions, but has emerged from those transitions as a stronger program, one that enjoys a national reputation built upon the successes and accomplishments of its graduates. Our graduates are helping our profession to change and grow in ways that were anticipated by only a few dedicated student affairs professionals back in 1969. For their vision and dedication to our profession, I give thanks.

Reference

American Council on Education (1937). Student personnel point of view. In Mueller, K.H., (1961). Student Personnel Work in Higher Education, Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin. p. 56.

Robert H. Minetti ('71) is Vice President for Student and Administrative Services at Bentley College in Waltham, MA. He received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University where he worked on the Residence Life staff. Prior to Bentley, he was Assistant Vice President for Campus Life at the Rochester Institute of Technology.