Journal of College & University Student Housing Volume 50, No. 1 - 45

The Declining Role of Practitioners
Sadly, the most important question remains unanswered: Is it actually
important for housing practitioners to be able to conduct and generate
original research in the contemporary landscape of campus housing?
Or is it enough for housing practitioners to simply be good consumers
of academic research to improve their housing programs?
further support this by building skill development workshops and facilitating the conversion
of existing work into research manuscripts (e.g., some conference programs).
Professional associations should emphasize the tangible professional development
outcomes of writing for publication by publicizing the unique and beneficial skill
development resulting from this effort.
Institutionally, many graduate programs have a research-centric thesis component
and should therefore set up their thesis programs in a way that makes students publishing
their research a realistic and manageable end result post-graduation. Additionally,
interdisciplinary groups of faculty, staff, and students would provide an environment
for actively generating scholarship along with a supportive and developmental
environment for growth in the research area.
From a departmental level, department leadership could create a collateral assignment
or committee to be balanced within the other collateral assignments so that it
becomes a job expectation. Such structures are already well established in many departments
as a tool for professional development; the only additional consideration
needed is balancing the time commitments appropriately with the individual's other
collateral assignments and committee work.
On the individual level, practitioners actively writing for publication should invite
colleagues who have not made such a contribution to explore ways they can gain experience
in scholarly writing. Such efforts will aid in normalizing and demystifying the
publishing process. Even if institutions design their graduate programs to position
graduate students to publish theses (as previously mentioned), ultimately it is up to
the individual to do so post-graduation. Converting a thesis into a publishable research
manuscript may take time and energy already in short supply, but much of the work is
already done.
CONCLUSION
This study revealed a dramatic decrease in practitioners authoring articles over the
first 50 years of JCUSH's history. Such a trend is not surprising, given the growing
dissatisfaction with research (Carpenter & Stimpson, 2007) and lack of available
time to engage with research (Sriram & Oster, 2012) in the contemporary campus
housing landscape. We offer many suggestions for further research and tangible
strategies to facilitate environments empowering practitioners to publish. The recommendations
counteract the apparent decline in value for practitioners generating
housing scholarship, which, unless addressed, poses the biggest threat to continued
practitioner-generated scholarship. 
42 The Journal of College and University Student Housing
Journal of College & University Student Housing Volume 50, No. 1

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