The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2 - 110

Craig W. Beebe * Torry Brouillard-Bruce * Carolyn Golz * Stephen K. Harrison * Shigeo J. Iwamiya

The early attempts to describe
professional competencies within
student affairs tended toward the
general . . . . including leadership,
interpersonal communications, and
developing an awareness of self
and others .

craft a professional development plan? How
should pre-professionals and graduate students prepare for entry into the field? How
do we know which of these competencies
are critical to success at various levels of the
organization, and how are in-career housing
professionals being prepared for their next
professional steps? In order to answer these
questions, we turn to the literature.
Relative to hiring practices, Kretovics
(2002) found that employers seeking entrylevel staff valued assistantship experience
above more concrete skills (such as those
related to academic research) and dispositions (such as a commitment to diversity).
On the development of current housing staff,
Englin (2001) found that housing supervisors
saw staff appraisal protocols as valuable while
residence hall directors under their supervision viewed the process as ineffective. Among
administrative leadership, Brandel (1995)
found that senior housing officers (SHOs)
rated their own professional expertise below
the level that they themselves believed was
required of the position for two-thirds of the
competencies studied.

110

In order to close this apparent skills gap
and provide appropriate learning and professional development opportunities for housing
professionals across the career spectrum, we
need a deeper understanding of the competencies required of housing professionals. Dunkel
and Schreiber (1992) published the first study
of professional competencies specific to the
student housing profession. But the competency movement is not particularly new and
certainly not specific to student housing. We
explore the evolution of professional competencies with an emphasis on college and university housing, beginning with a review of the
competency movement and concluding with
an exploration of contemporary literature and
practice within college and university housing.
Brief attention is given to competencies within
the larger field of student affairs in order to
place housing professional competencies in
context. We focus on empirical research and
on the functional role of agreed-upon professional competencies vis-à-vis the Association
of College and University Housing OfficersInternational (ACUHO-I) National Housing
Training Institute (NHTI) competency-based
curriculum (Dunkel, Grimm, & Schreiber,
1991) and the more recent ACUHO-I body of
knowledge (Cawthon, Schreiber, & Associates,
2012).

REWIND: A BRIEF HISTORY
OF THE PROFESSIONAL
COMPETENCY MOVEMENT
The first competency-based performance
models may go back as far as the medieval
guilds, when apprentices worked alongside
master tradespeople, becoming credentialed

T h e J o u r n a l o f C o l l e g e a n d U n i v e r s i t y St u d e n t H o u s i n g

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2

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