Professional development for mid-level women in student affairs: LAWS Cohort

Abstract

This Education Leadership Portfolio (ELP) documents my efforts to create a new program for women in mid-level administrative positions at the University of Delaware (UD) through the Division of Student Life’s Staff Development Committee. This program is designed to address the lack of diversity within leadership roles, especially the under-representation of women. It aims at preparing women to become leaders through a professional development (PD) program referred to as the Leading Aspiring Women to Success (LAWS). The goals of the program are to 1) facilitate the exploration of training strategies for advancement and 2) develop women as leaders in preparation for Senior-level Student Affairs Officers (SSAO) positions to address institutional lack of diversity. Designing a PD program centering on women leaders is justified. A demographic analysis of the Division of Student Life staff supports the national trends locally; women in the Division are under-represented in senior positions. Mid-level women who work in the Division of Student Life will be asked to apply to the program. Over the course of one year, the program will explore various topics to better prepare participants for applying for and successfully obtaining SSAO positions. ☐ Program topics were identified from a literature review and needs analysis survey. General learning objectives were created for each topic, namely, that participants will be able to: 1) determine their own leadership style by exploring various leadership style, including those informed by feminist leadership theory; 2) examine their own self-efficacy within their professional setting; and 3) develop an understanding of how to use the following seven competencies: understand how to build talent within your team, understand how to create and maintain effective partnerships, understand how to build team cohesion, understand fiscal responsibility and financial planning/budgeting, understand how to do strategic planning, understand how to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within the organization, and understand how to align departmental work with the institutional mission. These objectives guided the design of the PD curriculum and corresponding materials and were established in collaboration with co-facilitators who are content experts for a topic addressed in the PD. Furthermore, a facilitators’ guide was created to support co-facilitators in implementing the curriculum. The guide describes the framework used to design PD sessions, specifies the roles of the lead facilitator and co-facilitators, and outlines teaching and learning principles that underlie instructional decisions. ☐ Once an initial LAWS Cohort PD curriculum was designed, a focus group was administered with potential participants of the PD, a potential participant’s supervisor, and an external expert. Findings of the focus group demonstrated that the program was meaningful to potential participants and their supervisors. However, they did offer suggestions for enhancing the value of the PD. Many suggestions were subsequently incorporated into the final curriculum design. In conclusion, this work demonstrated the potential of the LAWS Cohort as an improvement strategy for addressing the problem associated with the lack of diversity within SSAO positions, particularly as it relates to the under-representation of women in leadership roles. The LAWS Cohort could be a meaningful PD program for the Division of Student Life that offers one solution to addressing the problem.