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Running head: COMPETENCY GOAL REVIEW

Competency Goal Review

Freddie Bourne

Montclair State University

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COMPETENCY GOAL REVIEW
Competency Goal Review

As my fieldwork has ended, I began to reflect on the NASPA / ACPA competency area that

would assumedly been useful in order to be successful in the Office of Disability Services. When

I arrived at the Office of Disability Services, it was slowing gaining speed and attention on the

Stevens’ campus. Still, the department was not being seen as important to students, whereas

more attention has been geared towards programs offered by Office of Residence Life and

Student Life. My objective when coming into this department was to bring more light to

disability services as an important sector of the college campus and to raise more awareness

through creating new programming initiatives, collaborating with external organizations outside

of Stevens, and to establish meaningful one-on-one relationship with a handful of students that

utilize the office on a regular basis.

Before beginning my Capstone project, I mentioned that the two competency goals that I felt

most comfortable with was Technology and Advising and Supporting. Technology was not as

prominent in this fieldwork, unless in conjunction with research on disability services at other

universities and facial differences Otherwise, technology was utilized when creating marketing

and promotional tools to help advertise the program through Canva and e-mail. As well,

technology was used to book the reservation for the program through the university’s events

management office. It was the intent to use technology to create a campus map of ADA

assessible entrances and building with elevators. While I worked with a number of different

online programs, none of them were fruitful due to cost, glitches in the system, or not working

properly. As an alternative, I used an existing map of the campus and created a rough drawing

and labeled buildings with any ADA accessibilities. From there, I brought these drawings to Mr.

Gehman, whom mentioned he would make a note to present this to the communications
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department that oversees creating the current online map of campus.

Advising and Supporting was explored in several ways in this fieldwork. The definition of

“[…] advising and support to individuals and groups through direction, feedback, critique,

referral, and guidance” (ACPA / NASPA, p. 14) was critical in a majority of my work outside of

the actual program. Each Friday, I would meet one-on-one with four students to go over their

weeks in classes, their plans for the weekend, any anxieties or issues they have with professors or

peers, and create study plans for the following week to keep them on track. While I have had

experience advising my resident assistants and students on my floor, working with students with

disabilities needs extra attention. For example, one of the students I met with is on the autism

spectrum and tends to be very closed off and has moments where they cannot concentrate. This

made me more cognizant to be patient during our conversations, make more direct eye contact,

be aware of my body language, and to also speak slowly and be willing to repeat information.

During these one-on-ones, my supervisor would periodically be in the room with me and would

provide me feedback about how to approach the individual conversations – such as one student

needs to be asked more follow-up questions because they may not be telling the whole story or

may be hiding something

Personally, I did not feel that I had much of a chance to explore Social Justice and Inclusion.

While my supervisor mentioned that I showed extreme interest and passion in this competency, I

am unsure if I have any way of showcasing that I could accomplish this minus executing the

program working with Philly Phases – an organization that is focused on promoting awareness of

facial differences. While it shined some light on the different types of facial differences and how

it affects day-to-day functions, I feel that I could have created more opportunity working with

additional organizations or collaborating with the diversity education in Student Life on campus.
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I look forward to challenging myself in this competency in my future in higher education by

branching out to additional offices and professionals to get different perspectives and create

more beneficial and intentional programming. One of my goals with this competency is to

present at a national conference on a subject of social justice. While I had the opportunity to

present at the Rutgers University’s Student Affairs Conference on diversity of thought, I would

like to present on either student with disabilities or another diversity initiative to a wider

audience.

My supervisor and I never got a chance to really touch on Law, Policy, and Governance. We

spoke about some situations around people with disabilities such as public transportation and

civil engineering in terms of creating cuts in curbs on the city streets; but these conversations

were more personal thoughts of how the state governments in New Jersey and New York do not

see it as a high priority to fund.

Assessment, Evaluation, and Research and Organizational and Human Resources are two

competency that I feel are vital to be successful in any field. Both my supervisor and I agreed

that I need more improvement in the latter. My supervisor mentioned in one of our conversations

that this may not be an issue if I was able to work on this fieldwork full-time. However, I believe

that my evaluation made me acknowledge that my organization skills needed improvement.

Some of the areas of the fieldwork was done, while in time, sometimes rushed such as the

fieldwork logs and the mid-term evaluation. I took ownership for lacking in this area and feel

that I made strides to make sure to prioritize more efficiently. My supervisor and I spoke about

this competency in more detail, where I asked for his advice on how to better prioritize my time,

practice better organization skills, and how to balance personal and work life. Without question,

this competency I plan to work on in my next position as an Area Coordinator at University of

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Southern Indiana.
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References

ACPA: College Student Educators International & NASPA − Student Affairs Administrators in

Higher Education. ACPA/NASPA professional competency areas for student affairs

practitioners. Washington, DC. https://www.naspa.org/images/uploads/main/ACPA_NASPA

_Professional_Competencies_FINAL.pdf