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Office Hours:
Monday - Thursday:
9am to 5pm
Friday:
8am to 12pm
Closed Weekends

Student Development Office,
SSC 210[map]

Main Office Phone: (949) 582-4616
Fax: (949) 347-1997

Audra DiPadova
Director of Student Development
(949) 582-4213

Erin Long
Inter-Club Council Advisor
Senior Administrative Assistant
(949) 582-4290

Natalie Hart
Office Assistant
(949) 582-4442

Office Hours:
Monday - Thursday
9am to 5pm
Friday
8am-12pm
Closed Weekends

Saddleback ASG Seal
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Student Learning Outcomes (SLO)

ASG Student Learning Outcomes, 2010-2011
The Leadership Learning Lab -- Educating the Whole Student

Student Development Philosophy

The Student Development Office is committed to the philosophy that students who participate in the life of a college excel academically, personally and professionally. Students who participate in co-curricular activities, building relationships with faculty, staff, and peers are most likely to stay in school and persist to graduation. The Student Development Office therefore supports the leadership and personal development of our students through opportunities such as the Associated Student Government (ASG) and campus clubs.

It is our mission to attend to the whole person in supporting student development and lifelong success.  The eminent Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, in his research concerning the cognitive abilities associated with leadership, asserts that if we are to thrive personally and professionally we must develop five mental capacities: a disciplined mind; a synthesizing mind; a creating mind; a respectful mind; and an ethical mind.   The Student Development program, along with Saddleback College’s top rated academic offerings, athletic programs, and other co-curricular experiences, all serve to offer every student the opportunity to cultivate these cognitive characteristics of excellent leadership.

The Student Development Office’s programmatic foundation is built upon three cornerstones within which we categorize all of our learning lab experiences (lessons, experiences, training opportunities, reflections, etc.):

• Self-Awareness, Personal Development, and Life Skills
• Leadership and Communication
• Social Justice and Responsibility

Why Student Development?

The growing body of scholarly research devoted to the relationship between student development and student success clearly demonstrates that the co-curricular is an essential partner with the academic experience.

 Vincent Tinto asserts, “students are more likely to persist and graduate in settings that involve them as valued members of the institution.  The frequency and quality of contact with faculty, staff, and other students in an important independent predictor of student persistence.  This is true for large and small, rural and urban, public and private, and 2-year and 4-year colleges and universities.”

 A 1996 report from The American College Personnel Association pushes this argument further, articulating that “institutions want to demonstrate that they are paying attention to instruction that transcends the classroom experience — education that encompasses the whole collegiate experience — and thus articulate institutional learning competencies for all students." To this point, “[t]he concepts of 'learning,' 'personal development,' and 'student development' are inextricably intertwined and inseparable." To make this connection function at the highest level, student affairs departments, such as student development, must articulate student learning outcomes to be a part of this institutional conversation.

Student Development Advisement Philosophy

Student Development staff advise the Associated Student Government (ASG) and provide significant support to all campus student clubs and organizations.  Utilizing our articulated student learning outcomes (below), we work with students individually and in group settings to realize their full potential as emerging leaders.  To achieve this ultimate goal of supporting student success we’ve articulated a multi-step co-curricular advisement process: 

PART I (Fall):

• Orient, educate, and train:
• Presentation of Student Learning Outcomes
• Expectation setting
• Initial leadership training (retreats)
• Introduction to personal development
• Development of personal rapport, mutually learning about personal goals
• Significant support for initial endeavors:
• Guided program and event development/management
• Potential for success and failure, challenges and opportunities (usually all):
• Planned events, programs, and initiatives in execution will fall on the spectrum of “requiring significant improvement” to “requiring minimal improvement”
• Process success and failure, challenges and opportunities:
• Planned events, programs, and initiatives will be assessed and discussed.
• Devise revised plans for future endeavors
• Guided reflection and assessments

PART II (Spring):

• Minimal guidance (with thorough support) for secondary endeavors
• Potential for success and failure, challenges and opportunities (usually all):
• Planned events, programs, and initiatives in execution will fall on the spectrum of “requiring significant improvement” to “requiring minimal improvement”
• Process success and failure, challenges and opportunities:
• Planned events, programs, and initiatives will be assessed and discussed.
• Devise revised plans for future endeavors
• Guided reflection and assessments, some cumulative

Student Development Student Learning Outcomes (SLO)

As a part of a concentrated effort to build a coherent and robust student development program at Saddleback College -- inclusive of leadership, personal, and professional development – the Student Office will formulate and assess student learning outcomes yearly.  We believe that student learning outcomes provide the necessary framework by which our efforts, goals, mission, and objectives are made intelligible to all involved in the endeavor.   Students will not just understand what the Student Development staff and advisors expect of them and their learning process, but also what to expect of the program and themselves.  Student learning outcomes are therefore just as useful for the student participant as they are for programmatic review, evaluation, and improvement.  To this end, each year the students involved in the programs associated with Student Development will also contribute to the formulation of the student learning outcomes.  For 2010-2011 we’ve devised student learning outcomes categorized according three cornerstones that serve to build our programmatic foundation:

• Self-Awareness, Personal Development, and Life Skills
• Leadership and Communication
• Social Justice and Responsibility

1) Self-Awareness, Personal Development, and Life Skills:

The Student Development Office considers self-awareness and personal development to provide the essential foundational elements for leadership skill-building and student success. Exploring self-awareness involves identifying and articulating various facets – cultural, social, and familial -- that contribute to the formation of one’s identity.  In addition, discovering one’s strengths and learning how to use those attributes translates self-knowledge into leadership acumen, contributing to personal and professional success.  Lastly, the development of self-awareness requires the student to better understand their personal talents, values, and interests, and further, to understand how these characteristics relate to effective leadership.

Students will:

• Develop and exhibit and accurate sense of self
• Develop and nurture a deep understanding of personal motivation
• Develop an understanding of and practice personal and professional responsibility
• Demonstrate knowledge of personal beliefs and values and a commitment to continuing personal reflection and reassessment  
• Learn to balance confidence with humility
• Assert strengthened personal character and further, an enhanced ethical sense
• Applying the comprehensive set of skills and knowledge for life success (of self and others) gained from one’s Saddleback College education

2) Leadership and Communication:

Guided by the Social Change Model of Leadership as defined by the Higher Education Research Institute’s 1996 publication entitled “A Social Change Model of Leadership Development: Guidebook Version III,” the Student Development Office understands that effective leadership serves to emphasize the need to understand self and others in order to create community and make positive, lasting change.  The central tenets of this model are inclusivity, an orientation to process, and work through collaboration.  Students are therefore encouraged to develop mutually beneficial relationships through communication and cooperation with others, collaborate to achieve group goals, practice living and leading with integrity, and learn about issues of local and global significance in order to become active members of their communities.

Students will:

• Identify, understand, and apply contemporary theories of leadership to a wide range of situations and interactions
• Develop and articulate a personal philosophy of leadership
• Understand concepts of democratic leadership and processes
• Understand the relationship between curricular and co-curricular experiences as a determinate of student success
• Learn to evaluate and improve upon personal leadership strengths and weaknesses
• Help students understand the communication process, its benefits and challenges
• Practice and perform professional written and oral communication
• Take responsibility
• Think critically
• Practice creativity
• Collaborate: students will develop the strategies to work with others to achieve specific goals
• Learn to manage conflict: understand and appropriately apply the skills of problem solving, conflict management and resolution while allowing for healthy disagreement
• Learn to effectively lead others on a project or in an organization
• Explore, understand, and lead, guided by the values of self-awareness, equity, social justice, inclusiveness, empowerment, collaboration, citizenship, and service
• Learn how personal values connect to motivation thus serving to benefit teamwork
•  Give voice to all involved, working to inspire a shared vision
• Contribute to an inclusive and engaging environment for a dynamic campus community
• Show a record of leadership experiences in preparation for future leadership opportunities

3) Social Justice and Responsibility:

The Student Development Office understands diversity to be one of the greatest assets to any community.  Fueling our collective creativity and ingenuity, our diverse society creates an energy of possibility as we negotiate to make positive change.  We expect students to develop an understanding of how various aspects of diversity such as culture, ethnicity, sex, race, gender, religion, sexual identity, socioeconomic status, and ability all affect one’s development and perspective as a leader.  Furthermore, students will learn to appropriately challenge unfair, unjust or uncivil behavior.  Through experiences with organizations such as the ASG Diversity Student Council or events such as the ASG funded Anthropology Brown Bag Luncheon Series, students will learn to value others and build confidence as engaged citizens as they become proactive members of their communities.

Students will:

• Develop and articulate respect for the diversity of talents, ways of knowing and learning
• Appreciate the relationship between human diversity effective teambuilding
• Learn social responsibility
• Understand and appreciate frameworks for ethical decision-making
• Students will apply ethical theories to leadership situations
• Identify and understand the impact of culture on one’s leadership style
• Evaluate one’s growth as an interculturally competent leader
• Understand that innovation and collaboration are important to leadership
• Develop a sense of citizenship
• Prepare for community involvement
• Understand the relationship between transformational leadership and personal, community, national, and world change

Adopted with permission from the University of Minnesota and Clemson University. Special thanks to both Universities for direction and guidance on current pratices in student development programs.