Job Hunt: Infinity

Career Sustainability I currently work in a position that is not part of a career ladder. I am considered support staff, so there is no clear path for me to make it to a “professional” position. Even if I were to be hired as an advisor, there is no path from there. You can be promoted to Senior Advisor, but (from what I can tell) there isn’t much difference. Even if you work in a position that is part of a career ladder, that ladder gets considerably thinner (and harder to attain) as you move up. There is only one SSAO (maybe) at each institution, we all can’t be SSAOs, it just isn’t possible. When we make the choice to stay in higher ed, when we choose to take part in ladder climbing, we need to be very realistic about what that means. We also need to understand that some people are going to leave student affairs, and that’s totally okay. Again, not all of us can be SSAOs. The big problem is, when is our profession not sustainable? When are we educating too many professionals for too ...

Part I: What can we do? We should be offering services that are veteran-friendly, such as orientations just for veterans (Ackerman et al., 2009). And we should be offering accurate information in those services, especially when it comes to recruiting (Schnoebelen, 2013). David Vacchi also suggests that we provide transfer credits and offer thorough evaluations of non-traditional education that student veterans possess (2012). More specifically we can create (and attend) training programs focused on student veterans (Schnoebelen, 2013). Advisors of student veterans should be made aware of the challenges veterans may face, including potential transfer credit issues (Vacchi, 2012). Some of these issues could also be from experiences while in the military, such as sexual assault (Ackerman et al, 2009). We should also be working with faculty so that they are aware of the culture of classrooms and how that may affect student veterans (Vacchi, 2012). Some institutions have done a...