Case study student development
Diverse Staff Southwest State university Is hulling new Resident Assistants (RA). Southwest State university is a small public baccalaureate university of approximately 2,500 students. Second year hall director Marcus is serving his first year on the Resident Assistant Selection committee. The school holds twenty positions and currently has seven available. Cheryl is the head of the RA Selection committee and she is the Assistant Director of Residence Life.
The committee will Interview nineteen students and rank them from “best” to “not read for the position.
In the ranking process, Cheryl asked them to take note of candidates’ race and ethnicity based on observable features and/or names. Out of the nineteen students, five were identified as students of color. Through the ranking system only two of the five identified students made the top of the list. Cheryl told the committee that they were going to offer the five students of ethnic background the positions and to look for a few more applicants.
Marcus, the new member of the committee, was confused as to why they were being offered the positions when there were reservations with three of the students and there was ever a discussion about offering them a position.
(Hammock & Benjamin, 2009) The troubling situation in this case study is that Cheryl is made decisions without consulting others on her committee. Cheryl is ready to hire students who may have trouble handling students’ religious beliefs or sexual orientation. Cheryl also said they are going to hire all the students of ethnicity and did not provide a reason for doing so.
Cherry’s leadership style Is Directive In this case. In the situational approach tenure are Tour learners styles: alerting, coaching, supporting, Ana delegating Morehouse, 2013).
The stage Cheryl is in is, directing, is high directive-low support. This style of leadership gives instructions about the goals and then supervises them carefully. In this case, Cheryl gives them specific instructions on what she is looking for in the candidates: teamwork, leadership skills, and confrontation skills.
Her support is low because she decides to offer positions to all the students of ethnic background, even though she heard what the committee had to say about the other candidates and possible problems with hiring the three that were not ready to be a students assistant. Having Rasa that do not handle situations well or are unable to build relationships can cause some problems on campus.
The residential halls could become hectic to handle in the long run and students could feel uneasy about their college experience.
The structure of the committee is political in that it is power- driven, and Cheryl is more of an advocacy leader (Bellman & Deal, 2008). Cheryl makes decisions without consulting her staff on hiring. Her agenda is set and she knows what she wants and she tells them to look for teamwork, leadership skills, and confrontational abilities. When the committee identifies the students to Cheryl tells Cheryl of ethnic background students, she implies that they will get offered a position.
Many of Cherry’s traits fall under the political frame.
The students Cheryl was offering positions to were African American. Black identity theories (as cited in Schuss, Jones, Harper, and Associates, 2011) are theories of cultural, social, psychological, and historical changes. This theory takes into account race salience, reference group orientation, and social identity awareness. In this theory, each stage has a different development task, and the presence of dents in different stages will affect how an organization may run (Schuss et al. , 2011).
Some of the students that were African American are not ready to become an RA; they are in a different stage, and this could affect the entire housing group. In housing it could affect how the students live and a student could become afraid to visit an RA for assistance when it comes to dealing with problems surrounding their sexual preference or their religion. It is good to have diversity in a staff, but if members are in different stages of development, it could have a ripple effect and urn the whole organization around.
Marcus, who was a part of the search committee for new Era’s, seemed confused about the process of finding a new RA. Cheryl mentioned that interviewing was Just one part of the selection, which indicated there is another part to the hiring process.
Cheryl decided to go ahead and offer positions to the students of color, and these students of color will not have to do the second part of the process. Schuss mentions assessment as analyzing and interpreting evidence that describes institutional, divisional, or agency effectiveness (Schuss et al. 2011). Schuss then recommends valuation to use the assessment to improve departmental and institutional effectiveness. To become effective as an organization, assessments and evaluations are important to produce success. Without assessment and evaluation, finding a good fit for a program will be hard.
Cheryl did not do a full assessment of all the students when going through an interview process. She is having the students of color miss out on the next stage in the hiring process because they are of color.
