The document discusses the author's professional development goals over the next 10 years. It identifies three key competency areas - assessment, evaluation, and research; values, philosophy, and history; and law, policy, and governance - that the author wants to improve. For each area, the author outlines specific intermediate and long-term goals, such as presenting research at conferences, refining their philosophy of higher education, and gaining a deeper understanding of legal issues. The author recognizes the importance of engaging with the field through conferences, research, and collaboration to advance their competencies and career.

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Now What
Marcus D’Iorio
Kent State University
At the current moment, I fell that I am behind in my professional development, due to the
financial limitations that my graduate assistantship has. This however has not stopped me from

2. RUNNING HEADER: Now What 2
seeking out any free professional development sessions, webinars, and roundtables that I am able
to attend in relation to residence life and housing on a college campus. Moving forward, during
the first few years of my first professional job it will be important for me to be able to engage
within the community of student affairs professionals. The will be done through looking at the
various organizational memberships I currently hold that I currently have, and see what
professional development drive-in conference sessions and regional conferences they offer. This
will allow me to be able to start networking faster, but also build connections for possible
research and conference presentation collaborations. While building my networking is going to
allow me to meet others and see what others are doing in the field, one competency area in which
I wish to grow is Assessment, Evaluation, and Research.
My current experience in the competency is around basic quantitative benchmarking and
simply qualitative surveying. Within the competency area I would like to move from the
foundation level to the intermediate level and learn how the interpretation of the data can be
turned into planning efforts. For the development of this competency to move to the intermediate
area, I hope to be able to in the first five years of the profession be able to run or be apart of the
planning team for multiple assessment and research functions of the department. This
experience hopefully allow me to start to transition to the advanced level for this particular
outcome. I see the competency area as something that will be needed in order to move to the
assistant level within a department. In order to build my development so that I may transition to
a higher level I plan on also conducting research within the field of residence life and housing so
that I can present at different conferences and publish in different journals, including Talking
Stick which is a national journal published by the Association of College and University Housing
Officers -International. This engagement within the field through publication and presenting will

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enable me to work on my overall goal of networking with others. Additionally, by building my
skills with assessment, evaluation, and research it will better position me to hopefully begin a
Ph.D. program in the next ten years. However, ten years from now, I hope to be able to move
into the associate or even directors role, and begin to use reflect on patterns of information about
how the field has developed and where it could be heeding.
In order to be successful in the associate and director’s position, the competency area of
Values, Philosophy, and History will be critical. This is one area in which I have little
knowledge past the intermediate outcomes, other than the History of Higher Education course
that I took. By understanding values and philosophy, I hope to be able to take what I have
learned and apply it in my work on the director’s level by formulating a vision for residence life
and housing departments. In order to get there, I need to first see over a period of a few years
how the philosophy of the department is shown. I hope to accomplish this through both active
participation in events committees, but also through careful observation of what others are doing.
I hope to be able to culminate this in a presentation or article on how perceived the vision of the
department, and how it influenced my work. For the values piece specifically, I hope to be able
to work on this through discussion with others in the field, in addition to students. It is these
conversations I feel will enable to me learn the meaning behind peoples values, and how I can
incorporate values into my work in order to provide an environment in which diversity and
inclusion are appreciated. In addition over the next five years, I hope to be able to refine my
philosophy of higher education. To do so, I will need to be able look at what I have
accomplished over the three to five years after graduate school, and reflect on my current
experience to see what has changed. By refining my philosophy I hope to be able to find a
greater meaning and greater value in the work I do as a professional. For me to be able to be

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successful ten years down the road, I will need to move into the advanced stage of the
competency. To do so, it will be important for me to internalize this competency for my own
campus and practice, and see how the values of the department align with the institution, and
how the philosophy of the department aligns with the institution. This could be started
immediately as well as over the next five years. If I hope to be able to lead a department in the
future I need to learn how to construct these values and philosophy. When looking at this
competency, I hope to be able to build a stronger foundation for why we do the work we do, and
how we impact others through what we set out do in our everyday work.
Each of the competency areas are important in the development of a student affairs
professional, one final area in which I feel I need to work on more so is Law, Policy, and
Governance in that as the more residence life and housing departments change and adapt to
current practices of inclusion especially around emotional support animals and mental health, it
will be important for me to go beyond knowledge gained from Dr. Thomas’s law class. By
doing so I will be able to hopefully recognize the different areas in which I will need to contact
the institutions legal council in order to get their view on potential policies and ideas. In order to
build my knowledge in this area, I will actively participate in research what other schools are
currently doing, but also by attending any webinars that I am able to. Through these groundwork
professional development opportunities, I hope to be able to gain a basic understanding of the
additional areas in which I would need to learn more. Eventually in the next ten years, I hope to
be able to attend a conference that deals with this competency area specifically. After the
conference, I would hope to be able bring the information that I learned back to my department
and be able to engage in higher level discussion about the legal issues with policies, and
hopefully teach others about the basic legal issues we could run into when writing policies.

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Overall when looking at these three competency areas each of them builds off of each
other in that in order to learn more about laws, policy, and governance I will need to do research
and engage through different methods in order to gain an enhanced understanding. In addition in
order to be successful with understanding values, philosophy, and history, it will be important for
me to understand why these are important and how other schools view this competency area.
Each of these three competency areas along are important to work on, however when combined
they are able to enhance each other in that in order to build myself professional in one
competency I need to incorporate other competencies in order to build on the original one. Due
to my limited professional development funds, I have not been able to attend any national or
regional conferences for the field. As an overarching professional development opportunity that
I would like to partake in is the ability to attend a NASPA, ACPA, or ACUHO-I regional or
national conference. It is also at these conferences that I hope to be able to present any work that
I have been doing that can make an impact on others. The conferences though, would also serve
as an opportunity to collaborate with others on work that they are currently doing or hoping to
present on. If I am not able to attend a conference, I am going to try and make up for it through
some other professional development source whether that be webinars, journal articles, or
research.