WEB NEWS RELEASE
COLLEGE PARK, MD (February 2009) - Since its beginnings in 1959 as the Vocational Guidance program, the College Student Personnel (CSP) program -- housed within the College of Education's Department of Counseling and Personnel Services -- has developed into an award-winning academic program boasting alumni who are college presidents, university faculty and administrators, counselors, and other student affairs professionals at all levels nationwide.
"Studying student affairs is sort of like studying the thing that's right in front of you, without you even knowing it," says Associate Professor Karen Kurotsuchi Inkelas, who is serving as interim director of the CSP program while its director, Professor Susan Jones, is on leave. "Many people don't realize there is a body of academic knowledge about how best to help undergraduates attain their goals and dreams, to develop maturity, to better learn what success means to them."
In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the CSP program is hosting a Friends of Maryland Party and Cruise on the Potomac, Saturday, March 28, for alumni and friends of the program (visit the CSP50 web site to register; deadline is March 20).
The CSP program enrolls 65 to 75 students a year in master's or doctoral programs in preparation for administrative, faculty and research careers. Most CSP students study and pursue the realm of "student affairs practice," which is understanding and creating elements in college life that enhance students' self-awareness and success.
"We examine what things about the environment might be barriers to student success, such as campus racism or chilly climate issues that limit students from achieving their highest potential," explains Professor Susan Komives, who joined the program in 1987 after 18 years as an administrator in the field. "We're all about designing environments, both within and outside the classroom, so that students can learn to be more humanitarian, be leaders, be more cognitively complex. For example, we partner with faculty to enable students in a sociology course to get out into the community and learn about social systems. Or we offer leadership retreats. Student affairs people are often involved in doing things like that."
If there is a challenge for CSP and programs like it, says Interim Director Inkelas, it is to gain even more acknowledgement nationally of the academic and research-based nature of the student personnel field. Research activity in CSP, for instance, is strong. Current faculty projects include Inkelas' research on the effect of learning programs for women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields; Komives' study of student leadership; Jones' assessment of the impact of community service requirements for high school students; and Assistant Professor Stephen John Quaye's work on handling difficult dialogues, such as racial conversations, in the classroom.
To mark its golden milestone the program has established the CSP Professional Development Fund to support student and faculty scholarly presentations and dissemination of research. Should total funds raised reach the minimum required amount of $25,000 the fund will become an endowment account to perpetually provide support of the same. To make a donation, visit the CSP50 web site at www.csp50.umd.edu.
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For more information on the College of Education, visit: www.education.umd.edu
or contact Halima Cherif, Assistant Director for Communications, at: hcherif@umd.edu
