The Clearing Storm: A Re-Assessment of the Climate for Collaboration between Academic and Student Affairs

There is increasing recognition among those in higher education that it is no longer adequate to train students in a specific field or industry. Instead, the push is more towards producing well-rounded students. In order to do so, all of a university’s resources must come together and the climate on campus must be one that supportscollaboration. This report is a re-examination of the climate for collaboration on the campus of a private liberal arts university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is a follow up to a similar investigation conducted on the same campus by Victor Arcelus(2008) five years earlier. In the interim, the university had re-configured its organizational structure, combining separate academic and student affairs divisions into a single unit overseen by the Provost. Additionally, the university had experienced turnover in several key leadership positions, including those of the President and the chief academic and student affairs officers. The purpose of this investigation, therefore, was to gauge the immediate impact of these changes on conditions for collaboration, which when present, advance student learning and development. Through interviews with six men and women, information was collected on the perceived climate for collaboration between academic and student affairs personnel.Analysis of the interview transcripts revealed that, depending on the position of the interviewee within the university, conditions on campus were seen as either improved or largely unchanged as a result of the transition in leadership and the structural merger of the two divisions.