The Impact of Ideal Worker Norms on Student Affairs Professionals

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The student affairs profession requires long hours and seemingly total devotion from employees to attend to the needs of students, which may force professionals to neglect their own needs and those of their families. Such expectations have negative implications for professionals’ ability to craft healthy professional and personal lives. In this session, panelists consider how Acker’s (1990) ideal worker norms, which suggest that employees are always working and have no familial responsibilities, are implicit in student affairs work and have different consequences for fathers, mothers, as well as childless professionals. After identifying these expectations, panelists will collaborate with audience members to identify ways to dismantle these norms to create workplaces that encourage all employees to thrive.

Sub Unit

• Division J - Postsecondary Education / Division J - Section 3: Organization, Management, and Leadership

Chair

• Margaret W. Sallee, University at Buffalo - SUNY

Papers

• How the Structure and Demands of Student Affairs Reflect Ideal Worker Norms and Influence Work-Life Integration - Lisa E. Wolf-Wendel, The University of Kansas; Laura Isdell, Lone Star College

• Work/Life Integration: Women Administrators in Student Affairs Managing Work and Family - Sarah Marshall, Central Michigan University

• Challenging the Ideal Worker: Fatherhood in Student Affairs - Margaret W. Sallee, University at Buffalo - SUNY; Alyssa Stefanese Yates, Michigan State University; Michael Venturiello, New York University

• Interrogating the "Ideal" New Professional in Student Affairs - Melanie Lee, University of Utah; Megan Karbley, University of North Carolina - Greensboro