When asked about the
role of student affairs Jane Fields questioned the researcher back: “I assume they handle,
um, res life, student life, you know, CAB, the [student] Center, food services, health
services. Am I on the right target? Orientation?”
One faculty member, Jennifer Johnson, had just met with Mark Lambert, the dean
of students, in her role as department chair the day before being interviewed for this case
study and offered this observation:
You know if you'd asked me this yesterday or if you'd asked me this on Saturday I
would've had a different answer. But, I sat down with Dean Lambert yesterday as
chair to chat about a couple of things. I never knew student affairs was quite so
big. For me, when you say student affairs, before I met with Dean Lambert, I
would have just, in other words, been thinking about organizations and where
people report to. Like I just assume that's primarily residence life.