Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs, Raechele L. Pope, Amy L. Reynolds, John A. Mueller, Jossey - Bass Publishers, 2004
Reviewed by Lissa J. Yogan, Valparaiso University

As I sit to write this review, I realize I am conflicted about the book. I received graduate training in student affairs and worked in the profession for several years. However, my Ph.D. is in sociology and I now work as a member of faculty. What I have learned over the past 20 years is that student affairs professionals and faculty are like the proverbial blind people touching different parts of the elephant. Both groups work at the same institution and work with the same students yet their views on the institution, on problems within the institution and the way(s) in which they should interact with students widely differ.

This book (as the title clearly states) is written for student affairs professionals. Like faculty, student affairs professionals can at times be a little insular in their view of the academy. While they perform a variety of roles which include administrative, judicial, leadership, teaching, counseling, advising and programming functions, they perform them all within student affairs offices. This means that the beliefs and ideas which govern their practices may not be ones with which faculty and administrators who come from an academic background are familiar.

Multicultural competence as defined by the authors means that one has multicultural awareness, knowledge and skills and that one has infused this competence into other key areas defined in the Dynamic Model of Student Affairs Competence. The other key areas in the model are: Administration and Management, Helping and Advising, Assessment and Research, Teaching and Training, Ethics and Professional Standards and Theory and Translation. It is this model that forms the outline for the first part of the book.

After identifying and explaining the Dynamic Model of Student Affairs Competence in chapter 1, the authors spend the next six chapters on the key areas mentioned above. I found some of these chapters more compelling than others. For example, how one infuses multicultural competence into assessment and research is not readily apparent to many of us.  Sure, almost all of us with a graduate education know to be mindful and current when creating demographic categories on a survey. But how many of us assess the internal consistency of items within a given measure on different populations in order to determine if the measure is reliable for different racial/ethnic groups? In the chapter on assessment, the sections on Defining the Population, Instrumentation, Data Collection and Alternative Research Approaches were well-written, easy to follow and useful to all faculty, staff and administrators charged with conducting assessment/research.

On the other hand, I found the chapter on Multicultural Competence in Administration and Management simultaneously too simplistic and too idealistic. I alternated between wanting to quibble with the authors and wishing I had more detailed and expanded explanations. For example, the authors quote Cox (Cultural diversity in Organizations: Theory, research, and practice, 1993)  "Ideally, creating a multicultural campus environment encourages the success of all individuals on campus and removes any barriers that inhibit the development of any individual, idea, goal or plan" (p.11). Whew! While this is indeed an admirable goal and one clearly embraced by the authors, it is a goal that shows no recognition of the realities faced by most (all?) institutions in the United States today. I thought this chapter, perhaps more than any other, neglected to face the entrenched values and systems present in most institutions of higher education. The authors seem to ask their readers to believe that the division of student affairs (through the practice of multicultural competence) can become different than so many other parts of the academy. I just could not believe this, no matter how hard I tried.

In order to combat the institutionalized racism, sexism etc. present in higher education, the authors propose that educators consider a new tool of organizational development: Multicultural Organizational Development (MCOD). MCOD was not presented in enough detail for me to believe that it could truly challenge existing models of organizational development. I found their intervention matrix too simplistic to realistically deal with the problems one would encounter in trying to change centuries old institutions. Thus, my review of the first part of the book is somewhat mixed. Many chapters are thought-provoking and will help anyone see issues in new ways. Their plan more than adequately addresses key areas for our colleagues who work in student affairs; but it fails to place student affairs in the context of the larger institution and sometimes seems too idealistic and reductive.

The second (and much smaller) section of the book is devoted to cases that allow the reader to reflect on the earlier information and practice working through situations. The cases presented represent an array of situations typical in student affairs work. The authors suggest that the cases work best when discussed by either a team of students or staff who use them within the context of staff development or by students in graduate preparation programs. I would concur. At times, the cases were difficult for me to examine fully because I had no one to challenge my thoughts or point out my subconscious biases. In conclusion, I would add this book to my bookshelf if I worked in student affairs. As a faculty member who teaches courses on race and ethnicity and social stratification, I will weave some of the chapters into my teaching but will probably not assign the whole book.

I just could not believe this, no matter how hard I tried.