Advancing the Integrity of Professional Practice: New Directions for Student Services, No. 135 (J-B SS Single Issue Student Services)

Defining integrity as "the combination of attributes and actions that makes people and organizations coherent, consistent, and potentially ethical," the editor and contributing authors illustrate how student affairs administrators can understand and implement integrity in their institutions.

Early chapters explore the organizational integrity of student affairs. Transactional and transformational leadership perspectives are discussed in the second section.

Other contributing authors tie education to integrity. In their chapter, Dennis Roberts and Trudy Banta engage in a dialogue about the way student development theory should guide practice, and how its assessment is essential to maintain the integrity of our practice. Sue Saunders and Jennifer Lease Butts consider how we should teach integrity to graduate students and new professionals.

Final chapters explore challenges to integrity ranging from those in the normal work routines, such as resident hall directors confronting late night parties or interoffice dynamics, to those faced in extraordinary circumstances such as the ones faced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Readers of this volume will learn how integrity affects the trustworthiness of their organizations and operations. They will have the opportunity to read about the highest goals and the best practices of leadership, and gain ideas about some practical strategies that can help them deal with challenges to organizational and individual integrity.

This is the 135th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Student Services, An indispensable resource for vice presidents of student affairs, deans of students, student counselors, and other student services professionals, New Directions for Student Services offers guidelines and programs for aiding students in their total development: emotional, social, physical, and intellectual.

Robert B. Young is a professor of higher education and student affairs (HESA) in the Patton College of Education and Human Services at Ohio University.