Fables, Labels, and Folding Tables: Reflections on the Student Affairs Profession

With humor, pathos, and humanity, Fables, Labels, and Folding Tables is a valuable reflective tool for helping student affairs professionals to define or re-define our place and our work in a time of dramatic change. It is a book about the human dimension of student affairs.

Author Randy Mitchell shares personal/professional essays as he explores his own work and that of his profession. Randy sees the fables - the stories and experiences that professionals share with each other - as processes of interpretation and self-definition. This sharing is critical to individual and collective success. Labels refers to the unique language of the profession and captures the names and ways used to describe people, movements, causes, and paradigms. And, folding tables denotes the tools of the trade and the ability to invent, utilize, and create using those tools.

Each of the 31 essays is a personal story, and yet in the tradition of all great story-telling, the story is really about each of us. As such it offers us the opportunity to think and reflect on our own practice and its place in the profession as a whole.

Randy L. Mitchell is the Associate Vice President for Student Success Programs at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. His current responsibilities include development of the Student Success Learning Center, the Student Success Service Center, and the JMU admission program.

Prior to his current assignment, Randy served as Acting Associate Vice President for Enrollment Services (1996-97), Director of the James Madison University Center (1987-96), and Assistant Professor of Psychology (1987-present). Prior to his work at James Madison, Randy served as Program Advisor, Assistant Director, and Associate Director of the Carolyn P. Brown Memorial Union at the University of Tennessee (1978-87).

Randy has a B.A. in English from the University of Northern Colorado (1976) and an M.Ed. in College Student Personnel Administration from Colorado State University (1978). He has worked with student activities, recreation, university centers, leadership development, student media, orientation, admissions, financial aid, registration/records, and student employment, and has been involved with numerous construction projects related to these programs.

Randy has published several articles and conducted numerous presentations on student success, leadership development, service-learning, organizational change, facilities planning and management, role theory, and student employment. His first book, Metaphors, Semaphores, & Two-by-Fours: Reflections on a Personal Profession, was published in 1997 by the Association of College Unions International (ACUI).

In the Spring of 1999, Randy was honored with an award from ACUI, recognizing his work and dedication to the profession.