The Curricular Approach to Student Affairs

Book excerpt: The curricular approach aligns the mission, goals, outcomes, and practices of a student affairs division, unit, or other unit that works to educate students beyond the classroom with those of the institution, and organizes intentional and developmentally sequenced strategies to facilitate student learning. In this book, the authors explain how to implement a curricular approach for educating students beyond the classroom. The book is based on more than a decade of implementing curricular approaches on multiple campuses, contributing to the scholarship on the curricular approach, and helping many campuses design, implement, and assess their student learning efforts. The curricular approach is rooted in scholarship and the connections between what we know about learning, assessment, pedagogy, and student success. For many who have been socialized in a more traditional programming approach, it may feel revolutionary. Yet, it is also obvious because it is straightforward and simple.