Shakira Moreta

Helping Skills for Student Affairs Professionals II

Dr. Lee Brossoit

Supervision Assessment Paper

For the past year and a half, I have worked as a Graduate Assistant at the Alumni

Relations office. Most of my assignments have been selling tickets for the Salem State Series,

recording RSVP’s for alumni and institutional advancement events and updating alumni contact

information using the Raiser’s Edge database and assisting with preparing for events when

necessary. My relationship with my direct supervisors is great, however it’s more of a friendly

relationship rather than focused on my professional development. Many of the assignments I am

given lack clarity and students aren’t given enough information regarding upcoming events

therefore we tend to be unsure when we receive questions about events.

Because it is my goal to make a good impression to make sure that I have references for

when I begin to look for a full-time job, when I began at the Alumni office I made it known that I

was willing to help out as much as possible. If there were projects that needed to get done by a

certain time I was willing to work extra hours in order to help out and I found myself doing a lot

of the work that belonged to another staff assistant who was my direct supervisor at the time, yet

I wouldn’t say anything about how it bothered me. During the 2017 Spring semester I took over

for someone who was on maternity leave and was responsible for the administrative work of the

Youth at Risk conference. This new responsibility required me to add more hours to my original

schedule and assume more responsibility. When this opportunity presented itself, I was excited

because I finally felt like I had some responsibility that allowed me to grow professionally,

however other staff members were used to relying on me for help assignments, therefore I also

had to continue assisting with events for alumni relations and advancement events. Throughout
the semester I began to feel drained and finally communicated it to my secondary supervisor who

I had a better relationship with. I explained how I felt like I was constantly doing the work my

direct supervisor did not want to do although it was her job and that I preferred to simply work

under Advancement Events rather than both departments. During the summer conversations were

had with all staff regarding how they wanted to divide the student employees and assignments

each student was responsible for. At the end of the summer my secondary supervisor was able to

advocate for me to be an “advancement events student” and now the work I do is simply related

to the events side of the office unless there are priority projects that alumni relations needs

assistance with.

My experience at the Career Services office at Emerson has been the complete opposite.

My direct supervisor at Emerson is the perfect example of the type of supervisor I would like to

be. My supervisor includes me in conversations that may affect my responsibilities, she makes

sure I am fully knowledgeable about the goals of our office and institution and shows interest in

encouraging my professional development. I decided to use my first semester at Emerson

College as my second practicum experience. The practicum requires a learning contract that

specifies the competencies I will address and the assignments I will be working on.

To make sure that I was achieving my goals, my supervisor made sure that the work I

was doing was directly related to the learning outcomes I outlined in my learning contract. Along

with the goals outlined in my learning contract, my supervisor often asked if there was anything

outside of the contract that I wanted more experience in or to learn more about. Through my

supervisor, I learned a lot about how I would like to influence the career development of

individuals I may supervise in the future.

 As a student affairs professional, there may be a point where I will have to supervise a

group of student employees or staff within the department I decide to work in. So far, I have no

experience as a supervisor, but I do know the type of supervisor I would like to be based on the

type of supervisors I have had during my time in the HESA program. I used the Supervisor

Assessment to compare my supervisors from the Alumni Relations and Institutional

Advancement Events office at Salem State and Career Services office at Emerson College.

Before I move onto a supervising role, I know there are some personal weaknesses I have that I

need to address. Through the anger management paper and discussion regarding de-escalation

we had in class, I know that if I want to be an influential supervisor I need to learn how to

management my anger in certain situations. For example, I previously mentioned that at the

Alumni Relations office I began to feel drained because people became dependent on me and I

felt as if I was doing work that my supervisor did not want to do. Had I expressed how I felt

early on, I could have avoided how I feel about having to work in the alumni relations office.

Although I don’t think the experience in the office is related to the work I want to do once I

graduate, I do enjoy working with some of the staff there, however I am unhappy with the job

itself. I wake up unmotivated to want to go work. I do not want to create this type of

environment for my potential supervisees. I think I need to learn how to express my feelings to

my colleagues and current supervisors in order to create the type of work environment I currently

enjoy working in such as the environment at Career Services at Emerson.

A strength that I do think will help me become the type of supervisor I hope to be is my

desire to help people develop, specifically students. Students typically work while in college in

order to help support themselves get through college. If I were to supervise students, I want to

make sure that I crate a welcoming environment for my students, but also contribute to their
learning. Even if the students I supervise aren’t interns, I would like to create some type of

contract or a list of learning outcomes for each of my supervisees for me to refer back to when

assigning certain projects to my students. I wouldn’t want them to just feel like they are at work

because they need to financially support themselves, I want their experiences to be meaningful.