Counseling and Human Development Services

College Student Affairs Administration PhD

Program Overview

The Ph.D. Program in College Student Affairs Administration (CSAA-D) at The University of Georgia is designed primarily to prepare individuals for practice and scholarship in one or more of the following areas:

Student affairs administration
Graduate education of student affairs professionals
Student assessment, outcomes research, and program evaluation in a student affairs context

Doctoral students in Counseling and Student Personnel Services will receive a copy ofthe Student Affairs Administration handbook which details specific information about the program. Ideally, this handbook will guide students as they “move into, through, and out of” the College Student Affairs Administration (CSAA-D) Program at The University of Georgia.

Students

A limited number of students enroll each year in the CSAA-D Program. The College Student Affairs Administration program is committed to recruiting students representing different societal groups, geographical regions, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Students come from regions throughout the United States and represent a diverse background of experiences. There are two types of students in the program: full-time (who generally hold assistantships in the Student Affairs Division or the Department of Counseling and Human Development Services) and part-time (who generally are practitioners who currently work in some area of student affairs).

History of the Program

In 1966 the Department of Counselor Education decided to offer a program in college student personnel. It recruited Dr. Theodore K. Miller from the State University of NewYork at Buffalo to develop the program. He arrived in Georgia in 1967 and began to construct the master’s program in Student Personnel in Higher Education (SPHE) and to develop a student affairs specialty within the existing Ph.D. and Ed.D. programs in counseling and student personnel services.

Dr. Miller (Ted as he was known to students and colleagues alike) received his doctorate from the University of Florida where he studied under Ted Landsmon and worked extensively with Dr. Harold Riker (one of the early pioneers in the housing and residential life area). Ted made many contributions to the student affairs field including serving as President of the American College Personnel Association (1975-1976) and as co-author of The Future of Student Affairs, which become one of the principal philosophical statement for the “student development movement.” He went on to serve as the first president of the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS). Ted retired in 1997 but still serves as an Emeritus Professor in the Program.

In 1972 Ted was joined by Dr. Fred Newton who received his training under Dr. Richard Caple at the University of Missouri . Dr. Newton left the University of Georgia in 1978 to become Director of the Counseling Center at Duke University ; he is now the Director of the Counseling Center at Kansas State University .

Dr. Roger Winston, who had completed his degree at the University of Georgia in 1973 and who was working at Georgia Southwestern State University as Associate Dean of Students, was selected to replace Dr. Newton on the faculty in 1978.

In 1988 serious re-evaluation of the program was undertaken to determine whether it was meeting the needs of student affairs practice at the doctoral level. A committee composed of Ted Miller, Linda Campbell, John Dagley, Dan Hallenbeck, Dwight Douglas, Joe Wisenbaker, David Coker, and Roger Winston studied the curriculum for over two years. Alumni and currently enrolled doctoral students also studied the curriculum and reviewed the literature. The faculty concluded that the counseling based program should be changed substantially to become an administration-based program.

In 1990 Roger Winston become the coordinator of the newly created student affairs administration specialty within the degree designation “Counseling and Student Personnel Services.” Dr. Winston retired in 2002.

Since inauguration of the SAA (now CSAA) Program, Dr. Diane Cooper (who studied under Dr. Albert [Al] Hood at the University of Iowa ) joined the faculty in 1996. She came to the program by way of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she was an administrator and Appalachian State University where she taught in their preparation program.

Dr. Sue Saunders—a 1979 University of Georgia graduate--came aboard when Ted retired in 1997. She left the program in 2000 to become Dean of Students at Lycoming College. She currently serves on the faculty at the University of Connecticut/

Dr. Merrily Dunn joined the faculty in Fall 2001. She came to the University of Georgia from Mississippi State University where she headed their student affairs preparation program. She is a graduate of Ohio State University (Robert F. Rodgers was her major professor).