NIRSA Student Employee Competencies
Competencies are considered measurable patterns of knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and other characteristics that an individual needs to perform work roles or occupational functions successfully.
- Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – Understanding one’s own identity and learning from the identity of others to interact respectfully and include others of varying backgrounds
- Appreciates difference and diverse experiences
- Seeks global cross-cultural interactions and actively works towards social perspective-taking
- Demonstrates flexibility by adapting to diverse environments
- Health & Well-being – An optimal and dynamic state that allows people to achieve their full potential
- Engages in ongoing reflection towards personal goals
- Creates movement and nutritional routines that prioritize growth towards a thriving lifestyle
- Evaluates one’s life across various dimensions of wellness, including but not limited to financial, environmental, spiritual, social, physical, occupational, psychological, and intellectual
- Leadership – The process of utilizing social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others in accomplishing a common goal
- Delegates responsibilities to ensure proper use of resources
- Effectively communicates and motivates others towards a shared goal
- Creates authentic relationships in which success is focused on the team and not self
- Acts with integrity and empathy as it relates to enforcement of university and department policies
- Professionalism – Knowing work environments differ greatly, understand and demonstrate effective work habits, and act in the interest of the larger community and workplace
- Consistently behaves with integrity and ethics
- Prioritizes and completes tasks to accomplish organizational goals
- Demonstrates dependability and responsiveness
- Communication – A process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior
- Adapts and adjusts messages in line with audience experience, diversity and background
- Seeks input and actively listens; checks for understanding of messages
- States opinions honestly and in a straight-forward manner
- Written and verbal communications are consistently clear, concise and appropriate to the audience
- Teamwork – The action of working with others to collectively produce or create something
- Builds collaborative relationships across diverse cultures, races, ages, gender, religions, lifestyles, and viewpoints
- Effectively communicates thoughts and ideas through various modalities
- Engages in critical conversations that may include controversy with civility
- Collaborates to establish specific, measurable, and agreed-upon performance goals and outcomes
- Problem Solving – The process of finding solutions to difficult or complex issues
- Obtains, interprets, and uses knowledge, facts, and data to identify and define a problem or issue
- Creates solutions to problems using new methods and processes
- Applies compassion and patience to resolve conflict
NIRSA Student Employee Competencies – Full PDF
Learning Outcomes
Entry-Level
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Communication – Develop knowledge, skills, and judgment to deliver information across various contexts and work collaboratively with others
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Professionalism – Knowing work environments differ greatly, understand and demonstrate effective work habits, and act in the interest of the larger community and workplace
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Resilience (LO1)* – Employ positive adaptive skillset to respond to challenges and distress
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Equity & Inclusion (LO2)* – Contribute to the development of equitable and inclusive communities
Supervisory-Level
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Teamwork – Contribute to a positive and supportive environment by sharing responsibilities, ideas, listening, and generating solutions
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Resilience (LO2)* – Build and maintain positive and reciprocal relationships and networks
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Equity & Inclusion (LO1)* – Enact inclusive leadership practices during community engagement opportunities
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Values Development (LO2)* – Develop and apply strategies to make values-based decisions
*Some learning outcomes are taken from the Student Affairs Curricular Approach – Click Here for Full PDF
Resources
- UCS Professional Internship Experience Certificate – All undergraduate and graduate students in any School Year at UNC currently holding part-time jobs who are interested in enhancing their personal and professional development are eligible to participate in the UCS Professional Internship Experience Certificate. Upon completion, students receive a digital badge and certificate of completion. This program is primarily for students who want to enhance the relevance of their pre-professional college/graduate work experience to align with their academic major/degree and/or career goal. Note: Certificate requirements must be completed within two semesters.
- UCS Career Readiness Certificate – All UNC-Chapel Hill students interested in enhancing their personal and professional development skills are eligible to participate in the UCS Carolina Career Readiness Certificate. Upon completion, students receive a digital badge and certificate of completion.
- Student Engagement, Empowerment, & Development (SEED) – Growing Leadership at Carolina. This Co-Curricular Leadership Certificate Series will provide students with an asynchronous leadership learning experience that will enable students to explore leadership through the lens of the Social Change Model of Leadership Development.