The Meaning of Community: Exploring the View of Student Affairs Officers

Using Boyer’s six principles of community as a conceptual framework, this study examined perceptions of community among student affairs educators (SAEs). Additionally, this research inspected the extent to which perceptions of community influence policy, programming, and practice. Using one-on-one in-depth interviews and qualitative theme analysis, ten SAEs offered their perceptions of community and their applicability to professional practices. Results indicated general consistency in defining “community” as a concept. However, when asked about campus community, SAEs described factors that could either inhibit or enhance campus community. Eight factors emerged as being of concern to SAEs in this study: impact of globalization on campus community as a result of technology; importance of negative experiences to the development of campus community; the student affairs professional sense of community; impact of size on quality of campus community; impact of fragmentation on campus community; relationship between campus community and surrounding community; conflict between individuality and community; and importance of social interaction within campus community. Finally, SAEs in this study reported that perceptions and understandings of community only modestly impacted their day-to-day work as administrators.