Reflections

I arrived at my practicum placement in UNR Athletics Student-Athlete Development with a clear plan. I had a supervisor, a project, a theoretical framework, and a partnership with the UNR Counseling Center that took weeks to build. However, by mid-semester, my original supervisor had left, a new supervisor had taken over, and the men’s student-athlete wellness group I had developed, complete with a designed curriculum, secured counseling partnership, and assessment tools, was canceled one week before its scheduled first session due to insufficient promotion.

 

I want to be specific about what this experience taught me, as the simpler reflection would focus solely on resilience. While I did demonstrate resilience, the practicum taught me something more uncomfortable: the gap between a program's quality and its institutional fate is real, and good work alone does not always bridge that gap.

 

The wellness group was fundamentally strong. It was based on resilience and strengths-based frameworks drawn directly from my Positive Psychology training. It had a genuine institutional partner in UNR Counseling Services and was tailored for male student-athletes, a demographic statistically unlikely to seek mental health support and rarely encouraged to view vulnerability as a strength. Yet, it was never realized.

 

What I learned from this experience was not bitterness, but a deeper understanding of how institutional change operates. Programs often fail not because they are poorly designed, but because they lack promotion, support, resources, and appropriate timing within political and logistical realities that are often beyond the designer’s control. This is not a cynical observation; it is a practical one. Ultimately, this insight has made me a better practitioner than any successful program launch could have.

 

The transition in supervision from Richy Turner to Kim Gross mid-semester taught me another important lesson: professional relationships do not depend on continuity. Kim Gross stepped into her role as supervisor and provided the grounded, clear-eyed mentorship that the situation required. What I learned from her about how a senior administrator can wield institutional authority without misusing it was not covered in any course reading; it was modeled for me. I left the practicum with more questions than I arrived with, and I consider that a successful outcome.

When people ask me about the connection between positive psychology and higher education, I often pause before responding. This isn’t because I'm unsure about the link; rather, it's because the connection is so ingrained in my thinking that breaking it down for explanation takes deliberate effort.

 

I completed my MS in Psychology with a concentration in Positive Psychology in May 2025, graduating with distinction. Following that, I earned my MEd in Higher and Postsecondary Education in May 2026. The order of these degrees is significant. I did not discover positive psychology through higher education; instead, I entered the field of higher education already influenced by positive psychology. I came equipped with a formal framework for understanding human flourishing, agency, and resilience, which informed everything I later read from scholars such as Sanford, Perry, Baxter Magolda, and Patton.

 

This sequence is important because it created a genuinely integrated identity rather than a layered one. I did not simply add positive psychology to my higher education training; I approached higher education theory through its lens. Similarly, I did not view equity frameworks as an addition to my positive psychology practice. Instead, I examined positive psychology through the equity lens provided by the course HED 620: Love, Justice, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education. This course challenged me to consider how strengths-based frameworks might fail students whose structural conditions make flourishing unevenly accessible.

 

HED 620 was the course that most directly confronted the comfortable narrative surrounding positive psychology. It urged me to grapple with the critique that frameworks centered on individual agency can obscure systemic constraints. This critique is not an argument against positive psychology; rather, it advocates for a more honest and nuanced understanding of it.

 

Presenting at the 2026 Northern Nevada Diversity Summit was my first time showcasing this integrated identity in a public scholarly context. Standing before a professional audience and presenting my original framework, the 4R model, for considering rural student equity was not easy. I have never been someone who sought public recognition. Claiming visibility in that space as someone who grew up in the communities, I was addressing the same agency I encourage my students to exhibit. In a very real sense, it was an opportunity to practice what I teach.

I enrolled in the MEd program in Higher and Postsecondary Education in the summer of 2025, having already completed my MS in Psychology. I entered the program with fifteen years of professional experience; I was not a beginner but rather someone who had been working in the field for a long time without a formal theoretical vocabulary. HED 510 provided me with that vocabulary, while HED 527 offered me an organizational perspective. HED 620 instilled in me a sense of obligation.

 

Love, Justice, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education marked a turning point for me. I transitioned from being a practitioner who cared about equity to someone who felt a moral imperative to act on it. There is a significant difference between seeing equity as a value and understanding it as a structural and historical condition that demands specific, institutional responses. HED 620 helped me shift from the first perspective to the second.

 

HED 691, Student Development Theory, transformed how I perceived my own practice in real-time. While advising the Undergraduate Student Senate, I studied Baxter Magolda's self-authorship frameworks. I observed student leaders struggling with the shift from external to internal authority, and for the first time, I had a theoretical term to describe what I was witnessing. Having the language to articulate my observations changed how I could address them.

 

The Diversity Summit presentation in April 2026 was a pivotal moment for me. I claimed the professional identity I had been developing. I stood before an audience as a scholar, not merely as a student presenting coursework or as a practitioner sharing my experiences. I had conducted the research, developed the framework, and earned the credibility to advance a scholarly argument in public. Growing up in rural northern Nevada, I had no role models for that kind of visibility; I didn't know it was an option available to me.

 

This ePortfolio represents my claim to that identity. It is not just a collection of evidence for a grade; it serves as a public record of a professional identity that required 15 years of practice, 2 graduate degrees, and considerable discomfort to establish. I present it not as a finished product but as a living document, one that will evolve as my practice develops. I hope it serves as evidence for the students I work with, showing them that this kind of presence is both possible and worth pursuing.