The purpose of this dissertation study was to describe how students who provide care for a person with a disability or chronic illness cope with the demands of both roles. The way students cope with stress has a direct impact on overall health, which has an impact on learning, development, and retention. Student caregivers are considered nontraditional students; nontraditional students are more likely to drop out of higher education because of obstacles in their non-academic life. Historically, student affairs professionals have developed programs and services to meet the challenges of underrepresented students in higher education. More than half of family caregivers are between the ages of 18-49, due to the aging population. The number of student caregivers enrolled in higher education will continue to increase and they are not adequately represented in student affairs literature. Data for this qualitative study was collected through a combination of individual interviews and a focus group to understand: who student caregivers were caring for, how they coped with their dual roles, and how the institution they attended supported them. While each student caregiving experience is unique, the fundamentals of student caregiving are consistent; student caregivers must often choose between completing academic tasks and caring for a human being. The participants represented a variety of disciplines, which highlights the need for student affairs professionals, faculty, and administrators across the academy to understand the specific challenges they face.

Today’s college student body reflects, among many things, the outcome of policies geared towards increasing access and diversifying the academy, efforts to recruit international students, the vast social, political, and economic disparities among marginalized populations, and the extreme cultural polarization of our times. Students on campuses have broad and individualized perspective, approaches, and values, which are culturally rooted, embedded within our socialization and often times conflict with the experiences of other students or the student affairs professionals tasked with supporting students. Student affairs practitioners must enter the field possessing a degree of intercultural competence, defined as an appropriate skillset and mindset, to effectively work across difference and support today’s college student. While the development of intercultural competence is a life-long learning process, master’s-level preparatory programs serve as a critical space for aspiring student affairs practitioners to engage in intercultural learning and skill development. Utilizing pre and post data result from the Intercultural Development Inventory and information gathered from post-graduation interviews, this mixed-methods study examined the intercultural competence development of students in Higher Education within a student affairs master’s level preparatory and their intercultural learning experiences at the assistantship site. The study found that across assistantship sites and observed developmental change, intercultural learning was dictated by the three themes: influential relationships, impactful factors, and depth of engagement.

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