I’m having an identity crisis. Is it just me?
Everyone’s path to Student Affairs Assessment is a little different. Usually winding, rarely straightforward.
Someone once told me a joke—and maybe you’ve heard it too:
You can trace the roots of every Student Affairs professional back to high school, and it’ll lead you to one of two places: the marching band or the yearbook staff.
I love that. Not because it’s necessarily true (Student Affairs folks are hardly a monolith), but because of what it implies.
We’ve always been involved. We show up. We engage—in our own ways, in our own time, but we do.
Some of us led student organizations. Others of us (read: me) preferred a more behind-the-scenes kind of presence. Either way, a lot of us found something on our college campuses that we didn’t find anywhere else: a sense of belonging.
That belonging made space for the kind of deep identity exploration that only college can spark. It’s one of the reasons I love working in higher ed. This place? It’s pure magic.
I found out who I was here—not just as a young adult, but as a professional. I’ve always felt like I knew who I was in this space.
Well… until recently. Cue: Identity Crisis.
Maybe it’s just me, but every time someone asks what I do for a living, I freeze. Like, actual pause. Brain buffering. How do I explain it? How do you explain it? (No, seriously. Drop your best ‘what I do’ one-liner in the comments — help us all out.)
In the wild (i.e., anywhere not on a college campus), people tend to lead with their job titles. But friends, can we talk about our titles in higher education? We love a long title. We love a comma in a title (a comma!). And we love to differentiate, to get real specific, even if that specificity is wrapped in a cloud of mystery.
Take mine:
Jordan Bullington-Miller, Senior Research Associate, Divisional Initiatives and Special Projects.
Sounds official, right? And honestly, I love it. It feels accurate and important and very “higher ed.” But try dropping that at a casual social event, and you’re likely to get either:
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Raised eyebrows and a polite “ahhh, of course,” or
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A follow-up: “So… what exactly do you do?”
Reader, this is where things get messy. Out in the broader world, data professionals go by many names: Data Analyst. Data Scientist. Data Engineer.
These are LinkedIn-famous, widely used, and while not always understood, at least known.
But then, my amazing colleague Sydney Kayne introduced me to a new one: Data Strategist.
And reader, my world cracked open.
Suddenly, I was deep-diving through the many flavors of data roles. What exactly is a Data Strategist? How is it different from a Data Analyst? From a Data Scientist? A Data Engineer?
What did I learn? These roles are defined a lot. And they are often defined with much confidence. But on the whole, they are as fascinating as they are contradictory.
And weirdly, I love that, too. I love what it says about our field. Because here’s the thing: we are data pros. Some of us visualize, some of us analyze, some of us code, some of us translate complexity into clarity. You don’t have to be a Data Viz Wiz to tell a powerful story. You don’t have to be a Jedi Master with Python to be a Data Baddie. Especially in Student Affairs, our work is nuanced. It’s layered. And the way we dig into that nuance is a skill all its own.
Butttttt, here’s the deal. As a Student Affairs pro, I’ve cut my professional teeth on every typology you can think of:
True Colors? Green/Gold for the win!
Myers-Briggs? ISFJ, baby!
StrengthsFinder? Maximizer, Achiever, Competition, Analytical, + Focus, all day long.
You get the idea.
So naturally, I wondered: what if all this data role reflection could become a typology of its own?
That’s how I landed on the idea of a Data Pro Identity Quiz. Powered by Tableau. Inspired by decades of Cosmo quizzes. Designed for curious data humans like you and me.
So… are you curious about your Data Pro Identity? Wondering where you fit in the data ecosystem? Got two minutes and a sense of fun?
Give my Tableau quiz a spin:
What Kind of Data Wizard Are You?
(Spoiler: There are no wrong answers, just cool insights.)
With love,
Jordan Bullington-Miller,
Former co-Editor-in-Chief of her high school yearbook
P.S. If this post has you spiraling (in a good way) about data roles, you’ll love Amelia Parnell’s Data Identity Framework (2021) and Natasha Jankowski & Ruth Slotnick’s Five Essential Roles of Assessment Practitioners(2015). Pure gold.
This post was written by Jordan Bullington-Miller, Senior Research Associate, Divisional Initiatives and Special Projects, Division of Student Affairs, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Jordan also serves on the SAAL Blog Team and as the SAAL Communications Specialist.