On October 24, 2025, I asked Dr. Christine Arnold, then serving in the role on an interim basis, during her presentation for the next Associate Vice-President (Academic) and Dean of Students, about her use of the term “scholar-practitioner.”
I said that the new “scholar-practitioner” trend implies that theory and practice can coexist. I pointed out that Niccolò Machiavelli and Hugo Grotius were brilliant thinkers, but both ended up as failed practitioners, showing, in the end, that one must choose one or the other to excel. I said it was Confucius who stated that a jack of all trades could never become a master of one. I said that if one spreads oneself across theory and application, one risks superficiality in both. I asked, “Have you considered the limitations of the scholar-practitioner?”
Arnold responded that it was a great question, but that it was not a new concept, and that the scholar-practitioner has been in place for a long time. She said that she wanted to make it more “robust in our institutions.” Arnold said that, within student affairs and services, it has been proven over time in the sense that they can offer programs to students. She said that assessment evaluation and having the actual scholarly background of student development theory, how programs work, and the components are “extremely important.”
Arnold doubled down: “I think we can absolutely be scholar-practitioners at once. In fact, I say we absolutely have to.” She said that she teaches this every day in her courses and that it is “important that not only do we have the practice approach, and we know how our students are interacting, what they feed off of, what they gain energy from, but we also know the background. What are we providing them for student development in that moment? And that’s the scholarly piece.”
She went further, invoking “cognitive education,” “restorative justice practices,” and “reflexiveness” as elements being embedded into programming. To ensure programs are “robust” and “meet the mark,” Arnold argued that a scholarly approach is necessary. “We need the assessment evaluation, and we need to know how it programs across compared with environmental scans,” she said. “We need to see how we’re embedding some of that theory and student development practice within our work.”
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