The purpose of this study is to examine the professional standards and competencies that California community college student government advisors perceive as important, their confidence level in those professional standards and competencies and the role that they believe professional organizations can play in developing those skills. This study explores California community college student government advisors' knowledge of professional competencies and standards and how critical they are to their success in their job. In addition, this study examines the role professional associations have in the development and training of professional standards and competencies and utilizes the professional standards and competencies identified by multiple professional associations and higher education literature.

In this study I employ a survey instrument that I designed as the primary data-gathering instrument. The focus of the survey was to gather information regarding student affairs professional standards and competencies, student government advisors perceptions of standards and competencies, and the role of professional associations. The online survey was distributed to student government advisors within the California community college system.

After all survey responses were collected, I examined the overall responses to the questions and how they inform the research question. However, question-by-question tabulations can hide critical information about how different groups and sub-groups may respond. Therefore, after completing the initial analyses, I pursued cross-tabulations, chi square analyses and independent t-test analyses for a more comprehensive picture of student government advisor's knowledge of, training in, and confident around their professional competencies. This study should provide guidance to advisors and professional associations in the development of standards and competencies for student government advisors.

Overall this study had several key findings. First, I found that while there was a great deal of overlap between the research literature on professional competencies and the professional standards, there were also broad areas of disagreement among the professional organizations and between the organizations and the research literature. Second, I found that a gap exists between respondent's rating of the importance of specific professional standards and their competence with those same standards---suggesting areas for professional training. Finally, there were clear differences by advisor experience with those who had advised student government for more than five years more likely to report a higher confidence level than those who had fewer than five years of advising experience.