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Advancing Student Affairs

Advancing Student Affairs
In November, the Dr. Christopher A. Lewis Distinguished Service award was renamed for the former chair of a knowledge community that promotes a better understanding and partnership between academic affairs and student affairs within higher education.

Christopher Lewis (BA ’97, Organization Communication) currently directs Enrollment Programs and Student Services and is the Associate Director of Admissions at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. He can trace his career path back to his days as a student at WMU, when he began working inon the admissions office with Scott Hennessey (current WMU associate director for admissions outreach). Lewis also became involved in the Western Student Association, a fraternity, and a number of other on-campus organizations. Through these activities, he came connected with Diane Anderson (current WMU vice president for student affairs) and Theresa Powell (former WMU vice president for student affairs), who became mentors to him.

“Junior year I was sort of floundering. First I was in international business, and then I auditioned for theatre. I quickly realized that I couldn’t be just a theatre major if I wanted to be a teacher in Michigan, I needed another major. I went to organizational communication and majored in that with a theatre minor.”

It ended up working out well when Lewis went to career services for help finding a career path. A few career placement tests indicated Lewis should look in student affairs area—he hadn’t even realized that could be a ‘career.’

Lewis was taking graduate classes in the counselor education and counseling psychology program and working on transfers in admissions when he was accepted at Miami University, where he obtained a graduate assistantship working in admissions. After graduation, he stayed on as a recruiter.

After spending a short time working as a college/career advisor for Owosso Public Schools in Michigan, Lewis broke back into higher education with a job at Grand Valley State University in student affairs.

Lewis had been involved with NASPA (National Association of Student Personnel Administrators) since 1997 when he was an undergraduate student, but it was around this time and he noticed that there were many people trying to bridge a gap between academic affairs and student affairs, and thought he may have an idea on how to help. In 2001, Lewis created ‘Student Affairs Partnering with Academic Affairs’ (SAPAA), a knowledge community within NASPA.

His leadership also reached within and beyond that knowledge community to support NASPA professional engagement and partnership efforts. Lewis is a past recipient of the Distinguished Service to the Profession award from NASPA Region IV-East, and has co-authored with James Cook a leading NASPA publication: Student and Academic Affairs Collaboration: The Divine Comity (2007).

Lewis stepped back from his chair position with SAPAA, but has maintained connections and allowed others to take the reins so the community can continue to grow and transform. It was for this work that it was proposed the distinguished service award be renamed in Lewis’ honor.

“It’s quite an honor, very humbling to have that given to you; to know that you have touched lives of colleagues, because you don’t always know when you’ve done that. That what you’ve set out to do has made a difference in the lives of people and places.”

Lewis also holds a Master’s degree from Miami University and an Ed.D from Eastern Michigan University.