– Hi, everyone. I’m Niya Bond, the Faculty Developer here at OneHE, and I’m excited to be joining you today to talk about an educator scope of practice. Now, before we dig into what that is and how it works, let’s set the stage with a couple of scenarios. Picture this. It’s Sunday evening, and you receive an email from a student sharing some pretty deeply personal struggles that go beyond your course content. You care about the student. You genuinely want to help, but you’re also not a counselor, and you’re not sure how to respond in a way that truly serves them. Or maybe it’s Friday afternoon at 5:00 PM, you’re in your office on campus, and a colleague asks you to start serving on yet another committee at 8:00 AM on Monday because “you’re so good at that kind of thing.” You value your colleague, the work matters to you, but you’re already stretched pretty thin. If you’ve ever, at any point in your educator career, felt overwhelmed by requests like those or just requests that are from people you care about working on issues that matter to you, but still had you questioning, “Is this really my job?” this video is for you. And whether you’re a faculty member, a librarian, an academic student advisor, or an administrator, understanding your scope of practice can help transform how you work and protect you and those that you serve.

Now, you might be wondering if you’ve never heard the term, “What is a scope of practice?” So a scope of practice is a framework that guides your professional life towards greater balance, freedom, and clarity. It’s built really around two fundamental questions. First, “What am I qualified to do in this role?” And second, “What are my responsibilities in this role?” This concept comes from a dear friend of mine and colleague Karen Costa, working at 100 Faculty, and she illustrates it pretty perfectly in my mind with a medical analogy. So she asks viewers, much like I did at the start of this video, to imagine a scenario. In this case, it’s a hip replacement surgery. And she asks, “Would you want an orthopedic surgeon “to perform your hip replacement therapy “or a certified yoga teacher?” Obviously the surgeon, but after you have a successful surgery, when the doctor recommends that you develop a yoga practice to care for your new hip, would you rather learn from a certified yoga instructor or the orthopedic surgeon who performed your hip surgery? The yoga teacher, of course. So why are we able to make those choices so quickly? It all comes down to qualifications. The surgeon has extensive education and practice in performing surgery. The yoga teacher has studied practicing all of the techniques of yoga safely. Each professional is qualified in their specific work context and in their specific roles and responsibilities, and working within those qualifications protects everybody involved. Now, let’s talk about why educators need this framework now.

As Sarah Rose Cavanagh so aptly pointed out in a recent “Chronicle of Higher Ed” piece, which we will share, higher education is in a state of upheaval. Traditional boundaries are blurring, and many of us are finding ourselves taking on expanded roles or being ‘voluntold’ to take on roles without having any other responsibilities removed from our plates. But here’s the thing. When we routinely work outside our scope of practice, we risk burnout which ultimately harms us but also those we serve, so, in my case, learners. For example, as an online English instructor, I often receive very personal writing assignments that sometimes reveal learner trauma, mental health struggles, or family crises. We do a lot of personal writing in these online writing courses, and, while I’m a human, while I care about my learners, what I’m actually qualified to provide feedback on is their writing craft and their critical thinking. I am in no way trained as a counselor or a therapist. And so recognizing that distinction is crucial, both for me to remain an effective teacher but also for me to help students protect their wellbeing.

Now, let’s talk about the practical framework that Karen Costa shares in 100 Faculty around this educator scope of practice idea. She’s built a template that’s very simple but very effective. It’s called the ‘Mine Versus Not Mine’ template. And basically it’s two columns, one with the title Mine, one with the title, Not Mine. In the Mine column, you list all of the responsibilities that you’re qualified to do and that belong to your specific role; qualified and part of your responsibility. For example, if you, like me, are a faculty member, that might include things like responding promptly to students’ emails about course content, providing clear assignment guidelines, offering feedback on student work, maintaining regular interactions with students, whether that’s office hours or email, and staying current in your field. In the Not Mine column, you list things that you’re either not qualified to do or that aren’t part of your responsibility, even, or especially if you care deeply about them. So this, for me again, as an example, might include: providing therapy or counseling; being available 24/7; helping solve learner financial issues; or making decisions about academic accommodations that require professional assessment from different offices and resources across the institution.

Now, let’s look at how this plays out in real situations that you might face, how you can take this kind of philosophical Mine-Not Mine exercise and apply it practically. Let’s talk about some common boundary challenges that can occur in higher ed settings. So I’ve already talked about students sharing struggles in their academic work. In my case, I try to say things like, “Thank you for sharing this with me. “I can see this experience has shaped your perspective. “It comes through powerfully in your writing. “For additional support with what you have described here, “I encourage you to connect with X, Y, Z resources at the institution.” Now, in the example at the beginning of the video, when a colleague comes to you with a committee request, if you have a strong scope of practice already developed, you will have developed potential ways to respond professionally. So, instead of a flat “No,” you might say, “I appreciate you thinking of me, “but this project falls outside my area of expertise. “Have you considered reaching out to someone in X department who specializes in X concept that the committee is about to take on?” Now, for those in student-facing roles, boundary-setting and availability is a really crucial balance. So it’s important to remember that being responsive doesn’t mean being available around the clock, and sometimes I have to remind myself this as an online educator because those temporal boundaries get blurred. But you might, as part of communicating clearly with learners, include on your syllabus or in announcements, something about timelines. So, “I typically respond to emails within 48 hours “during business days. “For urgent matters outside business hours, “please contact campus safety or the counseling hotline.” Again, you’re establishing boundaries to protect yourself but also to protect the wellbeing of those who might be reaching out to you for help.

Now, with those examples in mind, how do you actually implement this in your day-to-day work? So I’m gonna give you four tips. The first is to conduct a regular educator scope audit. So look at all of your current commitments, and honestly assess which align with your qualifications and role responsibilities and which don’t, and if you find that you are consistently working outside of your scope, then it’s time to make change. Second, develop some standard responses for common out-of-scope requests like those examples that were given in the beginning of the video. Think of it, you know how some of us educators have feedback libraries for things like, I’m always pointing out a comma splice, so I have a little feedback snippet that I can copy and paste and include with my original and substantive feedback that’s individualized and personalized, but I have that feedback resource library. You can have a scope of practice response library. So the reason that we do that proactive planning is because having those responses prepared can reduce the emotional labor and, for me, anxiety that comes with decision-making that has to happen in the moment. Third, build a referral network. So, know on your campus or at your organization, who handles what. So, for me, that might look like keeping a list handy of information for counseling services, financial services, disability services, the writing center, academic advising support, the career center. It sounds like a lot of work at first to gather all of those resources, but once you have them, once they’re up to date, you can redirect students pretty quickly and pretty appropriately, which is, in itself, a form of caring and support. Fourth, practice saying “No” to protect your “Yes.” Every time you take on something outside of your scope, you’re taking time and energy away from what you’re uniquely and actually qualified to do. Working within your scope of practice is not about caring less or being less helpful, it’s about being more helpful in the ways that match your training and your role. So when you refer a student to the appropriate services instead of trying to provide support you are not trained or qualified to give, you are helping them, you are serving them better and more effectively.

Now, establishing and adhering to an educator scope of practice is also about sustainability. Higher education, because of its upheaval, needs us educators, we educators, to be effective, and that means we have to maintain our wellbeing over time. Scope of practices provide a framework for us for that sustainability. It’s important also to remember that developing a clear scope of practice for yourself is not a one-time one-and-done exercise. So you might do a Mine-Not Mine list today, but in four months, you very well may have to return to that list and adjust it because even though we don’t want educators to be taking on additional roles outside of their scope of practice, it’s just the nature of higher ed that your qualifications and responsibilities are going to evolve as the organization system, structures, people around you evolve. And so your roles and responsibilities may change appropriately, and so that’s why coming back and reflecting on this process and making adjustments is good. We are not adjusting to take on more. We are adjusting to potentially take on different things that come under the purview of our expertise.

So, where do you start? Let’s make this a little more concrete. I’m gonna encourage you today, if you have the time, to just take 15 minutes to complete that Mine-Not Mine activity for your current role, and to do that, I’m gonna encourage you to be really honest with yourself about what you’re actually qualified and responsible for versus what you’ve been doing because you care maybe out of habit or even pressure. Then, if you can, share your scope of practice with a trusted colleague, supervisor, friend, spouse, anyone that you trust. Sometimes having that outside perspective can help you see things that you might not notice as you’re completing the activities, so maybe where you’ve been overextending, where you might be under-utilizing what your actual qualifications and responsibilities are versus what they aren’t. And, finally, because that reflection and that adjustment is so important, set a schedule or a timer or a calendar alert to review and revise your educator scope of practice on some kind of regular cadence. So maybe for you that’s once a semester if you’re on traditional semesters. Maybe it’s quarterly, like four times a year, whatever is gonna work best for you in your practice. But, again, it’s not a one-and-done, so setting that intentional time in the future is really important. And it’s really also important to remember that scope creep, kind of taking on additional responsibilities, things that maybe aren’t in your expertise or qualifications, can happen gradually and without us noticing. That’s also why it’s important to come back and revisit because scope creep is a real thing.

Now, I hope that it’s become clear through this video that a scope of practice is and is not just about professional boundaries. It’s really about professional empowerment. When you work within your scope, you provide better service, you maintain your own wellbeing, and you model healthy practices for those you collaborate with, whether it’s colleagues, students, whoever you’re encountering. And the question, again, isn’t whether you care about student success or institutional needs. The question is how to strategically and effectively channel that care in sustainable ways that align with your actual role and responsibilities. Your scope of practice is gonna help provide a roadmap for your continued caring, wellbeing, and effectiveness. Now, I hope learning about this framework has helped you understand those blurry boundaries that we often face in higher education and how we can combat them and empower ourselves to build beautiful boundaries that are gonna help us and help those around us. You’ll find links to Karen Costa’s scope of practice template, Sarah Rose Cavanagh’s Chronicle article, and other scope of practice resources that we’ll share out alongside this video, and I encourage you to explore those materials and get started on the Mine-Not Mine activity to begin to develop your own educational scope of practice. Thank you for watching. And here is to sustainable, meaningful work in higher education.