Going to college can be considered a crossroads in many ways. Students are taking on a new role as a college student with new responsibilities, and in a new environment. Higher education is an important time for students to make decisions about where they are going and how they hope to prepare for their future via their education.

Baxter Magolda’s Theory of Self-Authorship includes the following phases. 

• Phase 1: Following Formulas—allowing others to define who you are, “young adults follow the plans laid out for them” while assuring themselves they created these plans themselves (p.185)
• Phase 2: Crossroads—The plan’s a student has been following do not necessarily fit anymore, and new plans need to be established. Students are dissatisfied with self. As student development professionals, we should be extremely adept at seeing this stage and know how to guide our students to a life of purpose when they are at the “crossroads.”
• Phase 3: Becoming the Author of One’s Life—creating the ability to choose own beliefs and stand up for them (especially when facing conflict or opposing views)
• Phase 4: Internal Foundation—“grounded in their self-determined belief system, in their sense of who they are, and the mutuality of their relationships” (p. 186)

It is important to support students’ development with this lens by thinking about the ways you can support the shift between a dependence on others for answers (such as their parents, advisors, or other close ones) to taking ownership of their own academic path in pursuit of their own individual goals.

Example: Miami University

“At Miami University, we have established a three-tiered framework to help our educators design learning environments and curricula that promote students’ development toward self-authorship (Taylor and Haynes 2008), and we hope to advance this or similar frameworks across the university. Underlying the framework is what Baxter Magolda (2004) calls “the Learning Partnership Model,” which advances three educational principles: (1) validating students’ potential as scholars, (2) situating learning in their experience, and (3) mutually constructing meaning with them. Although the principles undergird all three tiers, the way they play out in practice shifts depending on the students’ developmental level.” Please follow this link to read on about the specific considerations and programming Miami University uses to bring this framework to life for their students.