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April 8, 2020

Identifying Strengths in First-Year Students with CliftonStrengths Assessment Initiative

Recently, the College launched an initiative focused on identifying strengths among our first-year students. Every student enrolled in the First-Year Seminar course was asked to complete the CliftonStrengths assessment, which identifies talent themes or strengths.

Educational Psychologist Donald Clifton (1924-2003) asked, “What would happen if we studied what is right with people?” After years of studying human strengths, he identified the 34 most common talent themes that all people possess to some extent. Based on this, the Gallup organization developed this assessment, very popular among education and business circles.

While a person can be successful in all 34 talent themes, the Top 5 are done with more:

  • Ease
  • Excellence
  • Enjoyment

The CliftonStrengths assessment is based on six principles of human nature and behavior. They are:

  • You have a group of talents within you.
  • Your greatest talents hold the key to high achievement, success, and progress at levels of personal excellence.
  • Becoming aware of your talents builds confidence and provides a basis for achievement.
  • Learning how to develop and apply strengths will improve your levels of achievement.
  • Each of your talents can be applied in many areas including relationships, learning, academics, leadership, service, and careers.
  • As you develop and apply strengths, your achievements will increase and you will experience greater and more frequent successes.

While analyzing the results from our First-Year Seminar course, Associate Dean Brenda Myrthil found that the Top 5 most frequently identified strengths among Roberts Wesleyan College first-year students are Restorative, Achiever, Empathy, Developer, and Adaptability.

CliftonStrengths describes people exceptionally talented in these strengths as follows:

Restorative – Adept at dealing with problems. They are good at figuring out what is wrong and resolving it.

Achiever – Work hard and possess a great deal of stamina. They take immense satisfaction in being busy and productive.

Empathy – Sense other people’s feelings by imagining themselves in others’ lives or situations.

Developer – Recognize and cultivate the potential in others. They spot the signs of improvement and derive satisfaction from evidence of progress.

Adaptability – Prefer to go with the flow. They tend to be ‘now’ people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.

Does this sound like a student that you know? These strengths can help students be successful in a variety of ways at school, work, and home. Constantly feel the need to check off your “to do” list items? That’s the Achiever talent! Always trying to “fix” things or people? Yep – that sounds like the Restorative talent! Of course, too much of a good thing can bring its own set of issues, but sometimes knowing where the concern is rooted can help everyone move forward.

We think this provides good insight into the minds of our first-year students. We believe this assessment will encourage students to think critically about how they can use their strengths to increase learning and their impact on the community. If you have any questions about the assessment or how you can incorporate it into education or the world of work, please contact Associate Dean Brenda Myrthil in the Office of Student Life.

References:

https://www.strengthsquest.com/

https://www.gallup.com/


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