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Move from reflection to action with the NIRSA Core Competencies Workbook
The NIRSA Core Competencies Workbook brings the framework to life with practical guidance and tools you can use independently, with a supervisor or mentor, or as part of a team.
- Explore the five competency domains and behavioral indicators
- Understand how capabilities evolve across career stages
- Reflect on your current practice and identify a focused growth opportunity
- Build an intentional professional growth plan
- Guide career, coaching, and team-development conversations
Discover what you need to succeed in campus rec
The NIRSA Core Competencies are organized into five interconnected domains. The framework provides a shared language for the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that support success across the profession.
Five domains of practice
Together, these domains represent the capabilities that support effective campus recreation practice across institution types, functional areas, and position titles.
It helps professionals understand what effective practice looks like, identify opportunities for growth, and build a roadmap for continued development throughout their careers.
Communication
Communication is about more than sharing information. It includes collaboration, relationship building, conflict management, advocacy, emotional intelligence, and storytelling. As professionals advance, communication becomes increasingly important in building partnerships and influencing decisions.
Leadership
Leadership focuses on developing people and creating positive workplace cultures. Leadership is not limited to formal supervisors. Every professional has opportunities to influence others, build trust, foster inclusion, and support growth.
Operations
Operations focuses on delivering high-quality programs, services, and facility experiences. Professionals demonstrate operational excellence by planning effectively, managing logistics, solving problems, improving processes, and ensuring participants receive consistent, high-quality experiences.
Risk & Resource Management
Campus recreation professionals are entrusted with people, facilities, finances, equipment, technology, and institutional resources. This domain focuses on stewardship. It includes safety, compliance, financial management, responsible resource use, ethical decision-making, and the growing responsibility associated with data, technology, and artificial intelligence.
Professionalism & Service
Professionalism & Service focuses on continuous learning, ethical practice, and contribution to the profession. The strongest professionals never stop learning. They seek new knowledge, share expertise with others, and help strengthen the profession for future generations.
Growth is about impact—not a job title
Professional growth does not happen all at once, and it is not defined by a job title. NIRSA’s framework focuses on the scope, complexity, and impact of your work. You may demonstrate capabilities from different career stages across different competency domains—and that is expected.
Early Career: Deliver & Apply
Set yourself apart through high-quality work within established systems and processes.
Mid-Career: Lead & Deepen
Lead programs, services, teams, or functional areas while improving systems and developing others.
Senior Level: Shape & Influence
Shape strategy, build leadership capacity, and influence organizational and institutional outcomes.
Reflect and grow
The framework is designed to support reflection and meaningful conversation—not to assign a score or label. Start with the pathway that best matches how you want to use it.
For your professional growth
Recognize strengths, identify a focused growth opportunity, and create an intentional development plan.
With your team
Explore team strengths, recognize competencies in action, and identify priorities for learning and improvement.
As a supervisor or mentor
Use a shared language to support feedback, coaching, career conversations, and development planning.
Across your department
Connect the framework to professional development, onboarding, coaching, leadership development, and succession planning.
Convert learning into understanding
NIRSA learning experiences support continued growth across the Core Competencies. After identifying a development goal, explore learning opportunities that can help you build relevant knowledge, skills, and capabilities.
As NIRSA continues strengthening its learning ecosystem, our goal is to make it easier to find and sort learning opportunities by competency domain so you can connect reflection directly to your next learning experience.