Category Archives: Academic Affairs

Bridges – literal and otherwise – for student success

Posted on January 15, 2015 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

I had an opportunity to welcome new faculty today and I told them that giving the obligatory “Welcome” before the main event was one of my designated roles in life it seems.

I guess it was because I could not sing solo and I didn’t have other discernible talents that I was always selected to give the “Welcome Address” when visiting choirs and other groups came to our church. I made the welcome something special. I made banners that said “WELCOME” with glitter and hung the banners across the pulpit, and I put a lot of thought and practice into what I planned to say. The visitors seemed to appreciate the effort.

When I welcomed new faculty at Montgomery College recently, I did not hang a banner, but I did ask something of them. I told them about when I first worked at a community college as a counseling faculty member. There was a bridge or walk across from the Student Services building and the building where classes were taught. Back then when faculty smoked cigarettes, some of them would take a smoke break on the bridge; others would come out between classes to grab a few rays. I made a habit of walking across the bridge to go from one building to the next just so I could run into academic faculty.

It was on that bridge between buildings that academic or classroom faculty and I discussed students who were obviously talented and bright, but their writing seemed to tell another story. Particularly disturbing was their inability to spell. We did research and discovered that there was something called dyslexia. This discovery led to a collaboration to get support for students who had learning disabilities.

It was on this bridge that academic faculty talked with counseling faculty about the veterans who could benefit from having someone to talk with, but who were reluctant to come to the Counseling Office. This led to the creation of a peer counseling program where some of the peer counselors were veterans. They were able to have the initial conversations with veterans and get to a point in their relationship where they could refer the veterans to the professional counselors.

A lot of work was done on that bridge between buildings for Student Services and Academic Affairs, and a lot of friendships were forged.

I asked the new faculty to see it as their responsibility to build a bridge between academic faculty and counseling faculty in Student Services in order to reduce barriers to student success.

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Posted in Academic Affairs, collaboration, Higher Education, Student Affairs, Students, Veterans

“The 21st Century Belongs to the Student”

Posted on July 25, 2014 by gwendungy | 1 comment

I would like to have been a fly on the wall when the course on Beyoncé Knowles was proposed at the University of Victoria in Canada. On further thought, there may not have been as much of an uproar as one would think because I understand that there was a course titled Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame offered at the University of South Carolina, Skidmore College is offering a course on Miley Cyrus, and Keanu Reeves has been the subject of college courses since 1994.

If the idea is not completely out of the realm of what is going on throughout higher education, then, what does it all mean? I think it means that there is credence to the following comment about higher education:

“The 19^th century belonged to the university president; the 20^th century belonged to the faculty; and the 21^st century belongs to the student.”

Bernard Shapiro, then head of McGill University, and Ann Dawsett Johnston declared this summation in Maclean’s, a Canadian weekly magazine, in 1998. We may be coming to an understanding of the pronouncement now.

Some of the most innovative educational practices are clearly adapting to students rather than the other way around, and it’s not all about pop culture, but pop culture may be a large part of it if this is what is important to your students. Getting students’ attention and motivating them to want to learn what we think is important should be done “by any means necessary.”

I highly recommend an article by José Antonio Bowen in the spring 2014 edition of AAC&U’s Liberal Education, titled, “The Teaching Naked Cycle: Technology is a Tool, but Psychology is the New Pedagogy” that gets to the heart of engagement and student success.

Faculty, in collaboration with student affairs, have access to students in ways that can locate the “entry points” to what is important to students.

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Posted in Academic Affairs, Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Higher Education, Students

Feeling Guilty…Opportunities Amidst Distress

Posted on February 6, 2014 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

I can recall how at times during the early years of my career, I would feel guilty when I said I enjoyed my work because as a college counselor, I often saw students when they were in distress. They didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives or they were not doing well in school or they were having family problems or worse.

I’m feeling a little guilty now after reading three articles, in particular, in the January 24 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. The small amount of guilt is because the three articles address challenges for colleges and universities, and I think these challenges are ripe for the skills of highly trained student affairs professionals. It is often in situations of distress that student affairs professionals are in the spotlight and they never fail to shine.

Sara Lipka writes about the decreasing pipeline of high school graduates and ends the article with this provocative sentence: “Demographic shifts could change who gets treated like a prospective college student.”

Lipka points out that when the number of high school graduates declined in years past, colleges and universities turned their attention to adult learners. When the number of adult learners cease to fill the enrollment shortfalls, colleges and universities will have to turn to another population, and that group will likely be first-generation students.

There is a lot of talk about opening pipelines to first-generation students, and yet, the attitude may still be one of charity. Attitudes of charity suggest that the students did not earn a right to attend the institution, but are being given a tremendous opportunity.

When enrollment of first-generation students affects the bottom line, the attitude will change, but the preparation for increasing numbers of this new population will not be adequate unless there is an understanding and recognition that one of the best resources to prepare colleges and universities for first-generation students will be skilled student affairs professionals.

I feel a little guilty in viewing challenges for colleges and universities as a propitious time for student affairs professionals, but orienting students to what it takes to be successful in college and providing support services where needed is what student affairs does. Student affairs also understands that it’s not only this new generation of students who need orientation; it’s the institution that needs orientation and preparation for the students.

In an article on the demographic shift, Eric Hoover quotes Donald Hossler, professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University at Bloomington, who calls the need for colleges and universities to help a “more diverse group of students” succeed as “the demographic imperative.”

Student affairs through various offices, initiatives, and programs provide a safe space where students can have time to adjust to the newness of the environment and get moral and spiritual support. Student affairs doing what they do best provide some of the brightest corners of colleges and universities that are floating on their past reputation and continuing to enjoy the ratio of applications to admits.

In these bright corners, student affairs professionals continue to work with students on retention because they know that the retention of students new to higher education is often not connected directly to academic ability, but to other issues related to health, wellness, and a sense of belonging.

Student affairs does this work though the institution may not state anywhere in its strategic plan or outcomes the word “retention.” Some institutional leaders would prefer to think that retention is not an issue for the students they have admitted. When colleges and universities begin to recruit and value retaining more diverse groups of students because they need them, funding for retention will become a priority and time spent on helping students succeed will be valued.

In this same issue of The Chronicle, Dan Berrett writes about highly charged discussions that occur on college and university campuses. When one considers the demographic shifts toward more diversity on college and university campuses, one must also know that crosscultural differences will bring even more difficult exchanges. I look forward to the opportunities students will have in a more diverse environment to learn about other cultures, their own culture, how they developed their current beliefs, and how they will develop their values.

When Berrett and others reference the power dynamic between teacher and student and the difficulty of having these hard conversations in a classroom, I think about the opportunity for student affairs to collaborate with faculty in facilitating these discussions in a setting outside the classroom structure with a professional who has no perceived power over the external rewards students expect from class participation.

I encourage student affairs professionals to make their skills known and to demonstrate the many ways that they can contribute to the mission of their institution, higher education, and the success of what Donald Hossler refers to as “the cohort marching to college.”

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Posted in Academic Affairs, Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Cocurriculum, Higher Education, Student Affairs, Students

What does welcome look like? Expectations of a multicultural campus

Posted on December 16, 2013 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

Demographic diversity does not define a multicultural campus.

Different cultures living in the same space do not make a multicultural campus.

A multicultural campus has expectations of members of the academic community. These expectations include all members – especially students – contributing to a welcoming and supportive environment.

Members of the academic community are not always aware of what welcome looks and feels like, and they often do not know that they are responsible for it.

I have been on many campuses this fall and, on one campus, I was looking out of a window just above where a student orientation leader or student adviser was giving remarks before beginning a campus tour. All the students taking the tour were white except for one black student with long braids who stood to the extreme right of the group on the front row.

During this beginning part of the tour, the guide never looked toward the black student. The tour guide had long hair that covered or shielded the right side of her face, and she never turned her head to see around the hair, therefore blocking off all vision of those on the extreme right where the one black student happened to be standing.

The black student might not have been welcomed and the student might not have felt welcome. The guide might not have been aware of how it might seem when she never looked toward this student.

This is why it’s necessary to make all members of the academic community who represent the college aware of what welcome looks and feels like. Something as simple as a student tour guide making eye contact with everyone could make the difference in whether or not a prospective or new student feels welcome and whether or not the guide is contributing to the culture of a multicultural campus.

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Posted in Academic Affairs, Higher Education, Race & Ethnicity, Student Affairs, Students

Defying Stereotyped Diversity: Getting to Know Students as Individuals

Posted on October 21, 2013 by gwendungy | 2 comments

George Packer’s The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America was written during a recent period when we could hear the chant “We are the 99%” in the background. I read the book weeks ago, and as I talk with students on campuses across the country, I imagine that they come from families represented by the people Packer profiles in one of the most enlightening books I’ve read on our diverse and “multi-culture.”

Packer probably would not want his book described with terms such as “diverse” and “multicultural,” as those who only think of people of color who have been historically underrepresented in the middle class and in higher education when they hear these terms might turn away.

When I’ve spoken with educators about the cocurriculum and learning outside the classroom and suggested that civic learning, democratic engagement, and social justice would be natural themes for collaboration between academic and student affairs, some immediately become defensive and talk about how there is already enough attention given to diversity and social justice through special programs and clubs for underrepresented students. They follow this with the lament that students who are either less academically and/or financially able get all the attention and support, while students in the middle are neglected and left out.

What I like about Packer’s book is that if we think of students in the way each person is profiled – those representing struggling farmers who want to be entrepreneurs, Wall Street fund managers, factory workers, workers in Walmart, and billionaire executives in Silicon Valley – we might have a more accurate profile of our students and their real diversity. This is a diversity that defies stereotyped groupings and calls on educators to get to know students as individuals as well as part of the group with whom they choose to identify.

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Posted in Academic Affairs, Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Cocurriculum, Higher Education, Identity, Race & Ethnicity, Student Affairs, Students

What Happens When the Academically Talented Aren’t College Ready?

Posted on March 13, 2013 by gwendungy | 2 comments

Still reading this week’s The Chronicle of Higher Education, I see an article titled, “Top Students, Too, Aren’t Ready for College.” My eyes widen with delight that someone with the credentials of the author, Elaine Tuttle Hansen, is speaking up about something of which colleges and universities do not have the time nor the resources to attend. Dr. Hansen writes that many academically talented students “may have college-readiness problems.” One student she described admitted that his work ethic and study skills were atrocious.

When students are academically talented, they slip by without seeming to need extra attention. It saddened me when I read what the student said after realizing that he was not ready for college. He said, “I would like to know the person I would have become had I been engaged as a young learner.” This student, as so many other academically talented students, could live up to his potential if he had an opportunity to be in engaged with a group and a highly skilled facilitator who would encourage students to think about their future, their contributions as citizens, and their obligation to take advantage of their privileges. These students could benefit greatly from a cocurriculum laboratory experience in which student affairs partner with faculty to help students become more college ready and more ready for a fulfilling life.

Dr. Hansen concludes the article on the need for college readiness for academically talented students with these words:

In this new reality, college readiness, and the lack of it, should be everyone’s problem. Educators at all levels should work together to develop programs and courses that support all students in reaching their potential, including advanced learners who need to challenge themselves beyond A’s.

The world needs to know the people our children can become if they are engaged as young learners.

As I noted in my previous blog, faculty cannot do it all. We need cocurriculum laboratories throughout the education cycle for students from elementary school through college. The engagement, introspection, and reflection afforded by cocurriculum laboratories are never complete.

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Posted in Academic Affairs, Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Cocurriculum, Student Affairs, Students

Practical Competence

Posted on March 12, 2013 by gwendungy | 1 comment

As I read this week’s The Chronicle of Higher Education front-page article by Sara Lipka and Eric Hoover about a developmental or remedial English class at Montgomery College, a two-year college in Maryland, it was as if I were there in that classroom. I felt the near helplessness of the dedicated faculty member, and I felt as if I were there as a student because I know what it’s like to have to separate your head and academic learning from the rest of your life. The article is titled “The Second-Chance Club,” and I think it would have unfolded as a second chance if Kenneth Okorafor, a Nigerian immigrant student, had miraculously passed the course.

As the narrative progressed toward the final decision about each student’s fate in meeting the requirements to go on to college-level English, it seemed as if Kenneth would certainly pass because he wanted to pass so passionately and he is a good person. As I read the narrative, I felt as if the music was about to swell for a happy dramatic ending since Kenneth was the last student to see the instructor about his course standing. I was really surprised at the final result because even his friend gets the green light to go on to the next level of English, and when he exits the meeting with the faculty member, he says, “Kenneth, don’t worry man, I’ll see you there OK?” Kenneth is so visibly nervous about his time with the instructor that one of the other students tells him, “Just know that, whatever happens, you’re smart.”

I think Kenneth is smart, but he did not pass the developmental course in English and he knows why. He allowed one of his essays to be published in The Chronicle along with the article, and he titled it, “My Two Greatest Obstacles.” In his essay, he admits that he allows himself to become distracted in class and he does not pay attention. He also realizes that he does not manage his time well. He stays up late watching television and he comes to class late. His realization of what may be hindering him from passing the course has come too late.

Having to retake a non-credit course puts Kenneth in the risky position of dropping out of college completely. Students such as Kenneth and some of the other students described in the class lack a critical skill for success in college and beyond, and that skill is practical competence. Practical competence is one of the seven student learning outcomes in Learning Reconsidered, a 2004 publication by ACPA and NASPA, two professional associations for student affairs.

Too many students like Kenneth can break the hearts of many faculty who feel helpless in moving them forward. I propose that student services work with faculty to offer what I call a cocurriculum laboratory that is connected to the class (read more on cocurriculum laboratories…). In this laboratory, the objectives of the course are reinforced and there is a strong emphasis on helping students communicate effectively and manage their own affairs. Students who do not have role models who demonstrate these skills are at a disadvantage in meeting the requirements of a college education. Student services staff are trained to help students through the developmental phases of self-efficacy.

Faculty cannot do it all and could welcome the assistance of their student services colleagues who can work with students in a laboratory, of sorts, where the emphasis is on adjusting to college life and making connections with students and the student services staff on a deeper and more personal level. These students will share their stories, encourage and support one another, all the while being guided by a highly skilled student services staff member who will move students towardaccomplishing the goals of the course and the skills that all college graduates should attain. One of these skills is practical competence.

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Posted in Academic Affairs, Cocurriculum, Higher Education, Student Affairs, Students

Stronger Emphasis on ‘Soft Skils’

Posted on December 6, 2012 by gwendungy | 1 comment

I’m serving on a Commission on the future for our very fine local community college, and I was at a meeting with business people and community college faculty, staff, and administrators. In his closing remarks, the business man who is chairing the Commission reiterated what the various groups were saying about the needs of college graduates.

He said that the college needed to pay attention to ensuring that more students are preparing themselves in the STEM majors, but that they also needed to be prepared with what are sometimes called “soft skills.” Expecting to hear reasons why there is not more emphasis on those skills that student affairs works to encourage students to acquire, this very wise man made the following statement:

Soft skills may not get college credit, and they might not be accredited by the people who evaluate college courses, but we need to say, ‘The hell with that!’ We need to do what we know is right for students because it’s about learning and getting the skills students need to be successful.

If I had been in church, I would have said, “AMEN!” In my speeches and presentations, I’m focusing on what skills our graduates and alumni need in order to be prepared both for careers that currently exist and those that do not yet exist, and some of these skills are those skills called “soft skills.”

When I talk with employers, they say that college cannot prepare students for the specifics for most jobs, but they can give students the foundation that will be used in learning how to learn the specifics of the job. What students do not always have is the foundation that enables them to be excellent communicators across cultures. The employers are saying they need managers, and without the intercultural communication skills, our students will not be equipped.

These skills can be learned if student affairs will collaborate with faculty in offering what I call cocurriculum laboratories.

I will write about these in subsequent blogs and will respond to any questions or comments.

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Posted in Academic Affairs, Higher Education, STEM, Student Affairs, Students

The Continuing “Buy-in” Challenge

Posted on August 1, 2012 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

While so many watch the Olympics in London, I am in the Green Mountains of Vermont with faculty and administrators from community colleges – amazing teams in their own right. While I am representing NASPA as a consultant at the AAC&U Summer Institute, “Bridging Cultures to Form a New Nation,” my experiences with both academic and student affairs in community colleges make me feel right at home.

As with any great team, there is preparation to be done, and ours came in the form of what could easily be a semester’s worth of readings on difference, community, and democratic thinking. Since learning is my number one strength, you can imagine how much I enjoyed prepping for the Institute. I am working with some highly skilled colleagues and we all have talented and committed faculty and administrators in our particular reading seminars.

In addition to the reading seminars, concurrent sessions were held on various topics such as diversity, high impact practices, and gaining faculty buy-in for Bridging Cultures projects the teams brought to the Institute. For the concurrent session on faculty buy-in, I teamed with a professor of philosophy and an administrator of service learning programs. We were to talk about faculty buy-in generally and collaboration between academic and student affairs.

If participants divided equally among the concurrent sessions, we could have expected some 20 in attendance. We were puzzled, then, when only six participants came to the session when, just the day before, teams had identified faculty buy-in as their biggest concern regarding successfully implementing their plans.

Following the session, I did some checking around to see why faculty had not come to the session. The main reason given was that faculty did not see “getting faculty buy-in” as their responsibility. It seems that collaborating with student affairs is not on the radar screen since they have difficulty collaborating among themselves. While we in student affairs often talk about the difficulty of cultivating collaborations with faculty, it looks like we need to get in line.

Something that was reinforced for me during the presentation and in my subsequent discussions on the topic is that we make a mistake when we paint faculty with the same brush. The philosophy professor who was one of the session presenters had his ideas about getting buy-in:

Have a problem that matters to faculty (the old “What’s in it for me” question)
Have a mandate
Allow faculty to take the lead in finding a solution
Implement their solution
Get feedback for course corrections
Act on the feedback

When I talked about faculty and student affairs working together to foster civic learning and democratic engagement, I asked what questions faculty have for student affairs. The immediate response was, “How much money do you have?” Faculty want to have additional resources and they believe that student affairs has more resources than they do.

After discussing how willing student affairs often is to support faculty initiatives and how student affairs is often willing to do the administrative work around a program, the faculty said they liked the idea of collaborating. Of course, I asked about faculty seeing student affairs as educators. I talked with them about my idea of cocurriculum laboratories attached to academic courses, and there was much interest in having their course content reinforced in a systematic manner with the addition of a thread of civic learning and democratic engagement. Others said that this was letting faculty off the hook in that they would make no changes in the curriculum and could claim that they were fulfilling the expectation of embedding civic learning and democratic engagement in their courses because student affairs would take care of this in the cocurriculum lab.

I’m not sure I care if faculty are off the hook as long as students get what they need and student affairs can have access to students in a context where they can plan, implement, and assess the impact of their work on learning and skill outcomes. While the important question of scale arose, in the short-run, I want to see the cocurriculum laboratories model tested; I want to see faculty and student affairs partnering on objectives and outcomes for academic course content and essential characteristics and skills such as personal and social responsibility, intercultural competence, and civic learning and democratic engagement.

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Posted in AACU, Academic Affairs, Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Higher Education, Student Affairs

Ambassadors…to China, faculty, and beyond…

Posted on June 3, 2012 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

Some people can’t write because they have what is called “writers’ block.” Fortunately, this is not a problem for me. I have so much I want to write about that it takes me a while to decide on what not to write about. Returning from a two-week visit to China, I have enough material to write about for some time, but I fear I might bore you, so I’ll just give you a taste.

Over the past weeks, I was fortunate to be among colleagues who participated as presenters in the Macau Student Affairs Institute, which was open to student affairs practitioners from all over China. It is believed to be the first such institute of its kind in China. A colleague created the curriculum and invited many colleagues you know (I won’t call names because these folks have not consented to be subjects in my blog) to do a series of workshops for the participants from China.

I learned an inordinate amount about student affairs in China, both from the institute and from my subsequent visits to Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Shanghai as “Ambassador for NASPA”, as the Chinese dubbed me.

I was truly impressed by the institute participants because they were eager and attentive learners from the beginning to the very end of the two-day workshop in which I participated. They were active learners and they have adopted what they call “total student development.” What I envied was the interest of faculty in student affairs work. The institute included professors from law, psychology, and information technology, all of whom were eager to learn how best to help students reach their maximum potential. It was terrific to have faculty and student affairs staff all working together to support students.

I’m encouraged by my recent experiences with faculty wanting to educate and support the whole student. The day before I left for China, I was making a presentation, along with a former MUFP alum of whom I am so proud, to veterinary medical education doctors about seeing their students through the lens of student affairs. They, too, were eager to support students and to learn what it means to view students from a holistic perspective.

I think our next frontier is to engage with faculty directly in professional development that has heretofore been reserved for educators who claim student affairs as their field. Student affairs practitioners are educators primarily outside the classroom. Why not be ambassadors to academic affairs, working with faculty to use the lens of student affairs in their teaching inside the classroom?

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Posted in Academic Affairs, Higher Education, International, Student Affairs

Category Archives: Academic Affairs

Bridges – literal and otherwise – for student success

“The 21st Century Belongs to the Student”

Feeling Guilty…Opportunities Amidst Distress

What does welcome look like? Expectations of a multicultural campus

Defying Stereotyped Diversity: Getting to Know Students as Individuals

What Happens When the Academically Talented Aren’t College Ready?

Practical Competence

Stronger Emphasis on ‘Soft Skils’

The Continuing “Buy-in” Challenge

Ambassadors…to China, faculty, and beyond…

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