Category Archives: 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

The Unmitigated Joy of Education: What Makes You Skip?

Posted on September 15, 2013 by gwendungy | 4 comments

Friday, September 13, 2013 was the final day of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s five-day back-to-school bus tour with the theme “Strong Start, Bright Future.” He visited high schools and elementary schools; held town hall meetings; spoke to students in assemblies, in classrooms, and on school buses. I was particularly interested in some of the comments the Secretary and school and college administrators who attended some of the events made during these visits.

Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, said that the university’s objective was to meet each student where they stand. He was referring to financial assistance for students who needed it. He followed up with, “We have a mantra here—we will be judged not by whom we exclude, but by whom we include.” At a town hall meeting in Santa Fe, Secretary Duncan said that though some folks come to Santa Fe to experience the culture and the architecture, “we believe you’re here to see our most precious resource: our children.”

Hearing these words of support made me recall something that I had heard just a week ago in the locker room where I swim. Some teachers were talking about the children returning to school. A first-grade teacher said that first-graders are skipping when they come into the school. I loved the image and thought about what makes one skip. I think it’s unmitigated joy and lack of fear about what awaits you.

When students find themselves on our college and university campuses, they could literally, and, most likely figuratively, skip to class if we met them where they stand, as President Crow said, and if we treated them as if they were our most precious resource, according to Secretary Duncan. As we move forward with the academic year, something that might help during those pessimistic valleys when we wonder if our efforts are worth it is to think about students skipping across campus or into classrooms because they know that they are getting a “strong start for their bright future.”

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Posted in Higher Education, Students

Living the Dream…Then and Now

Posted on August 28, 2013 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

Just as the Joe Louis and Max Schmeling rematch fight gave my parents’ generation hope and courage, Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech inspired my generation. Perhaps I should say, it inspired me.

As we often remember the details about where we were when significant events occurred in our lives, I remember that neighbors gathered with my grandmother, my mother, and me in the kitchen in our apartment in Chicago when Dr. King spoke.

We had a small black-and-white television that we brought from my mother’s bedroom and placed on the kitchen table. The table was up against a wall so there were only three chairs, but no one sat down during the speech. We were all transfixed by the number of people, the beauty of King’s words, and the courage of all who participated in the March.

As Dr. King’s words, the images the words evoked, and the cadence and tenor of his voice made me tremble with joy, I remember also being afraid that someone would do some small thing that would bring out the dogs and water hoses and someone would be killed. Even during this triumphant moment, there was reason to fear.

This speech came at a pivotal time for me. I had completed my first year at college and, because of financial hardship, I had decided that I would not return. It was after Dr. King’s speech that I changed my mind. I was not only inspired, I was ashamed that I would allow financial hardship and general unhappiness about college make me squander the opportunity that so many had fought and suffered to give me.
As we commemorate the day of the March on Washington and the Dream speech, I am heartened by all that has been accomplished and encouraged that a new generation will accomplish so much more. Our students today have the tools and the courage to help future generations live the Dream. It is a privilege to participate in their lives.

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Posted in Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Identity, Race & Ethnicity, Students

Reinventing and Helping Students Shine

Posted on August 13, 2013 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

There is nothing like the possibility of having a new start or the opportunity to reinvent oneself. Whether just out of high school or coming later in life, beginning college is an opportunity to remake oneself into one’s own image and leave behind the perceptions of those in one’s past.

The beginning of a new academic year is also a time for student affairs to innovate and influence the perceptions of colleagues with whom we want to collaborate to help students “shine.” The final line of John Legend’s song Shine tells us that “ordinary people can be a hero; don’t put out the light.” If we are not helping students shine, we may be guilty of putting out the light. The challenge is great. What can we do with the opportunity a new beginning affords?

This past week, there was a lot of questioning and opining about what Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame and fortune would do as the new owner of The Washington Post. Certainly a new owner is another kind of beginning or opportunity to redesign, innovate, and transform in order to change the perceptions and the culture of a well-respected institution.

The speculations about what Bezos would do ranged from whether he would be the death of journalism or the founder of its golden age. Regardless on which end of the argument continuum one sits, change seems inevitable. If Jeff Bezos came to your college or university, what kinds of changes do you think he would make that would have an impact on student affairs in order to help students shine?

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Posted in Higher Education, Identity, Student Affairs, Students

Educating for Reality…Still…

Posted on July 21, 2013 by gwendungy | 1 comment

“Throughout his campaign, Obama had tried to transcend the issue of race. He was, as the saying went, a post-racial candidate, not an extension of the civil rights generation of black leaders who had preceded him.”

This quote from Don Balz’s column in Sunday’s Washington Post, reminded me of a conversation I attempted to have with our son when he was in high school more than 25 years ago. He had always attended integrated schools and his high school in Columbia, Maryland, was probably the most racially mixed and liberal school in the country. With his friends, he had few if any occasions to think about race. However, because he was of the dating age, I attempted to begin a conversation about the history of black people in America and the civil rights movement in particular.

I told him that his current friends might not see him as they see him now if he began to date white girls because there was a history of black boys and men being killed when it came to white women. Our son responded that he didn’t want to hear about how things used to be because this was a different time, and he didn’t want the burden of the past to be placed on him. I recall feeling afraid for him because he didn’t want to hear. I recall knowing that whether he wanted to hear about the history and experiences of black people or not, he could not “transcend the issue of race.”

This is why I think it was extremely important that the president spoke personally about race following the Trayvon Martin verdict. While we black parents might not be heard by our children when we talk about race, “What he did was something no other American president could have done—giving voice, in calm and measured terms, to what it means still to be black in America.” I think we should give special attention and particular emphasis to the word “still” in this quote because, despite much progress and optimism, there is still much work to be done.

I think educators will need to help students see reality for themselves, especially in light of comments such as this one by Joe Klein in Time Magazine: “There will always be injustices like the murder of Trayvon Martin, but in our multiracial future, led by our color-blind children, there will be fewer of them.”

Will there be fewer boys and men racially profiled just because the demographics are changing? Do we want to be a color-blind society or do we want our citizen students to have the courage to see color and also respect the morality of racial justice? Our students will need to understand the history of our country, reflect on the experiences that helped shape their values, imagine a world that they want to create, and determine what attitudes and actions they will need in order to promote a free and just society.

The big question for educators is the one the mayor of Philadelphia asked us as a nation in another Time Magazine commentary: “Are we willing to set aside ego, be vulnerable and hear things that none of us necessarily want to hear?”

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

Contemplating the Big Questions…

Posted on July 1, 2013 by gwendungy | 1 comment

On Sunday mornings, I like to watch shows like Chris Matthews (so sorry the show is ending), Meet the Press, and all the other news talk shows as I flip channels back and forth among them. At the same time, I like reading the Sunday papers while having a late breakfast. As I was getting the breakfast dishes following the talk shows, I changed the channel to Super Soul Sunday, one of Oprah’s shows on OWN. I was not sitting down attending to the show, but what I heard caught my attention.

Oprah’s guest this past Sunday was Rainn Wilson from the television show The Office. I might be the only person who has never watched an episode of The Office, but I was familiar with Rainn Wilson from other roles.

Oprah was interviewing Wilson about Soul Pancake. I may be the last to have heard of it, but it sounds really interesting. From what I gathered from the part of the interview I heard, the idea behind Soul Pancake is to provide a kinky, quirky, fun space, literally and figuratively, for people to ponder the big universal questions.

The question Rainn asked Oprah was something to the effect of, “If you could ask God any question, what would that be?”

Oprah’s response was that she would ask, “Why?”

The question that came to mind for me immediately was, “What is my purpose?”

I’ve been asking that question for a very long time, and I suspect others, especially students, have asked that and similar questions that are never verbalized nor shared.

When I think about the value of the concept of cocurriculum laboratories facilitated by highly skilled student affairs staff or others, I think the labs provide a space similar to Wilson’s Soul Pancake where students will be encouraged to ask the big questions and ponder them with others who have similar questions.

I was so desperate to find an answer to my question about purpose that when I turned 30 – a particularly introspective year for me – I went on a retreat with an unfamiliar group that had advertised – or I interpreted the advertisement as promising – that participants would leave the retreat knowing their purpose in life.

Our students won’t have to grasp at such straws if student affairs and faculty work together to provide cocurriculum laboratories that help students identify cocurricular programs and activities that further reinforce the objectives of courses, and also facilitate discussions among students that help them to intentionally hone their communication skills while entertaining big questions.

A skilled facilitator will find ways to help students practice the skills needed to also develop cultural intelligence, practical skills, habits of civic engagement, and social responsibility. The cocurriculum laboratory is one way to address how students can attain the all-important qualities that we promise in our college and university mission statements.

Whether we open spaces for students to ponder the big questions through Soul Pancake or cocurriculum laboratories, we owe our students this much.

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

Tagged rainn wilson, universal questions

Collaborating for Student Achievement

Posted on June 26, 2013 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to serve as one of the faculty for the AAC&U High Impact Practices Institute. If there ever was an indication that colleges and universities are serious about student achievement, it is the number of institutions that brought teams to the University of Wisconsin for the Institute.

While there, the teams dedicated themselves to developing a plan to bring coherence to the high impact practices in which they are engaged. They were committed to insuring that all students would benefit from proven practices, and they were passionate about the contributions of all educators at the college or university. They were resource conscious and democratic in their thinking about who could do what for what purpose. Most of the teams were comprised of faculty, student affairs staff, and administrators.

I had the privilege of being one of the faculty for the leadership track, and in the session I led, I broke the group up into four topics according to my summary of all the teams’ applications. I asked participants to choose the topic they wanted to discuss: assessment; collaboration; retention; and the following together—e-portfolio, first-year experience, and sophomore seminar. The largest number of participants wanted to discuss collaboration.

I was encouraged that there is an increasing understanding that as educators, we should all be contributing to student achievement. What the participants in the Institute understood was that there had to be conversations to determine who would contribute what for what purpose and how to bring the rich resources together in a manner that would be coherent for students to access. I think the Institute was an excellent opportunity for a group of people from the same institution to become a team in pursuit of a common purpose. I wish all of them success in their endeavors.

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

Civic Engagement by Correspondence Course?

Posted on April 10, 2013 by gwendungy | Leave a comment

I have always thought that anyone who wants a higher education should be able to access it. I have always thought that admissions criteria for public universities should be eliminated and everyone should have an opportunity to try. With these kinds of thoughts held so long, I wondered why I felt so uneasy when reading two articles in particular in the April 12, 2013, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

One article titled “University of Akron to Help Students Test Out of Courses” should have been a solution to my desire to have everyone have access to higher education. The other article that left me ill at ease was titled “Under California Bill, Faculty-Free Colleges Would Award Exam-Based Degrees.” Both of these articles reminded me of what I would have opted for when I finished high school if I had not been able to attend Eastern Illinois University by some miracle on a teaching scholarship supplemented by loans and campus work.

With my desire to continue learning and no obvious means to go to college at the time, I was looking at ads in magazines about how to take what were called “correspondence courses.” These were courses where, for a fee, I would receive lessons to complete, mail them back for corrections or feedback and, when competency was shown, I would receive the next lesson. If I had gotten a college degree in this manner, there are many critical learning outcomes that I would not have achieved, and one of them is my desire to fulfill a civic duty.

Being a black college student in the 60s, I was obligated to be civically engaged. Civil rights decisions and laws had a personal impact on my peers and me. In addition to taking our courses, we met to talk about what we needed to do in our current situation as students to reinforce and be participants in what was going on in the country. We had discussions with out professors about the laws, previous movements, and what was within our power to do if we wanted to protest what we saw as unjust in our community of African American students. We opted to become involved, to have our voices heard. If I had taken correspondence courses, I do not believe that I would have felt a duty to become involved.

After I left college, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Because my consciousness had been raised in college about being an activist, I felt a duty to do something with what I had gained as a college graduate. I connected with civil rights workers and the NAACP to do what I could to honor the legacy of Dr. King. I recall writing letters until my hand cramped; I recall marching through the streets of St. Louis every January 15, Dr. King’s birthday, freezing and singing in an effort to bring attention to the need to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy with a holiday. I do not believe that a correspondence school education would have given me the tools and the desire and sense of duty to become civically engaged. I needed the camaraderie and perspective of others to help me develop the passion and courage to speak up and to put myself in what was harm’s way on some occasions of protesting, however peacefully.

So while I applaud efforts to ease the way for access to higher education by alternate means, I am skeptical about what kind of nation we’re creating if students do not also learn that there is an obligation to be civically responsible and engaged. Students need an opportunity to discuss and interact with others who have different opinions in order to better refine their own.

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Posted in Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, Higher Education, Race & Ethnicity, 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

Category Archives: Students

What does welcome look like? Expectations of a multicultural campus

Defying Stereotyped Diversity: Getting to Know Students as Individuals

The Unmitigated Joy of Education: What Makes You Skip?

Living the Dream…Then and Now

Reinventing and Helping Students Shine

Educating for Reality…Still…

Contemplating the Big Questions…

Collaborating for Student Achievement

Civic Engagement by Correspondence Course?

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

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