The transition from high school to college can be as challenging for students’ families as it is for the students. Recognizing that, colleges have increasingly hired administrators who are dedicated to helping parents and families with the adjustment.
At Gonzaga University, Amy Swank, director of parent and family relations, tells parents at their separate orientation each year, “You are going to go from an everyday manager or agent for your student to a spectator in a very short amount of time.”
Parents sometimes get emotional, she says, when they learn that they will no longer have unfettered access to student grades because of privacy laws, and that they shouldn’t call in to excuse their child from class. Her job is to show family members how to change their roles to being advisers to the students, or to “guide from the side.”
Swank, who has been in her role at Gonzaga for 10 years, is also president of the Association of Higher Education Parent/Family Program Professionals. The organization, which has grown to 495 individual members and 200 member institutions since its founding in 2008, shares ideas and strategies through surveys, publications, and an annual conference. While some member institutions do not have administrators dedicated to families, Swank says, all of them are engaged in fostering relationships with students’ parents and families.
College officials want parents to be involved — “they’re our No. 1 influencers over our students,” Swank says. Administrators have reframed their thinking to recognize that they are accepting not just a student, but the student’s entire support structure. That can mean stepparents, siblings, grandparents, guardians, and friends, as well as parents. Those family members can encourage students to refrain from binge drinking and other risky behaviors, and keep them on track with their studies.
Having an office that serves as a liaison for family members gives them a place to call when they have a concern, and also serves as a buffer so faculty members and other administrators don’t have to handle too many parental inquiries. One of the gains for colleges of cultivating family engagement, Swank says, is that “we know when families are involved in a healthy way with their student, graduation and retention rates go up.”
Colleges vary in where they locate the office that handles family relations. The majority are within student affairs, a 2017 survey conducted by the association and the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Parent & Family Programs found. Other programs are part of enrollment management, academic affairs, or alumni relations. A third of existing parent/family programs were founded from 2011 to 2017.
The people who direct or help direct family programs increasingly have master’s degrees, with more than 60 percent of participants in the 2017 survey having earned one.
Keri Riegler, director of New Student Connections and Parent and Family Programs at the University of South Florida, says her office has sought staff members who have a solid understanding of higher-education administration, students’ developmental needs, and even generational theory.
Technology like smartphones makes it easy for parents to stay in touch with their offspring in college several times a week, and many of them do. They may hear immediately from their student about a failed test or another setback.
Parents also use recently developed technology to communicate with colleges. The USF Parent and Family Programs page was created by Riegler’s office to reach out to the community that parents had already established on Facebook. Those online forums are the primary way that families of South Florida students communicate with each other and with university administrators. More than by email or phone, Riegler says, the social-media site is “where we’re getting the best information from them, about where we’re meeting expectations and also where we’re falling short.”
While once the university communicated with the student and then the student with the parent, she says, the expectation from students and parents alike now is that the university will communicate with the parent, and then the parent will pass on the information to the student. As the university responded to families’ desire for comprehensive communication through content like Facebook Live Chats and videos, interest in being physically present on campus seemed to diminish, leading the university to drop its Spring Family Day this year.
South Florida still holds welcome receptions for families and friends at fall move-in and invites them back to campus for Family & Friends Weekend in October. The fall event gives parents and whoever else makes up the student’s support system a chance to gauge how the student is adjusting to campus life.
In communicating with families, staff members in Riegler’s office take into account students’ circumstances and preferences. “For some of our students, we’re recognizing they may or may not have a family unit,” she says. And some students may not want their family involved in their college experience, in which case the college is careful to respect their privacy.
“The student is truly the author of this experience,” Riegler says. “We have these really tight family units, and then we’re also seeing more students that are here on their own.”
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