This article is excerpted from a new Chronicle special report, “The Future of Teaching: How the Classroom Is Being Transformed,” available in the Chronicle Store.
One endless year ago, administrators could plausibly think they understood “the college experience,” because it was steeped in rituals, rhythms, and requirements that stretched back decades. The pandemic severed those connections along with any sense of normalcy — maybe forever. This fall, the academic and cultural experiences that colleges and universities aspire to offer will most certainly be new, but they will not be “normal,” and we should avoid fanciful phrasings that seek to elide that reality.
At this point in the pandemic, many undergraduates have taken nearly 50 percent of their coursework remotely or in some hybrid format. Sizable graduate-student populations, particularly at the master’s-degree level, will have experienced the bulk, or even all, of their coursework online. Many undergraduates will matriculate to a campus for the first time in the fall without the typical orientation.
How can we best support all of those students? How should we help those in labs and research groups? How should we run mentoring programs? Or supervise extracurricular clubs and activities? And, certainly, how best can we ensure health and safety within campus housing? The questions and answers about this fall are — as has so often been the case in the past year — unprecedented. From our perspective in campus leadership roles in student-affairs and faculty-support departments, we have some ideas on how to proceed.
Relying on past traditions to guide us in the new academic year is not a strategy that will work now. It is also well past time to recognize — in our programming — that the student population is not a monolith. There is no “ideal” student. Our programming has to reflect the lived realities of students beyond the pandemic, to help all of them return to our campuses feeling a sense of welcome and belonging.
What does all of that mean for those of us in student affairs? Our work is directly tied to a central and vital part of the campus experience for the majority of undergraduates (and many graduate students as well). Positioning student-support services as vital and valued in 2021-22 — with the personnel and resources to meet students’ needs — should be a priority for administrators.
Another priority: Foster greater collaboration between the academic and support divisions of the institution. There are, and historically have been, meaningful intersections between the two. Now is the time to bring collaboration to the forefront of campus operations. Unless faculty and staff members work together toward the same goal — student success — no amount of targeted programming will overcome the very real deficits our students are now facing due to the pandemic.
Here are seven ways that faculty members can work with those of us in student-affairs departments to create the ideal conditions for student success:
- Expand orientation programs for new faculty members to include a dedicated strand on the role and work of student-affairs offices. Invite staff members to introduce themselves, to offer overviews of our offices, and to make it clear that we exist as resources for faculty members, as well as for students.
- Design a faculty-orientation program for adjunct instructors at a convenient time. Require their attendance, and pay them for their time. Make sure the program includes a dedicated section on student-affairs work.
- Department chairs should poll their faculty members to determine which student-support needs (mental health, disability-accommodation requests, academic preparedness) they see as most pressing for the coming academic year. Based on the results, chairs should invite staff representatives to give talks at department meetings on how to deal with these needs. This should be a top-down expectation to which department chairs are held. Adjunct faculty members should be invited to the presentations.
- Make greater use of faculty-in-residence expertise. By virtue of living with students in campus housing, these faculty members have a broad perspective on everything that students do, including, of course, attending classes. Create formal lines of communication between such faculty members and their departmental colleagues, and with upper-level administration, so that everyone is moving in the same direction and in concert when it comes to holistically supporting students. Draw on the additional expertise of the residential-life office and, for religiously affiliated institutions, of campus ministry.
- When faculty members require students to do group work, make it part of the course curriculum to train students in how to do such work. Dedicate a class session or a lab meeting to this subject. Bring in the relevant staff members to give presentations to the class on how to communicate to fellow students (in a nonthreatening and inclusive manner), how to schedule group meetings, and how to mediate problems in a group (such as when one member isn’t making progress on the group assignment).
- Consult with disability staff members about accessible curriculum design and invite them to speak to students about the importance of accessibility, particularly when they are involved in group work or are preparing class presentations. We should be modeling for our students while also requiring them to practice inclusivity and accessibility.
- Invite representatives of student-support offices into your classroom at relevant and meaningful times. Many professors design assignments in which students have to interview campus staff members to “learn about” what they do. Why not position these staff members as instructional authorities by inviting them to present to students?
Peering into the months ahead, we have an opportunity to do things differently as we plan for a return to campus this fall. With a year of pandemic experience behind us, we can more confidently say that we know what worked, what didn’t work, and — most crucially — how much work students and faculty and staff members should be expected to manage. We have an opportunity to pause and reflect on the journey that led us here and on the best ways to forge ahead. We have time to allow the future to catch up to the past.
Most important, now is the time to listen to your student-affairs experts and empower them to make the kinds of meaningful programmatic changes needed for this moment. We know your students, and we are already filled with great ideas on how best to help your particular population of students succeed.
If nothing else, the pandemic has accustomed all of us to working in unconventional ways. We should channel that energy and use it as the basis for new collaborative relationships in the future. What we have recommended here is a starting point.
