Jennifer R. Keup:
There’s so much that happens in that first year, but I think if you boil it down the first year in so many ways for both student and institution is about belongingness, about creating a sense of connection about agency, about creating a community of individuals. You know, it used to be that, that by the first six weeks with the goal was that a student knew a staff member, a peer in, on a faculty member. And, you know, I, I think those timelines have been blown out of the water, not just by COVID, but by many things. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be that sort of compartmentalize and who they need to know, but just feeling like they belong, like they know where to go.

Heather Shea:
All right. Welcome to Student Affairs Now. The online learning community for student affairs educators, I’m your host, Heather Shea. Today we are discussing the unique cohorts currently on college and university campuses, and specifically the unique experiences facing a group. Some are calling froshmores. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations, make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find us at studentaffairsnow.com on YouTube or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Today’s episode is sponsored by EverFi the trusted partner for 1500 colleges and universities. Everfi is the standard of care for student safety well-being and with the results to prove it. Today’s episode is also sponsored by Anthology. Learn more about their innovative data-driven platforms to build and foster your student engagement experiences.

Heather Shea:
Learn more by visiting anthology.com/engage. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Heather Shea. My pronouns are she her and hers and I am broadcasting live from East Lansing, Michigan near the campus or on the campus. Actually today I’m in my office of Michigan State University, where I serve as the director of women’s student services and interim director of the gender and sexuality campus center. I am also an affiliate faculty member in the MSU student affairs administration program. Michigan State University occupies the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the national bay three fires, Confederacy of a Ojubue, Ottawa and Pottawatomie peoples the university resides on land seated in the 1819 treaty of Saginaw. I am so thrilled to have extremely wise and generative panel today. Thank you all three of you for joining me to share a little bit about your background and experiences and specifically addressing the needs of the unique groups of students we have on campus today. So as each of you go around and introduce yourselves tell us a little bit about you, your current role, your pathway into student affairs, the work you do. And I’m going to start with Jennifer. Welcome Jennifer.

Jennifer R. Keup:
Thanks Heather. It’s great to be here and wonderful to be with the other panelists here. My name is Jennifer Keup. I’m the executive director of the national resource center for the first year experience and students in transition. And even though we’re completely externally facing and serve a national and international constituency, we are located at the University of South Carolina, which is on historic lands of the Cherokee people. And I want to acknowledge was built with enslaved laborers. and so I do wanna acknowledge the history there so that we can learn from it and do better to one for one another and to one another. again, the national resource center is located at the university, but serves a national international constituency. We have professional development, events, publications, original research, and all sorts of communication venues. And hopefully many of you have had a chance to interact with us in terms of like, you know, where, where my pathway has gone.

Jennifer R. Keup:
I have always lived in those liminal spaces of higher education that are between student affairs and academic affairs that somebody sneezes and they take over and it suddenly is reporting to somebody different. And those tend to be things like, you know, first year experience, student success, initiatives, assessment things that almost sort of supersede any one categorization and I’ve loved living in those spaces. They’ve allowed me to spend my career as sort of bilingual and cross-cultural from a higher education perspective. And I feel like there’s been great value and I’ve enjoyed contributing to this idea of building bridges and creating connections on campuses, which hopefully we’ll get to later as a, as a fundamental practice in the work of serving first year students and other students in transitions. On a personal level, I have to say, I’ve done action research on this topic. I dropped off my older son to college when fall of 2019 and picked him up in spring break of 2020. And he did not go back for quite some time. He is now a junior and doing well, but I lived with an N of one research project with this in my home. And so I feel on so many levels the importance of these students, not just an abstraction or as research or as individuals or serving on a campus, but as one of my own children.

Heather Shea:
A fantastic personal experience. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for being here today. Laura, welcome.

Laura Randolph:
Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I’m Laura Randolph. I serve as the director for new student orientation and family programs at Rutgers University where we’re really looking at student transitions. And so not just getting them through orientation, but really helping them through kind of that fall, spring and kind of moving in and moving through and moving on experience. And so for me my higher ed journey has been starting out in residence life. And so seeing students at kind of all, all walks of their college experience and living, learning communities but always gravitating towards that first year. And so really thinking through how are we welcoming folks into the university environment and what support structures are we putting in place for them to be successful? So I’m really excited to be a part of this conversation as we think about the multiple populations that are coming back in some cases or for the first time coming to a college campus. Thank you so much for being

Heather Shea:
Here, Laura. I appreciate it. Brian, welcome.

Brian MacDonald:
Thanks Heather. My name is Brian MacDonald. I am the executive director of communications and organizational development for UCLA student affairs. I started the the pandemic in residential life, however, and, you know, professionally I’ve, I’ve bounced around geographically and in terms of functional area. So residential life first-year experience orientation and through all of those opportunities. I think for me how I’ve approached our work is, you know, thinking about those students who we don’t see every day thinking about how we put unlikely ideas together to create new opportunities. And certainly that has been a perpetual challenge over these past two years. And so I also have a unique perspective that I’m sitting out this quarter. I’m on paternity leave with a two month old baby at home. So I’ve been able to take stock of what’s going on, not just at UCLA, but nationally.

Brian MacDonald:
And I think what’s very interesting to me as we have this conversation is how dynamically different our experiences and our answers may be based on where we are in the country, whether we’re at the politics of our states, or if we are at a university that is surging with enrollment or suffering from enrollment. And so I think as we approach some of these challenges and opportunities we’re not going to have a one size fits all solution. And so I think we’re going to have hopefully frameworks for great conversations and an ability to think differently. So thank you so much, Heather, and I appreciate getting to connect with awesome colleagues. So thank you.

Heather Shea:
Yes, I should say welcome back, Brian, because you were on a previous episode about geek culture, one of our very first episodes. So thank you for joining us back here again on Student Affairs Now.

Brian MacDonald:
Happy to, I’ll try not to swerve too much into nerd stuff. Promise.

Heather Shea:
That was a really fun episode. So I know this is a massive question. So, but I, Jennifer, I really want to pick your brain for a moment here about what we know about these periods of transition, you know, and, and I will also say that the all four of us are, are at pretty traditional four year institutions. So we are speaking about a specific student experience and we are going to get into a little bit later some variations on that. But what do we know about periods of transition when students come to campus for their first year of college and what are their needs? And anything you’d like to share about that go,

Jennifer R. Keup:
Yeah, that’s like five decades of research and practice. I’ll do my best. And to honor, you know, the, the, you know, individuals who were groundbreakers and this whole thing, one of the things I think I key into a little bit of the idea of traditional, right? Because I don’t know that that exists anymore. We certainly are on four your campuses, but traditional, I think is such a one of the most exciting things. I heard somebody to talk about new traditional students, not non traditional students, because it really flipped the framework. And to me, it was very meaningful. And I think there’s also a lot of that is breaking the ground or breaking from the idea of traditional thoughts around transitions. So historic very good at the time. Theory was really about transitions. It was really about endings and beginnings, very concrete, kind of you’re, you’re leaving this phase, going to this phase, and there’s some element of that, but I think the transition literature now is much more about, you know, honoring the whole students and the identities and experiences they bring with them to college.

Jennifer R. Keup:
I think at one point there was a lot of talk about how this is their first major transition to the first time that I left home. And I, you know, we clearly cannot make that distinction anymore. Students have a host of experiences before they come to us and may not be of traditional age, may be in different spaces in their lives where this isn’t the first time this isn’t the first transition. So I think that, you know, now we’re looking much more about things, not necessarily being additive, but more about expansion and amplification of self and identities and learning and transformation rather than just kind of like transition. And I like that. So I do want to sort of say that, I think there’s just been sort of this theoretical and conceptual shift in how we talk about the first year experience on the transitions, away from these traditional ideas.

Jennifer R. Keup:
You know, to to honor a host of student identities who are coming to us, a host of cultural, you know foundations and as well as just kind of, you know, a difference in pathways and that’s exciting. Now none of that is to minimize the fact that the nature of transition to higher education is significant. It represents a courageous milestone that is about reconceptualizing a future, both for the students, but often for their families and their communities. You know, what we know about the uplift of higher education with respect to learning employability, personal development, civic engagement, community involvement, global citizenry, you know, health and wellbeing, you know, social justice, all of that really does speak that, that this is a monumental milestone. It just may not be how we’ve traditionally conceptualized it as closing one door and walking through a hallway to a different one.

Jennifer R. Keup:
It’s really taking who the student was and, and that identity with them and amplifying it. In many ways, the first year is fundamental, fundamental to setting a precedent and a foundation for success in college, and for all the opportunities it opens up for individual and community. The, the, you know, there’s so much that happens in that first year, but I think if you boil it down the first year in so many ways for both student and institution is about belongingness, about creating a sense of connection about agency, about creating a community of individuals. You know, it used to be that, that by the first six weeks with the goal was that a student knew a staff member, a peer in, on a faculty member. And, you know, I, I think those timelines have been blown out of the water, not just by COVID, but by many things.

Jennifer R. Keup:
And it doesn’t necessarily have to be that sort of compartmentalize and who they need to know, but just feeling like they belong, like they know where to go. You know, that there are environments they understand for skill development. There’s a pathway for academic success. And I know what that looks like for themselves that first year is really about kind of operationalizing all of those elements and understanding who they are within that environment, usually institutionally, but just also within a community of practice, what does it mean to be starting in a new community of practice that represents higher education at all the things they’re in? So the first year is really about finding footing and that institutional environment, and a lot of that has to do with that sense of safety and connection. And in many ways, I think that’s why we’re here because so much of that was interrupted by COVID right.

Jennifer R. Keup:
And I think though, that COVID really also though showed us some ways that higher education writ large, and, you know, first year experience professionals had been using sense of place as a crutch or shield for community and belongingness and sense of purpose. You know, what, what are we trying to achieve? You know, we all do this where we bring new students onto campus and we parade them around the quad or take them to a very iconic sports facility or to the brand new recreational facility or pool, and, and pretend that that is communicating purpose or what the community means. And so in some ways, the literature that I’ve read about COVID, which is still very nascent certainly not conclusive is that the institutions that had a much better sense programmatically, and it’s an organizationally of purpose around, what does it mean to be at this institution?

Jennifer R. Keup:
What does it mean to be a part of our community? What are the expectations and obligations? That one has as being a part of this organization, you know, as a new member as a first year, students fared better than those that maybe had been relying on place as they crutch for really articulating a sense of purpose. And so that first year is really about connecting to the purpose of institution, what you’re there about. And, and that’s exciting. And we see a lot of, of, you know, best, better promising whatever word, you know, adjective you wanna use practices. You know, some that have been around for decades like the first year seminar, other ones that are redefining themselves as being first year specific, like academic advising, our orientation colleagues and housing colleagues, critical and fundamental to that. And then we also see new partners like librarians and individuals in financial aid that are making themselves critical partners to us in a student development puzzle and not just transactional services.

Jennifer R. Keup:
So there’s a lot of movements going on there. Now maybe to get into the lane of some later questions, I do also want to talk about the second year, because I think, you know, the sophomore year over the past 15 to 20 years has taken its own identity, you know, that we had the first year experience and then the sophomore year experience came up and it is serving a different set of needs of the student in that pipeline. I think for a long time, people there was pushback of, well, you’re just, you know, you’re moving the cliff, you know, and it’s like, well, no, we, if you do development, right, there are different developmental challenges at different phases. And to be first, your professionals are trying to cram an awful lot into that first year that may or may not have been appropriate. And so the second year we see a lot with respect to students after they find that sense of safety and connection, hopefully doing a lot more examination of purpose in themselves.

Jennifer R. Keup:
Like, what am I doing here? What do I want to do with the world? Where, what is my pistol theological center? How do I live and learn in the world? Is that appropriate to the major that I thought I wanted is that appropriate to the career? What I want to make a contribution. And we see a lot more sort of exploration of personal identity areas, interrogation of those kinds of externally defined pieces of our identity or student’s identity. And how does that fit into the trajectory academically and career wise? As well. So that second year is a lot of questioning. And I think, again, right now, we find that students might be coming in without that foundation of safety and, and sense of place. And that first year, because they may not have been there or maybe sort of questioning their, their connection to the community when it was done remotely and yet still facing these challenges, which are going to show up in the second year, irrespective of what that first year was. Right. But the timeline may be slightly delayed, but it’s not exactly pushed off a whole other year just because you weren’t on campus last year. So I don’t know that I answered your question. I might’ve traded a whole new portal of ideas for us to explore.

Heather Shea:
I love it. I love it. Well, I like how you queued up this idea of this like really transformed experience that our current cohorts are, are having on campus. So I think we move really into this idea of the term that Rutgers coined in the article that we’re, we’re borrowing and, and going to explore it more today, which is this idea of the cohort of students who were first year students during pandemic PR, perhaps learning from home spent a year doing that. And now they’re sophomores on our campuses. I have one who works in my office in women’s student services. So I don’t know if Ashley is watching today, but I keep thinking about her because when she comes in, it’s like, everything is brand new. And I keep forgetting that last year, even though she was working for us last year as well she wasn’t here on campus. She was living at her house in Ann Arbor. And so what is it like what do we, what do we mean by frosh smores? So Laura, can you talk a little bit about that group of, of sophomores as well as, you know, some of the things that Jennifer talked about regarding this first year group as well, and how together they are making up this really interesting cohort of students?

Jennifer R. Keup:
Yeah, absolutely. I love the froshmore kind of title. I would love to take credit for that. But our parents, family, community, actually the ones that kind of coined that phrase, but I think it’s a good descriptor of particularly our second year students because what you have said they have experienced college but not in that place kind of sense of place context. So

Laura Randolph:
It’s trying to kind of give respect to you. You’ve been in college, you’ve been taking the classes, you’ve been interacting with faculty, maybe interacting with students, but there’s a campus component in, particularly at Rutgers, we are a very complex campus and it’s a huge part of the Rutgers experience. And so how do you create space for that exploration to happen? And at the same time, our first year students and so for our first year students, I imagine kind of across the country, many of them are stepping foot on campus for the first time at MoveOn. So there’s not even an open house experience or if it is, it’s more of a virtual experience. And so they’re trying to imagine what living on campus or sharing a room or those traditions spots on campus can look like and kind of what’s that connection that you self.

Laura Randolph:
And so it, I think we’re in this unique space of how do you pull back the curtain on what’s important? What’s what do you highlight? How do you make them feel a part of the community? And I think in particular with our freshman population how do you still acknowledge the learning that has taken place? The learning, whether it be in the classroom about the university in our case about Rutgers but also add on that layer because for this population, it’s that question of, you don’t know what you don’t know. And so how do you create that space to kind of drop some teasers here and there? How do you create maybe kind of a checklist for them to know, Hey, at this point in the semester, you’re some things that you should be considering. And so it’s an interesting population in it right now.

Laura Randolph:
I think we’re seeing a lot of merging of the two in terms of our first year students and our second year students, but also trying to find some, a unique kind of identifiers in ways to support. I, I think as we look at our welcome program students were excited to be on campus. They were excited to go to events, to be in spaces with other people that were not boxes on screens. They were excited just to get out and explore. And so from kind of the program, I mean, that was exciting. But now as we kind of get into the thick of things, we’re also seeing in terms of balance how are you balancing now being immersed in this campus experience? The classwork has it lessened in many ways, it might’ve increased and being able to navigate all of those different pieces.

Laura Randolph:
And so it’s exciting time. But it’s also your shine to really understand who our students are. I think from the research aspect there’s a lot of pieces that we’re seeing that fit into the research in terms of we know that this no longer is kind of that first monumental experience in terms of being away from home for the first time, or perhaps even engaging in conversations with people who are different from them. But how do you balance that with still wanting to create these experiences where they are challenged, where they can step outside of their box where they can try something new, something different but also in a kind of measured ways. So that’s a lot I recognize but it, it is something that I think we’re going to be kind of working through and trying to understand particularly with our second year students are they now in a trend?

Laura Randolph:
And sometimes behaviorally as our first-year students, will there be kind of a, a shift where they now kind of fit in a second year lane? I don’t necessarily want to call it necessarily a lane, but just thinking about right now, there’s some trends that we’re seeing that are similar in terms of for us being on campus. So now you’re testing those limits, those boundaries. You are starting to explore campus. You’re starting to see who your support networks are, and those are very similar traits to what our, our first year students are experiencing it and are demonstrating. So yeah, it, it, it’s interesting. It’s exciting. And I think the impetus for the article was really just starting conversations of, we recognize these students have not been on campus. How do we welcome them into the community? It’s not acknowledging what you have lost, but wanting to acknowledge what you have done, what you have been able to accomplish. But recognizing the campus community piece is the piece that we want to make sure that we can welcome you into.

Heather Shea:
I love that. And I think we will definitely put the link to the article in our show notes. So you can go to our website and find that cause it did. I think for me, at least it highlighted this kind of making up for lost time and maybe what they didn’t get their first year. And I’ve kind of seen that a little bit on our campus as well. So Brian, you transitioned in the middle that you were working over at housing before, and you definitely experienced housing in the middle of the initial parts of COVID. So I want to kind of pick your brain a little on not only the implications for those residential experiences, but also in your new role with communications. Like that’s also a really key component to this because the students aren’t physically on campus receiving orientation information, they’re receiving it through other media you know, how do you cycle that through, make sure they’re getting the messages they need. So whole lot of kind of your areas of expertise to share a little bit with our audience.

Brian MacDonald:
Yeah. And I don’t know if I can consider it expertise. I feel like we just hit a reset button. Right. And we’re all learning, but you know, Jennifer and Laura, as you were talking and sharing so much great observations. I also just think about all the mistakes I made when I was 16, 17, and 18 in front of other people that probably didn’t get made by some of these students. Right. So it’s not just college student development, it’s high school development. I’m on paternity leave now, but I, I was on campus quite a bit during move in. And I was in an elevator with, you know, for socially distant young men. And they had no ability to regulate their cologne use. It was like babies, baby. who couldn’t control their venom. And I’m sure that would have been me you know, in, in 19, in 1996.

Brian MacDonald:
But I think as we talk to our staff too, there’s, there’s some things that, you know, folks didn’t quite experience in terms of mistake, makings, especially socially and probably academically that are being made now. And I also think too the UC system, we’re also you know, if we didn’t have a pandemic, we’d be looking at how the lack of an SAT for the incoming class would be impacting. So there’s so many different things, which is why I think Jennifer, I think you mentioned, we’re just starting to crack into all of the different research we’ll be doing on these folks, but it is true. I started the pandemic in residential life and now I’m executive director of communications and organizational development and, you know, working closely with our housing partners during this whole thing and UCLA 98% of our first years live on campus.

Brian MacDonald:
So the demand to be one of those 20,000 who live on a, it was a very attentive audience because our demand was so high. And so that was a place where we could prioritize messaging, which is why I think you’re spot on Heather. How do we actually find the places where folks are listening and, and prioritize? And I think the specific role of living on campus just to, you know, stay on this for a second, it provides a home base. And I think where admissions and orientations and summer experiences did an admirable job over the past two years, trying to replicate things to specifically virtual environments. There, there’s definitely an absence of that in person, for many folks that I think was felt. And so I think of all the things we may convert to digital the importance of sequential in-person when possible engagement is important.

Brian MacDonald:
And I’m sure I’m not the only one who during, you know, if you had campus closures, but you were walking campus and you ran into a parent or a student or someone walking around with their phone and you just interjected and said, Hey, you, and they just so happy to talk to another human being who worked at the university, even though there’s well curated messages and media online that is so much better than what I could offer them, that made a huge difference. And I think that we have to really look at those types of things that maybe we didn’t do save some money, but we have to make sure that we at least reflect on what took place. So I think there’s a sequential unpacking happening in our halls and apartments now that is scaled back. And things that we used to be really great at in October are just going to have to happen in January for our, our staff.

Brian MacDonald:
And I think that needs to be okay. I think just getting through the doors for moving and just understanding COVID protocols with so much. And so now getting to some of those developmental things that we really prioritized, I think folks are now starting to, and we’re in the quarter system. So we’re probably a little bit behind where some of y’all’s students are at we opened, we moved in in late September, right? So we’re still in, you know, first round of, you know, the midterms and things like that. But as far as effective communications go, things change so quickly leading up to all of our openings that sometimes, you know, over the past 18 months, campus has shared information with constituents that was news to staff, or it contradicted public health ordinances, or communication got messy with students. And they turn to those who they had trusting relationships with.

Brian MacDonald:
And in the absence of those connections, who do you trust, maybe student leaders, maybe active social media accounts, maybe friends. And sometimes those, those sources are spot on. Sometimes they’re not, but they’re fast and responsive. And so I think universities needed to learn how to be accurate and fast and not taking a week to read a draft. I’m sure many of you read drafts of emails that were going to go out and, you know, draft 32 and okay. Did, are we still talking about the same thing we were a couple of days ago? So I think universities needed to learn how to be more fast and accurate, and students needed to learn how to continue to read email, right. And so continue to stay on top of it and to roll with the punches. And so I think those things, those things occurred and, and I also think our communications needed to be inclusive and they needed to still maintain that core tenant of student affairs work in terms of being point a to point B many of us became very well versed in COVID protocols and health ordinances and shorthand for what was going on.

Brian MacDonald:
And you know, Deloitte just released a piece on sort of their recommendations for top five practices for student success. And they highlighted that one of those five needs to continue to be intentional outreach to first gen students. And they referenced that close to 30% of households with a first gen student canceled fall enrollment last year. And so we, we, there are many folks who made it to our campuses who may still be questioning if they belong. And I think regards to content you belong might be the most important thing for us to communicate. And then some of our really, really important information. So those are my initial thoughts on many, many, many different threads that I’m sure we could go down.

Jennifer R. Keup:
Brian. I just wanted to jump in around quickly. I, in the midst of it, I think it was like, June of 2020, I read this tweet and I wish I could be citing some brilliant piece of literature. And I could a bit, this one struck me because it said what people want is to be part of communities and they keep getting put in audiences and that’s causing a great deal of pain. And I think when I hear you talk, it’s, it’s clicking for me, what a critical tool the communication is. And the channels of communication have been throughout the pandemic of making people move from being an audience and talked at to being in community and be communicating with. And so I just want to say, you know, kudos to all of our communication professionals and you representing them for being that bridge between, you know, for being that tool to change people from feeling like they’re an audience to feeling like they’re a part of a community, but that light bulb just went off when it, and that tweet was running around in my head. When you talked about how impactful those communications have been and the channels of communication have been.

Brian MacDonald:
Yeah, I think that’s brilliant. Because I think it was so tempting to just turn all of our student engagement tools into just cranking out information and that’s when students hit mute. And so so to be able to still have a sense of humor, to still trust students with the keys, to our accounts, and to still be able to do some of those things that, you know, we want to keep people engaged and listening and not just reciting things. And that was, that’s been such a tension point. And, and well-deserved right, if we have, you know the director of county health saying, please send this tweet out about these instructions on how to get a vaccine. And you’ve got, again, not only your social media folks saying this still has to be engaging, but you’ve also got trolls and you’ve got people. I mean, at UCLA, we put out anything about vaccines on our social media and we immediately are inundated with, with folks who are trying to undermine the science, right? So there are so many fronts of communications and, you know, good reminder check in with your content moderators. It’s a, it’s a tough job. But yeah, I totally agree. I think that’s, that’s brilliant. I, I, I need to re I need to visit what you’re referencing because that’s such a great quote.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. And I also think about the way, at least at MSU, there’s been a lot of attention paid towards tone too. And understanding that for, for, for many of the folks in our population, the pandemic had a very disparate effect. Right. So for some, it was, you know, we got to all hang out at home and do our laundry at our lunch hour. So whether staff or students for others, it was, you know, a parent loss of a job or a parent had had COVID right. So like, what were the ways that we were using communications to kind of also indicate empathy? And I think that’s a, that’s a real challenge as well, because tone is hard to read in text, right. And it’s not necessarily as, as a few as it is when you’re talking to people in person. The other thing that I noted a lot of on our campus at least, is that they created virtual walking tours and actual physical walking tours that you could do with QR codes. Right. So you saw these people walking around scanning QR codes on the fronts of buildings. So I think the resurgence of the QR code is one of the unique things that happened that we thought it was dead. It is not.

Heather Shea:
So Jennifer, I am curious about this idea of how the pandemic variations in 20 20, 20 21 might be felt. And you know, when our campus at least started thinking about orientation we, we did it through a process that we called reorientation. So reorientation was this, you know, this kind of dual purpose initiative where first year and saw first year and second year students were all together. But there’s all these other implications. So, so some of those events, so some of those fall welcome events that we’ve talked about, right. Where massive at, at a campus like MSU with the incoming cohort, you’re just like, I can’t imagine. And also people were like, this might be the first time I’ve been in this big of an audience. So can you talk a little bit about like how those events might have shifted what you’ve seen across campuses that you’ve worked with or visited in terms of welcoming students and then maybe some of the other repercussions that we might be facing in terms of retention, persistence. I’m really struck by Brian’s point about first gen students too.

Jennifer R. Keup:
You keep on giving me these giant questions. You know, there’s so many things that I think have come out of this and I don’t even, I’m not even sure where to begin with this question, but I’m gonna do my best. I think that what’s interesting though, is that I love conceptualizing the students as you know, the first year experience on the transitions as communities of practice. And that’s actually drawn. I won’t get too deep into the literature. That’s drawn from a theory called legitimate peripheral participation in which talks about how people enter into communities of practice. And one of the reasons I think it’s a really relevant one is that communities of practice are defined by kind of social systems and it can be places, but doesn’t have to be, you know, so that’s also useful in this time when place is this a femoral concept, right?

Jennifer R. Keup:
It feels like it can be taken away from us at any kind of next variant or any kind of say other safety element. But, you know, we, I think initially we thought of the first year experience as a community of practice. And then we thought of the second year experience. The sophomore year experience has its own community of practice. And what we’re seeing right now is if it was a Venn diagram, those are overlapping a lot, right? The needs are very similar, but like Laura said, we still want to honor the fact that these students that are second year students and coming back, maybe for the first time on campus still went to cost. I mean, they still had connections. They still, you know, hooked into our environments. Maybe not in ways that they had thought or ways that historically sat, you know, first year students do, but they do.

Jennifer R. Keup:
So it’s, it’s a delicate balance of how do you give them what they need in terms of what they’re facing as a sophomore student, but also honor what they lost. Right? You don’t wanna infantalize them and treat them just like, you know, one thing I keep on telling campuses is please don’t pretend like you’re, you know, don’t, don’t throw everybody in the same cohort. You know, you, there might be a great deal of overlap. You might be repeating it, but these are two different groups that may need different things that said some of the really exciting work coming out of like orientation other first year practices had a lot to do with blurring those lines. So, you know, welcome week programs orientations admissions events, where you engage your upper upper class students, your more senior students, either not just in peer leader roles, but this kind of Rite of passage of the second year students handing over something in a very ceremonious way to the first year students.

Jennifer R. Keup:
That was really exciting things we saw coming out of that work even before the pandemic. And so there are kind of models of best practice where we, we really do draw these two groups together in meaningful ways. And we capitalize on the fact that that was a budding area of work and really use it to our benefit here, where there might be a great deal of overlap in need, but by the same token honoring the second year, students who are kind of passing things on to those first-year students, because you have to remember first year students, even though they’re coming to campus in a way that the second year students didn’t get to, they might be coming to the campus. You know, they might’ve chosen that campus site unseen. I mean, they had unique experience. It’s not like they’re having the same experience a first year student did at that institution five years ago, there is difference.

Jennifer R. Keup:
And the sophomores do have some kind of knowledge capital of how they navigated some of that in a COVID landscape. And they, so they do have skills, not just of being a second year student institution, but having navigated one year of college and this somewhat crazy environment. So I do like the idea of, of blurring those lines. And I liked it even before now, and now I see it as even being potentially the more of a promising practice. I also have to say that one of the standards of, you know, kind of recommended practice has always been a constellation of support. The first year experience is no one program. It’s not anybody’s sole responsibility. I mean, if you have a director of the first year experience a student transitions, that’s wonderful, but that person probably will tell you firsthand that they are relying upon collaborations and connections across the campus.

Jennifer R. Keup:
So we always say, you know, it’s great that you have an award-winning orientation program or that your first year seminar is written up and you know, us news and world report, but that’s one star program. A true first year experience is a constellation of support initiatives that goes across campus divides across student affairs, across academic affairs classroom. Co-Curriculum on campus, off campus, community partners. You’re really drawing everyone. And in this day and age, particularly, I think of the COVID outside of your campus because students have co-enrolled, they have, you know, done dual enrollment in high school. They’ve been taking maybe classes at their local community college, as well as at your institution. All those lines have blurred about a singular institutional experience. And so a critical a true constellation of support and leveraging those connections is really, I think, a way to do it.

Jennifer R. Keup:
And including that as we welcome these new students, because somebody who might be maybe have historically been more of a partner for second year, students really is being brought into the whole constellation of support for first and second year students as they go through this. So I think that the lines were already being blurred and I’m excited to see how we’re going to continue to do that in this space and, and engage our sophomores. One of the biggest though, I think is that one of the greatest pieces of the sophomore year experience is this transition from being a new member of the community, to being a contributing member of community, either as a paraprofessional, a student leader rising kind of to a position of more responsibility and a particular campus activity or club or organization, or at the institution, or even an employment.

Jennifer R. Keup:
And so many students didn’t get that. And so we’re seeing this lack, I guess, of initial trading and a gap in students who are in a role that they have appropriate experiences, or even the confidence to take on those student roles of leadership and engagement and that second year. So I think that it might be a gap there that we’re experiencing just in terms of capacity to run an institution. When you think of all the student leaders, you rely upon to serve and function as those first year programs and initiatives. So those are just some of the things. The only other thing I do want to say is that we’ve taught all danced around this, but I do think that our institutions were faced with factors that we always knew in our students and their identities, but we’re not able to see. And they were often hidden.

Jennifer R. Keup:
And so the students can self-disclose and those students where they’re forced to disclose those things, or we were forced to face them. So we’re running around campuses that are residential saying, we’re going to make you safe and send you home. And there was a good contingent of students who said, a home is not safe, not safe, or I don’t have a home, or if I go there, I don’t have enough food to eat, or I don’t have internet access. And so this idea of sort of competing needs and what means, what is safe and what does safe mean? You know, so we were faced with students who you know, issues of poverty, issues of food insecurity, housing insecurity, you know, domestic safety, conceptualizations of conceptualizations of family. First-Generation students trying to figure out like, what, what does this all mean? So we were students with emotional and mental health care issues that were either triggered by this or emerged from this.

Jennifer R. Keup:
So a lot of those identities that often remain hidden until people want to come tell us they had to tell us, or we were faced with those. And I do think there’s a real opportunity to normalize some of the things that maybe have the struggle we’ve been filled with shame. And maybe they’ve been put out in the open and in some ways I do hope they stay in the open. One of those being mental, emotional health, you know, we’re all have lived through a collective trauma. We’re all here trying to grow and support and heal, and us talking openly about mental and emotional health and wellbeing. Isn’t just about serving our students. It’s about serving ourselves.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. Laura, I am really curious what your thoughts are on this and how how you at, at wreckers are your colleagues as you’ve talked nationally within the big 10 or elsewhere have, have really thought about w you know, the changes that will kind of forever be in place because of this pandemic and because of the variations to serving students during transition in 2020 and 2021. So what are your reactions? Yeah, yeah, no, I think this, I think the pandemic has given us permission

Laura Randolph:
To address some of the kind of challenges that we’ve always known that were there. So I’m kind of re-imagining how do we kind of extend the arm to a variety of students. And so being able to step into the virtual world and not just be a talking head, but how do you find ways to engage with our students before they even come to campus to continue that thread? I think it’s trying to see what were some of the positives that came out in terms of the ability to for students to be able to connect out connect one-on-one. We saw that in our advising offices in terms of ability to have one-on-one advising appointments versus large groups, because they would come to campus. And just trying to think about capacity. I also think just in terms of really being able to pick the thread back up on our second year students we knew that that cliff was there, but I think this gave us an opportunity to really pick it back up and say, okay, we recognize that you weren’t part of the campus community, but this isn’t just a one-off year.

Laura Randolph:
How do we make sure that we continue to support our second year students moving forward? So I think there’s a lot of lessons that we are able to take from this and, and put into future programs. How do we begin to space out their learning? I know that Jennifer had talked about in terms of being able to cram a lot of information into that first year. And so in a virtual environment, you have to slim it down because a 30 minute in-person program doesn’t land in the same way in a virtual environment. And so again, it’s that intentionality and that permission to start thinking, what is it that students need to know when do they need to know it? And what’s the best medium in which to serve that. And so I think that’s been a lot of the questions in terms of as we move forward, do we move into a hybrid approach in terms of where there are some things that make sense to do online for a student to take at their own pace versus things that need to be in person?

Laura Randolph:
So whether that’s around connection or just ability to ask questions in real time to even being able to build on that. So I think there’s a lot of conversation on moving away from the one-offs and how do you really look at the journey of our students and being able to tailor it to the student and not just a one size fits all. Everyone comes to an orientation program. Everyone goes to welcome week, alright, classes start, but how do you begin to create some nuances within those experiences to address those identities that we knew were there, but we didn’t either didn’t have the resources or the time or the opportunity to, to really be able to address. And so for me, I think that’s the exciting part of being able to take this permission. We had to alter kind of given the pandemic, but how do we continue to have that permission as we move forward in the work that we’re, we have the opportunity to do.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. And know, on a previous episode, we talked about this idea of what needs to be restored, right? Like what did we go back to completely doing the exact what needs to evolve slightly because we’ve learned some things and we can do it better if we just tweak these components and then what needs to completely transform. And I’m thinking about other social identities and demographics, and, you know, we talked in the beginning, like, what is a traditional student experience? I think the pandemic has also illuminated the fact that for some students being able to attend meetings in a hybrid in a hybrid forum or creating opportunities for students to go to go to class and also have their kids right. And in their environment is really key. Brian, can you talk a little bit about some of the social identity pieces that have shown up? You mentioned the piece about first gen students and how, when, when we think about forward-looking which of those social identities and how might we adapt our services to best serve the needs of more students?

Brian MacDonald:
Yeah. One of the things that I’ve been looking at nationally just because it, you know, it’s sparked here, but it’s, you know, so many different universities and systems have different rules within them, right. As students with differences in abilities and how, you know, as you mentioned, a zoom environment created some access issues, but also opportunities. And as we now have folks both students who have a legitimate reason to go remote and also faculty to teach and how you’re seeing just a variety of different approvals and rejections for faculty requests to teach in-person versus remote or online or hybrid, whichever, you know, term fits in. And there’s it’s, it’s not consistent across so many different places. And so I think that that that’s one particular identity that could even cause folks to transfer or leave jobs and move to different states and just sort of, you know, move around to where there might be a better opportunity.

Brian MacDonald:
And then I also just think that you know, as we’ve referenced before the mental health of students and the ability to, you know, go from zero to a thousand and ramp full throttle, right back up into complete in-person, some students are very ready, others are not. And I think as we start to parse through different subpopulations I think that there’s probably just, again there’s going to be a desire to just pull towards some, some, one size fits all solutions, and I don’t think we’re going to be there. I would also say to students with dependents is a population that I, as of three years ago now sympathize with and empathize with and connect with a lot more. Now that I’ve become a dad and balancing family life, I think for not only students, but also staff is going to be an incredibly important dynamic as we’ve you for, for again, I was a campus that was you know, very, very, very, very remote work environment for the entire, you know, for as long as you possibly could be. I know some campuses were in more in-person sooner. And so it’s a drastic change for a lot of folks. And I think those are a couple of things that come, come to mind with your question.

Heather Shea:
We are getting towards the end of our time, and we definitely have things that we didn’t get to. So I’m just going to open it up before we get to final thoughts. Like, what did we not get to that you all would like to mention at this point, we didn’t talk about recommendations for professional preparation or, you know, all of these other things, anything you want to pick up on.

Brian MacDonald:
I would just say, who’s, who’s doing the work right. And so student affairs and higher ed is not immune to the great resignation and there’s many, many, many staff leaving their positions and there’s folks leaving other industries coming to ours and loving it. Right. And so there’s such, there’s so many different there’s so many different things that I think factor into that. I think some of that was happening pre pandemic. And I think some of it is exacerbated now, but who are our staff? What is it that they do? How do we prepare them in graduate programs? Do you need a graduate program? All of these different things, right. I think are now on the table to discuss and every, not just student affairs practitioners, but we have students who are not connecting with maintenance staff and dining workers because there’s shortages there too. And those are incredibly important people in the lives of many of our students. And so I think that’s one thing you could spend an entire episode on

Heather Shea:
Most definitely.

Jennifer R. Keup:
I think there are so many diversity equity and inclusion themes elements to the pandemic that we scratch the surface on, but could be its own episode or series of episodes with respect to acknowledging and recognizing different populations in the identities of students to the fact that, you know, everybody experience a pandemic, we didn’t experience equally, you know what I mean? And depending on resource and privilege and identity and location and social location, all that was a very different experience in the healing process. And the re-entry are very different based upon how you experienced the pandemic, not to mention some of the policy, things that have changed, you know, going test optional and can may completely rewrite access and equity issues and higher education. But we don’t know how yet, right. And it might introduce incredible opportunities, but but it might also sort of re privilege different groups.

Jennifer R. Keup:
And there’s just so many things. And, you know, even how also we, we rewrite the term of inclusion as we reconvene and spaces in person and in-person spaces. I think the word inclusion is something we need to revisit about in a true sense inclusion of, of whose voices are being heard, who, who was left at the margins, who do we have the opportunity to re-engage and who do we make sure it doesn’t fall out of the system? So I just feel like there’s so many DEI themes that, that we didn’t get to, and that are just so important to the work and the decisions we’re making right now for me just really quickly. And we touched on it briefly, but the wellbeing aspect in terms of, as we step into a kind of this new, consistent way of learning this new can sway of engagement, being mindful of how, what toll that’s taking on our students. We’re seeing students that are in-person classes, but also virtual classes and the mental capacity that is required for that. But also just coping strategies of kind of leaving a pandemic in terms of the impact on self and family and their community to how do they balance that with already existing a variety of roles? So I think that the wellbeing piece is one that is it’s on my mind. And wondering as we step into this new, consistent way, how do we prepare and addressing support students? Yeah.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. I, I’ve been thinking as you all were talking to, to pick up on the theme around DEI issues, you know, we, and the wellbeing piece is that our students experienced the COVID pandemic, but we are also experiencing racial justice pandemic, other issues of climate change and, and the ways that those are affecting students, because they participated in a, in a in almost an audience of those things happening on our news feeds as well. And so what, you know, we could have a whole episode of like the ways student activism was effected by their, their engagement or, or lack of engagement in in the black lives matter movement during the summer. Right. So like, I’m thinking a little bit about that as well. Okay. So we’re going to move to final thoughts. We’ll try to make these briefs and through running, always running out of time on Student Affairs Now love to know, so this podcast is called Student Affairs Now. What are you thinking about troubling? Kind of worrying on reading, whatever you’d like to share with our audience for now. And Jennifer, do you want to start?

Jennifer R. Keup:
Sure. I think the thing that’s on my mind at the moment, I’ve said this in several different settings, but that I think crisis has multiple phases and we tend to forget that, you know, there’s the initial phase where there’s an outpouring of resources to just manage the catalyst. And then there’s kind of a long stretch of managing uncertainty, which is all about resource conservation. And then there’s the part about managing change that is in some ways the final cycle of crisis. And I do think sometimes we per separate in managing crisis because we know how to do that better than we know how to manage change. And right now we’re really on the, on the cusp of a management change and deciding like we’ve alluded to here, I think Laura said it most recently, like, what do we want to keep from what we’ve done before?

Jennifer R. Keup:
What is meaningful? How do we, how do we say like, yeah, that worked and we want to engage that going forward. But also part of the managing change is healing, right? That all of us going through some type of collective healing, which requires grace and forgiveness and engagement and the courage to interrogate our practices. So I just, to me, that’s, what’s on my mind is how do we collectively embrace this stage of the crisis cycle of really going okay. Now it’s time to go through the healing and the change process and how do we make sure we’re not separating in crisis because that seems quote unquote easier because we have protocols for crisis. We have fewer protocols for change. And so that’s where my minds been on and I’m have been observing different people on how they embrace that, that phase of the crisis cycle.

Heather Shea:
Oh my gosh. I love that. As a campus currently in the midst of major organizational change, I think it has been a crisis for a long time. That’s great. Laura final thoughts for you?

Laura Randolph:
I think for me, it’s wondering how we can embrace what we’ve been through in terms of the lessons learned but also not try and get to the new normal. I think that’s a phrase that you’d like to kind of coin, but for me it’s more so how do we get to a new consistency? Because I my fear is when the new normal will be kind of pre -pandemic. And I think there are so many lessons that we’ve learned through the pandemic whether it be through challenges, whether it be through accomplishments that are worth taking a critical eye to, to figure out how we move forward. And my hope is that we can kind of go to a consistency piece that can also make us be flexible and nimble. Should we face another change or another crisis, or kind of another moment that requires us to pivot so and hopeful and all my brain is wondering how do we embrace the lessons learned to inform how we move forward and in a way that allows us to be flexible and adaptable.

Laura Randolph:
Thank you so much, Brian final thoughts.

Brian MacDonald:
Wow. I think final thought I think is just with, you know, our core mission as universities to make sure that folks who attend and come in, leave better for it. And I think we, I think those of us who are on programs like this and engage with students will very quickly fill that gap of the missing connection and the finding community. But I think we also have to think about the value of a degree as the donation debate, student loan, forgiveness, and things of that nature. And I think that are all of these different industries that are clamoring for employees will probably start asking us, Hey, are your students ready after three years? Can you, can we give them a job now? And I think our students will say, Hey, can I do online? I did online for two years.

Brian MacDonald:
Why can’t I go work full time and do my senior year online, I’m ready to go work for these places. And so I think that that will be, and then I think also on the topic of financial wellness is that you know, there’s sort of a new component to financial wellness that wasn’t as prevalent pre pandemic, and that’s the emergence of gamified great user experience, online brokerage accounts where college students can throw their student loans into a stock and have access to options and margins. And I think that that’s, you know, some of us, I remember signing up for a credit card in fall of 1996 and then putting my credit into a hole. And you know, there’s folks in student affairs who worked to reform some of those things, but there’s nothing stopping a college student from signing up for one of these things with no financial literacy, incredibly powerful tools. And then I think, you know, continuing to educate our staff on ways in which students can, can earn a living. Some of those salaries that were leaked on Twitch a couple of months ago, very, very high running Twitch accounts. One person was making over $700,000 a month. And so there’s a lot of things we can talk about in terms of finance with our students that I think is very important.

Heather Shea:
Wow. I’m not going to let my kid know that number.

Brian MacDonald:
Did I say 700,000? I meant $7 and 25 cents.

Heather Shea:
Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Thank you all so much for your time today. I really appreciate the conversation with fantastic. As we think about how we’re best serving froshmores, the two cohorts so also heartfelt appreciation to our dedicated behind the scenes production assistant, Nat you rock. Thank you. Thank you. If you are listening today to Student Affairs Now and not already receiving our newsletter, please visit our website, student affairs now.com and pop-up should appear, and you can enter your email to join our MailChimp list. And while you’re there, check out our archives where at 67 or 10 or something, something over 60 at this point episodes. And if you found this conversation helpful, please share it on your social media platforms. Leave us as five star review. We’re going to be launching a contest soon for folks who leave reviews or maybe swag involved.

Heather Shea:
So please share with us how you are using this in your work. Finally, just another shout out to our sponsors. We really appreciate your support. So a little bit more about them. This episode was sponsored by Anthology. Transform your student experience and advanced co-curricular learning with Anthology Engage. With this technology platform. You’re able to easily manage student organizations, efficiently plan events, and truly understand student involvement to continuously improve your engagement efforts at your institution. Learn more by visiting anthology.com/engage. And this episode is also sponsored by EverFi. For over 20 years EverFi has been the trusted partner of over 1500 colleges and universities with nine efficacy studies behind their courses. You will have that you were using the standard of care for students’ safety and wellbeing with the results to prove it transform the future of your institution and the community you serve. Learn more at everfi.com/studenttaffairsnow if you go to our website, you can also learn more about our other sponsors. Again, I am Heather Shay, thanks for our listeners and to everyone who’s watching and listening and serving on our panel today. Go out and make it count everyone. Thank you.

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