Willie Banks
So it’s almost like they’re fighting an uphill battle. And so I was thinking beyond the individual small battles that we may be facing together or individually, what is what’s the larger issue for me? And I really do think for me, from my see, I see a lot of folks struggling with how to be resilient, how to cope with all these issues, how to overcome and how to think about those things, and how do I move forward. And so many of our students nowadays, and this is just my opinion, and I’ve seen on my campus, some of our students who are just so brilliant, one thing happens, and they completely fall apart. And we spent a lot of time trying to rebuild them and get them back to the state to get them continuing on their path.

Heather Shea
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs NOW the online learning community for Student Affairs educators. I’m your host, Heather Shea. In today’s episode, we’re gonna delve more deeply into the question who are college students today? A conversation that is often steeped with assumptions based on outdated notions. My panelists today will unpack multiple perspectives on college students from the vantage points of various stakeholders. What our students needs, what challenges do they face and what opportunities do institutions offer. Before I introduce my guests, I’m going to share a bit more about our podcast and today’s sponsors. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and learning community for 1000s 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 our restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays and you can find us at Student Affairs now.com on YouTube or anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Stylus, visit Stylus pub.com and use the promo code SANow for 30% off and free shipping. And today’s episode is also sponsored by Symplicity. A true partner Symplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. Stay tuned to the end of the podcast for more information about each of our sponsors. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Heather Shea, my pronouns are she her and hers and I am broadcasting from the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the three fires confederacy of Ojibwe, Ottawa and Potawatomi peoples, also home to the campus of Michigan State University, which is where I work. MSU resides on land seated in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw. So, welcome to the four of you, my panelists for today. Love to have each of you introduce yourselves. Tell us a little bit of more about you. And I’m gonna start with Julie Owen, and welcome Julie.

Julie E. Owen
Thank you so much. Hello, everyone. My name is Julie Owen, and my pronouns are she her. I am an associate professor of Leadership Studies in the School of Integrative Studies at George Mason University in Virginia. I’m also affiliated with a higher ed program and women and gender studies.

Heather Shea
So happy to have you back on a previous episode where we looked at women in leadership, a fabulous book for which I’m sure will link is our affiliated episode for today. Willie, Willie Banks welcome.

Willie Banks
Hi, Heather. Thank you for having me. My name is Willie Banks. I serve as the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs here at the University of California, Irvine. And my pronouns are he him and his. So happy to be on this panel with everyone and good to see you again.

Heather Shea
Great to see you as well. Jemelleh Coes Welcome. I’m happy to have you on Student Affairs NOW.

Jemelleh Coes
Thank you so excited to be here. I’m Jemelleh Coes. I am the director of teacher leadership at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. And I’m also a part time assistant professor at the University of Georgia and the Department of the College of family consumer science in the department of Institute on the Institute and human development in disability.

Heather Shea
A lot of departments and names. Well, welcome. It’s great to have you here. And Yancey Gulley it’s great to have you on the on the podcast. We’re gonna have you talk all about the book here. But please tell us a little bit about you.

Needham Yancey Gulley
Yeah, thanks for having us. Thanks for doing this episode. I’m Yancey Gulley him his I am an assistant professor and program director of the Higher Education Student Affairs Program here at Western Carolina. I come to you from to sparrows place in the valley of in Callaway, North Carolina, the ancestral homeland of the Cherokee people. And so I bring you greetings from a beautiful blue ridges come visit when you can.

Heather Shea
Oh my gosh, it is a beautiful part of the country. Thank you so much for writing this great book editing this great book. Yancey, we’re gonna stick with you for a moment. The book is called multiple perspectives on college students. It was just released this past August. And I’d love to hear a little bit about how this book came to be, you know, how did bringing the idea of or multiple people from different backgrounds and stakeholder statuses together? So you included students, their parents, k 12 teachers, as well as college and university administrators. Tell us how you brought all those folks in to this project?

Needham Yancey Gulley
Yeah. Yeah. I’ll tell you like, like most good ideas that I’ve had in my life and my colleagues, it is not yet with a colleague. Many of you might know Dr. Laura Dean, who is a dear friend of mine, she now we’re at dinner one night at a wonderful Italian restaurant in Athens, Georgia, she was having a glass of red wine, I was having a glass of whiskey. And we were talking about all the things we knew from our different backgrounds, our careers, if you know, Laura had come from small private institutions primarily, and then was working at the University of Georgia’s faculty, I primarily worked at two year colleges, both public and private, and around the country, before working kind of the larger institutions. And we’re just having a conversation about how the students who worked with that day at UGA were so different from the people that we had worked with, previously in our careers. And then we started having a conversation about why people’s views of higher education were different from the different perspectives of those institutions. Which led us to a conversation about well wait, we know a state legislator who’s really talking about higher education in a totally different way than any of the things we just mentioned. And it just kind of just just kind of epiphany happened, like this is a conversation that we don’t have in the field enough that there are people from other places and other locales other than these big research intensive four year institutions, which is where how we situate higher education today, is it this myopic view. And so that was really what, what started it, and then having more and more conversations after that with different people. And so one thing, I just put my foot down and said, I want to remedy this, this issue of not talking about it, or at least begin a conversation that I hope can go on. And so I just started calling my friends and calling my friends who had friends, to get to folks, representative of all the kinds of stakeholders. And so that’s how you would get to some of these folks here today. Because what I realized, too, is that while I felt that stakeholder voices were important, and they certainly are about having scholars be able to analyze what those conversations were would be useful to. And so I had Julie come in, and some other folks to kind of say, what is about these voices that are similar? And what’s different about them? And what can they tell us in conversation. It’s just kind of how we got here. And I can go on and on about the wonderful people who contributed but it was a typical, you know, reach out to friends, reach out to friends, reach out to friends, and then start begging people sometimes.

Heather Shea
I love it before we, before we hit record today. I think Julie said, how do you have? What’s the one degree of separation from you from Yancey Gulley? Right? So it is it is a small world and I love, I love how it within the book, it’s a conversation. You know, it’s we’re having a conversation on a broader scale, but like within the book is these stakeholder essays, and then these, these really brilliant analyses by by scholars. So I love it. I think it’s fantastic. So when I think about this type of book, I mean, there’s multiple audiences, maybe you could talk a little bit about how administrators, faculty, grad students might use this text, and what kinds of ways would you see this book showing up? And either pro Devo or other kinds of forums?

Needham Yancey Gulley
Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, I really do see this book being used by a lot of people, I hope. I mean, that’s my hope, is it all the stakeholders who have something to say about higher education, and have decision making power about higher education? I hope they all look at this book, because I think hearing other people’s voices and seeing what they’re thinking about higher education would be useful for them. Right. Like, I think the think tank leaders. They think about this all the time, but do they think about it from every perspective? Are they thinking about it from a high school students rights perspective, they might not be. So I’m hoping those think tank leaders will use it maybe for professional development with their firms and their agencies. I’m really hoping that high school guidance counselors use it to kind of figure out how to help guide high school students and their families, and thinking about what’s next, if it’s college, and into this college, what kind of institution to what kind of program might be available to them? Beyond just, you know, the view we have on movies and television today. And I think for the bigger primary audience, right, I think it’s gonna be grad students thinking masters and dot programs. You know, when, when Laura and I were talking that night, we’ve talked about a sense, you know, we’d teach a class on the college students, right. Many of us teach a class on bad or diversity in higher education. But are we talking about diversity of perspective about higher education? Right? And so I see this but being really valuable not just in one course, but in multiple courses. And, you know, I’ve got some people who are already saying they’re going to use it and have their first year grad students in the master’s programs, buy it and use it for The rest of the time in a program to be able to pull back to it as kind of a standard curriculum. So that’s my hope is it all people take a look, I do think at the end of the day, it’s going to be a lot of grad programs who utilize it, which is really where I kind of narrowed the focus for Rutledge because I really wanted to narrow focus and so did that. I love

Heather Shea
that. Well, I think you know, we have a lot of grad students and faculty who listen to Student Affairs now. So hopefully, this will be a good primer for you all, as you think about what you might want to consider in terms of texts for fall, or for next year for next semester. But I want to take a moment before I turn to the rest of our panelists today and talk just a bit about an activity that you have people pause and do. And so if folks are listening or watching today, and you can pause the audio or video and and complete this activity, even if it just mentally I think that might be an interesting way to kind of check your own assumptions and biases and also the the ways that you have constructed perspectives about college students. So the activity is essentially, the book is based around five questions. And I’ll read them here in a moment. But if you could kind of think about, like, how would you respond? And then we’ll go through and really focus on the last three questions, but kind of consider the ways in which we might have answered them if we were stakeholders invited to write a section for the book. So the questions are, who are today’s college students? What are the needs of today’s college students? What are the most significant challenges facing college students? What are the most significant opportunities for today’s college students? And what can we do to best support today’s college students? So I don’t know you auntie, if you want to talk just for a second before I turn to the other folks around the origins of those questions, and then anything you’d like to share about the first two, before we get into really digging into the, the third, fourth, and fifth?

Needham Yancey Gulley
Yeah. You know, I really wanted to, we keep seeing conversations booked to be a conversation. I think conversations have flow, right? We want to start off with kind of some some base layer information. And so who are today’s college students? It seems like we should know the answer to that, right. But I think if you walked into most college campuses today, and went to an administrator or a faculty member and said, Who are our college students? I bet in most cases, which has been my experience that people answer that with not data driven facts about user Belshazzar, they talk about who their aspirational college students are, or who the college student restitution is built for and designed for are whether or not that’s who actually attends their institution and earns degrees or not. So I just wanted to start out there, which is why the first three chapters of this book really unpack a bit of that, right? The we have early chapters, where it’s a whole about data, who are the college students, let’s actually look and see who they are, right? Because we know that, you know, the minority of college students go to four year institutions right out of high school. Yeah, so we want to unpack that. And then then we thought about what are their needs? Right. And I wanted to spend some time thinking about what do they need to be successful? Oh, and by the way, how we do we need to find success. And I thought those two questions really gave us a baseline, to then be able to move beyond kind of a deficit model thinking right, we do need to challenges which also is, I think, you know, a bit different, right? Because leaders that may have to have a challenge or something they need to overcome. And how do we help them do that, and then really the last to train to what we can do as stakeholders to be supportive of the future of higher education in general through support of our students.

Heather Shea
I love it. Well, Willie, let’s turn to you. So you are a Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at a massive institution. From your perspective, what do you see as the most significant challenges facing college students today?

Willie Banks
Sure. And that’s a great question. And I do have to say thank you to Yancey for giving me the opportunity to contribute. He did bribe me and I’m still waiting on my my cake from North Carolina. I told him I did this, I wanted some baked goods from his kitchen. So I’m still waiting on those. But you know, when when he asked me to do this, this was, I mean, we were in the middle of a pandemic. I mean, we’re still in the pandemic. So let’s just, we’re still in the middle of pandemic, but when he asked me it was almost like a year ago, you can’t see or a year and a half. I mean, it feels like forever ago. So in that state, you know, I was I was wrestling with how do I answer this question, because I do think that our students face there’s a whole host of challenges for them. And what I and I think when you read my essay, what you’re gonna find is I start talking about the college unaffordability piece? Or is it maybe it’s, you know, housing or food insecurity? Is it this or that. But I really when I started thinking about it, I think one of the largest challenges is because around resiliency and coping, and I think really for me is that our college students face so many difficult and challenging situations. And so it’s almost like they’re fighting an uphill battle. And so I was thinking beyond the individual small battles that we may be facing together or individually, what is what’s the larger issue for me? And I really do think for me, from my see, I see a lot of folks struggling with how to be resilient, how to cope with all these issues, how to overcome and how to think about those things, and how do I move forward. And so many of our students nowadays, and this is just my opinion, and I’ve seen on my campus, some of our students who are just so brilliant, one thing happens, and they completely fall apart. And we spent a lot of time trying to rebuild them and get them back to the state to get them continuing on their path. And so one of the things that I continue to talk about with students and faculty staff families, is part of our responsibility within student affairs really is to not make it to be realistic with our students, but then hopefully give them the skills that they can overcome, they can be resilient, and that they can move forward, I always say that I hope that our students don’t take one particular instance at an institution or in a class or in a residence hall. And that paints their entire picture of their entire collegiate experience. Unfortunately, I see that far too often. You know, someone posted something from another student group, and I was offended. And now that is my cause, is to get that group eradicated from campus. And in I feel like, it’s so much reactionary, and not a lot of thinking about, okay, what can I learn from this? This? Is this really the situation is just bad, but what can I learn for him from it, but then also, how can I move forward. And so that’s really was for me was where I’m coming from with resiliency, and the coping is because I really want our students to face that. But I think there’s some other things I didn’t talk about that in my essay, but you have parents and families with their expectations and how they’re swooping in the helicopter boat, Lon more parents, all of those things contribute to how our students are able to cope or not to cope, because so many things are handled, I think, by, you know, their family or their, you know, advocates or, you know, their therapists. I mean, it’s so it’s very, everyday is a very eye opening day for me, because there is a different situation. And so that’s really going back to your question, Heather, for me, it’s about resiliency and coping, I just feel like, and I would probably extend it beyond our college students. I don’t know that. People in general, I mean, but let’s just be honest, I wrote this pre, you know, this was before the decision. This was before a lot of more stuff. I mean, climate change, I mean, there’s just, I mean, let’s just say the entire planet, our entire population, we’re dealing with a lot of stuff all the time. And the constant feeding, and the bombardment of news and information can be really overwhelming. And so I do understand why people really struggle with coping and how do you be resilient. So that’s really where I’m coming from with my my response.

Heather Shea
I really appreciate I just spent half a day last week in a trauma exposure response training program to try to help other administrators because I do think we’re living in a time of just continual trauma that everybody’s experiencing, but it is sometimes what what’s in your sphere of control? And what can you actually do to kind of move in and through and then how do we have all of that be informed through an equity lens as well? What what other folks say based on this college students you interface with? What are some other challenges that have come up in your course of the day to day?

Jemelleh Coes
For me, I think when I think about who the college student is today, I think about the various contexts in which they reside. So I teach at the I teach at the University of Georgia and at the University of Georgia, I teach undergraduate students so typically, those are students who are in their maybe sophomore or junior year, so they, they are sort of newer to the college environment. At Mount Holyoke, I teach graduate students. So those are professionals who have been in their career and they have been experiencing the world in the field of study that they want to do. So they have a very different orientation to their work. What I see though, in both arenas, particularly an undergraduate is that they want the knowledge that they have not been able to get up until the point Up until that point, so when really when you talk about parents who being in and sort of hovering over their children and Yancey, when you talk about what sort of what students are learning or what they, what they what they want to learn or like, what’s right for them. What I’m finding is that for undergraduate students, they want the knowledge that is currently in some of our legislation being barred from them. So we know that there are states who are talking about not teaching certain critical issues. And that’s going to leave a gap for many of the students who go to college for that knowledge. Particularly I teach in disability studies at the University of Georgia. So that is sort of a topic that has a lot of equity, sort of foundations. And we talk a lot about intersectionality. And we talk about historical context and all those things. And for my students, it is sort of a be witching experience, right? They think about like, the world is now open to them in a way that it has not been before. And they that’s sort of the knowledge that they want. And they’re trying to figure out, like, what do I do with all of this new learning that I now have? So I think when I’m thinking about like, what, who those college students are, they are curious people, they are people who want to learn and want to do something different that has been done. And then for the graduate students I’m thinking about, they have been sitting particularly in education in classrooms. And we know that over the last few years of this pandemic, we have seen, we’ve seen the effects on education, particularly right. And like, really, when you talked also about how students are not as resilient as they once were like, they’re having trouble, like figuring figuring all of those things out that’s happening also in our K 12 classrooms. So teachers are sitting in that. And they are realizing all of the rife inequities that have been up until this point, and they’re like, now I need to do something different. And that is both a challenge and something and something that they see as an opportunity. But they’re still struggling through like, where’s the right place for them to interject to make that change? So I think that our college students are, they are evolving, and they are seeing the world very differently. And I hope that we just continue that momentum to get them to open their eyes to experiences and things that they may not have noticed before.

Needham Yancey Gulley
But generally, I think that goes on to, like, I think there are those students, right, that really want to push and be pushed. There’s another batch of students for which the challenge is they don’t want to be challenged, and they don’t know how to be challenged. Right, because you challenge them, and then you lose, they lose our respect for you, if you disagree with them, or present something that is not of their way of thinking or that is outside of their worldview, and also see, given the polarization in our country and frankly, our world. Right, that we are also seeing that with our students with ideas sometimes. So I think I think almost see the two ends of it. Right? That let’s challenge me, I want to be pushed, I want to go to this places. I want to push you. Oh, no, you said something I disagree with your horrible bad person. Right? Like your ideas. Not bad. Your soul is rotten, like and so I think there’s a issue there too, with being challenged being challenged.

Jemelleh Coes
Absolutely. And I’m okay with getting those terrible evaluations because they exist, right. But I know that I’m doing right by society. So let’s keep it moving.

Julie E. Owen
Yeah, yeah. So you make me think I start all my classes before they come in the door, they have to read Meg Lee’s short essay called willing to be disturbed. It’s an awesome short reading. But just sort of like, you know, our job as a college is to make you uncomfortable a little bit. Because we know there’s too much support, you don’t grow and change. So I like where you’re going with that. And I just want to echo both Willie and Jemelleh some of this I think, as people craving meaning and purpose. And like we I just see a I see a crisis of loneliness in some ways. And I see in my classes are craving connection, and then yet we get to those places where there’s this big, canceled culture. So, you know, I like some of the reading that started to happen about moving from a canceled culture to a connection, culture or a culture of caring and connection. So I like to just ask students, what they think about that, and then all of a sudden, you know, three hours have gone by and my class is over. And so much to say about why, you know, it’s hard to have authentic relationships. And it’s hard to sort of figure out what our purpose is in the world when things are so uncertain. So I think it ties into all the points you’re making.

Heather Shea
Julie, we got to add that to our show notes for today. Because I think everybody’s proud of this. I was like, Oh, what is that? You know, I need to share this with my students. And I’m sure I didn’t think about that sounds great. That sounds great. So Jemelleh, as a former teacher and somebody who works directly with K 12 educators and as a faculty member, can you talk a little bit about the opportunities facing college students and kind of some of the things that you wrote about in your chapter.

Jemelleh Coes
Sure. So some of the greatest opportunities that I see with college students that I think just haven’t been there for a long time, are the the opportunity to actually affect change, whether it is big or small. And I see a lot more service learning classes, which I love, like get out there and go do the thing that we’ve been talking about in here. And there’s an opportunity to not only do that, by actually being in the place. But during this last period of of two years, where we have figured out how to use technology in more meaningful ways, I think the outreach can be different for college students, and they can do more through digital means, which hopefully means that they reach a lot more students. I think that the opportunities that they have just in the college setting and outside of the college setting, is to engage with people that they might not otherwise engage with. I think that that is always something that my students come away with, they wouldn’t they have the Disability Studies course in particular part of it is to go out and see what disability looks like in the world, be able to observe it be able to interact with people with disabilities, because a lot of my students come to me and they have never actually interacted with people with disabilities. And it is so fascinating to me, I’m like, what’s happening? What’s happened in our K 12 schools that is allowing this. But I think that college, if they are not getting it in their K 12 experience, then college is a place that they need to get that like they need to be able to see the world differently and interact with people who are not who are different than they are who have a different life experience. Because I just think that just makes them more aware and like just better humans, right. I think another thing that they they that another opportunity for college students is for them to craft, what society can be sold for part of our role as educators is to facilitate learning, right? Like we tell them all of the things and we give them all the information, we give you all those books. And then we’re like, Alright, now use it all think, because this isn’t all right. Like we can’t stop here, I need you to think about what I’ve given you, and how can we make this better? How can we evolve it? And that’s always the challenge that I give my students like, here’s, here’s what we have now. But it doesn’t have to be this thing. Because this thing right now like this is not good enough, right? How can we evolve it? So I think that another opportunity for college students is to think about how do they evolve our society? How do they evolve toward a more equitable, and justice oriented society after they received all of these tools that we’ve given them?

Heather Shea
That was really beautifully said. And I feel like that should be the mission of our institute, right? Like, here’s all of this knowledge, but what do you make of it? And what do you do with it? And how can we, you know, kind of think about challenges and wicked challenges in different ways. Julia Yancey, Willie, what else would you say are opportunities that you have experienced? Or what are some of the things that are facing college students who you think are positive?

Julie E. Owen
I just want to check on him, it actually goes really well, or chameleon was just saying, which is, actually I feel like my students are teaching me about social justice and inclusion and what that looks like. So I feel like they’re creating something that I aspire to. So I think they are doing and I just wanted to say that I teach this class of 25 women in leadership, and I have at least three folks who are trans identified, and then more than that, like four or five others who are identified as gender non binary. And it’s not a thing for that, like, it’s still a thing for me, I’ve always questioned, you know, and I want to get in their business. And you know, they just, this is who I am. And they’re so integrated and authentic in themselves that they don’t need to talk about, like, it’s just it’s very interesting. I’m having to change the way I teach, instead of sort of doubling down on identity conversations, because they’re showing up so fully formed, that I’m learning from them. So I don’t know, I just I think Jamal, I think they’re doing what you’re sitting there doing. So wanted to add that.

Willie Banks
I agree. And actually, Julie, to your point, one of the things that I think probably like five or 10 years ago, I had to switch in my head is that this assumption? Especially, I mean, I’m an out queer man. So I was find out, you know, what’s your coming out story? And I remember there was a certain point in time when I actually some students, and I was oh, what’s your they wouldn’t identify Oh, done, and I was, oh, what’s your coming out story? They’re like, What are you talking about? And I was like, you don’t have coming out story. So what do you and they were like, What are you talking about? I was like, No, when you actually like had to tell people they’re like, No, I’ve just always been this way. What are you talking about a coming out story. And so for me, that’s one of the things that I think is so and it’s unique and also just really empowering and also surprising is that today’s college students, the way they’re showing up on our campuses are so different, I mean, and to Julie to both of your points, it’s very much they’re coming here. And they have expectations, they want to see change. And they’re not afraid to push it. And I think one of the things that I’m so proud of especially being at Irvine, is that the type as soon as that were enrolling, are really high achieving, but then they also have all these other challenges. They’re like, first generation, they’re from underrepresented minority groups. I mean, they still have all these other things, but they’re thriving, and they’re actually doing very, very well. And so that’s the other thing that I always want to tell people is that just because you’re coming from certain groups doesn’t mean that that’s going to define your entire experience. And for a lot of our students here, they’re doing phenomenal things. And I think that’s the opportunity is that, I think, with technology, they really have their fingertips at a wealth of knowledge and information that for us, some of us on this call, we had to go to the library to search for it, you just couldn’t pull it up on a phone and have all this information. So I do think the opportunity there is really where our students have so much information in front of in front of them, that they can really almost chart their own path. But then also, it pushes us as an institution, that administration to really think about how do we adjust to meet those expectations, because I think our students are coming with some very solid expectations of what they are expecting from their experience. And if we’re not meeting it, they’re gonna say something about it.

Heather Shea
I just have to share a funny story when you said that I was like, okay, so that earlier today, I asked the student, do you want me to share my screen? And I’ll show you what I mean? And she’s like, No, I’ll just search it up on YouTube and watch it later and teach myself and I’m like, Oh, okay. It made me laugh. But it’s true. Like they they have completely different ways of learning in the world. And whereas I would be like, Okay, can you show me I’m a visual person, I need to kind of walk it through, like, no, YouTube, I’ll or I’ll YouTube it. Amazing. So when I think about college, and this is kind of a little bit off our script, but like when I think about opportunities, facing college students, you know, do our institutions, our institutions prepared to offer those opportunities? You know, and this gets into a little bit about, like, what do we do to support but like, how do we form and create the institutions in which those opportunities can be realized?

Needham Yancey Gulley
So I’ll tell you, I, as developers talking, and then as Jemelleh really were chiming in to us reminded of some research I’ve done in Jemelleh, I know you’ve been part of this some stuff we’ve written about how activists gain their strength, and find their own resilience. It is often through doing the work, right. And I think I did a research study on LGBT community college students actually coming to college graduates because I wanted to know what persistent strategies they used to make it through because the literature would have told us that LGBT folks in community colleges probably would not graduate. And so I wanted to find out from folks who did how they did that. And it happened one of two ways, it was the students who came in already out to at least point, right, they were already there. They didn’t need services, they didn’t want to go to a club, they didn’t want to see the poster on the wall, they didn’t care. For the students who were going through, they’re coming out, right, or their own understanding of self, they actually needed to be a part of the change of the institution. So they’re actually the ones that are met with, if there was a club there, they always wanted to change it, or they wanted to fight against the administration, or they weren’t to be the one to get a policy revoked, or put in place around their identity. And it was that action of doing where their growth happened, and gave them the strength to stay with the institution, because they felt like they were impacting something that was worthwhile. Not just for them, but for those who had come come after. And so I think that you to this point, if we get out of their way, right? If we if we give them the tools to lead the way, we give them some information literacy, because they do have it at their fingertips, but they don’t always know how to critically examine it. Right, if we do those kinds of things, and then kind of stepped to the side, I think that’s really an opportunity for us and for them. And I think some institutional types have done this better than others, right.

Jemelleh Coes
Yancey, I love that you brought up the nuance of the students who are sort of on the same journey and on the or a similar path that are experiencing sort of the same things maybe in different respects or they’re having different identities and or they have similar identities, but they’re experiencing it differently. I think another opportunity when we talk about the opportunities for students is for them to find their people, right like to find their squad, find their group, find the people who not only they are already, like they are similar to, but to find the people who they are sort of, similarly adjacent to, right. So it’s like we sort of got something in common. Let’s see what I can learn from you. Let’s see what you can learn from me. And let’s talk about like, what we can make happen between us. And that’s one of the things that I love to do in my class, I’m like, I see you, you don’t look like you’re that far longer than I see you who like, I think I can get you if I can hook you up with the right person. And I sort of put those people together and like, watch, like their evolution, like watch how they evolve together and learn together. Just a real quick story, like I had a student last semester, who I was sure it was. So in our department in our Disability Studies Certificate, there’s like four or five courses in the sequence. And you don’t have to take the whole sequence. But if you take the sequence, you get a certificate. And I had a student and I was like, he is just going to be here for this class. And that’s okay, because I’m gonna give you all I got right here in this class, right? So I was like, and that’s cool. Like, sometimes that happens. But most often, like, if I can get you in that first class, they’ll go on to the next class. But I was sure that this student was not going to do that. A semester pass, I didn’t see him. But in the following semester, I saw him come back to finish the series of courses. And it was because I like to take credit for it. Like I said, like I did it like look like he’s still instability, so sunny, but I know that it was probably more likely because of the students that he interacted with and learn from. And he just wanted to continue his learning based on that. So I think like being in community with other people who are close to or thinking about similar things, and having similar or maybe even different experiences is important for students to continue their learning.

Heather Shea
I love that I think about I mean, do you send them in separate things, but like the learning community model, and like building opportunities for interdisciplinary learning communities, you know, where there’s, there’s a loose tie, but not necessarily everybody’s studying the exact same program and doing the exact same sequence, but like the, you know, we’re going to look at this broader social issue, but through multiple vantage points. What do we, you know, that’s a huge opportunity for learning and growth and informing our work. I love it. That’s so great. Julie, so your chapter was one of the analyses, chapters, analysis chapters. So you were able to think about the different stakeholder essays and then kind of draw the themes across to think about the question, What can we do to support college students? So I’d love to hear a little bit more about what you wrote about and then hear responses as well. What can we do to support?

Julie E. Owen
Yeah, well, be careful when Nancy calls you because it was a hard task or amazing essays I had written well from those ISBA and other places. And so at Association leader, I had a faculty member, and I had this up some parents, which was fascinating to read a parent’s perspective on college. So again, if you haven’t gotten the book, definitely dive in there. There’s so much wisdom just in the individual stakeholders. And then I had the student, Talia. And Talia described, really being discouraged from asking for help or needing extra time in a math class. And she described that many of the faculty were distant and distracted, and what a heartbreaking narrative right to be. And so I’m like, how do you help Talia, like when I was writing, I kept thinking like, what can we do for Talia? And I actually brought me back to good old Schlosberg, you know, mattering and marginality, you know, the gold, all these goodies are still still relevant. And especially when students are in that it’s time to transition. And as Willie has said, so Well, we’re always in times of transition right now. There’s so much facing them. So like, how do we make sure they feel like they matter? I think that was the most important part of what I ended up coming away with. You know, if you know your Schlosberg, it’s like students need attention. So they need to feel noticed. So do even notice them. And some of that’s even just social media stuff and putting them out there as Knowers. And having some of you comes with expertise, importance, do they feel cared about slosberg talks about ego extension, the feeling that someone else cares about whether they succeed or fail. So that’s interesting. It’s not just that I succeed or fail, but you care if I’m not doing well on your class, you care if I stop coming to my student organization? I’ve noticed, you know, and that ties into that all those feelings of disconnection we’re talking about, and then am I appreciated by others. So, you know, it makes me think of that old Gallup Purdue index from a few years ago where it said, having a faculty member who cares about them makes students two times I think think is likely to have well being much later in their life. I mean, that’s amazing. So I think we need to get into the carrying business is sort of the takeaway I want to have. I’m very curious what other people thought about what we can do to support students. Right, that’s kind of a nerd answer.

Willie Banks
You know. I think that’s great. Anytime you can bring in matter in marginality, slosberg, I think that’s appropriate, because I think so much of that is at the core, because at the end of the day, I mean, you know, people just want to know that they matter. And I think that’s probably one of the things that we have to work on. And Julie, I love, you know, your call, as far as how do we do better route caring, I mean, I really do think sometimes, I mean, you can just, I mean, I don’t want to blame everything on social media, and I’m not, but I just think that, you know, there’s so many things that are going on, and you can just be a number, you know, and the thing is, is that if he peeled back, especially if we take a look at some of the social media stuff, I think it’s really a cry for some people they just want to be, they just want to know that they matter. They just want to know that someone cares, and that they’re just putting it out there hoping that someone is watching or listening and that can respond to. So it goes back to the matter. And I do think it’s so important that our students need to feel like they matter. And they want to know that they have a place and that that someone cares for them. And that may be an extension of you know, they’re not getting that in other parts of their life. And so they’re going to try to find it in some way. And I think that you know, we have a perfect opportunity. Look at me going back to the opportunity, the opportunity to really show our students what does caring look like in an institution of higher education. And it may not be a parenting, mothering, fathering type of thing. But it may be saying, Have you considered this, you’re doing really well, in this class? Have you considered this as an option? For, you know, future study or career? I think that, you know, our students would flourish more, if we actually took the time out to actually ask them, how are you? What are you doing? How are your studies going? And it’s not a perfunctory, just sort of, let me just check off the box and say, I talked to one student today. So I have, you know, done my thing. You know, people really want to know that they matter and that they care.

Needham Yancey Gulley
Well, I think that I’ll go back to a challenge of this, right? Because I think that yes, our students do need to know, they matter. They need to be supportive, we need to care about them. And I think most people who come into this profession of higher education, right, whether it be on the Student Affairs side, faculty side, whatever it be, we come because we care, right? But we are seeing right now the great resignation, right? Everyone’s leaving the field of higher education, faculty, affairs administrators all alike, is because we are so far removed from the ability to spend our time caring, and showing our students that they matter, because we’re spending upteenth thousand hours filling out paperwork, or serving on committees or serving our associations, frankly, like all this other stuff that takes us away from the reason we came into this. And then when we get tired and exhausted, we get burned out. Our field, our administration’s are whoever tell us if you cared, you just keep working hard. Because you’re curious, because you care, you didn’t come here to make money. And I think it just burns people out. So I think that I think most of us want to do what we’re talking about. But I think many folks in our higher education, field writ large feel just burned out from it. And I think sometimes then that gets turned into these people don’t care. So the opportunity we have and the way we can support our students is to actually be supportive of ourselves as well in some respect. So being kind to ourselves and being kind to our colleagues and one another, I think, could go a long way. And I think that is being student focused. But you know, put your mask on yourself in the airplane first. This may or may not be from all the faculty meetings.

Heather Shea
I really do. I agree. I agree with everything that all of you have said but I think this piece about how are we going to address burnout and compassion fatigue and also racial battle fatigue and I think that when we’re engaging with students, who you know, there is only so much you can give if you have nothing else, you know, if your cup is empty, so you sustainability of our profession, I think is really going to be a fundamental question that we have to grapple with. And we have done an episode on this based on the book. But I do think like the extension isn’t just about staff and and the administrators, but it is about the trickle down effect that that has on our students and what their needs are if they’re not being met by the faculty and staff. We weren’t engaging with them.

Julie E. Owen
Now, we’re if we’re not role modeling, what that looks like to have boundaries 30s. To Nancy’s point. Yeah. Right.

Heather Shea
I love it. Well, I so appreciate this book. And I think that there are so many kind of key important takeaways, and that has me thinking and pondering and kind of questioning okay, what what does come next for our profession? And so as we kind of typically do at the end of each of our episodes, we wrap up by asking a question to kind of summarize what you’re pondering and questioning, troubling thinking about. And then we would love if folks want to follow up with you, if you would mind sharing a way that people can connect with you. That would be great. And Jemelleh I’m gonna start with you. What’s your final thought for today?

Jemelleh Coes
Oh, nice. All right. Let’s see final thought. I love this conversation about care. It just warms my K 12 soul, like that is always talking about like relationships and connecting. So I love like the like centering care for students in care for future professionals. I love that. I’m thinking about how to connect continually connects students to other students who will sort of create their path so that they can create their own path. Because they think that they are, they have some ideas that we have yet to discover. I am also thinking about some resources that I’ve been sort of connecting with lately is one called leading equity just because I’ve just been laser focused on equity, and social justice and like, what are some concrete things we can do as well as sort of some bigger picture landscape things we can do? Like societal, that sort of thing? Yeah, so those were just those are some initial thoughts that I’ve been having. And just centering like the well being of like, thought and self care. So thank you for this conversation. That’s fantast.

Heather Shea
For sure, for sure. If folks want to connect with you, how can we find you? Where can they find you? Yeah, sure,

Jemelleh Coes
sure, sure. They can find me on Twitter at Jemellehcoes. And then by email J.coes@Mount holyoke.edu.

Heather Shea
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here. Julie, what about you final thoughts and how folks can connect with you?

Julie E. Owen
I I’ve been reading I’m gonna I want everybody to read Yancey;s book. And I want to promote this other book. So y’all read for pivots. It’s called retirement.

Julie E. Owen
justice reimagined ourselves. Dr. Shawn Ginn, right. So yeah, it’s a good pivot. This is a good pivot. But it’s about changes, we can make it ourselves to create more equity and inclusion. And it has been mind blowing for me. But he has a whole section on be both a lens and a mirror. And so that’s what I think I’ve been thinking about all day since I read that this morning about like, this book that Yancey edited is about the lenses right, all the different lenses we can. And then we also to the four questions you started with are the powerful reflection questions. We also need to do our own work, and put that mirror back on ourselves. And think about those questions that burnout and who are we and what gives us purpose and fulfillment? So I guess I’m leaving like I’m gonna be a lens and a mirror. Gosh, darn it. And you can reach me at Julie_gmu on Twitter or Jowen4@gmu.com on email.

Heather Shea
Awesome. Thank you so much, Julie. We’re gonna cite that book as well in our in our show notes. I love it. Willie? What are your final thoughts?

Willie Banks
Yeah, you know, a couple of final thoughts one I just have eternal gratitude to the Yancey for asking me to to be a part of this project. And I think that’s just fantastic. So hold that up and make sure that people see that please go get one and I’m still waiting on my pound cake Yancey. So I’m going to put that plug in. The other thing that I’m thinking I’m I’m I’m going to contribute this and really give a tip my hat to Julie for this but who doesn’t love Schlosberg and some mattering and marginality? I think that so much. And so actually, I was thinking I was like when you mentioned that I was like I need to pull out my articles on mattering and marginality just because that for me when I was in graduate school was such an important piece. And I just think it’s so important that we really do need to go back and talk about that, but then also the culture of care. I just think that that’s so important. So that’s what I’m thinking about. And I also think that self care is so important. I have for years have always said that our students are the first group of folks that you can’t fake the funk with. And I always told my staff, they said, and I always said, Listen, if you’re not in the right mind, and you interact with students, students will call you out on that, because they pick up, you cannot fake the funk with students, they will pick up if you’re unhappy, happy, sad, pissed off about something or someone. And the thing is, is that really informs a lot of my work, really trying to make sure that we’re doing work with our staff to make sure that they’re in a good place, because sometimes they’re not in a good place. And I know this conversation really focused on our students. But so much of the work that we’re doing in colleges, it’s really our staff who are interfacing with them on the front lines. And so sometimes, we have to make sure that we’re working on building up our staff and making sure that they feel that they’re connected and that they matter, and that they’re not marginalized. So that’s one taking away from this conversation. So thank you so much.

Heather Shea
Thank you so much. Willie can people find you at UCI website?

Willie Banks
Yes, wlbanks@uci.edu. And on Twitter, VCSAWillieBanks.

Heather Shea
Awesome. Thank you so much. And Yancey. Last but not least, thank you for pulling together this amazing group of folks for today’s episode, as well as for the book. What are your final thoughts? And how can people connect with you?

Needham Yancey Gulley
Yeah, one, thank you for having us and giving us this platform to talk, talk about this stuff and have this conversation. Again, the hope was with this text that it begins a conversation, it’s certainly not the end of one. I think I ended with a couple of thoughts. One, kind of where we’re really just left off. And we talked about earlier a little bit like we do have to take care of our faculty and our staff and our administrators, right, because that if we’re not good, we can’t provide good to the people. But part of that sometimes is I think we we can get burned out with higher education. Right? Like we get tired sometimes. And we get frustrated that administrators who made this decision that we don’t understand or why did that Board of Trustees member do XYZ? And so I think one of the things we need to do, and we have the opportunity to do through these conversations is really understand what motivates other people, and what aspects of higher education are important to them. Right? Is it? Is it the money? Is it the department education policy driven? Is it the legislator who wants to increase the tax base? Who thinks we need to educate more people to commodify their jobs? Right, like so figuring that out, I think, an opportunity to understand those lenses we talked about. So I think that’s one thing that I think we as professionals can do. And then I think the other thing is, I do think we need to focus again, on our students. We we’ve created these, at least a history class history of higher education is my favorite class I teach like, it is my favorite thing. And our institutions of higher education in the US today are the same institutions that we had in about 1910. We changed a whole lot from colonial colleges in 1910. And then we got stuck. And we really haven’t reinvented the model in a big way since then, that our students have changed. Our world has changed how people access education has changed. But we uphold this old antiquated, frankly, idea of how someone should engage in higher education. And we don’t revisit who our students are. We don’t revisit what they need. We don’t revisit, sure institutions change because we try to change our students to our institutions, and not our institutions, to our students. or, frankly, in a world today. We still have minoritized populations when it comes to higher education, not just our students, but those people who could be our students if we would allow them to be

Heather Shea
That’s beautiful and see their students be That’s great.

Heather Shea
Yeah. How can people connect with you Yancey?

Needham Yancey Gulley
Yeah, um, I have a Twitter, I don’t tweet. So you can go with me there, but you’re not gonna find much, but it is at Yancey Gulley. The best way is for me our email, frankly. So in NYGULLEY@WCU.edu You can google my website and stuff like that, too.

Heather Shea
Great, wonderful, wonderful. Well, I am so grateful for all of your time today for this conversation and for your contributions to the book. Also sending heartfelt appreciation to our dedicated behind the scenes producer Nat Ambrosey. Thank you Nat for all the things you do to make us look and sound good. If you are listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please do visit our website at studentaffairsnow.com And you can add your email to our MailChimp list and we send out one email per week on Wednesdays. While you’re there, you can check out our archives. We are nearing our two year anniversary as a podcast and over 100 episodes for you to pursue so I’d love love to encourage you all to take a look. Thanks again to the sponsors of today’s episode we make our podcast possible. Stylus is proud to be a sponsor student affairs podcast browse their student affairs diversity professional development titles at styluspub.com. You can use promo code SANow for 30% off all books plus free shipping. And you can find stylists on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, all the different places @styluspub. Symplicity is our other sponsor. They are the global leader in student services technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institution Symplicity supports all aspects of student life, including, but not limited to Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and well being student success and accessibility services. To learn more, visit symplicity.com or connect with them on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. If you can, please take a moment visit our website, click on sponsors to hear more about them and the other organizations that sponsor our podcast. Again, I’m Heather Shea thanks to all of the folks who are listening, everybody watching and make it a great week everyone.

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