Vasti Torres
I think if you don’t consider the individual nature of belonging, how an individual defines belonging, you are basically asking one to assimilate, or what Weidman calls socialization into an organization or an institution, and that assimilation assumes that that person has no capital to bring to the piece. So I really do think they do need to come hand in hand, because we’re not asking students to assimilate, right. And that’s a critical piece that really doesn’t get talked about a lot. I have I have, from time to time joke that I used to run first year experience programs or orientation, and that they’re really an indoctrination. So how do we move away from indoctrination to a much more, you know, looking at the aspects of belonging and other things?

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we’re talking about college students sense of belonging. We have one of the editors and two contributing authors from the new book The Impact of the Sense of Belonging in Colleg Implications for Student Persistence, Retention, and Success. Thanks to each of you for being here today. I’m so excited to learn from you. Student Affairs now is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in longside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays find details about this episode, or browse the archives it’s studentaffairsnow.com. This episode is brought to you by Stylus that publish the book, visit styluspub.com and use their promo code sa now for 30% off and free shipping. This episode is also sponsored by Vector Solutions formerly EverFi the trusted partner for 2000 and more colleges and universities vector solutions is the standard of care for students safety, wellbeing, and inclusion. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his. I’m a speaker, consultant, and coach, and you can find out more about me at Keith edwards.com. I’m broadcasting from Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Now, let’s get to the conversation. I’m so grateful for all of you for joining us today. Erin, let’s kick it off with you. Tell us a little bit about you. Go ahead.

Erin M. Bentrim
Sure. And thank you so much for having us today and hosting this podcast about this topic. I’m Erin Bentrim, and I’m a Senior Education and Training Specialist at Anthology Inc. My background has been on higher ed campuses for about 25 years before I made the move over to a higher ed adjacent role. approximately the last 15 years I’ve been in student affairs assessment. And prior to that institutional research, institutional effectiveness are kind of all over. I’ve also been on faculty. And so this has been a great, great work that we have enjoyed doing.

Keith Edwards
Well thanks so much to the work that you and Gavin Henning did to edit this and pull people together. And I’m so glad we’ve got you to kind of share the big picture and experts on this. So go ahead and tell us a little bit more about you.

Terrell Lamont Strayhorn
Sure thing. Thanks, Keith. And I echo the sentiments of Erin, thank you for the opportunity to come on the podcast and talk about a really important topic, I think at a crucial time. And hello to everyone who will listen and watch. I’m Terrell Strayhorn, Professor of higher education and women Gender Sexuality Studies at Illinois State University. And excited to be with this panel of speakers today talking about a topic that has been sort of center of my research agenda for a little bit of a decade now. Previously, I’ve served on the faculty at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the Ohio State University, Memorial College, and most recently as Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs at Virginia Union University. And so I look forward to sharing some insights that I think come from the chapter, as well as some of the work that I’ve been doing as director of the Center for the Study of historically black colleges and universities. It’s glad to be here.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. So glad you’re here. And Vasti tell us more about you.

Vasti Torres
Thank you. For those of you don’t know me, I’m Vasti Torres and I go by she her and ella, because I am My native languages Spanish. I’m currently the Executive Director, Executive Associate Dean for the School of Education, and I’m a professor in educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Well, I’m so glad all of you are here. And I think as we were talking before, in my work, I’m hearing so many campuses really wanting to center belonging in their efforts with students and helping students learn in centering belonging. And then we get about five minutes in that conversation, then the heads tilt, and they go, what are we mean by that? What is what does that really mean? What is the nuance of that? And so I’m so excited. I think, Erin and Gavin repression in sort of getting this out starting this project at a time before, it was really center stage. And I know many of you have been thinking and writing and researching about this for a long time. So Erin, why don’t you tell us a little bit about why you pursued this project you and Gavin and the folks you brought together and what you learned through the process?

Erin M. Bentrim
Sure. Um, I think that’s a great question as we were kind of chatting earlier. So where I want to start is to give some, some environmental context for this. So if you think about a few data points related to birth rates in the US college enrollment trends and retention persistence and graduation rates. We know those are lower than we would hope. So, Pew Research Foundation says that birth rates were already at an all time low before the pandemic, there was some anticipation of an anticipated baby boomer rise from the pandemic, but actually birth rates dropped around 4%. So you know, again, thinking about those college enrollment trends 2003 to 2017, there was an undergraduate enrollment increased by 70%. What we’re predicting now is 2017 to 2028, undergraduate enrollment will have an increase of only 2%. And when you think about that, those projections were reported in 2017, which is five years ago, and we’re, we’re in it in a different world now.

Keith Edwards
Things have changed. Yeah, yes, just a few.

Erin M. Bentrim
So 30% of students drop out before their sophomore years, 62% graduate within six years. So with that in mind, it’s no wonder that colleges and universities have begun to frame discussion around student success in new ways. So um, I noticed on my campus before I joined Anthology, it was on a campus, lots of meetings, sense of belonging, what do we do? How do we get students you know, to stay and succeed, but there was never again, it was that kind of lack of agreed on and how to define it, how to measure it. And the limited research investigating sense of belonging was kind of scattered all over, we found Terelj work, you know, and so that kind of got us thinking about that. But um, there was lots of confusion about sense of belonging is engagement. It’s the same thing as involvement. So, you know, that’s, again, to hear Terrell talk about that. So, Gavin, and I just kind of chatted, I said, Hey, what are you hearing on your campus? Because we don’t seem to be arriving? We’re just talking and talking and talking. That’s what do you think? And so we’ve decided just to, well, why don’t we pull this together? There’s not a, you know, compendium of research. So let’s kind of pull together maybe that first volume, that first work of everything that’s out there. So we wanted to our intention and vision was to bring together the research and address what sense of belonging is what it looks like, and how it impacts students success. One interesting point, Keith, is we put out the call for authors and April of 2020. Yes, so

Keith Edwards
I’ve got all this free time to write.

Erin M. Bentrim
Yeah, well, no actually, we had been working in planning, and we put the call out, and then we were like, Okay, well, what is this mean for this book? What is the pandemic mean for sense of belonging. So I am delighted to say that I think that this book, and the author’s work has become an even more valuable tool for educators as a result of the pandemic and the shift in new teaching modalities, and closed down campuses. So I think there was a positive impact. What I have learned, I’ve learned so much, and I enjoyed one of the thrills of being the editor is you get to read all these incredible authors and their body of work in their research in the different and, you know, brings up so many different things in your mind. I think I was surprised I knew what was a complex topic, but the depth and complexity of it, I was surprised by that. I’ve learned a lot about that. And then another thing was really gave me some food for a thought is the neuroscience, the cognitive neuroscience around sense of belonging and what that looks like in the brain. And so there’s, you know, a chapter about that in the book, too. So those are kind of the things that were big, overarching points about what I learned.

Keith Edwards
I really appreciate that. And I know you’ve got a copy of the book. So please show it off. Yeah, for us. And are some real? Yeah. Yeah. Well used,

Erin M. Bentrim
Very well used and because there’s so much internet to keep going back and looking at different things and different chapters. So it’s, it’s a great resource.

Keith Edwards
And just for folks who may be interested, there’s some good thought pieces, which is I think, a lot of what we’re going to explore Are there some research pieces? And then there’s also some little practical vignettes and little snippets of practitioners and how they’ve used it that are very brief, very short. And I think really helpful for the for those who want to help transition, the theory and the research into practice.

Erin M. Bentrim
Yeah, that was one of the sections of the book. So we did three sections, theories and foundations with part one, their sense of belonging across student populations, and then implications and applications. So we decided to organize it in in that fashion.

Keith Edwards
Right, great. Well, I think chapter two, if I’m going from my memory is Terell’s chapter, talking about your research and sort of not just your research, but also your long term research and study of this and the evolution of this. And one of the opening chapters, you distinguish between the often conflated terms of engagement, involvement, and belonging. And so I sort of think about those as kind of often being braided together, and maybe you can help us unbraid those engagement, involvement and belonging.

Terrell Lamont Strayhorn
So that is a good segue into I think, the core topic of the chapter that Erin and Gavin thought would be useful to the volume. And I thought it was GREAT as a person who’s written about sense of belonging to be a contributor to another volume that really drives down a bit more in depth around academic belonging, and really trying to help practitioners and researchers and scholars understand what belonging is, what it does, and higher education, and then how does it relate to some other concepts that are already pretty well established on the shelf of knowledge. And so you allude to them, engagement, involvement, and belonging, this was my second or third time being able to sort of take a perspective on this matter, because, in fact, when I wrote the second addition to my belonging book, The editors at Routledge asked for that kind of chapter that would deal with this. And it turns out, Lisa wolf window, our colleague at the University of Kansas, wrote a piece about this tangled web of terms and offered a perspective on whether or not they are synonyms and similar. Are they correlates of one another? Or are they in fact, you know, pretty unrelated, in some ways. And so, in short, and the chapter I talked about the fact that we know, much like Arun and Gavin said up in the introductory chapter, that students face all sorts of challenges in college. And those challenges were only exacerbated by the global pandemic and the historic racial reconciliation that we’ve witnessed in society over the past couple of years. And so, because of those forces, we’ve observed the climbing trends in terms of students enrollment students, matriculation students retention and persistence. All right. So the question becomes what causes that other than global pandemic Black Lives Matter and the other forces, and we’ve known for a long time that students either stay or leave college because of support, lack of support, or because of the presence of useful support for them. And we have a whole lot of research across different racial and ethnic groups about the important role that parents play, and families and communities, but also the role that faculty, staff, student affairs administrators play in this as well. And so we know that for students to be successful, they must establish supportive relationships with others on campus. And there’s a pretty widespread literature about that, and be involved in clubs and organizations connected with personnel in meaningful ways and also feel important to the group. Well, in many senses, those three sentiments sort of connect very closely to these three concepts. So in short, and the chapter I talked about, it is essential for students to connect with others in college. That’s involvement. And we’ll talk about that in a second. That it’s not up to the student though, and I listen. I mean, when I first started writing about it, I didn’t do this very well. I talked a lot about belonging at the individual level, and found myself really drawn to trying to understand students perceptions, and their feelings and the meaning that they make whether it’s using quantitative or qualitative data was really trying to see through the students lens but the problem with only focusing There is that many institutions then think it’s up to the students to find a sense of belonging.

Terrell Lamont Strayhorn
And we’ve known actually, for a long time and busty is that Indiana University, there’s a center for post secondary research there was led by George Kuh, there’s a lot of research that’s come out of that center that’s helped us understand the importance of engagement. Engagement is related to this concept of involvement, the psychological and physical energy that students devote to their college experience. But it also underscores the important role that institutions have, and fostering the conditions that compel students to be involved in that way that’s equitable, and appropriate, and safe and secured. Right. So that’s an engagement. And that’s when students are meaningfully involved. And that institutions arise to their engagement, responsibility, what I call them the chapter, an equity imperative, that we know that I used to say, Keith and friends, that we opened the doors of access in higher education to so many groups. And then one day, I heard myself say that and I was teaching the history of higher education, I thought, I open those doors, those doors were kicked down, protested down, you’re down, push through. So I got to stop saying that, and anybody who watches this podcast, feel free to do the same, because that’s not the story of access in higher education access has not been given to newcomers, it’s been protested and demanded. And because of that, institutions know now that we enroll students from all different zip codes, backgrounds, walks of life. And so we have a responsibility then to make sure that they can access the support that we know they need to be successful. That’s involvement. That’s engagement. So I close with when students are involved, and their institution at engaging institutions they feel important and cared about, and like they matter, and that sense of belonging.

Keith Edwards
So let me see if I got this, right. So involvement is connection. Engagement is sort of the investment in the time and energy. And then belonging is if those things go well what the student feels and feeling mattered and feeling cared for.

Terrell Lamont Strayhorn
Not bad. When you talk about time, I think about involvement really, as a frequency based behavioral kind of concept. I mean, that’s what Aston said that he’s like, look, it’s not about how they feel or think it’s about the time and energy, what they do in Congress, I think engagement turns our attention to what institutions must do to create conditions that compel students to be involved. And I think that if asked and said, It’s not about feeling, I didn’t know when I write up long as say, it is a feeling, it is about how students feel, and their perception of the campus environment, the access and accessibility of support services and those relationships, when you put those together, I think that’s the way that they sort of related and I will close by saying to me, they are not synonyms, they are correlate with one another, but there are distinctive traits. And, you know, we have a lot of research looks at measurement issues with these concepts. And they are strong correlations, but they are not perfect. So they they must be conceptually distinct.

Keith Edwards
I think so they also point out that I want to draw practitioners attention to how researchers use some of these terms in a very strict way and run measurement. And then how practitioners talk about them and staff meetings is not always the same. So I think that’s another place where that kind of conflation can happen.

Vasti Torres
I also wonder, to kind of do a preview of the work that I’ve been doing is could you be engaged in one particular portion but not feel like you belong at the institution? And I think that’s one of the kind of confounding parts of using belonging solely. Terrell, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Terrell Lamont Strayhorn
I agree. I mean, I’m in the theory of belonging, you know, I use data to pink, that exact image. I mean, I have surveyed and interviewed students who say, You know what, listen, when I am in the theater majors club, I feel like I’m with my people. And I feel like I belong and I matter. And I’m involved. But when I go right down the hall and enter into my science class, or when I think about the fact that it’s difficult for me to get a hold of my academic advisor, the message and the meaning I make of that is that I’m not important. So here it is a person who’s involved and feels a sense of belonging in one place but does not and does not feel it overall to the institution. I think for a lot of historically underserved and marginalized populations. Belonging to the institution is some ultimate maybe outcome and goal but it happens first through the social groups and smaller on clips.

Keith Edwards
That makes a lot of sense. And I think it has me wondering about how this varies from institutions. Because I spent a lot of time at a very small private liberal arts school and Macalester College 2000 students, you can literally know everybody. But then what happens when you’re at Indiana University? How do you have a sense of belonging there in this big place, and it makes sense, folks, we feel connected to the soccer team, to theatre and dance, to the Black Lives Matter organization to maybe this residence hall, but then not feel connected to the broader institution, I think how I would think that different institutions might want to create a sense of belonging at different scales. So that it’s not just the football game on Saturday, where you feel like I belong to the institution, right.

Erin M. Bentrim
And we talked about that, too. So I’m glad you brought that up. So smaller colleges and universities, you do know everyone, but as we’ve seen across this volume, in Vasti and Terell’s work, sense of belonging cannot be looked at without looking at intersectionality of the students. So if you’re on a smaller college or university, they may not be as diverse. So then you struggle with sense of belonging in that piece of it, you know, larger university, you might find your tribe or your people or, but then you’re up against the larger population. So I think, yeah, I think you have to balance it out.

Terrell Lamont Strayhorn
You know, and to the point of intersectionality, so I’m at Illinois State University, which is in Bloomington Normal, it’s not exactly the world’s largest metropolis city. However, a lot of our students are proud of them. But I have students who are from Chicago, and coming from Chicago, too. So here it is, they see this as a smaller place. And they’re looking for a much larger kind of place that’s more like home. So I think to Erin’s point, intersectionality works in so many complicated ways, right? It takes into account the student’s background, their geography, their sexuality, their identity, and that that shapes if sets of sort of serves as a sort of Aperture, or lens through which they see and experience college, it also sets what I think they think is important for finding that sense of belonging. I’ve met students who are like, you know, no, I don’t feel like I matter to this professor. And no, I don’t feel like, you know, my academic advisor cares about me, but you know, what my coach does on the track team, and I love it here. That’s the student helping me understand it’s not about my expectations of your belonging, but for their own.

Keith Edwards
Well, you alluded to this, but there’s tension between the individual and then the institutional responsibility and individual the structures and systems, I’m going to quote you to prove I did my homework, you pointed out that tension by saying, quote, it is essential for students to form positive, meaningful relationships with others, quote, and others point out that institutions have a responsibility to foster belonging, you quickly conclude with Yes, both are correct. So tell us a little bit about the both and have individual and institutional responsibility here.

Terrell Lamont Strayhorn
Yeah, I appreciate this. And I would love for all our colleagues to chime in to I mean, and the work I’ve done with campuses, you know, I think we’re all yearning to contribute to this conversation. And so at some point, you know, people, I’ve heard some critiques that, you know, oh, no, it’s too individual based. You got to think about the institution as if that was not mentioned. But the moment we only focus on the institution, and think this all structure is all systems. One, I think we miss one of the things that a student in Nashville at Vanderbilt University, heard me talk about belonging, and they said, you know, what belonging to me is like my superpower. Yeah, this place may not be that welcoming. It may not be that hospitable to me. But there are things I can do to fashion and create a space for myself, where I can feel connected and feel valued until the institution gets better. I don’t want to deny students that opportunity to see belonging as this force that is in their control that working with others, they can create spaces, in their own tables, as it were. But by the same token, I don’t want to miss that provost. Presidents Dean’s who will watch this podcast have an important role to play in the belonging work and that is, belonging doesn’t happen. It is created and we created in higher education through our policies, our procedures, our processes, our personnel. It’s hard to tell students they belong at a place when they don’t see themselves reflected. In the faculty and staff, the senior administration, they don’t see opportunities for people like them to advance in the institution. It’s also true that you know, right now it’s hard to feel like you belong, when you don’t know what the degree requirements are, and how long it will take you and what support is available. So when be as academic leaders, I love doing this as a provost, really thinking about belonging applied to my practice? And how can we simplify our processes? How can we make this journey for students seamless? How can we anticipate their needs and offer support, not wait for them to come and find it? But you know, being successful in college should not be a research project, it shouldn’t require students to have to, you know, get an IRB form filled out and figure out how do I access my degree audit? And what the hell is the degree audit and how many credits are required? And what’s the prerequisite, we ought to use what we know, to make this experience, more humanizing, more manageable, more efficient, more productive. And I think when we do that, through our strategic work in those areas, we’re constructing and building belonging. And that’s the institution of responsibility really tracks pretty well, I think, on George’s doors, coups, earlier comments about engagement. And obviously,

Keith Edwards
the visual I have is removing obstacles, taking, you know, where are the students bumping into obstacles, removing those so that things are easier whether they don’t know what a prerequisite is? They don’t know what they are. They don’t know where this office is. All of those things. Oh, go ahead, Erin.

Erin M. Bentrim
I was gonna say, and I think oftentimes, where I like to think about the institution having a responsibility is that for many years, we have looked at students from a deficit model, if you don’t know where your academic advisor is, well, that’s on you, because you didn’t pay attention and orientation, as opposed to saying, hey, maybe there’s another way we can create this. So more students are aware they’re more aware of services on campus. So I think, and again, I’m like, Terrell says, You have to create it. Because I think being involved and engaged is necessary, but not necessary, but not sufficient for student success. So I do think that institutions have I think this might be a game changer for them, if they ask them to belong into their mix and shift do a paradigm shift on what they’re doing on campuses for our students, that you know that that can be a game changer and really impact student success positively.

Vasti Torres
So at the risk of sounding like I disagree with my colleagues, which I actually don’t.

Keith Edwards
I love it, I love.

Vasti Torres
I’d love to actually don’t, I think if you don’t consider the individual nature of belonging, how an individual defines belonging, you are basically asking one to assimilate, or what Weidman calls socialization into an organization or an institution, and that assimilation assumes that that person has no capital to bring to the piece. So I really do think they do need to come hand in hand, because we’re not asking students to assimilate, right. And that’s a critical piece that really doesn’t get talked about a lot. I have I have, from time to time joke that I used to run first year experience programs or orientation, and that they’re really an indoctrination. So how do we move away from indoctrination to a much more, you know, looking at the aspects of belonging and other things?

Keith Edwards
Well, I’m so glad you brought that up. Because Brene Brown talks about the difference between belonging and fitting in and fitting in is when you’re describing this assimilation, or I have to be like everybody else, I talk like everybody else have to wear the same clothes everybody else wears, that’s fitting in whereas belonging is who you are, is accepted and you feel valued, and you feel mattered, and all of that. So

Terrell Lamont Strayhorn
just as well, just as you are no, there was no transaction required in order for a student. Now there’s transactions for us as an institution to get to know our students. So I love what Boston is set up there for everyone who will watch the podcast and works in orientation programs. I think when we start to really think about belonging applied to orientation mean, I’ve seen some really exciting work at you know, several institutions two year and four year where they’re spending more time getting to know students and building community and helping students learn how to navigate the institution is not indoctrination is really about a sense of men. membership, and helping students understand what does that even mean. But the institution is also open to learning some things about itself. And I think gets back to what you were saying earlier keeping that is, as we think about belonging, that it really is, you know, about removing barriers. And I always say it’s, there’s a part of belonging that’s destructive, right? We have to identify barriers and remove them. And we’ve built them, we built process walls and deadline walls and all sorts of walls that get in the way of students success, but it’s not just destructive, and kicking down those walls over this important, it’s also constructive. And that is starting to build the kind of innovative orientation programs that Vasti is talking about and the other kinds of OnRamps that support students through the internet.

Keith Edwards
Well, two favorite quotes so far for me is belonging is my superpower from that student that throughout mentioned, and engagement and involvement is necessary but may not be sufficient. From Erin, Vasti, Let’s, let’s turn to you your chapter is about transfer students specifically. But you opened with some important distinctions between different approaches to belonging. You mentioned integration from, person, environment, fit and funnel, mineral human need, help us understand these differing perspectives more and and your thoughts? Your your, your perspective on these?

Vasti Torres
Yeah, well, I will say that, to understand my perspective, you have to understand some things about my past and my experiences. So I was a transfer student. And so I’m very aware that my experience as a transfer student was drastically different than the students who were starting in their first year, and I did attend a small liberal arts college. So I didn’t know all 2000 people by the end. Anyway. The second piece is that I’ve done research at Urban universities, and that the commuter nature and sort of the the way things interact with the environment at Urban universities is very different than much of the research that is so focused on residential full time, traditional age students. So that’s a piece that also entered in this. And the final thing is I do a fair amount of work with community colleges, especially through achieving the dream and other community college initiatives. And community college environment is seldom mentioned when we’re talking about sort of developmental, looking at belonging and development, developing that. Now what that means is that as a person who tends to connect 52 million dots at the same time, we were looking at support, validation, socialization, integration, belonging mattering and community, all these things have a synergistic relationship, or it’s Terrell said correlated. But they’re actually treated as very separate constructs, which is really kind of difficult when you’re looking at students who are marginalized in one way or another. So what all these things kind of mean is that we have to recognize that environment, and the culture slash identity of a student influences how they see belonging, there’s not a one size fits all. As I mentioned before, this may look like we have to look at each student individually. But it’s about sort of creating environments that are inclusive and provide multiple opportunities. And the final thing is that we have to recognize that some students come to class only. And that’s how they that is their general college experience. So how do we begin to look at this growing population of commuter students? And if you look at the data, the majority of students of color begin at a community college, which is a commuter tend to be a commuter type environment. How do we consider looking at these types of students in the context of very traditional residential based research that looks at belonging? And so it really prompted me to kind of think about this differently. And luckily, I had some great students who helped me flush this out. So in the article in the chapter that I wrote, We do belong we do start with sort of disentangling, belonging, validation mattering and support, and we problematize it in such a way to say, is this really all the same thing? Or are there distinct pieces? And so the chapter in the book actually looks at a survey that was meant to measure belonging. And what we found is that it really measures belonging and personal support, very distinctly. So while there is a synergistic relationship, they’re very different. And one of the reasons we really wanted to look at This is that if you look at the connection between those things, it’s much more complex when you’re transitioning to a new institution. So if I’m transitioning it, I’m not forgetting all the people I met before I arrived. And I’m not necessarily clicking with the people I meet when I arrived. And so it has to be looked at in a much more complex way, because the transition for transfer student is much more complex. The other piece, and I think Terrell does this, as well as I, I use mixed methods a lot. And so the chapter I look at the survey piece, but then we have interviews to kind of fill in the gaps. And I’ll talk about a new article that’s coming out, also to kind of pull all this together. But we really found that students were talking about belonging and support that were on campus, and off campus elements, it wasn’t all on campus. And we also found that their past educational experience was almost written off in the transfer process, because if you didn’t take it here, then it may not be worth it. So it really devoid them of the capital they brought to the campus in some ways. So that belonging, or what you’ve referred to as barriers and obstacles, really did send the message that if you didn’t start here, you’re your past experiences are not as important. So if they ended up focusing on on the social support, to get their support, and sometimes to get their information, which is kind of sad for institutions. But that is actually what the literature around transfer students already shows us. So I’ll put that out there. And I also say that in an upcoming article, we kind of expanded the work we did for this chapter. And we try to problematize all these ideas as is, are these parts of community. And do transfer students create communities in different ways that incorporate different things. And what we found is that there were some distinct support elements, there were some distinct belonging elements, and there were distinct validation elements. But what was most interesting is that the sources of those elements were based on time. How much time am I going to spend in this environment? Do I want to engage? More so here? Or do I want to keep my past experiences? The people in terms of like, who’s validating my experiences, and we’ve talked about this before? And this is especially true, I think, in computer institutions, if I have 52 million things, demanding my attention, why am I going to engage with, you know, the traditional experience, when I have support and people that I can draw from, and this is also true in cultural elements, you know, the familial attach, attachment becomes very critical for some students, and that is a people thing. And the final piece is place, how does place influence how you see yourself as part of the community? And so if I’m commuting half an hour to an hour, why am I going to engage or invest time in the campus community when I’ve got other things, or when I get put in a, or in the article we talked about is transfer housing was like, the least desirable housing, those students are like on an on another side of the campus. And that place really influenced how they saw themselves as part of the community. So it very much is not monolithic. It is very malleable, depending on the students experiences, and I do agree that institutions can do something but we can talk more about that later.

Keith Edwards
Well that’s where my curiosity is. I think it’s really interesting that the students are telling you that things beyond the campus walls, maybe family, maybe my job, maybe how far my commute is or not, are such a big part of the picture. Right. But I’m wondering what what would you suggest for institutional leaders, you might say, I get that, but we don’t have any say of that. We don’t have any control over that. That’s sort of beyond our purview. Are there ways that institutional leaders and staff can better incorporate that in their work? Yeah. And Keith,

Vasti Torres
I’ll also add that this doesn’t contradict what Terrell and Erin, were saying. I want to make sure that people understand that it’s just looking at slightly different. I think one of the first things that institutions have to look at is that so socialization or integration social activities is not the be all for everyone, and may not be actually creating anything belonging or community for some students. So I think getting away from like a let’s have pizza parties is an important part of what we need to do as a field,

Keith Edwards
or at least not having it be the only strategy we utilize, right? Absolutely. Yeah.

Vasti Torres
The second element is this notion that all students will develop their relationships on campus. And those relationships will be the most important relationships that they form. And we really do actually create programs, create entire orientation events, approach some aspects of engagement and involvement from that perspective that all your close friends will be on campus. And that’s we have to get away from that perspective. And the final thing is that we need to begin to understand that community for commuter students is in the classroom. It may not actually be outside the classroom, it will for some, it’s not universal piece of it. But the classroom community becomes so critical. And frankly, it’s already been mentioned, removing structural barriers and creating connections is important. But it doesn’t have to be done in social or assuming that all your connections are on campus.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. So just a bigger, your sort of makes the board game bigger. It’s not doesn’t end at the campus walls, how do we also make all these connections and utilize all of these other things to build that kind of community? I’m hearing over and over again, in some of the previous conversations, what you’re sharing Vasti, about agency and the individuals agency and sort of meeting them where they’re at and what they want and how they want to do that. And also the, you know, belongings, my superpowers like big time agency energy. I also want to invite Erin and drill in here. But I also love about vasti, you’re kind of challenging some of your previous orientation practices. And Terrell sort of noting, I didn’t always talk about this the way I would like, I wish I would have talked about it. And reminding our colleague, Karen Inglis always reminded me that scholarship is cumulative. We’re, we’re learning and we’re growing, you’re adding. So I really appreciate that. Erin, interrupt anything you want to add here and what Vasti is offering us

Erin M. Bentrim
I think, I appreciate those words faster, because we do often get into the we want everyone to belong, but it’s not. You know, as you can see, throughout this volume, it’s not a one size fits all approach. So I appreciate you bringing that back up to the forefront. And the other thing I appreciate you stressing too, is it’s not just about what traditionally co curricular programs, that academic piece of it is is vital to build that belonging connection. And so for some people, it may be I’m really close to a professor or I’ve got you know, a study group, or maybe it’s a living learning community. So yes, those are things that we do need to keep remembering and to keep talking about. So thank you.

Terrell Lamont Strayhorn
I think one thing that resonates with what you were saying sharing of us, do you and I sort of alluded to this, and both this chapter in some other writing is one. And I appreciate the point about salience belonging salience. So, you know, one of the questions that we don’t ask enough in higher education is, you know, what matters to the student? And where do you want to belong? And where are you striving to gain a sense of connection and membership. And if we had asked this a decade ago, we would have learned that for transfer students, for many of our first generation students are working and commuter students, listen, single moms, single dads, military vets, who come back to school, they’re not looking to necessarily feel a strong sense of belonging in the SGA know, slammed to the SGA. I wasn’t a member of the SGA up, but I know it worked for me, but it won’t work for all. And so really understanding then that, you know, and we’ve known this in some research that certain contexts, like the college classroom, take on heightened importance, right for certain students at certain times. And I think what we learned from this conversation is about the important role that college classrooms play, for transfers to But here’s the take home message for those who will listen to this and think about it is, we have to also appreciate that we have students who have gained access to that college classroom, and the college classroom, no matter how well acquainted, no matter how efficiently decked out in technology for some students, and it’s terrifying, it is intimidating, it is chaotic. It is disorderly. It can be a site of trauma for them. And so how do we then take what we’re learning from Vasti’s work, to look, you know, past our critical gaze of the classroom, but to understand we’ve got work to do to make sure that faculty are teaching in ways that are culturally responsive and congruent, that they are, you know, using a diverse set of pedagogies that will get students you know, they can build and foster community for group work, and other kinds of perspectives and pedagogies, I think, really respond in practical ways to the recommendation Vasti is making.

Vasti Torres
And now I’ll add that when we don’t validate or acknowledge the the capital that students bring to class, from their past experiences, we are trying to assimilate them if we don’t pay attention to that. And I’ll give you a concrete example, how a simple shift validated students prior experience, I know an institution that used to run orientation for transfer students, they had maybe 25 30% of the transfer students show up, they changed the name of it to advising registration for transfer students. And guess what, almost 100% of the transfer student showed up. Because it wasn’t about like, we think you need to be oriented to college life it was you need advising, you need to register, and you have some of this previous knowledge. And then did some overlapping thing. But it totally shifted the focus of that student experience to be focused on what they already know, and the things they need to do.

Keith Edwards
It’s such an important point, I keep learning again, and again in my work, but sometimes just changing what we call things can make such a significant difference in how people engage or don’t, or how they the minds that they bring or, or what they come into it. So I really appreciate that example. Well, we are running out of time. And the podcast is called Student Affairs NOW. And we always like to end by asking our guests What are you thinking troubling or pondering now might be related our conversation today or just other things happening in your world? And also if you want to share where folks can connect with you? But let’s start with Vasti. do you what do you troubling now.

Vasti Torres
I’m traveling everything these days. I I’m actually really wondering how we’re going to fare after the pandemic, on this constant push to treat all students the same. If we know anything, not all students are the same. We’ve known that, you know, since the beginning of higher education, but yet we continue to try and do that. And I do think that having been virtual for a year and a half to two years, is going to change students expectations, and how do we begin to look at issues of community and belonging when students expectations are different today, so I think about that quite a bit. And I love to engage people on Twitter, which is my main social media at and my Twitter handle is Dr. Vasti. So easy enough to kind of remember.

Keith Edwards
Thank you. Thank you, and Terrell what’s on your mind now.

Terrell Lamont Strayhorn
I echo the sentiments of Asti there’s a lot that’s on my mind right now. And since she has eloquently talked about, you know how we fare in this, I don’t know what to call it post pandemic. Life, new, normal, whatever it’s going to be. You know, I think another piece that connects to this conversation and likely to many folks in your listening audience is that we’ve known for a long time that students find support in higher education, through positive meaningful relationships with faculty and staff. And so just as much as their sense of belonging matters, so too, does the sense of belonging of faculty and staff, those who work in academic affairs and student affairs and we’ve got, you know, a need for more work on the student front. We’ve got a real serious gap around belonging and the personnel space. And so I’ve been doing more work there and writing in that space to really think about one. What is it? What is it? What does it mean? Is it a correlate or synonym? does it operate the same way? Are the same sort of factors important and salient? And then most importantly, then how do we, as institutional leaders really create and construct it? So I closed a little ended up I mean, it was when I was provost at Virginia Union University, I, you know, watched my faculty, you know, pivot very quickly to teach online, manage enormous burdens with research and teaching and meeting students needs and stepping up to the plate to help, you know, a comprehensive, historically black four year liberal arts university ensure business continuity through a pandemic. But there was a toll for people stepping up in that way. And as we make our way into long term planning, sustainability, I don’t know endemic pandemic new normal, the question becomes how do we signal to faculty and staff that they matter that they’re they belong at a time not in our institution, but at lots of corporations, you know, at a time where we refer to people as non essential workers, and that language and the bosses nailed it. Language matters, words wound, and so we’re going to be responsible in higher ed and corporate America for those words and labels. And I don’t think we’ve yet seen or witnessed what will happen. So anyone think about those things, write about those things, invite others to think about it. And the best way to connect is on social media. I am TL Strayhorn on all things.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Thank you. And Aaron, what are you troubling now you did this great project two years in the making? It’s come out people can buy it now. What are you troubling now?

Erin M. Bentrim
So we tell you what I’m pondering and trembling about and I think Terrell and Vasti both feet and on these things. So this, this is kind of perfect, perfect timing. Um, when we think about, I feel like we’re finally trying to get a good grasp, and it could handle a sense of belonging on campus. What about off campus environmental context? What about social justice and social activism? So, you know, in, in the future directions and implications, one thing I closed the book on is, is there a darker side to sense of belonging? What happens when, when and if that sense of belonging results in negative behaviors and consequences? And I think a lot of that has come up for me over, you know, the last several years with our, you know, our current environment? How, what does that look like? How do we shift that? How do we? I don’t know. It’s just something I’m really thinking about sense of belonging at what cost is something that Kristin talks about in the forward. So I think I’m just again, I’m just kind of pondering what, what are some other aspects of this that we need to investigate? So yeah, I also been pondering that and if people want to connect, I would love to hear more discussion around that. I am primarily via LinkedIn, or email, even from an anthology.com and Erin Bentrim on LinkedIn.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Well, thanks to all three of you for your great thinking and contributions and for sharing that with our guests here today. This has been terrific. And thanks also to our sponsors of today’s episode Stylus and Vector Solutions. Stylus is proud to be the sponsor for Student Affairs now podcast you can browse their student affairs, diversity and professional development titles at styluspub.com. You can always use promo code SANOW for 30% off all their books, including this one, and free shipping. You can also find Stylus on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter @styluspub, and Vector Solutions. How will your institution rise to reach today’s socially conscious generation? These students report commitments to safety, wellbeing and inclusion are as important as academic rigor when selecting a college. It’s time to reimagine the work of student affairs as an investment, not an expense. For over 20 years Vector sSolutions, which now includes the campus Prevention Network, formerly EverFi has been the partner of choice for 2000 and more colleges and universities and national organizations. With nine efficacy studies behind their courses you can trust and have full confidence that you’re using the standard of care for student safety, wellbeing and inclusion. Transform the future of your institution and the community you serve. Learn more at vectorsolutions.com/studentaffairsnow. Huge shout out to our producer Nat Ambrosey who does all the work behind the scenes to make us look and sound good. And if you’re listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website at studentaffairsnow.com and scroll to the bottom of the homepage to add your email to our MailChimp chimp list. While you’re there, check out our archives. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to the fabulous guests today and everyone who is watching and listening. Please make it a great week. Thank you all.

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