What a "Holistic" Student Experience Actually Means - Roundtable Report

WITH

SUPPORT

FROM

ROUNDTABLE

REPORT

What a ‘Holistic’

Student Experience

Actually Means

How colleges can integrate learning and personal growth

TABLE OF CONTENTS

oracle.com/goto/universities

or call 1.800.633.0738

Modern Campus

Modern Cloud

Personalize the student experience

Empower lifelong learning

Promote student success

Foster institutional excellence

Become the Modern Campus Your Students Expect

Oracle Cloud for Higher Education

Fonts: Univers LT Std. 75 Black, 65 Bold, 55 Roman, 45 Light,

67 Bold Condensed, 57 Condensed

PRODUCTION NOTES

VENDOR NOTE: Please use center marks to align page.

Please examine these publication materials carefully.

Any questions regarding the materials, please

contact Darci Terlizzi (650) 506-9775

READER

LASER%

RELEASED

4 /15

2016

Job #:

Ref #:

Headline:

Live:

Trim:

Bleed:

416M_IND00381_MdrnCampusMdrnCld_EDU_8.5x11

M_416M_IND00380_MdrnCampusMdrnCld_EDU_8x10.5

Modern Campus Modern Cloud

7.875” x 10.375”

8.5” x 11”

8.9” x 11.4”

Resize

8.5” x 11”

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

Roundtable Report: What a ‘Holistic’ Student Experience Actually Means was edited by

Sara Lipka and is sponsored by Oracle. The Chronicle is fully responsible for the report’s

This material may not be reproduced without prior written permission of The Chronicle.

For permission requests, contact us at copyright@chronicle.com.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Interpreting Terms Like ‘Holistic’ and ‘Well-Being’

Campus leaders must understand students’ motivations and challenges

to design an educational experience that sets them up for success in

college, a career, and life.

High-Impact Practices and the Power of Data

The challenge of engaging and retaining more students can create a

xation on solutions, but what programs and services a college adopts

is less important than how it enacts them.

Becoming a Student-Centered Institution

Re-examining xtures like administrative structures and the curriculum

will help colleges spot ways to smooth students’ paths and opportuni-

ties to foster deeper learning.

Further Reading

Introduction

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Photographs by

Julia Schmalz

This report is based on a

roundtable discussion held

at The Chronicle’s ofce,

in Washington,

on August 2, 2019.

Questions or

comments? Email

[email protected]

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

INTRODUCTION

o to a conference or join a conversation about serving 21st-cen-

tury students, and before too long, you’ll probably hear the word

“holistic.” It has gained traction across higher education as insti-

tutions of different types focus not only on access, or enrolling a

diverse population of students, but on their success academically

and personally, in college and beyond.

Treating students as whole people isn’t a novel concept. Re-

search a century ago found a connection between personality

development and achievement, and colleges created programs like

orientation to nurture students. Over the decades, “student en-

gagement” became a watchword, as researchers and educators identified models

of classroom and extracurricular learning with positive results.

These days, lagging graduation rates, disparate outcomes by income and race,

public doubt about the value of higher education, and new accountability measures

have led campus leaders to try harder to help all students thrive. Add to that demo-

graphic change and increasing competition for students, and for many institutions,

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

raising the retention rate has become both a moral and a nancial imperative.

That’s partly why increases in spending on student services have generally

outpaced those in other categories in recent years. The trends are toward more

support and more personalization, as colleges establish so-called touch points

over the student life cycle. The goal is to serve a broader college-going popula-

tion by cultivating students’ sense of belonging and well-being, while expand-

ing resources for issues such as mental health, hunger, and homelessness.

To examine the holistic model, The Chronicle brought together a panel of

experts who approach this work in different ways, as researchers and adminis-

trators, across sectors of higher education, on campuses and at national orga-

nizations. They came to our office, in Washington, to share their insight on

sticking points and promising new directions.

This report offers key points of discussion to help campus leaders make

sense of popular terms, keep up with effective practices, and consider systemic

changes to improve the student experience. The following excerpts from the

roundtable have been edited for length and clarity.

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

PANELISTS

Randy Bass is the vice

provost for education and

a professor of English at

Georgetown University,

where he leads educational

innovation through the

Designing the Future(s)

initiative and the Red

House incubator for cur-

ricular transformation. In

three decades of work in

teaching and learning and

technology, he founded

Georgetown’s Center for

New Designs in Learning

and Scholarship; directed

the Visible Knowledge

Project, a study involving

70 faculty members on

21 campuses; and served

as a consulting scholar

at the Carnegie Foun-

dation for the Advance-

ment of Teaching. Bass is

the author and editor of

numerous books, articles,

and electronic projects, in-

cluding, with Bret Eynon,

Open and Integrative: De-

signing Liberal Education for

the New Digital Ecosystem

(American Association of

Colleges and Universities,

2016).

Shauna Davis is the

executive director of

holistic student supports

at Achieving the Dream, a

national network of nearly

280 reform-minded com-

munity colleges commit-

ted to improving student

outcomes. In that role, she

leads the organization’s

strategy for redesigning

advising and student-

support services, and leads

a team that coaches

colleges as they adopt

changes. Davis previously

served as the executive

director of the Virginia

Community College

System’s Student Success

Center and Ofce of Pro-

fessional Development, as

the director of student ser-

vices at Northern Virginia

Community College’s

Extended Learning

Institute, and as the

assistant vice president of

work-force development at

the Community College

Workforce Alliance.

Ashley Finley is the vice

president for strategic

planning and partnerships

and senior adviser to the

president at the Associa-

tion of American Colleges

and Universities. In that

role, she consults with

campuses on program de-

sign and implementation,

as well as equity goals,

seeking to connect stu-

dents’ personal develop-

ment with their learning

and civic engagement. She

previously served as senior

director of assessment and

research at AAC&U and

the national evaluator for

its Bringing Theory to

Practice

project. A sociologist by

training, she recently

spent three years away

from AAC&U as the

associate vice president

for academic affairs and

founding dean of the

Dominican Experience

at Dominican University

of California. She is the

author of several arti-

cles, book chapters, and

monographs, including

“Well-Being: An Essential

Outcome for Higher Edu-

cation” (Change, 2016).

Nance Lucas is the execu-

tive director of the Center

for the Advancement of

Well-Being, an interdisci-

plinary center at George

Mason University, as well

as the university’s chief

well-being ofcer, help-

ing to lead a campuswide

effort to promote students’

learning and personal

growth. A scholar of

positive psychology and

ethics, she is an associate

professor of leadership

studies in the universi-

ty’s School of Integrative

Studies and co-author

of Exploring Leadership:

For College Students Who

Want to Make a Difference

( Jossey-Bass, 2013).

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

MODERATOR

Tiffany Beth Mfume is

the assistant vice president

for student success and

retention at Morgan State

University, which has

earned national

recognition for its rising

graduation rates. In

her role, she manages

programs and services

including new student and

parent orientation, nan-

cial-literacy training, and

early alerts. She is the

author of What Works at

Historically Black Colleges

and Universities: Nine

Strategies for Increasing

Retention and Graduation

Rates (Rowman & Little-

eld, 2016) and The College

Completion Glass — Half-

Full or Half-Empty?

Exploring the Value of

Postsecondary Education

(Rowman & Littleeld,

2018).

Amelia Parnell is the

vice president for research

and policy at NASPA, the

national association of

student-affairs administra-

tors in higher education,

where she also directs

the Research and Policy

Institute, which exam-

ines effective practices to

promote student success.

In that role, she focuses

on colleges’ use of data

and the intersections of

campus functions. Parnell

previously served as the

director of research initia-

tives at the Association for

Institutional Research and

an education policy ana-

lyst for the Florida Legis-

lature. She is co-editor of

The Analytics Revolution in

Higher Education: Big Data,

Organizational Learning,

and Student Success (Stylus,

2018).

Josipa Roksa is a

professor of sociology

and education and the

senior adviser for academic

programs at the University

of Virginia. Her current

research focuses on under-

standing the experiences

and outcomes of tradition-

ally underserved popula-

tions, including rst-

generation, low-income,

and racial- and ethnic-

minority students. She is

the author of numerous

articles and reports, as

well as two books, with

Richard Arum, Academi-

cally Adrift: Limited Learn-

ing on College Campuses

(University of Chicago,

2011) and Aspiring Adults

Adrift: Tentative Transitions

of College Graduates (Uni-

versity of Chicago, 2014).

Sara Lipka has focused on

the student experience in

17 years as a reporter and

editor at The Chronicle of

Higher Education. She has

covered a range of topics,

including student and

academic affairs, cam-

pus life, legal issues, and

community colleges, and

has appeared frequently

on radio programs and

conference panels. As

editorial project manager,

she directs special reports

on pressing questions in

higher education, includ-

ing “The Truth About

Student Success: Myths,

Realities, and 30 Practices

That Are Working” and

“Career-Ready Education:

Beyond the Skills Gap,

Tools and Tactics for an

Evolving Economy.”

SECTION 1

“ I want to tell everybody

who’s just getting on

board with what the

needs of students are,

how institutions have to

meet those needs, and

how to handle account-

ability: It’s challenging

work.”

—Tiffany Beth Mfume

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

Interpreting Terms

Like ‘Holistic’ and

‘Well-Being’

erms that become buzzwords can

lose their meaning. On any campus,

it takes a common understanding of

a “holistic” philosophy or approach

to make it a reality. What skills and

qualities does the institution want

to cultivate — and how?

Knowing your students is funda-

mental to developing an educational

experience that enables them to

learn and grow. What are their motivations,

their challenges? By recognizing those factors,

educators can begin to set students up for

success in college, a career, and life. An under-

lying concept is what the psychologist Carol

Dweck called a growth mind-set, a belief that

intelligence is not xed.

Our panelists discussed how to dene and

promote students’ well-being, why a holistic

model is more important than ever, and what

lessons can be gleaned from institutions that

have long enrolled and supported an under-

served population.

Sara Lipka: When people talk about a “holis-

tic student experience,” what do they mean?

Tiffany Beth Mfume: There are two ways

I hear “holistic approach” thrown out. First,

from the perspective of colleges and univer-

sities, it means creating an experience for

students that’s not just academic, but about

how they interact with the institution. Then,

looking at individual students, what are their

challenges? What are they dealing with per-

sonally? What’s going on with their health,

families, nancial circumstances, housing,

food, safety, relationships, mental health?

Amelia Parnell: There should be alignment

between what students need, what we actually

provide, and then what they experience. If we

manage that well, I think we can use the term

“holistic.” If we don’t, students’ experiences

may feel more transactional: They came, they

paid, they left, and that was it.

Nance Lucas: To me what denes “holistic”

is tending to the well-being of our students.

It’s intentionally providing experiences inside

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

and outside the classroom that deepen their

meaning and purpose in life, providing oppor-

tunities for them to grow and learn in physical,

social, nancial, and emotional domains.

Ashley Finley: There may be a well-being

element to this, but that term doesn’t necessar-

ily get us to resilience, coping, thriving — to a

growth mind-set and the fundamental equity

questions around that. We spend so much

time talking about learning outcomes and soft

skills. What about self-motivation, self-efca-

cy? For critical thinking, written communi-

cation, even teamwork, students have to have

a good sense of who they are. How do we talk

about equipping students with the capacity to

learn, to develop interpersonally and intrap-

ersonally? How as institutions are we holding

ourselves accountable for that?

Josipa Roksa: One thing I wish we talk-

ed about more is an environment in which

students are welcomed, supported, respected.

That has to be the foundation to support

growth and development.

Randy Bass: Everything we haven’t always

cared about, but now suddenly do — that’s

often what “holistic” means. You almost have

to answer the question: What do we mean by

education? If education means preparing stu-

dents to be effective in the world at anything

— in the workplace, as citizens — then to me

you’re already in holistic territory.

Lipka: “Holistic” has become something of a

buzzword. What’s behind the new interest?

Shauna Davis: If you look at higher education

across the board, while we have a system that

has worked to become more accessible, it was

not designed for all. But when you have lots

of people coming in the door — especially at

access-oriented institutions — you’re less in-

clined to stop and say, Are we doing this right?

As enrollments have gone down, there’s

more scrutiny of how well students are do-

ing. Access is one thing, but are they actually

getting what they need? Are they completing?

Are they achieving some upward economic

mobility? People are stopping to say, Well,

wait. We really do need to look at the student

experience. That is what we own in higher-ed-

ucation institutions. That is what we shape.

When I’m out working with colleges, I’m fo-

cusing in on their structures, their processes,

their policies, their attitudes. Those inuence

students’ experiences and outcomes. Do we

understand who we have and what they need,

and are we willing or able as an institution to

then try to address that?

Finley: The eld is trying to respond to a lot

of indicators that things are changing — that

the students we meet today are very different

from those a decade ago. It’s not uncommon

now for campuses to talk about food insecu-

rity and homelessness. Things of that sort are

no longer just one-off issues, but the current

state of affairs for our students. As we started

hearing more of the same narratives, it was

like, OK, we’ve got to do something. We’ve

got to respond.

Lucas: I would add to that the historical-

ly high number of students coming in with

mental-health challenges. We have dened

“well-being” at George Mason to mean build-

ing a life of vitality, purpose, resilience, and

engagement. And it’s contextual. It’s also about

social justice, about removing the barriers that

prevent some populations of students from

thriving at our own institutions.

Bass: What also makes this very current is

workplace skills — the growing awareness of

AI, machine learning, human traits, and what

it means to prepare students for the next few

decades. There’s actually a powerful con-

vergence — and a reinforcement of what we

broadly mean by “holistic,” because it is about

producing the most human graduates.

Mfume: This discussion is always so inter-

esting to me, coming from a historically black

university, because the rest of higher ed is

coming around to welcoming the same stu-

dents we’ve had at Morgan State for 152 years:

rst-generation students, poor students, stu-

dents who need some developmental remedia-

tion, who didn’t necessarily have the best K-12

preparation for college, students who may lack

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

condence and a sense of belonging. It’s like,

Welcome to our world. When I go to con-

ferences for majority institutions, and people

are talking about subpopulations of minority

students or poor students or rst-gen, I think,

That’s all our students. All 7,000 are pretty

much in all of those buckets at the same time.

I want to tell everybody who’s just getting

on board with what the needs of students are,

how institutions have to meet those needs,

and how to handle accountability: It’s chal-

lenging work. You’re going to understand that

for students already coming to you with chal-

lenges, modest success will be an overper-

formance. How do you explain that to your

legislature? How do you engage with students

who are not going to be in and out within six

years? When they’ve stopped out, how do you

get them back?

So yes, welcome. There’s so much that

universities have to do. And in our experience

as historically black colleges and universities,

you’re going to be asked to do a lot more with

less. And the most effective strategies to create

a holistic experience, like summer bridge

programs, have high price tags. So what do

you do?

Lipka: What do you do?

Mfume: We write grants. That’s what we’ve

had to do. And there’s funding available for

students like ours, because student success is the

hot topic. There’s more money out there than

there’s ever been. But you have to have the time

to write the grants, and you have to be able to

build programs that can be sustained.

Davis: Whether it’s getting external resources

or taking an internal look and auditing policies

and practices, we need to look at how we teach,

why do we do it this way, and whether that

lines up with who we are today.

Bass: The whole history of U.S. higher educa-

tion is basically each institution with a theory

of who belongs there and how hard the institu-

tion needs to work to have them succeed. Once

you use words like “all” or “every” in front of

“students,” you start to dene things.

“ We spend so much time talking about

learning outcomes and soft skills.

What about self-motivation, self-

efcacy? For critical thinking, written

communication, even teamwork,

students have to have a good

sense of who they are.”

—Ashley Finley

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

SECTION 2

“ Some people have been getting

obsessed with, Does your institu-

tion have a rst-year seminar, an

internship program? They become

check marks, like, OK, check,

check, check. The new research

suggests that it’s actually less

about what is offered than about

having multiple touch points

integrated over time.”

—Josipa Roksa

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

High-Impact Practices

and the Power of Data

hat makes college mean-

ingful? What stays with

students years later? Most

people asked to recall a

dening experience point

to something outside the

classroom, according to re-

search by Richard J. Light,

a Harvard University ed-

ucation professor. Human

connection is vital: That was a key nding of

the Gallup-Purdue Index, a study of 30,000

graduates nationally. People are twice as likely

to be engaged in their work and to be thriving

over all if they can identify a professor or men-

tor who stimulated them, cared about them,

and encouraged them.

Many institutions have sought to sustain

that kind of interaction with opportunities

like learning communities and semester-long

projects. But the challenge of engaging and re-

taining more students can create a xation on

solutions. New ideas quickly become trends.

The risk for colleges is rushing to adopt cer-

tain practices and ending up with a disjointed

array of offerings, even one-offs.

Our panelists discussed today’s most ef-

fective practices, how to make advising less

transactional and more purposeful, and the

importance of sharing and applying data to

designing programs and services.

Sara Lipka: What practices, whether estab-

lished or less common, are you seeing have

some kind of impact?

Amelia Parnell: This is a huge time for us

to be highlighting certain things that are

effective, like the e-portfolio, a relatively new

high-impact practice. The e-portfolio is an

opportunity for the faculty and student affairs,

in an advising capacity, to help students tell

their story. Like, I had an orientation role, and

I learned how to coach students to become

active on campus.

Nance Lucas: There is a lot of evidence that

when students have the opportunity to engage

with a faculty member or a student-affairs ed-

ucator in a semester-long or yearlong project,

whether it’s in or outside the classroom, there

are considerable gains in not only their learn-

ing, but other dimensions, too. They feel more

emotionally attached to the institution, and

they gain more meaning and purpose in their

lives. We have a structured opportunity for

students to engage in research projects, and in

our living-learning communities, students do

an experiential-learning project each semester

or year.

Tiffany Beth Mfume: Some of the effective

practices really merge faculty with student

affairs, like faculty living in residence halls

or eating in dining halls with students and

having informal discussions around tables. It’s

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

about creating environments to engage with

students in and outside the classroom.

Parnell: Student employment on campus

can also be highly impactful. Moraine Valley

Community College and Clemson University

are two completely different types of institu-

tions that have both made campus employ-

ment about more than just answering a phone

or ling paper. They’ve paired students up

with mentors who advise them on, say, how to

create a LinkedIn prole. And you can build

in connections to the classroom.

Shauna Davis: At community and technical

colleges, there is a lot of emphasis on reimag-

ining advising.

Also on onboarding and intake processes, in

terms of, what do we know about students as

they’re coming through the door? How are we

being proactive in putting them on the right

path as opposed to waiting for them to come

and tell us, I have a problem, and I know what

question to ask? We’re seeing a lot of men-

toring focus on guided pathways, this idea of

starting with the end goal: Who or what do

you want to be?

“ One of the most popular

questions I hear is, What

product should we invest in,

what tool should we use?

I oftentimes say, It’s actually

less about the tool and more

about the change-manage-

ment process of how you

would use it.”

—Amelia Parnell

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

Ashley Finley: At my former institution, we

built up integrative coaching, or holistic ad-

vising, many parts of which I borrowed from

LaGuardia Community College, ripped them

off shamelessly. How do we think of advising

not as transactional, but as a fundamental part

of helping students connect the dots? More

attention to what students are doing in the

advising process can mean that they actual-

ly produce something: an education plan, a

career plan.

We were able to wrap in pure mentoring,

alumni mentoring, and coaching, which we

employed adjunct faculty and staff members

like the women’s assistant basketball coach to

do. One thing we’ve got to do much better

in higher education is think more about the

resources we have.

Any one high-impact practice is, what, may-

be a semester, a year if we’re lucky. We need

to get more interested in the accumulation

of high-impact practices. Also, they are just

the means to an end. Being very clear about

outcomes is critical.

Josipa Roksa: Some people have been getting

obsessed with, Does your institution have a

rst-year seminar, an internship program?

They become check marks, like, OK, check,

check, check. The new research suggests that

it’s actually less about what is offered than

about having multiple touch points integrated

over time. That means thinking about who

you are, who you’re serving, and what you’re

trying to accomplish.

I think we’re getting there, beyond the

buzzwords, even though there’s always a new

one, a cool new thing you’re supposed to be

doing. A commitment to serving students has

to be at the center, and then measuring the

outcomes.

Parnell: One of the most popular questions

I hear is, What product should we invest in,

what tool should we use? I oftentimes say, It’s

actually less about the tool and more about

the change-management process of how you

would use it. We know what could work really

well, but there’s always an element that people

don’t quite want to embrace.

Davis: More institutions are asking, How do

we get to a student-centered design? You

can’t do that well if you don’t understand

your data, and you don’t understand how

students are experiencing the institution.

Whether through mapping the student ex-

perience, shopping your own institution or

others and trying to get a feel for what it’s

like to be a student, or student focus groups,

I am seeing more emphasis on trying to

understand the real experience and the why

behind it. Maybe faculty had a classroom

policy but no idea what the nancial-aid

impact was. A number of institutions are

now more focused on taking attendance and

reporting midterm grades to help run inter-

ventions and provide supports.

Mfume: I’d been collecting data for several

years about why students choose Morgan State

University, and the No. 1 reason is to have an

HBCU experience. So we went from a basic

freshman orientation — placement testing, ad-

vising — to an HBCU-transition experience.

One of the things we do is take our students

to the National Great Blacks in Wax Muse-

um. They literally cry, hug, faint — and every

single time, they say it was their most impact-

ful experience. That matches new research on

belonging. And it’s been the exact period of

time that we’ve seen our retention and gradua-

tion rates go up.

It’s hard to determine what ingredient is

responsible, but it really gets down to know-

ing who your students are, what their goals

are, and why they’re there. I would challenge

everyone to go get their own data and create a

holistic student experience that’s customized

for their students and institution.

Lucas: Sometimes good pieces of data can be

incredible conversation starters. We all have

images in our heads about how things work

and what our students are doing or not doing,

how they’re spending their time. We’ve gone

to departments and presented not 30 slides,

but just, Did you know these few things? And

that context gets people to talk.

Roksa: We’ve done surveys of why students

persist in their majors or not. Faculty have

their own mind-sets about why, but when we

talk to students, it’s like, Oh wow, this is what

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

they really care about. And if we’d change just

one thing, it’d actually make a big difference.

Randy Bass: Downstream data can be so

powerful. I heard somebody say that if we ran

a couple of zip codes of students and showed

faculty how much a zip code was destiny in

their classes, they would be stunned.

Finley: Data can really illuminate the picture.

If we talk about ourishing, what is that?

What is thriving? What is belonging? The

power of good data is bringing people into a

conversation because they understand what

you’re talking about. They nally have some

metrics to conceive of it.

Shauna made a great point on intake. We

care a lot about GPA or how students scored

on certain entrance or placement exams,

but let’s talk about their mind-set. Let’s talk

about their motivations for being in college,

their current levels of thriving, their support

networks. If we are more thoughtful about

our students coming in, we’ll be more able to

understand how they are doing.

I was at an institution where the learning

outcomes had a category for the cultivation

of well-being. That became a powerful touch

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

point for the entire community to say, This is

explicit. This is something we all care about.

Faculty can see how their classroom practices

and how the learning process itself contribute.

And the course evaluation, a wasted assess-

ment in most places, could get a lot smarter —

and match the kinds of questions we’re talking

about today.

Parnell: I think about all the different types

of student-success data you might be able

to put into an algorithm, everything from

high-school GPA to parents’ income, all the

way down to how often students swipe in at

the tness center. But it still comes down to

the depth of the questions you can answer.

One practical example is a school that saw

its rst-year students entering with really

strong GPAs, we’re talking well above 3.5. But

starting in their sophomore year, the number

who were leaving the institution was steadily

increasing. In interviews, some students said

they hadn’t gotten into selective agship insti-

tutions, so they were trying to get their GPAs

up to transfer. Combining data, you nd the

nuance. So expand the scope, or rene the

scope of what you want to know to get better

information.

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

SECTION 3

“ Part of the challenge of

the next phase is to think

about how to better

integrate the curricular and

the co-curricular. Not just

helping students do that

themselves, but actually

nding ways to reimagine

the educational experi-

ence.”

—Randy Bass

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

aking good on the increas-

ingly popular claim to be a

student-centered institution

requires taking a step back.

That means re-examining

xtures like administrative

structures and the curricu-

lum to spot where colleges

might get in students’ way or

miss opportunities to foster

deeper learning. Finding ways to integrate

academic and student affairs can make the

whole educational experience greater than the

sum of its parts.

To transform themselves, some campuses

are devoting resources to change management

and capacity building, creating their own

training programs, coordinating with peer

institutions, hiring consultants, or joining

networks committed to common goals like

closing achievement gaps. Two common

struggles are dealing with resistance to change

and designing new incentives and forms of

evaluation to sustain momentum. To over-

come institutional barriers, strong leadership

and clarity of vision are essential.

Our panelists discussed what it takes to

blend the curriculum and co-curriculum, the

role of faculty engagement and development

in enacting such changes, how to spur culture

change, and the difference between coddling

students and supporting them.

Sara Lipka: Institutions of all types are

having some kind of reckoning at this moment

of increased attention to student success and

the student experience. Let’s talk about that

process of asking, “Wait, how are we doing

things? Are we really student-centered?” and

where to go from there. How do you move

from a boutique program that serves a fraction

of your student population — something that

requires a lot of coordination but is relatively

easy for an institution to do — to changing

the way you operate?

Josipa Roksa: Institutions that have primar-

ily served a traditional population have not

quite gured out effective ways of supporting

students new to them. They have done a lot

of “a summer program here, a mentoring pro-

gram there” without really thinking through

how to support all students. You admit 2,000

rst-generation, low-income students, and

you have a summer bridge program with 20 of

them, and those 20 students have an awesome

experience meeting with faculty, develop-

ing skills, and meeting friends. But if you’re

adding a small thing without rethinking struc-

tures, you will keep doing what you’ve been

doing.

Shauna Davis: It is very hard to bring about

any large-scale changes in student outcomes

without looking at how the institution

Becoming a Student-

Centered Institution

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

works. That’s the key if you’re really com-

mitted to a holistic approach. You’re accept-

ing: These are the students we have, and we

want these students. This is the population

we serve.

Nance Lucas: One thing we need to reckon

with is the mentality that holistic education

is the domain of student-affairs professionals.

It is an opportunity for all of us — faculty,

staff, university leaders, upper-class students

— across the board to positively impact our

students’ well-being. When we talk broad-

ly about the union between academic and

student affairs, it’s so amorphous. We need

to be more strategic in our structures and

processes using a systems approach. We’re

not incentivized necessarily to do that. And

we’re not going to go anywhere fast if we just

say this is a concern of a very small slice of

the institution.

Randy Bass: Speaking historically, in the

18th and 19th century, people thought of the

classroom as the place where students devel-

oped moral character. As research structures

professionalized the university, that work got

pushed out into what became student affairs.

The academic side basically said, You do all

the moral development. We might think of

this moment as a paradigm shift, a time for us

to reunite the development of the mind with

the development of human character.

Part of the challenge of the next phase is to

think about how to better integrate the curric-

ular and the co-curricular. Not just helping stu-

dents do that themselves, but actually nding

ways to reimagine the educational enterprise.

What does it look like to build a much more

holistic, responsive environment, given that

the incentives for tenure and promotion are

not going to change?

To me, a big piece of it is to create new

models of team teaching in the broadest

sense: team-designed, team-delivered, experi-

ence-based, community-based, applied learn-

ing. It’s happening in centers for social justice,

for service learning, and in entrepreneurship

hubs and makerspaces. There’s a growing

group of people who already have a hybrid aca-

demic-student-affairs mentality about personal

growth and development.

Lucas: In many cases, our promotion and

tenure criteria and faculty incentives are the

institutional barriers that prevent us from

doing exactly what you just described.

Roksa: I’m usually a pessimist, but I’m going

to say something optimistic here. I work with

a lot of faculty, and I would say many are

pushing against the old version of the tenure

model. Our faculty is becoming more diverse,

with a lot more understanding that students

have a life outside of the time they sit in class.

I’m hopeful that the younger faculty, despite

the tenure wall, are going to be engaged and

willing to collaborate. I’m impressed by how

many of our faculty do that even though they

really have no incentives other than knowing

it’s the right thing to do to support our stu-

dents. I hope we can change the structures to

make it even more likely for them to see what

needs to happen.

Amelia Parnell: A lot of what we’re hearing

now about student services and student affairs

mirrors what happened years ago with institu-

tional research. There used to be a centralized

function, and then ofces like HR, nancial

aid, and academic affairs needed somebody to

run their own analyses. Today you see grad-

uate programs like medicine and law saying,

Hey, I need somebody to talk to students

about loan debt or the pressures of the eld.

It’s a coexistence of the student-affairs func-

tion, the centralized ofce, and learning in

different domains.

That creates a bit of a rub: Why should I

do this work that previously I didn’t have to

do? But if we follow the trends of institutional

research, whether you have a student-affairs

position or, say, a faculty role, some aspect of

your work will be student-focused, like put-

ting information about the food pantry in the

syllabus and thinking more holistically about

what students need.

Tiffany Beth Mfume: We’ve been pretty

blessed to have just two presidents in the last

30-plus years because we’ve been able to think

these questions through without major inter-

ruptions. We’re an outlier. When leadership

turns over, there’s sometimes a whole new vi-

sion for what works best, where different ofces

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

“ What I call the ‘seduction

of the example’ is to insert

programs or services here

or there thinking something

could be really successful.

But without the foundational

components of leadership

and culture change, it’s

really hard to achieve good

results.”

—Shauna Davis

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

belong, where programs belong. You scrap

what you have and start all over — I’ve seen

so many of my colleagues go through that. A

new visionary comes and says, Well, where

I come from, we do it this way. I’m going to

restructure. So you start all over, and you ask

the same questions again and again. That’s a

challenge I see across higher ed. There comes

a point when you just can’t ask yourself any

more questions. The question is, What are

you going to do about it?

It’s been a nice progression of us as an institu-

tion critically asking ourselves questions about

processes and how things work together. You

begin to make changes like moving nancial aid

and the registrar under academic affairs. Now

we’re going to the one-stop student services so

they don’t have to gure out, I go to the bursar

for this, I go to residence life for that. Students

don’t need to know who has the answer to their

question. They just need to bring their question

to a team that’s cross-trained.

“ One thing we need to reckon with is the

mentality that holistic education is the

domain of student-affairs professionals.

It is an opportunity for all of us — faculty,

staff, university leaders, upper-class

students — across the board to positively

impact our students’ well-being.”

—Nance Lucas

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means

Davis: When you look at an organization

that achieves any type of transformation,

true transformation, you can usually point

to leadership. The president isn’t necessarily

the only one doing the work. But the clarity

of the vision, the consistency of the vision,

the commitment to resourcing the vision, the

accountability pieces in there — those are the

key points.

The other piece a lot of institutions will talk

about is culture change. You can’t just give an

announcement at a convocation and say, We’re

going to transform the student experience.

When people who work at the institution

have autonomy to carry these things out, and

there is faith placed in them, the alignment

is clear. The exemplars we point to nationally

have that in common. What I call the “se-

duction of the example” is to insert programs

or services here or there thinking something

could be really successful. But without the

foundational components of leadership and

culture change, it’s really hard to achieve good

results. There has to be an understanding as

to what you prioritize, what you value, what

you give space and time to, what you evaluate

yourselves against, what we communicate out

in public, how you talk about yourselves. The

institutions that are moving the needle have in

common the clarity there.

Mfume: Two things I see that can act as a

gateway to culture change are keeping the

wins in front of people and having people feel

that their roles are valued. When we won an

advising award, for $2,500, we gave ve $500

cash awards to faculty, with no restrictions —

buy a computer, go to a conference, x up your

ofce — based on who was engaging with our

advising tool. We publicized it greatly, to say,

The work you do matters. We accomplished

this for our students because of your work. It

was a small investment in making people feel

valued.

Lucas: We’ve operationalized in our 10-year

strategic plan at George Mason the goal that

all members of our community thrive. That

has allowed us to be really creative. Faculty

receive curriculum-transformation grants to

design new courses or add modules. There

are research groups on well-being — and a

well-being pathway in our general-education

core. Our student-affairs educators are work-

ing on a resilience badge, a digital credential

we’re aiming to put fully online. Our plan is to

require all incoming students, including trans-

fer students, to complete that resilience badge.

We are not going to be nished at the end of

the 10-year strategic plan. We’re still learning

and redesigning.

Davis: Whether or not holistic support is seen

as coddling is an important conversation. Peo-

ple have different schools of thought in terms

of, How much support? What are we going

to provide? When we talk about wraparound

services, some people think that’s taking edu-

cation into another area.

If you’re not taking attendance because stu-

dents are adults, well yes, they should be able

to get to class. But what if you are in a service

area where students lack transportation, or

depend on public transportation, or what if

they have other real-life issues that get in the

way? Being able to use attendance as an indica-

tor of when students stop engaging means you

could run an intervention and potentially not

only keep a student in school but change the

trajectory of his or her life. I don’t see that as

coddling. I want to make that distinction.

If we’re really committed to upward mobili-

ty, and all those sorts of things we talk about,

we need to understand who our students are,

where they come from, and how they experi-

ence the institution — and then be responsive

and proactive to remove systemic barriers that

don’t need to be there.

Holistic support means being more aware of

who you’re serving and what they need. That

doesn’t mean the institution doesn’t teach well

or believe in rigor or have standards. It means

we understand what our mission is, and we’re

committed to giving more people an oppor-

tunity to actually reach their potential. Or at

least not stand in the way.

what a ‘holistic’ student experience actually means