Linking Faculty and Student Services to Achieve Success

As I recently joined the John Burton Foundation in developing college programs for foster youth in California, I’ve been immersing myself in the world of student services and the essential role they play in lives of so many young people. This has caused me to consider what, as a long-time community college instructor, I’ve experienced as a disconnect between those who instruct and those who provide support services to students. I see many opportunities to enhance the communication and collaboration that would serve our common goal of student success.

            The fact is, faculty often feel at a loss for how to ensure student achievement. It’s obvious that the students we teach have changed much over time. This is partly demographic change, but more importantly, it is the result of the wonderful effort to bring more people who have been traditionally excluded into higher education. What hasn’t been obvious is what to do with the increase in challenges that accompany these students: first-generation students; students working full - or near full-time jobs, coping with the rising costs of education and living expenses; students who are parents; students that haven’t had good quality secondary education; and students who have had little societal support in their desire to improve their lives, whether it is due to disability, neglect, prejudice, or other indifference.

            Facing all of these issues without the support of one of the most important factors for success – family – are foster youth. Furthermore, foster youth have faced the trauma that caused them to be removed from their homes. It has been my experience that working with student service professionals around supporting foster youth is increasing my overall effectiveness as a teacher because it has helped me to better understand all of the students that I face each day.

            Over the years I’ve had many conversations with other faculty frustrated about what’s happening, or what’s not happening in our classrooms. Even while knowing some of the extreme challenges our students are dealing with, we remain rather baffled by what looks like, on the surface, a lack of interest, lack of motivation, and lack of sufficient preparation for the work our students must do to earn their degree or certificate. We worry about dumbing down, struggle with classroom management issues, and just don’t know what to do about lack of attendance, attention, and performance. We desperately want our students to succeed, so it’s disheartening to see students flounder, disappear, or fail.

            I’ve heard many of my faculty colleagues express their frustration as “they just don’t get it.” What’s become clear to me is that we don’t get it.

             Our perspective is distorted by our own experience. Traditionally, education has been a winnowing process. Who went to college, who succeeded, who went on to graduate school was consistently filtered each step of the way, narrowing down who was in our classes.

            We were largely not taught how to teach - and certainly not taught how to teach a diverse population. So we tend to teach the way we were taught, the way we learned. After all it worked for us! By definition we learned well in a conventional academic setting. Recently a colleague told me that her classes are all lectures because she always liked her professors’ lectures. But we all know that’s not how everyone learns best. If we’re trying to reach more diverse students, we must be nimble and more creative in our teaching, we have to be more clever.

             Those of you in student services understand the realities of the students we’re charged with serving better than most faculty do. You can help faculty understand them and by working together, we can develop holistic strategies for supporting their success.

             The fact is, even though I’ve taught at more than six colleges and universities, as an adjunct and full-time faculty member with tenure, I’ve never had a formal orientation to the world of student services, or even the world of the diverse students that I teach. I’ve been asked by students to sign progress reports, instructed on what I must do to provide special accommodations for students with disabilities, and I’ve stopped by offices to hand off exams and heard references to programs with lots of acronyms,  not always clear on what they meant. In my mind I lumped it all under the general category of “counseling.”

             Our students are incredibly resilient, determined and creative. With our combined support, they will succeed.

 A few things that can make a difference:

 1. Encourage cross-talk on campus. Create opportunities for instructional faculty and student services faculty and staff to work together to inspire better advising, more impactful instruction and student success.

 2. Engage the academic senate and work to create a holistic perspective on student success. We can all use some encouragement and ideas to think about new ways to teach - ways that fit today’s realities such as the foster youth that deserve the extra support that will allow them create a successful life.

 3. Educate the faculty on the students and how much students benefit from your services. Distribute a fact sheet. Provide orientations and training for faculty - especially adjuncts - on what you do and why it’s important. Five minutes at a department faculty meeting can go a long way. 

 4. Engage adjuncts. Most of the teaching hours students experience, especially in their first two years will likely be with adjunct faculty. Support stipends to involve them in professional development teams.

 5. Provide language for faculty to include on their syllabi directing students on where to get help. This also helps create a positive classroom environment by showing that faculty care.

 6. Advocate for release time - yes, even (especially) for adjuncts - to redesign courses to be more learner centered with diverse learning experiences. It takes a lot of time and a supportive environment to break the mold and create new teaching strategies.

 Dr. Pruitt is a consultant with the John Burton Foundation in addition to her work as an instructor in anthropology at Berkeley City College. For more information about the John Burton Foundation and California College Pathways visit: www.cacollegepathways.org.

California College Pathways is a statewide partnership that provides resources and leadership to campuses and community organizations to help foster youth succeed at community colleges and four-year universities. By engaging institutions to work together, sharing best practices, and advocating for policies that support foster youth in higher education, California College Pathways is helping foster youth across the state achieve their higher education goals and move on to fulfilling careers.