Category: support network

459. Mental Health in College

Posted in emotion, higher education, learning, support network, teaching
August 19, 2026

A growing proportion of college students report mental health challenges, but most student affairs practitioners, campus leaders, and faculty members have received little training in addressing mental health concerns. In this episode, Alexis Redding joins us to discuss a new resource designed to allow us to provide better support for students with these concerns.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: A growing proportion of college students report mental health challenges, but most student affairs practitioners, campus leaders, and faculty members have received little training in addressing mental health concerns. In this episode, we discuss a new resource designed to allow us to provide better support for students with these concerns.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Alexis Redding. Alexis is a developmental psychologist, faculty co-chair of the Higher Ed Concentration, and the inaugural faculty chair of the Mental Health and Higher Education Professional Development Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on mental health in young adulthood and the transition from college to the workforce. Alexis is a co-author, with Nancy Hill, of The End of Adolescence: The Lost Art of Delaying Adulthood and is the editor of Mental Health in College: What Research Tells Us About Supporting Students, which was recently released by Harvard Education Press. Welcome, Alexis.

Alexis: Thank you.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Alexis. Are you drinking any tea with us today?

Alexis: I am, I’m drinking peppermint tea today.

Rebecca: Oh, that sounds wonderful.

John: Today, though, I need a little bit more caffeine, so I have an oolong tea.

Rebecca: And thanks to John, I have a Prince of Wales tea.

John: So we’ve invited you here today to discuss Mental Health in College. Before we discuss this book, though, can you tell us a little bit about why you chose to focus your work on college student development and mental health?

Alexis: I have been working with young adults in both high school and college for 25 years, and for the first 10 years of my career, that was in the high school side, working in college guidance. So, I got to play this incredible role in the lives of young people of helping them do the exploration and choose a college. And what I noticed partway through doing that work is that a lot of my students were struggling in the transition to college in ways that I had not anticipated. And I realized that I could change the conversation with my own students, but as I started to talk to college counselors around the globe, I recognized that there was a broader pattern happening of students struggling in very familiar ways, and yet each student seemed to think that they were in it alone, that they were uniquely doing something wrong. And so I hit a pivot point in my career 10 years in, and I decided I would go back to grad school, and the idea was I would spend one year asking and answering the big questions about how better to scaffold transitions for young adults. And I fell in love with the process of not just asking the questions, but having the chance to train the people who were working in College Guidance and working in Student Affairs. And so we’re now 15 years later, I completed my doctorate and then joined the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and have now worked with 1000s of people who do exactly the work that I had hoped to inspire, supporting young adults in navigating these transitions and older adults. Because, of course, we know that not all college students are 18 to 25 years old.

Rebecca: It’s a great story. Can you talk a little bit about the origin story of mental health in college? How did this book come to be?

Alexis: This book is actually the result of a course that I teach called Mental Health in Higher Education. It’s a professional development course that is open to student affairs practitioners, campus leaders, and faculty members that we teach online every spring, and the idea behind the design of the course was to take all of the conversations happening about mental health and get them under one umbrella. And so, what I wanted to do was take folks who were not in conversation with each other, who were attending different conferences, publishing in different journals, but who all cared really deeply about this question of how do we best support our students and to put them in conversation with each other. And so I’ve got this beautifully expansive group of faculty members, folks from the Jed Foundation, from Life Design out at Stanford, from the National Association of College Admissions Counseling, all having a conversation about the role each of us can play in better scaffolding this ecosystem, and the course is by design limited to just about 50 students every year, so that we have a chance to really build community in the classroom. And so I realized at some point that this conversation needed not just to live with only 50 students a year. And so I approached the folks at Harvard Education Press with a proposal for the book. It’s now been about two years since that initial conversation happened, and our book just marked almost 100 days out since publication. So it’s been exciting these last three months to see the way that it’s had impact in shifting the conversation to a broader sense of “we’re all in this together.” We are all in our different piece of the ecosystem, trying to make things better, and we can learn from one another in doing that work.

John: So you talked a little bit about who was enrolled in your course. Is that the audience intended for the book itself?

Alexis: The book is really intended for anyone who cares about college students, and we’ve found that a lot of faculty are reading it, even though it was initially drafted more thinking of a student affairs audience, and I’m so delighted that they are, a lot of college counselors in thinking about what students are going to need in the transition, and a lot of parents and families, and I’m really heartened to see that. I think the broad conversation about mental health that comes from the media is often very heavily focused on a crisis narrative that feeds into a sense of panic. And what we’re really trying to do in the book is create concrete and actionable suggestions and a broader understanding of just how common some of these challenges can be, so that we can tamp down on that. And what better audience for that than a parent audience? And so it’s been great to see that they’ve been picking it up as well.

Rebecca: You mentioned, in the context of the class, how many folks are talking about mental health in higher education in different contexts, different colleges, universities, conferences, etc. So it seems like it might have been really challenging to choose the topics and contributors for this collection. Can you talk about your process for that?

Alexis: It was a delightful challenge to figure out who to put in conversation, and one of the driving motives that I had was just to choose people who were not co-authors with one another, and so we really could have different threads of the conversation to bring together. And so, what I wanted to do is have a different kind of conversation in every way. So, for example, the book is in three parts. The first part is perspectives on what’s going on, and chapter one, I mean, they’re all my favorites in different ways, but this one is my favorite because it is co-authored by three college students with journalist Rainesford Stauffer, and in it we start the book by grounding the conversation in what students are experiencing and what they want us to know, and then the complement to that in that section is a chapter written by Laura Erickson-Schroth and Janis Whitlock from the Jed Foundation, talking about a systems level view of what’s going on for mental health. And so we love being able to frame the book in that way, of a bottom-up and top-down perspective, but leading with student voices. The second section is about contexts and experiences that students are having. So we have Mandy Latz from Ball State University, who wrote a chapter for community college faculty members. We have Dr. Adam Pierson Milano from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, who wrote an exceptionally well-researched chapter on student veterans and military-affiliated students, and so we wanted to explore different identities or ways of navigating college, and we capture that there. And then our final section is about transitions, and so we have Dr. Angel Perez, who’s the CEO of the National Association of College Admissions Counseling, who used original data that NACAC collected from college counselors about stresses that students are feeling when applying, and on the other side we have Dustin Liu and Joe Catrino, who wrote an amazing chapter about their work in life design, thinking about how students are choosing careers to pursue afterwards.

Rebecca: I really love that you lead with the student voice. I can’t underscore that enough because when you ground it in student voices, it really brings people in and really opens up the rest of the conversation.

Alexis: Yes, I’m so grateful to Rainesford for bringing three students in and really working with them in a wonderful, engaged way to make sure that they felt comfortable with the stories they were telling and publishing them, knowing what they were contributing, but also wanting to make sure that these young people felt completely safe through the process. And so we allowed them to edit and re-edit to uplift their voices. They come from three different institutions. They have three very different experiences of the college years, and so it’s a lovely place to start. I complement those student voices by some pieces that I wrote, which are the vignettes that are interspersed throughout the book, and that is the voices of people who are working directly with college students as well. So the book itself is very research grounded, but these pieces are just about practice, and so I chose five people who are doing just pioneering important work, who have very different perspectives on what students need, and those are interwoven through the narrative, so that we hear their voices as well.

John: At the start of this conversation, you mentioned that initially you were working with high school students who were planning their transition to college, and that they were feeling a little bit uncertain about their futures. Is this something unique to the current generation? I know you’ve done some research on this, which appeared in your earlier book. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Alexis: So this is my favorite question because the answer is counterintuitive. I study the college experience going all the way back to the 1940s using archival interviews with young people, and what we know from that research, which I do with Dr. Nancy Hill, is that this is not unique. That young people have always struggled in moments of transition, which makes sense. When you are moving into a new context, a new chapter of your life, you feel unsettled. You feel like you matter less. That shifting context sort of leaves you feeling unmoored, but that doesn’t mean that our instinct that something is different is wrong. And what we’re seeing now, and there’s a wonderful meta-analysis that just came out of the UK about heightened perfectionism. So we’re seeing the same core experience of loneliness, feeling unsettled, and yet, it has intensified in ways that are really important. So, when our instinct tells us, “No, no, it feels different. I don’t remember it being this way,” there’s something to that. There is a heightened perfectionism that is causing students to be more risk averse, to be more frightened of getting something wrong. And so, what we’ve seen for generations has, I think, impacted student life more intensely than it ever has before.

Rebecca: Do we know why there’s a shift in that space to more perfectionism?

Alexis: The meta-analysis suggests that there are a couple of things going on, and any good answer is that there are a couple of things going on. And of course, one of those things is social media, and so the way that we are seeing context shift. There was just a really fantastic idea that comes out of the University of Chicago from I believe it’s Dr. Callard is how you pronounce it, about the uni-context the fact that we are now sort of living without these unique contexts that we used to have, where I was one person at home, one person at school, one person in this activity, and had a lot more space to explore those identities. And now we’ve sort of collapsed all of those contexts into one. And I think the developmental impact of that is profound. And so that might also be what’s going on.

John: The focus of this book is on student mental health, and there’s been a lot of discussion of the mental health crisis in higher ed. One factor, though, is that students are much more comfortable discussing mental health issues today. But, most faculty don’t really have much training in diagnosing serious mental health concerns. At what point should faculty and staff refer students to mental health support services on the campus? What should they be looking for?

Alexis: I love that question because that’s at the core of so much of what we all do. And I’ll just add in a couple of data points even before I dive into my answer, which is a study out of the BU School of Public Health and the Healthy Minds Network in 2021. So this is already five years ago now. At that point, 80% of faculty reported having conversations or seeing students struggle with their mental health. So most faculty are already seeing this, already engaged in these conversations. Only 30% of faculty members had received any training or felt equipped to be in those conversations. And so it’s really important to think about what it is we are going to do. What I am seeing around the shift of students being more comfortable talking about mental health is there’s a little bit of a disconnect around language that is causing us really to feel helpless in these conversations. So what has happened is students are learning a lot about mental health from social media, and so they’re learning a lot of clinical terminology that is not always presented in a clinical way, or with the accurate diagnosis, or with as much nuance as a clinician would. So they’re showing up in our offices and they’re saying things like, “I have chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m having panic attacks. I’m dissociating,” and we are taking those clinical terms at face value. Now, the answer is not to fault students for showing up with that language. They’re using the language that they are being provided. The answer is that we need to press pause and think about how are they showing up, so that we can have a broader conversation. So, the first question we should ask when that happens is we should just ask the student, “What does that mean to you?” so that we make sure that the clinical term doesn’t cause us to automatically refer before we’ve interrogated what that means. But the short answer is, whenever we are unsure, if we are in the gray area, we always refer, and the referral can be to clinical services, or it can be picking up the phone and calling the dean of students office or our colleague in mental health services. But we don’t want to automatically do that. So by pressing pause and asking five questions, we can equip ourselves to have a much better conversation with the student, figure out maybe do they need clinical care or not, and if we ultimately refer, we have more information to provide. So here they are. Question one is: “What does that mean to you?” Two: “How is that showing up? How is that impacting your daily life?” Three: “How long has this been going on?” Four: “What are the supports you already have?” And Five: “How can I help?” And so, what happens even just in those first two or three questions is more often than not we might get clarity about which camp our student falls into? Are they having a typical, normal developmental challenge, or is this something that could perhaps need clinical intervention? So I will give you an example of what that difference could look like. The student who tells me they’re having a panic attack, rather than just immediately saying, “Oh, that’s for the clinical care team. I am not a clinician.” I ask, “What does that mean to you? What does that look like? How is that showing up?” And they say “I’m really overwhelmed by the workload. I’m not quite sure where to start. I’ve got 200 pages of reading for my lit class, and I’m getting, on average, B’s, and I was always an A student. It’s feeling really stressful.” Well, that doesn’t set off the alarm bells of a clinical concern, and the conversation that unfolds from there might mean that that student actually just needs the tutoring center or a different kind of support or just a conversation with me as the faculty member. If there’s any gray area, we refer. But if there’s not, and often there’s not, then it’s a conversation we’re prepared to have. But the student who says, “I’m having trouble getting out of bed, I’m sort of overwhelmed by getting my laundry done, and it’s piling up to the point that I just want to cry. And I’ve even stopped going to the activities I love.”

Well, that is not what I’m equipped to talk about as a faculty member. I can listen, but they need a different kind of support. And the key is, as soon as I identify that it’s either a gray area or a clinical concern, I don’t just hand them a phone number, I do a warm handoff. I either say, “Here’s the number. Let’s call and set up an appointment now,” while they’re sitting with me, or “I’m on my way to my car because it’s the end of the day, let me walk with you past the counseling center” if I know that it’s open, and that warm handoff makes all the difference. Because when a student is really struggling, it can be very hard to make outreach to somebody who they have not yet met, and they are choosing you as the faculty member because you feel safe, and so you need to be with them to hand off to make sure that they’re with somebody else with whom they can share what’s really going on and get the help that they need.

Rebecca: So you’ve talked a little bit about distinguishing between things that really need some professional intervention by a counseling center therapist or whatever, and we know our counseling centers at colleges are overwhelmed, they’re taxed. So when someone falls in this other camp where it’s not a gray area and it’s not a referral, what are some of the things that we can do to better support students?

Alexis: I think there are a couple of really easy things we can do. The first one happens even before the student shows up in our office, which is changing the conversation on our campuses and making sure that students know that college is hard and it doesn’t always feel great, and the loneliness is typical. And that story that they’ve heard that college will be the best four years of your life feels really untrue on that dreary Tuesday morning when you’ve yet to meet your friends. And so I think before even students are showing up in our offices, we need to have very honest conversations about what’s hard about college, so that they understand that everybody has these struggles and they don’t feel alone in that. Once they’re in our offices, I think we want to validate what we’re hearing and, where possible, share an example of something that we have gone through that’s appropriate to share and how we’ve navigated it, or help them to think about how they could solve that problem using the resources of campus. So we know that too many students wait until junior or senior year to go to the career services office, but students who show up in their first year and who have scaffolding around exploration can tamp down on some of the stress they’re feeling in that process. So making a recommendation there. The tutoring center and the writing center are such incredible resources, but most students assume that it’s only the quote unquote bad students who need that. So we name and normalize. That is the strong students that look for help in doing that as well, and I think those are the ways that we help to shift the conversation.

John: When students report stress, some of that stress is what we often consider productive struggle or desirable difficulties. And one challenge that faculty face is that it’s hard to design learning activities that provide an appropriate level of challenge without overstressing some students and boring other students. Are there some strategies that might work in providing an appropriate balance that can work for all students or for most students?

Alexis: It’s such a good question. It’s such a powerful puzzle of teaching and how do you meet students where they are. In our chapter on community college faculty, written by Dr. Mandy Latz, she has some wonderful ideas of just scaffolding in the syllabus, warm policies around meeting students where they are and understanding the supports that they need. In terms of the content, what I find in my classes is I really love to give students the option of designing their own part of the project or assignment, and so I will make it explicit for them. Here are the learning goals of what the original assignment was. Is there a way that you can meet these learning goals by doing something that meets your internship goals, that meets the workplace that you’re also in, or helps you do something important like career exploration? And I have them propose a paragraph demonstrating how they can do that. And I think that that is one way that our student who wants to push themselves more allows themselves to push themselves more, and we can encourage the students who need that extra push to do a little bit of that. It also ensures that students find the activity meaningful. And the last thing you want to do as an educator is give students something that they’re doing just to check off a box. You want to always seize those opportunities to give them a chance to grow and learn and be challenged and to change. We also want to make sure when we are trying to find balance of meeting our students as human beings and scaffolding their needs and making sure that when they need an extension they get it, that we’re also not compromising their education in the process, and so really thinking in a critical way about how do you tamp down the pressure in this moment, but still uplift the learning goals of the course.

Rebecca: In your description of flexibility in terms of content or maybe approach to learning objectives, I’m also thinking about the kinds of flexibility that we saw really starting during the COVID pandemic around flexibility of deadlines. But sometimes that flexibility causes more harm than good. It can have unintentional consequences or increase student stress. Can you talk a little bit about deadlines and student stress?

Alexis: I have one rule in my class around deadlines, which is we never have a midnight deadline, as a rule. And often, when a student is asking for an extension, they will ask, “Can I just have until midnight?” Now, why do I not want them to have an assignment at midnight? Because I have explicitly signaled to them that I want them up and working on that task at 11:59 p.m. So that’s one thing. Thinking about if a student asks for an extension, how do we give them 24 hours, and so it’s still 4 p.m. the next day, so that they’re not working late into the night. It’s also important when a student asks for additional time to work with them to look at how the assignments fall throughout the rest of the semester. And so, if a student maybe needs a week for an extension, we need to talk about: “But what does that mean for the next assignment and the dominoes that fall moving forward?” Those are conversations that the student can be in with you to think about what is the best way to do this, and maybe the overarching message is that, especially knowing that students are feeling particularly perfectionistic and fearful of failing, is to remind them that sometimes you’re going to hand in a paper that’s not your best work, and that is okay, and that’s part of the growth process. And so I invite my students, whenever they’re handing in something that is not the thing they are most proud of, to add a paragraph at the bottom, sort of like you do with an academic paper when you’re talking about, and here are avenues for future study, and to name for us as a teaching team, here are the things that I wish I had time for to account for. That way, when we respond to them, we can really approach that as a growth task of “we see that you’ve named that you wish you had. Here’s why that would have worked really well.” Or you name that you’d like to study 100 years worth of what the literature said. That doesn’t actually serve what you’re doing here. And so we can help them think for the next assignment, “How do they put bounds on it, and how do they approach it?” It doesn’t change how we grade it, but it changes how we give them feedback.

Rebecca:I really love that approach. I think the other thing that sometimes around deadlines can be problematic is when there’s a lot of scaffolding, and if you don’t meet the scaffolded deadlines, you’re missing out on some of the structure that’s provided. And a lot of times, I think the structure can reduce stress too if students are really aware of that structure and how that’s building.

Alexis: Yes, I love an incremental assignment so that students are getting feedback along the way. It also means that each assignment counts for less overall, and I think that’s really important because the assignment that’s worth 10% of the grade just lands differently than the assignment that’s worth 35% of the grade. And so you want to avoid those as much as possible. Another thing that I do, and it’s not about assignments and deadlines in particular, but it does help to tamp down some of the stress is that we have a grade for participation in our class to encourage everybody to participate, and I do two things around that. The first one, I suggest that all students find a way to use their voice in the first two classes, even if they’re not necessarily comfortable speaking up, because then it takes some of the pressure off. They’re just a person in that class who uses their voice, and it can tamp down on some of that stress. The other is that on the syllabus I spell out what participation looks like, and that doesn’t mean that you need to speak up in every single class, that you always have to have a comment. The participation looks like being an engaged learner, taking notes, being in engaged conversation when you’re in small groups, and so taking some of that pressure off for the student who just feels shy and feels uncomfortable using their voice, so they don’t feel pushed to do that as well if it’s beyond their comfort zone. But I always want to make sure that we can push at their comfort zone and help prepare them for speaking up moving forward wherever we can.

John: Going back just a little bit to the issue of scaffolding, it also provides students with some early feedback for students who are not as well prepared by their prior education for college-level work. It gives them some chance to change course at an early stage of the project so that it is meeting the assignment expectations if they were not initially clear. Obviously, it’s best if we could make them clear to students, but giving them that chance to correct their path early on before they go off in a direction that’s not going to be as successful for them later, which also removes some of the stress as well.

Alexis: It does, and it’s surprising how when you have that early round of feedback and conversation, the student might say something that they were really lit up about, that they dismissed out of hand as: “Well, that doesn’t really fit,” but maybe it does. And so you can seize on that moment and encourage them to sort of go in that direction as well. And I think the confidence building through it and it’s stronger work. I mean, we all know in our academic work we don’t operate in a silo. We share the work with our colleagues and we get feedback as we’re refining, we want them to have that same benefit, and it does tamp down a lot of the pressure.

Rebecca: You talked earlier today about the importance of helping students recognize that they’re not the only ones alone feeling certain feelings or experiencing the transition in the way that they’re experiencing it. That, in and of itself, helping students recognize that can certainly help foster some belonging, but do you have other recommendations on how faculty can create a sense of belonging or mattering in these larger classes or in online settings where it might be a little more challenging to make some personal connections?

Alexis: Yes, I love the piece of that question around teaching online. So I teach both on campus and in our online program, and that is a piece that you just need to be much more intentional about when you’re designing a course for the online learner. Pre-pandemic, a close friend of mine was enrolled in an online program, sort of before we all had Zoom and knew what we were doing. And before she began, she got this one page of how to show up in the class, and it was the most draconian document I’ve ever seen in education. It was: be sitting in front of your screen, be centered in your screen. Nobody else is allowed to be in the room with you. Nobody else is allowed to walk around behind you in the room. And even at the time, before we were all working and teaching and learning from home, it felt like wow, what a weird thing to signal about how you want me to show up in this space. And so I have, in designing my online classroom, first during COVID and now today, intentionally designed the antithesis of that idea, which is recognizing that our students might not have the luxury of a private space to be in. My learners are online with me Eastern Standard Time, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Some of them are learning at three a.m. local time, and so they might be in pajamas, propped up in the bed. There might be one of their kiddos, sort of nestled in their arm or sitting on their lap, and that is okay. And we signal that from the beginning that, if appropriate and you’d like to introduce your kiddo, do that. We would love to know them or your pets. If you are hungry during class time, that’s fine. Eat during class time. We’re going to meet you where you are. If that is lunch time or dinner time or breakfast time, or if that is your one window that you have to do those things, that’s great. And we’ve got a lot of students, and I’ll admit it makes me a little dizzy, but a lot of students are walking on a walking pad during class time, and that’s great that they’re getting in their fitness. I can’t teach and be on the walking pad or I would love to join them, but really, just signaling we’re going to meet you where you are, and the way that you are showing up as a human being in this space, that’s great. If you’re eating something delicious, like maybe share the recipe with us, [LAUGHTER] but you don’t have to turn off your camera. You don’t have to pretend that you’re not hungry at dinner time, and so that I think goes a long way towards just building a sense of connection for all of us. My cat sometimes walks across the screen too, and that’s just part of what it is to be on a screen and to be meeting people this way.

John: College students have always felt somewhat uncertain about their futures, but with the widespread adoption of generative AI, many more students are concerned what their future job prospects are going to be like. This past spring, I’ve had more students who expressed concern about whether the skills they’re learning are going to allow them to be employed in the future. What role can we play in helping students connect the skills that they’re learning in our classes and our institutions to what they are going to need once they leave the campus?

Alexis: I like to think of this as a real opportunity. For years, we have told students: “Study this one thing, and you are guaranteed to have a stable future.” And so, for a long time that was computer coding and, oops wait we steered you wrong. So what does that mean for us now? It means let’s not tell students study X and that is the path, let’s really dive in to a meaningful conversation about what are you curious about? What are you passionate about? and recognizing that there’s more freedom than ever to do that. What we know is that English literature majors are now being sought out by some of the Gen AI companies themselves. We can broaden the expansive conversation about, if there’s no guarantee, then what the guarantee is find something that lights you up. And of course, it’s never been true that you have to study for one particular avenue unless you’re going into, you know, medicine. But as a first-year student, there should always have been this room to explore. I personally was an art history major in college. That is not a direct line [LAUGHTER] to becoming a psychology professor, but all of the skills that I learned in art history are the skills that I learned to get me to psychology, and so we have to shift the conversation to not just what are you curious about, but what are the thinking strategies and the thinking routines that you can learn, and those are things that are transferable from context to context, even if the job market is changing.

Rebecca: I think your art history transition makes perfect sense. [LAUGHTER]

Alexis: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I come from the arts too. Well, we always wrap up by asking, “What’s next?”

Alexis: What’s next are some really exciting opportunities around the book. Throughout the summer, I have been joining book clubs around the country on Zoom at different colleges and universities. They’re reading the book, and then we’re being in conversation about how do we implement in this space? I’ve been approached by a couple of different colleges and universities to come in and do training for faculty, staff, and administrators, and it’s always delightful to have the opportunity to do that, along with some of the folks who are part of the 20-member team that wrote the book along with me. And so, just continuing to spread this message, to help us think in a more delineated way about figuring out what is a typical, normal, expected challenge that we have when we are growing and changing and attending college, and what needs clinical care, and building a more robust context in which our students know that we care about them as individuals, not just as learners.

Rebecca: Well, that sounds like a great adventure is underway.

Alexis: Indeed.

John: Well, thank you for joining us. I first heard you on the Happiness Lab podcast you did with Laurie Santos. We’ll include a link to that in the show notes, and then I saw your TEDx talk on a similar topic, and we’ll include links to that in the show notes as well. You’ve got a really good book here that can be helpful for an awful lot of people in higher ed who are facing challenges that they may not have anticipated when they first started their careers.

Alexis: Thank you. It was wonderful to be in conversation with you both.

Rebecca: Yeah, thanks for joining us.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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419. Empowered

Posted in burnout, evidence-based practices, faculty, self-care, support network
November 12, 2025

Women faculty of color in higher ed generally receive little training to prepare them for the challenges, unrelated to their teaching quality, that they experience in their careers. In this episode, Chavella Pittman joins us to discuss her new book, Empowered: A Woman Faculty of Color’s Guide to Teaching and Thriving, a resource she created to address these challenges and to help female faculty of color thrive.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Women faculty of color in higher ed generally receive little training to prepare them for the challenges, unrelated to their teaching quality, that they experience in their careers. In this episode, we discuss a resource designed to address these challenges and to help female faculty of color thrive.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Chavella Pittman. Chavella is a Professor of Sociology at Dominican University. She is also the founder of Effective & Efficient Faculty, a faculty development company that works with faculty and campuses across the country to help them develop strategies for creating an environment in which all students and faculty can thrive. Her research interests and expertise includes higher education, interpersonal interactions, research methods, and statistics. She is the author of Empowered: A Woman Faculty of Color’s Guide to Teaching and Thriving, which has recently been released as part of the Oklahoma University Press series on Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Education, edited by James Lang and Michelle Miller. Jessmyn Neuhaus will be filling in for Rebecca, the usual co-host of this podcast, because Rebecca has been called away by our campus administrators to do administrative things all day today down in Syracuse. Thank you, Jessamyn, for joining us, and welcome back, Chavella.

Jessamyn: Thanks for having me.

Chavella: Yes, thanks so much for having me here. I’m excited.

Jessamyn: Today’s teas are:… Dr. Pittman, what are you drinking today?

Chavella: I’m trying to get a little fancy because I’m usually drinking water, but I have fireside vanilla spice tea.

Jessamyn: That sounds like a nice fall tea.

Chavella: Exactly, exactly.

Jessamyn: I am drinking tropical hibiscus tea from my local grocery store chain, Wegmans, and I’m drinking it in my Tea for Teaching mug, one of my prized possessions.

Chavella: I love it. [LAUGHTER]

John: And I am drinking a spring cherry green tea from the Republic of Tea, which I picked up at Wegmans down near Syracuse. So we have that in common there.

Jessamyn: Wegmans, do you want to fund tea for teaching? [LAUGHTER]

John: They have a very nice collection of teas and pretty much everything else. And I’ve been very pleased. I spend the summers in North Carolina, and there are three Wegman stores within about a 20-minute drive of Duke University now, which is a very nice improvement.

Jessamyn: We’ve invited you here today to discuss Empowered. Can you share the origin story of this book?

Chavella: Yes, so I would say the short version of it is that there are just a lot of gaps in the support provided for women faculty of color’s teaching, so whether it’s colleagues, the literature itself, the scholarship for teaching and learning, faculty development centers, there are just huge gaps. I mean, that’s how I started doing this work as a grad student. I got recognized by other grad students and faculty too for being adept at helping people navigate some of the challenges they were having in the classroom. And so I was giving workshops at departments, I was being a part of the training for TAs, meeting with faculty to help them navigate a range of challenges. Thirty years later, and most people haven’t gotten better at it. So, [LAUGHTER] I ended up writing the book because I was just like, “Wow, like, how do these gaps still exist?” I wanted to get all that information in one place so that people could have a mentor available, 24/7, so that they could just pick the book up if they were facing something in particular. So essentially, that’s the origin story of the book. And I do want to be clear that when I talk about the challenges that people are facing, they’re not anything that have to do with their teaching quality, like I pretty much became adept at helping people deal with teaching challenges that have nothing to do with their teaching quality and everything to do with other people’s expectations of them and social norms. So that’s essentially the origin story of the book, it’s me trying to fill a gap that has remained for 30 years.

John: Now, you’ve already partially addressed this, but who is the target audience for this book?

Chavella: Well, the cheeky answer is everybody. I really do want everybody to read it, because there are lessons in it for everybody, of course, but the audience that it’s centered on is definitely women faculty of color, their experiences often get invalidated or they’re silenced or they’re marginalized. And so I wanted a book that was squarely focused on their experiences, their teaching, their careers, which isn’t to mean that other people can’t get something valuable from it, like there are lessons that everybody can get from it about their teaching. There are lessons that everybody can get from it about how to navigate some of the challenges that they could be facing that might be similar for women faculty of color, but the book is very much so wanted to center women faculty of color, so they’re the primary audience, but the secondary audience are allies that want to support those people and the other secondary audience are just other folks that want to have great teaching and who want to thrive instead of surviving, because the book is very much so about thriving and having like a sustainable academic life and having joy as well.

Jessamyn: What would you like readers to take away from the book?

Chavella: Well, I would say a couple of things. I want people to feel empowered. So I want them to take away that they can feel empowered, that the things that they’re facing have solutions, essentially. That’s part of the empowerment is that you don’t have to just put up with it, or suffer through or muddle through, that you can be empowered, that the things that they’re facing, they can absolutely address. I want them to take away that they can champion their teaching in reviews. So it’s not about just sort of like slinking away and sort of managing some of the stuff that’s going on. It’s very much about proudly proclaiming in reviews like these are the things that I’m bringing to the university, because that’s part of the reduction of stress. It’s like not just managing the stuff in your classroom, but knowing that these things aren’t going to bite them in the butt when it comes time for tenure, promotion, or any sort of retention or renewal review. So I want them to know that they can champion their teaching in reviews, and I want them to feel equipped to teach authentically in a way that amplifies their gifts, in a way that allows space for joy. So instead of having to modify their teaching, or dumb it down, or do the things that people expect, even when those things are not considered to be good teaching, like people are encouraged to do things that are not evidence-based, and women faculty of color are doing things that are evidence-based; they just might be less common. And so I just want them to teach more authentically and joyfully and have space for joy, essentially. So that’s what I want them to take away.

John: You talked a little bit about some of the topics that you’re addressing. Could you give us an overview of some of the other broad topics that are being addressed in the book?

Chavella: As faculty developers, I think that we have the vocabulary for talking about teaching challenges that faculty often don’t have. We think about women faculty of color, and all faculty actually situated in their disciplines, whether it be chemistry or math or English, history, psychology, political science, they don’t have the vocabulary that we have. So I very intentionally don’t introduce the chapters by the threat. So what I do is I sort of describe it. So each chapter opens with a scenario, and the scenarios are meant to be relatable. So every single scenario is something that I’ve either seen in a faculty client or it comes straight out of the research, and it’s something that I want people to read that chapter and be like, “Oh my goodness, that’s exactly what’s happening to me.” And I know, just from consulting for a while, they’re going to relate to that more than me giving the jargon. If I give the jargon, people are like, “Oh no, I’m not experiencing that.” And I’m like, “Okay, I know you’re experiencing that, [LAUGHTER] it’s just that the label that you don’t want to sort of be associated with, or you just don’t recognize it.” So it’s stuff like that. So, for example, chapter two in particular, where I’m telling people to anchor the strong points, I do that in two ways. So there’s a scenario. So I describe something that someone might be facing. So I’m not going to read the whole thing, but I’ll just give you a little bit of it. It starts by saying: “We all know her. In fact, you might know her as you, whether that’s you as you are today, or maybe a younger, more naive version of you. Who am I talking about? The person who sits on every committee as the diversity person, the person who’s asked or coerced to spearhead new initiatives, the person who goes beyond the call of duty to serve students, including students of color, outside the classroom, without being asked and without recognition. Inside the classroom, you’re going all out for these students. You’ve been guilted and pressured to participate as the only woman,” etc, etc, and then says here: “But it gets worse. Despite unflagging extra effort on a part of this woman of color, you guessed it, the University delivers a crushing blow. It’s a ‘no’ to her tenure application, and it’s about her teaching.” So there are more scenarios like that. You get the feel from that one. And this chapter is about extra labor. It’s about additional teaching labor. So someone may not know that as invisible labor. They might say, “Oh, I like doing that. I don’t mind doing that. I’m committed to doing that.” So the chapters open up like that. There’s also another little descriptive piece that opens the chapter: “Gain crystal clarity about your teaching labor, and don’t let your generosity continue to go unnoticed. Reap well deserved benefits from this labor that steals time from research, writing, and grants and, at the same time, banish accusations of bias or an agenda.” So the chapters are all about challenges like that, if that makes sense. I guess the point that I’m trying to make is I don’t want to use the jargon. So the chapters are about challenges such as teaching labor, interactions with students in the teaching, interactions with colleagues about the content that you’re teaching, about expectations for student care. So broadly, that’s what I’m talking about. But I know for a fact that a lot of women faculty of color, shoot, and even the administrators reviewing them, that’s not going to click with them, because they’re not developers. Seeing the descriptions, the outcomes of these things, that’s what’s going to click for them.

Jessamyn: So, thank you for describing the organization of the book and some of the things that are going into the chapters. Can you tell us more about the structure of each chapter and how you hope readers will read and benefit from how those chapters are structured.

Chavella: For sure, the organization of the book is incredibly intentional. I want the book to be used; I don’t want it to just sit on a shelf and gather dust. I want people to be able to use it. So I hope that people read it from beginning to end, but it doesn’t have to be read that way. So, with that in mind, each chapter has the same sections. So, for example, each chapter has a section that’s about the threat. So that way, I’ll describe the common teaching threat that women faculty of color and other faculty might be facing. And the goal is for them to be able to name it, for them to be able to see it, for it to be visible, so that they understand that it’s a structural issue, not a personal failing. Each chapter also has a strategic action. I don’t want to just put threats out there and people not know what to do about them, [LAUGHTER] so I walk them through an evidence-based strategy for dealing with that particular threat. Not only so it doesn’t just tank their teaching, but so it doesn’t tank their reviews for renewal, retention, tenure, promotion, etc. And the strategic actions that I describe, they don’t take a lot of time and energy, because I know women faculty of color don’t have time for that, so they’re streamlined, they get to the point. And each chapter also describes a mine field from the scholarship of teaching and learning. So the scholarship of teaching and learning is incredibly instructive for the evidence-based strategies. It’s just not often a fit for women faculty of color, and so that section waves a flag so it tells them like, “Okay, yes, here are the things you’re doing that are great according to the scholarship of teaching and learning, but here’s how they set up a trap, or how they have a gap that could harm you in your career and your teaching, essentially. And then I have a section in each chapter empowering actions that they can take that week. So if they’re not ready to do the strategic action at that point, there are smaller, micro actions that they can take just to feel empowered in the moment. Each chapter also has a summary that’s sort of like high-level takeaways of all of those things that I just described. And the thing that’s interesting is that even though women faculty of color, like the research demonstrates, are doing all this incredibly wonderful teaching with all of these great outcomes for students, for society, for the universities, there are these nagging, persisting narratives about their teaching as deficient. And so where that comes to play in a chapter, there’ll also be an extra section called “the excellence of women faculty of color’s teaching.” Because, you know, the three of us, we know that literature, like we read this stuff all day. But again, if we think about faculty and the administrators that are reviewing them, they don’t know that literature. So in chapters where there just happens to be a narrative of women faculty of color’s teaching as deficient, there’ll be an “excellence of women faculty of color’s teaching” section that outlines the research of how their teaching is actually stellar. So each chapter has all of those sections, and so that’s how I want people to read the book. I would love it if they read it from beginning to end, that would be awesome. And even after they read it from beginning to end, maybe they faced the challenges that are in chapters one, four and five, and then at another time, they have to flip back to chapter three. I want them to be able to immediately get in and find what they need, particularly if we think that some of these faculty might be under duress, they might be under threat, they might have a review coming up. So I want them to be able to navigate and find what they need quickly at a whim’s notice, essentially.

John: At the start of this conversation, you mentioned that there were a lot of gaps in the materials that faculty were provided. Could you talk a little bit more about the unique contributions of your book to the literature to fill in some of those gaps?

Chavella: I don’t want to give it all away. I want people to read the book, but I would say one of the unique contributions of the book is that I am suggesting that people thrive, that they’re not just surviving, that they care about their well being, that they’re not martyring themselves for the job, for the students. And that does not mean that you don’t still do a great job. It doesn’t mean that you don’t care about student learning. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about your work. Quite the opposite. There’s an entire chapter in the book that’s about joy. So I think that’s one of the large unique contributions of the book. And just given this particular moment, first of all, it’s a moment that other people have been in for a long time… that have been in before, you know, if you think sort of cyclically, and the messaging, I think that most people give is people to just sort of hunker down and slug it out and suffer, and I’m not saying that. So that’s definitely a gap in the scholarship of teaching and learning is that we don’t talk enough about faculty well being. And I very much so want women faculty of color to be well, to be authentic, to be joyful, and all faculty to be that way. So that’s definitely a unique contribution of the book. Another thing I think, I talk about a couple different sort of terms in the book as well, like I’m introducing a couple ideas. We referenced one of them before, and so I talk about what I call super invisible labor. We talk about invisible labor in higher ed all the time, a lot of time it’s about committee work. We do not talk about it as it relates to teaching. So super invisible teaching labor, like I talk about it at length in the book, I talk about what it looks like, the consequences of it for faculty careers, for student learning, for the university, etc. So these are the sort of gaps in the scholarship of teaching and learning that people will find in the book, some unique contributions that it has.

Jessamyn: I love both of those ideas, and just on an emotional, visceral level, talking about joy and thriving in academia, it feels radical, but it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t sound like such a major issue that’s never been talked about, but it should be… recognizing what you do well and how to achieve that important work-life balance and thrive.

Chavella: Yeah, for sure, all of my work from the beginning, has always been about having a boundary, trying to be as efficient and excellent as you can be, getting back to time with your life, doing things… if you want to use that time for research, if that’s what gives you joy, like, do it. Like, that’s been the messaging throughout. And I definitely feel like that’s the part of my messaging that gets shushed, right? Like people are like, “Shhh, don’t say that.” Like, it’s shameful to want to care about your well being, that it’s selfish to care about your well being. And I’m sick of it. Actually, [LAUGHTER] I’m just sick of it. So it’s definitely the thing that I’m yelling from the rooftop at this moment. I’m always yelling something from a rooftop, and this seems to be the thing that I’m yelling from the rooftop, is that faculty well being is important. It matters. It should just matter, because we’re human, [LAUGHTER] and people should care about us. But for those who don’t care about that, it’s important because it does have a lot to do with creativity and output and productivity and all the things that we can do. So we’re much better at our jobs when faculty well being is good. And again, that’s just the argument for people who don’t actually care about us as humans.

Jessamyn: And it’s rooted in recognizing and helping other people recognize what they’re already doing well… such an important part of educational development. But often people come to the centers for teaching and learning with this deficit framework, like, I must be doing something wrong, or there’s something I have to add, and part of our job, it’s so important, is saying, “Let’s look at what you’re already doing well,” and this is why.

Chavella: Yeah, absolutely, it’s interesting. You triggered another thought in me is that it’s one of the reasons that the book is necessary. The origin story of the book is, I think that teaching centers and developers do a good job of that sort of diagnosing, the: “Here’s what you’re doing wrong, here’s something you could do better,” but they’re not as good at “You’re already doing it excellent, and people are resistant to it. Now what?” And I’m not blaming the scholarship of teaching and learning or teaching centers, because they have limited resources, time and energy, and a lot of times they’re put in the position to be a bit remedial or to teach people new things, they just don’t have the space to help people who are already doing it great. They just don’t have the space for that. So I’m glad to fill that gap and to be a partner with faculty developers and teaching centers and say, “Okay, I got those people,” and a lot of times those people are women faculty of color.

John: One of the things you note is that a lot of the characteristics of the teaching of women faculty of color are undervalued or are not recognized. Could you talk a little bit about what are some of the strengths that appear in the way in which women faculty of color teach, but are not always recognized by the institution or by students.

Chavella: Of course, that’s easy. [LAUGHTER] Women faculty of color, our teaching tends to have more active learning. We know from the scholarship of teaching learning the benefits of that. They tend to have learning outcomes, again, active learning, evidence based, you know, the scholarship of teaching and learning. They tend to have learning outcomes such as maybe like development of social and personal responsibility, and these things are very much so aligned with General Education says we should be producing in our students and with what our institutions want produced in our students. They tend to focus on more skills like creative problem solving. They tend to have assignments that are more applied. So instead of just memorizing, they’re actually learning to apply skills. And again, these are all things that are aligned with university missions, goals, and part of sort of the purpose of education. So those are just a couple of examples. There’s much more detail and citations and statistics and stuff like that in the book, but just sort of broadly, whether it’s their pedagogy, their learning outcomes, or their assignments, they’re doing, all the things that the scholarship of teaching and learning and that the university say, and that the employers also say that they want from students and from society. So they’re doing all the things that produce all the outcomes that both society and universities want, essentially.

John: And hearing you say that… last night, we had a meeting of our student committee on learning and teaching here on campus, and we asked them for some of the things they observed in classes that were not very effective, and the most common response was that a lot of faculty are still spending most of their time lecturing, and they said it was really hard to maintain a focus for 55 minutes, or an hour and 20 minutes of someone just talking at them. So anything that encourages more active learning, I think, would be very much appreciated by students, as well as being a much more effective way to encourage learning.

Chavella: You know, what’s so interesting about that is, yes, obviously we all know that we should have more active learning. Lecturing can be done, like interactive lecturing. Like, I’m not a no to lecture person. I encourage people to do lecturettes, is what I call them, on particular types of concepts, like, it has a place, but you can do an interactive lecture for 55 minutes, and very much so keep students’ attention. This is an example of what I mean when I say that there’s a gap in supporting people who are doing it right. Students might not like lecturing. They’re used to lecturing. When you lecture, they complain. When you don’t lecture, they complain. [LAUGHTER] So that’s a really, really good example of some of the resistance to innovation that women faculty of color face in their teaching is because they’re not just lecturing for 55 minutes, they’re doing other things, and because it violates students’ expectations and colleagues’ expectations of what’s supposed to be happening in the classroom. It’s violating sort of the social norms. They already don’t trust those faculty for a variety of reasons, or may not trust those faculty for a variety of reasons. They complain. They’re suspicious when they don’t find lecture, even though we know it doesn’t produce a lot of the outcomes that we’re interested in, and then students complain about it. So that’s a really good example.

Jessamyn: And that’s such a good example of why your book is empowering, because knowing ahead of time that there’s these things at play that student resistance will flare up, so enables the strategic approach and the mindset and everything we need then to go into the classroom and be effective.

Chavella: Yes, very much so, into the classroom and into reviews. [LAUGHTER]

Jessamyn: That’s right. Absolutely.

Chavella: Like you said, it’s like a toolkit. You’re like, “Okay, I know these things are coming, but I’m prepared, and so I can skip off into the sunset…” [LAUGHTER] not that extreme, but that’s exactly what I have in mind for people. Stuff is going on around you. Of course, we acknowledge those things, we don’t act like they don’t exist. We name it, we prepare for it, and we carry on with the things that bring us joy.

John: Joy is good.

Chavella: Yes, it is… [LAUGHTER] essential.

Jessamyn: Well, John and Rebecca always end the episode by asking their guest, what is next?

Chavella: A book tour. That’s what’s next. So I’m very much available to campuses for virtual and in person, like book club discussions or book talks or seminars or workshops on one or more of the chapters. So that’s what I’m really focused on now, is engaging in a book tour. So if people want to bring me in, either virtually or in person for any of those things, book club sort of discussion, book talk, or some sort of workshop or seminar, I’m available.

John: Well, thank you. I very much enjoyed reading your book, and I hope many more people will.

Chavella: Yay, I hope so too. Thank you for having me. This is always so much fun.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing Assistance provided by Madison Lee.

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400. Snafu Edu

Posted in community of practice, diversity, faculty learning community, higher education, inclusion, learning, pedagogy, reflective practice, support network, teaching
July 2, 2025

Most books and resources devoted to professional development focus on strategies that faculty can use to create a positive learning environment for our students, but generally assume that everything will work as expected. In this episode, Jessamyn Neuhaus joins us to discuss her new book, Snafu Edu, which acknowledges the reality that everything does not always work as we hope that it will, and suggests strategies for addressing common situations in which things go wrong.

Jessamyn is the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and Professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University. She is a historian and the editor of Teaching History: A Journal of Methods. Jessamyn has published extensively in scholarly publications in the areas of history, pedagogy, and cultural studies. She is a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Teaching. Jessamyn is the author of  Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to be Effective Teachers, and the editor of Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning. Her newest book, Snafu Edu: Teaching and Learning When Things Go Wrong in the College Classroom will be released shortly by the Oklahoma University Press series on Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Education, edited by James Lang and Michelle Miller.

Show Notes

  • Jessmyn Neuhaus
  • Teaching History: A Journal of Methods
  • Neuhaus, J. (2019). Geeky pedagogy: A guide for intellectuals, introverts, and nerds who want to be effective teachers. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.
  • Neuhaus, J. (2022). Picture a professor: Interrupting biases about faculty and increasing student learning. West Virginia University Press.
  • Neuhaus, J. (2025). Snafu Edu: Teaching and Learning When Things Go Wrong in the College Classroom. Oklahoma University Press.
  • Neuhaus, J. (2003). Manly meals and mom’s home cooking: Cookbooks and gender in modern America. JHU Press.
  • Neuhaus, J. (2011). Housework and housewives in American advertising: Married to the mop. Springer.
  • Harlow, R. (2003). ” Race doesn’t matter, but…”: The effect of race on professors’ experiences and emotion management in the undergraduate college classroom. Social psychology quarterly, 348-363.
  • Barbeau, L., & Happel, C. C. (2023). Critical teaching behaviors: Defining, documenting, and discussing good teaching. Routledge.
  • Lauren Barbeau and Claudia Cornejo Happel (2025). Critical Teaching Behaviors. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 390. April 23.
  • Felten, P., & Lambert, L. M. (2020). Relationship-rich education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College. Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Lang, J. M. (2020). Distracted: Why students can’t focus and what you can do about it. Hachette UK.
  • Palmer, P. J. (2017). The courage to teach guide for reflection and renewal. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Miller, M. D. (2024). A Teacher’s Guide to Learning Student Names: Why You Should, Why It’s Hard, How You Can (Vol. 2). University of Oklahoma Press.
  • Pittman, Chavella (2025, forthcoming). Empowered: A Woman Faculty of Color’s Guide to Teaching and Thriving. University of Oklahoma Press.
  • Piven, J., & Borgenicht, D. (2010). The worst-case scenario survival handbook: travel. Chronicle Books.
  • Norell, Elizabeth A. (2024). The Present Professor: Authenticity and Transformational Teaching. University of Oklahoma Press.

Transcript

Rebecca: Since we began this podcast in November 2017, we’ve had hundreds of opportunities to have extended conversations with many innovators, researchers, educators, thought leaders, and advocates working to support student learning. We are grateful to all of our guests who have so generously contributed their time, to the new friends and colleagues we’ve gained, and for all of our listeners. We’re excited that our friend and colleague, Jessamyn Neuhaus joined us to celebrate in our 400th episode.

John: And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming.

John:Most books and resources devoted to professional development focus on strategies that faculty can use to create a positive learning environment for our students, but generally assume that everything will work as expected. In this episode, we discuss a new resource that acknowledges the reality that everything does not always work as we hope that it will, and suggests strategies for addressing common situations in which things go wrong.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Our guest today is Jessamyn Neuhaus. Jessamyn is the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and Professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University. Jessamyn is an historian and the editor of Teaching History: A Journal of Methods. Jessamyn has published extensively in scholarly publications in the areas of history, pedagogy, and cultural studies. She is a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Teaching. Jessamyn is the author of Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to be Effective Teachers, and the editor of Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning. Her newest book, Snafu Edu: Teaching and Learning When Things Go Wrong in the College Classroom will be released shortly by the Oklahoma University Press series on Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Education, edited by James Lang and Michelle Miller. Welcome back, Jessamyn.

Jessamyn: Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.

John: It’s good to see you again. Today’s teas are:… Jessamyn, are you drinking tea?

Jessamyn: Tea is my afternoon beverage, and we’re recording this in the morning. So I’ve got a very large cup of high octane coffee.

Rebecca: A good way to power the day.

Jessamyn: Exactly.

Rebecca: I have Yunnan Noir today.

John: Very good. And I have a ginger peach green tea today.

Rebecca: Nice. We’re invited here today to discuss Snafu Edu. Can you tell us the origin story of this book?

Jessamyn: Yes, so John and Rebecca, let me take you back in time to the late 1990s, dawn of the internet age. Grunge was king, and I was pursuing my doctorate in U.S. History and Gender Studies, and in doing that research, I became just utterly fascinated with 20th century prescriptive texts, things that reinforced sociocultural and especially domestic ideology, normative domestic ideology. I mean stuff like cookbooks, etiquette guides, 1950s mental hygiene films. And so as a scholar in the archives, that’s what I loved examining in the most, this evidence, these leftovers, of what people at different points in time had decided was the best, most ideal way to live and be, especially at home and at school. And if you’re fascinated by those things, here’s a shameless plug, check out my first two books, which were published in my work in history. One’s on cookbooks, and one is on gender and advertising representation of housewives. So anyway, as a scholar of teaching and learning, I’ve always had that little research fascination in the back of my mind. I kind of question about how advice and research about teaching reinforces certain norms and ideals, not intentionally or consciously, but as discourse, as texts doing ideological work in culture. So I was always thinking, could I maybe write something about teaching, give actionable advice about teaching, like in real life, that interrupted some of those prescriptive ideals. I wanted to write a book that would be useful in people’s daily teaching work. That was the great joy after I published Geeky Pedagogy was hearing from people who were able to use it in their just day-to-day work and drawing on the abundant research about effective teaching practices, and at the same time, in Snafu Edu, I wanted to emphasize that that daily teaching work is, in a word, it’s messy, and it’s not a matter of if, but when something will go awry. And then that was all percolating, and it got cemented in the post-pandemic years so when something had really, really gone wrong in a major way, and the time was right for me, as an author, because I’m fortunate at this point in my career to have something of a platform. I’m no James Lang or Sarah Rose Cavanagh, but I have the ability in the world of educational development and in scholarship about teaching, I have some power to get my work published and to speak to people about things I think are important, the things that I believe need more attention, that we need to talk about more. I’m in a position to be able to articulate those and get some listeners. And what I wanted to articulate this time in this book, is, OMG, things can go really, really wrong in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: I know when I was reading, Jessamyn, I felt like you totally captured the messiness, and certainly the messiness of my classroom and many other colleagues that I have. [LAUGHTER]

Jessamyn: Excellent.

John: And I think that will resonate with probably all of your readers. So, speaking of readers, who is the target audience? Is it for faculty just starting off, or for faculty at all stages of their careers?

Jessamyn: Well, my audience is anyone who’s in an instructional role on a college campus. I have been thinking more and more about the ways that teaching happens, not just in classrooms, not just with professors, but all kinds of people in designated staff positions as well. And I am very attentive to what Roxanna Harlow termed disparate teaching realities, meaning that teaching labor is really shaped by every individual’s intersectional positionality, including our embodied identities. And so my hope is that, with those things in mind, anyone and anybody in any teaching context can find it useful. I do think it will be useful for anyone at any stage in their career, but I think it’s going to especially resonate with mid-career educators, basically, anyone who’s been teaching long enough, and it might just even be a couple classes, but anyone who’s been teaching long enough to have made some serious bloopers and experience students making big mistakes too.

Rebecca: Definitely does something to establish some sort of [LAUGHTER] community around the realities of teaching.

Jessamyn: Yeah, so you have some experiences to think back on. I would say, especially for a large section of us, the experiences that kept you up at night, that you tossed and turned, reliving, wondering what you should have done differently, torturing yourself about what went wrong, it would be helpful to have a couple of those in your mind when you pick up this book.

Rebecca: So, I know that we’ve talked about, and you’ve certainly written about in your work, the idea that one size fits all professional development doesn’t really work. So can you talk a little bit about why there’s just no simple solutions to the common problems in education? [LAUGHTER]

Jessamyn: Yeah, I mean, humans gotta human. [LAUGHTER] Nobody’s a widget moving through the world like a product on a factory belt. Every person has their own unique set of experiences, life circumstances, pet peeves, passion projects. I know, for example, Dr. John Kane is a musician and makes a lot of time and effort in his life to play music. There’s things that just matter to us more than maybe matter to other people. And especially in our work, everybody’s bringing with them into the classroom a whole huge honking set of emotional and cognitive baggage that they’ve acquired during their previous or even concurrent experiences in educational settings. I mean, it’s a lot. And also what we’re here to do is incredibly hard. Learning is very, very hard. It often, usually always entails setbacks, and that includes learning how to teach effectively. So, in my view, this reality needs more direct and specific highlighting in discourse about teaching. We just need to talk a lot more about the fact that teaching is not a perfectible activity. And it’s not that anyone’s out there saying teaching is perfectable. No one would say that consciously, but there’s a real strong subtext and a lot of discourse about teaching that, in even, like otherwise, really excellent advice about teaching that, if you just do it, everything will be fixed, everything will be perfect, and that’s not possible.

Rebecca: You talked about the bloopers, but I think a lot of people feel really isolated when those bloopers occur, or those are the things [LAUGHTER]they don’t want to share.

Jessamyn: Yeah, exactly, for many reasons, teaching in higher education is absolutely a closed door culture, and it’s really hard to describe to people who are not college teachers, even people in K through 12, like the dynamic, where if another professor walked into your room when you were teaching, it would be shocking. You would stop. You would be stunned. What are you doing here? …would be absolutely the feeling. It’s a closed, locked, barricaded door around teaching in higher education. So yeah, the stakes are super, super high for when something goes wrong.

John: One of the issues that you’ve just mentioned is that people are working in their own little silos. And when things go wrong, they often don’t talk about it with other people, and as a result, everyone imagines that [LAUGHTER] everything’s going really well for everyone else, and then you have those sleepless nights. And faculty respond to that in different ways. Some people will blame themselves and will struggle with it. Other people might blame their students, and we see a lot of that as well….

Jessamyn: …or both… [LAUGHTER]

John: …or some combination thereof. Why are faculty so resistant to share their experiences with other colleagues?

Jessamyn: I could sum it up in two words: graduate school. A whole bunch of us, not every single person, but a whole bunch of us in higher education, we’ve been quite literally trained in how to wield our intellect like a weapon, and to always try to be the smartest person in the room. I’m exaggerating, and obviously our positionalities, identities, really shape our experience with graduate school. But I do think there’s a culture in academia that feeds perfectionism generally, that you never expose your vulnerable underbelly to the other smarty pants in the room. And I think teaching is especially fraught because of our limited and limiting ideas about what good teaching looks like.

Rebecca: How do we start to normalize this idea of discussing our snafus? Is there things that professional development like teaching centers should be doing? Are there things that administrators should be doing?

Jessamyn: Well, I have two thoughts on this. One is highly aspirational, [LAUGHTER] probably not possible. One is more immediately doable. So in my utopian vision of life as a college educator, everyone will gather every spring for a campus wide oops day, like the only thing we’re doing is discussing all the things that we personally did wrong and all the things that went wrong in our classrooms. And we could include some brainstorming about what to do better next time, but that wouldn’t be the main point. The main point would be, we’re gonna bring out into the light, all the monsters under the bed, the things that went wrong. And as we know from every story about monsters ever, like, once we bring them into the light, they’ll shrivel up and blow away. So probably not too realistic, but more practically speaking, we can advocate at every stage and in every way that when we’re formally evaluating teaching that we need better language and systems for recognizing and then documenting every instructor’s growth narrative of teaching advocacy. I’m really influenced here by the book Critical teaching behaviors: Defining, documenting, and discussing good teaching, by Lauren Barbeau and Claudia Happle, they offer a framework based on six identifiable instructor behaviors, and they argue there’s a vast amount of work that effective teachers do before, during, outside of class meetings in order to facilitate student learning. So leaders, that includes your promotion and tenure chairs, department chairs, administrators, they need to do everything they can to define effective teaching as a career-long process, and that has to include pedagogical learning and reflection, trying new things, assessing and adapting, and importantly, that in that growth narrative, because it’s about growth and learning, there will be mistakes and missteps, but that is evidence of growth, not evidence of ineffective teaching.

John: You mentioned the work by Lauren Barbeau and by Claudia Happle. We had an earlier podcast with them in the spring of 2025 and we’ll share a link to that in the show notes. To help build this sort of discussion, it’s really important that teaching centers have the trust of faculty. And one of the things I think we’ve both seen is that when we have faculty reading groups and people are talking about things that work well and things that don’t work well, it helps to develop that sort of trust. Would this book be a good focus for a faculty reading group?

Jessamyn: Yes, I think so, of course. We would want to ensure, this is one thing I do mention in the book about classrooms, but we want to ensure psychological safety for our participants, making sure that everyone feels able to share ideas, bounce ideas off, and maybe flop, like, maybe suggest something that doesn’t really make sense, and definitely share all the things that we have personally flubbed. So framing it as we’re here to build our growth mindset and think about ways to keep moving forward in our own growth narrative, keeping those things in mind and maybe even more importantly, right now, I think this would be a good book for our present moment when, in fact, there are so many very, very big, truly, almost incomprehensible things going very, very wrong for higher education. These are being brought mostly by outside political and legislative attacks on our curriculums, on our programs, other essential aspects of our day-to-day work. I mean, it’s a true shit storm, and I wrote this before, the past administrative… what would you call it?

Rebecca: …the list of executive orders? [LAUGHTER]

Jessamyn: Yes, exactly. So I don’t discuss it in detail, but one thing I do mention, and what is happening now, is the beep storm that is happening right now on the heels of another major beep storm was the pandemic years, and even more, like for most faculty, the incredibly fast spread of generative AI has taken another big bite out of our cognitive emotional and even our physical stores of energy we have for teaching. So, it’s a good time to think about how educational development can support pedagogical wellness, and how something like a book club is not only a chance for us to learn stuff from experts in research about teaching, but also, and maybe right now more importantly, a place to build connections and community by talking honestly with each other about teaching and that has to include all the things that can and do go wrong. And I would take it as a very big personal victory if, in discussing this book, we could draw on the power of humor and laughter, even rueful laughter, maybe defiant laughter. I don’t mean mocking. I don’t mean laughing at students, but maybe by not always having to take ourselves so super seriously, we can counteract some of the incredibly demoralizing and discouraging realities about teaching, the ongoing disparate teaching realities, the perfectionism. I know not everyone is willing or able to engage in kind of self-deprecating joking that is my go to but that’s one reason I shared a bunch of my worst mistakes in this book. So if you can’t share your own for whatever reason, this is my public permission for you to use mine.

John: We’ll be doing a book club on our campus this fall, so we’ll let you know how that goes.

Jessamyn: And anyone who is doing a book club on Snafu Edu, I’m very happy to zoom in to do a Q and A with your group.

Rebecca: Awesome. I couldn’t help but imagine, while you were describing your utopian oops day, like a lot of laughter and things like “bravely sharing their blunder award,” or something, [LAUGHTER] like where everyone votes for the best blunder. [LAUGHTER]

Jessamyn: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] The face plant award, yeah.

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah, yeah.. I wanted to just share that I imagine that as it being a very joyful event, [LAUGHTER] despite the hard conversations.

Jessamyn: Yeah, that would be fun. I’m there. Send me an invite.

Rebecca: All right, sounds good. [LAUGHTER] You suggest a general approach throughout this book, addressing challenges in our classrooms, and summarize it with the acronym, STIR,, S-T-I-R. Can you talk about what STIR stands for and how one might use it?

Jessamyn: Sure, with the caveat I get that there’s already too many acronyms, and this is a pretty cheesy one, but part of the reason I went to the acronym is because of when things do go wrong, it’s hard to think clearly, and sometimes a snappy acronym can help keep us on track, can help us bring back to the present moment. So this particular one, it’s a variation on other kinds of conflict resolution strategies such as SOAR, which is stop, observe, assess, react. For Snafu Edu. I’m suggesting, for my audience of other brainiacs and eggheads in higher education, is Stop, Think, Identify, and Repair, and it’s just a way of framing some of the preparation we can do for when the snafus hit the fan, a reminder that in situations that pose problems, when things are about to go wrong, when things might go wrong, when things are going wrong, we can usually exercise some agency in the classroom and interactions with students by taking a beat to use our big brains, then think about what all might be going on, to approach with curiosity based on what we know from our research and the scholarship for teaching and learning from our wisdom of experience, try to identify what’s going on, and then to the extent that it’s possible, taking steps to repair the snafu. And this is a good place to note that my book doesn’t address the very worst case scenario for any classroom, active shooter threats or other kind of physical danger. That’s 91,1 not STIR.

Rebecca: I really like that you chose repair for the R, because there’s a lot of other words you could have maybe chosen that was a really important choice.

Jessamyn: I think so. It evokes trying to patch something up to the best you can. One thing that I really wanted to avoid was some of the cliches around making mistakes, or the discourse about making mistakes that it’s always inevitably going to lead to a good outcome. With the right “can do” attitude and the right frame of mind, you can always turn it into something really positive. That’s not true. I don’t believe that, and I didn’t want to even accidentally reinforce that with the word

John: Your book is broken up into five parts that address challenges in teaching and learning associated with inequity, disconnection, distrust, failure, and fear. Could you give us a couple of examples of some of the problems associated with these issues and how you might perhaps go through that STIR approach?

Jessamyn: Sure. The most important thing I want to say first is the thing that Snafu is really adding to the conversation is that those five things create problem and obstacles for learners and for us as educators. Most books about teaching, including my first book, Geeky Pedagogy, they focus mainly on the learner’s experience and strategies for addressing and reducing obstacles to student success and then conversely, research on like inequities faced by instructors often doesn’t also fold in that students are navigating those inequities as well. So in Snafu Edu I want to make sure that when we talk about things going wrong in the college classroom, we are talking about everybody in the college classroom, including us, including the instructors, including the TAs, including everybody. So for instance, inequity, systemic intersectional inequity, it exists no matter how much certain politicians want to convince us that it doesn’t… it exists. It creates obstacles to student learning, and it creates obstacles to effective teaching, especially for any faculty member who doesn’t, quote, unquote, look like a professor. Disconnection and distrust are also aspects of higher education that researchers have been showing for a long time really interfere with success, with major upticks in the post-pandemic era for obstacles to students’ academic success. So, like when a student just doesn’t feel connected in any meaningful way to the subject or the institution, it’s going to be a lot harder for them to persist, and Felton and Lambert’s book, Relationship-Rich Education shows us pretty darn definitively. But so too do instructors need to experience some sense of connection to their work, to the students, in a professionally appropriate way, to their institution. Otherwise things snafu up our work. They get in the way of our success. And distrust, so talk about snafus in the classroom, trust is just the bedrock for what we do, but often not central in our minds when things go wrong. So take for example, here’s one, 100% of people listening to this podcast will have experienced students engaging in non- class related scrolling, emailing, texting, online shopping and so on. There are many and many complicated reasons that our devices are so distracting in the classroom. There’s a bunch of strategies we might use to cultivate attention, covered really well, most recently by James M Lang’s book, Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus, and What You Can Do About It. But even before all those strategies, we have to be aware that these interactions, even like you see it out of the corner of your eye, they can seriously erode our trust in students as a group. Another one that I think many listeners and readers will relate to is how even one, like literally even one, deliberately cruel, demeaning or even thoughtlessly worded comment on anonymous standardized end of student evaluations, how much that can damage our trust in students. And speaking of student behaviors, another one where it’s really important to think about it in terms of the snafu is fear, because student fear can manifest in behaviors that on the surface look like something else entirely, and not coincidentally, look like things that really can just drive us right up the wall, something that looks like complete disengagement, even hostility or inattention. It might be rooted in students’ really deep psychological physiological fear, completely unrelated to us, related to something else in their school experiences, related to something in their life circumstances. And I guess the last couple things I’ll say is that these snafus, one thing that really became clear as I was doing the research is that they’re both very common and systemic and almost universal, but then they’re also really shaped and defined in unique and individual ways. So, take failure. What does it mean to fail in college? What does it mean to fail in academia? I mean, we have some system wide metrics, like, literally an F for failure, but how that’s experienced by students, how they define it, is really shaped by their life experiences, their goals, their personality traits, what fields they’re interested in, and so on. And failure is tricky too, because by its very nature, learning has to include some failure. You have to do something not very well…and that might include, really just completely dropping the ball… you have to do something not very well before you can learn how to do it well, and that includes teaching. But again, we’re working in these bigger systems that can really interfere with our ability to engage in productive failure and mistakes.

Rebecca: Each part of your book uses a similar organizational structure where you kind of describe the problem, discuss possible repair strategies when things go wrong, and concludes with a discussion of proactive approaches and a go bag, [LAUGHTER] that reduce the likelihood or severity of the problems in that section. Can you talk a little bit about why you chose this particular organizational structure?

Jessamyn: Yeah, I so appreciate that question, because I really wrestled with how to structure the book in a way that supported my argument, we have to normalize mistakes, missteps and things going wrong in teaching and learning, and when I say normalize, part of that is recognizing that they take a real toll on us, that again, I didn’t want it to be like this cliched view of mistakes. I didn’t want it to read like I was saying, “Oh, well, we mess up sometimes, but it’s all a glorious process of learning, and we’re gonna hop on our Mr. Mess, the learning unicorn. We’re gonna fly up to the rainbow of perfect teaching and learning.” No. Things going wrong, it can really suck, and it’s not always resolved in a productive way. Sometimes things go wrong, period. There’s no silver lining, there’s no wisdom gained. It’s just bad and things go wrong. So the structure, how I thought about how to do this, the first section really is just an overview, but it lays out some of the most compelling evidence from the research about why things go wrong because of inequity, disconnection, distrust, failure, and fear. And I want to start there to really enforce why these snafus can be expected, and then building on that, the next chapter, again, is working to normalize snafus by focusing on what to do when they happen, and keeping in mind that, again, positionality and context always matters, and that the repair suggestions in the next section, they always have to be adapted to your teaching context, your personality, and what will work for you with where you’re at. But I didn’t want to just leave it there. I did want to make sure that readers were empowered as much as possible to exercise agency wherever and however they can. And increasing agency is my response to the snafus caused by fear. The opposite of fear isn’t exactly agency, it would be something like courage, like Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach, but I think courage is just a little bit too judgy. It’s a little bit too much to say to people, things go really wrong, but you have to be courageous. I don’t think that’s sufficient, in the year of our Lord 2025 to say, “be more courageous.” I think, though we can say for students as well, in the face of fear, that we can find ways to exercise agency. Agency is limited. It’s limited by things outside our control often, but there are places where we can exercise it in teaching and learning, in our classrooms, in our actions, in our course design. So those last chapters in each of the sections gives an overview of some, it’s not all of them, it’s just a selection of a couple high impact practices for increasing equity, increasing connections, increasing trust, increasing success and increasing agency. And in all cases, it’s about how to increase those things for ourselves as well as our students.

John: Can you give us an example of something going wrong in the classroom, some possible repair strategies and how to ameliorate future related issues so that people come prepared for such problems?

Jessamyn: Sure, let’s talk about one super, super common snafu that on the surface may seem like a small issue, but once you’ve delved into it, it touches on some really big ways that things can go wrong and can create real obstacles for teaching and learning: names, our names, and more specifically, learning, correctly pronouncing, and using each other’s names in class and in interactions with students… and wait, before everyone who teaches huge lecture classes of hundreds skips ahead. This does apply to all of us, all of us working in higher education or really, actually, any human person in any professional or social situation, names matter. Names always matter, even if you personally, you as an individual cannot memorize every single student’s name in your 300-person, 400-person lecture. That doesn’t mean that names aren’t important. I mean, they’re not just like labels. They’re not just widget labels. They’re the first and foremost expression of our subjectivity, of our ability to act and be in the world. And so to be recognized by names is to be recognized as a person. The scholarship on teaching and learning very clearly shows that when an instructor learns and uses student names, even if, like in a huge class, they can’t learn every single name or use them every single time. It improves students’ rapport with, perceptions of, the professor, and it can improve learning and engagement. But I would argue, just as important is students learning and using each other’s names, and students learning, correctly pronouncing, and using… and this is maybe controversial… but using a professor’s last name and their title. Yep, I’m going on record here to say that when you’re working with them in the classroom, in a class, students should call you Professor such and such, or Doctor so and so, because and here’s where names intersect with some of those big potential snafus. Names, and for professors, titles are closely tied to inclusivity in the classroom. So inclusivity, meaning that every single person, including the professor, has the maximum opportunity to learn, to engage with the material and to improve their skills. So professional titles really matter, because professors from historically marginalized populations must navigate, must mitigate, students’ preconceptions and stereotypes about academic expertise and authority. So just in short, students are more likely to call women and to call all faculty of color by their first name or Mrs., like in my case, than to call us professor. And of course, students’ sense of belonging and willingness to participate, even attend class, is demonstrably improved when people there, including the professor, know their name. But let’s be honest, it’s really hard. Learning names is really hard in any setting, and I have to give a major shout out here to Michelle Miller’s book. It’s a short guide, A Teacher’s Guide to Learning Student Names. I mean, like chef’s kiss, it should be required reading for everyone in higher education. There’s a lot of ways and means for learning student names, helping students learn each other’s names, and here’s where Snafu Edu comes in. There’s also so many ways this can go wrong. We can get students’ names wrong. We pronounce them incorrectly, we stumble, we fumble, and sometimes that can be pretty disastrous. Sometimes that can be in a way that reinforces stereotypes, that undermine students’ sense of belonging, and that is the same with students using each other’s names and students using our names incorrectly or not knowing them. So all those things could go wrong. When this happens to me, I use the first two repair strategies I discuss in the book for when I mess up a name, students messes up my name, I use a script. That’s my first strategy, and I apologize, my second strategy. So when I say a script, I don’t mean like a memorized monologue you’re using word for word, like a robot in every situation. I don’t mean literally a script like actors use, but I do mean having at the ready a collection of short phrases, a couple sentences that we can do almost automatically in tense or difficult situations. We are human people. When we’re dealing with other human people, we have some biological, even social, cultural, learned responses to potential conflict, problems, defensiveness. We may default to fight, freeze, fawn, or flee. Fawn was new to me, just recently. I know fight, freeze, or flee. Fawning means people pleasing, trying to appease someone, bending over backwards to placate and eliminate any perceived threat. So script in this context, doesn’t mean memorize, but does mean practice, like you have stood in your office and practiced. This is something Chavella Pittman, in her work, has recommended to faculty as well, that you do need to practice what you’re going to say. Now maybe you are so socially skilled and extroverted that you never for one second feel the need to practice your words. And if that’s true, like, how nice for you, like, [LAUGHTER] I love that for you. Good for you. But for the rest of us, scripts can really help. So my two combined strategies, scripts and apology, when I call a student the wrong name or I don’t remember their name. “I’m sorry, [Use the correct name].” That’s from Michelle Miller, like you got to use it to learn it. “I’m sorry, [Correct name]. Names are important. We’ve all been working on remembering them. I apologize for my error.” That’s it, short, simple, no need to get into any like explanations or defensiveness, just “sorry about that.” And to be clear, apologizing is never fun for anyone, and again, positionality and context always matters. It won’t look the same for everyone every time, but when we mess up, and we will mess up, a short, quick apology is an effective repair strategy. Using a script can ease the pain of that. And I have another one for when students call me, it’s usually Mrs. Neuhaus. Sometimes they try Jessamyn, but that’s can be hard to say, so they might default to Mrs. Neuhaus. So I have a script, and it’s something like, “Thank you for that question or comment. Before we discuss it, I just want to remind you that when we’re working together in this learning community, I asked to use my professional academic title, Professor Neuhaus. I know it’s not easy to remember, using everyone’s names isn’t easy. I appreciate your effort to do this,” something like that. These are my repair strategies, because of the ways that those small moments can really create big, big snafus in equity, trust, and connection, for educators, for us and for our students. So the final part of your question was, then, how might we reduce this in the future? It’s not easy. Again, from Michelle Miller’s work, I know that the key thing is to make it a priority and put in the time and effort to learn names and also structure classes and class activities so students can learn and use each other’s name, and more broadly, learning and using names goes to two important strategies I outline for increasing equity. We want to plan for learner variability, and we also want to plan for learner biases. So we want to proactively structure activities, office hours, interactions, knowing that we must expect and hey, let’s be joyful about this. We celebrate diversity as an academic asset, and that includes every unique and individual name. So that’s great. Let’s plan for that. Plan for ways to do that. If it means I’m going to have a shorter class the last day of our first week, because I’m going to make names the priority and I need time to practice them, then that’s what I’ll do. And two, the second one is also important, planning for ways that learner expectations or assumptions can flare up around names. So instead of getting caught in, “Oh my God, who is Mrs. Neuhaus, I spent so long in graduate school to get my PhD, do not call me Mrs. Neuhaus,” [LAUGHTER] like and then snapping “It’s Doctor, not Mrs.” I mean, that’s true, but is that helpful? Is that a good way to build connection, trust, equity and to move on productively? And does it feel good for me to do that? No, no, better is to have that practiced response, that script in my mind so we can address it and move on.

Rebecca: …In a much more calm fashion. Each chapter ends with a section called “gear for your go bag,” which we mentioned a little bit earlier. Can you talk a little bit about why you chose the metaphor of a go bag for these sections?

Jessamyn: Sure? Yeah, two reasons. One, just on a practical note, and especially for books like this one, that’s kind of crammed full of actionable teaching advice and you’re generating a lot of ideas as you’re reading it, it’s really helpful to have that concise summary at the end of the chapter. But second, I just love the metaphor. It resonates with the quotes that I use throughout the book, from the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. I deliberately chose this book, and I wanted to use it because it’s this very tongue in cheek, but also factual guide for surviving ludicrously terrible situations: your parachute doesn’t open, you get stuck in quicksand, you have to land a plane even though you’re not a pilot. And when I use it in my book, it’s this rejoinder to sanctimonious teaching advice that downplays or even ignores the reality of things going wrong, like “No, things go wrong.” So having a go bag in that context, it means you’re packed and ready for when things go sideways. In popular culture and in prepper world, it means you’re packed, ready to go when the apocalypse hits. So in the book, it’s just my little bit of a snarky way of saying we can at least have a few things to grab when something goes wrong.

John: What would you say is the major message that you’d like your readers to take away from this book.

Jessamyn: Sure, I have to start with a shout out to Liz Norell. She’s the author of The Present Professor. She was an early reader of Snafu in manuscript form, and she helped me identify and articulate three major ideas that run through the whole book and that I would like readers to take away into their teaching practices: humans mess up, inequities exist, but the super teacher does not exist. And don’t get me started too much on the super teacher. I’ll take up all the rest of my time. But since we haven’t mentioned it yet, the super teacher, I want you to think about the last time you saw a college professor character on a TV show or film, and specifically, were they teaching? And if they were teaching, what they were doing, they were lecturing. They’re always lecturing, but they’re not just lecturing. Their lectures are on this inherently fascinating topic, usually like psychosexual violence [LAUGHTER] or like serial killers. And students were mesmerized. They show, they always show… They depict the students. Nobody’s scrolling, nobody’s sleeping. They’re nodding. They’re eagerly raising their hands to ask questions. And after his, it’s not always, but often it’s, his lecture, his highly entertaining lecture that he gave with no notes whatsoever, the students might even feel moved to applaud. I mean, I ask you applause. Okay, so such depictions, they’re more than just amusingly inaccurate representations of the college classroom. They express this really persistent and powerful, limited and limiting assumption and expectation about what good teaching and authentic learning looks like. So it’s not just bad for teaching. It’s bad for learning, because in this representation, students do nothing but sit there and get entertained and somehow their heads are magically filled with knowledge. So it undermines our own self efficacy. It can undermine our self image. It really contributes to stereotypes around professors, and they are just born that way. The super professor’s not like going to the workshop and reflecting on pedagogical practices, and they’re definitely not messing up and then making an adjustment trying to do better. So it would make me really, really happy if, because of reading my book, any educator who gets caught in snafu, the first thing they think of is, “yep, humans mess up,” and then going forward, figuring out what to do next, keeping in mind that inequities exist, they’re reality, shaping everybody’s teaching and learning contexts, and that nobody can live up to that really impossible ideal that doesn’t reflect how teaching and learning actually works in real life, to stop, think, identify, and repair to the extent that is possible.

Rebecca: That seems like a great note to wrap up on, but we always wrap up by asking, “What’s next?”

Jessamyn: I am really excited about my current book project, which is going to be a guide for college educators to designing, assigning, assessing and, most importantly, enjoying, unessay projects.

Rebecca: That sounds fun.

Jessamyn: It’s going to be fun.

Rebecca: I like the underscore on the enjoying.

JESSMYN: Yes, yes. It’s the biggest ace in the hole for talking about unessays is that people who put in the work to design them, because it’s not easy, and assess them, also not easy, report that they have fun assessing them. That’s like a mind blowing, reality shattering statement, instead of slogging through grading, counting every minute you could have fun doing it. Yeah, let’s talk about that.

John: Fun is good. [LAUGHTER] Well, thank you. It’s always great talking to you, and we’re looking forward to future conversations.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Jessamyn: Thanks for having me.

Rebecca: I always appreciate that you put a full range of human emotion in talking about teaching and learning and enjoy your storytelling. So I’m glad folks will have the opportunity to read Snafu Edu soon. Thank you so much.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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357. Inclusive Socratic Teaching

Posted in classroom community, collaborative learning, diversity, equity, gender bias, higher education, inclusion, learning, pedagogy, race, social justice, support network, teaching
September 4, 2024

Socratic teaching is a primary pedagogical technique in American law school education. In this episode, Jamie Abrams joins us to discuss barriers this method can impose and strategies for a more inclusive approach to Socratic teaching.

Jamie is a Professor of Law and the Director of the Legal Rhetoric Program at the American University Washington College of Law.  She has published numerous books, chapters, and articles, including several on legal education pedagogy. Jamie is the recipient of teaching awards from Blackboard, the University of Louisville, and the American University Washington College of Law. She also co-founded the Brandeis Human Rights Advocacy Program at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law which works to advance the human rights of immigrants, refugees, and noncitizens.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Socratic teaching is a primary pedagogical technique in American law school education. In this episode, we discuss barriers this method can impose and strategies for a more inclusive approach to Socratic teaching.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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Rebecca: Our guest today is Jamie Abrams. Jamie is a Professor of Law and the Director of the Legal Rhetoric Program at the American University Washington College of Law. She has published numerous books, chapters, and articles, including several on legal education pedagogy. Jamie is the recipient of teaching awards from Blackboard, the University of Louisville, and the American University Washington College of Law. She also co-founded the Brandeis Human Rights Advocacy Program at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law which works to advance the human rights of immigrants, refugees, and noncitizens. Welcome, Jamie.

Jamie: Hello.

John: Our teas today are:… Jamie, are you drinking any tea?

Jamie: I am. I have a very simple green tea, but it’s in a special mug that one of my research assistants gave me that has a picture of the cover of a book I wrote and my research assistant worked on. So my tea is pretty basic, but my mug is pretty special.

John: And it’s on theme, because we will be talking about that book very shortly,

Rebecca: I have Scottish afternoon tea, despite the fact that we’re recording this in the morning. [LAUGHTER]

John: And I have Lady Grey tea today.

Rebecca: That’s a good choice, John. We invited you here today, Jamie, to talk about your most recent book, the one that’s on the mug, Inclusive Socratic Teaching: Why Law Schools Need It and How to Achieve It. Socratic teaching has long been a hallmark of legal education. Why has there been such a high level of curricular conformity in legal education?

Jamie: Yeah, it’s really kind of shocking, right? If we think for a second about what lawyers do. We hire lawyers to be innovators, problem solvers, creative thinkers, storytellers. So the idea that we educate in such a lockstep way is really kind of befuddling to me. You would think that schools, especially in a competitive market packed in fighting for these students, would find ways to differentiate. So I think personally, the US News and the larger than life role that the rankings processes have played over the years is one piece of the story. I also think it’s a lot of mimicry. So I became a law professor, and I started teaching how my law professors taught me, who were teaching how their law professors taught them. And also, I think there’s very little incentive to innovate. You have to sort of cross a certain threshold and be a quality and strong teacher, but at the end of the day, most of the incentives in academia generally, are skewed toward publication and other things, and there’s not a lot of incentive within our institutions. There’s no one to tell that you’ve innovated. There’s no one celebrating it or putting it on the website, but they’ll put your book on the website, and they’ll put your publications on the website. But I do think it’s ironic that the Socratic method was innovative at one point, that it was revolutionary to legal education, and now 100 years later, I’m not sure we can call it revolutionary anymore.

John: What is some of the harm done by this focus on Socratic teaching?

Jamie: Yeah.So first, let me just define Socratic teaching, just to make sure. So folks might define it different ways, but it’s typically a large lecture hall full of students, one professor situated at the front, and that Professor holds all of the power and engages in sort of serial Q and A with one student, than another, than another. So it might last the whole class with one student, some professors might do cold calls, where everyone in the room is sitting there scared, waiting to be on call, or others might take volunteers. And so this method of teaching is very distinct to legal education, and it has wielded the exact same criticisms, frankly, for 50 years, criticism that it marginalizes some voices and magnifies others. If you think about a classroom design, that’s literally true, like certain voices just carry dominantly on those microphones in our classrooms, others are harder to pick up, harder to hear. There are quantitative studies going all the way back to the 90s that male students, and white male students particularly, are much more comfortable engaging in this sort of intellectual sparring with the professor and other students might find that culturally dissonant to the way they would engage with the professor. It can be very abstract, sort of talking in the air about what the law is, which can cause students to sort of leave their identities at the door. We sort of pretend that the law is neutral, and while people in the room have been harmed by some of the legal rules that we’re teaching, and we don’t often acknowledge that, or we leave those students to raise the critiques directly. So those are some of the most concrete harms. But the other thing I would just briefly mention, those are the harms that I think are sourced to the Socratic method of teaching, this abstract perspectivelessness, sort of marginalizing hierarchy. But the thing that I’ve wrestled with in my work is: what are we protecting here? Are the rest of the students just thriving and loving this method of teaching? And that’s where I think it’s important to note that we have a real wellness crisis, in general, in legal education and the practice of law, with one in 10 students reporting self harm, one in six students with clinically diagnosed depression, one in four students with alcohol dependence. And so I sort of look at that data and like, “What are we protecting here? Why are we so afraid to innovate or try something new?”

Rebecca: Law school student bodies have also become more diverse. Has legal education evolved to support these more diverse student populations? It’s sounding like it’s not.

Jamie: It really is not, or the way that I describe it is we’re innovating around the curricular core. So it’s like we’ve bought a house and we’re doing beautiful renovations to closets and third floors and guest rooms, but we’re leaving the kitchen and the living room, where people spend the bulk of their time, untouched, and so we have beautifully more diverse student bodies, faculties, and our communities. But honestly, most of the reforms that have happened along with the diversification of who’s studying law have been more structural and less curricular. So we’ve popped up all of these support mechanisms, mentoring programs, pipeline programs, scholarships, affinity organizations, academic success programming, named chairs and all of these things are helpful. They provide structural support, but again, those are really incremental supports that risk giving the message to students that students are the problem, not the pedagogy. It’s saying, “Well, if any students are not thriving in this pedagogy, we’ll hire all these people to help support you through it,” instead of maybe reflecting that maybe the pedagogy isn’t working for everybody. So those kinds of support systems are helpful, but they’re sort of more harm reduction than transformation, and so our curriculums have not changed dramatically, other than seminars and ad hoc things like that.

John: Going back to the pedagogy a bit, one of the things that has been emphasized quite a bit in terms of inclusive teaching more broadly, is the importance of low-stakes formative assessments. But it sounds as if that has not been the norm in at least the core curriculum in law schools. Could you talk a little bit about how assessment takes place and what type of feedback students get in their core courses?

Jamie: Yeah, and one of the reasons I’m so excited to be on your podcast is legal education is so far behind other fields in pedagogical transformations. And so just about 10 years ago, we moved to outcomes-based assessment, frankly, pretty begrudgingly and reluctantly, but the accreditation bodies moved us in that direction, and most folks did it kind of superficially. We’ve added some learning outcomes to our course, and that was about it. So a typical law school course marches through 14 weeks of these sort of high anxiety, intellectual sparring with your professor, and then it historically culminated in a one time only three- or four-hour exam where you sit and that’s it, and you may not ever get that exam back. You’ll get your grade, you will move on, and from that professor, you’re unlikely to be able to get too much feedback, maybe a sample answer, or maybe a little bit of a summary of what your professor was looking for. But along the way, this outcomes-based education comes along, and frankly, most law faculty adapted very simply by just moving that summative exam that was so stressful and opaque and anxiety producing from the end and then plopped a midterm in October or March that does the exact same thing. It’s just as opaque, it’s just as stressful, it’s just worth less. But we’ve not really adapted in very thoughtful ways to do more no-stakes, low-stakes assessment, or to really help students see an arc, like a course of development of how the Socratic method fits into any of this. Is this a form of assessment, or is it just a method of teaching? I don’t think we’re clear for ourselves what the heck we’re doing with this method of teaching.

Rebecca: So as you brought in more diverse students, and the pedagogy hasn’t changed, and you have these supports here,[LAUGHTER] and that you’ve talked about some things kind of changing along the margins. Has the curriculum changed around the margins? Is that where some of the change has happened?

Jamie: So there’s a lot more dynamic programming. We have many more seminars and interesting named chairs and folks in our institutions who are institutional experts. But that being said, like a typical course in contracts or tort law or civil procedure still looks pretty much the same. The book I use, for example, is on it’s like 15th edition. It’s been around for 80 something years, and so how has it adapted? It shoves some more notes in to offer some more diverse perspectives, maybe eliminating some of the masculinized language or the racialized language in a practice problem or a hypothetical students are wrestling with. So I would say that, generally speaking, our teaching has become less problematic. But that’s not the same as becoming inclusive or excellent.

John: And in your book, you also talk a little bit of how the curriculum reflects the dominant culture, which doesn’t bring in a lot of voices, just by the nature of the curriculum with existing case law. What perhaps should be done to bring in more voices so that the curriculum better connects to the more diverse student body?

Jamie: Yeah. So I think reimagining a Socratic classroom around clients, around skills, and around communities could go a long way. So the one thing that Socratic classrooms offer that is beneficial is repetition, which is very helpful for students learning a new skill. And every class, every time they walk in, they’re going to start with one case, then a second case, then a third case, and they’re going to do that in all of their classes. So there actually is a lot of repetition happening. So what if instead we transformed that repetition into beginning with a client who called a lawyer. Why did they call a lawyer? What did they want? What had happened to that person? What did the law say when the lawyer first researched the law and did that answer the client’s problem, or did it not? And in most of our cases, it didn’t, and so they had to go to court. So there’s just so much more we could do to pull the exact same materials, the exact same law that we’re studying, and pull it down into communities. Like, how is this actually affecting people? And if you think about it, we’re packing classrooms. I have 88 people in my class that starts next week. There’s so many perspectives in that class. There’s going to be international students, students from rural America, from urban America, students from every geography in the country, like there’s so many great moments to just hear from that. But so this serial, I’m going to talk to student one, then student two, then student three, we’re missing all of the great opportunity to bring in. So there’s this famous movie, The Paper Chase. And in this movie, the professor is a legendary Socratic professor, and he says, “You came to me with a brain full of mush, and then I’m going to turn you into a lawyer.” And I think that that mentality, certainly less toxic today, but there’s still this idea that we need to eliminate, eradicate, this idea that our students come with a, quote, “brain full of mush,” and every year we have a room of 88 people from all over who’ve lived different experiences, who are going to read this exact same material and think about it differently, and our classrooms could be so much more engaging and different every semester, and more student centered if we start to embrace that instead of sticking with this serial case participation.

John: And I do have to say, as I was reading your book, I kept seeing John Houseman, both in the movie [LAUGHTER] and in the TV series. A brilliant actor.

Jamie: I think he won an Oscar for it,

John: I believe so, yeah.

Jamie: I have mad respect for anyone role playing a law professor who could win an Oscar. That’s impressive.

John: But I think that series did reflect some of the stress and anxiety that that method of teaching created for the students.

Jamie: Absolutely, there’s this famous scene. I can’t remember where it falls in the movie, but a group of these all white male students get a hotel room, and they lock themselves in, and they take the TV out, and they’re just spiraling into madness as they’re studying for the exam, and they’re talking about murder on the inside, such that the housekeeping staff ultimately gets suspicious of what’s going on in there. But it depicts everything of the toxicity. It certainly doesn’t look nothing like that anymore. But that the same idea of just this brain full of mush and then this frenzied push to an all in exam is certainly still there.

Rebecca: I think, whether you’re in a traditional kind of law faculty or in a different kind of department that still embraces traditional practices, no matter your discipline, introducing more inclusive practices can be daunting, can be hard. What do you see as some of the first steps to make some change? Is it something that you do as an individual? Is it something that you start to do and try to make a departmental change? How did the seeds of change happen, do you think?

Jamie: Yeah, one of the things that I think is a first problem to be addressed is we actually don’t have a community of teachers who teach in this way. And that’s actually kind of surprising. At least in legal education, there are robust communities of folks who teach legal writing, for example, that’s one of my areas of expertise. And we have conferences, we have newsletters, we have our own journals about pedagogy. We have idea banks, we have listservs where we share ideas. And that happens in clinical education. And so here, this is sort of like a rogue industry of Socratic teachers, sort of working as independent contractors, doing their own thing. You walk into a law clinic, whether it’s serving veterans in a private school, in a rural setting, or whether it’s doing housing cases in Manhattan, there’s a certain pedagogy and there’s a certain set of values that drive the work that these clinical classrooms are engaging in. And so I think one huge part of this is we need to build some community for those folks. There are 1000s of law professors, and more than that. My daughter is in AP gov and did a Socratic seminar as part of her coursework as well. And we’re exporting it around the world. A lot of law schools are trying to design themselves in an American tradition. And so I think one huge step is community building and figuring out how we can share ideas and have a sense of identity among Socratic teachers. So I think that’s a big part. Second, I think we also have a huge problem in academia generally, where we bifurcate staff and faculty roles, and so we have staff in our institutions who are working daily with students struggling through our classes, struggling through the bar, struggling through job placement, and then we have faculty just marching on doing their thing, and there’s very little information sharing about what kind of shared experiences, because it can depersonalize it. It’s not my classroom that’s a problem. But if we could hear our students in general are struggling with cold calling, with too much reading, with general anxiety, and we could start to be thinking much more as a community. And then finally, I think one of the big issues is this Socratic classroom props up the entire structure of time management for faculty, specifically. So I’m coming off my summer. I get back to teaching next week. And if I’m being honest, I probably spent 90% of my summer working on scholarship, and 10% working on teaching. And even the teaching, I wouldn’t really say, is working on teaching, it’s working on just rebooting the administrative components of it, updating my syllabus, getting my course learning management site up. It’s not teaching. I’m not transforming, I’m not redesigning, I’m not innovating, I’m marching forward. And I use my summers to do scholarship. And so I think for folks who are interested in innovating, we have to make some space for it so that others can follow.

John: There’s been a variety of critical approaches critiquing legal education. Have they had much of an impact?

Jamie: We have 50 years of scholars across a robust group of adjacent fields of scholarship, from feminist legal theory to critical race theory to LatCrit to queer theory. All of these critical perspectives have different methodologies, different agendas, and the one thing they all align on is naming the critiques of the Socratic method. And so I think, if I’m being reflective, these scholarly communities have had huge effects in building out that seminar programming, making more diverse hiring, and in the law itself, like how we think about what the law should be and scholarship, but at the end of the day, inside of the curriculum, I think the change has been a little bit more incremental, a little bit more add on. And so that’s kind of stressful for students too, to just shove in some extra readings here and there, but it’s not integrated in the book, and it sort of feels tangential or ad hoc. So I don’t think we’ve done a lot. Again, we’ve kind of done it around the core, and there’s great things happening. But I personally think that every person about to enter the legal profession should be thinking about it in more inclusive ways, of how the law affects communities. And just bluntly, every law is an expression of power, and somebody is going to benefit from that law, and someone is going to be harmed by it. And so it should be a part of training lawyers, not just seminar enrollment with your electives.

Rebecca: It’s really powerful just to just even think about that. I’m thinking about what you were saying about needing to shift from a 90/10 to a different kind of percentage, and how you start to make that shift if you also need to start forming community when a community doesn’t actually currently exist, because some of that time would need to be allocated to the community too. So it’s not as clean as a 90/10.

Jamie: That’s exactly right. And so, for example, I’m really excited since this book came out, I’ve done a couple of talks with faculty. Teaching is so vulnerable. Reading course evaluations, you have to be in the right mental space to open those. It’s hard, it’s searing, it’s vulnerable, just like our students’ experience when they open our feedback on their essays and their exams. And so I think here, if it feels like an attack and someone saying your teaching is outdated or your teaching is too traditional, it shuts people down. But if instead, we could bring in a speaker and look at a script of a typical Socratic dialog: what were the facts of the case, what was the holding of the case, what was the issue in the case, and critique it. That’s pretty darn abstract. It actually is abstract. How could we reframe this? And then the legal writing faculty in the room and the clinical faculty might say, “Why don’t you ask who hired a lawyer and why? Because those are the people who walk into our clinic.” And then the legal writing, people might say, “Why don’t you ask what legal sources that lawyer found when they researched on behalf of their client?” And so I think there are just cool ways within our faculty where we can all be learning from each other, but it does, I think, have to be a bit community based, otherwise it just feels too personal. And so one of the things I talk about in the book is this kind of paradoxical opportunity that COVID created, because the very idea that 180 something law schools and all of these faculties, in a flip of a switch, changed how they taught, and it wasn’t right, it was frenzied and it was flawed, but it was necessary, and we did it. And so, similarly, I think here, if it feels less personal, and it feels like we have to do this for our students, because one in 10 of our students is engaging in self harm, and one in four has alcohol dependence, like we can make some changes. I think we feel like we’re doing something together, instead of feeling like we’re attacked by someone critiquing our teaching.

John: You advocate inclusive Socratic teaching, so you’re not suggesting that Socratic teaching be eliminated. What aspects of Socratic teaching would be kept? What are the benefits of it that you’d like to see persisting?

Jamie: Yeah, and first I should say advocating might be a strong word for keeping Socratic method. I think I just approach it from sheer pragmatism… that change, you can’t bludgeon change. Change is hard. Faculties are not the most change oriented groups of people. The critiques are fair, and I think people actually agree with those critiques, but I do not think that the critical mass is there ready to upend the Socratic classroom and reimagine legal education. And so I sort of start from that premise and then say, “Okay, well, what could we do within this?” And so I kind of pitch my thinking on this as we should keep blowing the roof off of legal education, reimagining how we think about teaching. But while we’re doing that, which takes some time, we have to raise the floor and just raise our standards. So the things that I suggest are that we come up with a set of shared pedagogies that shape a Socratic classroom, and I propose that those frame Socratic teaching around techniques that are student centered, skill centered, client centered and community centered. And so my thinking with that is changing books is hard, changing testing techniques is hard, changing your teaching notes is hard, but if we could just reframe our existing dialogs using our existing materials, I think we could go a long way to diffusing that power role that the professor plays at the front. And frankly, it’s kind of liberating to hand a lot of power to the students. It takes pressure off the professor. It’s not this intellectual sparring, it’s a community of soon to be lawyers working together to talk about cases and what happened. And so I think it’s just a much more achievable method of reform. But in bulk, given how much of the time our students spend in these courses, I think the results could be transformative.

Rebecca: It seems like one of the key things that you’re promoting is the idea of the connectedness, that it’s not abstract, and that it’s connected to each individual, and that there’s a way for them to see how it would impact their lives, or the lives of their individual communities, or the communities that they’re a part of.

Jamie: Yeah. And I think the wealth of scholars who are writing about wellness in the profession are really great on this topic, which is, if we were to try to source where is this depression coming from… what’s happening? Law students enter legal education with similar levels of happiness and healthiness to their similarly situated peers, and then something’s happening in that first year. And I think that’s exactly what it is. It is the loss of community. Students are afraid to come into office hours, that someone else might hear their questions. And it varies at different schools how competitive and how individualistic the pursuit is, but when I think about my time practicing law, it was not individualistic at all. It’s sitting in a conference room hashing out ideas, throwing out ideas, brainstorming what to do, coming up with a plan B and a Plan C and a Plan D, and teams of lawyers thinking things through and the study of law is a lot of holeing yourself up in the library and just grinding it out, and maybe you might look to the people to your right and left as your competition. Certainly we need to do a lot more to help see that these are your future collaborators and colleagues, and you’re joining a profession that is a community, and you’ll rely on them much more in your practice than law school gives the impression of.

John: So shifting to more teamwork and collaborative work would be part of this revision. What other changes would you like to see in terms of how classrooms are functioning in a more inclusive approach?

Jamie: I would say, first, we need to be transparent with our students. If we’re using the Socratic method, why? What is happening, and it’s very opaque. So for example, if I were to propose one change to the most cynical or incrementalist of teachers who’s sort of skeptically considering this. Very simply, just tell your students what you’re doing with the Socratic method. Why are you using it? How does it prepare you for the exam? How does it prepare you for lawyering or the bar exam? What is it doing? And that can just be helpful. That’s a first step. Second. I think it’s helpful to start to think about pulling out of our Socratic methods. More clients, community, and skills. And then third, I think we have to tether this to a repackaging of our exam strategies as well. So what we’re doing in the classroom should be a form of no-stakes, low-stakes readiness for what you’re going to ask students to do on the exam. And so similarly, if we can start to ground our exams in more purposeful. So many of our exams are very abstract. You’ll give students a bunch of things that happen. I teach tort law with like personal injuries. So there’s a car accident, and then someone on those college campus scooters leaves it, and someone trips on it, and all sorts of sort of parade of horribles happening. And then we say: analyze. But who’s our client? Who’s paying us? What’s our mission? What was our community? Where did this happen? We could just do more to align what we’re doing in the classroom with these exams. And I think a lot of that aligns with where legal education is heading anyway, which is toward more professional identity formation, more development of cultural competencies. And so I think this, it can fulfill a lot of pedagogical objectives.

Rebecca: I hinted towards this a little bit earlier, about there’s individual things you can do to start to form community around you, or to connect with people who might be interested [LAUGHTER] in pursuing some of these things as well. Those individuals may not be your colleagues within your department. They may be other folks that you’ve met at conferences. How do you start nudging the people around you, maybe, who need the nudging? [LAUGHTER]

Jamie: Yeah, absolutely, I think it’s important to note that Socratic teaching in its traditional form is really hard on teachers too. We’ve talked about how it’s hard on students, but I look back on my early years of teaching, and it is a constant debilitating fear that your students are going to catch you in something you don’t know, or a mistake you made, and that’s just an unrealistic set of expectations. I practiced law. I was a talented lawyer. I’m a talented professor, but I still know only a fraction of the material that I’m teaching. There’s still room to learn. There’s still cases I never had and areas I never practiced in. And so it’s a very stress inducing experience for the professor, too, and particularly the new professor. And so over time, it becomes very sustainable, but at the beginning, it’s actually debilitatingly terrifying,[LAUGHTER] and especially it’s because of that intellectual sparring vibe. You can picture the student who’s like, mission in life is to outspar their professor, and so, that’s just a terrible approach to learning in general. And so I think a little bit of this, more experience sharing of how teaching can be more engaging, right? I teach the same courses every single year, but if we’re teaching in more student-centered, community-centered ways, our students are changing dramatically, how they think about the world, how they think about learning, our communities are changing dramatically, and our communities are, frankly, more polarized and divisive than ever. And so what are we going to do about that? So for tort law, for example, we’re going to go to a jury. Which kind of jury in COVID Are you going to get? The jury that COVID is not serious, or the jury where COVID has the whole community on lockdown? It’s a totally different set of values and norms driving a community. And so I think that it can just be such a more engaging way to teach if we open up the idea that our students are going to engage with the material in different ways every year, and it also takes the professor out of it, like I try to teach in inclusive Socratic techniques, and one of the things that I think is the biggest benefit of what I try to do is I don’t have a line out my door at exam time of panicked students. I do review sessions, and people come to office hours throughout, but if you’re more transparent with your students about what you expect of them and if they know how you’re going to test them at the end, and if every class is a chance to practice that over and over, it also takes a little bit of this tension out of the grades that I give and the conversations that you have with students around exam time, they can start to support themselves. You can start to transfer. They can study in groups and take practice problems together. And so in some respects, I think it’s less fatiguing and it feels less high stakes, because I can’t have all the answers. I have my lived experience. But when someone else engages on a topic in the class, the other folks in the class might have a dramatically better answer than I ever could have thought of. So I think just being a little bit more vulnerable and raw in like talking to each other about what Socratic teaching is actually like, especially in these first years, and I should mention especially for women professors and professors of color, because we have this image and this bias in our head of what a law professor looks like. And so if you stand there with a quieter voice, a smaller frame, if your voice doesn’t carry in the same way across the classroom, if you’re a person of color, there’s great series of talking about presumptions of competence, and how students on bulk don’t give a presumption of competence to their professors of color. And then you imagine that intellectual sparring and what that’s like when you have someone who looks like what you thought your law professor would look like, and someone who doesn’t. It’s a dramatically different experience. And so that was a very long answer, but building community and more honesty about what teaching in this tradition feels like.

Rebecca: So I feel like you might have some folks who might just say, “but Jamie, I’ve got my habits and I’m tired [LAUGHTER]…

Jamie: Yes, yes. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: …and I don’t wanna,” but I feel like those same folks might buy in if you say it’s really important for the new people, or for the diversification of the field, to make a little bit of room for these new folks and to establish some of these other kinds of patterns so they don’t get the pushback, and that they don’t have some of this stress. A lot of times, I think some of our seasoned faculty actually are really willing to budge a little bit so that some of the people that they really want to see succeed can, if they understand why those people can’t succeed. Sometimes you have to be really explicit about why they can’t succeed though, they just don’t get it.

Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I think is important too, is, despite everything we’ve talked about in our time together, about the critiques and the harms, course evals are great for these professors, right? Like these are beloved professors. They’re revered, people aspire to be in their classrooms. There is tremendous peer pressure in teaching to conform. So one of the things I talk about in the book is, at a minimum, we just need to stop putting Socratic teaching on a pedestal and making it immune from accountability, even if you don’t want to change. Just stop pretending that your classroom is the default, and just make space that there could be other classrooms. And because what’s happening is anyone who wants to try to innovate or approach it in a different way is going to be evaluated by folks teaching in that traditional perspective. So there’s some room for academic deans to give some structure to what are we doing when we do peer evaluations, it’s not mimicry and conformity, like we should have some objective criteria that could be fulfilled in any number of teaching techniques, but there’s a lot of just this conformity. And so I think making some space to liberate peer evaluations, to rethink the questions we ask on our course evaluations, like the dominant questions on a law school course: “Was your professor knowledgeable? Was your professor available? Did your professor handle difficult topics well?” It’s all Professor centered, instead of, “Did you feel welcome in the classroom? Did you have the tools you needed to succeed?” Even our questions could be more student centered to start to measure things from the student perspective instead of let’s just assess whether you thought your professor was smart enough, which is an incredibly narrow and subjective and infused with bias way to approach it.

Rebecca: You mean like a question, like, “Did you receive feedback throughout the semester?”

Jamie: [LAUGHTER] That’s a great question. That would be a great question. One quick anecdote I would love to mention. As I was working on this book, I had the chance to present… every year, there is a new law professors conference that takes place in Washington, DC, run by the American Association of Law Schools. And so, I don’t know, maybe 150, 200 people come. These are the new hires. They’re entering. They’re going into academia all over the country. First of all, as a slight aside, everyone calls it the baby law profs, which already tells you that we are not embracing the idea that new people come in with new ideas. But anyway, putting that aside, I got the chance to do a session on the Socratic method there, and I would describe it as pretty raw, because in that room are people who want to change, like they’re at that moment, and they’re actually at a conference that’s doing some of the assimilation, and saying, “Let me teach you how to teach in the Socratic method,” like, “let me teach you how to handle exam writing.” And so that kind of tells you that there’s just this assimilation process, and on the topic of the Socratic method, it was quite raw, because many of those faculty, they’ve been in practice, and they see the flaws of it, they see the limitations of it, and they’re excited to innovate. And then slowly, we kind of dull that instinct and start to channel toward conformity in a way that I think is really problematic. That’s a great place where we could start. And let’s open it up, let’s hear from innovators. Who’s not teaching in a Socratic method? Let’s get them in front of these students and these new law professors, and let’s get a more diverse panel of what other techniques folks are using, what’s working, what’s not.

John: Following up with that issue of diversity, in your book, and you alluded to this just a few minutes ago, there seem to be some pretty substantial gender inequities in terms of legal instruction. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. And I honestly would love to talk about it a little bit more from the perspective of personal narrative, because I think that will tell the story quite representatively. So I’ve been in teaching for 17 years. I have two children, and I’ve had zero maternity leaves. One I was lucky enough to have in June, and so it worked out. The second was born in September… didn’t work out… and I kept teaching through that semester. I was a term faculty member, as many women faculty are, so I was not full time, not eligible for FMLA, and I hadn’t been there for a year. And I remember talking to my academic dean. I remember coming home and being like, “he’s gonna let me teach.” And I was so grateful that I was gonna be allowed to come in after giving birth and keep teaching. And I look back on that, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, there are so many layers of problems with that….” that I actually sincerely felt that, and that I was so grateful to just have a job through that. And so anyways, so I was in legal writing, which is dominated by women, as is clinical faculty, and really limited in its opportunities for tenure-track positions. And so I ultimately went on the tenure track, and you have to be geographically mobile often to do that. And so that landed me in the middle of Kentucky, in Louisville, Kentucky, from Manhattan, and my spouse was a financial services guy working in Manhattan, and somehow did not seem as excited about Louisville, Kentucky’s financial services market as I was, and so we ended up living there 10 years, and seven of them he commuted. Seven years of solo parenting. And like when you start to add that up, schools get out at three o’clock. You get the kids on the bus, you get to school. How many conferences is that? How many more papers could you have published? How many more networking dinners and Bar Association events or award if I were able to be a full time… I was a full-time professor, but solo parenting, just to have a job, not to rise in the job or thrive in the job, but just to call myself a professor. Quite candidly, it nearly destroyed our family. Seven years of commuting is financially taxing, it’s emotionally taxing, it’s very hard on relationships, and that experience is so typical. I could name dozens and dozens. We are not great at spousal hiring. We’re not great at childcare. We’ve got lots of issues and just lots of stunted opportunities. And then the last thing I’ll say is all those things we talked about, the mentoring, the support programs, the affinity groups, those are often led by women and professors of color. And so there’s a piece of legal scholarship that I really like that says the women professors do the housekeeping at home and the housekeeping institutionally. And so women faculty and faculty of color doing disproportionate amounts of service, particularly the kind of service that isn’t really counted very well. Certain kinds of service are quite well distinguished and coveted, but mentoring students can kind of fall off the grid, and being the person that people just come to for support is not really tracked, but that’s time lost. So those are some of my personal experiences with it. I think the most raw example of it is I will never forget the day I found out I was awarded tenure. We had multiple days of the meetings, and so I didn’t know which day would be the day my package would be considered, but the day we found out my spouse was out of town, and there’s a tradition of a champagne toast at the end for folks who were just awarded tenure. And I couldn’t be there for the champagne toast because I had to go home, and then I went home to solo parenting, and I just remember I was very upset about it, and I just remember feeling like that’s the stuff, that community and that I was there and I was thriving, but I was not able to engage in the ways that we would want our faculty to under those circumstances. That was a raw, dark note to end on.

Rebecca: Those are the realities, I think, of a lot of complexities of higher ed that we’re still trying to untangle.

Jamie: And I think the thing that excited me so much about you inviting me to join the podcast is we don’t talk very much across schools. We don’t talk across fields. And legal education is pretty darn far behind. We have a lot to learn from peers, if we’re open to it. And so I think that these struggles are not unique to legal education, and other fields and areas are much more ahead of us. And so if we could just open our minds to more learning,= 360 from those around us.

John: And your book should help contribute to that, at least in the legal profession.

Jamie: I hope so. My favorite thing to do with the book is do faculty presentations that are conversations where, similarly, where I begin with the presentation, and then I’m out of it, right? Just like I’m describing we should be doing in our classrooms, where, what’s happening at your school, what could you be doing? And it’s a really rewarding feeling to see faculty talking among themselves about pedagogy and not being talked at.

Rebecca: …sounds like a great place to get to our last question, which is: we always end by asking, what’s next?

Jamie: Well, I think if I were talking to colleagues listening who are teaching in the Socratic tradition, I would say, start with something. We often set such high goals for ourselves that it feels like too much. Just pick a couple of things, the transparency, try a different method of assessment, or talk to your colleagues about what methods of assessment might be more helpful to give feedback to students. My first message would be to start with just a couple of things and just see how it feels. We don’t need to rewrite our books or rewrite our syllabi, but I also think there’s a lot of institutional work that needs to be done. I think this grassroots and this coalition of the willing is one strategy. But also, I would love to see more leadership at the top of academic deans and institutional structures, just doing a little bit more. Like, what if we promoted in our marketing some of our great teachers? What if we could do some spotlighting on students talking about what they love about their great teachers. I think there’s a little more we could be doing to create a culture that values innovation in teaching. Lots of our teaching awards are kind of popularity contests. What if we had awards for innovation, where we start to incentivize in that direction? And so I think institutionally, there’s a lot of work we could do to start to set the tone at the top that this is something that actually matters, and we can actually differentiate in the kind of pedagogy we’re delivering.

Rebecca: Well, I hope your book sparks some great change in the spaces that you want the change to happen.

Jamie: Thank you so much. Conversation about teaching, I think, is the answer to the beginning of all of this. So I’m so grateful to be on this podcast and to see the work you all are doing in bringing folks together from various fields and traditions, and it’s really inspiring.

John: Well, thank you. I really enjoyed reading your book. It’s an area that we had not really talked about before, and it sounds like it’s an area where there could be some very productive changes made.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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355. Class Dismissed

Posted in access, diversity, engagement, equity, first-generation, higher education, inclusion, income inequality, learning, race, racism, social justice, support network, teaching
August 21, 2024

Institutional racism in the form of redlining and unequal access to educational and housing opportunities have left generations of students without equitable access to higher education. In this episode, Anthony Abraham Jack joins us to discuss the challenges that first-gen students face and what colleges and faculty can do to reduce these inequities.

Tony is the Inaugural Faculty Director of the Boston University Newbury Center and Associate Professor of Higher Education Leadership at Boston University. Tony’s research has appeared in numerous scholarly publications and he is the recipient of numerous awards from the American Sociological Association, American Educational Studies Association, Association for the Study of Higher Education, Eastern Sociological Society, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. He is the author of The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students and Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Institutional racism in the form of redlining and unequal access to educational and housing opportunities have left generations of students without equitable access to higher education. In this episode, we examine the challenges that first-gen students face and what colleges and faculty can do to reduce these inequities.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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Rebecca: Our guest today is Anthony Abraham Jack. He is the Inaugural Faculty Director of the Boston University Newbury Center and Associate Professor of Higher Education Leadership at Boston University. Tony’s research has appeared in numerous scholarly publications and he is the recipient of numerous awards from the American Sociological Association, American Educational Studies Association, Association for the Study of Higher Education, Eastern Sociological Society, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. He is the author of The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students. His new book, Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price is scheduled for release in August. Welcome Tony.

Tony: Hi. Thank you all for having me.

John: Our teas today are:… Tony, are you drinking tea?

Tony: I’m actually drinking water, but I was actually thinking about going to get the Bengal spice tea that’s in my cabinet right now.

Rebecca: That sounds yummy, maybe afterwards, huh?

Tony: Indeed.

Rebecca: I have a new tea John that I got when I was in Scotland. So this is a 1903 blend from Pekoe Tea Edinburgh.

John: Wow. Yeah, I saw some of the photos from your world tour there while I’ve been in the classroom here, so just rub it in a little bit.

Rebecca: I’m trying. [LAUGHTER]

John: …and I am drinking an Irish Breakfast tea..

Rebecca: that’s on theme

John: …from Wegmans [LAUGHTER] here in Durham, North Carolina.

Rebecca: So, Tony, we invited you here today to discuss your forthcoming book, Class Dismissed. But first, maybe it’d be helpful if you tell us a little bit about your own educational journey.

Tony: There are two things that I always share about getting to this spot of being an educator and being an academic is: I’m a head start kid and I’m a first generation college student. Those two things are central to who I am and the work that I do. If it were not for Head Start, I would have a very different educational trajectory. Head Start put me in a school across the tracks, literally, in Miami. I went to a school that I wasn’t zoned for, because that dividing line that was McDonald’s Street. I was supposed to go to that dividing line of McDonald’s separated West Grove from Coconut Grove, where the Bahamian settlers were who cleaned up behind the white, wealthier families that live on the other side, and the schools were night and day in many respects, from the resources that they had, even class sizes were a little bit different. It was just a very different place. And what’s interesting is, if you were to come to my office right now, I actually have a map of Coconut Grove, and it literally says Coconut Grove Negro district, and on this official city map, you actually see the line that was drawn by city officials to say where black people could and could not live. That was fundamental. Head Start, it didn’t remove me from that history, but it didn’t make me travel the same path that that history would force me to any other way. And I’m a first-generation college student. I’m the son of a security guard. My mom actually helped segregate her middle school that she then worked at for 31 years as a school monitor, and my brother is a janitor who actually works at my old elementary school. No one in my family extended learning beyond college, but they made it possible through everything that life could throw at us, that made it possible for me to go to college, and those two things fundamentally shape who I am. As a Head Start kid, I can’t help but think about being from Coconut Grove. Every city in America has their Del Mar divide, that street that separates the richest and the poorest. Thinking about like it is in St Louis, I live very close to ours, and my education trajectory looks very different from everybody else who I went to school with. So many people who I live next to had a very different trajectory. So those two things really speak. And I was very fortunate to end up at Amherst College for undergrad, and then I came over to Harvard University to pursue my PhD. And to be honest with you, I haven’t left school yet. Since the moment I entered through Head Start, I have not left school. It’s been a lifelong dream to be a forever student, and I’m living it.

Rebecca: I’m living that lifelong student trajectory as well. [LAUGHTER]

John: Me too. The history of redlining and dividing districts and federal funding and loan availability in terms of those redlined districts, which weren’t always labeled that way, but they were still treated that way in terms of the availability of FHA loans and so forth…

Tony: Exactly.

John: …for a remarkably Long time, led to some horrible inequalities in terms of school financing.

Tony: Yeah, how the United States did policy for transportation. When you think about I-95 they literally drove highways through neighborhoods and say, “Okay, black people live over here, white people can live over here”. Even, how we handled the GI Bill, even though it was supposed to be one of the most universal policies. One, it wasn’t universal because so many women were not available for it, and then yet, the racialization of it was also a major aspect. So yeah, between redlining and blockbusting. So actions that real estate agents would say they would purposely introduce a black family in a neighborhood selling a house at like 125% of its value. But then when those whites who did not want to have a black neighbor, they were quick to sell and leave, and neighborhoods began going from all white to all black in that very short period of time. And you think about the resources that left because of income differences and segregation, weighed down by racism with income, I was removed from some of that, because Head Start placed me at Coconut Grove Elementary, and the principal there, Don Beebe, said he gets to stay. Not everybody had that opportunity.

John: And you talked about some of this in The Privileged Poor, where you talked about some of the inequities in colleges based on the amount of privilege that students had. Could you talk a little bit about the thesis of that to help set the stage for your more recent book?

Tony: Yeah, The Privileged Poor came about because of two things, and very much personal experience, but in two ways, experiential personal experience, how I experienced as a student, but it also what I had to grapple with as a graduate student, because as a student, I was trying to figure out what was going on when I got to Amherst, because so many people had gone to boarding school like Andover and Exeter and Saint Paul, or these really, really ritzy prep schools like Hackaday and Sidwell Friends and Nightingale I had graduated from a prep school in Miami, but from Head Start to 11th grade, I was a public school student. I had a football coach who liked athlete students but didn’t like student athletes, and so I transferred schools my senior year because I didn’t want to be under that kind of regime. And then Amherst called that football coach and said, “Hey, do you got a student who can pass our test?” He said, “Yeah, we got a kid this year,” and the rest was kind of history. The reason why I tell that story is because when I got to Amherst, I discovered that my individual detour through a private school was actually a well established on-ramp to elite colleges because of programs like Prep for Prep, A Better Chance, the Wight Foundation (W, I, G, H, T), and all these other programs that place lower income and sometimes lower income students of color into boarding day and preparatory high schools. So I’m like, “Okay, this is different.” This is people come from all over the place. It’s not just the rich people who are coming from these ritz y places. But then I got to graduate school, and as a sociologist, I’m reading about these inequalities and cultural inequality and race and all that stuff, but no one who’s writing about education is speaking about these students. They kept speaking about students as a monolithic group, really like they were painting with one brush stroke, and I was like, “Well, they got half the story right.” A lot of the people who I knew did struggle with isolation and difference and culture shock, but the other half of students, roughly, did not, like I had friends who studied abroad in high school for a year. I had friends who had flown on private jets. I had friends who had experiences that I only saw on movies and TV shows, like Gossip Girl. And so I put my experience as an undergrad in conversation with what I was learning as a graduate student and say, “Hey, something’s going on here.” And what I learned is colleges were hedging their bets. They were getting their new diversity from old sources. They were increasing the number of lower income students, but they were not saying was that they were going to private schools to get those students. And my research show that one half of lower income black students at elite colleges like Amherst and Harvard are actually the alumni of those boarding, day, and preparatory high schools. And so when I was dealing with all of that, that’s what came up with the privileged poor. Privileged poor is an oxymoron. It’s about somebody having little economic capital but having high stocks of cultural capital. They had been to elite places before. They had traveled to Tulum, they had traveled to Martha’s Vineyard, they had traveled to Nantucket, all of these very, very ritzy places. And when they got to college, they were in their fifth year of boarding school, really, and I contrast their experiences to the doubly disadvantaged, those lower income students who don’t have that same experience. And the reason why it was important to me to draw out this distinction was because any program that we created to help students in college, especially lower income and first year in college students, it would miss the mark, because if we had these two modal groups, these two people who are on different sides of the coin, if we try to navigate right down the middle, we will miss out on so many students. And so I use the privilege poor and the doubly disadvantaged, kind of like the miners’ canary, I’m able to show when and how class matters in college, both symbolically through cultural capital, those taken for granted ways of being that are valued by colleges and universities, but then also economic capital. I’ll give you just two quick examples. One, who knows what office hours are? Who’s comfortable using them? And who knows how valuable they can be, not just for your present but also your future? Usually, the literature and other people say, it’s usually the wealthier students, people whose fam went to college, I show that it wasn’t just those from money who felt comfortable, but those who had experience that only money could buy, the privileged poor and the middle class were more comfortable, the doubly disadvantaged were not. They got access to the letters recommendation. They got access to institutional resources at a higher rate than their lower income peers. But when campus closed during spring breaks, and it was about how much money you had in your pocket, now how much cultural capital you have in your mind, it didn’t matter whether you were privileged poor or doubly disadvantaged, you went hungry. And so I was able to show how students’ trajectories to college shape their pathways through college in a new and novel way. And so The Privileged Poor allowed me to engage with policy as well as academics and reducing some of the inequalities on campus.

John: The Privileged Poor was written before the pandemic, but then the pandemic hit and you started working on this new book. Could you talk a little bit about what you observed there and how that led to Class Dismissed?

Tony: Yes. So The Privileged Poor was published in 2019 and I was very fortunate that in the years in between now and 2019 I got to visit a lot of college and universities that have begun working with them to change their policies, and to date, over 80 universities have changed their dining hall policies to account for food insecurity on their campuses, both from small liberal arts colleges to large public institutions and every institution in between. And so I was having this good rapport. And The Privileged Poor also focuses on life on campus. It tries to understand how class shapes students’ engagement with their peers, professors, and the policies that govern campus life. And one thing that kept gnawing at me was that a question that The Privileged Poor cannot answer head on because of what wanted to focus on then was about students’ lives off campus, especially their families in their neighborhoods, and how that continues to shape how they move through campus. Class Dismissed came about because I was asked to do a project about how black students were experiencing inequalities on campus, especially during the pandemic, and I said I like the premise, but to fully understand how inequality shapes how students move through campus, I want to expand who I’m speaking to and the questions that I’m asking with a particular focus: how does the inequalities off campus shape daily life on campus? And that’s how this project began. I was invited to do this study by William Julius Wilson, a preeminent sociologist, and I interviewed 125 Asian, Black, Latino, Native, white and mixed students to understand truly how COVID exacerbated the very inequalities that universities were ignoring, especially how structural inequalities like poverty, segregation, the lasting legacy of redlining and blockbusting, which we already talked about at the beginning of this conversation, continues to shape how students move through campus, and I was very excited and intentional about including more groups to study, because I want to show you just how different their experiences are, especially by inclusion of Native students, who are sadly one of the most overlooked groups of college students that we have, to be able to show not just the lasting legacy of redlining and blockbusting, but the lasting legacy of land theft and disenfranchisement, deepens our understanding of what universities need to do to prepare for these students. I know we probably want to get into it, but there’s something about understanding where students come from that really shapes our understanding of where they return to and when COVID shut down campus, even if the policies for these closures were correct, we show just how ill prepared we were to help students navigate that transition. And again, and I say this in the book, this book is not a COVID book. This book is not about COVID. This book is about the inequalities that existed before that were worsened by campus closures and the pandemic. Because I really wanted us to understand where students come from and how that continues to shape their life, both as a springboard into more opportunity, because in the book, I talk about students who were able to take on unpaid internships during the pandemic. Even as the pandemic shut most of the world down, crippled some countries to the brink of bankruptcy and collapse, there were students who were taking on unpaid internships at venture capital firms, compared to then being able to show well, yeah, lower income students also took on unpaid labor, but it took on a very different form, and yet new is I’m actually going beyond just saying that both groups of students took on unpaid internships or unpaid labor, I actually show that the skill sets that are used by lower income students to carry out the work that are thrust upon them often requires a higher level skill set than those used by those in unpaid internships who complained about the grunt work and the busy work that they were able to do. But here’s the rub, whose CV is going to say what? Whose CV is going to have the right title? Whose CV is going to have the right employer? Whose CV is going to have the right detailed job description? And whose CV is going to remain silent about all the extra work that they did in addition to classes, in addition to other familiar responsibilities? So that’s why I said, to me, I hope people take away from the book that yes, COVID had a different effect on students. But I really want us to pay concrete attention to the way in which so much of what I talk about existed before March 2020, before campus closed, and these processes were continued for generations because that black box of unpaid labor that happens for lower income students, that wasn’t created four years ago, that has already existed. But then I try to also offer concrete things that we can do to begin to understand this. Because I don’t know if you all remember, in the early 2000s the Common Application introduced the familiar responsibility question to understand why students are, for example, not part of Glee Club and key society and playing a sport. And some people like, “well, I work,” or “I take care of my grandparents, “and they saw this familiar responsibility question really changed the way in which admissions officers were able to get a texture of students’ life. I asked a simple but a fundamental question in the book, Why do we have this at the end of high school, beginning of college, to help students get into college, but we have nothing like it on the way out? What are employers missing by not understanding the unpaid labor that all students do, and not just those who go to familiar places, by venture capital firms or a senator’s office or some of the other things, knowing that the work they do is mostly grunt work that doesn’t give them any kind of true experience.

Rebecca: It’s interesting that all of these inequities have existed forever, and COVID did make things more visible, but that doesn’t mean that a lot of change has occurred. Can you talk a little bit about some of the ways that colleges continue to fall short?

Tony: Yeah, one of the things that I highlight in my work is, oftentimes, I don’t want to say the actions, but the happenings of the most overlooked offices on campus. And I’ll talk about like, you know, the Dean of Students Office and other places like that. And to give you an example, I talk a lot about academic leave policies in the book, and the reason why is because it often shows both the class biases and the, quite frankly, ignorance that colleges have about where students come from, and I talk a lot about where students come from, because we’re talking about universities that are reaching out and saying, “We want you. We want a student from every state and every type of community, like we want to diversify our campuses along all of these lines.” But are you ready for it? If you want it, you get credit for recruiting it. But are you ready? Do you actually know what students need? The reason why I talk about leave policies is because I exposed in the book the very class and paternalistic approach that we take to it. When a student wants to take a year off and do an internship or just take a year off just to travel, the only thing they have to do is email that Dean and say, “Hey, I’m not coming back next semester.” They fill out something, but it’s usually very light work. If a student is asked to take the time off, and a lot of people will say, “Well, it’s probably because they cheated, or that something like that,” it’s often not because of the work. It’s because they are struggling to manage the expectations of home and the reality of college. When universities tell students that they need to leave campus for academic leave, they almost act like parole officers and put a whole bunch of responsibilities on students, new responsibilities on students as they are going home. So even though a student is at their most vulnerable, many universities require students to work a full-time job and take class at a local university while they are away from campus. There are some universities that require letters of recommendation from that employer. Now to middle-class America, that may not sound so outrageous, but what if you come from a community where 50% population have jobs and the other half do not? What if you come from a community where you’re not only the first person in your family to go to college, you one of a few people in the entire community to go to college. Who is comfortable and familiar with writing the types of letter of recommendation to assess your mental ability when you are fighting to get a job at the local fast food joint or Walgreens or CVS or Duane Reade, because that’s all the jobs that you could possibly apply for in your area. If we don’t understand the geography of inequality, especially as it pertains to access to employment, access to schools, access to mental health counselors or individuals who can assess that, are we truly helping students when we’re giving them a task that can’t be done, not while they’re home? There are some students who had to leave home after they have left college to go to a place to be able to fulfill that because they live on the reservation and finding work in that way was impossible? What about our students who come from more rural communities where jobs aren’t as available as the apples on trees? There are so many things, and so I use students’ experiences to not only show how different those who come from privilege and those who do not, how different their college times are. But I also relate that to policies that we could actually change on the college campus to address the inequalities. It’s heartening that the University of Rochester, for example, has a program that they’ve had for years called the Take Five program, because they know that lower income students disproportionately have more disruptive life events that undercut their academic experience. They were like, you are admitted under this take five program, because we know that this time that you are investing in higher education is often going to be punctured with moments that leave you so broken and bruised you might take a week or two slower. And so I try to highlight those other things. And the reason why I talk about policy here is because, as I was doing this book, I was inspired by the work in The Privileged Poor, where I was able to get universities, for example, to change their dining hall policy. And so I sent out a theme for the book. I said, “Well, now that we know what we know, what are we going to do about it? What’s the point in just writing about inequality if we’re not going to address it? If students’ stories give the general scaffolding of policies that can be adopted, why not listen to them? Why not let that inform the universities that govern campus life?” I just want to bring attention to that because the fact of the matter is, as our communities become ever more diverse, by geography, by race, by class, we must pay attention to those sending communities in the same way how any immigration scholar will tell you country of origin matters because US policy differs, differs because of their relationship with each country. The same thing applies. Harvard and BU and Amherst have real nice diplomatic relations with Greenwich Village, with the Upper West Side, with Palo Alto, very great diplomatic relationships; from Coconut Grove, from Detroit, from parts of Brooklyn, from parts of Cleveland, St Louis, not so much. We don’t understand, and because we don’t have an understanding of that inequality, it’s hard for us to adopt policy that is receptive to it, because, again, to ask a student to take on a full- time job when they come from a community where jobs have been gone for a generation, is giving them a task that they cannot complete. The sad part about it is those requirements were not always relaxed during COVID19, some universities still required students to work during it. One student told me that she had to petition to get two part-time jobs to count because that was all she was able to find during the pandemic. And because what she come from, there weren’t a lot of jobs, and then she had to take on these two part time. Now, this is the same person who lived in a house with a family member who was on dialysis. This is the same person who lived with immunocompromised people, and she had to petition yet again and say, “Hey, I am afraid, deathly afraid, to go out to work. Please don’t make me because I’m fearful of hurting my family member.” She had to petition for it, because universities weren’t flexible enough to actually realize the consequences of it, or they were so rigid in their policy. And this book is not a book that is organized by, “Oh, this is policy, let me see the effect, right?” No, the book is organized by understanding how students dealt with the inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic in their families, finances, in the fault lines along race on campus. And when you look at the family dynamics and the consequences of it., you just see how it’s important to understand that students, especially lower income and first-gen college students, they’re not running away from home. They’re trying to get away from the things that make home hard. That’s why so many first gens are driven. It’s not because they don’t like home, it’s that they don’t like aspects of home that make life hell, whether that means having to do, as I talk about myself, whether that means having to do homework by candlelight because the power was out more often than not, whether it was not having your own bed or your own space to be, or enough to eat, those are very real thing. But I also want to highlight the ways in which university policies make coming from those spaces even harder, and to some students, they almost felt intentional.

John: So far, we’ve mostly been talking about institutional policies. But what role do individual faculty members play in this?

Tony: Individual faculty and staff are also important players in this, So, I’ll give you an example from the book. In the book, I show how universities have a segregated on-campus labor market where students are almost divided by social class in what jobs they go after and what jobs they get. What I show is that middle class students, or rather, students who are comfortable engaging with faculty were more likely to get research, teaching, and course assistantships. They were more likely to be in quote, unquote, those like life of the mind positions, the academic kind of heavy lifting work of the University. Students from lower income backgrounds who were not comfortable engaging with adults were more likely to be in manual labor positions like barista, grounds keeping, janitorial. That was happening long before the pandemic hit, and then when campus closed, and what I’m able to show in the book, is that lower income students who weren’t comfortable lost their jobs, those who were comfortable with faculty kept their jobs, and even increased their hours. I talk about this being directly about what faculty can and cannot do because so often assistantship jobs, whether it’s course, teaching, or research, those jobs aren’t even posted. Those jobs are doled out in office hours. Those jobs are people who are tapped for those positions. But if you are not in those spaces, even if you’re the best qualified because you know the material, you don’t get that job. In the end, what I show is the students who needed more were given less. The students who needed to earn more money to support themselves and their family were given fewer hours, less resources, and less support. The students who needed less, at least financially, were given more: more hours, more money, more support. It increased the disparity that what these jobs can do, and importantly, let’s then move beyond the pandemic. If you have a job when you have high faculty interactions, you not only get paid today, but you get a letter recommendation tomorrow. But if you have a transactional job where it’s pay for services rendered, that’s all you really get, is the pay today, there aren’t readily available opportunities for you to use your job to fully access institutional resources. Yet, if you work for me or any faculty member, there’s a greater likelihood that you will be able to access something from our networks, whether it’s, “Oh, I’m going to be meeting with the Director of HUD,” or “I’m meeting with this Director of a movie, they’re giving me three extra tickets. why don’t you come with me?” All of a sudden, you’re meeting people in different kind of ways. Or I. can put you on to say,”Hey, this person’s hiring next year. You should think about interning there.” These are just like very, very real opportunities that students who are connected to faculty members who are in the know or who can connect them with it, do more. They get more and so that’s why I want to challenge faculty. And faculty have great autonomy and greater access. One chemistry professor, for example, can hire as many students as an entire office like a dean of students. Some chemistry professors’ labs are 20 or 30 people strong, and half of them are undergraduates. So we have power within ourselves. I was doing a professional development program this weekend, and I met a Dean, and he said that he just changed the rule that if a faculty member does not list the job on the university’s website, they will not be eligible for a benefit that the college gives for hiring undergraduates. And I applauded them for that, because that is a step in the direction that I think we all should go. Because, as I also show in the book, when you make explicit the hiring process, lower income students from all backgrounds, whether it’s public or public school or private school, or their familiarity with elite environments, they’re more likely to apply or feel that it’s an opportunity that is available to them.

Rebecca: I think in this example and the previous example, you’re really highlighting the relational aspects that are really important for students to be successful in various ways, both on campus and in the next steps after campus. And you’ve really highlighted the idea of both in the example of the petitioning, and even knowing that petitioning is an option or building relationships with faculty, and even knowing that’s an option to get opportunities and highlighting the idea of making things more explicit. Is that the direction that institutions need to go in is developing policies that really highlight transparency, or are there other suggestions that you have for institutions?

Tony: I mean, transparency is huge, but it’s not just transparency. I think it’s also translation, because the more we leave to random connections, random conversations, or random moments of, “Hey, you look familiar,” or “Hey, do you take my class?” …the more we will see these class processes to continue, because students who are comfortable will avail themselves to more resources because they know how the college works, students who are not especially lower-income students think that hiring, grades, internships, fellowships, should be about the work, and yet, sometimes doing the best is not what gets noticed. It’s being present. It’s being in the room. I always tell the story of, when you apply for the Rhode to go to Oxford for study, you need eight letters of recommendation, eight. Who knows eight people, and not just know them, but who knows eight people who know them well enough to write true letters of recommendation for them, to endorse them for one of the most prestigious, if not the most prestigious, undergraduate award you can receive? You can be a 4.0 student, but if you’re a 4.0 student who has never been to office hours, who has never attended a faculty and student-faculty dinner, that has never worked for someone in their lab, do you have an advocate on campus for you who can say anything else, other than they were the top performer? But if you were a student who got like a 3.85, not quite 4.0, but still A range person, but you went to office hours because you didn’t do as well on your first exam, and you started going, and you develop a rapport with a faculty member, and you begin to work with that faculty member on their project. And then when that faculty member goes away for a week, sometimes you babysit their dog, or you become a member of their lab and their family, that letter is going to reflect that connection. But we leave so much in that black box of the hidden curriculum about how you should navigate college, and we almost never talk about employment. As a matter of fact, as I argue in the book, university takes a very hands-off approach to on-campus employment. We were like, “Just use this website or attend this job fair.” Job fairs are not neutral ground. We say “wear business casual.” What does that mean? As one student told me, “I don’t know what business casual was.” Some people may hear us talk in this conversation and be “Well, like, this is duh, like, it’s business casual. Get some loafers, get a jacket. Of course, you’re going to go and talk to a faculty member.” If anyone is having that thought right now, I would want them to ask themselves three questions: “What’s the highest level of education of the person who raised me? What job do they have? and how similar or different was my high school to the college that I went?” We have to remember, people with PhDs are 12 to 25 times more likely to have a PhD parent. Faculty members are like doctors, dentists, and the vets. It’s a hereditary position. So many faculty members have not only family members who have PhDs, but who are the children of PhDs. Again, through studying students’ experiences, through their families, finances, and the fault lines along race on campus, I was able to expose the way in which students move through campus on uneven and unequal grounds, long before the pandemic, and was able to chart how much rockier it got.

John: So, we’ve talked quite a bit about institutional issues and institutional policies, as well as some things specific to faculty. One of the things that happened with the pandemic, though, is faculty, often for the first time, recognized the extent of some of the inequities that their students were facing when they were seeing students who had trouble accessing wireless networks, or accessing Zoom, and struggling to share a computer, or being busy taking care of sick relatives or other issues, and there was at least a bit of recognition of some of these inequities. But I’m wondering if maybe faculty are backing a little bit away from that now as we’ve moved a bit further from the pandemic. A lot of people were a little bit more relaxed about deadlines and other policies and were a little more aware of the role of the hidden curriculum and so forth, but I’m not sure that that’s continued at the same level we’d like.

Tony: And that’s one of the reasons why I hope that this book doesn’t take us back to COVID, but it resurfaces the lessons that we learned through it, with some new ones, of course, because for me, I don’t want us to have this “get back to normal,” this post-pandemic normal, this new normal. The new normal is too easy. It will all too easy become a replication of what we had before if we don’t take these inequalities into consideration. If we don’t understand the way in which class shapes how students move through campus, and how race often exacerbates those differences, we just go back to what we had. We need to strive for something more like an equitable campus. We haven’t seen that.

Rebecca: Moving towards an equitable campus requires some hard work and change, and sometimes that’s something that people are really afraid of.

Tony: Yeah, I was thinking about something I said, it was like: “Simply following the impulse to get back to normal will only be a setback. If we return to normal, we will return to what was. We will once again be held hostage to the inequities that plague higher education and society alike. We will once again hold ourselves and our institutions back from being what we could be, what we should be. Let us not yearn for normalcy. I don’t want to be normal in the sense of the normal operating procedure. We need things to disrupt the normal operating procedure, unless our intention is to harm the very students who we are paying millions to recruit, retain, and graduate. If your intention is to do that harm, then you can go back with the new normal that’s basically going to be what we had part two. But that is not your intention, then you need to rethink and reframe many policies.”

John: In addition to the need for institutional change, are there some specific things that faculty can do in their classes to help reduce some of the effects of the inequities that our students face?

Tony: I’m a sociologist, and I already get in trouble for being as prescriptive as I am in the sense that “you’re too applied,” I’m like, “Well, again, now that we know, we know what we’re going to do about it,” but I don’t want to be so prescriptive that I limit the imagination of faculty. I’ll give you an example: in reading The Privileged Poor. I talk about the fact that we always say when office hours are. We almost never say what they are. And my work on office hours has spurred hundreds of faculty to begin to define office hours on their syllabi and on the first day of class. I want them to be similarly inspired. And here’s where it gets fun. Some people were in class 10 minutes early, and walked the class to their office to show people where they are. I never said to do that. I want to put people on the path to understanding the nature of America and how it comes to campus. We all don’t have the same streets to walk down. Some people gladly take a walk at night and stretch their legs. Other people know that that is a luxury that could cost them their life. And I say America, not saying that we are not global institutions, but we also know the larger context of the recruitment of lower-income students, especially in no-loan financial aid policies that are at nearly 80 no-loan schools in America. The vast majority of them only have no-loan policies for U.S. students. For me, that’s why I say America. And so I don’t want to be so prescriptive and tell fabrics what they need to do, but I do wish more people knew about redlining and blockbusting. I do wish more people knew about land theft and settler colonialism, and not just in the historical context, because we love to say that happened a long time ago, like Jim Crow laws were a long time ago. I’m like, “No, they weren’t.” I wish we understood the present-day manifestations of those inherently disenfranchising practices, because if we did, I think we would come to understand the reality that the greatest determining factor of an individual’s life chances in this country is a zip code in which you are born. In the land of the free, home of the brave, the place of unbound opportunity, if I know your zip code, I can predict how old you are going to be when you die, if you go to school, if you will graduate from high school, what college you would go to. Neighborhood isn’t destiny, but it almost feels sometimes that those who make it out took a detour that was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. There was a moment, there was a broken light that said, “turn here” instead of keep going and getting stuck into a different path. And so I just hope that this book spurs conversations on campus, not only to revisit some of the most invisible policies that have rather large impacts on student life, but also thinking about how we move through campus.

Rebecca: I hope a lot of faculty and administrators and other folks involved with our institutions read your book and really come together with creativity and have some interesting solutions or experiments to make change happen. We always wrap up by asking: “What’s next?”

Tony: What’s next? That is a great question. I told you I’m first-gen. I never got to do a college tour when I was in high school. I didn’t know what a college tour was when I went to the prep school, you know, I was around a whole bunch of rich people, and they were like, “Oh, well, we’re gonna take a week through the California schools and a week through the New England Schools.” And I was like, “whatever I can’t see online when I’m at school on a computer because I don’t have internet at home, it won’t be seen.” And so I always say that when I go and share the work with people, as I’m invited to campus. This is my college tour. And so one thing that I look forward to about what’s next is visiting campuses to share the book. And also I am knitting another baby blanket for my graduate advisee, who just welcomed his first child into the world with his wife. And so that’s what’s next for me, is the book tour and a baby blanket. I actually just went and got the yarn this weekend, and I chose a pattern.

Rebecca: That sounds really exciting, a nice balance.

Tony: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

John: And we do appreciate your book tours. In fact, we very much appreciated when you visited Oswego after your previous book. And I know shortly after that visit, a lot of people stopped calling office hours, office hours, and started using other names and moved them to other places to make them a little bit more welcoming. So I know that was a fairly immediate effect of one of those college tour visits.

Tony: Actually, Oswego was my last in-person visit before campus closed.

John: Yeah, we closed just a week or two after that. I think. I remember that, yeah,

Tony: I think I came up on March, 7th or 8th, I believe, and campus closed on March 10. [LAUGHTER] It was my last visit. I got off the plane, I was like, “Yeah, this is a different world we are living in.

John: Well, we were glad you made it before everything shut down.

Tony: I am too

Rebecca: …extra memorable. [LAUGHTER]

John: Well, thank you. We really enjoyed talking to you, and we’re looking forward to sharing this episode and to reading the book, which should be arriving shortly, my pre-order went in a couple months ago.

Tony: Awesome. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Thanks for joining us.

Tony: Thank you all so much.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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354. International College Students

Posted in diversity, equity, higher education, inclusion, international education, international students, learning, study abroad, support network
August 14, 2024

International college students face cultural and financial challenges in addition to those all new college students face. In this episode, Peter Ghazarian and Hayley Weiner join us to discuss strategies institutions might use to support international students.  Peter is an Associate Professor of Higher Education Leadership in the School of Education at SUNY Oswego. He has worked in international education in the US, UK, Germany, and Korea. Peter’s work focuses on higher education, leadership, public policy, multiculturalism, and human migration. Hayley is a graduate student in the Higher Education Leadership program at SUNY Oswego.

Show Notes

Transcript

John:International college students face cultural and financial challenges in addition to those all new college students face. In this episode, we discuss strategies institutions might use to support international students.

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John:Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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Rebecca: Our guests today are Peter Ghazarian and Hayley Weiner. Peter is an Associate Professor of Higher Education Leadership in the School of Education at SUNY Oswego. Peter has worked in international education in the US, UK, Germany, and Korea. His work focuses on higher education, leadership, public policy, multiculturalism, and human migration. Hayley is a graduate student in the Higher Education Leadership program at SUNY Oswego. Welcome Peter and Haley.

Peter: Hi.

Hayley: Hi.

John:Our teas today are: … Peter, are you drinking any tea?

Peter: I actually am currently drinking some tea. For the summer, I would say my go to is unsweetened black tea, and that’s what I have right now. It’s hard to get away from it.

Rebecca: It’s perfect.

John:And Haley?

Hayley: I’m drinking chai today.

Rebecca: Nice.

John: …and Rebecca?

Rebecca: I am drinking a Scottish afternoon in anticipation of my upcoming trip in two days.

Peter: That’s exciting.

John:And I am drinking an Irish Breakfast tea, which is in the same general neighborhood.

Rebecca: I’m going there too. We invited you here today to discuss your research on the experience of international students in US education. Can you start by helping us understand the current landscape of international students studying abroad in the United States? Like, who are the students? Are they from particular regions, levels of affluence, et cetera?

Peter: Yeah. So I’d say there’s been kind of a sea change in the international student population in the United States since COVID. Prior to COVID, I would say it was predominantly dominated by middle- and upper-class students from China. But then with the trade war, and then with the COVID outbreak and the zero-COVID policy in mainland China, it led to a lot of diversification of international students coming to the United States after COVID. And so we are starting to see a lot more students from India in particular, and also from Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in Nigeria. A lot of students coming to the United States from Nigeria.

John:And could you talk a little bit about the research project that you’ve both been working on?

Hayley: Yes, so Peter and I were intrigued by this idea of why international students come to the United States and what their experiences are in terms of seeking employment. A lot of international students express this notion of wanting to gain either internship experiences or post-graduation employment, normally in the form of CPT or OPT and Peter and I are very intrigued, as these students often express positive and negative experiences that are unique compared to what their domestic peers may experience when trying to gain employment of that kind.

Peter: And we’re also kind of interested in these competing personal versus professional elements or aspects to their experience, where they have kind of this imagined experience that they’re going to have as international students. And then there’s this reality and these economic demands that come upon them that they might not have anticipated. And so there’s almost a direct kind of butting of heads there between those two aspects of their time abroad.

John:You mentioned OPT and CPT. Could you define those terms for our listeners?

Hayley: Yeah, so CPT stands for Curricular Practical Training, and this is a work authorization for international students while they’re maintaining their student status, so they can only participate in CPT for employment that is directly related to their major, and while they are in a current student status. OPT, on the other hand, stands for optional practical training, and this is specifically for students after they graduate. And traditionally, students will go for a full-time job, but students can do either part time or full time or even internship. But OPT is specifically for their post-graduation employment.

Peter: And so for a lot of students, that becomes this period where the clock is ticking down if they want to find visa sponsorship through an employer. And so many students see this almost as kind of this grace period after they finish their program to try out with an employer or employers, and hopefully be able to win their support to stay in the United States as a full-time employee there.

Hayley: Yeah, and to add on to what Peter said with this idea of a clock, specifically with OPT, with students finding their post-graduation employment, there’s a lot of federal rules. For example, the latest date that they can start their OPT is 60 days after their graduation date. And as we know, navigating the job market in the current way it is, it’s very difficult for domestic students, international students, or any student in general, to find a job within a specific, constrained timeframe. And international students don’t get the privilege of looking for jobs outside of their major or maybe just taking a job that can earn them a little bit of money while they seek something that is more up to what they’re looking for in the long run. So keeping in mind that there are these federal regulations about the days and there’s this constant pressure sitting on them to find the jobs, even while they’re a student and post graduation.

Peter: Once students become aware of that, it’s almost like the specter that’s haunting them in all of their experiences, whether or not they’re in class or whether they’re building personal relationships with their peers, there’s this creeping dread of this clock ticking down and this need to find some security in life.

Rebecca: Those federal regulations impact the front end of the experience as well. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges international students face in even coming to the United States to study?

Peter: So international students… I would say the biggest struggle is to get that student visa on the front end. So past work that I’ve done related to destination choice among international students has primarily focused on country image and how that influences individual students’ choices. And what I’ve found in the past is that actually much more important than individual perceptions of a destination are the country-level relationships between a student’s home country and the destination, and so they’re much more likely to choose a place that has a good, constructive, positive relationship with wherever it is they’re trying to go. That plays more of a dominant role in deciding whether they go or don’t go to a particular destination. But then there are also other issues that they consider, such as financial barriers and regulations that can get in the way of them easily being able to access higher education within a particular destination. And for the United States, the big barrier, I would say, is demonstrating the ability to financially pay for the study in the United States. It’s for those who’ve had the experience, it’s a bit like applying for a mortgage, but instead of being asked to show that you can pay for it in the future, that you can already pay for the entire house before. [LAUGHTER] And so there’s a lot of financial gymnastics that people go through to try and demonstrate that, even though it is a big ask for them and it can be very difficult for them.

Hayley: Yeah, to jump onto what Peter was mentioning about the financial aspect, I currently work as a DSO in SUNY Oswego’s international student office, and a DSO is a designated school official. So I help students when they’re preparing for their visa interviews or when they’re getting their initial documents, such as a form I-20 to apply for their visa interview. And a very common occurrence is international students needing additional time or having struggles in terms of demonstrating the financial ability, and specifically, international students don’t get the privilege of applying for FAFSA or other United States federal aid programs that their domestic counterparts may get the opportunity to apply for. And so as a result, they have a larger sum of money that they may need to come up with up front, like Peter mentioned. And sometimes, even if they don’t receive the visa on its own, they still needed to come up with that money just to get the visa interview appointment.

Rebecca: And then my understanding is that, depending on where you’re coming from, getting a visa appointment is also a challenge …just scheduling it and making it happen in a time frame that makes sense to start school.

Peter: I’ve had many applicants, for example, from Ghana, who are really struggling with that. It’s just booked out so far in advance, it’s so difficult for them to get an appointment, and the students feel as though they’re very unlikely to be awarded a visa unless they’ve been given some form of scholarship or some sort of financial assistance with the offer. And so students are pretty desperate in that situation.

Hayley: A lot of preparation goes into it as well. Peter mentioned Ghana. I know India is a country where sometimes students are waiting one year or more. I’ve seen students wait years …plural… just to get their visa interview booked. And sometimes students are more eager and they want to have it sooner. And this does result in a different perception of whether they decide to come to the United States specifically to pursue their degrees, or maybe what degree they’re going to pursue, because they’re looking for that longer benefit in terms of financial benefits.

John:Implicit in this discussion is the notion, I think, that most of the students who are coming from abroad are interested in staying here after it, or at least staying long enough to get some training. What proportion of students are coming with the intention of staying in the U.S. after they complete their schooling, and what proportion are planning to return to their countries?

Peter: I don’t have hard numbers for that, but the sense that I get is that a lot of students are pretty fluid in their view of whether they stay in the United States. A lot of students are also willing to go to other third destinations that are English speaking, for example, like Singapore or Hong Kong, or places where English is the lingua franca, and they feel like they’d still be competitive in the job market, but they would be making what we might call a global middle-class wage, although some of the students we spoke to were interested in going back home after getting a bit of experience here, believing it would allow them to move into kind of an elite position back in their home country. In particular, I believe one student was interested in moving for a global energy company that was active within their home country. They believed if they had some energy industry experience in the United States, it would be pretty easy for them to transition into that type of position back in their home country, which is a position for an elite individual there.

John:Given the additional financial requirements for students coming from abroad, it would seem like most of the students who come in would be coming in from above average incomes in many of the countries of origin, which means we’re mostly providing some additional benefits to those who are already relatively privileged in their countries. Is that accurate?

Peter: And that is absolutely accurate. I have actually done a study that looked at whether or not international higher education exacerbates income inequality. In any case, it depends on the host or the sending destination. In some places, it is something that is seen for the elite, and it is almost something that’s required for them to return back to their home and get a position within a large corporation or within the government. It’s seen as kind of a stamp of approval having that international qualification. But in other places, what we’ve started to see is that when we do have people who are from a lower income background who participate in international higher education, it does contribute to intergenerational mobility, and that tends to be an improvement in their social class as a result of their participation. And it just depends on the place. And so in a lot of East Asians countries that are sending students, it is contributing to the inequality, whereas in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, that’s where it’s having more of a positive impact and contributing to economic mobility there.

John:So you’re working on the study of international students in the US. Where’s the sample drawn from?

Hayley: We focus on a phenomenological study where we focused on the shared lived experiences of international students. And just due to our resources, we did use a population of SUNY Oswego students specifically, and these students were a mix of both current students and recent graduated students. And to my knowledge, all of our students were a undergraduate degree level or recent undergraduate alumni.

Peter: There were students from India, Malaysia, Nepal, Bahamas, and Senegal. We did reach out to other institutions in central New York, to their offices of international students and scholars, to ask them to kind of spread the word and help to recruit but we got only a few responses to those initial entreaties, and then when we tried to schedule interviews with those folks, there was no response.

Rebecca: What are some of the challenges that international students face while studying in the US and adapting to the US educational system?

Hayley: I think a big overlooked challenge that international students face, that maybe others may not acknowledge, is they’re kind of starting over in a brand new setting. They not only have to get adjusted to the culture, but there’s some things that maybe people who live in the United States for their whole lives take kind of for granted. So, for example, international students, they’re permitted to have an on-campus job, but they don’t have a social security number. They have to go through the process of applying for a social security number. International Students don’t have bank accounts in the United States, and they can’t even pay for food their first couple days here because they don’t have maybe a card or anything to use at, like the grocery store, or they don’t have a SIM card for their phones to call their families back home. And I think there’s a lot of cultural adjustment that takes place, and students are kind of rushed into being acquainted with United States higher education settings, because not only do they have to deal with all of these cultural adjustments, but they have their schoolwork that piles up almost immediately after they arrive.

Peter: Yeah, and in terms of what we learned just in speaking to participants in the research study, what was kind of surprising or jumped out to us was that they are going through a lot of the same identity development phases that domestic students or local students go through but there’s these additional layers on top of those experiences that they’re having with having to navigate a new cultural environment and dealing with some of this economic pressure that they have on them. For some folks, they’re able to navigate that successfully, and they’re alright, even though it is very stressful. But for others, it is very difficult. For them. There’s always something to worry about, and it makes it very difficult for them to just relax and enjoy the moment, because there’s always some issue or concern that’s kind of lingering in the back of their minds.

John:In terms of cultural differences that they have to navigate, one of those, I think, would be differences in the way in which instruction takes place in US classrooms. Could you talk a little bit about some of the challenges that students face in adjusting to a college environment in the U.S.

Peter: I would say, from our participants, we heard mostly positive things. So the students themselves, coming from a younger generation, felt happy and excited for maybe more of a student-focused approach to instruction and more active learning in the classroom. They appreciated the opportunity to be able to interact with their peers, and felt that it really strengthened their communicative abilities. And so it seemed to be a very positive thing for the vast majority of students. They did mention that it was strange at first and a little difficult to adjust to it, but that overall, it’s something they enjoyed. It’s something they saw valuable as part of this attractiveness of US higher education in general.

Rebecca: Some of the conversations that I had with some international students recently in terms of the kind of classroom setting was the expectation of scaffolding, or the steps to complete assignments that maybe they had an experience in their home country, and not understanding that those things were required, or that those were different kinds of expectations that we have here. So it’s made me as an instructor much more aware of being explicit about what some of those differences might be. Are there other ways that instructors can support this transition into the US system?

Peter: I would say, looking at it almost from kind of this universal design for learning perspective, would be the best way to think about it is that the more explicit and clear you are in general about your expectations, it’s going to benefit not just international students, it’s going to benefit all of the students that are in your course. So making sure that you’re communicating your expectations about assignments in multiple ways, so that the most people can get it or can understand it is going to be really key here in just improving instruction for everyone. And international students will, of course, also benefit from this, but I think everyone can benefit.

Rebecca: So in addition to adjusting to the classroom and some of the adjustments to the U.S., what are some other changes that international students describe?

Peter: So, one of the big things that we heard about was personal change. So students weren’t just adapting to a new cultural environment, it was also having an impact on how they saw themselves and their idea of themselves. And so a few of the students talked about internalizing ways of thinking that they had originally felt were foreign or different or that they were uncomfortable with, but now they saw it as part of who they were, and that they had this interesting experience of moving between selves. So there was their home country culture self, and then there was their US culture self, and depending on the context, they had to be a little bit fluid in their identity and how they behaved and the way that they thought, but that that was an important part of adapting and excelling within a cultural environment is having that flexibility to be able to reinterpret yourself according to the rules of a different game you might be playing according to which culture you’re operating in.

Hayley: And it seemed like when the students kind of described this personal change or transition, like Peter mentioned, it wasn’t really a superficial change that they were describing. They were describing more of like a deeper engagement with the new culture that they were experiencing, and how this deeper engagement worked to reshape their thought processes and their perspectives, and how it was very transformative within their cultural immersion into US higher education institutions,

Peter: There were times when they were able to achieve that imagined or idealized experience of studying abroad that they originally had before they came to the United States. So I think one participant in particular talked about walking home late at night from a part-time job that they held on campus, and how they would never be able to do that in their home country, because it would have been unsafe for them to be walking alone by themselves, and just how they felt so free and they felt so independent that they started crying on the walk home, because they felt like they had achieved what they had dreamed or hoped for by coming to the United States.

Hayley: And that kind of ties on to this, like aspirational kind of rationale that Peter and I focused on on our research as well, where both personal and professional international students have this motivation to come to the United States because there’s dreams that they have. And like Peter mentioned, there was that student who just felt this sense of relief, or just a sense of satisfaction of being where they were at that point, being in the United States, and they felt like they were living what they were dreaming of when they were a child. And then we have the professional side, where they’re international students. I remember one student describing to us how she was thinking of being a doctor, and how in her home country, she knew that being a doctor and being a female doctor didn’t have as much room or level for success. And then another student from the same country mentioned wanting to be a geologist and how, in her home country, geology is not a very popular science, and that more engineering and doctors are from that home country, and how coming to the United States allowed them to have this diversified curriculum that allowed them to fit into these dream roles that they imagined when they were younger.

Peter: And so what we were trying to make sense of these different rationales for studying abroad. We weren’t just doing this like on our own or pulling this out of the thin air. We came into this with a theoretical framework that we adapted from a researcher called Fakunle, who’s based in the United Kingdom at the University of Edinburgh and Fakunle has put together a model for the different types of rationales that international students have for studying abroad. And it’s something that she put together speaking primarily to international students in Europe. And we wanted to see how well it held up while we were speaking to international students here in the United States. And we found that the model applied very well. And those four rationales are an aspirational rationale, an educational rationale, an economic rationale, and then an experiential rationale.

Rebecca: That transitions nicely into thinking about international students for an F1 visa and that OPT or that optional practical training that we talked a little bit about earlier in trying to find a job in their field or discipline immediately following graduation. What is the experience like for students trying to find these opportunities? I know from my own conversations with international students, it can be a struggle. Can you share what some of those barriers are that they might face in this job hunt?

Hayley: I think a very major barrier is that sometimes employers don’t comprehend or understand what it means to be an international student, and believe it or not, with OPT, if a student plans to use their one year of OPT, or in STEM students’ case, they get an additional 24 months of OPT, an employer does not need to provide sponsorship of any kind, and the student is eligible to work for that given employer, so long as that employment is directly related to their major. And sometimes employers get scared or worried about the idea of hiring an international student, either just they don’t have the resources to know what it means, or they’ve never done it before, and that acts as a significant hinder for international students. Now I know when we were interviewing students, there were a few students who mentioned that they were able to easily acquire a job, and it took a few tries, but they were able to get one before they graduated. And we’ve had other students who mentioned that it was much more difficult to get post-graduation employment, and after graduating, it became their full-time job to apply for a job, but keeping in mind that they only had that limited number of days to seek that employment added this extra stress that was very troublesome for the students.

Peter: Yeah, and I would say that it’s not just the employers that are ignorant of the rules that surround OPT, there’s also a concern that support services on campus beyond the international student office, aren’t always aware of these regulations or how they impact a student’s employability, and so students felt like they had to take anything that they heard from Career Services or an internship opportunity that they heard about with a grain of salt, because those are almost always developed or they’re communicated in a way that’s targeted towards local students, and it might not play out the same way for an international student. That opportunity might not exist for them. And they also talked a lot about how they avoided medium or smaller companies as a result of those companies’ lack of awareness or knowledge of OPD or CPT, and the belief that they would just kind of not even consider them seriously because they weren’t aware of how OPT or CPT worked. And so this was a source of pressure for a lot of students. They felt like they were supposed to be the expert of these policies, but they’re very complicated, and for somebody, for example, who’s communicating in a foreign language, trying to express this in a way that calms the nerves of a potential employer is not something that’s easy to do.

John:Might part of that be due to concern that when many new employees are taken on, particularly in technical fields, there’s a lot of on-the-job training that’s provided, which is costly to the firm. And might there be concern on the firm’s part that they might invest in workers who will not be able to get a change in visa status?

Peter: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely a legitimate concern on the part of a company. Interestingly though, it seems like those technical positions are the ones where the students tend to have more success in applying for the positions. And so students, for example, who are going into mining or into IT roles, those are the students who often have the most success in their applications for OPT even though those tend to be the positions that have a lot of on-the-job training that they are going to receive. And I wonder whether or not that’s because those are industries that are traditionally more open to recruiting from abroad, and so perhaps they feel more comfortable with working with these students who might need some sort of sponsorship in the future,

John:And also the fact that there are not that many students in the U.S. majoring in those fields, so that a very large share of employees in those areas are coming from overseas … fortunately, or we’d be in much worse trouble in our country.

Rebecca: It might also be tied to the potential three years of OPT rather than one that is often tied with those particular fields which are STEM designated

Hayley: Based on our interviews with students, as well as just my work in general, I noticed that students who are in STEM designated majors, even for their first year of OPT, before their STEM extension is even granted, they have a much easier time just getting their foot in the door or getting an interview, compared to students who are maybe in the field of like business or communications, and I think that longer extension of OPT could possibly have an impact on an employer making the initial investment into an international student as a first-time employee.

Peter: Right, because one year isn’t really enough time to know for sure whether or not you would want to keep somebody on, but three years, you know then, you know for sure whether or not this is somebody you want to sponsor or not. And so, actually one of our participants made a comment like, “I just don’t think a year is enough for me to prove myself to an employer. And so I don’t think I’ll be able to stay. I’m glad that I have the opportunity to gain that experience here.” But, that person, in particular, really regretted not being in a field that offered the longer OPT because she felt like that would have given her a better chance to be able to stay in the United States in the future. An interesting sort of side effect of that that I’ve seen, is that a lot of institutions are coming up with ways to get their programs designated as being in the STEM fields, in order to make it more attractive for international students. So I I’ve seen, for example, like a business analytics program, that they really focused heavily on data visualization and those types of things in order to promote it and get it approved as a STEM field degree program. But is it actually a STEM field degree program? I don’t know.

Hayley: It is actually, yeah, business analytics was recently added to the list of STEM designated degrees.

Rebecca: What could institutions do or advocate for to minimize some of the challenges for students as they pursue work opportunities?

Hayley: I think, while it may not be the sole solution, a really great solution could be showing international students how to market themselves. I noticed a lot of international students worry that maybe because of their international background, they may not line up with a domestic peer who studied in the United States their entire lives. But that’s not always the case. International students have specific traits such as being able to easily adapt to new cultural settings, or a lot of times they speak even multiple languages, and this is something that their domestic counterparts who are applying for the same jobs, they don’t often have that same trait. And so by being able to market themselves in the current or modern workplace or in the job market itself, I think that would be one way to minimize some of the challenges. I don’t see that as being one of the ways to get rid of all challenges, but it could allow international students to have an upper hand.

Peter: And I think a lot of student support services that are available on campuses now are in this sort of one-size-fits-all approach to supporting students, and that that can be to the detriment of students who are coming from non-traditional backgrounds who are participating in higher education here in the United States. So international students, for example, suffer from this. Non-traditional students might suffer from this. First-generation students might suffer from maybe an older approach to providing support services to students that in the past did serve well, but now maybe we need to be thinking a little bit more carefully about how do we individualize these services that we’re providing, so that we are at least aware of the different types of support that different students are going to need if they’re going to be successful transitioning from higher education into the workplace, and so international students would absolutely benefit from this. And I think that, in order to make this work, there needs to be a little bit more communication across offices on university campuses, because now a lot of these things are very siloed off from one another, and so it prevents, for example, an understanding of students who are receiving accessibility support in their work: searching for a job, for example, or students who are international, who are looking for a job, might have specific needs that they would benefit from if those offices were aware of what one another were doing and they were sharing information a little bit more openly with one another.

John:A while back, we did an interview with someone from the University of Miami who was talking about a program they had there to help prepare students from China for American classrooms in terms of the difference in structure and the difference in expectations, in terms of active participation and discussion. Is that something that perhaps more colleges could do to ease some of the transitions?>

Peter: So there was kind of a boom in those types of programs, in those gateway programs, they were often called, and they met with mixed success. In some cases, they were really helpful, and it helped students to adapt by giving them a soft transition period when they could adapt to the expectations of the U.S. university, before they went into a more high-stakes environment where they were getting graded for their actual content area coursework. However, some people were critical of this. They saw it almost as a money grab by the institutions who were asking these students to complete maybe 24 credits of coursework that wasn’t really going to apply towards a degree, and a lot of the times it was a conditional part of their acceptance into that institution. And so they got kind of a bad rap by especially international students who saw it as just paying for two more semesters but not really receiving a tangible benefit.

John:That particular program was a very short course, just more of an orientation to the differences in the culture of American college education. It was just a short program to reduce some of the shock and to help prepare people for the difference so they could hit the ground running without getting a bit behind in their work.

Peter: Yeah, I think that approach is absolutely positive and something that would be of great benefit to the international students, but again, if it has no credits, and then the funding for that type of program becomes very difficult, because it’s not sustainable in the long run, a lot of the time,

Rebecca: Is there a role that institutions could… should… play in establishing relationships with potential employers or regional companies that might make it easier for students to find placements after graduation.

Hayley: Working in an international office, it’s not traditional for international advisors to maybe reach out to employers on behalf of students, but if an employer were to ask a student a question related to their visa status, or maybe related to OPT or CPT, that would be somewhere where an immigration advisor on a campus can step in. Something recently that the SUNY Oswego International Office did, was we actually heard about students receiving lots of questions from their employers about what it means to be an employer of somebody who is working under CPT authorization or OPT authorization. And so our office actually took the initiative to make a specific web page for those employers for these basic kind of Q&A, frequently asked questions, that we do receive, and it’s actually had a very positive impact. And we’ve received a few compliments from some employers about how this did assist them, and they learned some new information about really what it meant to be a student on OPT or a student on CPT from the perspective of an employer.

Peter: And that more broadly, with all of these workforce development initiatives that we’re seeing take root across the United States, I would say that there’s an increasing expectation that higher education institutions are more directly involved in the transition of their graduates into the workforce, and that they are playing a role in making sure that students, regardless of what major they’re choosing, are being prepared for some sort of future within the economy. And I think that there is some resistance to that, because it challenges some of the foundational ideas about what higher education is about, or the purpose of a higher education institution. But I don’t think it’s something that higher education institutions are going to be able to escape. With the huge amount of money that people are investing in a degree there is an expectation that there’s going to be a return on the money that students put into that and higher education institutions are going to be held accountable if students are not able to be successful after pursuing their degree.

John:Are there any other things that you’d like to share about your study with our listeners?

Peter: The thing that really jumped out to me is as someone in the past who has done primarily quantitative research focused on international students, it was nice and refreshing to focus more on the individual lived experiences. And what really stood out to me was how similar the experiences were between international students and what is recorded in the theory about local domestic students in the United States, and so they’re having these same sort of identity development phases, or they’re going through a lot of these same sort of experiences. But as I mentioned earlier, it’s layered with these other things that are going on that really add a little bit of depth and complexity to the types of things that are happening to the international students here in the United States.

Rebecca: We always wrap up by asking: “What’s next?”

Peter: I would say this study focused on Central New York in particular and so the next logical step would be expanding it out further to other regions of New York State, or to other regions of the United States in general, to make sure that my model holds up according to other experiences in other regions of the country and in private and public and even parochial higher education institutions within the United States. So grasping at the diversity of experiences that exist within U.S. higher education, and making sure that that’s captured in the work, and then moving beyond just defining the problems and the experiences towards highlighting or spotlighting solutions to these issues or concerns that we’re learning about as we’re studying the experiences of international students here.

Hayley: Yeah, and to kind of add on to what Peter was saying, by bringing to light or highlighting or making awareness of the shared experiences of international students, because I think it’s very important to acknowledge that international students still touch just about every office on the campus the same way that domestic counterpart students would. And so this is not just something that maybe international student advisors or individuals who work with international students on a daily basis should focus on, this is something that kind of has stakeholders on all ends of a campus. And so by spreading the awareness or making others known of these challenges that international students face, I think solutions would become more prominent.

Rebecca: Well, thank you both for getting us to think a little bit more about our international student population.

Peter: Oh, thank you so much for having us, and we really appreciate the opportunity.

Hayley: Yeah, thank you so much.

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John:If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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332. Challenges and Opportunities

Posted in access, classroom community, diversity, engagement, equity, first-generation, higher education, inclusion, learning, motivation, race, social justice, support network, teaching
March 13, 2024

Faculty and administrators have been faced with new challenges and opportunities as higher education adapts to a rapidly changing environment. In this episode, SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. joins us to discuss strategies that colleges and universities can adopt to navigate a successful path forward.

After graduating from Harvard, Dr. King acquired a Master’s degree from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, and taught high school social studies. He later co-founded Roxbury Preparatory Charter School and served as a co-Director for five years. Under his leadership, students in this school attained the highest scores of any urban middle school in the state and closed the racial achievement gap. After acquiring his doctoral degree from Columbia and a law degree from Yale, he served as New York State’s Education Commissioner from 2011 to 2014. Dr. King left NY for a while to work in the Obama administration as Deputy Secretary of Education from 2015 to 2016 and joined Obama’s Cabinet as Secretary of Education from 2015 to 2016. Following his work in the Obama Administration, Dr. King continued to advocate for increased educational equity and access as President and CEO of the Education Trust.

Transcript

John: Faculty and administrators have been faced with new challenges and opportunities as higher education adapts to a rapidly changing environment. In this episode, we discuss strategies that colleges and universities can adopt to navigate a successful path forward.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is the State University of New York Chancellor John B. King Jr. He has a long history of involvement with education. After graduating from Harvard, Dr. King acquired a Master’s degree from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, and taught high school social studies. He later co-founded Roxbury Preparatory Charter School and served as a co-Director for five years. Under his leadership, students in this school attained the highest scores of any urban middle school in the state and closed the racial achievement gap. After acquiring his doctoral degree from Columbia and a law degree from Yale, he served as New York State’s Education Commissioner from 2011 to 2014. Dr. King left NY for a while to work in the Obama administration as Deputy Secretary of Education from 2015 to 2016 and joined Obama’s Cabinet as Secretary of Education from 2015 to 2016. Following his work in the Obama Administration, Dr. King continued to advocate for increased educational equity and access as President and CEO of the Education Trust. Welcome, Chancellor King.

Chancellor King: Thanks so much, excited to talk with you all.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are: Chancellor King, are you drinking any tea with us today?

Chancellor King: I am, sweet ginger citrus tea. And this is part of my New Year’s resolution. I’ve always been a tea drinker, but I also am a longtime coffee drinker. [LAUGHTER] But a New Year’s resolution this year was to put the coffee aside and switch only to herbal no-caffeine tea. So that’s what I’m working on.

Rebecca: Well, I’m glad that you decided to record this podcast then as part of your New Year’s resolution.[LAUGHTER]

Chancellor King: It fits in perfectly. [LAUGHTER]

John: And following that theme. I am drinking a spearmint and peppermint blend tea, as another herbal tea.

Rebecca: I may have noted that I was trying to cut down on caffeine in an earlier podcast, but I happen to have a Scottish afternoon tea today. [LAUGHTER]

Chancellor King: No…

John: Which is a bit more caffeine than breakfast teas.

Rebecca: Yeah, my accountability isn’t working well. [LAUGHTER]

John: There’s so many things we’d like to discuss with you. But given the time limitations of the podcast, we’d like to focus on your views of the challenges and opportunities facing higher education today. What do you see as the major opportunities in higher ed today?

Chancellor King: I think higher ed is foundational to the long-term success of both our economy and our democracy. We have vital roles to play in both. Certainly, we have tremendous opportunities in the state to prepare students for success in the semiconductor industry which is rapidly growing in the state, for success in healthcare where we have tremendous needs, success in green jobs, and some of the resilience work that we’re going to need to do as a society because of climate change, tremendous opportunity to prepare students for every conceivable profession, from teachers to writers to actors to artists. And, we have a crucial role to play in the health of our democracy. We’ve got to make sure that we are preparing all of our students with a rich liberal arts education so that they can be critical thinkers, so they can be critical consumers of modern media, so that they can be discerning, so that they can make decisions as voters, as neighbors, as citizens. And we’ve got to make sure that our institutions are able to meet both of those missions across degree programs.

Rebecca: What are some of the ways that we can move forward on some of those opportunities?

Chancellor King: Well, look, we were very fortunate that last year, Governor Hochul and the legislature made such a significant investment in SUNY, $163 million, the largest operating aid increase SUNY has received in 20 plus years. It allowed us to make double digit percentage increases in state support at all of our state operated campuses as well as to invest funds in mental health services, services for students with disabilities, internships, which is critical to preparing students for those transitions to career. We were able to put $10 million towards the expansion of research, which is another critical role of the higher ed sector in the health of our society. And we’re able to dedicate consistent funds for supporting our food pantries across our institutions, because we worry about our students are struggling with food insecurity. So one way we move forward is through continuing to invest in the strength of our institutions. Another important way that we can move forward on that agenda is continuing to adapt our offerings, our programs, creating new paths for students, very excited about the Governor’s announcement around AI and the creation of Empire AI and what will be a significant investment in SUNY’s ability to prepare students for research and careers and ethical use of AI, very excited about the new Stony Brook Climate Resilience Campus, $700 million campus that will be built on Governors Island, just off the coast of Manhattan. So we’ve got to continue to evolve as we respond to the opportunities and challenges for our economy and for our democracy.

John: Speaking of challenges, what do you see as the major challenges facing higher ed today?

Chancellor King: There are, unfortunately, a number of major challenges. Many of our institutions, certainly at SUNY, but private institutions in the state, higher ed institutions across the country, have seen significant declines in enrollment. And that was all exacerbated by COVID. That said, I’m a glass half full, tea cup half full, kind of guy. [LAUGHTER] And I look at that and I say, part of what we need to do is evolve our thinking about who our students are. We’ve got to make sure that we’re reaching out to every New Yorker to let them know there’s a place at SUNY. We’ve got to do more work to make sure that we are recruiting low-income students, first-gen students, Black and Latino students, indigenous students, immigrant students, that more of our veterans know that they can come back after their service and find opportunity on our campuses, that folks who are involved in AmeriCorps service programs know that there’s a place for them at SUNY, that our working adults know that they can come back to SUNY, whether it’s one of our community colleges or one of our four-year institutions, to complete a degree that maybe they started and didn’t finish. We’ve got 2 million New Yorkers with some credits, no degree, or maybe that they’re coming to a campus for a microcredential or a certificate, but we’re gonna then help them leverage that into a degree program over time. So there’s the challenge of declining enrollment, but there’s also the opportunity. We are already seeing progress at SUNY, this is the first year in 10 years that we had an enrollment increase across all sectors. But another major challenge is the attacks that we’re seeing on academic freedom, on teaching the truth about our history, the attacks trying to undermine our ability to talk about the hard parts of our history, the times we fallen short of the promise of American democracy, slavery, the horrific treatment of Native Americans in the way land was taken from them. That’s a part of our history. It’s just the truth, and we’ve got to grapple with those hard truths. But there are folks all over the country, unfortunately, who are trying to prevent discussion of those topics, even states where they’re saying they don’t want any higher end institution to mention the word diversity or the word equity. So that I think is very dangerous, and very proud that in New York, we are standing up for those values. We’re gonna be the opposite of Florida, and we’re gonna stand up for diversity, equity, and inclusion, but I worry a lot about that attack.

John: One of the concerns that many people have are these attacks on higher ed, that are convincing more parents and many students that college is no longer needed. Because, for political reasons, perhaps, a lot of people are arguing that a college degree is no longer useful. What can we do to help push back against some of those attacks that we’re seeing nationwide?

Chancellor King: Yeah, you know, there are a few things. And certainly, we have to make the value proposition clear. It’s important that students understand and families understand that over your lifetime, if you have a bachelor’s degree, it will translate into a million dollars more of earnings. So there is this very clear value proposition. We’ve got to take on the affordability question, which a lot of families worry about. You hear so much about the student debt crisis. So we’ve got to really help folks understand how affordable SUNY is. 53% of our students across our institutions go tuition free because of the Pell program and the New York state tuition assistance program as well as the Excelsior program. And our tuition, as you know, just over $7,000, is significantly less than many of our peer institutions in neighboring states. It really is possible to get an incredibly high quality education affordably at SUNY, and we have to make sure that parents and students understand that. We’ve also got to, I think, go back to first principles around what is the purpose and the vision of higher education. The fact of the matter is, you look at almost every indicator, life expectancy, health outcomes, you name it, they’re better for folks who have higher education. And what we’re aspiring to, is to say come to our institutions for an education that will help you lead a healthier, more fulfilling life. I want you to come to our institution and maybe take art history, and so your life is enriched because when you travel, when you go to a new city, you go to a museum and you discover insights around art that you otherwise wouldn’t have had. That’s the part of the beauty of higher education. So we’ve got to make the value proposition argument, the dollars and cents argument, but I don’t want us to forget about also making the richness quality of education argument as well.

Rebecca: As we think about broader access, and our student bodies becoming increasingly diverse in a variety of ways, we do see a number of historically minoritized students having lower retention and DFW rates. What can educational institutions do to reduce some of these equity gaps in degree attainment and not just starting?

Chancellor King: So important, and at the Education Trust, this was really a major area of focus for us, trying to make the case that institutions have a responsibility to not only recruit first-year students, but to provide the supports necessary for students to complete and go on to success after graduation. One of the things we’re working on at SUNY, as I think you know, because Oswego’s very much part of this, we are replicating across 25 of our campuses a program called ASAP for community colleges or ACE for our four-year institutions. And the idea behind ASAP and ACE which has been shown to be successful in doubling completion rates in randomized controlled trials, so it has a tremendous evidence base. The core strategy around ASAP and ACE is to provide supports that make it more possible for students to be successful: more intensive advising, cohort experience, help with just-in-,time financial assistance for the student who, the car breaks down and so then they can’t get to their job, they can’t get to class and for want of $250 for the auto mechanic, they end up dropping out of school. ASAP and ACE have shown that if you provide that just-in-time financial support, it can make all the difference. There’s also an effort to support transportation, so that you try to take that out of the way as an obstacle for students. And I’m very hopeful about the impact that ASAP and ACE can have across our 25 campuses. But, more broadly, there’s really a cultural commitment we have to make as a community of institutions, that we are going to be laser focused on helping our students complete with a meaningful degree or credential. And so when we see those high DFW rates in a class, we’ve got to ask, “Well, is there more we could do in terms of academic intervention? Is there more support that we can provide? Are we seeing patterns for students with disabilities where they’re not getting the accommodations they need? Are there opportunities to maybe have those classes structured differently, so that students are able to get some of the foundational support they need at the same time as they are tackling new rigorous challenges, what sometimes people will refer to as co-requisite classes that integrate the remedial work with actual credit-earning college-level work.” So we’ve got to just be disciplined about this. And we’ve got to invest in the programs that we know will make a difference. EOP has been fabulously successful in New York for decades. Again, a set of wraparound supports, a sense of community for students, and importantly, financial assistance.

John: Are there any specific types of interventions in the classroom that seem to be particularly effective in terms of reducing some of the equity gaps by race, by first-gen status, and by Pell eligibility.

Chancellor King: It certainly varies by discipline, but a couple observations, one is relationship building is critically important. Students need to know that you care, and they need to know that they can come for help. When I was teaching at University of Maryland College Park before I came to SUNY, one of the things I would do every year on my syllabus, I would include basically a basic needs statement to say, here’s where you can go on campus if you are struggling with food insecurity, or housing insecurity, or if you need additional academic support, or you need additional mental health support. And here’s my contact information and my TAs contact information, and I want you to reach out if you need help in these areas outside of our class. Of course reach out if you need help with the work in our class, but if you need help in these other areas, please let us know. And just that step of communicating to students, here’s where the resources are and I want you to reach out for help, can be quite powerful. So relationships are critical. A second one I would point out is, again, it varies by discipline, but opportunities for students to do projects, hands-on learning, we’ve seen oftentimes that when classes are only lectures and exams, that students may not get as engaged. And it may not be as accessible to students as it could be. It takes more time. It’s more complicated to design courses that build in project-based or experiential learning. But we certainly need to be thoughtful about that, as we design courses.

Rebecca: I love the examples that you’re sharing because they really underscore that sense of belonging a student might gain and really feel seen, acknowledging that, you know, students may be housing insecure means you belong here, we know that you might be housing insecure.

Chancellor King: That’s right. That’s exactly right.

John: One of the things that’s had a pretty profound impact on higher ed, or at least it’s raised a lot of questions in higher ed, is the rapid development of AI tools ever since the introduction of ChatGPT last year. And we’re seeing new tools coming out almost every week or modifications on the existing tools. How do you see this affecting how we teach students and how students learn? And how can we prepare students better for a world in which they’ll be working with AI tools that’ll be increasingly better developed.

Chancellor King: It’s a fascinating set of questions. And this, I think, is going to be an important area of discussion for faculties across all of our SUNY institutions for many years to come. I’m very excited that the governor committed to the Empire AI initiative, because that will invest real resources in our institutions to do some of the research to unlock the potential power of AI to advance the public good. You think about some of the opportunities where AI could help with medical diagnosis and the development of treatment plans in medicine… early days, but we see some opportunities there. We’ve got an NSF grant at UB, University at Buffalo, to focus on the use of AI as a tool for improving instruction for students with disabilities, and there’s tremendous potential there. We know that AI can be leveraged for advances in manufacturing and robotics, so tremendous opportunities to leverage AI. There are also tremendous risks. We have a set of scholars at UB as well, who are working on the issue of deep fakes, and the risks that deep fakes pose to our democracy and the good functioning of our society. We have a faculty member at UAlbany, who is a philosophy professor whose focus through the early part of his career was on trust between people, and now he is writing about and studying trust between people and machines, as we think about how AI is reshaping elements of our society. So lots of opportunity here for us on the research side, and also some very real implications for thinking about teaching and learning. Some hopeful things like how can AI be used to power personalized tutoring for students who may be struggling? How can AI be used to create adaptive learning experiences where the level of challenges match to how students are responding to questions, but also, I think, a very real fear. Will students be doing their own work? Or will they be using chatGPT to write their paper? And so it’s going to challenge us to think differently about the kinds of assignments we give and where students take those assignments. So lots of questions that I think all of our faculty have to begin to think about, but we can’t pretend it’s not happening, that it’s not changing how students approach their work. And so we’ve got to be responsive.

John: I’m going to put in a plug for an event that SUNY will be sponsoring. There’s going to be an AI symposium taking place in Buffalo on May 21st. We’re working on a schedule for that, and we will include a link to any information about that in the show notes for anyone who might be interested in joining a discussion with many people from around SUNY about the implications of AI.

Chancellor King: There’s so much excitement around this. We had an AI task force this past semester that is now ongoing, and we had probably 80 faculty members across SUNY institutions participating in that and that was thinking about lots of different questions about the implications of AI. But I think this is a great chance for us to deepen collaboration across the SUNY system.

Rebecca: You really highlighted a wide range of both opportunities and challenges that institutions face as a whole. How do faculty see themselves in moving forward in facing some of the challenges in helping students achieve meaningful credentials or really meet meeting some of the demands of our very near future.

Chancellor King: The faculty are the heart and soul of SUNY. I visited all 64 campuses, as I mentioned, last year. I’m about halfway through visiting them all again. And I’m just continually inspired by the work I see happening across our campuses, just faculty members who are inspiring students, who are equipping students with critical skills that will help them in their professions and in their lives. So I’m very grateful for that. A couple of places where I think there are some real leadership opportunities, one is for faculty to play a role in supporting our recruitment efforts to make sure that when students of color, low-income students, first-gen students, are coming to campus, they are hearing a clear message from faculty that they are wanted. One of the worries I have about the Supreme Court decision last year ending race-conscious admissions, is that it sent a message to black, Latino, Indigenous students, you are not welcome in higher education. And we want to send the opposite message, we want to say there’s a place for every New Yorker at SUNY. Our classrooms are stronger when our student body is diverse; our faculties are stronger when they’re diverse; our research is better when diverse researchers are engaged in solving problems together. So recruitment is one opportunity. Second opportunity, I think, is to continually ask how do we evolve our instruction and our course content to align with our evolving students in our evolving society? Now, we’re always going to want students to engage with the great conversation about what is the good life, we’re always gonna read Plato and Aristotle. But at the same time, we got to think about how are the questions we’re asking maybe different given what our students face today. So I think about when I was at one of our campuses, speaking with a botany professor, who was saying that he’d really never had full enrollment in his course, he always had empty seats. But this past year, he was teaching a course in the horticulture of cannabis and waitlists. And it wasn’t to say that every student in that class is going to get a job in the cannabis industry, though certainly the cannabis industry is going to grow in New York. But that course will be a gateway to getting excited about agriculture and an interest in careers in agriculture, which are plentiful as a whole generation of folks in the agriculture industry retire. We have lots of need for folks with expertise in agriculture, sustainable agriculture, in particular. So maybe being in that course on the horticulture of cannabis will bring them into this new field. So it’s not that he’s teaching something entirely different, it’s kind of tapping into the intersection of his discipline and what students are curious about. Similarly, you think about health care, and the challenges we have in the healthcare sector, students are really interested in learning about racial health disparities, and understanding how we’re going to tackle those. And I’m not saying diverse students are interested in those questions, because they see the horrific maternal health disparities by race that we have, and they want to make it better. So we should talk about that in our nursing classes, in our public health classes, in our medical schools. So this evolution of our teaching and our content to meet the moment, I think, is hugely important. And then I would add, we are stronger together. And so collaboration across disciplines, collaboration across institutions, strengthening transfer pathways, for example. 80% of the students who start community college, say they want to earn a bachelor’s degree, but less than 20%, do. We can do better, we have to do better. And so those partnerships, not only institutional partnerships, so that credits transfer and those things, but also faculty collaboration. What do we advise students about which courses to take if they’re interested in a particular degree when they come to the four-year institution? How do we improve advising at the two-year institution? Those kinds of things are an important place where faculty can engage.

John: As you mentioned, SUNY has done quite a bit of work in easing transfer credit across institutions, between community colleges and four-year colleges. But we have those really poor success rates for students who plan to go on for a bachelor’s. Are there any other strategies that could be used to help ease that transition from community college into four-year programs?

Chancellor King: Absolutely. You know, we have a transfer task force with folks from across our two- and four-year institutions working on this set of questions. Some of the things that we’re seeing that are promising around the country: advising… crucial, particularly as you’re picking classes, as you’re thinking about your major and how it will translate into what you want to ultimately do in your career, improving advising at the community college level, particularly if, and we have some folks who are using transformation funds, some of the funding we got last year from Governor Hochul and the legislature to do this, particularly if you can get the four-year institution to either place their staff as the advisors on a two-year campus, or to work in very close partnership with the advisors on the two-year campus to help ease that navigation. Another issue is what I might describe as friction reduction. One of the things we started this past year, which we will continue to grow is a SUNY match process where we reach out directly to students in our two-year programs and saying, “You are directly admitted to these four-year institutions based on your academic record at the two-year institution,” because for a lot of students, especially first-gen students, it’s that feeling of “Well, college, it it really for me, is a four-year institution really for me, am I ready for a four-year institution.” But it can be transformative to get that letter, that personalized letter that says there is a place for you at the four-year institution. And then look, there’s lowering financial barriers. That’s critical. One of the things I’m excited about that the governor announced in her State of the State and included in her budget is Universal FAFSA, making sure that students complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, because that’s how they know what resources are available to them. And some of our community college students, unfortunately, they don’t realize the aid they could have and so they’re struggling to afford the two-year institution and making the choice not to pursue a four-year degree because they don’t know the Pell dollars, the TAP dollars that could be there for them. That’s why we need them to do the FAFSA. Last year in New York, students left $200 million in federal aid unclaimed because of not completing the FAFSA. And so Governor Hochul wants to require K-12 to work with us in higher ed, to make sure that every student either completes the FAFSA, completes the DREAM Act application if they’re undocumented, or they and their family would complete a waiver that says “I realize there are billions of dollars available for post-secondary education, and I don’t want any. I’m not gonna fill out the form.” But at least we’ll know that every student and family understood the options available to them.

Rebecca: Sounds like some really great opportunities. I’m watching our time and knowing that we’re nearing our end of our time. But I’m really curious, before we get to our last question, what you’re most excited about working on in the next year?

Chancellor King: I love that question. I’ll tell you one of the things that I’m very passionate about. I first worked on when I was at the U.S. Education Department, President Obama had an initiative called My Brother’s Keeper, which was about trying to improve outcomes for boys and young men of color. And as part of that initiative, I was very involved in kind of leading the agency work on that initiative when I was Deputy Secretary then continued that as Secretary. And one of the initiatives that we launched was something called Second Chance Pell. And the history there is that in 94 in the crime bill, there are many problematic provisions, but one that was especially dumb was a provision that banned access to Pell grants for folks who are incarcerated. Now, of course, the evidence is any educational experience while incarcerated reduces the likelihood of recidivism. And completing a degree while incarcerated dramatically reduces the likelihood of returning to prison. So shamefully, this was part of the tough on crime punishment first kind of focus of the mid 90s. They banned access to Pell Grants, as a result programs in prisons all over the country closed. Some remained open through philanthropy, but many many closed. We wanted to change that, and so we used our experimental authority under the Higher Education Act to create a pilot program called Second Chance Pell that would allow, at that time, 65 colleges and universities to use Pell grants with students who are incarcerated. We launched that while I was Secretary. And then, when I was at Ed Trust, a coalition of civil rights groups, criminal justice reform organizations, education equity focused organizations worked together to get folks to visit those programs, members of Congress, Governors to highlight the incredible stories of the students who graduated from higher ed in prison programs. And we were able to persuade Congress to change the law and restore Pell access generally. So today, Pell Grants are available for incarcerated students. SUNY is already the largest provider of higher education in the state’s prisons with over 700 students, but we are trying to grow that effort. I want there to be a higher education program in every correctional facility in New York State. I want to make sure that we grow the number of bachelor’s programs. We have a lot of associate’s degree programs, but I want to make sure that students have the opportunity to go on to their bachelor’s degree. I was at graduation last week, mid-State Correctional Facility, five students graduating from Herkimer Community College. It was so beautiful and inspiring to see the transformative power of education, to hear students talk about how the access to higher education had changed them, changed their lives, changed their prospects for when they come home, but changed them as people. The faculty members were crying, the family members were crying, the folks in the correctional facility were so excited for the students who were graduating. It was truly, truly inspiring. So I’m very excited about that work. I’m looking forward to growing that work. But then more broadly, I’m excited that SUNY is on the move. SUNY is delivering high quality, affordable public higher education, driving economic opportunity for New York State. We are working to improve recruitment, retention, and completion. We are advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are doing the things that we ought to be to better serve New Yorkers. So I’m super excited about our work together.

John: Those are really important programs. And we’re so glad to hear all of this. We always end with the question: “What’s next?” I know you’ve already addressed a lot of this, but there’s so much more.

Chancellor King: Well, you know, we try to organize our work around the aspiration that SUNY has to be the best public statewide system of higher education in the United States. And we’re the largest comprehensive system, but it’s very important that we work to be the best system. To me that means we’ve got to deliver on student success. We’ve got to deliver on research and scholarship, the Governor’s asked us to double research and scholarship across the system. We’ve got to deliver on diversity, equity, and inclusion, that means diversity of our students, our faculty, our leadership, across our institutions. It means implementing the diversity, equity and inclusion, general education requirement, which is really nation leading to say every student is going to be exposed to diversity, equity, inclusion content across all of our institutions. And we’ve got to deliver on economic development and upward mobility, which has been the SUNY tradition for 75 years. So I organize how I think about the work. And certainly our board is organizing its work around those four pillars in order to achieve that goal of being the best statewide public higher education system. In the short term, we got a state budget that hopefully will be enacted on April1. So we got a lot of work to do to make sure we are making the case for investment in SUNY and helping people to see there’s a nine to one return on each state dollar invested in SUNY in terms of the economic impact. We need legislators to know that and we need to work with them to make sure that they are investing in the great work that our faculty are doing.

Rebecca: Well thank you so much for your insight on the current state of higher ed and all the opportunities that we have to improve our society.

Chancellor King: Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to join you and thanks for fostering dialogue on important issues.

John: And thank you for giving up your time so generously and all the work that you’ve done and are continuing to do.

Chancellor King: Thanks so much.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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331. Not Your Mother’s Dorm Room

Posted in design, diversity, equity, higher education, learning, learning spaces, persistence, social networks, support network
March 6, 2024

Recent trends in dormitory construction have provided students with more private space and less shared space. In this episode, Shelagh McCartney joins us to examine the reasons for this trend and discuss the effect these changes have on student persistence and success.

Shelagh is a licensed architect and urbanist and an Associate Professor and Director of the Together Design Lab at the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University.  She is the co-author with Ximena Rosenvasser of “Not Your Parents’ Dorm Room: Changes in Universities’ Residential Housing Privacy Levels and Impacts on Student Success.”

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Recent trends in dormitory construction have provided students with more private space and less shared space. In this episode, we examine the reasons for this trend and discuss the effect these changes have on student persistence and success.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Shelagh McCartney. Shelagh is a licensed architect and urbanist and an Associate Professor and Director of the Together Design Lab at the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the co-author with Ximena Rosenvasser of “Not Your Parents’ Dorm Room: Changes in Universities’ Residential Housing Privacy Levels and Impacts on Student Success.” Welcome, Shelagh.

Shelagh: Thanks so much. I’m really happy to be here.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Shelagh, are you drinking tea with us today?

Shelagh: I am drinking tea with you today.

Rebecca: Any special kind?

Shelagh: Earl Grey tea.

Rebecca: That’s a good classic.

John: It is. I am drinking Darjeeling today.

Shelagh: Very nice.

Rebecca: And I have a Scottish afternoon tea.

John: We’re recording in the afternoon. So that works well.

Shelagh: Perfect.

Rebecca: Just barely. [LAUGHTER]

John: We’ve invited you here today to discuss your article on changes in universities’ residential housing and some of the other work you’ve been doing. Before we discuss the study, it might be helpful to discuss how architectural design helps to shape human interactions.

Shelagh: Well, I think when we think about how design in general really shapes who we meet, when we meet, how people interact together, and whether it’s a comfortable interaction or something that happens more often. And I guess in the context of university housing, it begins to be about socialization, friendship, likelihood of creating friendship, and then how that actually translates into academic success, because people that are able to build those broader networks tend to do better in university because they have a better network and resource groups to go to during the ups and downs of university. Intuitively, we sort of associate place where you live with our mood, our familiar bonding, or a refuge for the world, or when we invite over people to share that space with us. And in our researches, we really looked at people such as Altman in the 1970s, who presented theories on how people were experiencing the lived environment. He discussed privacy, socialization, and how people would manage their environment to either connect with others or isolate themselves from others. And to do so, people resort to what he referred to as environmental mechanisms or behavioral mechanisms. So an environmental mechanism would be to close the door, And a behavioral mechanism would be someone to ask to leave the room like to say to someone, “Can you please leave me alone, I need to go and do my studying that I need to do.” And so some of the other research when we think also of linking these pieces together, and with architecture, it’s complicated, because we’re looking at other disciplines. And so when we think about Altman, and then we reach deeper into psychology of lived spaces with can think of Festinger, Schacter, and Back in the 1950s, unplanned meetings or chance encounters that discussed the influence that the built environment has the ability to sort of facilitate social interactions, friendships to come together, and more times we meet with people of similar interests, the higher chances are that we’re going to have a better connection with them, or friendships to arise. And of course, the strong interpersonal connections also affect our well being. So for students that’s reflected in how well they perform academically and their satisfaction with the university as a whole in terms of our experience. So these works I’ve really talked a lot about, the 1950s, the 1970s, and that’s really where a lot of this work came from. And I will say that we became concerned when we began to see sort of a shifting trend of what we were hearing in the types of lived environments, and that historically, university residence has been linked to having stronger academic outputs. But if the built environment begins to change, then maybe that wouldn’t be the same. And so that was sort of a rise from concern about five years ago. And then thinking about how we could actually look at a study and build a study around this to look at the changes we were seeing. And so in our initial work, we discussed student life and how we were studying university. So in my case, my first experience at university was living with a roommate in a shared bedroom, and sharing a common space such as a bathroom and a lounge. I like to joke that I could have held hands while lying in bed with my roommate, our beds were that close together. [LAUGHTER] And we had common dining with the whole building, but activities such as meeting in the hallways, or leaving the door open for people to come in and be able to hang out and remembering the sort of feelings also associated with that, to create friendships and networks. But students today have a completely different university experience. They’re offered a wide type of living units, apartments, larger super suites. So we’ve sort of set to investigate how these new living units are affecting students.

Rebecca: You’ve hinted at some of the changes that have occurred more recently. Can you talk about some of the changes that have happened over the last couple of decades and maybe why some of that change has actually occurred?

Shelagh: So when we think about the changes that have happened the last 20 or 30 years, I think it’s really important that there is a sort of inflection point, that after World War II student housing completely change with the rising rapid enrollment, especially by military veterans, and encouraged by sort of the state to receive university education and to be able to begin their lives after the war. And so we really see the rise at that point in time to change the kind of living environment. So the role of universities in providing housing for students also shifted. And we see that shift post-World War II. And then we are beginning to see that shift in the 1990s as well. So at that time, when we think about what was happening after World War Two, it was decided that universities and government would take that role of building fast, high-density residences with common dining spaces, in our case across Canada, but it did happen the U.S. as well, to meet that demand for student housing. And the design of these dormitories were called barrack buildings, which when we think about post-World War II, that begins to make sense, due to the similarity with military barracks. At that time, it was considered that veterans would not complain about simple features and amenities of these accommodations. And it was a successful experience, housing the majority of the student population on campus housing. And this is today what we think of as being what we call traditional residences, this sort of shared bathrooms, common dining room experience, many times single, double, triple, or quad rooms, and how many people that they were actually housing within those spaces. So that’s what we think of when we’re thinking about the traditional mothers’ dorm room. Then the other inflection point that I spoke about was in the 1990s, that this custodial role that universities had for university housing was really put to the test. Universities were systematically defunded, with their financing mainly coming from enrollment numbers. And at this time, government funding for infrastructure decreased considerably. This is why we’re seeing higher incomes of international student enrollments as well as universities using the unregulated tuition fees of international students to finance themselves. I’m speaking from the Canadian context, most of our universities in Canada… I’m saying most, but I want to say all… are public institutions, so we don’t have this similar division. So a lot of the funding comes through universities from the governments themselves. And this funding model had a radical shift on what happened in terms of thinking about the housing. So consequently, enrollment numbers continued to grow, but there wasn’t the facilities necessarily to put into place. And so what we’re seeing now is that private developers are associated with universities began building on campus residence to meet this demand. And so later on, especially in the last 10 years, we’re really seeing that the private developers are taking the lead in building student housing mostly in off-campus developments. And the new units are no longer responding to universities’ housing models, but they would try to cater to what I’m going to say is like students’ preferences. And I want to be clear that these are student preferences and parent preferences prior to the student entering university, I think there’s a significant discussion around what are students’ actual preferences, and what are the perceived preferences before they come in. So what we’re seeing how the new units are being structured, they’re allocating more facilities into private spaces, they’re starting to provide more private bedrooms, but also private bathrooms, also private lounges, also private kitchens, and private developers would also build multiple apartments. So in the last 10 years, private developers in some association with universities are building mostly single and double apartments, which means it’s sort of almost like a… we would say, in Toronto… a mini condo, but that would be a single bedroom, with a lounge, a kitchen, a bathroom, all within your own unit. Some of them are multiple apartments, would be separate bedrooms with those other shared facilities. And then also beginning to think about that they could be building single and double suites. What that is, it’s a private or semi-private bedroom, lounge and bathroom, but more of a communal kitchen that’s outside of the unit. And so in Toronto, in the last 10 years, there have not been any more traditional units built or our parents’ dorm rooms built at all. And so when we think about that shift of what’s been associated with a on-campus experience, that that’s not occurring. So although the total number of these high-privacy units in Toronto right now is small and doesn’t represent a majority of where students live, they are representing what is being constructed today, and what is on most of the horizon moving forward. And that’s really why we were concerned and that we are trying to put the research behind that to say, to think about the student experience and how to advise consulting firms and to encourage universities to actually think of the housing experience as part of the university experience, not as something that they put to the side that someone else handles. This isn’t just heads and beds. This is part of the university experience. And also it is directly tied into how people feel about their university experience as in would they recommend someone going to that university is based primarily a lot on their housing experience.

John: Why has there been this shift in the perceived preferences of students? Is it due to rising incomes, so that it’s easier for students and their families to afford more expensive housing because the barracks-style housing would be relatively less expensive than the private suites and so forth? Or might it be partly due to perhaps a decline in fertility rates so that family sizes are smaller and students coming into our colleges are less likely to have had prior experience sharing a room with a sibling, for example.

Shelagh: I can’t speak directly to fertility rates and how the relationship of that does come together. I wouldn’t say that fertility rates have declined so much lately that there has been a changed experience. When we look at occupancy, the occupancy of the average people per household has remained relatively the same in the last 20 or 30 years. But I would say probably in the 60s and 70s, it could have been different, at least here. We’ve had a large immigrant population that’s come to Canada in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. It continues today, and a lot of people want the best for their kids. They’d worked hard to secure a future to have the best for their children. And most of these more luxury places cost more. So this is the cost for this traditional room, and this is the cost for this other one that is more expensive to build, more expensive to run. And so there is a notion of attaching the luxury piece to it. So when we think of society as this trend, particularly in Western cultures, there is a tendency towards larger private spaces. When we think of the size of homes, of how they’ve grown as compared to post-World War II student housing, we begin to think about the two major trends that started in the 1990s in student housing, was first the involvement of private developers that imitate rental types of other units, and cater them to students, such as single units or apartments shared with only one or two people. And in the sense that developers are building something that they can easily redirect to another public if needed. I think that this is actually quite an important piece, is the financing behind it. And the flexibility of a developer that is not a university, and may actually want to pivot if the student housing market isn’t the new asset class that people are relying on so much in terms of having their returns, and could pivot actually to rent it within the normal housing market. It’d be more difficult to do that with a traditional or barracks style room. And so the second is also the commodification of the student experience and emphasis on student preferences. So there’s a lack of research for a long time on student housing that actively involved universities and developers to seek students’ wellbeing. It was more thinking about “what is the preferences,” it was very much driven by parents entering university, children entering university rather than actually students there. So in one of our subsequent studies, we actually took students and said, “Okay, these are the options, these are your preferences, and we gave them all the money in the world.” And so we did like a mock game on this and then we constrained them, and what amount of money they had to spend, and we were able to actually prioritize themn And so to me, that’s a contribution that we’ve made, because there’s one thing to say, what would you like. I’d like a pony. I’d like a unicorn, I’d love a great car, maybe a different type of house, but I may not be thinking about how I’m going to pay for that. What are my actual priorities? So by constraining the students, we push the dial a little bit to say, “Okay, what do you want?” And one of the main things that came back was affordability, they may have a preference for all these things that people say what they want, but when they’re asked to actually balance it, people actually chose differently, quite differently based on what their preferences were. And these were existing students. And I also think, within the barracks style, is that we’re not advocating that everything be built traditional, because there is different personalities out there that succeed differently, and better in different types of housing. But we just want to make sure that the new kind of housing isn’t all that’s being constructed, and that people that may have felt crowded in the quadruple rooms on barracks style housing, and a lot of studies are that way, they compare quadruple rooms, traditional rooms, with single apartments. And there’s so much of a spectrum in between there that I think really comes out in our work. And we’ve tried to allow people to access that, to be able to compare the spectrum, the pieces in between within that. A lot of the research was comparing severely crowded ways of being that people couldn’t have any kind of privacy to something that was very, very, very, very, very private, and then therefore saying that this other thing was bad. And so when we think about this commodification that’s happened, that there is a lack of research of students being actively engaged within that. And that’s true that there is some expectations of recreating what is offered in the familial home. So Kaplan stated that if students are used to sharing a bedroom in their own homes, directly thinking what you mentioned, John, than there also be more comfortable at university doing that. And the cultural differences, I think, is also what applies. We’re beginning to see that and Heilweil identified it as well, that there’s some cultures and subcultures that are more comfortable and want to share their space and their belongings. Even if they have the money to be able to rent the more private unit, they actually prefer to live with someone in more close proximity to them. So when we think about how these changes have affected cost and affordability, this is what also really tips the scales to us when we think about the stress. It’s virtually inaccessible and unaffordable to live close by to universities for a majority of reasons. So nowadays in Toronto, about 70% of the students remain in the familial home, because universities don’t have enough residences, or people can’t afford to live within them because of the lack of affordable housing that’s available. And for developers, this is a perfect storm of having low vacancy and high prices close to universities, that encouraged them to focus it on these luxury products that they could flip into condos and don’t satisfy the needs of the majority of the student population as well. But we’re seeing a change in the discourse of talking to developers who are now showing interest in changing the strategies we’re putting forward thus far in the city itself. And I think that that’s one thing that’s quite interesting in the Toronto context is that the developers that are working here tend to be smaller, almost family-oriented developers. And so you’re literally talking to the person that’s making some of the main decisions, and that it is a family enterprise. And so in some of our grants moving forward, we have actually applied to do some of this work with developers to move the conversation along in this context, and then sharing it more broadly, because the Canadian population isn’t so dissimilar to the rest of the populations in North America as well. So although I can’t sort of speak to fertility rates, I think that we’ve seen a growth in the size of bedrooms since the 1940s, across the countries, across North America, and that is being emulated in the student homes, and the student residences that people are seeking.

Rebecca: You mentioned earlier a difference between perceived wants in housing prior to starting university, and then you implied that there might be a change once they’re here. Can you talk a little bit about that potential shift that happens.

Shelagh: So I think what we’ve seen is that there is a lot of desire to emulate the familial home, and not want to share anything. I don’t know anybody. I want to have my own bathroom. I want to have my own bedroom. I want to be able to cook. I want to have the most flexibility that I can. And what we’re actually seeing is that when we work with students that are actually students, and they’ve had some university experience already, that there’s more of a desire to share. They are putting more weight on the networks and the importance of the networks because people forget that they are sharing those things if they’re living within a family environment, there is another adult there that they’re sharing with, there may be other siblings that they’re sharing with. And so they’re getting those different interactions. And now when you take a student and put them in their own apartment by themselves, and there isn’t a need to go out, that they forget that they’re not actually seeing anybody in those chance encounters that are moving forward. And Ximena and I, in our latest piece of research with Yemi Adediji, we’ve looked at it really quantifiably. We have 11 years of research, 11 years of administrative documentation across all of the universities in Toronto. And we were able to actually classify them by room and being able to see how successful that they’re being. And in speaking to the students as well, we have another article that is published called Affordability is King. Affordability is King is that people really want to be able to have one space that’s private. And so we would probably, similar to as John said, that a barracks building is easier and cheaper to build. And we could actually drive this as affordability. We would be advocating for small individual rooms, that people could be able to have one space where they can feel private, and yet the rest of the spaces where they are going to be able to have different chance encounters. And interestingly, a lot of it hinges on the bathroom. And we think that that’s because one has to go to the bathroom more times than they eat. And also, if you’re in a shared space, brushing your teeth near somebody, that is a bit more of an intimate experience, and therefore you’re more likely to engage with each other in the dining room. Whereas we are seeing the research of bedrooms that have bathrooms within the unit, that their grades are substantially impacted negatively. I know that’s not in the current one. But the swings are substantial. They’re nine grade points out of 100.

John: That’s really interesting. I’m a little surprised by that, but that is one sort of shared space that everyone has to use. A lounge, for example, might not always be used, it could be empty much of the time, and in fact, in many dorms, they have been, but the bathrooms would get a lot of visitors often at the same times of the day.

Shelagh: So I think it’s also sort of this balance between those spaces that are designed for socialization and there’s places that are designed for privacy. But we speak a lot about balanced privacy. And one of the current pieces that we’re working on is: “what does that actually mean?” And using tools that we’ve developed to allow people to say, “Well, what is the privacy that I’m looking at within here? How can I begin to put that on a scale to understand how those are connected to each other?” And then again, with a large quantifiable study, it’s 28,000 students in that time period, so a substantial dataset to be working with. So some of the results have been surprising. And then to really begin to think about what that means for the design of spaces. If we were to give people advice as to what they should be investing in in terms of so social spaces. Designing a really great social bathroom could be one of them. And I reflected on my university experiences, sometimes the getting ready to go out was more fun than the actual going out.

John: One of the things you did was design an instrument called the hierarchy of isolation and privacy in architecture to help describe some of those changes. Could you describe what this index captures?

Shelagh: Well, it begins to look at the different spaces within the unit, and then to think about how many people you’re interacting with within that space. And so there’s a significant difference between single bedrooms, double bedrooms, and three and four bedrooms. And so we looked at each of the spaces and to say, really following Altman to think about primary and secondary territories. Are you by yourself? Are you sharing them with one person? Are you sharing them with a small group? And then to allow that to guide more of the discussions, again, because there is this real weights of the opposite ends of the spectrums, and we were trying to communicate that there’s much more nuance to this. And so we actually use the HIPAT tool in some of the new work that we’re just getting to journals now, to really look at all of the different units just to say, “Well, what does balanced privacy actually look like?” We gave a tool to actually be able to talk about it and measure it. And we were seeing in the literature, a lot of psychologists and people saying, “This is what we’re observing, but we don’t know how to analyze the built environment.” And so we’re hoping that it would be a tool that would allow many other disciplines to interact with architecture in a way that is more organized and they can begin to speak to each other around this tool. I think that that’s a common thing within our research together, we’re always looking for ways to bring the disciplines together, because so many people can speak about the built environment. But it’s a real shame that if you can have a great psychologist or sociologist that’s looking at a piece, and then just says, “Well, I can’t analyze the built space.” This is a tool to allow them to be able to engage in that.

John: And we should note that citations for all the studies that have been mentioned will be included in the show notes. And when they are publicly available, we’ll include a link to them as well, just so our listeners know that they can find more resources about this as a follow up.

Shelagh: Well, thank you. And I know that in the HIPAT tool that we also developed and built on the housing classification, again, many of the housing classifications are organized in how a developer thinks about constructing a space like “does the space have a kitchen?” “does the space have a bathroom?” and so they were comparing apartments to traditional but again, if there’s four people living in apartment that’s completely different if there’s one person living in an apartment, and so the HUC tool, or the housing unit classification system, was designed to tease that apart and we’re finding a lot of people in co-op housing, co-housing are beginning to talk to us or citations of using this as a more organized way to describe housing in other situations as well. So it’s not designed only for student housing, there’s many other ways that it can be used in terms of innovative people sharing space.

John: In general, in the design of academic buildings, at least on our campus and many campuses in the US, there’s been a shift to create more spaces for students to interact. But it sounds like the trend in dormitory housing, where students spend a fair amount of time, has been in the opposite direction. And there’s been a lot of research in the last few years about the importance of connections and networks and so forth in terms of student success and retention and wellbeing. How have these two things diverged in that way? Why has the architecture of dorms gone in a very different direction than architectural trends in the design of academic spaces.

Shelagh: Well, I think that, particularly in the States, the housing, through the provision of different amenities has been used as a way to attract students to the campus. The housing experience in Canadian universities is not radically different. And because we have a different donor funding structure, I think that that’s why we’re seeing a lot more of the amenities that are available in US residences, we’re really seeing that change in terms of attracting students, in terms of the amenities. And so I think we’re seeing the mirroring more pronounced, let’s put it that way, the mirroring of the familial home. And again, this notion of “I’ve worked so hard to get to this place, and I want to put my kids through the university.” I will say, our parents’ generation, or my parents’ generation, did not attend university the same kind of way. And that generation is shifting now. The people that are starting to send their kids to university went themselves, which when we think about that article that says “Not my Mother’s Dorm Room,“ my mother hadn’t gone to university. So they were doing what everyone else did. We were seeing through the 80s and the 90s is that generation pushing for the best for their kid. I’ve worked so hard, and I didn’t go to university, but I want the best for my kid going to university. And now what we’re beginning to see is people say affordability is more important. I went to university. I lived in that environment. There’s no way, kid, I’m paying for a luxury place for you to be. So we may actually begin to see a shift. But I do think that the REIT and development and financing structure has a very large impact on how the units come together. And so within that, if the developer can build a type of housing environment that could be flipped to be thought of as being single apartments, or double apartments, even, then the banks feel more comfortable lending money to them. And we don’t have as developed a REIT structure. And so they feel more comfortable lending to them. I’ve had developers say to me, I wanted to do that. But we’re talking about five point difference that I was getting offered rates of 2, 3%, as compared to 6, 7. That’s a drastic change in my financing model, I think in universities as well, that the custodial role of the different universities is changing. And again, a lot of the discussions have been give it away, University’s job is not actually to house students, to not to be the parent. But that was always the historical role, the custodial role of them. And so when we think about it, like coming back with the emulation of wanting to be in the parents home, combined with not necessarily enough understanding, for us, we began to be concerned. And when we looked at the literature, people hadn’t touched this topic as much since the 70s. More of it’s coming out now, and a lot of it was based on academic spaces, but within the housing, that it was really, again, looking at these two opposites. And so we wanted to develop more tools around that, and not based on our tools, but there is more interest in looking at this. And I think, as the universities begin to think about what is the financial situation that they’re in, how they will begin to progress on that, but residences, I know in the States, more than Canada, have been used as a vehicle to be able to attract students as sort of the having these great, amazing environments. I think if you said to a Canadian parent, like there’s a lazy river in the residence, people would think that that was not something that they would ever think would be there. Whereas I think the amenities that are available and some of the residences, that they’re pretty luxurious and pretty fun and that’s a huge attraction.

Rebecca: What are some of the consequences of not really paying attention to our residence hall development and not really thinking about these academic implications, or some of the social implications? What are the long term effects of some of these decisions?

Shelagh: We think ultimately, people will not have the same positive university experience, the benefits that you typically see out of living on campus won’t be there. Students become more dissatisfied with their university experience and don’t necessarily want to attend. And I think this is something we’re trying to outline in the literature that it starts to become also an equity discussion. Like he who has the money to be able to afford said residence and actually even be able to live in a university residence. Myself, Ximena with Kiana Basiri and Cynthia Holmes, we’ve recently completed a study that we’re putting in for publication, it is in the revise and resubmit piece right now. But it is looking at the implication of, again, GPA, we have about 750,000 students that we’re looking at and looking at them longitudinally. People that live in residence graduate more often, people that live in residence have a significantly higher GPA, on average, and then myself, Ximena and Yemi, we looked at well, when we break that down by unit type, what does that mean? I sort of alluded to the fact that it’s substantial between the differences. But the differences, as I said, between single apartments and this ideal single room on a traditional floor, where you’re sharing a bathroom, having a different dining experience, a 9-point difference is the difference between an A-minus and a B-minus. So the GPA will get lower, and you’ll sometimes see people that won’t be able to pursue university education. I do think one of the largest concern now is affordability. John, you stole my moment. But you advocated for the fact that it’s cheaper to build. We’re actually saying, build single rooms, sharing all of these amenities together, and pay attention to the fact that they are places where you have to go, that it isn’t just the lounge, thinking about the hallway spaces and the bathrooms, places that you need to go and where you will be interacting with people. So, i.e., these bathrooms are not single stalls with doors along a wall that you go into and experience completely separately, that there is a place where there is interaction. But the long-term effects is the fact in many of these areas, if you don’t build the right kind of residences, we’re literally seeing the ability for a poor student to succeed, that they will likely fail and will not continue in the university. But around the affordability question is that if universities aren’t paying attention to the curriculum of housing that you are going to create an inequity in the system. He who can pay to live close to the university is going to do significantly better than he who can’t. They’re then more likely to go into graduate studies as well. And they’re also probably going to only going to socialize with their own socio-economic group. And then you begin to see divisions on campus socially. And if areas of housing is not affordable, then when we think about the meritocracy that we sort of say hard work and brains, then you can succeed. We’re beginning to divide society. I mean, that’s the big doom and gloom piece, but it is one of the pieces sort of lit are concerns, just to say this is a a type of experience that leads to success. And if we’re not paying attention to the type of units that we’re building, there may be a lot of investment and we’re not going to get the results we think we’re going to get from them. And from that, some universities, if they don’t have housing available or don’t build great housing, or housing that really builds their campus, they may see people begin to not to want to go to university there. In Toronto, for instance, as with this unaffordable housing economy, you can begin to see the impacts on the success of the city, because you’re not attracting top minds. I have lots of people that reach out to me now saying, “Well, what would faculty housing look like?” Because we’re beginning to see land values go up typically by 1% by kilometer that you get closer to a university. So talking about affordable housing beside a university is kind of a paradox to that unless the university takes a role in that. So you begin to see his brain drain of talent away from the university, and thus away from a city.

John: Are there any other observations you’d like to share with our listeners?

Shelagh: When we’re thinking about these academic spaces, there’s a push generally towards more space. I would add that design is really important in these spaces. It’s not lost on me that the type of units that we are advocating for are the ones that are in the classic dormzilla Munger building on the west coast that has been very highlighted, let’s say, in discussions around university housing. But within that, it’s not just about the unit, the unit is important, but things like light are important. And it’s not just about lounge space, it’s about good lounge space, and really considering what are the interactions that people will have. And so new residences offer a wide range of social spaces that are not offered in traditional residences. And so in our studies, we investigate students’ daily activities, and if those activities correlate with a fixed space or not. So it’s not only a matter of students meeting informally, or in an unplanned way, but the familiarity with strangers that later become acquaintances, and hopefully friends, I think, is really important. And then our latest research, we found a very particular connection between dining spaces and GPA. And dining spaces, as they become more flexible in the terms of universities, allowing students as meals all across campus, we actually see a negative correlation because student interaction diminishes of meeting up with the same people, and so does GPA. And again, I was expecting smaller point percentages, you know, maybe the difference between a B and a B+. But again, within these, we’re seeing quite significant gaps within that. And so for us, it has led us to investigate more different pieces on top of it.

Rebecca: Well, we always wrap up by asking: “What’s next?”:

Shelagh: For student housing, within that I would say hopefully more and better. So which coincidently is more affordable for students, as well as what we are advocating for: single rooms with a lot of shared spaces are cheaper to build, they’re easier to maintain, easier to manage.=, typically. Our research shows that if properly managed, going back to our parents’ dorm rooms, or traditional residences is the right way to go. Of course, we do not advocate to dismiss the diversity of the student population and their needs. But for majority of the student body, which is where my perspective is coming from, I’m not talking necessarily about people with different abilities, or neurodiversity. But for the average student, we found the traditional rooms seemed to be the answer. And that for our research group working with universities and developers, what’s next is we’re going to be looking to shape the future of housing together to focus on students’ wellbeing, trying to bring the conversation around to a student-centric approach rather than only an internal rate of return approach. And that we’re in the process of publishing some new findings that I’ve mentioned today, and taking the work to more specific groups. We’re going to be looking at international students. So I’ll wrap up by saying that in this new work that we’re looking at, we found comparing socializing residences, single apartments, as I said on campus, was that people that lived in single apartments are the most expensive and luxurious ones on campus perform nine points worse, single modified traditional rooms, which is a room with a bathroom inside of it, they actually perform three points worse. As soon as you take that bathroom and put it in, they’re not performing with it as well. But if you did not want to have a single room only, students that live in multiple apartments where they are sharing with a group of four or five students, an apartment environment, although they perform worse than ones in traditional rooms, that is sort of the next-best group again, because of those social interactions that they’re having. Interestingly, we were surprised by this result, that single modified traditional were sort of three-points rooms, but as soon as you had a friend in your room with you, that then I guess, encouraged social interaction, that they only performed a little bit worse than the single room. We would generally advocate for small private bedrooms, but would allow for students to have a place that they can be quiet in, but that if they wanted to have more space that they would be encouraged to go out into their environment to interact with.

Rebecca: Well, thank you so much for sharing your really interesting research. As a designer, I find all this super fascinating.

John: Thank you, and it’s really nice to see some studies of these types of things rather than decisions being made based on perceived student preferences, which may not always align with what students will choose when faced with the cost, or when institutions are aware of what some of the implications are in terms of student retention and student success. So it’s nice to see this research being done.

Shelagh: Well, thanks so much for having me, John and Rebecca. I know, as a architect and a planner, I’m always looking for the data and how it can influence design. And speaking recently, at a conference, there were a number of architects that came up to me afterwards and said, “You must have seen so many residents” and I was like, “happy to have a lunch and learn,” we really want to do applied research, and just sort of see what is something that is concerning to us, and then be able to see if we can actually put a framework classification, allow people to investigate into this further. So maybe someone listening to this will also feel better about how they will be housing their student as they move into university. But then also, if there’s other researchers that are listening to this to say, maybe there’s an interdisciplinary way that they can come together with the tools that we’ve done, to be able to think about increasing the conversation into many other fields. Thank you so much for having me.

John: Thank you.

Rebecca: Thank you so much.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

Ganesh: Editing assistance by Ganesh.

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328. MicroSkills

Posted in graduate training, professional development, sleep, stress management, support network, teaching, transparency
February 14, 2024

Formal education does not always prepare us well for the unwritten rules of the workplace. In this episode, Adaira Landry and Resa Lewiss join us to discuss MicroSkills: Small Actions: Big Impact, their new book, designed to support us in efficiently navigating professional environments.

Adaira is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. She is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and award winning mentor. She co-founded Writing in Color, a nonprofit that teaches the craft of writing. Resa is a professor of emergency medicine, TEDMED speaker, TimesUp Healthcare founder, designer, entrepreneur, and award-winning educator, mentor, and point-of-care ultrasound specialist. She hosts the Visible Voices Podcast, amplifying content in the healthcare, equity, and current trends spaces.  Adaira and Resa have written many articles together in CNBC, Fast Company, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Nature, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Science, Slate, STAT News, Teen Vogue, VOGUE, and USA Today. They have been quoted and featured in the Guardian, the HuffPost, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. MicroSkills: Small Actions: Big Impact, is scheduled for release in April 2024 by Harper Collins.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Formal education does not always prepare us well for the unwritten rules of the workplace. In this episode, we discuss a new resource to support us in efficiently navigating professional environments.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

Rebecca: Our guests today are Adaira Landry and Resa Lewiss. Adaira is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. She is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and award winning mentor. She co-founded Writing in Color, a nonprofit that teaches the craft of writing. Resa is a professor of emergency medicine, TEDMED speaker, TimesUp Healthcare founder, designer, entrepreneur, and award-winning educator, mentor, and point-of-care ultrasound specialist. She hosts the Visible Voices Podcast, amplifying content in the healthcare, equity, and current trends spaces. Adaira and Resa have written many articles together in CNBC, Fast Company, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Nature, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Science, Slate, STAT News, Teen Vogue, VOGUE, and USA Today. They have been quoted and featured in the Guardian, the HuffPost, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. They are the co-authors of MicroSkills: Small Actions: Big Impact, which is scheduled for release in April 2024 by Harper Collins. Welcome back, Adaira and Resa.

Adaira: Thank you so much for having us. I’m excited to be here.

Resa: Delighted, delighted, delighted.

John: We’re glad to talk to you again. Today’s teas are:… Resa, are you drinking tea?

Resa: I am absolutely drinking tea. I am drinking Celestial Seasonings True Blueberry. And I like not only the smell. I like the taste. I like the name. I like the feeling.

John: And Adaira?

Adaira: I am drinking chamomile. I love chamomile, and I’m trying to actually get more into green tea, which I hear is the healthiest type of tea out there. But I’m starting with just chamomile today.

John: …all those antioxidants.

Adaira: Right. That’s exactly right. It’s purely for health benefits. I’m trying to transition to exclusively green tea.

Rebecca: Both of them sound nice and calming. For sure. I have Harsha, which sounds like the exact opposite of that. [LAUGHTER]

John: Which is a black tea, a very harsh black tea, apparently.,

Rebecca: it is not a harsh black tea.

Adaira: I can’t do black tea. It is really harsh. It is.

Rebecca: …so tasty.

John: And I have a Republic of Tea wild blueberry tea today, which is a black tea.

Adaira: I like that brand.

Rebecca: …popular flavor this afternoon. So we invited you here today to discuss Micro Skills. Could you tell us a little bit about the origin of your book project.

Adaira: I’m happy to start. So Resa and I have been writing together for about three and a half years. We started with articles writing about our everyday struggles in the workplace. And we recognize that the things that we were facing in academia in medicine were widely applicable to a larger audience. Things like how to communicate, how to write a letter of recommendation for yourself, how to deal with workplace toxicity. And so those topics, even though we were encountering them in the healthcare setting, people were encountering them in education and finance, and tech. And so we thought, what would be the next big thing? Like, where do we go from here? And I’ve always wanted to write a book, and I love writing with Resa. So it just seemed like an organic next step to pitch the idea to her, “How about writing a larger project, a book, together that is really focused on the workplace?” And we still have the same philosophy of teaching the strategic how to, and using a voice that really is approachable and full of easy-to-implement tips.

Resa: And what we found, as Adaira said, is that what we experienced and what we see in medicine is actually exactly what our friends are seeing in other industries. And we found that we were able to write about the workplace in ways that spoke to many audiences, many industries. And we’re both ambitious. And when she came to me with the offer and the idea, I said, “I’m in.”

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about the intended audience? …you’ve kind of hinted at your connection to the medical field, but also these wider audiences….

Resa: I’m going to make a sports reference, and we’re going to talk about the playbook. And for different reasons, and sometimes overlapping reasons. Adaira and I have felt like, we didn’t get a copy of the playbook. And we certainly have been able to navigate this thing called academic emergency medicine, and we have a lot of accomplishments. But gosh, it definitely could have been easier if we had been told certain things, if we somehow got the inside scoop. And so the motivation was to provide that for everybody: to get there easier, get there sooner, get there in a way that everything…. goals, tasks, habits, navigating the workplace… just doesn’t seem as hard.

Adaira: I was going to add because a lot of people have asked if there is a specific audience we had in mind when we wrote the book, and Resa and I discussed upfront, “So we want to write a book for just women or just physicians?” And we’ve found ourselves wanting to really capture that wider audience. And, yes, we think this book is going to appeal greatly for those who are early in their careers who really know very little about the workplace because they have limited experience. And also, we have found that people who are more senior have benefited from a refresher, reminding themselves of what others expect of them. And we’ve even heard some feedback that people are going to use this as a guide in how they mentor others.

John: And even some of those who are later in careers, I think, can benefit from it. When Rebecca and I were working together in the teaching center, she saw some of the emails I sent out, and her response was, “I don’t know why people even talk to you, sometimes.” [LAUGHTER] I don’t know if you remember that conversation, Rebecca,

Rebecca: I think that’s a direct quote. [LAUGHTER]

John: I think it was a direct quote. It was a few years ago, but having this type of book could be really useful for people in pretty much any career. In the introduction, you note that the characteristics of successful people are often wrongly considered innate traits, rather than larger skills that can be dissected and learned in small pieces. Could you describe the range of topics that you address in this book.

Resa: So we have 10 chapters. And we actually did a lot of beta testing, beta reading, brainstorming sessions, the two of us, and then we opened it up to some people from all different ages, stages industries to see what resonated, and I’ll just name those 10 chapters. And that sort of will speak to the audience, in that they’ll understand really how comprehensive of a book this is. So we have micro skills for self care, micro skills to manage a task list, micro skills for polished communication, micro skills to build and maintain your reputation, micro skills for becoming a subject matter expert, micro skills to learn your workplace culture, micro skills to be a team player, micro skills to grow your network, micro skills for navigating conflict, and finally, micro skills to actively find new opportunities.

Rebecca: …such a great list of categories of micro skills. Can you give an example of what some of those specific micro skills might be?

Adaira: Yeah, I want to open with chapter one, micro skills for self care. And we purposefully put that at the front of the book, because we think, for anyone who wants to be better at work, they have to do this check in or audit as far as who they are, how they take care of themselves, how much compassion they give to themselves, and just making sure that they feel like they’re in a good spot, as a person, as an individual, before they start moving into work, and the team, and all of those things. And so we really love that this chapter is at the beginning, and we open with nine micro skills for self care. The first is to nourish relationships with people you trust, to really invest in those people to recognize the value of gratitude and demonstrate appreciation of others. The third is to make yourself an award-winning sleeper. As physicians, we of course, have a high emphasis on sleep and rest. Protect your ability to deliberately rest, and we talk about what deliberate rest means. Manage your personal finances. And we have a lot to say about that. Monitor your personal hygiene and physical health. And that was actually quite an interesting one to put in there, because there’s a lot about how someone appears that is very personal and sensitive, and it’s a very controversial topic. So that was a really interesting one to dive into. Number seven is offload routine tasks that bring you no joy or purpose. Number eight is place and organize everything on a calendar. And then number nine is to set limits on time spent in meetings.

Rebecca: I’d like to emphasize and underscore that one.

Adaira: Almost all of these were born out of our own personal struggles, or what has been told to us by other people directly, or our observations of how we have seen other people thrive or struggle within the workplace. But it’s not like any of it’s just coming out of thin air. Like what if this were a problem, it’s all grounded in some form of reality that we have witnessed.

Resa: And our approach is unique because there are many business self-help books out there. And when submitting a proposal and working with an editor, we had to give what we call comp titles. So there are plenty of books out there that talk about these things. What we know is different about this book is we break it down into these small steps, micro skills, and we tell people how. And I’ll just take the example of developing subject matter expertise, that seems like huge and people are like, “I don’t even know how to do that. How do you do that?” And we break it down. And one example about which we wrote recently is collaboration, and how collaborating with others can be a piece of building your own subject matter expertise. So we go into examples, and we break each one down with providing critical actions that are actionable, they’re discrete, they’re specific, and they build upon each other.

Rebecca: The other thing that’s really important to underscore is that these are all presented as skills, things that are learnable. And not just somehow, something we’re more or just supposed to somehow know. But it’s something we can take steps to get better at, and not just snap here today, we have this particular skill.

Adaira: That’s exactly right.

John: And early in your book, in terms of differentiating your book from other self-help, or self-care books, you note that a lot of other books come from a perspective of privilege, and may not work with a broader audience. Could you give us some examples of how you’ve tried to make your book relevant to a broad range of readers?

Resa: John, I love that question. And no one has asked us that question yet. They’ve noted what you just noted. But they didn’t ask how or maybe why. And so I think this comes from a place, and I’ll speak personally, of having had the experience of not feeling like I belong, feeling like I’m the only, and I’m not denying the plenty of privilege that I bring to the table. But being super aware that all of these environments are not built for inclusivity and belonging and for everybody. And so one assumption that is made often in these books is that people have access to resources, and the specific resource I’m speaking about is money and wealth. And it’s not said, but it’s definitely assumed by the way these books are written, or the way they talk about, “well just go do this.” It assumes that you have access to a savings and checking account, that you have access to caretakers like parents who can give you money, or who can support you, or that you’ve somehow inherited financial knowledge that maybe you didn’t inherit, and you didn’t have that kind of opportunity in the household in which you grew up. So financial is one assumption that we tried not to make. And that goes back to the why we told people how, because a lot of the books just assume, we’ll just go out and get a financial advisor. Many people don’t even know where to start. And the assumption is, that must cost a lot of money. And the reality is, it does not necessarily need to cost a lot of money, it may not cost any money. But again, we tried to really come from our own experience, or the experience of people that we love that are in our life, or quite honestly, we’re in the emergency department, we see the full breadth of society, and people come at the worst days of their life. People sometimes come with like, literally minor paper cuts, the range. And so I think it keeps, I certainly know it keeps me sober. And I say that a lot. And people are like, “oh,” and it’s a figurative aspect to staying sober about not everybody comes from the same place or has the same access.

Adaira: And the other thing that we wanted to do was really reveal our vulnerability and our own lessons learned. We don’t write from a place of “we know everything, because we have never made a mistake.” Well, that would be very untrue. I’m speaking personally for myself. I have made plenty of mistakes. And I would say that the book is really born out of the examples of how we have learned to be better communicators. And some of that is because we’ve made a mistake in the past. And we’re like, we should never make that mistake again. And we should also teach other people not to do the same thing. And so I think that level of vulnerability, that level of humility, is woven throughout the book because I tell a story about how I gave a patient the wrong medication dose. And so that’s like revealing a part of me that maybe someone else might want to hide. But I think showing that allows the reader to really understand that “Yes, here are these two physicians trained at Harvard who are successful.” Resa has a very successful podcast, I have a nonprofit. We have succeeded in various ways. And we have done that through making mistakes and learning lessons from it.

Rebecca: I really love the transparency component in underscoring that piece of it, and that making sure that you’re not making some of those assumptions, incredibly valuable and can’t be underscored enough. You’ve hinted a little bit at some of the content of individual structures, but they all follow a common structure. Do you want to share a little bit about how each chapter is structured? Kind of on this thread of transparency.

Resa: Love to. So as Adaira spoke, we put ourselves into this book. So every micro-skill and every chapter starts with a story, a vignette. And we switch back and forth who’s speaking, whose story, and its a real story. Some identifying features are changed, but they’re based on real circumstances and we wrote them so you can tell it’s our authentic voice. The goal of the story is to illustrate the micro-skill. And after the vignette, there’s an aspect where we talk about why is this skill important? …and some may be self evident. But sometimes these things are not evident. And that’s why people need to read this book. So we talk about why it’s important, how it can help you at work. This goes back to the humility and the transparency. We say, “Hey, listen, we get it. This is hard. And this is why it’s hard and why you may not want to do this, been able to do this, all the above.” And then we break it down into critical action steps, concrete steps, that the reader can take.

John: Can you give us some additional examples of some of the micro skills that you talked about in your book?

Adaira: Yeah, I will start with one that I think is relevant to me in my most recent days. And that is “learn what your supervisors expect of you.” And actually, in the book, I tell a story about how I went to a lecture many years ago, where it was a male speaker, and he was telling a story about how he was tasked to organize social, like mixers or journal club-type things during the day. And his co-fellow, a woman, was also tasked to do the same thing. And he spent like two minutes on this assignment, like he just sent out a quick email, and it was done, he didn’t really even order food. And she made a beautiful invitation and got this like artisanal food and had music and everyone was personally invited. And in the end, he ultimately got hired, he sort of summarizes this story, because they’re both fellows, but he was the one of the two who was hired because he didn’t really spend time doing the tasks his supervisor didn’t care about, instead of doing all the organizational stuff, what we call non-promotable tasks in the book, he spent time doing the research, giving the talks, networking with people doing other things that his supervisor valued. And so I think that’s something that’s like a favorite of mine right now. Because as an advisor for our medical school, I’m sort of teaching students to understand what is expected of you. And it becomes quite relevant. If you are someone who doesn’t really understand that there’s a difference between the work that is tasked to you and what you personally find valuable. And we talk about this other concept of non-promotable tasks. And there’s a huge gendered component to that, where perhaps the woman in that scenario was told or assumed that she needed to put this energy into something else that she shouldn’t have been doing. So that to me is a really interesting concept.

Resa: My favorite skills, favorite stories, change day-to-day and conversation-to-conversation. One that I’ll highlight is under the micro skills for self-care chapter, and this is specifically: recognize the value of gratitude and demonstrate appreciation of others. And in this micro-skill, I start by telling a story of working in the emergency department with an attending and I was a resident doctor, and this woman came in and she was clearly dying of metastatic cancer. And it was very recognizable to us how terminal she was, how sick she was. And the family that came in with her definitely did not recognize how end stage and far along she was. And no one had had a conversation with her, with them. There was no consensus decision about what to do and what measures to take in terms of her wishes as she was dying. So we went into the family room and had a conversation with the family, this attending and I, and I watched him very skillfully hold this conversation and, with the family, bring them to a decision where I visibly saw them feel better and feel relief, I should say. And it was remarkable. I’d never seen this type of conversation. So fast forward. I was finished with my training, and I was the faculty member working in the community. No resident doctors, just me, a patient came in, had metastatic cancer, but wasn’t that sick, and he and his partner, very friendly, very nice, very appreciative. He did get admitted to the hospital. And that was it. Three weeks later, he came to the emergency department again, I didn’t recognize him. His cancer had progressed. His partner was like, “Hi, do you remember us?” She recognized me and I had to do a double take. There’s a lot that we keep inside, we don’t say outside, and keep this sort of demeanor. But it was very clear this time, he was very sick. And so the same situation of the partner didn’t really have that recognition and insight. She’s like, “Well, I’m gonna go, do you think he’s going to be admitted?” And I realized I had to have that similar conversation. So I took her into a room, sat down, explained to her how serious it was and gave her specific directives and what to do to sort of prepare and that he was definitely going to be admitted, etc. I was not working the next day, however, she came down to the emergency department to look for me and she passed on a thank you through the nursing staff and they told me. I wrote a note to that attending who had taught me how to have that skillful conversation from back in my training. And he’s told me that he’s kept that note, and he pulls it out every once in a while to read it. And this concept of gratitude and thanking… yeah, it can be a thank you note. And I joke that growing up, I was always told I was supposed to send a thank you note. And I was like, eyeroll, thank you note. But now, there’s real value in authentic note writing, but just acknowledging, thanking, and realizing that none of us are doing this alone, everything we do is team. And acknowledging that those assists, and that those people that helped you along the way, is really important.

Rebecca: And those notes don’t take a long time to write often, but are incredibly meaningful and impactful.

John: And they’re also really effective for the mental health of the people who write those notes. There’s a lot of research suggesting that expressions of gratitude help improve the quality of life for the people who engaged in that.

Resa: That’s exactly why it’s in the self-care chapter. Bingo..

John: In self care, you mentioned earlier, though, a couple of things that I might have some challenges with, for example, you mentioned to give up those things that don’t bring you joy, that sounds like a good deal of my day today. [LAUGHTER] For those people who are in a position where their job requires them to do tasks that may not always bring them joy, do you have any suggestions on how they can find more joy in the work that they’re doing?

Rebecca: This isn’t a request for any personal advice or anything, is it, John? [LAUGHTER]

Adaira: There’s a part of work that we all have to do that is menial, and feels less enthusiastic or inspired by and I think, in the book, we make a caveat, like you can’t give up everything, because you have to again, go back to what your supervisor expects of you. What we really are talking about is when there’s room for optional stepping down, or stepping up, and there’s room for you to sort of voice your opinion or your objection. So if someone comes to me and like I have collaborators and peers who come to me and say, “Hey, would you like to join in on this project,” and I don’t find myself having joy in that type of work, I feel empowered to say no, and focus on the things that really do bring me joy. But if my supervisor were to tell me, “Hey, I need you to be at work tomorrow at 9 am,” I really couldn’t look at that person and say, “No, I don’t want to do that,” because then I might lose my job. But it is a good question to ask yourself, because that might mean to you that this job really isn’t where you should be. If the most basic expectation of you you don’t want to do it’s a nice thing to sort of stop and pause.

Resa: I do think that we have more agency and control at work than sometimes we think we do. And part of that is the self care. If you’re rested, if you have the Board of Directors, I love having my own Board of Directors, your go-to people that you can say, “Listen, I need to bounce this scenario by you. Are there any ways that you see that I can offload some of this?” And people you trust, people that understand your situation, sometimes they come up with stuff you’re like, “Amazing. That’s a great idea.” So I think realizing that, like I said, when we don’t feel we have agency, when we feel out of control, there’s actually usually more in our, I guess they call it the sphere of influence. And actually, a skill in the micro skills for self-help chapter is about setting limits on time spent in meetings, and time expands to fill that allotted. And so we definitely think that 60-minute meetings can often be 30-minute meetings, 30-minute meetings can often be 15- to 20-minute meetings, 15- to 20-minute meetings can often be an email or a phone call. And so there is a lot of play, and none of us can really, at the end of the day, we know and acknowledge, ignore our roles and responsibilities.

Rebecca: So your book is super comprehensive. There’s many micro skills in there. And for some, sitting down and reading from cover to cover might be a good strategy, [LAUGHTER] but it might also be really overwhelming having so many micro skills. Do you have some advice for how to engage with your book?

Resa: This is a fantastic question. And it’s almost as if you queued up… I’ll start. I have one of my besties from college. She’s also in academic medicine. She’s a dermatologist and she recently stepped into a leadership position and she has been one of the beta readers. She was bowled over… she’s kind of mid- to late-career… with its applicability and accessibility. And she said, and Adair and I specifically designed the table of contents, so, sure, you can read it cover to cover, but you can dip in and go to a chapter or a skill. My friend had to run a meeting, so she went directly to the micro skills on how to run a meeting. And she actually, as a part of this new leadership position, has had to have some quote difficult conversations. We talk about difficult conversations and conflicts. So my N of one is that you can actually piecemeal and go directly to topics that are relevant to your needs. We call it just-in-time learning.

John: So, it doesn’t have to be read from beginning to end in a continuous linear fashion…

Rebecca: …but it should be at an arm’s length away. I think one thing that stood out to me that I know a lot of our graduate students are constantly struggling with is growing your network and how to do that. I think it’s always very mysterious to people it seems daunting, it seems scary. It might be a skill set that feels like, if you’re not outgoing, somehow, you can’t build a network. So I think that component is something that I know that my graduate students would really benefit from dipping into.

Resa:In that micro-skill, when we talk about growing your network, we start from this premise that everybody has a network, everybody has a network, and people may think they don’t, but they do, whether it’s friends from elementary school, kids you attended clubs with when you’re growing up in high school, your high school friends, your college friends, in our case, our med school friends, our residency friends, our fellowship friends, our faculty friends, and then if there’s been any national experience or international experience, it just goes on and on and on and on. And one approach for people that still don’t buy it, that they have a network, is you can do something simple, like setting up one meeting a week, one outreach, and one meeting a week with the goal of building upon that. And eventually, over time you grow your network. And when you connect with someone organically and nicely and well, or it can even be a mentor, you can ask them, “Is there anybody that you think I should meet? Can you introduce me? Or can I reach out cc: you?” or say that you told me. So once you do it or know how to do it, it’s like not a big deal. And also I have 100% been there where I’m like, “I don’t have a network, I don’t know anybody.” And then I was like, wait a minute, oh my gosh, okay. And this goes back to the sort of thinking back and reflecting and actually feeling rested enough to have that reflection time.

Adaira: And I’ll just quickly add that for many people, myself included, I assumed my network would be built by people coming to me and like offering to just coach me or to be my mentor. And so for many years, I didn’t have a network. I would say from like, 21 to like 25, for sure. So really early in my career when I was in medical school, early residency, I didn’t really have like a network or a team of people who I could turn to. And it wasn’t until really someone showed me how they network and how they reach out to other people and normalized for me that like I’m in charge, and I really need to build this myself.

Rebecca: I think there were a couple others that stood out to me in particular, as well, like designing meetings to have a clear purpose. That’s a skill I’d like to share with others [LAUGHTER] as well as myself.

Adaira: There are some things in this book that I think we all struggle to tell other people directly. And so someone when I told them about the self-care chapter that has something about literally body odor, someone said that they felt like really relieved that we gave them guidance on how to check in with other people who might be struggling in this realm. We include uncomfortable truths that can hopefully be helpful for the reader like “this is how I can deal with this for someone else, for myself.” And yes, that meeting the agenda part is one too, like, if you’re in meetings all the time that have no agenda, just like how to ask someone, “Hey, do you mind sending out an agenda so we can understand what the goals will be for this meeting.”

John: One other thing that I remember, and this also relates back to our earlier conversation on an article you had posted, was using email efficiently and encouraging other people to use email more efficiently so that you’re not spending all of your time on email. Could you talk a little bit about some of your suggestions for using email for communication.

Resa: This is one we get asked a lot. To your point, we’ve written two articles about email. One is fuel-efficient mentoring, and another on compassionate email culture. And in the book, we talk about the role of the cc: line and the bcc: line, and 100% email and email inbox can get out of control. And so we try to teach how people can feel in control of their email inbox and how to email in a way that is effective, communicative, and generous not just to themselves, but to other people who are on the receiving end. So if we speak specifically about the bcc:, the blind carbon copy, most people think of it as a punitive measure, and it’s used against people or it’s used to create a paper trail. We flip that and we think actually, it can be a very generous tool to use and we think if used in that way, it can be very effective, and people will embrace it. So I’ll use an example. Recently, one of my friends wanted me to meet and mentor one of her younger faculty. And so she introduced us, meaning by email, she electronically introduced us. And I wrote back and I said, “Dear so and so let’s meet next week, here are some of my specific days and times, looking forward to it, Resa.” And then right underneath my name, I wrote my friend’s name in ncc:. And what that meant was, he knew she’s seen this, even though I can’t see her, she sees that I’m closing the loop and I’m responding to your young faculty. And her inbox does not get loaded with more emails when he responds to me. And again, closed loop communication.

John: Yeah, that reply all can get really messy. And bcc: can really reduce that to a much more manageable level.

Rebecca: There’s so many things we could talk about, because there’s so many good things in the book. I was looking at a lot of them in the micro skills to build and maintain your reputation. You might have some initial thoughts about what might be in that chapter, but there’s some really great micro skills around complaining carefully and sharing your failures to normalize humanness. So there’s such a good spectrum of things. And I wish we could talk about all of them, because I really would love to talk about them all. [LAUGHTER] But we always wrap up by asking: “what’s next?”

Adaira: Well, I think for us, next is like tomorrow and the next day, we’re like on a day-to-day level right now, because we are trying to spread the good message of the book and get people’s feedback and see how we can continue to amplify the book through lecturing, workshops, writing articles, and those sorts of things.

Resa: Yeah, we’re in a really exciting period. For listeners, we’re recording before the release of the book. And so we’re in full on marketing and publicity mode. We are doing exactly what Adaira just shared. And we’re just really hopeful that the content resonates with audiences and readers so that, yeah, they buy the book, but also they want to buy the book to get the book and sort of there’s that self-perpetuating aspect to its content being timeless and resonating with many, many, many people.

John: I think you’ve been quite successful in writing a book that should resonate with pretty much everybody. We really enjoyed it.

Adaira: We’re happy to hear that. Thank you.

Rebecca: Definitely something for everybody, no matter their stage of their career, or really what field they’re in. So, thank you for your work in putting this together. It’s important work.

Resa: Thank you.

John: It’s amazing that you do this along with all the other things that you’re doing, [LAUGHTER] which suggests perhaps that some of those tips can lead to more efficiency in terms of how you’re using your time.

Adaira: That’s correct. And that’s the goal. Well, thank you so much for having us.

John: Thank you. It’s great talking to you, and we’re looking forward to your future work.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

Ganesh: Editing assistance by Ganesh.

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323. Explore First Study Abroad Program

Posted in access, diversity, engagement, equity, first-generation students, higher education, inclusion, international education, learning, pedagogy, study abroad, support network, teaching
January 10, 2024

Compared to continuing-generation students, first-gen students experience a higher risk of not completing a college degree. In this episode, Sue Roberts, Marianne Young, and Beth Hanneman join us discuss a study-abroad program for first-gen students that is designed to build their confidence, sense of belonging, and help them understand the connection between their education and their career goals. Sue is the Associate Provost for Internationalization at the University of Kentucky. Marianne is the Assistant Vice President for Smart Campus Initiatives at the University of Kentucky. And Beth Hanneman is the Associate Director of Career Advising and Career Education, also at the University of Kentucky.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Compared to continuing-generation students, first-gen students experience a higher risk of not completing a college degree. In this episode, we discuss a study abroad program for first-gen students that is designed to build their confidence, sense of belonging, and help them understand the connection between their education and their career goals.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guests today are Sue Roberts, Marianne Young, and Beth Hanneman. Sue is the Associate Provost for Internationalization at the University of Kentucky. Marianne is the Assistant Vice President for Smart Campus Initiatives at the University of Kentucky. And Beth Hanneman is the Associate Director of Career Advising and Career Education, also at the University of Kentucky. Welcome, Sue, Marianne, and Beth.

Sue: Thank you, we’re glad to be here.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Sue, are you drinking any tea?

Sue: I am not drinking tea right now. But if I were in my normal space, I would be drinking tea. Yes.

Rebecca: Do you have a favorite kind?

Sue: I do. It’s a rooibos tea, a red bush tea.

Rebecca: Wonderful. Marianme, how about you?

Marianne: I’m not currently drinking too, but I have one on the ready. It is a lovely wild sweet orange.

Rebecca: Nice. What about you Beth?

Beth: So I went to Montana this past summer for a yoga retreat and fell in love with Huckleberry. So I now drink a wild Huckleberry tea at least once a week. And that’s what I’m having this morning.

Rebecca: I have never had that. I think it’s a first on the podcast.

John: It is. I am drinking an Irish Breakfast tea.

Rebecca: And I have a Jasmine Dragon Pearl this morning.

John: Dragon pearls?

Rebecca: Dragon pearls. [LAUGHTER]

John: Ok, so we have a mythical tea. [LAUGHTER] We read about the Explore First Study Abroad program in an article in the Chronicle recently. And so we invited you here to talk about that. Could you give us an overview of this program?

Sue: Sure. It’s a new program for the University of Kentucky, run for the first time in summer 2023. We took 60 students, 60 undergraduate students, all of them first-generation students to either London or Dublin for a three- week Education Abroad program focused on career readiness.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about this program came about?

Sue: It came about in many different ways, actually. There were conversations happening on our campus for probably two or three years before COVID, even, among different colleagues, some in the Career Center wondering how they could produce really good career readiness, education abroad programming. So I’m in the office of first-generation student success thinking about how we could do a better job in introducing first-generation students to education abroad. And then in the International Center, in the Education Abroad office itself, there were lots of conversations about how we could partner with colleagues across campus to develop programs that would reach this demographic.

John: One of the things we were really intrigued about was a program that was designed to benefit first-gen students as well as providing those career readiness skills. Could you describe a little bit how this program integrates that career focus?

Beth: Yeah, I’ll take that one. So over in the Career Center, we have the national association called NACE and they have NACE Competencies. And so when you start thinking about any major that a student has, you want them to make sure that they have those skill sets. So when they actually get into the workforce, they’re able to be analytical, they’re able to have communication skills. And what I love about the first-gen program and Explore fFrst within that, is the idea of how do you do that in a global setting. And so when you start thinking about designing this curriculum, and me and Marianne had the privilege of helping to work on that. It was this idea of, we had at least find out what the foundation is that the students had. And so sort of thinking about block scheduling, where a lot of times professors may say we’re going to do one topic and then go to another, I did more of what we call spiral curriculum, where you introduce a topic, and we brought it in here in the United States before we left, so maybe it was resumes where they had to create a resume and work on a resume ahead of time. And then when we’re overseas, we re-introduced resumes to say, “How would you put this Explore First experience on your actual resume? …kind of the same when it came to networking. What does it look like to navigate, to connect with people? Okay, great. We do that here in the United States. But then how do you do that in a global setting. So it was one of those things where you can actually see that reinforced. I also thought that was really cool when it came to interviewing as well, of having that prep for the students within that area.

Rebecca: We have a couple of other episodes of tea for teaching that also talk about the NACE competencies that we’ll link in our show notes for folks that are interested in that particular detail. So we just talked about NACE. Can you talk a little bit about the benefits that students get from it being a study abroad experience?

Beth: Yeah, at least for myself, the world is definitely interconnected. And so what I loved about how we interacted with employers is that we first looked at those that were connected here to Kentucky, and then we reached out with those that would be overseas. So for example, we have a company named Alltech that’s located here in Lexington. And so our students on the Dublin trip was able to actually go see their location. So it wasn’t one of those things that “Oh, hey, we’re just randomly seeing a company.” We’re very methodical about how that connection is. Another company, Compass, for example, does food services for our University of Kentucky health care system. So it wasn’t one of those things of just like, “Oh, we’re just gonna go see a company.” It was one of those elements of not only is making this connection abroad, but how does this actually impact me back home. And we would actually talk about that. Students would be like, “Alright, yes, you see this in another country, how does cultural awareness make a difference? How does being able to navigate and learn about yourself influence who you’re going to be back at UK?” And one of my favorite questions we asked in the interviews that they had to do for one of the assignments was: “If you’re back on the college campus, and you run into the university president, what are two things you tell them about the program?” And it was really cool to hear from the students that like, “I didn’t think I could learn so much about myself in three weeks, let alone three months about a career,” and others have never been on a plane before to navigate what that looks like. So even if you go into the job market, most likely somewhere along the line, you’re probably going to have to travel somewhere and do connections, but to have that support to have other people with them, when they did it for the first time was really impactful.

Rebecca: I love that reflection question. [LAUGHTER] So many benefits to that.

Marianne: I think the global stage also provides a really unique opportunity to just boost confidence with these students, as Beth was talking about, some of our students had never been on a plane. And not only did they navigate getting on a plane, they navigated getting into and past customs and immigration and all of that. And then the most surprising piece to me, in terms of what this looked like in terms of that confidence boost is at the beginning of our core sessions with the students, they put together kind of a: “these are what my goals are currently.” And by the end of the program, not only physically the confidence that you saw as they stood in front of the class, and they were presenting what their new goals were, for some of the students it expanded the opportunities that they were considering. They had never considered what it might be like to be in a leadership position in a global organization, or for the other students, it solidified what it was that they were wanting to do. And that confidence that they had of “Yes, I’m on the right path,” I think came from them navigating situations that they hadn’t been in before. And then being able to connect with different companies and different leadership individuals within the company, who they could see like, “Oh, my gosh, they were first generation as well, and now they’ve moved abroad, and they have this position in the company,” and the confidence that came from being able to navigate an international city as well as “I have confidence in how I’m going to navigate my career pathway,” that was so amazing to see in the sestudents.

Sue: I will agree with that. I visited, I think, three of the four programs. The program was split into four different groups, two went to Dublin two to London. So there were 15 students in each and I think I’ve visited three of them over the course of the summer, and to see that confidence grow, almost hourly, was incredible. And I will say that I think it translates, we’re hoping anyway, that it will translate, into greater understanding and kind of sense of purpose as a student. So you can see the point of your degree, you can see the point of why you’re struggling through this or that course to make it through to graduation. And of course, we want to see good results in terms of retention rates and graduation rates.

Rebecca: I’ve had the opportunity to teach a couple of travel courses where I’ve had students who had never traveled before, some within the US and some travel abroad. And I agree that seeing the confidence growth in students is such a rewarding experience for the instructors as well as for the students. It’s a really powerful experience. But one of the things that I really love that you’re describing is this connection to alumni, and those really specific intentional connections between the businesses locally as well as abroad. That’s a really beautiful component of your program.

John: And one of the challenges that all colleges face is the relatively high DFW rates generally experienced by first-gen students. And by making clear to the students the salience and the relevance of the material that they’re learning, and how this can open up these possibilities to them in a very obvious manner that they may not naturally see, I can imagine this could be really transformative.

Marianne: I think one of the great moments we had as we were visiting one of our employer partners, as Beth was talking about the spiral curriculum, he had talked about LinkedIn profiles and been helping them and then we get to this employer visit. And they start talking about LinkedIn profiles. And it is almost the exact lecture we had given that morning. And students are turning around and saying, “Oh, my gosh, you told us that this morning, and here’s this employer saying this exact same stuff. You were right.” And so we revisited again, and then the next employer, and so it was the aha moment of “Oh my gosh, this is actually something that I’m going to need and I’m going to use as I navigate my career.”

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about what a typical day for a student looks like in this program.

Marianne: There was no typical day, but this will kind of give you some activities they may have been shuffled around a bit. We’d start off with maybe some class time reviewing the visit. Maybe we’d have the day before talking about the experiences that the students had, answering any questions they may have had, how they navigated a challenge, just really taking time to connect and then help them build on the information that we were presenting. Once we kind of move through class time, we might have visited an employer in the afternoon and done a site visit where we not only learned about the company but also some of our employers took us through exercises like design thinking at some of our tech companies, or walking us through interviews and resume reviews in terms of a mock opportunity if you’re applying to their company. And then we may also have a cultural visit in the afternoon, visiting a significant landmark in the area or learning about the history and the culture of the particular space that the students were in. And then in the evenings, our students would maybe get together and cook in the residence hall, or they might go out to dinner together. And so generally we had class time and some cultural visits or an employer visit.

Beth: Yeah, exactly what Marianne said, and when you think about over the three weeks, because we were there for three weeks with these students, the beginning part of the classes were more kind of prep and foundation to get them to know what to expect. And so we broke teams of three, and so we would have one person would be the person who was in charge of introducing the group, we had one person that was the photographer, one person that was in charge of the “Thank you” at the end for each site visit. And that was really cool to see him learn collaboration, but also kind of change up and like, “Oh, well, this person is really interested in architecture, so we’re gonna have him be the speaker for this one, and then I’ll do the photography. And this one over here, we as a group, we actually wrote the thank you note together of what that means to follow up within it, kind of expectations within it.” So that was really cool in terms of curriculum, and kind of how we set that beginning. And then closer to the end like Marianne said, was more like review: “What did you learn from it and reflection?”

John: Do students travel with faculty or staff from the University of Kentucky?

Sue: We structured this program so that each group of students was accompanied and led by two professional staff members from the campus. Typically, it was a person from the Career Center, and a person from the Office of First-Generation Student Support. So it gave the students oftentimes very familiar people who understood where they’re coming from, and the skills they brought to the table, but also a person with the career advice ready for them kind of as needed. So it worked really well, I think, to have those program leaders on the ground with the students. And we weren’t hosted by a university, although we did visit universities in both locations. But we worked with a education abroad partner provider called AIFS. And they have provided the classrooms, they assisted us find student accommodation, and they worked on us with the cultural visits.

Rebecca: I think I remember also reading that you did some work prior to going abroad and some coursework there. Can you talk a little bit about what that looked like?

Marianne: We had an opportunity and clusters with the students, we broke them into smaller groups to help prepare them for what to expect as they were preparing for their education abroad experience. And so we covered a variety of topics of what about your luggage? What is a carry on? What is it checked bag? How do you move through security? What can you expect in an airport? What can you expect in terms of customs and immigration? We talked about how to prepare for the weather, how to think about budgeting, and being prepared for different costs of things, or how you might be able to consider all of the different pieces and parts of preparing for souvenirs that you want to get… all those different things, a variety of cluster topics to make sure that our students not only had a connection with the person that they were going to be traveling with, but also the other students. And then it gave us space for any of the questions that students may have had, as they were preparing for this experience.

Beth: It’s just a great way, because a lot of times when I’ve done education abroad, you might meet at the airport for the first time. But what I loved about this program is that we literally got to know each other prior, to at least kind of understand maybe some of the things that they were concerned about as a student. And so then as a staff member, we can be like, “Okay, let me give you some extra resources.” I remember one particular student, I ended up calling her mom and her was on the phone, because she’s like, “Okay, Beth, I know you went through the whole situation of what we need to do for the airport, but my mom has questions.” And I was like, “Sure, no problem. Let’s talk.” And so her mom was like, “Oh, nice to meet you Beth. Her mom dropped her off at the airport, gave me the biggest hug. When her mom picked us up. She was like giving everybody in the group a hug, because we were extended family for them for three weeks.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about the timing of the program?

Sue: So last year, it was the first time through, so I think we had to do things very quickly. We had to assemble a team, we had to get these clusters stood up. We had to recruit students, we had to find the scholarships for them and all the rest of it in kind of a hurry. So this year, we’re spacing it out a bit more. So we’re recruiting for summer 24 right now. And we’re going to repeat the program, we’re going to take 30 students in two groups to London and 30 to Dublin in two groups. So we’re excited about that. And then their travel occurs during the summer vacation, early in the summer vacation, so May and June this year.

Marianne: The interesting piece of the timing as well was I was on the first group that went to Dublin, and we were actually able to connect with the group that was coming after us in the airport as they were preparing to go out, so my students were able to pass along some words of wisdom and some thoughts to the group that was coming after them. And so that was a really fun piece with the timing to be able to catch up with each other in the airport.

Beth: In terms of curriculum, the way it was set up, there was one class that everybody was part of. So we actually met as a group virtually, with all 60 students ahead time. So everyone had that basic foundation. And then when we’re actually over there, that was when we did the actual classes for the individual pieces. So I did Dublin two and London one. And so at the same time, we’re having curriculum in terms of giving feedback for the next group coming over.

John: Now, you mentioned that there was some time spent acquiring funding, could you talk a little bit about the funding that was used for this program?

Sue: Sure. And this is a little unusual, I think. It was a surprise to us when the Kentucky State legislature or general assembly awarded some funding to all Kentucky institutions of higher education to support displaced students, so refugee students primarily. As part of that program, they allocated a certain amount of funding also to support education abroad and exchanges. So when we realized that, which was only in the summer before, so summer 22, we thought, “Aha, we could finally make this happen. This thing we’ve all been talking about in different ways about connecting careers, connecting first-generation students with education abroad, and making a real difference for those students, and we could do it at a actually a quite a big scale for education abroad, 60 students is quite significant.” So we seized the opportunity. The trick, then, of course, was to find matching money, because it didn’t cover everything. So we found some money internally at the university, we used education abroad scholarships, our administration at the very highest levels awarded us some funding to kind of back us up if we needed it. So it was a team effort. And this upcoming year, we don’t have the state money. That was a one time deal, so we’re funding it all from our university funds.

Rebecca: So cost is always a concern, I think, for first-gen students, and may be one of the reasons why they don’t even think they might ever go abroad. I know that was the case for me, as a student. I didn’t think I was ever going to get a chance to go abroad, but I got to when I was in graduate school. So can you talk a little bit about what this meant to the first-gen students or if you had trouble initially even getting them to think that they could really actually participate in this program?

Beth: Yes, one of our students on Dublin two got the email about applying and that the program was going to be there when we started doing the recruitment. And he was like, “Is this a scam? Is this true?” We went over to the first-gen office to verify because he’s like, “it sounded too good to be true.” And so once we got the word out that it was, of course, students applied and said, “Okay, let’s do this.”

Sue: You’re absolutely right that it’s the number one barrier of first-generation students is finances. And I think it was the majority of our students on this program are Pell recipients. So first-gen is a very big category. But we did try and make a difference, particularly for students whose financial means were limited. So it was a tremendous opportunity for them. And as Beth said, some of them were very disbelieving at first of the opportunity, they couldn’t understand how this was happening, because they hadn’t thought that this was something that they could ever achieve. And that was another reason why we kept it to three weeks, because many of these students… well, in fact, I would say all of them… were working during the summer. So three weeks away from your summer job and earning is a big deal, and others had family obligations as caregivers, and so on. So that’s the reason why we ended up with a three-week timeframe was partly to be sensitive to those needs. And then in terms of the financing, London is an expensive city, and Dublin is an expensive city. And these are young people, these are primarily first- and second-year university undergraduates. So budgeting to shop, to eat, to go out is difficult, and especially when it’s a different currency and options are different, and the prices are different. So that was a big element that we’ve reflected on since this first time through, and I think we’ll be maybe just a little bit more supportive. We were supportive, but maybe just a little bit more supportive of how to budget when overseas because they were responsible for their own spending money on this program.

Rebecca: What about things like food or other personal costs for travel, was that included in the program?

Sue: So there were a few meals included. There were a few like welcome dinners and things like that included, but by and large students were responsible for their own catering as it were for their own food. And it turned out that was kind of an issue because it takes a bit of knowledge of the stores and what’s available and what’s affordable. It takes a bit of knowledge of how to cook in a budget conscious way and not just grab the processed thing. And of course these supermarkets are unfamiliar and I would say one thing we did think a lot about upon return and when we debriefed this was giving the students a bit more time to adjust to that situation and to learn their options and to cook because sometimes we were so busy with all these things we were doing every day that they didn’t have much time to plan their suppers, or to go shopping and cook so I’ll let Beth and Marianne chime in because they were on the ground, they know more, but that was the kind of impression I got.

Marianne: So, we had some bargain shoppers in my group that found meal deals at like close Tescos, things like that. And so it was always kind of a competition of “Did you know that the sandwich was included in the meal deal?” And so it was a pretty inexpensive breakfast and lunch and sometimes dinner opportunity for students that became somewhat of a game, to figure out, like, what are you going to put in your meal deal this time? And so a lot of our students were supportive in terms of sharing different deals that restaurants were doing. Did you know that on Tuesday, they have a student special where you can get this, this, and this. And so they were really great about sharing some of the tips and tricks and things that they picked up along the way. And then also sharing meals. So going to the grocery, and he brought me to purchase something, while I may not eat this whole thing, but if you split it with me, then I’ll get the next one. And so they were really great, that was really fun to see them kind of helping and sharing deals that they found along the way.

Beth: And one of the things that we did is we actually offered a time if someone wanted to come with me to the grocery store. We did a local one so they could see how close something was if they by chance needed something quick to eat. But then we actually went with them, which was one was a little bit farther away have more of the discount kind of larger what they would think of a supermarket type of thing here in the United States, just because, over there, you kind of buy more what you need, versus “I’m going to have lots in the refrigerator and freezer within it.” And we actually had a couple of times where we had meals together because it was someone’s birthday and we wanted to celebrate. And very similar to what Marianne said that they would be like, “here’s a deal,” or “hey, I’m going to make soup anybody else want?” And we had one student who loved to cook, and others are like, hey, awesome, I will help clean up, or pitch in for some money if you would be willing to be the person that actually wanted to make the meal, and they actually collaborated teamwork that way too. So it was really cool to see.

Beth: One thing I wanted to share is the fact I think people think that education abroad is three weeks, and then you’re done. For us, this is a lifetime connection for these students. So we actually had dinner with both groups separately, so they could get together and meet each other and see each other, I’ll get messages being like “Guess who I saw on campus?” and they have a competition of how many times they see a certain student, be like “I saw them three times this week, Beth, I saw this one four,” but even moreso is this confidence coming back to have to go after the dreams that they want. We had a student who, I’ll be very honest, had a really rough home life and had a lot of confidence issues and got over there had a chance to start talking, had a really good conversation with a couple employers. And we did a networking night where we invited all the employers back and they could come and network with the students. And she had a really good conversation with some of our staff that we actually had come over from UK to kind of see the program as well. And she followed up, wrote a note back to say thank you for this conversation, I appreciate it. This is what I’m looking for in terms of career or job, and that person connected her with to somebody back here in Lexington, she then goes and reached out to that person, met with them, interviewed, and now has an IT position that she never thought possible a year ago. So that’s really cool to actually see them do this steps, it’s one thing for us to say go do, it’s another for them to actually gain the confidence to go and actually obtain it.

Rebecca: What a great story.

John: One of the things that I think you’ve all mentioned is that this creates a really tight bond among the students as well as the connections to the staff members they traveled with. And that sense of belonging has been shown in a lot of studies to be a major factor in student retention. And I think programs like this can create really strong bonds that can help students be more likely to succeed.

Sue: I will agree with that. There were two young women on one of the programs who became fast friends. And I assumed they had been friends forever, and I just was chatting with them, and I said, “You know, you must have known each other a long time.” They said “no, we just met.” And one of them said that she was so excited to come back to UK in the fall… so this semester… and I said “well, weren’t you excited anyway?” And she said, No, she wasn’t, that her freshman year had been a little lonely, and she had not made a good connection with her roommate and was struggling a little bit to fit in. And she said “Now I have a best friend on campus, and we’re gonna have fun the next few years together. And I thought that was awesome.

Marianne: And I’ll brag on our students. They were phenomenal. I mean, when I told people that I was going to go to a foreign country with 15 college students, and we were going to travel the city and we were going to do all of the things they looked at me like, “Why would you take college students to an international city?” They were fantastic. They were supportive. They were curious. They were beyond what you could even imagine in terms of the questions that they were asking and the way that they engaged with the curriculum. We have phenomenal students here at the University of Kentucky and I was lucky to get to take 15 and I have them running across campus yelling my name saying “Oh my gosh, this is the first time that I’ve seen you since you’ve been back on campus” or seeing each other on campus is such an honor to be a part of just that family that we now have. And, like I said, they were the best students you could ever imagine traveling with. I do it again in a heartbeat.

Sue: So one thing that really impressed me about these students, actually taught me a lot about this category “first-generation” which is kind of thrown around is that these students are really amazing. I mean to get to the University of Kentucky, to be studying their majors, to be making good academic progress is an accomplishment for these students and they have the resilience, they have the resourcefulness, they have the curiosity, as Marianne said, to make the most out of education abroad. So these are not students who took this for granted. When they were in London or Dublin, their eyes and ears were open all the time. And they were busy taking it all in, reflecting on it, and they absolutely were some of the very best students I’ve ever seen on an education abroad program.

Rebecca: So do you have plans to evaluate the success of this program?

Sue: So yes, we built assessment into this program from the beginning. So we had a researcher from the College of Education who helped us and administered pre- and then during, and then post-surveys of each student. So she collected information about their responses and reflections to the assignments and to their learning, and also something about their intercultural learning as it were. So we’re going to also track these students and see how they do compared to the peers who didn’t get the opportunity to study abroad in terms of their academic progress and their graduation.

John: Excellent. We look forward to hearing more about how well this program works. We always end by asking, what’s next?

Sue: Well, we want to do this again. [LAUGHTER] So we think it’s working. We’ve got good results so far, assuming that the next summer is also successful. We hope to just keep tweaking it, making it better and better for the students and maybe building it in as kind of a signature program for first-generation students here at the University of Kentucky.

Rebecca: An incredible thing to invest in and offer first-gen students. Thanks so much for sharing the details of your program.

Sue: Thank you for having us. And thanks for your interest in this endeavor.

John: It sounds like a wonderful program.

Sue: Yeah, it’s been a blast to develop and to be part of I must say. It’s been fantastic. And I don’t think we mentioned but perhaps we should that over one quarter of our undergraduate students identify as first generation. So this is a significant population at our university which serves students of all sorts from the state of Kentucky and outside.

John: Excellent.

Sue: Thank you both.

Marianne: Thank you all

John: Thank you for taking the time to join us and to share this wonderful program.

Sue: Yeah, appreciate it.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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