“STUDENT AFFAIRS”

CONNECTIONS, REACTIONS, RESPONSES

DALLIN GEORGE YOUNG, DISCUSSANT

Assistant Director for Research, Grants, and Assessment, National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition

TWITTER: @DALLINYOUNG

-OR- CONNECTION: MEANS AND MEANING

A Tintonian View on Students• Tinto’s (1975) theoretical model on student departure• “Systems” (Interpersonal)

• Social Integration/Sense of Belonging• Academic Integration/Engagement

• “Commitments” (Intrapersonal)• Goal Commitment• Institutional Commitment

Tinto (1975)

MeansMeaning

Results

Means of Connecting• SSAO Using Social Media• Staff and Faculty working together to provide student

academic support• Implies interaction with students to (a) refer them to support and (b)

interact with them once they arrive to receive support

• Student support environment• Type of environment matters

• Integrated approach• Intentionally targeting students who need certain kinds of support and

opportunities

Meaning of Connection• Why does it matter that higher education professionals

connect with students?• Why does it matter that faculty and staff connect with each

other?• Why does it matter that transfer students feel connected

academically and socially?• Connection is the building block for:

• Sense of Belonging• Academic Self-Efficacy• Sense of Commitment• Sense of Confidence in Others (Trust)• Perspective taking• Collaborative work• And others

Effects • Results of these things working in concert

• Persistence/Retention• Success as student• Success beyond college• Effectiveness/Efficiency

Tinto (1975)

MeansMeaning

Results

Working in Background• Cultural Capital (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979)

• Knowing things about a culture – an insider’s view

• Social Capital (Coleman, 1988)• Having a social network of connections – Knowing someone

• All 3 papers touch on how this capital is(n’t) developed (Seifert, Burrow, Peregrina-Kretz, & Moore) or mobilized (Ahlquist & Deters).

Community Cultural Wealth• Yosso (2005) – Community Cultural Wealth

• Students moving between cultures, e.g. home, community, campus(es)

• Important Cultural “brokers” in these studies include: Student Affairs and Services Staff, Faculty, Senior Student Affairs Officers, Students, (implicitly) Students’ Peers

Tinto (1975)

MeansMeaning

Results

Systems for College Community Cultural Wealth

Community Cultural Wealth• Yosso (2005) – Community Cultural Wealth

• Students moving between cultures, e.g. home, community, campus

• How can we create systems and structures on campus that facilitate the acquisition and mobilization of community cultural wealth on campus that will lead to increased sense of belonging and academic engagement?

Seifert, Burrow, Peregrina-Kretz, & Moore

• Contribution to Literature:• Provides insights into the culture around partnerships

• Ownership of programs – Silos

• Presents an implicit model for understanding organizational behavior where collaborations and barriers to it are structural in nature

• Strengths• Development of the survey instrument – “Sequential mixed methodological approach”

and “cognitive interviewing”• The background and literature review are logical and easy to follow and set the stage

conceptually for the study.

• Suggested Improvements• This study seems to hang on the notion of awareness of programs across institutional

boundaries.• Clarify that this is about awareness of programs as a proxy for the awareness of others. • Provide information about where the “programs to support student success” live. Are

these the responsibility of faculty or student affairs?• Some attention should be paid to the relative number of faculty to the number of student

affairs professionals on campus. If there are more faculty on campuses, and

Ahlquist• Contribution to Literature

• The ways in which Senior Student Affairs Officers are maximizing efficiency and effectiveness using new technologies

• Provides a road map for decision-making for digital neophytes

• Strengths• Excellent writing • Models are accessible and deep and supported by the findings

• Suggested Improvements• Tell us more about your methodology. Why is this a case study? Why is

that appropriate and why are you using it? Positionality. • There may be one or two studies here.

• Paper 1 – Digital Decision-Making Model• Paper 2 – Social Media Leadership Framework in Student Affairs

• OR, synthesize the two models. Is there a way to integrate the two?• Consolidate and streamline findings section.

Deters• Contribution to Literature

• Furthers the conversation around pathways to success for transfer students• If conclusion holds, has real implications for design of transfer student success programs as well as

native student programs• Can be used as a tool to identify opportunities for early intervention with transfer students.

• Strengths• Straightforward design, clear criteria for defining the two groups.• Use of the PPS rather than waiting to gather persistence data.

• Suggested Improvements• Clarify your scales. What do the numerical anchors represent? Is 1 = strongly agree or is 5 =

always? This will help reader understand your results. • All your overall means are

• Psychometrics. • Reliability scores very low. This requires some explanation for why you went forward.• What to do with missing data. Explain why you chose “listwise deletion” rather than other approaches such

as Propensity Score Matching or Full Information Maximum Likelihood.• What went wrong with those items? Does this potentially undermine your whole study?

• Opportunities• Real opportunity to connect this conversation to equity issues:• See Wawrsynski & Sedlacek, 2003 (JCSD), Cuseo or Townsend (Just Google their names +Transfer)• Transfer student capital (Lanaan)