With the advent of the new post-9/11 GI Bill, many colleges and universities have seen significant growth in the numbers of veterans and other military students on their campuses. Along with this increased population has come a growing recognition that while these students share many of the same struggles as other students, their service in the…

For years, the authors have heard the pleas of students, administrators, staff, and faculty to be able to write more personally--for publication, course assignments, theses, and dissertations. They have heard educators throughout the United States talk about the value of personal narrative writing as a way to take a different in-depth look at an…

Humans, as social creatures, look to others for affiliation, support, and guidance while also having the capacity to offer something of value to someone in need (understanding, compassion, reassurance, hope, etc.). While offering such support can be easy, almost innate, for some and less natural for others, basic helping skills can be learned and…

Part I, "Searching for the Right Way to Begin Class," described the various iterations of beginning class rituals the author used over the years. Those rituals began with a prayer to the Holy Spirit as was required at the Catholic women's college Marymount in Tarrytown, New York, where he first taught out of graduate school in 1965. That was…

While there are hypotheses and theories about which portions of the brain appear to regulate which types of thinking and emotion, people aren't sure how to "change" those parts of the brain to improve critical thinking. Furthermore, while recent studies point to something called neuroplasticity, which hypothesizes that what one does, what one…

In 2007, "About Campus" published the author's article "Humble and Hopeful: Welcoming First-Generation Poor and Working-Class Students to College." It has been used as a handout in various student orientations, included as a chapter in Teresa Heinz Housel and Vickie Harvey's "The Invisibility Factor: Administrators and Faculty Reach Out to…

In 2006, the author had moved to Moscow, Idaho, from New Delhi, after having worked for nearly four years in publishing houses. She had become exhausted by stets, specs, and style sheets. Whiny authors with paper-thin egos bored her, and she was frustrated with lazy designers who tried to pass off every odd cover as avant-garde. She wanted to…

The vast majority of college students, classroom faculty, student affairs educators, and administrators have a tremendous amount to learn about gender diversity. For this majority and for gender-nonconforming students and educators, opportunities are all but untapped to leverage this diversity to enhance learning, as well as to support and…

An overwhelming majority of college students feel that diversity is important. Students want to explore diversity and need to be guided in ways that help them negotiate what often feels like a social and emotional minefield. While many staff and faculty share a belief that diversity education does not require specific training beyond either a…

In this article, the authors share the skills required to plan and execute a successful days-long backpacking trip, which they have discovered are also useful in advising student leaders. The authors' lessons were originally learned while backpacking with several friends. The six of them had planned and trained for months to do a six-day, 50-mile…

While student veterans share characteristics with other student populations, they also bring to campuses a host of unique gifts and challenges whose impact can be profound, not only on the vets themselves but also on the institution and the individuals who work with them. Therefore, college professionals should proceed with humility and caution as…

Since 2006, 19 institutions across the United States have been trying to figure out how to work smarter through their participation in the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education. Drawing on data from the first year of the study, the robust, mixed-methods study the authors report in this article evaluated growth in the first year of…

Religious pluralism is not the first type of diversity higher education has faced. In a 1998 article, Sylvia Hurtado, Jeffrey Milem, Alma Clayton-Pedersen, and Walter Allen advocated the necessity of using a multidimensional framework for enhancing the campus climate for racial and ethnic diversity. Their model began with acknowledging the…

Over the past few years, the language of interpersonal "boundaries" has migrated from the clinical to the public domain, and many young people in particular are familiar with the concept of boundaries in relationships with others. Not only do boundaries help to define relationships with others, but they also clarify one's unique sense of self.…

The number of studies conducted on college-student attrition is overwhelming. But few examine the impact of adding an early-intervention assessment tool to existing retention programs. Too often, colleges and universities conduct initiatives with similar purposes as disconnected efforts; retention programs in particular can benefit from a more…