Through the lens of resilience-based student success frameworks, this article aims to illustrate how small-scale individual actions such as early outreach and student advocacy work, can bolster student outcomes and surround first-generation, low income, and underrepresented college students with a community of support.

To improve student success outcomes and close equity gaps, Boise State University has been testing a variety of ways to embed design thinking methodologies into the rhythm of student affairs work and serves as a case study for other university leaders looking to accelerate innovation on behalf of students. Design thinking can be effective in…

Promoted by initiatives such as Shared Futures by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) or by the American Council on Education's Internationalization Collaborative, global learning has become an important feature of undergraduate higher education as colleges and universities have sought to enhance and align their…

For students with a significant amount of student loan debt, the excitement of graduating from college can be overshadowed by feelings of anxiety and fear. Debt perception is about more than the cost of a college degree, the amount of financial aid received, or the value families place on education. In this article, the author tells a story about…

In the spring of 2020, the US Department of Education updated Title IX guidelines addressing the way campuses investigate gender-based violence. This paper explores how then Vice President of Student Affairs at Phoenix College handled changes to Title IX compliance in the early months of the Coronavirus pandemic while also transitioning to remote…

Along with a host of higher education institutions (HEI), Ryerson University has championed social innovation in its programming for the past several years, culminating in the development of the Office of Social Innovation (OSI). They define social innovation as the practice of using creative and collaborative approaches to challenge historical…

In this article, the authors discuss that equity is the aspiration for justice resulting from the intentional distribution of capital in its myriad forms in the context of generations of state, system, and institutional oppression. The conflation of equity with equality and the white-washing of equity have upheld systems of dominance within higher…

This article relays the author's experiences and lessons learned after she was selected to serve as the faculty coordinator for first-year student scheduling at her institution. The new assignment to run the first-year scheduling function in the summer was supposed to be a way to do something interesting and engaging in the summer. It turned out…

For years university administrators and faculty have navigated the complex and difficult terrain responding to demands for equity and inclusion from marginalized students. Most recently, the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 responses on communities of color has caused some students to allege the nation's universities did not adequately consider…

The United States continues to become more racially and ethnically diverse, and the nation's colleges and universities' demographics are commensurate with that growth. Between 1976 and 2017, the percentage of White students enrolled in postsecondary institutions fell from 84% to 56%, while the percentage of American college students who identify…

Indigenous peoples embody their sovereignty in higher education through their ancestors and deities. The author reflects and shares his personal experiences as a Hawaiian in higher education, and asks the question, "How do we Indigenize the social sciences for the future?" He utilizes an ?o¯lelo no?eau (proverb) - ?o ka wa¯ ma mua, ?o ka…

The purpose of this article is to share UNCF's promising practices for implementing the Careers Pathways Initiative at HBCUs, which include: (1) involving faculty throughout planning and implementation phases; (2) identifying a point of contact with a direct reporting line to leadership; (3) imbedding the initiative into the curriculum; and (4)…

The following question guides this paper: What features of the postsecondary experience unnecessarily contribute to diminished student well-being? As part of this project of testing bold ideas about student well-being, two things should rightly be the focus of attention: (1) the broader context, the zeitgeist in which students find themselves…

People hate the feeling of uncertainty; if not managed or addressed properly, it can lead to confusion, frustration, or worse--and that is a bad thing. Equally bad, however, is running from ambiguity, leaping to solution based on assumption, and failing to take the time to explore what is unknown and learning to be comfortable in, and taking the…

In this interview, Beverly Daniel Tatum, President Emerita of Spelman College, shares her views of higher education. She notes the historical importance of historically black colleges and universities to our current leadership in all areas of society, their importance in rural areas or other places with limited educational options, and their need…