In an earlier moment in my career, I was involved in a community service program in inner-city Chicago that sought to turn “traditional” service on its head. The program served homeless persons, but with a heavy emphasis on what it meant to do so in a cross-cultural context, and with a focus on healing and reconciliation, and not on the “fixing” of whatever may have brought about a person’s circumstance. Its leader was a woman named Claude Marie, whose soft voice, cadence of speech, and personal story (she had been tortured in South Africa during the apartheid years) powerfully validated for me, a privileged White male from the Northeast, that service of this kind can only be achieved when approached in reverse. By this I mean that I, the alleged “successful” service giver who gets into his car to drive down to the uptown area of Chicago from the suburban comfort of Evanston, and then leaves again, needs to approach the building of such a relationship as learner, not teacher. Space doesn’t afford me opportunity to be expansive on how perspective-changing this was for me, but if/as you have occasion to see me, ask me about my McDonald’s experience.
I raise this because I see parallels to our work here at William Paterson—frankly, everywhere I have worked in higher education—made especially insidious because for all of its history in America, college has been framed as a privilege, not a right (in contrast with K-12 education). We, the highly educated elite, who found success in the Ivory Tower and its approach to learning with an emphasis on print and reading, gives us the “right” to opine on what knowledge is and what the other (i.e., students) must have to be enlightened. And, when we find that these vessels before us sometimes don’t respond in the way desired, we begin to wonder what must be wrong with “them.” After all, we navigated college, perhaps through struggle too, so why don’t they navigate it successfully? Perhaps they just aren’t smart enough to be here…
There are complex and damaging psychological and sociological forces under this hood, but let me offer this thought. Imagine students as teacher, and staff and faculty as learner. I think of this as mentoring in reverse. Whereas they look to us as their guides, just as their high school teachers told them to do, instead approach engagement with them in a way that signals you are seeking their knowledge and understanding of the world and how they make sense of it. Claude Marie described the magic moment when that orientation suddenly creates a genuine relationship from which both persons benefit.
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With this perspective in mind, I’ve been thinking a lot about Garien this week, a former student at Indiana State University where I worked previously and with whom I have been in a mentoring relationship for 10 years. Garien was an undergraduate from Gary. He had been homeless at more than one point in his life, and for a time in college lived out of his car, barely held together with duct tape and a prayer. We built a relationship over an extended period and I sought to deploy my Claude Marie learning to approach it as learner, not teacher. That led us both to feel comfortable in our insecurities—for him to navigate a world as a Black male who had nearly no male role models in his life, and me to confront tapes in my head about what others should experience and know. Today, undergraduate and graduate degrees in hand, Garien works for the public school system in Terre Haute, Indiana, coaches track, and mentors countless young boys in a myriad of challenging settings. I am Facebook friends with him and every week he posts something inspiring, and frankly that mentors me. A recent one was this: “Never allow your smile to be taken without giving a sincere effort to keep it.” Thanks, Garien. |
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What Works Conference. Our students are our greatest asset. Whereas we often speak to their challenges, we don’t often share what works in supporting their success. The first annual (hopefully) What Works Conference (Monday, December 13 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. via Zoom) for faculty and staff seeks to change that. The conference will feature breakout sessions by WP faculty and staff, panel presentations by students on what good teaching and advising looks like from their vantage point (recall my point above about student as teacher), a unique roundtable experience that attendees get to shape, and a keynote by a national expert on student success at universities with a mission like ours. I hope you will consider a session submission; it is not complicated. Submissions are due by November 11. See this website.
WP Online Undergrad. We have officially launched. Ninety new students are enrolled in 8 undergraduate programs now available totally online; the goal was 50. Thank you to the many who have worked tirelessly in the background to make this possible, and for the faculty who are delivering our mission in this new way to adult learners. If you would like to know more about these programs, see this website.
Back on Track Campaign. As you know, an unusually large number of students opted to not return/sit out the fall semester. Enrollment Management is working intensively to get them re-enrolled. Online course options are even more extensively available now (in addition to WP Online), and a student who has a fully online schedule can enroll without being vaccinated. For more information on this campaign, and how a student who stopped out can be eligible for a free Summer 2022 course, see this website. Also check out the short video with President Helldobler and Donovan Taylor, student representative to the Board of Trustees.
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3,929. Total campus tutoring sessions across all centers (both in person and remote) since the start of the semester.
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32%. Percentage of tutoring visits that were to Tutor.com.
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6,262. Total unique students who received some kind of feedback through Starfish.
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Quotes from two powerful stories I read this month, one from Angela Duckworth, MacArthur Genius Award winner, in a moving piece about Albert Bandura, who recently passed away, with regard to the importance of personal agency (click here to read the whole piece). The second from a recent Insider Higher Ed story on student mentoring in which a national survey of college students reported on their mentoring experience (click here to read the whole piece).
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The young person in your life needs your help to develop a sense of personal agency. They need you to nudge them to try things that scare them a little. When still finding their balance, they need your steady hand. And when they’re ready, they need you to let go, so they can pedal on their own.
— Angela Duckworth
Nearly half of students can’t identify a single mentor, defined as someone who was not already a friend or family member who was available to give advice on navigating college and planning for after college.
— Student Voice Report
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The Provost’s Office is Meg, Lissette, Claudia T., Claudia C., Jonathan, Kara, Sandy, and Josh. You can reach us at 973.720.2122 • [email protected]
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