HomeBlogRelationships Making Connections in Collegeby Jessie L. Moore and Sydni BrownSeptember 25, 2023 Share: Section NavigationSkip section navigationIn this sectionPodcasts – Home 60-Second SoTL Limed: Teaching with a Twist Making College “Worth It” Land Acknowledgement Making College “Worth It” – Season 1, Episode 2 In a 2021 survey conducted by the Elon University Poll and the Center for Engaged Learning, 54.5% of recent college graduates indicated that they’d encountered meaningful relationships with faculty or staff multiple times, and 69.1% reported multiple meaningful relationships with other students. Unfortunately, 16.4% reported never developing those relationships with faculty or staff, and 9.8% never developed meaningful relationships with peers. How can students make connections in college? Our panelists – Isis Artze-Vega (Valencia College), Oscar R. Miranda Tapia (North Carolina State University), and Peter Felten (Elon University) – share strategies from their new book (with Leo Lambert), Connections are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education. Read the book for free on Project Muse, thanks to a grant from the Gardner Institute. Explore teaching and faculty development resources related to the book on the Center’s website. View a transcript of this episode. Meet our Guests Our guests are the authors (with Leo Lambert) of Connections are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education. Isis Artze-Vega is the college provost and vice president for academic affairs at Valencia College. She is a coauthor of The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching. Oscar R. Miranda Tapia is pursuing his doctoral degree in Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at North Carolina State University. Peter Felten is the executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning, the assistant provost for teaching and learning, and a professor of history at Elon University. Episode Credits This episode is co-hosted by Jessie L. Moore, Director of Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning, and Sydni Brown, a senior at Elon University who is majoring in Communications Design and Strategic Communications. Making College “Worth It” is produced by Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning. Episode art was created by Jennie Goforth, managing editor for the Center for Engaged Learning, and Nolan Schultheis, the Center’s undergraduate Podcast Producer. Funky Percussions is by Denys Kyshchuk (@audiocoffeemusic) – https://www.audiocoffee.net/. Soft Beat is by ComaStudio. Learn More about Research Featured in this Episode Research Featured in the Featured Books Review research details for Connections are Everything. Review research details for Relationship-Rich Education. Center Resources about Relationships “What Works” When Building Educational Relationships? As we noted in our previous post in this two-part analysis (Puckett and Felten 2024), student-faculty and student-student relationships contribute significantly to learning, motivation, identity development, well-being, and graduation rates in higher education (Felten and Lambert 2020). The positive effects… Mentoring in a Constellation: Supervisors and Mentors of Student Employees In our 2020 institutional survey on mentoring, fourth-year students identified on-campus student employment as the fifth most common experience that prepared them to connect with potential mentors. Supervisors of student employees offer a dynamic example of meaningful relationships that can… Metacognitive Intervention and Student Success 60-Second SoTL – Episode 56 This week’s episode focuses on a metacognitive intervention for first-year students on academic probation and features an open access article from Teaching & Learning Inquiry: Swanson, Holly J., and Bryan Dewsbury. 2024. “The Impact of a Metacognitive… Conceptualizing Mentoring Constellations in Study Abroad: Mentors’ Perspectives Recently I had the opportunity to think about mentoring in the context of a semester study abroad program with undergraduate research (UR) mentors working with DIS, Study Abroad in Scandinavia. Before talking with the mentors, I had asked their students… 1 2 … 7 8 > Center Resources about Relationship Accelerators Capstone Experiences Definition Capstone experiences aim to facilitate students’ sense-making of their growth and development across their major or general educational studies and have been a hallmark of undergraduate education in one form or another for at least as long as higher education has… High Impact Practices and Historically Underrepresented Minority Students For over a decade Kuh’s (2008) work on the critical importance of engaged learning has shaped the undergraduate college and university experience. Kuh dubbed these teaching and learning experiences High Impact Practices, and taking part in at least one of them at… Immersive Learning The Center thanks Phillip Motley for contributing the initial content for this resource as part of his CEL Scholar work. Definition Immersive learning is more than a single pedagogy or specific practice. It covers a wide range of approaches to… Internships Definition Two commonly cited definitions of internships are those from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) and the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS). Since the term “internship” lacks a consistent definition across the… Learning Communities Definition Learning communities emphasize collaborative partnerships between students, faculty, and staff, and attempt to restructure the university curriculum to address structural barriers to educational excellence. In their 1990 publication Learning Communities: Creating Connections Among Students, Faculty, and Disciplines, Faith Gabelnick, Jean MacGregor, Roberta S…. Service-Learning Definition Service-learning was one of the ten experiences listed as a high-impact practice (HIP) when such practices were first identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) in 2007. Given the many benefits that service-learning experiences offer students… Students as Partners Definition Students as Partners in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, or simply Students as Partners (SaP), is a pedagogical approach that has been embraced recently by many higher education institutions primarily in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia…. Supporting Neurodiverse and Physically Disabled Students in Engaged Learning by Caroline J. Ketcham Welcome, here is what you can expect: This page will share dialogue about resources around access, inclusion, and supports for neurodivergent and physically disabled students in higher education settings. It is the beginning of a conversation… Undergraduate Research Definition The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) defines undergraduate research as: “An inquiry or investigation conducted by an undergraduate student that makes an original intellectual or creative contribution to the discipline.” Similarly, Kinkead (2003) notes that Undergraduate Research (UR) can… Work-Integrated Learning Definition Work-integrated learning (WIL) is an approach to education that allows students to obtain work experiences related to what they are learning in a classroom setting (International Journal of Work-Integrated Learning, n.d; Jackson 2016). Ferns, Campbell, and Zegwaard (2014) describe…
