Lecture hall of students with white walls and geometric design. text reads: While faculty-student relationships are difficult to scale, connecting students purposefully with each other is possible even in the largest enrollment classes."

“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…

Black text reads"Over 1,800 faculty say time, institutional factors, and well-being are barriers to creating relationsuops with and among students." In the background is angular layers of opaque gray overtop a black and white image of students and faculty in motion going up and down a stairwell on a college campus.

What Are Barriers to Relationship-Rich Education? Faculty Perspectives  

Student-faculty, student-staff, and student-student relationships contribute significantly to student learning, motivation, identity development, well-being, graduation rates, and post-graduation career and civic outcomes in higher education (Mayhew et al. 2016; Felten and Lambert 2020). The effects of student-faculty interactions are particularly…