A practical guide to building the connections students need to thrive in and after college from the authors of the best-selling Relationship-Rich Education. Decades of research demonstrate how important the relationships with peers and professors are for students academically, personally, and professionally. Yet many students lack the strategies to develop educationally purposeful relationships in college. Connections Are Everything shows students the simple steps they can take to make their own college experience meaningful and transformational. In short, practical chapters, this guide helps readers learn how to build relationships through various strategies, including using "relationship accelerators" like internships and mentorships, undergraduate research, and campus employment. Undergraduate demographics have changed dramatically as students of color and first-generation students become the new majority at colleges and universities across the United States. Connections are particularly significant for these students; the positive—and negative—impacts of peer, faculty, and staff relationships are magnified. Higher education cannot meet students' needs or achieve equity, justice, and inclusion without relationship-rich education. This book empowers students to seek out relationships by demystifying the varied ways they can cultivate significant connections.

A mentor, advisor, or even a friend? Making connections in college makes all the difference. What single factor makes for an excellent college education? As it turns out, it's pretty simple: human relationships. Decades of research demonstrate the transformative potential and the lasting legacies of a relationship-rich college experience. Critics suggest that to build connections with peers, faculty, staff, and other mentors is expensive and only an option at elite institutions where instructors have the luxury of time with students. But in this revelatory book brimming with the voices of students, faculty, and staff from across the country, Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert argue that relationship-rich environments can and should exist for all students at all types of institutions. In Relationship-Rich Education, Felten and Lambert demonstrate that for relationships to be central in undergraduate education, colleges and universities do not require immense resources, privileged students, or specially qualified faculty and staff. All students learn best in an environment characterized by high expectation and high support, and all faculty and staff can learn to teach and work in ways that enable relationship-based education. Emphasizing the centrality of the classroom experience to fostering quality relationships, Felten and Lambert focus on students' influence in shaping the learning environment for their peers, as well as the key difference a single, well-timed conversation can make in a student's life. They also stress that relationship-rich education is particularly important for first-generation college students, who bring significant capacities to college but often face long-standing inequities and barriers to attaining their educational aspirations. Drawing on nearly 400 interviews with students, faculty, and staff at 29 higher education institutions across the country, Relationship-Rich Education provides readers with practical advice on how they can develop and sustain powerful relationship-based learning in their own contexts. Ultimately, the book is an invitation-and a challenge-for faculty, administrators, and student life staff to move relationships from the periphery to the center of undergraduate education.

The book is designed to offer both a theoretical grounding and practical guidelines and advice--from faculty, students, and coordinators/directors of teaching and learning centers--on how to develop student-faculty partnerships focused on affirming and improving teaching and learning in higher education. This is a why-to and a how-to book, and it provides those interested in trying out their own version of student-faculty partnerships with theory and evidence that supports such efforts, various models of how to go about creating and supporting such partnerships, and advice from a wide-range of experts, on the one hand, and faculty and students who have tried this approach, on the other hand. That balance--of theory, step-by-step guidelines, expert advice, and practitioner experience - will provide those interested with a wide range of perspectives and possibilities on how to build student-faculty partnerships and various levels of guidance. The book will include helpful responses to a range of questions that we have been asked by academic staff from different institutions, disciplines, and levels of experience. These responses will attempt to help faculty overcome some of the perceived barriers to student-faculty partnerships and suggest a range of possible levels of partnership that might be appropriate in different circumstances.

Colleges and universities silo diversity and inclusion by creating specific courses to address them, or programs to welcome and support people with a range of identities, whereas in reality students, faculty and staff do not encounter diversity in the fractured ways that match the organizational structures of our institutions. We all simultaneously embody a variety of identities with different saliency in different circumstances and times. This book offers models for institutions to move intentionally toward intersections - of study abroad and multiculturalism, of race and gender and religion, and of other essential aspects of our educational programs and our students' identities - to open doors to new possibilities that better prepare our students for life in a diverse world, and that allow our institutions to become more efficient and effective as we strive to not simply do things better in our own separate spheres, but to do better things by working together across difference. Each chapter offers action-oriented analysis focusing on particular campus intersections, rather than attending to specific demographic groups. Chapter authors also build on their own local expertise of doing this work on campuses that often do not have deep pockets or rich histories of such efforts. The book is organized into three sections: People focuses on diversity broadly defined, considering questions about how we recruit and engage the students, faculty, and staff in the campus community, and how we work with governing boards and others to promote inclusive excellence. Environment focuses on inclusion, including residence life, the local community, the working and learning environment, and external factors and events such as national and international news events or town gown relationships. Learning focuses on perspective taking and learning about difference in the core curriculum, the disciplines, and the co-curriculum, as well as professional development for faculty and staff. This ground breaking book aims to help readers, no matter what position they occupy on campus, to develop the knowledge and capacities necessary to do this essential work and is premised on the understanding that identity, oppression, power and marginalization cannot be accomplished by looking solely at single identities.

Colleges and universities silo diversity and inclusion by creating specific courses to address them, or programs to welcome and support people with a range of identities, whereas in reality students, faculty and staff do not encounter diversity in the fractured ways that match the organizational structures of our institutions. We all simultaneously embody a variety of identities with different saliency in different circumstances and times. This book offers models for institutions to move intentionally toward intersections - of study abroad and multiculturalism, of race and gender and religion, and of other essential aspects of our educational programs and our students' identities - to open doors to new possibilities that better prepare our students for life in a diverse world, and that allow our institutions to become more efficient and effective as we strive to not simply do things better in our own separate spheres, but to do better things by working together across difference. Each chapter offers action-oriented analysis focusing on particular campus intersections, rather than attending to specific demographic groups. Chapter authors also build on their own local expertise of doing this work on campuses that often do not have deep pockets or rich histories of such efforts. The book is organized into three sections: People focuses on diversity broadly defined, considering questions about how we recruit and engage the students, faculty, and staff in the campus community, and how we work with governing boards and others to promote inclusive excellence. Environment focuses on inclusion, including residence life, the local community, the working and learning environment, and external factors and events such as national and international news events or town gown relationships. Learning focuses on perspective taking and learning about difference in the core curriculum, the disciplines, and the co-curriculum, as well as professional development for faculty and staff. This ground breaking book aims to help readers, no matter what position they occupy on campus, to develop the knowledge and capacities necessary to do this essential work and is premised on the understanding that identity, oppression, power and marginalization cannot be accomplished by looking solely at single identities.

A clear, practical framework for getting higher education back on track The Undergraduate Experience is a guide for significantly improving student learning and institutional performance in the rapidly changing world of higher education. Written by recognized experts in undergraduate education, this book encourages college and university leaders to rethink current practices that fragment the student experience, and to focus on creating powerful, integrated undergraduate learning for all students. Drawing from their own deep experience and the latest research, the authors reveal key principles that enable institutional change and enhance student outcomes in any higher education setting. Coverage includes high-impact practices for engagement, the importance of strategic leadership, the necessity of setting and maintaining high expectations, and insight on fostering excellence through systematic planning. Through its core themes and action principles, this book can be a valuable resource for faculty, staff, administrators, and governing boards at all types of postsecondary institutions. The book provides a practical framework for achieving excellence in undergraduate education by focusing on: * Learning * Relationships * Expectations * Alignment * Improvement * Leadership The value of an undergraduate education is under greater scrutiny than ever before, and campus leaders must be able to convey the value of their institutions to students, boards, donors, and legislators. Is a college or university degree worth the increasing cost? Are today's students academically adrift? What's the difference between a degree and an education? Responding to these questions requires focused action by individuals and institutions. The Undergraduate Experience offers practical guidance for creating and sustaining excellence in the face of disruption and change in higher education.

College teachers all too often still play Sage on the Stage lecturing to rooms full of passive and supposedly absorbed students. The cutting-edge opposite is still supposed to be the Guide on the Side facilitating wherever students themselves are already going, mentoring and coaching them along the way. But who says that these are the only or the best alternatives? This book advances another and sharply different model: the Impresario with a Scenario, a teacher who serves as class mobilizer, improviser, and energizer, staging dramatic, often unexpected and self-unfolding learning challenges and adventures with students. In this book, the author argues that to pose a single alternative to lecturing is profoundly limiting. In fact, he says there is no reason to have to choose between ""student-centered"" and ""teacher-centered"" pedagogies. The best ways to teach and learn are both. The same applies to the false choice between ""active"" students and ""active"" teachers there can be more than enough activity for everyone. In particular, the author argues that we need a model in which the teacher is notably pro-active a kind of activity for which certain theatrical metaphors seem especially appropriate. Picture a college teacher who regularly sets up classroom scenarios challenging problems, unscripted dramas, role-plays, simulations, and the like such that the scenario itself frames and drives most of the action and learning that follows. For teaching as staging, the primary work of the teacher is staging such scenarios. The basic goal is to put students into an urgently engaging and self-unfolding scenario, trusting them to carry it forward, while being prepared to join in as needed. This book offers a conceptual and practical framework for Teaching as Staging, grounding the approach with illustrative and sometimes provocative narrative from the literature as well as the author's own practice. Teaching as the Art of Staging offers a visionary challenge to the prevailing models of pedagogy. The book presents a thoroughly practical model that opens up new possibilities for anyone interested in dramatic new directions in teaching and learning.

College teachers all too often still play Sage on the Stage lecturing to rooms full of passive and supposedly absorbed students. The cutting-edge opposite is still supposed to be the Guide on the Side facilitating wherever students themselves are already going, mentoring and coaching them along the way. But who says that these are the only or the best alternatives? This book advances another and sharply different model: the Impresario with a Scenario, a teacher who serves as class mobilizer, improviser, and energizer, staging dramatic, often unexpected and self-unfolding learning challenges and adventures with students. In this book, the author argues that to pose a single alternative to lecturing is profoundly limiting. In fact, he says there is no reason to have to choose between ""student-centered"" and ""teacher-centered"" pedagogies. The best ways to teach and learn are both. The same applies to the false choice between ""active"" students and ""active"" teachers there can be more than enough activity for everyone. In particular, the author argues that we need a model in which the teacher is notably pro-active a kind of activity for which certain theatrical metaphors seem especially appropriate. Picture a college teacher who regularly sets up classroom scenarios challenging problems, unscripted dramas, role-plays, simulations, and the like such that the scenario itself frames and drives most of the action and learning that follows. For teaching as staging, the primary work of the teacher is staging such scenarios. The basic goal is to put students into an urgently engaging and self-unfolding scenario, trusting them to carry it forward, while being prepared to join in as needed. This book offers a conceptual and practical framework for Teaching as Staging, grounding the approach with illustrative and sometimes provocative narrative from the literature as well as the author's own practice. Teaching as the Art of Staging offers a visionary challenge to the prevailing models of pedagogy. The book presents a thoroughly practical model that opens up new possibilities for anyone interested in dramatic new directions in teaching and learning.

The recent trend of trying to measure higher education's return on investment misses a fundamental point, argue Charity Johansson and Peter Felten. The central purpose of a college or university is to transform the lives of students-not to merely change them or help them mature. This transformation is an ongoing process of intentionally aligning one's behavior with one's core sense of personal identity. It is the university's central role to lead students in this transformation, a process that shapes students into intentional, critical, and engaged individuals. Recognizing the remarkable influence of the college experience on peoples' lives, the authors offer a guide to how colleges and universities can effectively lead students through this life-changing process. Drawn from extensive interviews with students and graduates, faculty and staff, Transforming Students gathers diverse stories to show how students experience the transformation process, which rarely follows a neat or linear path. The interviews illustrate central themes from the literature on transformative learning and the undergraduate student experience. A sequel of sorts to George Keller's classic Transforming a College - which chronicled Elon University's metamorphosis from struggling college to a top regional university- Transforming Students addresses the school's core educational mission: to shape students into engaged adults who embrace learning as a lifelong endeavor. Given this effect, the college experience is much more than preparation for a career. It is preparation for life.