What does it mean to belong in a classroom, in a discipline, in a university?
For some, this is a strange question as we’ve always felt like the University was a place for us. When you belong somewhere you don’t notice that you belong: you simply exist with little anxiety or self-consciousness and are not plagued by doubt from yourself or others as to whether the University is a place you could succeed, or where you should want to succeed.
However, many students who come to Montclair do not feel like they belong. In the Fall 2021 “Educate Your Educators” survey, only 28% of responding undergraduates reported that they agreed or strongly agreed that “most students feel a sense of belonging” at Montclair, down from 41% in 2019. More recently, the University’s Noel Levitz survey from Spring 2022 showed improvement: 37% of undergraduates report that they agreed or strongly agreed that “most students feel a sense of belonging.”
When students have a strong sense of belonging they are more successful:
- Students who have a sense of belonging persist at greater rates (Gopalan & Brady, 2020; Hausmann et al, 2007; NASEM, 2017).
- Having a sense of belonging is a predictor of motivation, engagement, and achievement (Zumbrunn et al., 2014).
- Students who have a sense of belonging have established “supportive peer relationships” and believe that “faculty are compassionate” and that students are “more than just another face in the crowd (Hoffman et al., 2003).
Daily Practices to Support Belonging
- Learn and use your students’ names; recognize them as individuals and not bodies in seats.
- Make it easy: Use a name tent
- Read this study that suggests how powerful being known by name is for students.
- Identify the students you know the least well and seek out a way to engage them individually, such as asking simple questions, or offering compliments on their ideas or comments.
- Mitigate stereotype threat and imposter syndrome. Brown University offers the following strategies for mitigating stereotype threat in the classroom:
- Examine how you give feedback to students: To mitigate stereotype threat, critical feedback on assignments should emphasize:
- reflection of a teacher’s high standards
- students’ potential to reach them and
- substantive feedback to improve. For example, a framing comment like the following can be adapted: “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.” (Steele, 2011; Yaeger et al., 2014).
- Frame the purpose of assessments effectively: Emphasize that tests and assignments are a diagnostic of students’ current skill levels, which can be improved with practice, instead of a measure of permanent ability (Aronson, 2002).
- Use reflective writing to normalize struggles.
- Recognize the diversity of contributors to/members of the field.
- Move course assessments away from timed, high-stakes tests. Courses with design- or writing-based assignments, as well as low-stakes quizzes, tend to have more equitable outcomes.
- Examine how you give feedback to students: To mitigate stereotype threat, critical feedback on assignments should emphasize:
- Mitigate microaggressions.
- Consider inviting the Office of Social Justice and Diversity to run a class workshop in microaggressions.
- See this list of examples and responses for interrupting microaggressions produced by University of California Santa Cruz.
- Be aware of and mitigate implicit bias.
- Make space for students’ voices and experiences.
- Encourage a growth mindset and the value of effort over innate intelligence.
- Address controversial topics — It’s not impossible to have fruitful and educational valuable conversations about topics that matter personally, socially, politically, and otherwise.
Plan an Intervention to Foster Belonging
Socially disadvantaged students who experience a “belonging intervention” are more engaged in university activities, develop more friendships, have higher GPAs, and are more likely to have a mentor (Brady 2020, Walton et al 2007 & 2011, Yeager et al 2016).
The Idea: Recognize doubts about belonging, and cast belonging challenges as temporary & mutable
The Intervention: Students read and reflect on diverse older students’ stories of experiencing challenges to belonging in college and how their experiences improved over time. (Brady et al 2020, Walton & Cohen 2011, Yeager et al 2016).
Solicit or find authentic student voices who can speak from their experiences of first encountering non-belonging and then persisting and being helped to finding belonging and from that, a sense of belonging.
- Solicit: Write to former students who you witnessed not just succeeding, but first struggling. Invite them to help you. If your students are interested in helping, ask them to record or write their short vignette. You might share these slides to help them understand your project.
- Find: Try We Belong in College
- Assign the project to students. See Andrew Roland’s assignment, UNM.
- Write your own: Create a Belonging Story.
Next, ask students to read / view the student perspectives and follow the viewing with a writing activity, with short written essays (two paragraphs) such as:
- Why do you think it is common for students to feel unsure about their belonging when they first come to college? Considering your own experiences with transitions – to high school, to college, to a new community – to compose your response.
- Most college students become comfortable in their chosen major, college, and university over time. Again, based on your experience, how do college students become comfortable? How do college students develop that sense of belonging?
- Read more about OFE’s take on Belonging by viewing the slides of our Belonging Intervention workshop, January 2023.
Updated 01.24.23
Part of cultivating scholars is encouraging and supporting students through letters of recommendation. Much research has shown that letters of recommendation exhibit bias, however unintentionally. Here are some tips to help you avoid common pitfalls of unconscious bias.
- Stick to professional matters: leave out personal, private information about the student.
- Be specific. Rather than labeling them “successful” or “accomplished” in a broad, generic way, provide concrete examples.
- Don’t call attention to the subject’s gender or, race, or ethnicity.
- Don’t raise doubt through negative phrases (“Although” or hedges (“appears,” “seems”).
- Don’t damn with faint praise.
- Don’t be too brief: shorter letters suggest lesser degree of assurance in subject’s abilities.
If you feel uncomfortable writing the letter, it is better to say no to the request than to write a tepid letter of recommendation.
When writing letters of recommendation, consider some of the strategies proposed by Rebecca E. Burnett, Rebekah Fitzsimmons, Courtney A. Hoffman and Patricia R. Taylor (2022, June). They argue for a collaborative approach in which applicants request letters, writers collect information and then draft the letter; writer and applicant then collaborate and review the letter. This collaborative process can help mitigate bias.
Belonging
- It’s the Little Things: The Big Impact of Microaggressions 13-minute Panopto video produced by Montclair Office for Social Justice and Diversity
- Belonging at Cal State Chico
- Belonging exercises change outcomes at UPitt
- Creating Inclusive College Classrooms, University of Michigan
- NSSE belonging research
- MIT Academic Belonging
- Strategies and Resources about Stereotype Threat, Brown University
Hoffman, M., et al. (2002). “Investigating “Sense of Belonging” in First-Year College Students.” Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice 4(3): 227-256.
Bias in Recommendations
Avoiding gender bias in reference writing, University of Arizona, Commission on the Status of Women
Avoiding racial bias in letter of reference writing, Montana State University
Gender Bias Calculator: Letters of Recommendation, collection by Lehigh University
Examples of Bias in Letters to Watch Out For, Rochester Institute of Technology
For more information or help, please email the Office for Faculty Excellence or make an appointment with a consultant.
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