Looking Back and Looking Around: Transition Fundamentals and Success

Principles as Object Lessons Mary Stuart Hunter

Associate Vice President and Executive Director

National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition

Looking Back and Looking Around: Transition Fundamentals and Success

Principles as Object Lessons

- Review context and history of student success

- Consider “transitions” from a broad perspective

- Review scholarship that undergirds our work today

- Apply what we know to our ourselves

Higher education’s approach to students over time

“College for the Elite” Era

“Survival of the Fittest” Era

Darwinian attitude

For the privileged

Sellers’ market

“Student Survival” Era

changing demographics

“Student Retention” Era

Proliferation of colleges and universities

Competition in the marketplace

Driven by economics

BUT……. A minimalist goal

“Student Success” Era

Help students do more than just persist … progress to degree Focus primarily on academic success, but with psychosocial aspects, too Programmatic interventions

? ?

The “Thriving” Era

“The construct of thriving as an expanded vision of student success provides a framework for conceptualizing new ways of helping students reap the full benefits of higher education. The very word thriving implies that success involves more than surviving a four year obstacle course. Students who thrive are vitally engaged in the college endeavor – intellectually, socially, and emotionally, they experience what Tagg (2003) calls deep learning; they are

investing effort within the

classroom and managing their

lives well beyond it.

Thriving students are also goal oriented, applying their strengths to address the academic challenges they face. When they are thriving, students are connected to others in healthy and meaningful ways, and they desire to make a difference in the world about them. They also see the world differently. Equipped with a positive perspective on life, they are secure in the present and confident of the future.”

Schreiner, Louis, & Nelson, 2012 Emphasis mine

Education for the Elite

Survival of the Fittest

Student Survival

Retention

Student Success

Thriving

….transition….

Many connotations and uses

of the word

….words and phrases….

Transition

words

allow us

to work

smooth

changes into

our writing

last first but

as a result on the other hand

moreover in addition otherwise conclusively lastly

most

importantly

in conclusion to end with furthermore on top of all

second next first of all

last of all to sum it up last, but not least finally

….film editing….

A dissolve from the end

of one clip

to the beginning

of another

….judo….

refers to the skillful

transition between

standing phase and the

ground phase

….Monty Python….

“No! No! Anything but the transition!”

60-60 / 30-30

lessons from anthropology

Arnold van Gennep

Dutch Anthropologist

(1873 –1957)

Coined the term “Rites of Passage”

….3 stages….

Rites of passage:

Separation

Transition

Incorporation

…collegiate rites of passage…

• Orientation

• Move-in Day

• Convocation

• Registration

• Ring ceremony

• Graduation

….the transition process…. William Bridges

• Endings

• The Neutral Zone

• The New Beginning

….endings…. • Disengagement

• Dis-identification

• Disenchantment

• Disorientation

….endings….

“In my end is my beginning. That’s a quotation I’ve often heard people say…but what does it mean?”

-- Dame Agatha Christie

….endings….

“What is past is prologue”

William Shakespeare

– The Tempest

…the neutral zone…

• Temporary, but critical stage to experience

• May include period of inactivity

• Reluctance to discuss with anyone

• Time of inner reorientation

…the neutral zone… “Who are you?” said the

caterpillar……

“ I – I hardly know, Sir, just at the present,” Alice replies rather shyly, “at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

….the new beginning….

• Begins within person

• Will not happen until person is ready

• Motivation comes when aligned with deep longings

• About the process

….the new beginning….

“A journey of a thousand

miles begins with a

single step.”

--Chinese Proverb

… college students in transition …

• First-year students

• Sophomores

• Major-changers

• Coming out

• Transfer students

• Senior students

What is an institution’s responsibility?

What do we know about student success??

Research & theories

on student success

and persistence

Institutional Fit (Tinto and others)

• Congruence

between student and institutional goals and values.

• Can students needs be met at the institution?

• Can fit be cultivated?

Social & Academic Integration (Tinto, Pascarella & Terenzini, Light, others)

• Learning and retention increase when what students learn outside the classroom is incorporated inside the classroom

• Relevance and integration

Involvement and Community (Astin, Kuh, Sanford, Light)

• Time on task

• Link between quality and quantity of involvement and student performance

• Interactions with peers

Engagement (Kuh et al)

• Purposeful, intentional,

and connected

• Links cognitive and affective dimensions

Learning (Astin, Kuh, Tinto, others)

• Is key to success

• Is root of persistence and success

• Book learning and life skills learning are both critical

Comprehensive Collaboration (Gardner and colleagues)

Comprehensive Collaboration (Gardner and colleagues)

Effective Educational Practices

• Level of Academic Challenge

• Active & Collaborative Learning

• Student Interactions with Faculty Members

• Enriching Educational Experiences

• Supportive Campus Environment

48

Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, Whitt, & Assoc. (2005). Student success in college.

10 High-Impact Activities

First-Year Seminars and Experiences Common Intellectual Experiences Learning Communities Writing-Intensive Courses Collaborative Assignments and Projects Undergraduate Research Diversity/Global Learning Service Learning, Community-Based Learning Internships Capstone Courses and Projects

High Impact Practices

…while promising, they are not a panacea. Only when they are implemented well and continually evaluated to be sure they are accessible to and reaching all students will we realize their considerable potential.

• From the forward by George Kuh

Brownell, J.E. & Swaner, L.E. (2010) Five High Impact Practices: Research on Learning Outcomes, Completion, and Quality. Washington, DC: AAC&U.

Student-faculty contact

Active learning

Prompt feedback

Time on task

High expectations

Respect for diverse learning styles

Cooperation among students

Good Practices in Undergraduate Education (Chickering & Gamson, 1987; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005)

Looking Around

applying student success principles to ourselves

High Expectations

Time on Task

Cooperation

Comprehensive Collaboration

Challenge and Support

Nevitt Sanford Mihaly Csikszenetmihalyi

”the line between the actor and the act blurs and, on some cases disappears entirely. There is not dancer. There is only dancing. Flow is not the same as happiness. In fact, when we interrupt flow to take stock of our happiness, we lose both.”

-- Eric Weiner The Geography of Bliss p 172

Enriching Educational Experiences

Thank you ….. and enjoy the conference!

References

• Bridges, W. (2003). Transitions: Making sense of life’s changes. Reading, PA: Addison-Wesley.

• Chickering, A. W. & Gamsen, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7.

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997) Finding flow in everyday life. New York: Basic Books.

• John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Higher Education. Available at http://www.jngi.org/institute/

• Light, R.J. (2001) Making the most of college: Students speak their mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• Kuh, G.D. (2008) High impact practices: What they are, who has access to them, and why they matter. Washington DC: AAC&U. available at http://www.aacu.org/leap/documents/hip_tables.pdf

• Kuh, G., Brownell, J.E. & Swaner, L.E. (2010) Five High Impact Practices: Research on Learning Outcomes, Completion, and Quality.

• Kuh, G.D., Kinzie, J., Buckley, J., Bridges, B.K., & Hayek, J.C. (2007) Piecing together the student success puzzle: Research, propositions, and recommendations (ASHE Higher Education Report no 32). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Kuh, G.D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J.H., Whitt, E. J., & Associates (2005) Student success in college: Creating conditions that matter. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Pascarella, E.T. & Terenzini, P T. (2005) How college affects students, Vol.2, A third decade of research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Schreiner, L.A., Louis, M.C., & Nelson, D.D. (Eds). (2012) Thriving in transition: A research-based approach to college student success. Columbia, SC: National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition.

• Sanford, N. (Ed.) (1962) The American college. New York: Wiley.

• Tinto, V. ((1975). Dropout from higher education: A theoretical synthesis of recent research. Review of Educational Research, 45, 89-125.

• Tinto, V. (1987) Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• Van Gennep, A. The rites of passage (1960, translation by Vizedom, M. & Caffee, G.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press

• Weiner, E. (2009) The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World. New York: Twelve.