Many California college students face food and housing insecurity. CalFresh food benefits, known federally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, can help students pay for food, but most students eligible for this support are not receiving it. To address the gap between eligibility and participation, the California Policy Lab…

As higher education becomes more competitive in terms of student recruitment, program delivery models, and student retention, increasing options in housing and residence life has become more critical for institutional sustainability. Traditional institutions with thriving on-campus living programs have made critical enhancements to their housing…

Religious, secular, and spiritual identities (RSSIs) are an important aspect of the complex experiences of students in higher education. Often dismissed or forgotten by higher education professionals, RSSIs have shifted drastically over the 20+ years since Love and Talbot first wrote about them in 1999. While scholarship on RSSIs has steadily…

Foreign language houses, on-campus residences in which students pledge to speak in their target language, offer valuable opportunities for language and culture learning. Scores of such programs exist at universities across North America (Dewey, Baker, Bown, & Martinsen, 2011), yet little is written about them in the research literature. This…

Nearly three in five undergraduate students on U.S. campuses experience basic needs insecurity, which means they lack access to stable sources of food, housing, or other living or educational essentials, like affordable childcare or technology. Basic needs insecurity unequivocally jeopardizes student success, increasing the likelihood of leaving…

This issue of "New Directions" provides an overview of the increasing numbers of students who are experiencing homelessness, housing insecurity, and food insecurity. College presidents are in a unique position to lead campus efforts to identify students in need and to develop strategies for supporting this increasing, often invisible,…

Mid-level managers have the difficult task of juggling needs and direction of entry-level staff with the demanding outcomes from their supervisors and senior leadership. To be successful, they must maneuver through demanding expectations from their supervisors while simultaneously garnering buy-in from those they directly supervise in order to…

This chapter shares reflections from two university housing administrators on using dialogic practices to build skills for addressing issues of social justice and equity that surface in residential community living settings.

Successful implementation of a Residential Curriculum Model is dependent on the preparedness and investment of professional staff to design the learning experiences taking place in residence halls. Recent literature urges student affairs educators to embrace approaches which contribute to student learning beyond the classroom. This concept has…

Students in postsecondary education experience housing and food insecurity in increasing numbers. Their particular needs as students make it difficult for them to use traditional shelters. This chapter describes how two students from University of California, Los Angeles, created a shelter designed for students from the university and from Santa…

This issue of "DataPoints" shows student residence while enrolled at college by institutional category, 2016. These data reflect the fact that community college students are more likely to be nontraditional students who are juggling college, work and taking care of family members while attending college near their home.

Objective: The purpose of this viewpoint is to discuss the lack of research on resident advisor (RA) self-care and how behavioral interventions can be used in housing programs to educate and improve RA self-care. It is essential for live-in housing staff (both professional and paraprofessional) to learn how to develop appropriate strategies that…

There's been no shortage of suggestions for how to save the many small colleges that dot the landscape, especially in New England. Susan Dynarski, a well-respected professor who regularly comments insightfully on issues in higher education, suggested that perhaps the only places where COVID safety and education can coexist are rural small college…

Community college students are more likely to be low-income, people of color and first generation in their family to attend higher education than their four-year peers. For a combination of these reasons, they are more apt to be housing insecure. This article discusses how some community colleges are providing new solutions for residences for…

This article seeks to make the case for how relationships are essential to meeting the tapestry of student needs by examining experiences and challenges of several student threads in that tapestry, using both two-year and four-year institutional perspectives. How faculty, staff, and administrators respond--or don't--in building rapport and…