As community colleges create or enhance their online learning programs, campus leaders must find ways to make these experiences equitable for all students, so that everyone has a fair chance at success. Colleges are using a wide array of innovative strategies to do this. These methods include designing online courses with inclusion in mind,…

When students are initially immersed into the academic and social community of their program, they are more likely to succeed than if left to navigate graduate school on their own. As such, well-crafted onboarding initiatives are among the highest impact retention practices and key to enhancing the graduate student experience. While George Mason…

Traditional ecological models are promising for making sense of international student experiences, but the assumed monolithic nature of the structuring systems is inadequate for explaining development that occurs across multiple systems. We present and expand a model called the Spanning Systems Model that recognizes multiple ecologies. The model…

In order to guide educators step-by-step through an orientation process for an online team-based learning (TBL) course, this chapter describes principles for creating an orientation module for an online higher education course that employs online delivery following both standards from the Quality Matters Rubric for Higher Education and essential…

The global online education sector has been rising rapidly, particularly during and after the events of 2020, and is becoming mainstream much sooner than expected. Despite this, research studies report higher levels of perceived isolation, difficulties with engagement, and higher attrition rates in online compared to equivalent on-campus programs.…

Most children starting primary school in Australia do so after attending early childhood education and participating in a transition to school programme. While this has become the expected pathway, it is not the one followed by all children and their families. In this article, we describe visible transitions as those that are known, understood and…

This article relays the author's experiences and lessons learned after she was selected to serve as the faculty coordinator for first-year student scheduling at her institution. The new assignment to run the first-year scheduling function in the summer was supposed to be a way to do something interesting and engaging in the summer. It turned out…

Many new students are struggling to succeed in the current college environment. The mental health crisis and the pandemic have only increased this struggle. Communication centers should partner with student orientation in order to increase student retention, alongside familiarizing students with the communication center from the beginning of their…

Technology has become a way of life since March 2020 and the statewide shutdowns after the COVID-19 pandemic. People who had gotten by without ever having to use the internet, much less turn on a computer, had to learn quickly to change and adapt. The administrative team of Fontana Adult School realized the need to help students with basic digital…

Higher education institutions have affirmed their commitment to antiracism but differ in how and when they introduce those values to graduate students. Engaging in a conversation about race and racism can be uncomfortable for some students, especially before trust has been established. A graduate school in the northeastern United States instituted…

Research has shown the value in both Student Affairs and Academic Affairs approaches to student leadership education and development, yet many curricular and co-curricular programs continue to operate independently. Institutions that offer both curricular and co-curricular leadership programs are uniquely positioned to leverage the expertise from…

Classroom management is cited as a frequent concern by many teachers. These concerns with classroom management are commonly rooted in a struggle to effectively engage students and a failure to form authentic relationships with students. Centering Culturally Relevant Pedagogy is crucial when effectively engaging and building authentic relationships…

The author questions the high cost of innovation in higher education. He states that much of the literature and other communications convey the sense that improvements in university functioning are more a capital-intensive, than a thought- or labor-intensive enterprise, especially for small public institutions, which educate a substantial…

This article highlights a two-year institution's efforts to deliver personalized guidance and direction to students, providing essential support resources in hope of facilitating meaningful connections that will lead to increased enrollment, persistence, retention, and three-year graduation rates. The project includes efforts by student services…

In 2019, [Sunny] (City, State) was awarded a federal College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) grant designed to provide necessary support for the first-year success of migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their direct families. This article describes programming of the CAMP grant, focusing on how it functions as a learning community through its…