Don’t Assume
Lived Experiences Are Not as Cut and Dry As One Might Think
Student leaders play a huge role in our campus peer-to-peer engagement. Regardless of their role: orientation leaders, peer educators, tutors, resident assistants, tour guides or serve on the campus activities team, these students are needed to keep the engine running as well as fill gaps in student services that are out of reach of HigherEd professionals. Their roles are extraordinarily important, not only for the students they are selected/elected to serve, but also as they build their own transferable skill set that can be so essential to their growth and success beyond their time on campus.
This is not new information, and as HigherEd and Student Affairs professionals, we tout this as we promote the importance of peer to peer leadership roles. However, I am seeing a struggle on campuses, specifically a combination of challenges that are grounded in campus response to the pandemic intersecting with student development and how traditional aged students are struggling to assist their peers in ways that are frustrating their supervisors, and the peers they may be charged to serve.
Looking back - let’s say in generations of the 80’s, 90’s and early 00’s - peer leaders had traditionally been students of junior or senior status. Over the last decade and a half - we have seen a marked decrease in the number of seniors who are able or choose to be a student leader. Internships, jobs and other circumstances and opportunities run in conflict with these on-campus roles. At a similar time, campuses realized (some begrudgingly) that unpaid or poorly paid leadership roles screen out first generation and high financial need students, resulting in student leadership that doesn’t represent the campus. As such, campuses turned to enhancing the pay/remuneration for these roles as they sought to recruit highly engaged sophomores to beef up the student leader numbers and broaden representation.
This shift in student leadership selection challenged campuses in how they recruited, trained and supervised their students - hopefully for the better. The lived experiences that student leaders brought to the role remained extraordinarily essential, as these experiences provided the peer leaders with context for their work. A relatability with their fellow students, and for many the motivation for seeking the role to begin with. Then, the pandemic hit. And, for nearly three years student life was in a state of flux - resulting in the student’s lived experience being a myriad of zoom events, hybrid classes, and other modifications. And now, many of these very students whose experiences were less than typical, are expected to lead, advise and assist the class of 2026, who have had a much more traditional transition to their campuses.
In speaking with student leaders and those who supervise them, there is a clear disconnect. Seemingly rooted in a lack of an ability to relate to the first year student experience. As one student said to me recently, “I don’t know if I’m disappointed because my first two years were so uneventful, or if I’m happy about it because I’ve become a better student. But the bottom line is, I don’t understand what my students are going through.” When pressed, the student indicated that the training they received to be a peer leader was tactically strong, but there were assumptions made by their supervisor and those who led the training. “They kept saying, ‘as you know’ and I wanted to say, ‘I don’t know’. Because I don’t.”
For anyone who has supervised undergraduate students knows, it can be a challenge due to the undergraduate’s lack of work experience and their own self-development. But now, you throw into the mix that key assumed qualifications - the campus lived experience - aren’t necessarily there. The most competent supervisors may be finding their work more challenging as a result.
Considering it is mid-September and the campuses are buzzing, we need to be mindful that the peer-to-peer leaders who are charged with assisting first year students may be feeling they are not performing up to expectations set by supervisors, their students or themselves . As such, we must provide additional training opportunities and support that will heighten their effectiveness and their satisfaction with their role.
Exclusively for paid subscribers! Premiering next Wednesday, September 21 - The Maplewood College Case Study Compendium.
Case studies are an effective learning method that allows for strengthening levels of competency, challenging thinking, and heightening discernment. At present, case study textbooks may provide readers with an overarching theme, such as social justice or management, but each of the case studies is a stand-alone typically only touching on a narrow aspect of the organization and its key personalities/players when responding to the guiding questions/challenges of the case. To fill the gap that exists for Higher Education professionals, students and faculty seeking a more realistic case study experience, Dr. Laura De Veau has drawn from her over 30 years of Higher Education experience and written this collection of case studies based on a unique premise: by going beyond a case, and delving into the campus in its totality, the learner will become more prepared in managing the complexities of being a leader and contributor on campus – at every level.
Some aspects of the Maplewood College Compendium will be familiar to scholars and practitioners in that it will provide a diversity of case studies broken down into multiple themes, but what makes this a unique offering, will be the detailed setting and personalities that will create the setting for Maplewood College, and how the compendium will be made available to readers – through the Substack platform to paid subscribers to Dr. Laura De Veau’s newsletter, “What’s Up in the Academy?”. Paid subscribers will be introduced to Maplewood College next week.
Tune In - Tuesday, September 20 at 2:00 PM Eastern - “Office Hours with Dr. DeVeau”: USDOE Completion Grants: the USDOE has announced a $5 million grant program to support the College Completion Fund for post-secondary success. The program targets HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, and Minority Serving Institutions to invest in data driven reforms that will improve completion rates. On this episode we will be joined by Dr. Catherine Brown from the National College attainment Network to discuss the program and the opportunities for institutions seeking grant funds.