Caring Campus, a program to have faculty contribute to fostering a culture of caring for students at schools, is related to observable benefits, according to a recent report by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Columbia University.
Dr. Elisabeth Barnett
Caring Campus is a program that began in 2018 by the Institute for Evidence-Based Change (IEBC) to involve higher ed staff in improving engagement with students and creating a ‘culture of caring’ at community colleges.
The program has two sections: Caring Campus/Staff, which involves nonacademic staff, and Caring Campus/Faculty, which involves college faculty. Both subprograms are meant to bring staff or faculty together to help identify and implement certain behavioral commitments to increase student connection to the college.
Such behavioral commitments listed in the report include: learning and regularly using students’ names; creating syllabi with clear explanations of course content and expectations; meeting with students individually at the start of the semester to get to know their interests, needs, and wants; giving quick and early feedback; and discussing individual challenges with students in order to provide extra help and/or flexibility on assignment deadlines.
“There's a lot of concern generally, I think, about student sense of belonging – and connectedness maybe more – because of the pandemic,” said Dr. Elisabeth A. Barnett, senior research scholar emeritus at CCRC and co-author of the report. “People, in different ways, became less connected, and there were fewer students coming back to college and so on. So I think a lot of institutional leaders have been concerned about making sure students develop that sense of connection. And then, faculty are especially interested because they haven't always had an explicit role in student success efforts, and it's a way for them to see where they fit in. At least it's one approach to helping them to fit into those efforts."
Schools get the option to implement either or both program sections. The Caring Campus program is currently being implemented at more than 100 U.S. colleges – most are community colleges. And Caring Campus/Faculty specifically has been implemented in 28 colleges, according to the report.
The CCRC report, "Caring Campus: Faculty Leadership in Student Success," focuses on the Caring Campus/Faculty portion of the overall program. According to the report, at Delta College in Michigan and Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI), where faculty was surveyed, 97% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed with the statement that the Caring Campus/Faculty approach helped faculty improve student success.
