How are you thinking about your impact on your university’s environment? What about your university’s environment and its impact on your students? As Residence Life professionals, we often focus solely on the environments that we actively create in our own buildings. However, the campus environment is a complex and nuanced factor in a college student’s experience. As a graduate student, I’ve learned a lot about the shaping of campus through my college environments course; I’ve discovered a plethora of knowledge that has been applied to my experience working on campus. In the second chapter of Designing for Learning: Creating Campus Environments for Student Success (my course’s text), C. Carney Strange and James H. Banning discuss the impact of human aggregates on college environments. In this post, I want to detail what the human aggregate is and how professionals play an equal role to students in shaping the human aggregate characteristics of the campus environment.
Human Aggregate: The understanding that “environments are transmitted through people, and the dominant features of any given environment are partially a function of the collective characteristics of the individuals who inhabit it.”
The concept of human aggregate implies that the primary aspects of an environment are a reflective function of the traits that the environment’s collective population has. In other words, environments are what and who they are made up of; the environment is often representative of its population and vice versa. Inevitably, there are students who are outliers compared to the majority. In addition, subgroups may be present within the student population, carrying their own unique ideals and characteristics. In understanding this, I reflected on how a concept like this one may apply to students with marginalized identities. In doing so, my first thought is that viewing a campus solely through a human aggregate lens may be detrimental to student outliers, particularly students with marginalized identities, whose culture and experiences may differ from those of the majority.
The human aggregate is not solely constructed of students. Rather, faculty and staff members are also included in the collective that shapes the environment of the campus. How a student can relate to or see themselves within members of the collective will influence the shape of the environment for them. With that said, institutions may inadvertently perpetuate and curate the environment themselves, excluding students who do not fit the mold of the culture that has been cultivated. In my experience, I have observed that the concept of human aggregate can be applicable at the departmental level as well. During my time in the on-call rotation, I dealt with an immensely terrifying situation concerning the safety and mental health of an international student on campus. The student, initially reported as missing by their friends, was transported to the hospital after hours of speculation on their whereabouts. This speculation took place right outside of the student’s bedroom door, where I had to navigate conversations with campus police about the necessity of keying into the room. What I noticed in this encounter was that many of the cultural nuances of this interaction were overlooked and ignored by the police officers and their policies. After learning about the typologies in my course’s text, I can see how the department’s typical rules based on the majority constituents in the environment were working to the detriment of students who did not fit the majority mold, in this case international students.
Strange & Banning’s text lists several student typologies. While typology is an interesting and fun way of categorizing, it is important to note that categorization has its implications and subtleties. For example, a student’s engagement type might be ‘scholar’ or ‘status striver’ (emphasizing a focus on scholarly pursuits and academics) due to familial pressure and cultural influence rather than mere preference.
Scholar: From The CIRP Freshman Survey Typology of Students. This type of student has a “high degree of academic and intellectual self-esteem, high expectations for academic success in college, aspirations for high-level academic degrees, and a significant disinclination toward careers in business and social work.” (Strange & Banning, 2015).
Status Striver: From The CIRP Freshman Survey Typology of Students. This type of student is “committed to being successful in their own business,having administrative responsibility for the work of others, being very well-off financially, obtaining recognition from colleagues for contributions in their special field, and becoming an authority in their field; strongly materialistic values reflected in their inclination toward college majors and careers in accounting and business and toward partying, watching television, and joining fraternities or sororities.” (Strange & Banning, 2015).
In my situation, I watched students struggle to provide information on their friend’s mental health due to cultural norms surrounding disclosing such information being taboo. Disclosing was the only way to get closer to the safety of their friend, but also compromised their values and privacy. Observing this in combination with a language barrier, I witnessed people from departments who were meant to serve as resources inadvertently perpetuate an overarching lack of care and an ‘it is what it is’ mentality. Inevitably, students with similar experiences may be left feeling uncared for and out of place in their residential environment. If the campus police deemed their hints not reputable, advocacy offices refused attempts to communicate, and their hall director was practically powerless, I can only assume that these students felt on the outside in these moments. The staff members of the university were not reflecting an environment that was supportive of them and their needs, even if it was unintentional.
After reviewing this information and reflecting on my experience, I hold the belief that allowing policies and job tasks to revolve singularly around the conditions created by the people in the environment, specifically the students, is a dangerous game. It is also exclusive towards students who do not fit the mold of the traditional college student in the United States. To only view environments through a human aggregate lens, in my opinion, is to imply that it is the sole responsibility of the student to find their place on campus and adjust accordingly. However, I believe that a more student-centered approach should be enforced at institutions. Rather than curating the student body to fit the faculty and staff-centered environment an institution has created, work can be done to cultivate an environment that aligns with and serves the diverse student population.
Diverse, but Interpersonally Fragmented: An institutional type. Students at these colleges have numerous experiences with diversity and tend to use technology, but do not view the institution as supporting their academic or social needs nor are their peers viewed as supportive or encouraging. All and all, not a very easy place to live and learn it seems.
For example, perhaps an institution labeled as the Diverse, but Interpersonally Fragmented engagement type may typically leave students to their own devices as it pertains to healthcare insurance and bills. To take a student-centered approach, the university might still create and distribute an international student guide to navigating health insurance in The United States (another issue I saw arise for international students on my previous college campus). Overall, observing how the students and their subgroups formulate aspects of the environment is helpful, interesting, and exciting. Yet, as professionals, we too have a responsibility to reimagine the campus. My new conception is that faculty and staff play a large role in the overarching construction of a college environment, and they should posture themselves as such.
