Student Support

Accommodations, accountability, and individual care for each student – keys to success!

Wrap-around student support puts the student at the center of programming. This allows for staff in various roles to track student success or challenges and collaborate to provide support the student needs to be successful. In this model, students who are struggling are identified early, and thoughtfully approached to identify what is needed, then collaboratively provided with resources and services to help them get through difficult times. This differs from the traditional model which simply evaluates the student work outside of the context of the rest of their lives, and puts the onus on the student to seek out needed resources.

How we did it:

ARC-Learn was intended to support students with non-traditional pathways (many with work or caregiving responsibilities), so we anticipated that their personal lives could affect their participation in this program. During our time together, we worked with students (and mentors) who experienced challenges with finances, overwhelming academic workloads, mental health challenges, and family crises.

Our team of student support folks included mentors, undergraduate advisors, project PIs, student colleagues and a program coordinator. Our program coordinator reached out to any student who seemed to be struggling, or who was not participating fully in the program. If we were unable to reach them, we worked with the student’s academic advisor as another avenue of trying to connect with them and determine what was needed. Together with the student (and sometimes mentors), we would make a plan for the student to catch up in the program, and help them find additional resources at our institution. In some cases, we would work with them to make the decision to leave the program.

Considerations for your program:

Build structures into the program that can be adjusted as needed on a case by case basis. The entire goal of an inclusive research program is to help the student successfully complete the program. This can require a great deal of accommodation for other factors in a student’s life. It also requires mentors and coordinators to outline clear expectations and hold students accountable so they can finish their work within the timeframe of the program. An example of this might be to assign a project to be due each term to keep students on track for completion. If a student is having a rough term and is unable to complete the project, work with them to develop a plan to catch up in a way that makes sense for their project, rather than issuing a failing grade or having them drop the program. On an individual basis (for students who might otherwise leave the program), consider working with the student and mentor to develop an alternate final product, so they leave the program with a sense of confidence and accomplishment.

This requires mentors, instructors, academic advisors, program coordinators and peers to be in open communication with the student and collaborate to provide the support necessary for student success.

Intentionally supporting students this way is time and energy-intensive, and often falls off the plate of busy mentors, instructors and advisors, who only see students in one capacity. Consider funding a program coordinator, with duties including the facilitation of wrap-around support for students.