Running head: REFLECTION PAPER 3 1

Conceptions of Student Success

knew that a major way to do that was to validate these students’ cultures and be supportive of

them. I was ignorant of most of the theories around this subject, beyond foundational student

development theories. My thinking was primarily individual, in that I was thinking about how I

as an individual could support students in navigating a school environment not necessarily built

for them. I was not thinking about changing the structure of that system, because I did not feel

that I could do so. My thinking was very deficit-based, as I thought mostly around what students

lacked, what they needed and what I and the institution could provide.

This course has changed my thinking around student success in several key ways. First,

and perhaps the biggest shift, is that I now think first about how the institution is structured. The

policies, programs, financial aid, staff and student organizations on campus, these are all what

affect student success. Rather than putting the onus on the student to adapt and change, and

seeing myself as one individual helping them to change, I instead look at the institution I am

working at to examine how we are fostering student success and how I as an individual can

collaborate with others to enhance what we offer as an institution and how we engage students.

I have noticed this change in myself in my work with international students and in

residence life. When one of my international students was experiencing a challenge threatening

his ability to stay in school my first thoughts were about which offices are meant to be

supporting him and how they were failing and the ways they could engage and support him

better. In the past, I think I would have thought more about how he was not using services and

not doing everything he could (even if he was) because I was just used to using that lens. In

residence life my supervisor and I work to engage our residents and Resident Assistants in all

areas of their lives, to address current events that may be affecting them, and to connect with
REFLECTION PAPER 3 2

them on a personal level and not as a formal university employee. We work in students’ homes,

where they should be able to relax and be themselves and feel at home. Thus, we engage with

them on that level to build relationships where they can share what is happening in their lives

and do not feel they need to compartmentalize their academic, professional, and social lives.

There are several specific readings, theories, and concepts that have particularly stuck out

to me throughout the semester and which I know will shape my work as a professional. First,

Yosso’s Cultural Community Wealth concept, Museus’ Culturally Engaging Campus

Environments (CECE) model, and culturally responsive pedagogies as discussed by Irizarry have

been very foundational for me in how I conceive of culturally engaging campus environments

and pedagogies in my work (Irizarry, 2008; Samuel D Museus, 2014; Yosso, 2005).

Yosso’s work highlights how certain skills and aspects of culture are valued in our

society and many (particularly non-white middle-class culture) are de-valued. Yosso highlighted

several components of culture of students that they can use to succeed: aspirational capital,

linguistic capital, resistant capital, familial capital, social capital, and navigational capital

(Yosso, 2005). It is a matter of helping students to see that capital when they have not been

taught to value it, and to learn how to use and apply that capital to succeed. It is also a matter of

shaping our campus environments to validate that capital and provide students opportunities to

use it. That is where Museus’ work comes in.

The CECE model highlights structural institutional factors that create culturally engaging

campus environments that celebrate the cultural wealth diverse students bring to campus. They

are: cultural familiarity, culturally relevant knowledge, cultural community service, opportunities

for meaningful cross-cultural engagement, collectivist cultural orientations, culturally validating

environments, humanized educational environments, proactive philosophies, and availability of

holistic support (Samuel D Museus, 2014). This is a theory from the beginning of the semester,

but it is so foundational and it ties in to so many of the other articles we’ve read all semester. I

use this framework to think specifically about what I can do in my role to foster student success,

and what to look for at an institution to indicate to what extent it supports diverse student

success. This also ties into the equity scorecard process which is specifically a model for

assessing and evaluating how institutions promote equity (Harris, Bensimon, & Bishop, 2010).

The key to the equity scorecard process is examining data which exposes an unstructured

problem in promoting student success. Rather than answering this problem with assumptions and

deficit approaches about marginalized students, the institutional team is prompted to take more

equity-minded approaches which focus instead on how the institution is not promoting success

and what the institution can do to meet students and build on their strengths and abilities. While I

will most likely not be at the level to be on such a team for many years, I can use this mindset

now as an entry-level practitioner to look at problems I face in my department and in my

position, with the goal of putting into action the components of the CECE model.

Irizarry’s inclusive pedagogies highlights ways teachers can be culturally inclusive in

their teaching, and much of it is not in the classroom itself. Irizarry discusses teachers who live

and engage in the community, attending religious services and community events, purchasing

items in the community, and engaging with families. They approach the families and

communities of their students with humility, seeking to learn and assist. They engage similarly

with students themselves, seeking to learn from students and validating the cultural knowledge

students have. They support students holistically and acknowledge students’ experiences outside

the classroom and what is happening in the larger world and community, so that students feel

seen as people, and that they matter. They seek to build coalitions between students, parents,
REFLECTION PAPER 3 4

school, and community, and they co-create learning in the classroom itself (Irizarry, 2008).

While this study is focused on K-12 teaching, it has important lessons for promoting student

success in the higher education environment. Engaging families and community at home, and

building community at school, are key.

In higher education, Museus talks about cultural community service (Samuel D Museus,

2014) and giving back to the communities students come from as a way to create a culturally

inclusive environment. Quinones and Kiyama also discuss how families, specifically fathers,

promote their children’s success and can be better engaged (Quiñones & Kiyama, 2014).

Contreras also highlighted how financial aid is not the only concern for underrepresented

students in succeeding in higher education, but building community and social support are key.

Contreras specifically highlighted pre-college programs that continued into post-

secondary education and included community and social support aspects (Contreras, 2011).

These pre-college programs are excellent, but they are limited in resources and who they admit.

Post-secondary institutions themselves can create such programs and build community for their

under-represented students. An example of programs at Miami that could be further developed

are the MADE at Miami program and the Bridges Scholars program. Both are currently short

pre-semester programs that do not carry on well through the school year. By expanding these

programs to focus on social support, resistance and advocacy, and community in the pre-

semester and continuing to meet through a one-unit class and peer mentor group for example,

these programs can intentionally build community that continues through all four years, similar

to programs such as the Posse program.

I was also intrigued by our readings and discussions around the constructs of grit vs.

resilience vs. thriving. These are all buzzwords that are thrown around a lot, so looking deeply at
REFLECTION PAPER 3 5

what each term means, how they differ from each other, and the benefits and drawbacks of each

concept was very helpful for me. Grit is a focus on compensating for weakness, and improving

one-self. It was also defined in our discussion as how much one can push back at adversity.

Resilience, in contrast, is about using strengths to stay strong and bounce back from adversity.

Specifically, familiar, individual, and environmental supports. Therefore, it expands to slightly

beyond just the psychological skills of the individual, while grit is very specifically individual.

The thriving quotient even further expands the concept, focusing on five areas, broken

down into three categories: Academic thriving, composed of engaged learning and academic

determination, intrapersonal thriving, composed of positive perspective, and interpersonal

thriving, composed of social connectedness and diverse citizenship (Schreiner, 2010). Several of

these relate to grit and resilience. Grit, defined as passion and perseverance, primarily plays into

the academic determination, engaged learning, and positive perspective. Individual resiliency

plays into the positive perspective, familial and social resiliency relate to interpersonal thriving,

or social connectedness and diverse citizenship. Community cultural wealth can also be seen to

contribute to the elements of the thriving quotient. Navigational, social, and familial capital

contribute to social connectedness, while aspirational capital relates to positive perspective,

engaged learning, and academic determination. As a practitioner, I want to always be looking for

ways to apply Community Cultural Wealth to whatever construct or theory I am thinking about,

because I am working to counter-act a tendency to value white middle-class culture and I want to

center other cultural wealth in my thinking.

Diverse citizenship also relates to Museus’ cultural community service (better described

as cultural community engagement) or students getting involved in their home communities and

relating their learning and education to where they come from (Samuel D Museus, 2014). Perez
REFLECTION PAPER 3 6

and Taylor’s findings also relates to the interpersonal thriving factors by emphasizing the

importance of family and community support as cultural wealth, and the impact of mentors and

peer networks (social connectedness) on students’ ability to apply their cultural wealth

effectively to higher education (Pérez & Taylor, 2016).

Another useful linguistic discussion was about the terms involvement, engagement, and

integration. Again, these are common buzzwords in higher education and student success.

Involvement is more focused on the agency of the individual student. Similar to the deficit model

of student success, it puts the responsibility on the student to get involved and to surmount

barriers to involvement. Engagement focuses more on the institution and what involvement

opportunities the institution provides. Integration comes from Tinto’s work on student departure,

although nowadays Tinto would call it “sense of belonging” and that is more currently used,

since integration applies cultural assimilation. Integration, or sense of belonging, is about the

student learning and adopting the norms of the institution and the institution shaping itself to fit

the student. It is a reciprocal relationship between student and campus, as Wolf-Wendel, Ward,

and Kinzie describe it (Wolf-Wendel, Ward, & Kinzie, 2009).

I find engagement and sense of belonging to be useful constructs in thinking about

student success, but only in the context of creating culturally inclusive campus environments.

These concepts are so often colorblind, but if we relate them to Community Cultural Wealth,

culturally inclusive pedagogy, and culturally inclusive campus environments then we can make

these concepts useful. For example, Harper wrote about the importance of proactively engaging

underrepresented students in high-impact practices, or educationally purposeful activities

(Harper, 2009). For Harper, engagement as a construct in which the institution needs to passively
REFLECTION PAPER 3 7

provide opportunities is not enough. Staff and faculty must proactively recruit and encourage

students in getting involved.

This proactive mentality struck me, because it is key to my take-aways from this class.

We, as faculty and administrators in higher education, have the responsibility to consider the

challenges underrepresented students face at our institutions and actively work to dismantle those

challenges by re-structuring out own institutions and programs. Not only that, we must

proactively take individual and collective responsibility to notice our students, encourage them to

take advantage of opportunities, and engage with them around their cultures, backgrounds,

families, and dreams; urging them to set high goals and proactively providing the support needed

to reach them. This relates to the intrusive advising approach, or proactive advising, which I plan

to incorporate into my advising.

Sense of belonging is complex and something that is very important to student success,

but hard to promote. I found Dee and Daly’s recommendations for how faculty can promote

cultural change in support of diverse student populations useful in thinking about how to

promote sense of belonging in the classroom and outside it (Dee & Daly, 2012). Dee and Daly

discuss the importance first of decoding the text of higher education. This resonates with me

because I also study intercultural competency and a key element of culture is that it is implicit

and deeply felt but difficult to explain. Making cultural scripts explicit is key to adjusting to a

new culture. In intercultural studies we call this a “cultural informant”. As a practitioner, I can be

a cultural informant for underrepresented students. Next, Dee and Daily recommend connecting

students to a larger network of peers and professionals, validating their cultures through

culturally inclusive readings, assignments, and curriculum, and structuring the learning

environment so it promotes academic engagement (2012). I think I can do these things as an

advisor as well: connect students to networks, validate their cultures in my advising, and

promoting academic engagement. For me, probably I would be promoting engagement in high-

impact practices or educationally purposeful activities as defined by Kuh and Harper (Harper,

2009; Kuh, 2008).

High-impact practices are defined by Kuh as study abroad, learning communities, first-

year seminars, service learning, student-faculty research, and senior capstone experiences. These

experiences put “students in circumstances that essentially demand they interact with faculty and

peers about substantive matters, typically over extended periods of time” (Kuh, 2008). Another

way of looking at such activities are Harper’s “educationally purposeful activities” which are

taken from the National Survey of Student Engagement.

These are having serious conversations with peers from different backgrounds, actively

participating in student organizations and out of class activities, using technology to work

collaboratively on assignments, participating in a learning community or other program where

students enroll in two or more classes together, taking foreign language courses, and completing

an independent study or self-designed major under the supervision of a faculty member (Harper,

2009). These activities, similar to high-impact practices, promote active academic and social

engagement in students. Not just for grades, but intrinsic motivation and interest in learning and

engaging in the campus community. As an advisor, I will work to promote these activities to my

advisees.

Another way this class has shifted my thinking is in admissions and how to select and

admit students. I grew up in a fairly affluent high school with access to rigorous AP classes and

to me, a highly selective undergraduate institution was a priority for my future. That emphasis on

high selectivity has stayed with me. I have learned before about how SAT and ACT test scores
REFLECTION PAPER 3 9

do not actually have a strong relationship to student success and are more useful in screening out

non-white and lower socioeconomic status students, but the readings for this class made me think

more broadly about admissions and what we value. Access vs. selectivity is a very big question

for elite schools, particularly highly selective public schools like UCLA and UC Berkeley. How

do we provide access to marginalized students, while also admitting a high-achieving student

body? Despite the exclusive origins of the “holistic” admissions process, today it is the best way

to select driven, hardworking students. “Hungry” students as Harvard’s Dean of Admissions puts

it (Guinier, 2015).

Guinier argues that universities would do better to focus on collaborative problem-

solving, creative leadership, and independent thinking, as those are the qualities that contribute to

someone who can benefit democratic society (2015). Moving away from the testocracy and

focusing on more qualitative qualities of character should democratize admissions more and

better include marginalized students. This was interesting for me to think about, and let go of

some of my more elitist dispositions towards selective test score and GPA based admissions

based on my own early socialization and instead think about “highly selective” in a different

way.

The functional area I am passionate about is international education. More specifically,

international student programs and advising. This is a student population often recruited for

financial gain, compositional diversity (while avoiding increasing domestic student diversity),

and an institution’s desire to be “global” and then not provided with adequate services and

generally forgotten once they get to campus. By providing better opportunities to engage these

students, and particularly to engage international and domestic students with each other and

around questions of culture, I think I can contribute to creating a more inclusive campus
REFLECTION PAPER 3 10

environment not just for international students, but for all students. Domestic white students can

learn about their own cultures (since they often feel they have none) and grow to appreciate

difference and become more comfortable engaging across difference. The same goes for

domestic students of color and other underrepresented students on campus. As diversity becomes

more discussed and valued all students feel more comfortable advocating for themselves and

discussing who they are.

Thus, my biggest takeaways are to think about Museus’ CECE model in how my office

structures our programs, advising, and policies (to the extent we can, due to having to follow visa

restrictions). I also think about being an advocate for my students, particularly as visa regulations

become more and more strict and government rhetoric is increasingly anti-immigrant and anti-

international students. I think about validating students’ home cultures, engaging with their

families and communities, proactively promoting engagement in high-impact and educational

purposeful activities. I think about creating opportunities for engagement and focusing on

promoting sense of belonging through the CECE model, and collaborating with other offices and

people on campus to make it happen. I cannot be a one-woman crusader. As Kezar wrote in

Creating Campus Cultures, we must engage in shared leadership to create sustainable change

(Kezar, 2012).

I also think about Dee and Daily’s and Irizarry’s work on culturally inclusive pedagogies

and being a cultural informant for my students. Particularly if I teach university orientation

courses like the EDL 151 course: Introduction to the American University which I teach now at

Miami, I can incorporate these practices into creating a culturally engaging classroom. I can also

incorporate these ideas into orientation programs and other co-curricular programs I create for

international and domestic students. In addition, peer mentor programs are often offered by
REFLECTION PAPER 3 11

international offices and so I can incorporate the research of Kiyama and Luca on the benefits of

peer mentor programs both for the mentors and advisees in designing and advocating for such

programs (Kiyama & Luca, 2014). Finally, I want to promote thriving by encouraging resilience

and teaching students how to see and leverage the cultural wealth that they have and connecting

them to networks. The thriving quotient particularly resonated with me as a lens through which I

can shape a lot of the programs and advising that I do.

This course had a big impact on me by changing the perspective I take on student success

and teaching me how to take anti-deficit approach and ask the right questions to promote student

success. In addition, it provided me with several key theories and concepts I can take into my

future work, such as the thriving quotient, resilience, Museus’ CECE model, Kuh’s high-impact

practices and the National Survey of Student Engagement’s educationally-purposeful activities,

as well as Dee and Daily and Irizarry’s recommendations for faculty to create culturally inclusive

environments, and of course Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth model.

References

Contreras, F. (2011). Strengthening the bridge to higher education for academically promising

underrepresented students. Journal of Advanced Academics, 22(3), 500–526.

Dee, J. R., & Daly, C. J. (2012). Engaging faculty in the process of cultural change in support of

diverse student populations. In S. D. Museus & U. M. Jayakumar (Eds.), Creating campus

culture: Fostering success among racially diverse student populations (pp. 168–188). New

York, NY: Routledge.

Guinier, L. (2015). Aptitude or achievement? In The tyranny of the meritocracy: Democratizing

higher education in America (pp. 26–43). New York, NY: Routledge.

https://doi.org/10.1108/01443330010789070

Harper, S. R. (2009). Race-conscious student engagement practices and the equitable distribution

of enriching educational experiences. Liberal Education, 95(4), 38–45. Retrieved from

http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-fa09/le-fa09_Harper.cfm

Harris, F. I., Bensimon, E. M., & Bishop, R. (2010). The equity scorecard: A process for

building institutional capacity to educate young men of color. In C. Edley & J. Ruiz de

Velasco (Eds.), Changing Places: How communities will improve the health of boys of

color (pp. 277–308).

Irizarry, J. G. (2008). RicanStructing the discourse and promoting school success:Extending a

theory of culturally responsive pedagogy for DiaspoRicans, 6(4).

https://doi.org/10.1891/1540

Kezar, A. (2012). Shared leadership for creating campus cultures that support students of color.

In S. D. Museus & U. M. Jayakumar (Eds.), Creating campus culture: Fostering success

among racially diverse student populations (pp. 150-167). New York, NY: Routledge.
REFLECTION PAPER 3 13

Kiyama, J. M., & Luca, S. G. (2014). Structured opportunities: Exploring the social and

academic benefits for peer mentors in retention programs. Journal of College Student

Retention, 15(4), 489–514. https://doi.org/10.4317/medoral.21026

Kuh, G. (2008). High-impact educational practices: What they are, who has access to them, and

why they matter. Leap (Vol. 2008). https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004

Museus, S. D. (2014). The culturally engaging campus environments (CECE) model: A new

theory of success among racially diverse college student populations. In M. B. Paulsen

(Ed.), Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research (Vol. 29, pp. 189–227).

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8005-6

Pérez, D., & Taylor, K. B. (2016). Cultivando logradores: Nurturing and sustaining latino male

success in higher education. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 9(1), 1–19.

Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0039145

Quiñones, S., & Kiyama, J. M. (2014). Contra la corriente (against the current): The role of

latino fathers in family – school engagement. School Community Journal, 24(1), 149–176.

Schreiner, L. (2010). The “Thriving Quotient”: A new vision for student success. About Campus,

15(2), 2–10. https://doi.org/10.1002/abc.20016

Wolf-Wendel, L., Ward, K., & Kinzie, J. (2009). A tangled web of terms: The overlap and

unique contribution of involvement, engagement, and integration to understanding college

student success. Journal of College Student Development, 50(4), 407–428.

https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.0.0077

Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community

cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91.

https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006