Center for Teaching and Learning

Promoting Student Success: What would YOU do? A Quiz

 

  1. An African-American freshman female student, who sits in the front row of class, seems to be distraught after class meetings. She never volunteers an answer in class and never asks a question, so it is difficult to gauge her thoughts or how well she is learning. Her unhappiness is so apparent that you inquire about her well-being. She shares that she understands the information, but is having trouble adjusting to the size and the "unfriendliness" of UMSL. You suggest that:

    • a. She should be patient because she will adjust to UMSL with time.
    • b. She use the Student Planner as a guide and visit campus support services and Student Life to build some campus connections.
    • c. She should visit her old high school frequently to maintain those contacts.
    • d. She visit Multicultural Relations where she can become involved in cultural activities and be assigned an upper-class student mentor.

      DISCUSSION

      UMSL is a diverse campus with students from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds coming together to pursue higher education. For some students, this may be the first time that they have encountered such diversity. The Faculty plays a vital role in assisting students in learning ways of mastering the University climate. While it is true that the student might adjust with time, a faculty member can be more proactive in recommending some potential actions that might be helpful. At first glance, the faculty member might want to refer students to the Office of Multicultural Relations, but that referral might feel limiting and would be based on the assumption that because of the student's ethnicity, the best fit would be the Office of Multicultural Relations. A more appropriate course of action is to use the Student Planner as a resource guide to show the student the wealth of opportunities for campus engagement and make a referral to The Office of Student Life in 366 Millennium Student Center. http://www.umsl.edu/~uhwcs/ or http://www.umsl.edu/~mcraa/index.html

      Finally, the classroom provides an opportunity for learning interpersonal skills as well as academic content. In class, then, faculty are encouraged to use teaching techniques that promote interactions and discussions such as icebreakers, dyadic discussions, and group work. In this way, the whole group can be broken into smaller subgroups which invite discussion and promote students' engagement with one another.

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