SENSE OF BELONGING AND ACADEMIC SUCCESS are pivotal in the dynamic landscape of higher education, providing students with a sense of success and security that can improve their physical and mental health, motivation, and engagement. Drawing on research by Sanford, Sriram and colleagues, and Tinto, this study investigates the intricate relationship between challenge, support, student interactions, grade point average, and broader constructs of flourishing and sense of belonging for students living on campus. By validating scales measuring challenge and support, this study examines the impact that a beneficial balance of these factors has on shaping student outcomes. Findings suggest that fostering intentional interactions—particularly academic, social, and deeper life interactions with peers—significantly influences flourishing and sense of belonging for students living on campus. Surprisingly, experiencing excessive challenges correlates with increased grade point averages. Implications extend to practice and advocating for strategies to enhance student interactions in on-campus living environments.
IN TODAY’S RAPIDLY SHIFTING AND CRISIS-PRONE HIGHER EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT, women in leadership—particularly those overseeing student housing operations on college and university campuses—are making critical high-stakes decisions that are shaped by both internal and external perceptions of identity. This basic qualitative study uses the Ecosystem Decision-Making Framework as a conceptual context for exploring identity, one of four factors that influence executive leaders in higher education when making decisions during times of uncertainty. Specifically, this study seeks to understand how identity influences the decision making of women leaders in senior housing officer roles. While previous literature identifies a range of barriers that women face in leadership—feeling like an imposter or even code switching to meet often unwritten expectations—this study highlights the voices and lived experiences of women navigating these realities during the decision-making process. The findings aim to inform practices that support the success and retention of women in the workplace, analyzing the systems women are leading rather than the leadership of women.
THIS JOURNAL ARTICLE EXPLORES THE LIVED EXPERIENCES of a Black mother and first-generation doctoral student working full-time in Housing and Residence Life (HRL). Situated within the framework of Black feminist thought (Collins, 2009) and an asset-based approach (Harper, 2010), this study will examine how this woman draws upon her resilience, strengths, and resources to thrive academically, professionally, and personally. Black mothers in academia, despite facing racial and gendered challenges, demonstrate remarkable perseverance and determination to balance their academic pursuits with family life, contributing to a deeper sense of purpose and community (Castañeda & Isgro, 2013; Suizzo et al., 2008). The practice of “othermothering” among Black women in higher education enhances their ability to foster strong mentorship networks, cultivating a culture of care and support which benefits themselves and others (Lee, 2018; Strayhorn, 2014). This article addresses the importance of organizational support systems, both on and off campus, to mitigate the isolation often experienced by African American women professionals in academia (Hinton, 2001). It is the hope that this study contributes to the currently scant understanding of working Black mother doctoral students’ unique lived experiences, highlighting strategies for fostering resilience, well-being, and academic success for aspiring and current Black doctoral students and the individuals who support them (Mitchell, 2019).
RESIDENTIAL FACULTY PROGRAMS—where small cohorts of faculty live in residential colleges with students—are becoming more popular across the U.S. Despite the abundance of research highlighting the benefits of a robust residential faculty program for both students and institutions, we know comparatively little about how faculty presence in residential colleges facilitates the support and community necessary to achieve these outcomes. To address this, we conducted a qualitative investigation to understand student perceptions of how residential faculty provide social support for students. Results detail the myriad types of support students seek from residential faculty and how this support shapes their experience at the institution and their aspirations for the future. These outcomes are discussed in reference to their impact on theorizing in this area as well as practical outcomes relevant to student development and engagement.
THE PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES OF BLACK WOMEN in college and university housing and residence life reflect a deep entanglement of race, gender, labor, and institutional dynamics. While their contributions to the field are significant, their stories are often marginalized or rendered invisible within dominant narratives of leadership and student affairs. Framed by Black feminist thought and grounded in narrative literary analysis, this article explores the intergenerational strategies Black women employ to navigate the professional and emotional demands of this work. Drawing from published reflections, scholarly literature, and personal essays, this study identifies recurring themes that highlight the resilience and resistance of Black women and how they make meaning of their work. By weaving together critical theory, literary interpretation, and lived reflection, this article offers new insight into the cultural labor of Black women in housing. It calls for practitioners and institutions to recognize these narrative strategies not just as coping mechanisms, but as radical acts of leadership, survival, and care. Through this work, we aim to honor the stories that too often go untold and offer a blueprint for building more affirming and equitable professional environments.
WOMEN IN HOUSING AND RESIDENCE LIFE demonstrate resilience and courage in their professional lives, navigating structures that demand a high degree of emotional labor and a depth of student care that often exceed professional expectations. Resilience and courage can work together to counter the negative effects of this challenge: Courage represents an important choice that women can make as an act rather than as a reaction, and resilience allows them to bounce back from difficulty or recover from any setbacks. When understood as a choice, courage becomes a powerful leadership practice. Through narrative reflections, this qualitative study examines themes of internal conviction, systemic resistance, boundary setting, and the interplay of vulnerability and leadership. Findings highlight the intersectionality of gender, professional identity, and institutional culture, offering both a critique of current structures and a roadmap to create more empowering workplace environments for women. Participants made it very clear that resilience and courage are not static traits; they are dynamic capacities that can be cultivated through internal practice and reflection and can be strengthened by self-compassion and supportive networks.
THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY is to examine the lived experiences of Black women in housing, especially the various stages of the work cycle of Black women in the field. This study includes Black women across multiple roles within residential life, including graduate assistants, resident directors, and associate directors. Particular emphasis will be placed on understanding the factors influencing Black women’s decisions to remain in or depart from the field, with a focus on the role of gendered racism in shaping these choices. The authors will also offer guidelines and discuss implications for promoting well-being within this context. The methodology employed will be collaborative autoethnography, utilizing a series of reflective questions to facilitate the processing and analysis of personal experiences.
THE CULTURE OF BUSYNESS has become a significant barrier to negotiating work/life boundaries for higher ed student affairs professionals. Using a qualitative, phenomenological approach, this study examined the perceptions of 20 newer residence life professionals to understand how busyness impacts their personal and professional lives. Analysis of data from semi-structured interviews revealed that, as a result of living and working in a culture of busyness, staff felt pressured to live up to both explicit and implicit job expectations and had difficulty negotiating the balance between work and personal life. The findings of this study provide insight into how busyness influences job satisfaction and career motivation and discuss how concerns might be addressed to prevent burnout and attrition.
WOMEN CUSTODIANS PLAY AN ESSENTIAL, YET OFTEN INVISIBLE, ROLE in shaping student belonging in on-campus housing communities. This critical qualitative study explores how women custodians contribute to Latine students’ sense of belonging in university residence halls. Using pláticas—a culturally grounded conversational methodology—with six first-generation Latine college students, the study centers on student voices to examine how informal, relational interactions with custodial staff offer emotional support, cultural affirmation and a sense of home. Guided by frameworks of community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), sense of belonging (Strayhorn, 2019), and invisible work (Daniels, 1987; Hatton, 2017), the findings reveal that women custodians foster community through everyday acts of care that are often overlooked by institutional structures. These relationships are grounded in shared cultural experiences, language, and values, and are sustained through reciprocal exchanges that reflect mutual respect and community. The study challenges traditional definitions of student support by highlighting the relational labor of women custodians as central, not peripheral, to Latine students’ success. It calls for higher education institutions to recognize and honor the often-unacknowledged work that staff perform outside their formal roles, particularly in student housing. In doing so, we affirm the role of women custodians as vital contributors to inclusive, culturally responsive campus environments.
THIS COLLABORATIVE AUTOETHNOGRAPHY EXPLORES THE EXPERIENCES of two Black international women, originating from Jamaica and Nigeria, respectively, working in U.S. residential life and housing. Drawing from Black feminist thought and Afro-diasporic ways of knowing, we unpack how cultural dissonance, immigration barriers, and institutional expectations impact our sense of belonging, leadership, and resilience in a field often shaped by U.S.-centric norms. Guided by collaborative autoethnography (Chang et al., 2013), we each authored personal reflections and engaged in dialogue to identify shared themes. The four themes in our findings include: cultural dissonance in residential life; negotiating race, gender, and foreignness; community, care, and survival; and conflicting cultural expectations of independence and emotional expressions. Our narratives highlight both the challenges and opportunities faced by Afro international women in residential life, emphasizing the need for transnational mentorship, inclusive policies, and greater recognition of global perspectives in the student affairs profession more broadly. This study contributes to growing scholarship on international staff and students in HESA, particularly those who navigate the compounded challenges of Blackness, womanhood, and foreignness. We call on student affairs educators and HESA programs to intentionally embed internationalization into their curricula and support structures. Our work ultimately expands conversations around equity, belonging, and leadership, positioning Afro international women’s experiences as vital to the future of higher education.
RESIDENT ASSISTANTS PROVIDE AN INVALUABLE ROLE in identifying residential students at risk for suicide and connecting them with appropriate supports on campus, which becomes increasingly important as many staff remain unaware of what prevents students from reaching out for help. This study explored the barriers that prevent students from seeking support from resident assistants (RAs) and mental health professionals. Many residential students who experienced suicidal ideation reported that though they may have benefited from mental health support, they did not seek out help for their distress. They also felt there were fewer barriers to seeking help from RAs than from mental health professionals. For this reason, RAs appear well positioned to help residents overcome barriers to pursuing support for mental health crises, to serve as gatekeepers, and to connect residents with mental health resources. This article reviews implications for how RAs can successfully intervene with students experiencing mental health crises and then refer them to the appropriate resources.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, residence halls at colleges and universities were emptied except for a few lone students. While research has documented how these students experienced isolation and stress, this paper specifically explores how five undergraduate Black men living in residence halls spent their time and engaged in self-care as well as psychosocial development. In this qualitative paper, we use Chickering and Reisser’s third vector of identity development, “moving through autonomy towards interdependence,” as a conceptual framework to understand how our study sample created independent spaces and engaged in self-discovery as a response to the isolation. Implications are relevant to researchers and housing practitioners.
Cultivating inclusive residential communities is an important responsibility of professional and graduate residence life staff. Meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training is crucial for fostering inclusive and safe residential communities, yet there is limited empirical data on this topic. This study explores one residence life office’s DEI book club for graduate and professional residence life staff. Using interviews and focus groups, this study explored staff members’ experiences in the book club and sought to understand how staff transferred their learning to their professional work. Participants acknowledged that the book club was a valuable source of learning, fostering empathy and relationships among staff and creating a safe space to navigate sometimes difficult conversations. Participants also reported changes in their approaches to supervision and working with students, noting that they were more focused on equity and providing holistic support for their students after the experience of discussing books about racial and gender discrimination, poverty, and homelessness. The findings suggest that a book club can be a simple but meaningful way to foster conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion while developing equity-minded staff.
The pervasive use of smartphones has altered the ways that entry-level, live-in residence life professionals engage with their work. This qualitative study examines the self-perceptions of digital well-being among 16 live-in professionals as they navigate their work/life balance. Rooted in Shah’s definition of digital well-being as the integration of personal health and relationships in digital settings, this study analyzed how participants identified positive and negative impacts of engaging in digital activities and became aware of ways to manage and control those activities to improve personal mental, physical, and emotional health. Three primary themes were identified after analysis of the data: navigating job expectations, establishing and managing boundaries, and practicing self-care through digital behavior change. These findings provide insight into how entry-level, live-in professionals might be empowered to manage their digital well-being to increase job satisfaction and prevent burnout.
Faculty-in-residence initiatives can face many challenges, but when successfully implemented, they can have a positive impact on the experiences of both students and faculty. This study explores how faculty serving as faculty-in-residence (FIR) at a public university in Southern California described their integration into residential communities, the challenges they encountered, and the impact of these roles on the broader faculty experience. Using a qualitative interpretive approach, we conducted in-depth interviews with eight FIRs to develop insights into the implementation of FIR programs. Our findings reveal that while the FIRs faced significant challenges—such as time constraints, low student participation, and differing visions of faculty and student affairs professionals—successful integration into residential communities led to meaningful faculty-student interactions and enhanced connection and engagement. The study concludes with recommendations for establishing successful FIR initiatives and emphasizing the role of personalized support, realistic program expectations, and strong collaboration among faculty and student affairs professionals.
Requests for emotional support animals (ESAs) on college and university campuses have been increasing over the years, as more and more students are presenting documentation to allow them to live with their ESA in a higher education setting that does not otherwise allow pets. Research to date has focused primarily on higher education narratives about ESAs (e.g., issues like avoiding risk), but little is known about the individuals who have ESAs. Using a qualitative three-dimensional narrative approach, this study sought to explore the meaning that ESAs have for these students and the impacts of the unique campus housing setting on ESA partnerships. We collected information from three participant narratives. Four themes related to ESAs in campus housing arose from the data: the desirability of on-campus housing, the importance of a sense of community on campus, requirements needed to prove legitimacy, and policy restrictions on ESAs. The narratives inform suggestions for higher education institution administrators to better support ESA partnerships individually, systemically, and within the on-campus community.
The high turnover of resident assistants at institutions of higher education continues to be a problem. Upper-division students of at least a junior standing typically fill the resident assistant (RA) position, but housing professionals are increasingly considering hiring sophomore RAs. The purpose of this mixed-methods exploratory study design was to develop evaluation criteria and to compare the performance of first-time sophomore and upper-division RAs. Content analysis was used to develop evaluation criteria. Performance criteria included relationships with residents and staff, residential community development, programming, and administration. These criteria were then used to predict class standing ex post facto. Researchers gathered data from nine U.S. universities for 302 resident assistants in the Mid-Atlantic Region. Excluded were RAs of nontraditional age. We analyzed data using binary logistic regression. Results showed that performance criteria did not predict an RA’s class standing. This finding will give housing professionals more confidence in selecting sophomore students to serve as resident assistants.
College students’ sense of belonging was significantly affected in many ways by the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to examine its specific impact by examining responses to two research questions: “What role do friendships have on students’ sense of belonging?” and “How has students’ sense of belonging changed since pandemic-related restrictions have been lifted?” A pilot study conducted in the fall of 2020 pointed to friendships as key to belonging. Four students in their senior year of college who had been living on campus as first-year students when the pandemic began and had participated in the pilot study as sophomores were interviewed for this study in the fall of 2022. Study findings reveal that students’ concerns about the virus, pandemic restrictions, and changes to social support and interactions with peers had lasting impacts on students’ sense of belonging. Participants discussed positive interactions, feeling that they mattered and were accepted and heard, and reciprocity in friendships as important factors in alleviating this sense of disconnection. One of the major characteristics of friendships that supported their sense of belonging was authenticity. Close friendships that were supportive, non-judgmental, and allowed students to be their authentic selves were essential to their feeling part of the residential and campus communities.
The resident assistant (RA) position is one of the most complex and important roles on college and university campuses in the United States. Although these student staff serve many functions, the primary responsibility of RAs is to make their residents feel welcomed and valued in their community. Black students who take on the RA role at Historically White Institutions (HWIs) are charged with creating welcoming environments and making students feel valued in the community while often not feeling welcomed or valued themselves due to stereotypes and racism. This qualitative phenomenological study explored the lived experiences and development of a sense of belonging for Black students serving in the RA role at HWIs. The study shares the stories and experiences of 10 students using interviews and photovoice. The words and images captured by the participants helped us better understand how Black RAs at HWIs experience the role of resident assistant. Implications for practitioners to consider when working with these students are highlighted.
