Three Ways to Support Students
By Axel Brandt
Among college and university personnel, faculty (arguably) have the greatest opportunity for interactions with students. We are often called upon to support students in many aspects of their lives, including academic, emotional, and career preparation. Let’s talk about some relatively simple ways that we can answer that call.
Academic Support via Office Hours
It’s a common faculty complaint: students don’t come to office hours to get help. While it’s perhaps convenient to chalk it up to students just being disengaged, that’s certainly not the entire picture. For example, some students reported not knowing what ‘office hours’ means. Okay, so maybe we change the name to ‘student hours’ or clarify what office hours means in our syllabi and on the first day of class. What else can we do?
Maybe we survey students to make sure that they can actually attend the hours we set. When I do this, I attempt to make sure every student is able to attend (at least some part of) an office hour each week. After shifting to a mastery-based grading system where students can retake quizzes during office hours, it’s even more important that I schedule my office hours when students are available. To do this, I set up an Excel Workbook that implements the Reweighted Range Voting method. In summary, this is a multi-winner election method that iterates through rounds of voting in a way that makes voices quieter based on how much they like the office hours that have already been picked. In every semester I’ve used it, every student who responded to the survey had at least one office hour they were able to attend.
Emotional Support
We’ve probably all been there: a student is struggling or just had a bad exam and is now in your office either in or on the verge of tears. There are now three things that I have in my office at the ready.
The first: chocolate. Who doesn’t like some comfort cocoa? Here’s an article to back it up for any of you “purists” who want more than just abundant anecdotal evidence to prove it works and/or those of you looking for something “better” to cite as justification.
Next: tissues WITH ALOE. Unless your department stocks higher quality tissues than every one I’ve been in, it’s definitely worth the personal investment. Because why kick someone when they’re down? That includes yourself. Self-care isn’t selfish.
Finally: a pillow. Stay with me, I promise this isn’t creepy or an elaborate cover for taking naps (although the thought has crossed my mind a time or seven). Quick story: a few years ago, my mom gave everyone in the family a pillow with some sort of motivational saying. My sister got one with a dandelion that says “scatter kindness.” My brother got “today is a good day for a good day,” which is now in his K-12 music classroom. My pillow is in a drawer in my office. Whenever a student is feeling down or being too hard on themself, I tell them that there’s something in that drawer for them. When they pull it open they are greeted with the message:
This has had such a positive effect for some students that they will swing by my office just to pull the pillow out of the drawer and give it a squeeze. If you want one, my mom bought them via Amazon.
Career Support
Our admissions office ran a session where they coached faculty on how to talk to high school students and their parents during personalized campus visits. FWIW: helicopter parents are a thing of the past; the two types of Gen-X parenting styles are referred to as "snowplow" and "stealth bomber.”
Anyway, a key detail is that Gen-Z students are very career motivated when deciding to go to college and picking a major. Programs like engineering, nursing, and accounting were referred to as “destination majors” due to their clear trajectory to a career; perhaps mathematics could use more branding and marketing efforts here.
Regardless, it’s important for us to support our students’ career aspirations. Our department has partnered with our campus career services office to weave a Professional Development Program into our courses. We have also arranged alumni panels where students can talk to alumni about their journey from their time in college to where they are now.
Supporting Supporting
Since the pandemic, feelings of burnout have led to faculty dialing back work efforts. In a landscape with declining enrollments and disappearing tenure lines, it feels like faculty are continually being asked to do more with less. How do we balance supporting ourselves as we work to support our students? Boundaries for sure. Unfortunately, I’m often slow to recognize when those boundaries need to shift and end up more overworked than I perhaps needed to be. It’s not much of a consolation, but at least my office has chocolate and a pillow.
Axel Brandt (he/him) has been described as a runner and is currently training for a trip to the Grand Canyon where he hopes to run rim-to-rim-to-rim all in one day. He built a version of MENACE with students during spring 2024; it is now his favorite enrichment activity for STEM fairs. Axel is also a mathematician on faculty at John Carroll University.