Running head: SUPPLYING THE SCAFFOLDING

Supplying the Scaffolding: Providing Support for College Student Success

Laura Czyzewski
Georgia Southern University
COUN - 7132 01F

SUPPLYING THE SCAFFOLDING

Supplying the Scaffolding: Providing Support for College Student Success

Tier 1 public research institutions provide attractive academics and a multitude of nonacademic activities for students to become involved and engaged. Fine and performing arts,
sporting events, discipline-specific student clubs, and sororities and fraternities seek to engage
students to display their academic and artistic talents, show their school spirit, and join in a social
environment of comradery and brother/sister hood. For many, having such an array of choices is
exciting and inspiring. For others, however, college can be daunting and overwhelming, to the
point of compromising academic success or state of mental health. These tier 1 schools can often
have anywhere between 15,000 50,000+ students, all coming from unique individual and
diverse backgrounds. What can universities do to ensure they are optimizing each students
experience, particularly when the populations are so large and diverse? Schools continue to use
the Office of Student Affairs and Office of Institutional Diversity to promote student social and
mental health and academic achievement.
The mission statement for the Office of Student Affairs at the University of Minnesota
states the following, The Office for Student Affairs provides services, programs, and facilities
that advance student success, inspires students to make life-long positive contributions to society,
promotes an inclusive environment, and enriches the University of Minnesota community (The
Office for Student Affairs, n.d., para. 1). Promoting institute inclusiveness and providing
programs and facilities for student success are two areas in particular where student affairs can
provide strong support for the multicultural student populations that make up larger universities.
Across the nation, institutions are recognizing the challenges faced by individual student groups
and are investing much-needed resources into providing a greater support system for these

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students to thrive. Student affairs offices are leading this charge in their centers and
programming.
The Glossary of Education Reform (2013, para. 1) defines, culture as, encompassing
race, ethnicity, nationality, language, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, and
exceptionality. Student affairs divisions within larger research institutions are recognizing the
unique needs of various multicultural subpopulations and are implementing facilities and
programming to support these students. Womens Resource Centers, for example, are now
commonplace among most university student affairs divisions to address issues and challenges
particularly faced by women on college campuses. These centers offer resources and staffing to
help students deal with coping and preventing sexual assault/violence, female-specific health
issues, academics, and career support. The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, for
example, sponsors a workshop called ICARE through their Womens Resource Center (Office of
Inclusion, n.d.). The workshop is intended to engage the greater college community by educating
them of their role in bystander intervention to combat sexual assault of women on campus.
DAugellis model of lesbian, gay, and bisexual development describes six stages for
recognizing and coping with sexual identity. These six stages include: exiting heterosexual
identity, developing a personal lesbian-gay-bisexual identity status, developing a lesbian-gaybisexual social identity, becoming a lesbian-gay-bisexual offspring, developing a lesbian-gaybisexual intimacy status, and entering a lesbian-gay-bisexual community (Pascarella &
Tarenzini, 2005). In order to help LGBTQIA students maneuver through these stages of sexual
identity development, many university student affairs divisions have created LGBTQIA
Resource Centers with programming and support services for students in the LGBTQIA
community. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, the LGBTQIA Resource Center has a variety

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of events and opportunities for students to engage in an understanding of sexual identity issues.
For example, they have implemented the Georgia Tech Safe Space, a training program for
members of the campus community to become allies to the LGBTQIA community. They also
have Ask Aby, an anonymous Question and Answer service for those who would like support
but are not yet ready to move through the full cycle of sexual identity recognition. They also
have a newsletter as well as a Trans 101 training for the campus community to understand and
include members of the Georgia Tech community that identify as transgender (Office of Student
Affairs: LGBTQIA, n.d.).
Research has shown that there is a positive correlation between attending a
college/university, and civic engagement (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). To promote social
awareness among college students and get them actively involved in their surrounding
communities, many institutional student affairs divisions will have centers similar to that at the
University of Florida. UFs Center for Leadership & Service designs programming for students
to become civically engaged. The Projects for Peace initiative is a grant program for students to
come up with their own project for building peace in todays society. Each recipient is given
$10,000 to bring his/her concept to practice. The Center for Leadership and Service also
sponsors the annual Gator Global Initiative Conference. It is a social impact conference where
students are encouraged to become local, national, and global leaders for social responsibility
(Center for Leadership & Service, n.d.).
Included in many divisions of student affairs is a very important office to assist those
students who need psychological support. Students entering college for the first time, as
discussed throughout Kadison and DiGeronimo (2004), are dealing with an exorbitant amount of
pressure and uncertainty. Some experience academic pressures from parents. Others are facing

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many of the gender and sexual identity issues mentioned previously. Some have an onset or a
continuing of a psychological disorder such as depression, anxiety, eating and other body image
disorders, etc. Others are confronting social pressures for the first time surrounding alcohol and
drug consumption and sexual expression. Such mounting pressures can cause massive distress
and universities need to have the resources in place to help these students mentally so they are
able to succeed academically.
Kadison and DiGeronimo (2004) suggest that the way in which parents can protect their
students mental health is in the choice of institution and that institutions focus and attitude
towards providing resources for protecting and supporting emotional growth. Does the university
provide adequate mental health services to help the students cope with the inevitable stress that
accompanies college attendance? The University of Texas at Austin has a Counseling and Mental
Health Center that helps students with a variety of resources including strategies to tackle test
anxiety, full psychiatric services, as well as crisis assistance. Interesting, particularly in todays
global context, they are also providing a link through their web site for coping with terrorism and
the trauma of the aftermath of a terror attack (Managing Traumatic Stress, n.d.).
Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) suggest that research indicates college attendance
promotes a positive attitude towards racial equality and increases interactions with those of
differing racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds. To foster this environment and further commit to
understanding and supporting students of all backgrounds, most institutions have an Office of
Student Diversity. These offices focus on providing academic support, awareness initiatives, and
advocacy for students in underrepresented minorities across their college campuses.
The University of Georgias Office of Institutional Diversity seeks to engage not only
students, but faculty and staff across the institute, to participate in diversity initiatives. For

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example, they provide a workshop on Creating an Inclusive Classroom so that faculty may be
sensitive to supporting students from all racial/ethnic backgrounds. They also offer a Diversity
and Inclusion Certificate, an incentive program for staff and faculty across campus to learn how
to remain culturally and racially/ethnically inclusive. The Office of Institutional Diversity also
sponsors Movimiento, an all-day event to encourage members of the Latin community to commit
to the University of Georgia (Office of Institutional Diversity, n.d).
Massachusetts Institute of Technology has their Institute Community and Equity Office.
They have a series of programming centered-around the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
including an annual MLK celebration. Speakers are invited to discuss issues of social equality
and the importance of civil rights. They have also sponsored events focusing on: Arab-Israeli
Relations; How Race and Gender Matter in Technical Privilege; Science, Technology, and
Innovation in Africa; and celebrating National Hispanic Month and the Malaysian festivals of
Deepavali and Hari Raya. They also provided a very relevant open community forum in
December 2014 entitled, Black Lives Matter: A community-based, solutions-oriented dialogue
on race at MIT (ICEO, 2014).
Virginia Techs Cook Counseling Center, on their web site, supplied a statement in
response to an anti-Muslim graffiti message found on a campus building. They state:
As a staff, we are committed to respecting and valuing our humanity, including
differences and similarities of age, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, culture,
national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, language and socioeconomic
status. Prejudice and discrimination are harmful to all humans. As a staff, we support all
Hokies, of all ideological and demographic backgrounds. We emphatically do not support

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statements or behavior expressing hate, violence, or denigration of others. (Division of

Student Affairs, n.d. paras. 2-4)
This is how all universities must respond in support of multicultural inclusion. Virginia Tech
should be an example to all that despite varying racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds,
socioeconomic status, gender and sexual identity, all are welcome on our university campuses.
The institutions mentioned throughout this paper and their Offices of Student Affairs and
Diversity are making significant strides towards supporting student success. We must continue to
forge and foster all of our students to protect the mental stability and physical well-being of our
students and help them achieve their full potential.

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References
Center for Leadership & Service. (n.d.). Gator Global Initiative. Retrieved from
http://www.leadershipandservice.ufl.edu/programs/gator_global_initiative/
DiGeronimo, T.F. & Kadison, R. (2004). College of the overwhelmed: The campus mental health
crisis and what to do about it. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
Division of Student Affairs. (n.d.). Cook Counseling Center. Retrieved from
http://www.ucc.vt.edu/
Institute Community and Equity Office. (2014). Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://diversity.mit.edu/events/?action=tribe_list&tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=li
st&tribe-bar-date=2014-09-01
Managing Traumatic Stress: Coping with Terrorism. (n.d.). American Psychological Association.
Retrieved from
http://www.leadershipandservice.ufl.edu/programs/gator_global_initiative/
Multicultural Education (2013, August 29). The Glossary of Education Reform. Retrieved from
http://edglossary.org/multicultural-education
Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Relations. (n.d.) Sexual Violence Prevention Programs.
Retrieved from https://oiir.illinois.edu/womens-center/our-programs/sexual-violenceprevention-programs
Office of Institutional Diversity. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://diversity.uga.edu/programs
The Office of Student Affairs. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://osa.umn.edu/about/index.html

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Office of Student Affairs. (n.d.) LGBTQIA Resource Center. Retrieved from

http://lgbtqia.gatech.edu/
Pasarella, E. & Terenzini, P. (2005). How College Affects Students. San Francisco, CA: Wiley
and Sons, Inc.