帮助学生在新的现实中取得成功

What do you do when the hub of a supportive community suddenly has to shut down because of a pandemic, a time when such a place has never been 更多的 important? 如果你 德文郡威尔逊90年, 你做了一些快速的转弯, 你向前倾身, and you face the challenge with creativity and positive leadership.

威尔逊 directs the Center for Academic Excellence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 是文学院的一部分 & 科学，校园里最大的学校.

He describes the CAE as “a high-touch advising, 学术支持, 领导力发展中心,主要服务于第一代, 低收入, and underrepresented undergraduates with a high level of talent. The center’s midst-of-campus location is the physical heart of this community, where students form ties with advisors and one another.

But in March, the center was forced to close when the university shifted to remote learning. The move to online education affected some students 更多的 than others, with many moving home to stressed environments. Parents were often working on the frontlines and households lacked resources. Moving home often meant students were caring for siblings.

“A lot of these students came to college so they could focus on their education,” he says. “This is the essence of the social capital equity gap, where parents with means and people with experience can navigate these things much easier. These students have become another resource in the household at the same time they’re trying to pursue their education.”

威尔逊 and his staff had to move quickly to replicate the center’s support model at a distance, while also concentrating on bringing in new students who would be enrolling without the benefits of a traditional orientation.

“I told my staff early on: This is reality,” he says. “我们如何让它发挥作用? We can talk all day about what’s wrong with it, but what can we do to make this work?”

Through student surveys, his office learned what continuing students were up against. They sent care packages, emails, and launched a series on Instagram. They advocated at the university level for keeping an equity lens on decision making. 他们组建了一支“虚拟街头队”,” a group of undergraduates who developed programming to engage new students over the summer. They ended up bringing in one of the largest cohorts of students the program has had yet.

From March through the summer, 威尔逊 and his staff made sure students knew they were supported.

“We kept updating them with communications,” he says. “We let them know the ways they could connect. 在这个时候, I think that’s critical as we’re trying to retain students who are historically underrepresented in higher education. 他们需要感受到你的存在.”

Before 威尔逊 joined the university in 2006, he spent nearly a decade working for 贝洛伊特 after graduating, 首先在 招生，然后在联邦政府资助 三个项目，包括 麦克奈尔学者计划, which aims to diversify the next generation of scholars and researchers.

在贝洛伊特, 威尔逊 says he learned how important relationships are in higher education, and how different elements of a small college work together for the good of the whole. That knowledge came into play during the pandemic and also helped him navigate the transition to a leadership post at a large university.

威尔逊, who was a 第一代 college student himself, 可能已经离开伯洛伊特了, but he took quite a bit of the college with him, including what he calls “a village of mentors,” whose wisdom still guides his work every day—during a pandemic, 或不.

Bill Flanagan, 贝洛伊特’s former dean of students, is one of them. “他看到的不仅仅是真实的你, 他看到了你的未来,威尔逊这样评价弗拉纳根. “And that is a framework that has driven me in terms of how I build organizations and how I think about what people can do.”

阅读更多关于校友工作的故事 “在疫情时期的战壕里”.