Belonging Champions

Belonging Champions Origins

The Kent State University Belonging Champions program is grounded in work from the Student Experience Project (SEP) (https://studentexperienceproject.org/report/) and has been informed by the Equity Champions model for faculty communities of practice, which was developed at one of the six universities that participated in the SEP. Belonging Champions has utilized the “by faculty, for faculty” vision for these communities developed out of this prior work, even as we have adapted it for our Kent State context.

Our work takes an evidence-driven approach to creating learning conditions in the classroom that can reduce equity gaps and improve pathways to student success for all. A central part of our community is utilizing a set of easy-lift, high-impact classroom practices (see: https://accelerateequity.org/resource/practices-library/), derived from research conducted by leading scholars in the field of social psychology who have evaluated interventions that support student experience, including Mary Murphy, David Yaeger & Greg Walton, Carol Dweck, and Claude Steele (for research that specifically informed the development of the SEP, see: https://studentexperienceproject.org/research/). This research is part of a larger base of empirical research supporting the importance of student experience to improve success and equity of outcomes for college students (see: https://studentexperiencenetwork.org/csmlm/). The results of projects such as the SEP have informed a focus on student experience as a key lever for equitable student success in higher education policy, as illustrated by this August 2024 brief from the Institute for Higher Ed Policy:  https://www.ihep.org/publication/student-experience-and-belonging-strong-outcomes/ 

During the spring and summer of 2023, a development team crafted the vision, goals and model for Kent State Belonging Champions communities of transformation, with an initial focus on the regional campus system. The leadership team consisted of faculty and administrators from across Kent State (see: https://www.kent.edu/ctl/belonging-champions for a complete list of leadership team members). Communities of transformation are distinct from communities of practice in that members hold in common a compelling vision, commit to the living integration of that vision in their practices, and provide for each other a supportive community that can help members sustain these practices in the face of competing pressures from the larger system (Kezar & Gehrke, 2015).

Through exploration of relevant literature and peer models, centering of the larger system of higher education, and taking into consideration the unique contexts and culture of Kent State University and the regional system, the development team sought, with Belonging Champions, to create meaningful and equitable learning experiences for all our students. We sought to create learning conditions where all students belong, are respected, and trust that we believe in their capacity to learn and grow. We believed the best way to do so was to work together, in community, to create those conditions for each other, and to center the voices of our students, particularly those who have been most marginalized in the educational system. The goals of the project for the regional system were to increase student persistence and retention, decrease DFW rates, and build social connections among faculty in the communities, including between campuses, as well as between faculty and students and among students. 

A key aspect of Belonging Champions is providing faculty with real-time data on students’ experiences in their courses through the Ascend survey. Ascend, developed through the SEP by an ed-tech nonprofit organization called PERTS, is a thoroughly validated survey, utilized by dozens of colleges and universities across the U.S., to assess student experience on the evidence-based key learning conditions addressed in the SEP, including belonging, instructor growth mindset, identity safety, and self-efficacy (see: https://www.perts.net/ascend). Champions survey their students three times a semester. Course reports generated through PERTS, the results of which are available only to instructors, help identify opportunities for improvement of student experience in that course, data which instructors can then use to identify and implement evidence-based classroom practices that address the learning conditions they seek to improve.

Another important aspect of Belonging Champions is the centering of community as a key lever for real and sustained change in higher education, both in the classroom and beyond. Faculty champions come together each week in small communities, co-led by faculty facilitators who have previously participated as champions, to learn together and support each other in service of creating learning environments that value the assets all students bring to the learning experience and support each student’s ability to learn and grow. Prior research has indicated the power of this type of community approach for faculty, both for their own learning and for the impact on student success (c.f., Bartell & Boswell, 2019), as contrasted with more traditional approaches to faculty development, which are less likely to lead to significant and sustained changes in pedagogical technique or outcomes (c.f.,  Henderson, Beach & Finkelstein, 2011). 

Fall 2023 Pilot 

In Fall 2023, twelve faculty champions, from across the regional campus system, were recruited to participate in a pilot community through outreach to the regional campus deans. Deans identified faculty who were campus leaders with a demonstrated commitment to student success.  Our pilot community was facilitated by our leadership team in the Fall 2023 semester. We sought to create a space where all faculty felt as if they belonged and were working together, as part of a supportive community, to create learning conditions in their classrooms that fostered the thriving of all students. As a linguistic cue for our unique approach, we began to call our weekly engagements with champions “gatherings”, not meetings.

During the fall 2023 semester the leadership team held weekly development meetings, planning for upcoming gatherings and thinking ahead to planning for the spring term. We strove to take a continuous improvement approach in the development of our communities, intentionally gathering and using information from the pilot semester to inform program revision, an approach that continues to be a mainstay of our work with the communities. During the pilot semester, for example, although we started with detailed plans for each meeting, based on mid-semester feedback and learnings from the first gatherings we pivoted to a three-question model that focuses on faculty experience, exploration of key learning conditions, and discussion of relevant classroom practices. 

In addition to these efforts, the University Teaching Council supported an institution-wide Student Belonging Faculty Incentive program from fall 2023 through fall 2024. This grant provided faculty the opportunity to learn some of the foundational practices from the Student Experience Project, gain experience with the Ascend survey, and meet with other faculty two to three times over the course of a semester to discuss their learning.  

Regional System Expansion & Beyond 

Utilizing the learning from the fall 2023 pilot to inform key revisions to our model, in spring 2024 we expanded Belonging Champions to seven regional system communities with 14 facilitators and 82 faculty champions from every campus in the regional system. This expansion was supported via one-time funds for the Regional Campus System, under the leadership of Vice President Peggy Shadduck.

We created Canvas spaces for each community, and materials that facilitators use to guide their weekly gatherings. We continue to meet weekly with all facilitators to make plans for the coming week, adapt to faculty needs, and troubleshoot any problems. Representatives from the Belonging Champions leadership team also attend monthly Ascend network meetings, organized by PERTS, and are continuing to refine Ascend survey use. At the end of the spring 2024 semester, we held a celebration for all Belonging Champions at the Stark Campus. Dozens of champions, the leadership team, campus deans, and other regional staff and administrators came together to recognize the deep commitment Belonging Champions have for this work and their communities. We also created a Belonging Champions advisory council, charged with providing guidance on program goals and components, supporting continuous improvement efforts, including consultation on assessment, and representing the work to university and larger communities. Members, including faculty, staff and administrators from the entire institution and faculty who have participated as champions, serve two-year staggered terms (see: https://www.kent.edu/ctl/belonging-champions for a complete list of council members.)

During the fall of 2024, five regional communities, including ten facilitators and 49 champions, participated in Belonging Champions. Through fall 2024, 127 regional faculty have participated in our communities (for a list of all participants, please see: https://www.kent.edu/ctl/belonging-champions). In spring 2025, we will launch Belonging Champions for Kent campus faculty. Through funding from the University Teaching Council, two of our five communities, co-facilitated by Kent and Regional campus faculty, will be dedicated to Kent campus faculty, with 58 total faculty participating this spring. Our goal, after spring 2025, is for fully integrated communities, with Regional and Kent campus faculty working and learning together, and supporting each other, in their efforts to create learning conditions that support positive student experience.

Additionally, as an outgrowth of the one-time funds received by Dr. Peggy Shadduck, some experienced champions have been identified to lead initiatives that move Belonging Champions forward in a sustainable way, particularly as we anticipate the end of these one-time funds. Two champions will be working on creation and curation of additional practices that will provide more variety for teachers; two champions will be working on ongoing engagement with ideas around lighter-touch extensions of knowledge and community. In addition, six groups of faculty formed Changemaker Teams to extend the learning from Belonging Champions in ways that effect substantive change within key courses. We look forward to sharing the outcomes of their work over the next year.  

Goals and Assessment: Forthcoming

Since its inception, Belonging Champions leadership, planners, and advisory council members have been shaping our assessment plan, which is based on holistic assessment, with a focus on continuous improvement. Our goals for students are to build a strong and supportive learning environment that attends to students’ needs for belonging, to increase persistence and retention and to decrease DFW rates, especially for our students who experience the highest equity gaps. Our goals for faculty include pedagogical growth and reflection, social connections between faculty and students, and building authentic learning communities for faculty across campuses and disciplines. Measures that we are using to evaluate the program and work toward continuous improvement are the Ascend survey that demonstrates student experience, end-of-semester faculty self-report surveys, and institutional data that can help us determine student retention, success, and persistence. As reports beyond the pilot semester become available, we will share our findings here.  

“The Belonging Champions program offers an outstanding opportunity to positively impact your students academically and personally. I have personally witnessed the profound transformations it brings about in our students. Participating in this program has heightened my awareness of the compelling research findings that emphasize the pivotal role of belonging in students' academic journey. When students feel part of a supportive and inclusive community, they are more inclined to actively engage in their studies, seek assistance when needed, and persevere through challenges. This sense of belonging cultivates a positive self-image, bolsters motivation, and ultimately results in enhanced academic performance, increased retention rates, and greater fulfillment in their educational pursuit. Investing your time and effort in this program is highly rewarding, as the skills and insights gained can be applied across all your classes, creating a ripple effect of success.” 

Sarah Andreas 

“Any doubts I might have had (I’ll admit to some, not many, but certainly some) regarding a focused approach to reaching students and modifying pedagogy or simply my own classroom behavior quickly subsided as I saw the results in my students. These results are easy to quantify with the ability to see data from Ascend surveys, I have been able to identify areas where I need to focus a bit more to be as inclusive and positive as I thought I was. The community itself is a welcome bright spot – the support, compassion, and understanding from other instructors is particularly valuable. If I can pass any information along to someone considering joining, it is that you will be amazed at how minor changes can have major results, whether tweaking the wording on a syllabus, or feeling open to sharing with students one’s own vulnerability. It is nice for them to see us as fellow humans.” 

Wayne McDonald 

“Being a part of the initial cohort of Belonging Champions has been a positive experience. It has helped me grow professionally since I have reflectively examined my classroom practices in the Belonging Champions structure. There are elements that have been affirmed and others that I had not considered. I have changed some practices and added others. I have become more aware of the student views of college expectations and environment.  Their experiences and conversations have allowed me and their peers to share and become more than people in the same room at a particular time.  The opportunities to share with colleagues have been enlightening. Since there are those of us who are the only instructors in a department at a campus, there are few chances to meet, discuss, and learn from each other.   Knowing that others are in similar situations with similar student groups has helped give a broader perspective to concerns. The easily accessible supplemental materials were useful as I needed them - not necessarily according to the topic of the week. It's great to have ready resources.”

Marty Daniels 

“The Belonging Champions program fosters a sense of camaraderie among the participants that really feels like we’re all striving for similar goals across our various disciplines and classes. We are encouraged to reflect on our own courses and policies to make our classrooms places where students can feel they truly belong and succeed.”

Scott Tobias 

“It has been great working with the KSU regional campus group to transform how I teach! I learned how to make small changes that help welcome and support students by communicating belonging and in turn enhancing their ability. I changed many of my policies to be more flexible and I removed some of the common identified student roadblocks. I hopefully can change student’s attitude about themselves and communicate that they can succeed in my courses. Even minor modifications can change a student’s classroom experience--such important lessons! Changing my Introduction and including my story of struggle with my undergraduate grades on Canvas also made my course more welcoming and approachable. I also added the use of an open access materials in all but one course to help those students, especially on my campus, with financial strain.” 

Kay Amey

“Faculty feel despondent about situations that they can’t control. The normal response is to complain about it- that does help relieve some of the stress, but ultimately it establishes a mindset that undermines the ability to make changes. We can’t control the lives of our students outside the classroom- they come to us as they are, and they deal with all kinds of struggles that we sometimes don’t know about. The program helps identify ways that we can reframe our mindset and establish better classroom behaviors to help our students be successful. We can’t change their home situations or what they learned before they came to us- we can absolutely change our classroom policies to help them be successful. Low self-efficacy undermines success- they don’t think they can do it, so they give up. We enable that mindset instead of helping to combat it. Grit is not something a person has- it’s something that they do. And it’s something that can be learned. Faculty don’t give up when we give a bad test or assignment (or even get a paper rejected)- we revise and resubmit. Why shouldn’t we teach our students what to do when they struggle or fail? Some of the real world has all-or-nothing consequences- but our classrooms don’t. Public sentiment criticizes college as being insular and having unrealistically low standards- even though that’s never been the case, I think we sometimes move too far to compensate. We should be the on-ramp to the ‘real world’ not the gate that keeps them out. Connections and humanity are the areas we struggle with the most- if the students feel a connection with us, they feel a connection to their courses and campuses."

Bryan Jones 

“Being a member of the inaugural Belonging Champions Community of Transformation has immeasurably impacted my teaching. Although I have been committed to trauma-informed teaching for many years now, my work has been mostly on my own, so the structure and the support of this community served to enhance my pedagogy as well as my personal commitment and belonging. Most specifically, I learned to view myself as both a facilitator and a member of my classroom belonging community, as a writing teacher, a writer, and as a first-generation college student who spent her freshman year of college in a state of uncertainty and confusion. I've learned to share my vulnerabilities with my students as a way of fostering their growth mindset, and honestly, my own growth mindset, too.” 

Kristine Harrington 

“Belonging Champions has given me the opportunity to carve out time in my week to think about what I can do to make my course more inclusive, so ALL my students feel like they can grow as learners and succeed in the course. While providing a nurturing environment has always been part of my pedagogy, being in Belonging Champions pushed me to be more intentional about developing strategies that make my students feel like they belong. Small changes can have a significant impact in the classroom; for example, something as basic as explaining why I have certain policies may increase my students’ willingness to follow them and see them as necessary vs. restrictive. The weekly conversations I had with the other participants and the facilitators allowed me to express my concerns regarding the struggles that our students experience, find solutions, and ultimately articulate the principles that guide a more inclusive pedagogy. Additionally, the ASCEND survey showed me how these strategies impacted my students, and I was able to make adjustments throughout the semester. The resources in Canvas, while numerous, are worth the time because they are very practical and can be implemented in the classroom.”  

Ana Wetzl 

“Mathematics is the least favorite subject of many students. As a math professor, I find that it is more challenging to engage students to learn math than to teach math contents. This “Belonging Champion” program is very beneficial and effective. I learned many useful ideas and strategies that I can use to engage students to learn math and help them to fit in the math learning community.  I am very pleased to notice some positive changes from my students in my pilot class for improving student belonging.  I also notice the changes of myself in my teaching mindset about academic rigor, the relationship between instructor and students, etc. For the relationship with students, I see now that the relationship is the partnership. I am just a learning partner of my students, and we work together to lead success. For academic rigor, I am more flexible with deadlines of course work by providing as many opportunities as possible to students who want to take for improve their learning. This “Belonging Champion” program demonstrates an excellent model for how to build a “belonging” community. As a participant, I have gained experience as a student/learner, which help me to understand how students feel when they join a new class and how to fit in the learning community.  The program has successfully fit me in this learning community, and I feel very comfortable and feel strongly that I do belong to this learning community.” 

Min He 

Spring 2025 Cohort

Facilitators are marked with a *

Photos of Champions

Fall 2023- Inaugural Community of Transformation

• Katherine Amey, Ashtabula
• Sarah Andreas, Tuscarawas
• Ginger Bihn-Coss, Tuscarawas
• Martha Daniels, Stark
• Rebecca Frazier, Geauga
• Kristine Harrington, Salem
• Min He, Trumbull
• Bryan Jones, Ashtabula
• Velvet Landingham, Geauga
• Wayne McDonald, Stark
• Scott Tobias, Stark
• Ana Wetzl, Trumbul

Spring 2024 Champions

Organized by Cohort

Fall 2024 Champions

Organized by Cohort