Episode 52: Dan Maxwell on the Role of Student Affairs in Student Engagement, Belonging, and Health Promotion
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How can you make a big place feel small? How can academic affairs and student affairs collaborate on student success? How can you make decisions with "gut plus data"? We discuss these questions and more with Dan Maxwell from the University of Houston system and downtown campus.
What does it actually mean for a student to succeed? In the traditional sense, we often look at GPA or the four-year graduation rate. But for Dan Maxwell, a veteran student affairs leader at the University of Houston, success is something much more personal: it is the moment a student can turn their dreams into reality.
Achieving that dream requires more than just academic rigor; it requires a sense of belonging and a support system that catches students before they fall. As the landscape of higher education shifts, student affairs professionals are moving beyond being "party planners" to becoming architects of retention, wellness, and social mobility.
The Holistic View of Student Success
In the latest episode of the Connected College podcast, Dan Maxwell shares his 35 years of wisdom on the evolving role of student affairs. He defines the profession as the art of fostering connections and reducing roadblocks. Whether it is navigating the transition from foster care, finding a sober community through recovery programs, or simply learning how to take effective notes, the goal remains the same: ensuring that the smallest roadblock doesn’t become an invitation to "stop out."
Student success is built on the foundation of meeting basic needs first. If a student is worried about where they will sleep or what they will eat, they cannot focus on pedagogy. By addressing food and housing security alongside emotional and physical health, institutions create a safety net that allows students to persist when things get difficult.
Using Gut Plus Data to Drive Decisions
One of the most significant shifts in the field is the move toward data-informed leadership. Maxwell emphasizes that while he trusts his "gut," the future of student success lies in "gut plus data." Modern student affairs teams are now tracking not just who attends an event, but the specific outcomes of that engagement.
By using apps to log student participation, administrators can see demographic trends and perform targeted outreach. If a student attends a leadership workshop, the system can automatically suggest similar programs to keep them engaged. More importantly, this data allows leaders to correlate engagement with actual outcomes like GPA and credit hour completion, proving that a robust co-curricular life is a driver of academic achievement.
Meeting the Next Generation Where They Are
The post-pandemic era has brought a new generation of students who are more digitally dependent and socially cautious. This "double or triple awkwardness" in physical social settings requires a new approach to programming. Today’s students are highly attuned to diversity and find information faster than ever, yet they still crave physical connection.
To support these students, Maxwell suggests a "public health lens" for student affairs. This involves moving interventions "upriver" to prevent crises rather than just pulling students out of the water once they are struggling. By creating small, specialized communities—like the Honors College or Veteran Centers—within large institutions, colleges can make a massive campus feel like home.
Conclusion: Turning Dreams into Reality
The work of student affairs is to ensure that the promise made during recruitment matches the reality of the campus experience. By reducing barriers, fostering inclusive environments, and leveraging data to prioritize high-impact services, institutions can empower every student to navigate their path forward. Success isn’t just about the degree; it’s about the transformation that happens along the way.
Episode 52 Transcript
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Elliot Felix: Welcome to the Connected College podcast. I'm your host, Elliot Felix. I've helped more than 100 colleges and universities change what they offer, how they operate, and how they're organized to enable student success. And if you're a leader in higher ed and you think that the silos and separations get in the way of student success, then this podcast and my upcoming book, The Connected College, are for you. We're here to learn and work together to bust silos, question tradition, and forge partnerships so that students feel connected to their college, their community, their coursework, and their careers. Dan is a student affairs leader who must have found a way to clone himself. He's so engaged and so involved at the University of Houston at both the system and the campus level that he seems to be everywhere on campus, online, wherever he is, he's helping foster belonging and helping students find support to turn their dreams into reality. This interview was kind of a dream too. There's so much wisdom in here. One of my favorites is where he talks about going with gut plus data to make decisions. Love it. Let's dive in. Welcome, Dan. So excited to have you here to talk about the role that student affairs can play in designing student success. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in student affairs.
Dan Maxwell: Thanks again, Elliot, for the opportunity to have a conversation. This fall, I celebrated my 35th fall opening as a full-time student affairs professional. So feel blessed to have found this connection and passion so early on in my career. So I think like many student affairs professionals, I was probably active or overly active as an undergraduate. Served as an RA, I was active in a fraternity, served as an ambassador out of the admissions office. I did an internship in the student center as a senior. That was connected to my major at the time, which was human resources, and helped to create their very first student employment program. And like many students, worked about 20 hours a week as a lifeguard to contribute to covering the cost of going to school. I didn't really learn about the student affairs profession until my senior year and I was meeting with my hall director and she wanted to know kind of what my plans were. You know, good mentorship supervisor relationship. And I talked about going into a Fortune 500 company at the time and doing human resources, worked around employee developments and investments, learning how to capitalize on skill sets. And she listened and said, "Do you know that you could do that every day with college students?" And quite literally, if you could have painted the picture, there would be this huge light bulb above my head that just exploded. And I started to associate, oh, that's what my career advisor does. That's what the student union director does. Yeah, that's what... turns out I've been doing student affairs while being a student, right? And so she helped me to think about the profession and guided me towards how to explore different graduate programs. And I landed down at the University of Miami, Florida, where I earned my master's degree in higher education. And I guess you would say that the rest of that history... I moved back to Syracuse for a couple years, then University of Arizona, Western Illinois University, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, and now University of Houston. And over those 35 years, I've worked in multiple functional areas. So in some ways, I feel like a generalist having been exposed to a lot of different areas both in student affairs functionally but also with some leadership opportunities with the campus, with some of the staff associations and committee work. And then coupled that with work in my professional associations, usually around conference planning or presentations, and then also some leadership and had the honor to serve as a president of one of my national organizations as well.
Elliot Felix: Right, you were just the conference chair for the NASPA annual event in Boston, right? Which was fantastic.
Dan Maxwell: Thank you, yeah, a great opportunity to in some way go back to my hometown. I grew up south of Boston, my extended family's out there, and to be able to help design a program that continued to recruit people to come back in person because, you know, we'd all been on the pandemic for a little bit. We had about 3,500 people in Baltimore, which was the real first conference out of the pandemic, but we were just shy of 6,000 people in Boston. For some groups, that was their first time back in person. And so creating a professional development opportunity where people could see themselves investing in themselves and exploring new ideas and connecting, reconnecting, it was just a great professional milestone.
Elliot Felix: I love it. We can almost look at this conversation and the book chapter that comes out of it as a professional development vehicle for folks because I think you have so much to share, such great insights and such a diverse set of experiences that hopefully this can help both accomplished and aspiring student affairs folks with enabling student success for folks. For folks who might be like you in your fourth year not knowing what student affairs is, can we step back and can you define it and tell us what that encompasses?
Dan Maxwell: I think if you think about student affairs as a profession, it for me has been over time that ability to help students find connections to the campus community where they, through our efforts, create and foster campus community where people feel like they belong there. And through that sense of belonging, they begin to explore ways to learn outside of the classroom as a complement to what they're learning inside the classroom. For some, it's the opportunity to build soft skills that allow them to be effective as a student leader but maybe even more effective in the classroom when they do small group projects or having to do presentations and opportunities to build confidence. It's providing opportunities for students to be able to work on campus and then for some, linking their passion areas with the things that they're studying in the classroom to help begin to maybe navigate what a career is going to look like for them after college begins. And for some students, the student affairs function allows students to stay connected to the institution while they build their capacity to be able to excel in the classroom. Right? So what we don't want to have happen after somebody's been accepted to a university is for them to stop out. So how do we collectively across the functions of student affairs with our academic partners reduce those roadblocks that sometimes for students they say, "I'm going to push right through that, I know what I need to do," but for other students, sometimes the smallest roadblock is the invitation to stop out. And we know that it can be difficult and challenging to come back in once you've stopped out. So our goal is to be preventative and proactive while helping students to feel that sense of connection. I always tell parents during orientation, you know your children, your son or daughter, better than we do and you've probably had experiences where you wanted them to do something and you get the eye roll like, "I don't want to do that, that's not for me." But the moment you know that your son or daughter, that they have connected to something that they begin to own it, then it's theirs and they have a sense of responsibility for it. And so I see the same thing once the student feels like this academic pathway forward for them is theirs and they have some sense of control and contribution and they want to be successful, they want to succeed. And that to me is what persistence is, that's what grit is. It's that thing inside of you that pushes you past the noise to get to the end goal, which is your degree attainment and some opportunities to grow your soft skills along the way.
Elliot Felix: Love the idea that the goalpost for student affairs is finding connections and reducing roadblocks that ultimately... like if students feel like they belong and you remove the kind of the barriers or at least lower them that are along their path to success, then you've done your job. I'd love to hear, are there sort of familiar groupings of functional areas within student affairs, like I know residence life is one, but what else? How does it break down?
Dan Maxwell: Yes, so I think the on-campus living is a big part of that opportunity for students. I think the other part of it is you think of maybe a student engagement student experience portfolio which would include probably things like student activities, fraternity/sorority life, leadership development, opportunities for folks to connect. Like your student union, so the physical space where people can come together and to connect. You can also think of maybe like health and well-being. So your recreation center, your counseling center, maybe your accessibility center, the health and pharmacy. In my experience here at the University of Houston, it also includes a recovery program, so thinking about that wellbeing. We also have a faith center on campus, and so it's multi-denominational or non-denominational, but again recognizing that for some folks faith is a big part of their identity and needing that space on campus. But then I think we have like typically maybe comes out of a dean of students area or maybe even a diversity, equity, inclusive area but like your veteran center, your center for diversity inclusion, LGBTQ center, women and gender resource center. And then we also here have a space for first-generation students, students engaged in foster care, and undocumented students. And then career services, you know, that opportunity to begin to put into place or put into a document a resume that kind of outlines your experiences but also helps you to take your story in your own voice to be able to have a conversation with employers. I think depending on what institution you're at, sometimes that academic support services kind of floats between a provost's office and a student affairs area or student success area, and that could be things like the math lab, the writing lab, non-major area kind of helping people to figure out what they want that major to be, academic counseling. So those things sometimes are linked more directly or they certainly have blurred lines between them because all of those services are trying to help students navigate this path forward. Because I believe if we've offered you an opportunity to be at our institution, we've acknowledged that you have all the abilities to be successful and you say yes, then we have a commitment to help you figure out how to navigate this path forward, which is reducing roadblocks, setting expectations, providing a support network for you to lean into and to strengthen your skills and to be able to be successful to attain your degree.
Elliot Felix: I love that. And how... I think you touched on some of these things, but how would you define student success?
Dan Maxwell: I think the basic or foundational level student success is navigating your four-year degree program or five-year degree program, depending on your major, but to graduate, to attain that degree. You've come here because you want to learn a particular pedagogy, a particular topic of interest and really lean into it and explore it and push back on it and write about it and maybe experiment about it. But when it's your first opportunity, so you begin to define your pathway forward as you become a citizen in the greater community. What role do you want to have? And so whether you do that with an associate's degree and then a four-year degree or an associate's degree period or even a graduate program, but it's really about getting the degree. I think then if you want to expand it, I think you have to recognize that degree attainment comes with the sense of connection in the classroom with your faculty, the sense of belonging in the community in which your university is housed. It's feeling like you belong in that space, that you're welcome, that it matters that you're there, and that your success is something that the institution is wanting and looking for you to be able to take your dreams and turn them into a reality. So, you know, we don't really make the dream, we help you make the dream a reality.
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Elliot Felix: I love that definition of student success is when they can turn their dreams into reality. That's pretty powerful stuff.
Dan Maxwell: I think, you know, education doesn't have to be specific. I believe in support, you know, workforce development and specific skill sets that contribute directly back into the workforce, but I think for some students it's that cognitive development. It's the ability to think about some stuff in an abstract way, it's about finding that path from A to B or then an experiment that sets their light bulb out. But it's building on a foundation that allows you to then move into a career that could be directly connected to your educational focus or could be a one-off or two-off. So I might really love marketing, but it doesn't mean I'm going to go into a marketing firm. I may be able to do marketing in so many different aspects of my greater community when it's that passion and how I want to take that passion connected to the next thing in my journey forward.
Elliot Felix: And what role in that journey, what role can student affairs professionals play in designing student success, in being intentional and facilitating or enabling how students get to turn their dreams into reality?
Dan Maxwell: I think we have to look at the types of experiences that we're creating on campus. So I think there's a foundational piece about students meeting the basic needs, making sure that they have connections around food and housing, access to support networks especially if they're first-generation students. They may not know about different ways to support their endeavors at the institution because they don't have somebody to talk to about those things. So what does a study group look like? How to use the library? How to start a research project? How to ask questions in the classroom? What does good note-taking look like? And so some of those things can be done... not for all students, but if you recognize that not all the students who come through your front door, who have every right to be there because they've met your academic criteria, it doesn't mean they've had the same learned experiences or lived experiences that prepare them to be ultimately successful in the classroom. And so looking at how you support basic needs and how you help folks to begin to develop critical skills to be successful in their academic pursuits. Then I think you have to look at the types of co-curricular programs that you have. How diverse are your student organizations? Can students find a space for them to participate in some of those activities? What does student government look like or do you have Greek life or other types of organizations that are socially focused? What kind of programming are you doing that allows folks to get connected to other students on campus whether it's through leadership development or social evening and weekend activities? So I think from a student affairs perspective, how we contribute back to student success is having a robust co-curricular or student life experience and taking into consideration especially now coming out of the pandemic, the health and well-being of your students. And so really asking students to take time to be reflective about their mental health, their emotional health, their physical health, and how do they find ways to connect to those things so that they will take time to take care of themselves so that they too can be successful back in the classroom.
Elliot Felix: Student affairs versus student life... it's interesting, like one is a little bit kind of inside baseball jurgy terminology. How do you feel about student life? Is that the functional description of what student affairs is charged with? Maybe there's no difference.
Dan Maxwell: Yeah, I don't know that there's truly a difference if you kind of peel back the semantics because I've been at... I have colleagues who are in charge of campus life or campus services or student services or student affairs or student life or student engagement or some schools have even gone to say the student experience. Whenever your campus nomenclature is to call it, that's fine. But in reality, when you take away the names, you go and look at the functions. It's really about how are you providing an inclusive campus environment that your student body, regardless of the path that they took to get to your space, feel a connection to that campus strong enough that when things go awry, they're not going to walk away. That they know what their support networks are, they know where to go ask for assistance or support. That they have an ability to invest in, again, their mental health, their emotional health, their physical health. That they have opportunities to contribute back through community service or serving a student organization or student government, being an RA. Or as a commuter student, they have spaces to go and don't feel at a disadvantage because they can't, for whatever reason, live on your campus. We've not even talked about what does it mean to greet international students in community or being in a diverse campus community like the University of Houston where there's no one majority in student population. And so we can categorize students based on many many things. We don't have a majority one student population. So Hispanic, Caucasian, African American, International, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native... I mean they're not all equally distributed, but there's no one that is the majority. And so how do you work with a diverse community of students in a diverse city like Houston? And that means that you have to recognize that lived experiences are just that, they're not going to be duplicative across your entire student body. So you be able to meet students where they are and help them find those connecting points. Those connecting ways are going to keep them there when things get rough.
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Elliot Felix: What are the things that are changing student affairs? Like changing how people in your shoes do their work every day and think about how their work is changing, the macro trends?
Dan Maxwell: Yeah, and I think it's a great question, Elliot, because I think what I'm going to share with you is... I don't know that it's new, but I think that we've started to use language that demonstrates our knowledge that these metrics are important. So how are students being retained from year one to year two to year three to year four? Because if you're not retaining them, they're never going to get to graduation and your goal is to help a student graduate, preferably in four years, but we do a lot of tracking on the six-year graduation rate. So retention is really important, graduation is important. Talking about how we level the playing field between the ability for Pell-eligible students to be successful right along with non-Pell-eligible students, meaning like it doesn't matter kind of what your lived experiences were before that, when we get here we're going to provide the network that kind of levels up and gives everybody the opportunity to be successful. So what does that look like? And then I think the other part of it is how do you track not just participation but track the type of engagement and the outcome of the engagement. So when students come to the events that we do here at the University of Houston, we have them through an app just log in. Then we can pull their demographic data, we can identify the types of programs they're coming to. We can then do some target communication back to them to say, "Hey, you were just at program X. We got two more programs that are like program X coming up in the next two to four weeks. Hey, we want to make sure that you're aware of this because you seem to have a good time." In addition to that, asking basic questions like, "Did you learn something new while you were here? Did you meet somebody new? Did you begin to think about the cultural experience from a different perspective? What does that look like?" So I think getting some metrics about how people are engaged and the outcome of that engagement contributes to the conversation of what's keeping them here, i.e., retention. What's helping them to stay here? And then is there a difference between students who are maybe living on campus, participating in your events, going to the rec center, joining an organization like a fraternity/sorority or student government? Are those students' GPAs equal to or better than students who are not participating? Is their number of credit hours per semester equal to or better than those who are not participating? Are they being retained at a higher level? Like, does the engagement contribute at least in some kind of causal relationship that you can at least contribute that it may not be the thing, but it's one of those things. And I think those of us in the student affairs have got to be able to demonstrate that we are contributing to retention, graduation, reducing the gap and social mobility, and that students are doing well or better through and/or as a part of their participation. Like, how are we contributing to the development of the whole student as they attain their degree or their pathway to attain their degree?
Elliot Felix: What about like external changes beyond the sharper focus on retention and graduation and leveling the playing field and tracking the type and frequency and outcome of engagements? Like, are there larger things like demographics, technology, socioeconomic things, cultural things that are changing the way you do your work?
Dan Maxwell: I would say that past the pandemic, I think one of the things that I've heard a lot of conversation in some of my circles is how are we talking about health in a way that matters? And so almost looking at some of our work from a public health lens, recognizing that some of the lived experiences or maybe some of the cultural experiences that students have had can be contributing factors to their ability to be successful or some may perceive don't prepare them well enough to be successful at the beginning. Doesn't mean they can't be successful in the end, but you know, if I'm a first-generation student, that just means I don't know that I've had a lot of people around me talking about what does it mean to go to college, what does it mean to be successful in college, what does that look like. Am I being supported to think outside of what everybody in my family has traditionally done? Like, how do I really think about my health and my ability to be successful? So I think the public health lens is really important now, kind of the health-promoting university framework. Like, how do we become preventative and strengthen the safety net versus waiting for people to fall in the river and pull them out? Like, how do we move our actions to the front of the river and prevent students from falling in? How do we help other folks become just as attentive to the red flags versus saying, "Well, that's not really my responsibility, I'm going to send it to somebody else." I think we also are working with the most recent generation of students who not only have been exposed to their phone and their iPad longer than anybody else, but I would say they're probably even more dependent on those things and some self-isolation just because of the behavior. Individually focused, they may be connected to 20 people but they're doing it in a space where maybe there's not a lot of people around them. And so what does connection look like for students? And I think we've had to be able to address, you know, not saying, "Well, in my day we used to do this..." this is how we would connect with people. Because I think our students today are more attuned to some of the diversity challenges and issues that are out there and maybe they don't have to overthink something, they just receive it the way that it is. I also think that they know how to find information faster than folks before them. They're used to being able to find stuff quickly. They're connected in chat rooms and discussion groups, but I also think they're still finding ways to want to be connected physically. So how do we bring programming to a new age of students who are navigating their social development and evolution in the ways that I never would have done when I was a young person? And so it doesn't mean that it's wrong, it's just different. And I think as student affairs administrators, generational differences can't be overlooked. We can't get mad that it's not what our experience was, because these students are engaging and moving through with or without us. So we need to figure out how they're choosing to engage to meet them where they are and bring the programming there and then maybe in some other ways continue to do some of the work that we're comfortable with or we're excited about and it could be new to them as well. We're not going to get there if we just keep wanting to do everything that we did or everything that we did with the last generation.
Elliot Felix: Yeah, I hear you. I remember as the pandemic was easing up and we started going to other people's houses for dinner or having them over, it was like I felt like I was in a fifth-grade dance. It's like, where do I stand? How close is too close? How do I make conversation? I can only imagine if you've never done that, not only is it awkward, but you've never done it before, so it's like double or triple awkward. And you know, and not just awkwardness but anxiety and real challenges there.
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Elliot Felix: What are some examples from your institution or looking across the country of student affairs really doing something special to enable student success? You know, to use your definition, to create those inclusive communities where people feel connected and you're removing roadblocks along the path to success?
Dan Maxwell: Yeah, I mean I think one of them is to recognize that the moment that students begin to look at your institution, they are in their own ways teasing out what they think their experience may be when they get there. Right? So they're looking for the signs of "What's my student life experience going to be like if I go to school there? Am I going to find ways to connect with people?" Yes, I think students are looking about, "Does the school have the major that I'm interested in? Do they have opportunities for me to maybe do internships and be connected academically?" Depending on their area of interest, there may be some faculty members that would entice them because of the work. I don't ever want to underestimate the fact that students are looking at ways to be academically successful and to be challenged and charged to elevate their game. But I think they're also looking at, you know, "What's my social life going to be like? How am I going to meet folks? What kinds of things are happening on the campus? Am I going to be supported? Do I see myself... whatever myself is, whatever my lived experiences are... do I see people who may have had similar experiences or am I setting myself out to be an outlier?" Right? So I think young people are coming to our spaces and looking at all these interconnected opportunities and what it's going to mean for them. So I think we have to acknowledge that whatever it is our business counselors are telling folks about who we are, are they going to find that when they get here? Or that's the first disconnect, right? So that the relationship between admissions and recruitment and orientation and student affairs, whether they report to the same VP or Provost, they've got to be in sync with each other about that we're telling the story of who we are, not who we want to be. This is what you're going to find here and these are the opportunities for you in the classroom, outside of the classroom. If you think you're going to want to do undergraduate research, is that known? Will I be able to find work if I had to work to go to school? What's it going to be like if I live on campus or live off campus? You know, they are looking at those things and you can't underestimate, quite honestly, the role of athletics and the profile that that brings to the school as well. So I think the congruence of how people see us and what they'll find when they get to your campus is really an important thing to do as far as enabling that success. And students are trying to put themselves in that new space and they want to know that they're going to be able to do things.
Elliot Felix: It's almost like success is defined based on what you expect and the expectation is set before they arrive.
Dan Maxwell: Yeah, I think we have to... when our expectations don't meet the reality or there's a mis-expectation or unmet expectation, those are things that give people pause. And so does the marketing of who you are meet the reality of what you do and will I find those things when I get to that campus and participate? I think that, again, I'm going to go back to this whole kind of health-promoting university. I do think that we have to even more so now, and I don't know the pandemic was what led us here, but I think the pandemic acted as an accelerator, is that people want to know that you're looking at the whole person. That you're going to look at all of me... in the classroom, my financial stability, my ability to have a space to lay my head and to eat nutritious food, and to have ways to connect socially, culturally, academically. And that I'm going to know that it matters that I'm there because of the way that people treat me. And they can have high expectations of students in the classroom, but that also means that we're going to have support services to help you meet those expectations. So what does it look like to provide strong academic support services in addition to providing a highly valued student experience outside of the classroom as well? And then I think the other example that I would say is it goes back to your data. What kind of data are you collecting? How are you using that data to drive decisions about prioritizing programs and services and activities? How does the data help drive maybe financial decisions that you have to make? Those of us who are experiencing the impact of the enrollment cliff, that means fewer students, that means less tuition dollars, that means less student fees. That could impact the ability to maintain staffs and academic programs that you've had historically if your student body begins to shrink. Right? So how are you going to make decisions based on fewer funds regardless of where those funds come from? You may have to make some of those decisions. And so I think it's already beginning to impact folks. And you know, if you reduce your base budget or your traditional budget, how do you then begin to make decisions of what to let go of? I would say in student affairs we're always used to, or we sometimes complain about, always being told to do more with less. Then when someone tells you, "Well, you can't do it all, so what are you going to let go of?" then you're like, "Well, I can't let go of anything right because it's all important." So the question is how do you discern between what really is making an impact with your students for today, of today, and what goes into that? And so doing program evaluations, having assessment plans, having a strategic plan that helps to provide some kind of a Northstar for your division, understanding what trends are in the different functional areas and tracking how people are participating, what they're getting out of the events and things... so that all that data is important. And it may not look the same for each department but every department is going to have something it's basing their decisions on other than, "I trust my gut for a lot of stuff." But gut plus data is really good.
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Elliot Felix: I love that. And in our last couple minutes, you know, as you think about these things like using data to drive decisions and being a health-promoting university and reducing roadblocks, like are there any shining examples? I'm thinking about all the inspiring sessions you probably saw or heard about at NASPA. Like, what are a few of the things where you were really blown away by what an institution was doing to move the needle on some of these things?
Dan Maxwell: For example, one of the things I'm really proud of here at the university that we've done... we had a parent from the greater Houston community who'd come to us and said, "You know, I have a son who's already in recovery, but did you know that we have two recovery high schools in the city of Houston? And the students who are graduating from that high school are not staying in Houston to go to college. They're going to college campuses where there's recovery programs because that's the support system that they need if they're going to leave the support system that they have." And so her conversation was, "How do we create that support system here on this campus and retain some of our most talented students to come to the University of Houston, but they need to be in a support system that they've already experienced?" Right? And so, again, not to date myself, but in the early years of my time in higher ed, it used to be like, "Oh, full students are going to come to campus and experiment with alcohol, they might experiment with drugs." Well, in reality, we have students who are already in recovery... two, four, five, six years... who are coming into our campus community. They've already done all that. Now they're trying to figure out how to stay sober and navigate an experience that can be complicated and frustrating and nerve-wracking especially if you don't know who to turn to for support. So we learned some new information, we figured out how to start it off getting some private funds, we slowly moved into a process where we could get some support through some fees, and we've expanded to now have a recovery townhouse on campus. So students who want to live on campus live in a sober environment. Big sober tailgate events. And so that network of folks is allowing these students to navigate some pretty heavy baggage as they move through and earn their degree. I think when you think about some of our more vulnerable student populations, whether it might be student veterans or students aging out of foster care or international students, is having centers or offices that say to them, "Not only are you welcome at the university, but here's your home to allow you to be supported so that you can walk into a space and you don't have to worry about whether or not you're welcome." You're going to be amongst your people, whatever your people may be, and we can talk about some topics that maybe you don't really want to talk about publicly. You know, one of the things that I have learned... students who were in foster care are leaving an experience where they've been labeled. They don't want to start their college career putting that label back on themselves. So how do you support students who've aged out of foster care without saying, "Hey, raise your hand and tell me if you've come out of foster care, I want to help you." But learning how to market and communicate and to get the word out to students that this is available to you if this should be your experience, and what does that look like?
Elliot Felix: It seems like that the trend in maybe both of those examples is you can't just like broadcast, you also have to narrowcast. Like, there's times when you're building one university community and then there's times when you're building it at a much smaller scale based on affinity or identity and that ladders up.
Dan Maxwell: Yeah, I mean I think another great example is the University of Houston. 47,000 students. The Honors College takes this very large university and creates this very small connection of students who want to add on to their college experience with the additional rigor that comes through an honors college program. But in doing so, they've created a very small network of support and engagement that allows these students to take this very large university and create another community within their community. And so for them, you could say that's very much like the women and gender resource center or the veteran services organization or the center for student empowerment that works with students aging out of foster care. You're taking this very large, complex community and saying, "Hey, here's a spot... while all this is available to you, here's a spot that is seeing you very specifically, clearly based on the experience that you've had or the experience that you're looking for."
Elliot Felix: I love the idea that part of what success looks like is making a big place feel small. I love that. Well, Dan, thank you so much for your time and insights about the role that student affairs can play in student success. Really appreciate it.
Dan Maxwell: My pleasure.
Elliot Felix: Thanks for listening to the Connected College podcast. Subscribe to my Connected College newsletter at elliotfelix.com for insights and excerpts from my upcoming book, tools you can download and special offers. You can also find more information about talks I've given, articles I've written and upcoming events there. And please support the podcast by rating and reviewing it wherever you're listening. Let's create connected colleges where students will succeed.