Episode 69: Shaun Carver on Bringing People Together for a Better World
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How can you bring people from different countries and cultures together to create a better world? What are the evidence-based practices to promote interaction, strengthen communities, and take risks? How can you improve empathy, understanding, and communication? We dive into these questions with Shaun Carver, Executive Director of International House at the University of California Berkeley.
In the modern landscape of higher education, we often focus on the "what" of learning—the curriculum, the technology, and the credentials. But according to Shaun Carver, Executive Director of the International House at UC Berkeley, the "where" and "who" are just as critical. In a recent episode of the Connected College podcast, Carver sat down with host Elliot Felix to discuss how living in a diverse, intentional community isn’t just a housing choice; it’s a catalyst for profound student success.
The International House (I-House) movement, which began in 1924, was born from a simple yet powerful realization: isolation is the enemy of growth. Today, with a community representing over 80 nationalities, Carver is proving that when you bring diverse people together to share meals, bathrooms, and conversations, you create a pathway to a better world.
Defining Student Success Through Empathy and Humility
While many institutions measure success through graduation rates or starting salaries, Carver looks deeper. For him, student success is defined by the development of empathy, humility, and the ability to navigate a "multilateral" world.
It starts with the lived experience of international students. Leaving home for the first time to study at a rigorous institution like UC Berkeley in a second language is a monumental challenge. Success, therefore, is not just about passing a physics exam; it’s about having a dinner with someone from a country you’ve only seen on a map and walking away with a shared understanding. Carver believes that if students leave less "intellectually arrogant"—realizing that the world is filled with shades of gray rather than black-and-white certainties—the institution has done its job.
Why "Uncomfortable" Living Learning Communities Work
One of the most provocative points Carver makes is that student satisfaction and student growth are not the same thing. In an era where many colleges are in an "amenities arms race," building luxury apartments with en suite bathrooms and private laundry, I-House takes a different approach.
They intentionally design for "uncomfortableness." This includes:
Mandatory Double Rooms: Undergraduates must share a room, and policy dictates it must be with someone from a different country.
Communal Bathrooms: Carver jokes that you truly start learning when you have to share a bathroom with someone who has different habits and cultural norms.
Social Architecture: Small, modest rooms push residents into the "Great Hall" or the library, forcing social interaction.
Data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) supports this "high-friction" model. Students in these types of living learning communities often show higher GPAs and a greater sense of belonging because they are forced to engage with the "other" rather than retreating into a "cocoon" of comfort.
Navigating the Challenges of a Polarized World
The mission of bringing diverse groups together is currently under attack by a global narrative of segregation and conflict. Carver notes that while campus protests may flare up in the streets, the atmosphere inside I-House remains different. Because students see each other as friends and peers first, they can engage in "constructive disagreement" rather than seeing one another as enemies.
However, the "business" of international education face real hurdles. From fluctuating currency strengths and visa delays to the shifting political rhetoric that can make U.S. campuses feel less welcoming to foreign families, leaders must be more agile than ever. Carver’s strategy is simple: track the data, be ready to pivot, and never stop leading with your values.
Advice for Higher Ed Leaders: Lead with Values, Not Policy
For those looking to replicate this success, Carver offers a piece of advice that challenges traditional administrative bloat: solve problems with people, not policies. He famously cut the I-House student handbook from 50 pages down to 15, removing "organizational scar tissue"—policies that were essentially overreactions to one-time incidents.
Ultimately, to attract the right students and foster a healthy community, institutions must be crystal clear about what they stand for. When a college is firm in its values of respect, civility, and open-mindedness, it attracts students who are ready to grow. By prioritizing human connection over luxury amenities, we can create environments where students don’t just graduate—they evolve.
Episode 69 Transcript
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Shaun Carver: The reason this was created was that we believe that if you bring diverse people together and they listen to each other they learn from each other. They understand each other better. That's the pathway to a better world, right? People come in here and they open their minds and they learn about people and cultures and points of view that they had never been exposed to before. And instead of creating all this conflict, we create a lot of really great mutual understanding that leads to a much better community.
Elliot Felix: Welcome to the Connected College Podcast. I'm your host, Elliot Felix. I've helped more than a hundred 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. I am so excited to dig into the topic of how building diverse communities contributes to student success and, excited to welcome Sean Carver for this conversation.
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Elliot Felix: What's your definition of student success?
Shaun Carver: When you say how do you measure student success, it is: how do they leave here with a better understanding of others? Have you had a conversation or dinner with someone from Sri Lanka and learned about their culture and their views of the world? Do you know anything about their history, their art? That's what you get here. I hope that people leave with a better understanding of other people. Clearly we believe you're a more tolerant person, more tolerant of other people, of other cultures, of other ideas.
Shaun Carver: I hope when people leave that they have an understanding that some people disagree with you and that's okay. They come from a different background, a different culture, and have different values, and that's okay. Because at the end you see them as people, my friend, my colleague. And I hope they're less intellectually arrogant. When you see that things aren't black and white, right and wrong, that there's a lot of different views, you say, wow, there's a lot of gray.
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Shaun Carver: I care about student satisfaction, but I draw the line where we should consider them as our customers because we don't want them to be comfortable. My job is to put 'em in uncomfortable situations. We want them to grow, which means they gotta be in uncomfortable positions. My rooms are pretty modest. We have communal bathrooms. I'll never do an en suite bathroom. You wanna learn about something, go share a bathroom with somebody, then you're really start learning.
Shaun Carver: As a policy, all of our undergrads have to double. They have to share a room, and by policy it has to be someone from a different country. We force a bit of uncomfortableness because that's what our mission is, to help them grow. Our whole building was designed to make it hard to stay in your room by yourself all the time. It pushes you out into the social areas, into the library, into our great hall.
Elliot Felix: It turns out, hall-based dorms that force you into some of these more uncomfortable situations as opposed to suites or apartments, on average, see 22% more interaction. There's a higher sense of community. There's actually even slightly higher GPAs.
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Elliot Felix: What's changing and what's challenging about bringing together communities of people today?
Shaun Carver: What you just talked about is under attack. The idea that diverse groups can live together in one community in peace and harmony is just against the narrative that is being thrown out there today. There is a way to come together and to see each other as people that have differences and have conversations about differences. We sit down at the dinner table; we have these long communal tables, 10 or 15 seat tables, so that you can have these conversations.
Shaun Carver: From a business standpoint, you have to ask the question: how attractive are US campuses right now to international students? There's just a lot of risk out there right now regarding funding, visas, and the strength of the dollar. We have to consider the political rhetoric. If it's not a great environment, people will do a trade-off and go to a different country or a different school.
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Shaun Carver: Make sure that institutions are very clear about what their missions and their values are and lead with that. This isn't the place for you if you don't agree to these list of values. Working with international students, they know the top 10 brand names of universities, but they don't necessarily know the differences of the campus cultures or the values. Campuses and institutions need to do a better job of getting out there about what they believe in.
Shaun Carver: Create an environment where it's safe, it's respectful, it's civil, and people with different opinions can see that they're welcome. We allow people to have a voice. That's how you're going to welcome diverse communities. Also, solve problems with people, not with policies. When I got here, we had a student handbook that was 50 pages long. I got it down to 15. Policy is often organizational scar tissue; it's an overreaction to an isolated incident. Sometimes you just need to start with a clean whiteboard.
Elliot Felix: Lead with your values and then start fresh. Sean, thank you so much for these great insights on building such powerful and productive and positive communities.