Agnes Scott College

Building Belonging through Relationships

For me, strengthening engagement and belonging starts with relationships. Students are more likely to engage when they know that someone sees them, knows their story, and genuinely cares about their success. At Agnes Scott College, I have tried to be intentional about creating opportunities for students to connect with faculty, staff, peers, mentors, and the broader community. That looks like an open-door policy where anyone can retreat on bean bags, with dim lighting, Legos, a fidget toy, a yoga mat or a book. 

I have also learned that belonging looks different for every student. We have to create multiple entry points for students to find community and feel connected, whether that is through academic programs, student organizations, cultural communities, leadership opportunities, mentoring, or simply having a trusted staff member they can turn to. Success is not just about retention and graduation numbers; it is about helping students develop confidence, purpose, and a sense of possibility. That often looks like meeting with students to gain insight into their interests, goals, and areas of growth. 

Connecting Enrollment to Student Success

One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that enrollment and student success cannot operate in silos. Recruiting a student is only the beginning of the relationship. As higher education professionals, we have a responsibility to ensure that the experience we describe during the enrollment process is consistent with what students encounter once they arrive. Our goal is not just that students get enrolled, but that they have a successful experience and collegiate career, leading to graduation and beyond. 

We also need to understand the whole student. Academic preparation matters, but so do financial circumstances, family responsibilities, mental and emotional well-being, sense of belonging, and access to support. When we understand those factors early, we can connect students to resources before a challenge becomes a crisis. Working in higher education often lends itself to being a resource to students directly and indirectly. 

Using Data to Remove Barriers

Data gives us an opportunity to be more proactive. Data allows us to identify patterns in enrollment, persistence, academic performance, engagement, and the use of campus resources to understand where students may need additional support. Data is a helping hand in our goal to provide students with the support they need in order to be successful.

“Our goal is not just that students get enrolled, but that they have a successful experience and collegiate career, leading to graduation and beyond.”

However, data should never replace the student voice. As leaders, we need to ask, What is the data telling us, and what are students telling us? We also have to be mindful of bias and ensure that data is being used to remove barriers rather than create assumptions about what a student can or cannot achieve. Hence, the importance of higher education professionals is to grab data and be intentional about using it to make spaces and places better for students.

Making Opportunity More Accessible

As a woman of color, this is particularly meaningful to me. I know that talent exists in every community, but access to opportunity is not always distributed equally. Students may face financial barriers, limited access to college knowledge and professional networks, transportation or technology challenges, family responsibilities, or the feeling that they have to navigate higher education without someone who understands their experience.

Representation matters. Sometimes seeing someone who looks like you in a position of leadership, teaching, mentoring, or supporting students can be the difference between simply being present and truly believing that you belong. My goal is to be that representation for my students to see that they do belong at any table or in any space they desire. 

Using Technology to Remove Friction

Technology gives us an opportunity to make higher education more responsive and easier to navigate and access. When used properly, data and technology can help institutions anticipate student needs, personalize communication, simplify administrative processes, connect students with resources, and make support available at the moment it is needed. Technology can streamline processes and make things accessible no matter the distance or time. 

The institutions that use technology most effectively will be those that combine innovation with empathy. We can automate processes, but we cannot automate belonging. The future of student-centered higher education is using data and technology to remove friction while giving faculty and staff more capacity to build the relationships that help students thrive in the classroom and beyond.