The answer to improving student success: start by asking questions
From her research as an undergraduate to her current role as an associate professor and Ph.D holder in sociology, Molly Dingel’s passion has been to empower students. In her 22 years of experience at UMR, Grinnell College and the University of Kansas, one thing has always stood out: there’s nothing more powerful than a simple conversation.
“If you have a question, it’s important to just ask it,” said Dingel. “It’s always okay to ask.”
Since 2012, she’s worked to fine-tune that idea with her students at UMR, diving into the various ways students interact and bond with their professors with the goal of improving their college experience.
Her recent research has focused on asking dozens of students a set of the same questions (among others: what is it like in the classroom for you? Have you had cultural challenges? How do you think about diversity?), and breaking the responses down into digestible data points.
“These are pretty open interviews,” said Dingel. “I’m asking a wide variety of questions, to a wide variety of people. I have all this interview data, and we’re able to analyze it and boil it down to find out how students develop a relationship with the teachers and students around them.”
In her research, she’s found that students of color and first-generation college students, two demographics with considerable overlap, are more likely to feel as if they are falling behind, or to feel a sense of isolation.
It’s a problem that permeates past UMR — the challenges faced by first-generation students are well-documented — but Dingel says the traditional professor-student relationship must change, in order to help those students in need realize their full potential.
“We very much need some additional conversation and support,” said Dingel. “There’s still a lot to be done.”
In the college setting, she says the burden of changing the culture falls not on the students, but the universities themselves. The traditional college class — large lecture hall, strict office hours, minimal supervision and teaching — tends to leave students behind, especially those that don’t enter college with any prior familial knowledge of the collegiate experience.
Instead of simply asking students to play catch-up, Dingel says the best way to improve student success is for university leadership to bear the burden, and look inward to make changes.
“If a certain group of students aren’t doing as well, instead of asking ‘why aren’t they doing well?,’ the question institutions should ask should be closer to ‘what are we doing that is preventing these students from succeeding?,” said Dingel. “It’s about turning the lens onto themselves. The points of improvement are much easier to find that way.”
Dingel says these institutions can start to make changes for the better in small ways — for example, lowering the power dynamic between professor and student by making office hours less formal, making it easier for students to present questions.
It is something UMR has been doing for years: instead of holding formal office hours, professors head to the two JustASK centers, inside University Square and 318 Commons. As a professor herself, Dingel says JustASK sessions are much more casual than a traditional office setting — which removes some of the anxiety students face when they need clarification on a topic.
It has improved student success across the board, and (among other things) has led Dingel to believe that UMR is on the leading edge of what a modern, equitable university should be.
“Is UMR moving things forward? In a word, yes,” said Dingel. “Leadership is providing as much support as they can. They really want to do the right thing, and be a place where all students can be successful. I believe that because I’ve seen it firsthand.”
This story is included in our March edition of On Campus.
