Living in the Explore House: A Major and Career Exploration-Focused Residential Learning Community for Undecided Students

Scholarship on students who enter college without a declared major indicates that this population of students faces unique challenges (Anderson, 1985; Beal & Noel, 1980; Lewallen, 1993), but also may be more likely to persist to graduation and earn higher grades than those who enter college with a declared major (Lewallen, 1995). Based on undecided students’ needs for academic, career, and personal resources (Zarvell & Rigby, 1994), this article describes the implementation of a residential learning community (RLC) focused specifically on providing undecided students with in-hall programming and services related to academic major and career exploration, and provides implications for future implementation

Honoring Immigrant College Students’ Funds of Knowledge through Appreciative Advising

This chapter explores the use of Bloom and colleagues’ (2008) practice of appreciative advising (AA) as a means of building vital relationships with immigrant college students and a potential framework to increase retention of this student population. AA is a versatile and relationally oriented framework that fosters micro-climates in which students can identify their goals and ambitions while also envisioning the path to achieve these goals. To successfully employ AA, it is critical to not only acknowledge but also to amplify and elevate students’ experiences, values, and wealth of diverse knowledges. Anderson et al. (2019) referred to this as exercising cultural curiosity and cultural humility, actions which disrupt power, while creating openness and investment in students (particularly those typically navigating the margins of higher education). By combining these concepts with a funds of knowledge (FoK) approach, which builds on immigrant students’ communal resources, knowledges, and experiences, collaboration between advisors and immigrant students can lead to the development of dialogic spaces where AA can be actualized (Anderson et al., 2019; Witenstein et al., 2023). Consequently, this conceptual chapter aims to illustrate how AA can be adeptly actionized by academic advisors to support immigrant college students through a combined framework that links cultural curios- ity, cultural humility, and FoK.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/books/1151/thumbnail.jp

COS Ambassadors

A collection of materials and resources for COS ambassadors