The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1 - 23

Family Income, Campus Residency, and Student Retention

more visible on campus (Milem, Chang, &
Antonio, 2005). For example, when assessing
the ability of residential staff to meet standards
for acknowledging cultural diversity and advocating cultural understanding, many standard
approaches, like the Resident Assistant Cultural Diversity questionnaire, focus on racial
diversity (Johnson, Kang, Thompson, 2011).
To develop effective staff training programs
that increase cultural sensitivity toward socioeconomic diversity, residential staff development needs to nurture staff members' abilities
to think critically about campus culture and
how they enact roles that may systematically
favor some groups more than others. This approach is necessary because "deﬁcit thinking"
(for instance, the idea that someone who is poor
is less-skilled or less hard-working) permeates
society and educational-settings; practitioners
mirror these beliefs (Garcia & Guerra, 2004).
Increasing awareness and understanding of
this dynamic can alter staff beliefs and attributions about students' success and failure.
Simply including a lecture on campus
climate, middle-class norms, and the importance of cultural diversity in staff training alone
will likely be ineffective to improve staff's
ability to communicate with students from
low-income families (Stewart & Peal, 2001).
Professional development activities must systematically and explicitly link knowledge about
socioeconomic equity to practices. Even wellintentioned staff experience culture clashes
and create environments that systematically
deny some students meaningful opportunities (Greenﬁeld, Raeff, & Quiroz, 1995). These
clashes often result from misunderstandings
when individuals from different backgrounds
each base their behaviors on a different set of

Beyond staff training, increasing
the socioeconomic diversity
of residential life staff would
increase low-income students'
exposure to students like them
who made it through the initial
transition into college.

rules or expectations. Garcia and Guerra (2004)
study programs that are most effective for students and families from low-income and culturally diverse communities, focusing primarily
on professional development among K-12 educators. Their recommendations-which offer
broad suggestions to improve staff members'
openness and approachability-likely translate to the college campus setting. They recommend problem-based activities within staff
training in which participants analyze a speciﬁc situation, develop hypotheses about the
factors involved, consider alternative cultural
explanations, and identify culturally responsive
strategies to resolve the problem. Involving
seasoned staff mentors to guide new practitioners through the activities would help new staff
align the expectations they have for the job with
the realities of the challenges they may face
(Henning, Cilente, Kennedy, & Sloane, 2011).
Such training exercises aim to increase cultural
sensitivity and diminish socioeconomic blind
spots (Stuber, 2010). Awareness of the ﬁnancial constraints some students face may also
motivate staff to emphasize social events and
activities that are accessible at a low-cost.

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1