The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 2 - 11

Student Success
Mindset:
How Resident
Assistants Understand
and Enact Their Role
in Student Success

RESIDENT ASSISTANTS CAN BE A KEY RESOURCE in
institutional efforts to promote holistic student success.
Historically, higher education institutions have not always
activated this resource on behalf of promoting academic
success specifically. This qualitative interview study
explored how peer residential staff (N = 40) at one large
public research university with a specific focus on increasing
student success understood and enacted their role in this
effort. Findings indicate that participants identified four
roles (older sibling, friend, resource provider, role model)
through which they enacted proactive, holistic facilitation
of a broad construction of the term student success.
Participants identified several barriers to and facilitators
of their roles in student success, from which I developed
recommendations for practice and research.

At the broadest
level, student
success is
typically
measured
in student
persistence,
graduation, and
time to degree.

KRISTEN A. RENN
Professor of Higher, Adult, &
Lifelong Education
and Associate Dean of
Undergraduate Studies for
Student Success Research
Michigan State University
renn@msu.edu

Student success is at the center of a contemporary movement to
improve higher education by increasing graduation rates, decreasing time to degree, and closing opportunity gaps across demographic groups. At the broadest level, student success is typically
measured in student persistence, graduation, and time to degree
(Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, & Whitt, 2011; Tinto, 2010). First-generation
and low-income students in particular face a combination of academic, personal, and social barriers that make them less likely than
their peers to complete college. Research (Almeida, 2015; Engle &
Tinto, 2008) shows that these students encounter systemic barriers
to success: finances, mulitple responsibilities (jobs, school, family),
weaker academic preparation compared to peers, and campus
climate. Some students also cope with internal barriers to success:
academic self-concept, skepticism about higher education's return
on investment, and lack of "college knowledge" (Person, Baumgartner, Hallgren, & Santos, 2014). Any institutional efforts must
address these factors, and institutions should design student experiences to help them overcome external and internal barriers.

University of California, Davis
Davis, California

10

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 2

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 2

Contents
The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 2 - Intro
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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 2 - Cover4
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