Peer Leadership as an Emerging High-Impact Practice

Like many, my college years (interrupted by two years of missionary service) were transformative for me. Mars Hill University, the University of Utah, and Brigham Young University (yes, I transferred twice) were all tremendously impactful.
 By the time I had graduated I had new intellectual skills, had learned what it meant to be part of a diverse community, and had a much clearer idea of who I was and who I wanted to become (both vocationally and otherwise).  As with any kind of learning, there were a number of factors that contributed to my growth during this period, but my undergraduate experiences at

To be more specific, there were particular aspects of my experiences at these schools that were impactful.  At +Mars Hill, intercollegiate athletics helped me feel a sense of belonging and identity on campus, the common "Liberal Arts in Action" curriculum gave me a chance to reflect on and have conversations about big questions, and an internship in the Athletic Training department was my first taste of authentic experiential learning in the college setting.  I was only at "the U" for a semester, but it was impactful in that I figured out (a) that I really didn't want to be a doctor (thanks to 1,000 seat "weeder" classes in biology and chemistry) and (b) that I was really going to hate my college experience unless I found a way to really immerse myself in the experience, which was hard to do living at home with my parents.

Eventually I ended up at +BYU.  While I enjoyed many aspects of my BYU experience, it wasn't the classes I took (although I took some great ones) or my major (which I enjoyed immensely) that most influenced me during my three years on campus.  Instead, it was the two years I spent as a peer mentor in what was then known as "Freshman Academy."

More than any other experience I had as an undergraduate student, being a peer mentor met the criteria for high-impact practices put forth by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).  It provided me with meaningful interaction with faculty members, engaged me in critical thinking about important issues, provided me with undergraduate research opportunities, and taught me to work collaboratively with others on sustained projects.  In fact, in the recent alumni survey I completed, I cited it as the single most impactful aspect of my experience at BYU.  I say this because it made a more meaningful contribution to my realization of essential learning outcomes than any other part of my experience, and, more importantly, launched me on a career trajectory in higher education that I would never have imagined.

AAC&U has defined 10 discreet high-impact practices (HIPs) that are widely-tested and linked with substantial educational benefits:

• First-year seminars/experiences
• Common intellectual experiences
• Learning communities
• Writing-intensive courses
• Undergraduate research
• Collaborative assignments and projects
• Diversity and global learning
• Service and community-based learning
• Internships
• Capstone courses/projects

I'll argue, both here and hopefully at AAC&U's Centennial Annual Meeting next year, that peer leadership should be included on this list because of it's potential to contribute to 21st Century Learning outcomes and provide for a transformative undergraduate experience.  National studies of peer leadership point to this practice as an emerging HIP with potential to fulfill the promise of a liberal education (e.g. Keup, 2012).  Indeed, peer leadership promotes the hallmark outcomes that characterize liberal learning by integrating many of the characteristics of the more established HIPs llisted above.  

Yet, the quality of the PL experience varies across campuses.  But, when institutions merely cobble together sexy “best practices” rather than intentionally inter-weaving established HIPs to form a focused and intentional educational environment, the potential for the PL experience to yield substantial educational benefits is lost.  In contrast, when stakeholders thoughtfully integrate established HIPs into the PL experience, students are positioned for tremendous growth.

What are the characteristics of a high-impact peer leadership experience?

Close ties to the academic curriculum.  Peer leadership comes in a number of flavors, with peer leaders being used to support student athletes, first-generation students, and women in STEM.  And, at some level, any type of peer leader experience can be impactful.  But, peer leaders are likely to experience greater gains when their work is aligned with a credit-bearing course that is part of the required curriculum.  Required first-year seminars are a great setting for this type of peer leadership, but it could also take place in another substantial academic course that is a required part of the curriculum.  This alignment brings validity to their work, while also providing opportunities for peer leaders to engage with course content and pedagogies in ways that promote critical thinking.  Even better -- embed peer leaders as part of a learning community where peer leaders and students engage "big questions" and work to integrate their learning across courses.

Meaningful engagement with faculty members.  A big part of the reason I was changed by being a peer mentor was that it brought me into a situation where I was being mentored by full-time faculty members who were interested in my development and new how to challenge and support me.  Too often, peer leaders are hired or selected, provided with minimal sub-par "training," and then set loose to somehow figure out how to "lead" their peers.  In these cases, being a peer leader isn't likely to lead to much growth.  Worse--there's a decent chance it will do more harm than good.  Peer leaders should be provided with opportunities for regular and meaningful interactions with the faculty members who supervise them.  Even better -- engage peer leaders in research and assessment examining the impact of the peer leadership initiative of which they're a part.

Make it academic.  Peer leadership is often critiqued by those who view it as nothing more than taking students on campus tours during new student orientation or organizing weekend social events.  There isn't anything wrong with peer leadership experience that is firmly grounded in the social aspect of college; However, peer leadership that takes on a more "academic" tone, will both be viewed more favorably by the academic officials on campus, and contribute to the academic outcomes of the institution.  Whether it's substantial writing assignments or tasks completed by peer leaders, undergraduate research, capstone projects that invite peer leaders to integrate and articulate the learning they've experienced in their role, or an academic course that they register for as part of the experience, the peer leader experience needs to have some kind of connection to the academic life of the university.

Clear learning outcomes and focused assessment.  It isn't enough to just claim to be providing a great learning experience for peer leaders.  It needs to be directed by well-articulated learning outcomes and documented by high-quality assessment.  

High-impact peer leadership experiences are already happening on a number of campuses, but for peer leadership to really emerge as a truly high-impact practice, institutions need to approach it as such.  Considering the above issues will be a great start.

The Power of Productive Time Off: What would a sabbatical for undergraduate students look like?

I have a confession -- I'm really bad at relaxing, taking breaks, going on vacation, or anything else that means
just slowing down.  Case in point:  I haven't eaten yet today, am not likely to stop for lunch (or even eat anything for that matter), and will probably get home later than I'm planing.  It's bad and I should be different.
This malady isn't unique to me, and is particularly prevalent in high intensity work environments where there is an expectation to continually crank out new ideas, products, and programs.  A few weeks ago, I watched a TED talk from +Stefan Sagmeister, in which he argues for the value of extended periods of time off and shares his practice of taking every seventh year off to rejuvenate his creative outlook as a designer.  Sagmeister's shop shuts down completely every seven years and he takes off for some kind of exotic place.  But, he isn't just lying on the beach sipping fruit drinks.  He's relaxing in productive ways that mean he comes back at the end of the year with ideas and projects that drive his work for the next six years.

Watching the talk did two things:  (1) made me feel guilty for not being better at taking time off and (2) made me wonder what an undergraduate student sabbatical might look like.

Sabbaticals (or "professional development leaves" if you're at BYU where we rename everything), have been a long standing tradition in for faculty members in academia. The goal is to provide time and space for a faculty member to increase expertise, enhance creativity, or take a deep dive into research.  Because I'm not in a faculty position and never been on one of these leaves, I can't comment on whether or not they are truly renewing in the hoped for ways (I'd imagine that varies from person to person), but I'm willing to believe that it's a good thing.

So, if it's good for faculty, might it also be good for students?

An initial response from many might be that we already provide students with these opportunities through study abroad programs and internships.  Fair enough.  I'm willing to accept that some of these opportunities have the effect of truly being renewing and rejuvenating for students in ways that truly contribute to their academic experience.  But, the reality is that study abroad programs and internships touch only a small segment of the student population and, in many cases, are cost prohibitive.

What I'm softly arguing for is consideration of some sort of extended sabbatical as a required aspect of  the undergraduate experience and that drives students toward more productive outcomes in the one, two, or three years after their sabbatical experience.  My sense is that this sort of thing is happening in pockets on innovative, small, liberal arts campuses.  So, if you know about those schools, please let me know so that I can learn from them.

Until then, I'll just have to guess at what the characteristics of this kind of experience might be:

1.  Intentional alignment with institutional goals.  Because we've been told we have to by accrediting bodies, we all have learning outcomes and institutional aims.  The sabbatical should provide an opportunity for students to both explore these outcomes and demonstrate their progress toward fulfilling them.

2.  Flexibility.  For the undergraduate sabbatical to hold meaning for students, they need to take personal responsibility in crafting their experience (just like a faculty member would).  While study abroad or an internship might be what they select, students will come up with much more educative experiences if they are given the autonomy to design their own experience.

3.  Accountability and Support.  This characteristic serves as the necessary balance to #2 above.  Most students will need some guidance and support in developing a sabbatical experience.  Further, a simple set of criteria for evaluating and approving proposed sabbaticals will provide helpful constraint to students as they are making decisions, as well as ensure that sabbaticals meet their educational purposes.  Some kind of formal proposal process should be developed (perhaps a simplified version of the thesis/dissertation defense process).

4.  Accessibility.  Well resourced and well connected students are already having these kinds of experiences.  Institutions need to find ways to extend this opportunity to the rest of the student body.  This, of course, will involve finding ways to provide funding for experiences that take a student off-campus.  But, it also means providing advisement support (either through professional advisors or faculty advisors) to help students explore and identify suitable experiences, and then navigate the process.

5.  Immersion.  For a sabbatical to be both restful and impactful, it needs to be long enough and involved enough that a student truly becomes immersed in a project, new way of living, etc.  A year might be too long, but two weeks is definitely too short.

6.  Thoughtful consideration of timing.  Taking a sabbatical during a student's first semester or first year might be too soon because they may not have a refined enough idea for what type of experience they need and want.  Likewise, a sabbatical too late in a student's experience means they won't be able to bring their learning back to campus and use it to shape and inform the rest of their experience.  The ideal time seems to be after the first year, but before the fourth year.

7.  Bookends to both prepare and debrief students.  The first year could be spent helping students develop a plan and proposal for their sabbatical.  This would also engage them with faculty members and staff who serve as mentors, involve them in consideration of key questions about what they want to learn and how, and provide direction for decisions about first-year course registration -- all things we want first-year students doing anyway.  So, in many ways, providing students with the responsibility of developing this kind of plan can nudge them toward a whole constellation of  high-impact practices and behaviors during their first year.

When students return, they can be involved in a similar set of high-impact practices, including developing an integrative report/portfolio/project that reports on their learning and maps out next steps for using their sabbatical as a springboard toward future learning (both at the institution and beyond).


It would be a lot of work and take adaptation for each individual practice, but the "undergraduate sabbatical" would be a way of transforming the undergraduate experience and bringing new meaning and relevance to everything else that a student does during their experience.

New Student Orientation as an "Inoculation" for the realities of the college experience

As I've argued before on this blog, student affairs and higher education professionals are often overly
preoccupied with making new students feel comfortable when they arrive on campus for new student orientation.  Of course, it's important that students feel safe and supported as they begin their college experience.  However, we often have a fairly narrow definition of what a safe and supportive environment looks like--one that emphasizes comfort, hyper-positive messaging, and reassurances that "things will be fine" and "you'll do great."

While this approach to orienting new students provides initial feelings of safety, it fails to consider what is required for newcomers to feel safe and supported after the honeymoon phase has ended and they find themselves in the midst of the realities of the college experience.  At that point, what new students need is an accurate understanding of what to expect, including the "warts and all" description of the challenges that they're likely to face.

In their most recent book, Decisive, the Heath brothers describe the idea of the "realistic job preview" and its value in combating the problem of employee turnover and hiring mismatches.  The idea behind this approach is to make sure that job applicants really understand what they're getting into, by providing cautions, warnings, and simulations that "expose people to a small dose of organizational reality" (see Jean Phillips research in the Academy of Management Journal).

Realistic job previews have been proven by a large research literature to reduce turnover.  Like I did, you're probably thinking "of course turnover went down--people stopped taking the job."  While that's true in some cases, the effect of "dropouts" in the recruitment or new hire phases is actually quite small.  In fact, in many of the studies reviewed by Phillips, people more no more likely to drop out of the recruitment process that recruits who weren't exposed to the realistic preview.  

Instead, realistic job previews seem to be effective because of the way that they "inoculate" new hires against shock, disappointment, and frustration.  In short, when new members of an organization have a realistic view of the challenges they should expect, they aren't quite so alarmed or taken back when they encounter hard experiences.

Here's the interesting implication for New Student Orientation:  realistic job previews seem to reduce turnover even when they're given after an employee is hired.  The message here is that realistic previews don't just help people make better choices about what job to take (or, for those in higher ed, which school to attend), they help people more effectively cope with the difficulties and challenges that they are certain to encounter.  Not only do realistic previews decrease turnover, they increase satisfaction.

So what does this mean for New Student Orientation programming?  First, we should do a better job of talking about the hard things that we know (from both experience and the research) students will encounter (time management struggles, homesickness, issues in the residence halls, substance abuse, etc.).  This should move beyond discussion of abstract challenges and include real stories, of real people, and the real challenges they've faced.  Whether it's orientation leaders sharing stories of the challenges they've faced (if you go this route, be sure to provide training and scaffolding so that they're sharing the kinds of stories you want) or faculty members and administrators sharing stories from their own undergraduate experience, students need to be exposed to the hard things they'll be facing during their first year (check out what Stanford is doing to leverage the power of stories in preparing students for challenges).

Second, and more importantly, new student orientation (whether you define that as a one or two day program or a more extended orientation in the form of a first-year seminar or peer leader program) should trigger students coping mechanisms by engaging them in thinking and planning about how they'll react when the challenges come.  These mental simulations and reflections are what really provide the inoculation students need because it prepares them with a concrete plan they can implement when they've failed their first exam, heard about a tragedy at home, or realized their roommate is an alcoholic.

So, to sum up, here's a set of recommendations for student affairs professionals who want to "inoculate" students during new student orientation:

• Be real -- make sure students understand what to expect during their first year of college





Use stories to provide understanding of (a) what to expect and (b) how others have responded to the challenges they should expect to face






Provide opportunities for students to reflect on the challenges they anticipate facing and, most importantly, how they'll respond

Clearly, what we're currently doing to retain students and encourage persistence isn't working.  And, I can't help but wonder if part of the problem is that students haven't been sufficiently inoculated for the college experience.  Ultimately, a safe and supportive environment includes a clear understanding of expectations, not just well-meaning (but hollow) messaging about how "you're great," "you'll do fine," and "don't worry."