A Winter Recipe for Creating Self-Advocating STEM Students

The time has come for you to cozy up next to the fire place and prepare for a great winter story....

Imagine, if you will, that you are a new first year student starting your university experience at an elite STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) institution.  You have come to this institution as one of the top percent of students in your high school and having rarely studied or done homework because math always comes easy to you.  Accordingly, you transferred several AP credits to your new school and have quickly been classified a college sophomore despite this being your first year on campus.

As the semester progresses, however, you begin to realize that this university business may be a little different than high school.  You begin to think about trying to find ways to learn how to study and come to accept that maybe, just maybe, Calculus 2 is harder than you thought. Upon recognizing this, you also realize that you do not know where to go to get help because you have never had to seek help before. Frantically you start to search for resources; you google and YouTube, you ask around your friends and residence hall and eventually your RA tells you about a great solution--talking to your academic advisor.  “My advisor?” you ask yourself; you have never needed an advisor before, what if people know you need their help, you wonder.

What I have described for you above is one of the normal experiences facing many new-to-campus STEM students. For many first years in STEM, learning new ways to approach class materials, assignments, and test can be a new adventure—an adventure they are not sure how to survive! This is where academic services come into play.  As academic support specialists, it is important that we begin working with students who have never needed help well before they realize they need it by empowering students to come to us. It is important that students find us so that we can normalize their experiences and remind them that they are NOT alone as they try to acclimate to the new academic standards of college.  Often, students do not realize that many of their peers are also struggling and that there are services available to assist them during these difficult times.   

In my mind, this means taking necessary steps as academic coaches and representatives of academic programs to teach students (new and returning) that self-advocacy is a critical component of success, and one must exercise it most immediately. So just how do we make a self-advocacy a standard part of the collegiate process? By striving toward and doing some of the following:  

• Ask your students early on where they might start to struggle, and what struggles they are already facing:
  • One of the first questions I usually ask a student sitting in my office is “Have you talked to your professor?” and I usually receive a blank face and a “no” as an answer.  When I push students by starting with “Why,” I am often bombarded with excuses that often stem from students not knowing how to advocate for themselves and how to ask for help.  However, it is not the student’s fault that they are unsure of how to ask for help.  Few high performing students have ever had a need to learn to ask for help before.  
• Provide students with resources that are worth their time--
  • When a student is good and ready to seek out help you will want to make sure the suggestions your provide pay off.  For many students who are asking help for the first time if they do not see the rewards more immediately, they may not continue to seek help.  One of the things I try to do is connect student with peer tutors and the professor directly as these are folks who are more likely to see them than I am as the semester goes on.  
• Follow Up!
  • Following up with STEM students can be instrumental in their success. Checking up will allow academic advisors to assess if a student is following through with receiving the help they need and continuing to practice self-advocacy. For a student asking for help for the first time, this follow up can make them feel like you care about their success.  Moreover, it reminds the student of the things you may have discussed earlier about being proactive in asking for help. (Sometimes a little guilt can go a long way—but exercise this carefully). 
• Lastly, remind students to pay it forward.
  • If you believe a student has benefited from your help (and hopefully this is true), it is important to remind them to tell their friends about the services offered on campus and how speaking up has greatly improved their academic trajectory.

I hope you found these steps helpful. The ideas provided are a recipe for student success that can work for every student when initiated early. There is no such thing as a stupid question, and when a student starts to disagree with this sentiment remind them that even Albert Einstein asked questions!!

About Amanda: Amanda is a Baltimore, Maryland native but moved to Tampa, Florida to complete her undergraduate and graduate degrees. She received her undergraduate degree from St. Leo University and her graduate degree from University of South Florida. She worked in Residence Life for a little while but new her destiny was to see the world, so she moved to Dubai, UAE to teach and advise Emiratis, while seeing the world. However, Amanda has recently turned in her flip flops for ski boots and has moved to Denver, Colorado where she works at Colorado School of Mines a an Academic Advisor for the Center of Advising and Academic Services.  She enjoys running races, traveling the world, working out at her local Crossfit Box, singing in the car, and cheering on her favorite football and baseball teams.