Abstract
Throughout my career in student affairs, I have known student learning happens in many contexts beyond the traditional classroom. It happens in the residential hall, the orientation circle, the one-on-one meeting with your work study student, and the community service project. It also happens in the library, on the quad, in the student center, the prayer room, the multicultural student affairs office, and as one moves around towns and cities in which colleges are situated. Students learn from each other, their families and communities, their advisors, supervisors, instructors, the professionals who work in Dining Services and Residence Life, and many others. Learning extends well beyond a simplistic transaction between instructor and student; it is more than the mere acquisition of new understanding and knowledge. To take a cue from Young and Bunting who think and write about college student transitions in this issue, learning is a process and practice of participation, community, reflection, and becoming.
My most formative learning moments during my undergraduate education were not confined to the classroom. They happened at the student protest, the campus drag show, the meeting with my Women's Studies professor, the visits back home, and the social justice dialogue event. I remember attending a first-year student retreat in undergrad where student leaders shared personal narratives about home, friendship, faith, identity, and community. Hearing their stories unveiled a critical truth about how I understood my queer self in this world, a truth I would share a year later as a student leader for the same first-year retreat. In this experience, I was not only learning from the stories of my peers, but I was also participating in a reciprocal process of sharing my own learning with others through storytelling. My engagement with this field was birthed through those informal moments of learning within and alongside relationships and community. What continues to drive me in this career is a persistent desire to continue learning, be challenged on what I think I know, and generate newfound insights about the world around me. I imagine for many of you as readers; you also have similar commitments to lifelong learning in and beyond the college experience.
To be committed to student learning is to foster learning across contexts, communities, spaces, places, and times. Learning is a continual process for and with ourselves and others. It can be a slow burn as well as a sudden burst. As Audre Lorde said in an interview with Adrienne Rich published in 1984, “the learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.” What does it mean for those of us who work in higher education to incite learning with our students? How does our work alongside students also incite learning within ourselves? How do the spaces we create spark new formations of thinking, learning, developing, and being with our students, colleagues, and administrators?
The collection of articles within this About Campus issue invites readers to reconsider our traditional conceptualizations of student learning development. The authors center and encourage new ways of thinking about student transitions, institutional transformation, mentorship, transfer students, and student leader training. As a result, the articles in this issue keep encouraging us all to think more creatively about how, when, where, and with whom student learning can (keep) happen(ing). May your own learning through these articles incite riotous thinking about how you can continue improving conditions on your college campuses for the holistic learning and development of college students.