Meeting of the Minds

“Collaboration” – Bresciani et al

            Collaboration is vital to the success of a higher education institution. To purposefully and holistically develop any student, departments need to be working with one another to ensure all needs are being met. It is likely that there may be several obstacles on the road to reaching this level of achievement.

            One of the first barriers mentioned in the book is the mindset that student learning is only achieved in the classroom with faculty. When reading that statement, I was reminded of some of the struggles my chapter went through during my undergrad years. Our campus advisor was receiving negative feedback from professors about Greek men and women being late to class, not focusing, etc. and we needed to take a stance to show that our chapter’s members were not the type of men that would slack off academically. We asked two faculty to become our new chapter advisors and that helped them see all that we do outside of classes. It also gave them information to share with their peers so that the image of Greeks on campus would become more positive.

            I think motivation is an important factor in collaborating, especially with faculty and staff. Both faculty and staff do their job requirements and to go above and beyond, there would need to be some buy-in for them. Personally, motivation comes from personal accounts and relationships and so having students invested in the collaboration too might produce collaboration at a greater frequency.