The boarding schools Seun Balogun went to in Nigeria and Hamilton, Ont. neatly set out his instructional day.
“It wasn’t complicated, I always I had my schedule set up for me,” says Balogun, now a third-year student at the University of Waterloo.
Then, in his early days as a first-year student, he picked up his course plan, saw wide gaps between classes and wondered what he would do with all that free time.
That airy schedule started to become an abyss as he struggled with the new person he had so quickly become: An independent adult responsible for the choices he made to fill his day.
“I panicked a lot,” Balogun says. “The thing is, you learn to deal with it. Now I don’t have as much time, but I’m doing more stuff.”
Seun Balogun knows the social and academic challenges students can face when they first set out on their own. He's made it his mission to provide advice and guidance to incoming students, including Behrooz Shafiee Sarjaz, as part of Waterloo's International Peer Mentors Program.
Balogun’s story of shock and adjustment is typical among first-year students, and a key reason why Waterloo sets up an array of supportive programs for young men and women who find themselves edging toward that abyss, if not slipping into it.
Balugon credits his don, friends he made in the African Students’ Association, course advisers, his family and friends of family for helping him find his path. They often pointed him to on-campus support services.
Six weeks into school he changed programs, dropping computer science for a choice that has made him a lot happier — math and economics.
Today, others seek him out when they feel themselves losing traction. For two years, Balogun has been a SHADOW — Student Hosts and Delegates of Waterloo — helping international students deal with the social and academic challenges of learning in a different land. Starting in 2013, the name of the program has changed to International Peer Mentors.
Different needs, different services
While they change in name and form, student support programs begin at recruitment and follow the student until he or she leaves the university community.
Services weave across academic and administrative departments. They range from faculty advisers offering counselling on course selection, to mentors helping entrepreneurial students develop an idea into a marketable product.
They ease students into campus life by providing a package of ice-breaking events during Orientation Week.
Co-op, which lies at the heart of the learning experience for 16,500 students in 120 programs at Waterloo, provides its own package of support to prepare students for work placements. Most of this is done through the Co-operative Education & Career Action Centre.
A recent review placed mental-health care as a key component in the university’s push for excellence. Through Campus Wellness, students find care and comfort when they face problems beyond anyone’s scope to manage alone. Most of the assistance available on the second floor of the new Health Services Centre is focused on mental health.
Students come to university at an age when mental-health problems are most likely to surface. Research indicates that one per cent of first-year students in Canadian post-secondary schools attempt suicide. Six per cent give it some thought.
Easier access
Student well-being is so important at Waterloo that a number of key services have been brought together — and new ones developed — under a recently formed administrative department, the Student Success Office.
That process began in 2010. By September 2011, the re-organized office on the second floor of South Campus Hall was ready to help.
Incoming students at Waterloo are demographically different than the same group 20 years ago. They are younger, on average, by a year. The last Grade 13 class graduated with their Grade 12 schoolmates in 2003.
“That can be huge in terms of maturity,” says Sean Van Koughnett, director, Student Success Office. “Maturity can be as important to success as academic ability.”
Changing demographics in Canada, and Waterloo’s focus on attracting international students, also means the cohort is more ethnically diverse. Many incoming students, meanwhile, try to fit paying jobs into their schedules, just as they did in high school. Most bring with them the high expectations of parents.
It amounts to a lot of pressure, says Van Koughnett, and progressive schools don’t take a sink-or-swim attitude. Giving students what they need for success is a key element of President Feridun Hamdullahpur’s leadership, he says.
“This in not about lowering our standards,” Van Koughnett said. “It’s about maintaining our standards, while providing supports.”
Waterloo’s Department of Athletics uses a form of success coaching to support the 600 students competing under the Warriors logo across 32 teams. They face some added challenges, says Chris Gilbert, interuniversity sport manager. Besides keeping up with their studies, they’ve got practices to attend and games to play.
“If they are going to be successful, especially with the rigours of a Waterloo curriculum, those challenges need to be identified quite early,” Gilbert says. “We tell them to map out their term right now. In three weeks, they’ve got a mid-term. And it’s not the same as high school.”
Athletes are generally good about time-management because they’ve grown up with schedules, he says. But as top performers, they may be reluctant to admit when they’re overwhelmed. During orientation, Gilbert says, athletes are told about support services and encouraged to seek advice from senior teammates and coaches. The department tracks marks so that it can advise coaches to check in with players whose grades start slipping.
Great expectations
Waterloo sends representatives overseas, across Canada and to 600 secondary schools in Ontario to talk to senior students about what the university offers. Its booth at the annual Ontario Universities Fair, a three-day event in Toronto at the end of September, covers 3,000 square feet. The fair attracted 118,000 people last year.
“We don’t try to hide the fact that we are a rigorous place to study,” says Julie Kalbfleisch, associate director of communications, Marketing and Undergraduate Recruitment.
Face to face or online, Waterloo presents itself as a strong academic institution with a lively campus life, and lots of support for success.
“We have high admission averages, and that’s something that’s known about us,” says Kalbfleisch. “So we attract the best students. Then all of sudden they’re here, and I think it’s challenging because they are surrounded by the best of the best. It can be tough.”
Blogging for the soul
Last year, Kalbfleisch lined up several students who started at Waterloo in September to blog about typical first-year experiences.
Posts deal with such issues as assignment pressures, the joy of a snow day and how to clean a “gross” shower head.
“It shows the real picture, but it gives students the understanding that things can work out, even if they didn’t start out the way they thought they were going to,” says Kalbfleisch.
Danlynn Tang says she gets as much benefit from blogging as others do relating to her posts. A first-year math and accounting student who came to Waterloo with an average in the nineties, Tang said her course load, distance from home (Ottawa) and natural shyness occasionally pushed her to tears in the busy weeks following the thrill of orientation.
Blogging, she says, widened her comfort zone, and she found a network of support among fellow bloggers.
“It’s nice seeing things through another student’s perspective, how they’re coping with the transition, and comparing their experience to mine,” she says.
Tang says she sees a big difference in the person she was in September and the person she has become.
“I just never imagined myself calling banks and arranging housing,” says Tang, as she looks ahead to her second year.
Most first-year students return to Waterloo. Retention is just above 90 per cent.
But, says Van Koughnett of the Student Success Office, retention is but one indicator of student success. The level of engagement and satisfaction students have throughout their experience is equally important. All these measures are impacted by the entirety of the student experience, not just what happens in the classroom. The approach to engaging and developing our students is a holistic one, grounded in research that shows that success in academics and life are dependent on not only “what you know” but “who you become.” Attributes such as maturity, confidence, integrity, perseverance and work ethic are developed through a range of experiences both inside and outside the classroom.
In the end, retention, engagement and satisfaction all come down to fit — whether the academic, career and social environment is one that matches the goals, abilities and motivation of the student. Sometimes, Van Koughnett says, coaching a student to success may mean that the student will conclude that there is a better fit somewhere else.
In the meantime, the Student Success Office counts on people like Seun Balogun to help students feel at home at Waterloo. As an International Peer Mentor, he meets regularly with his assigned students — one from Iran, two from China.
Their talks over dinner or coffee range from the joys and frustrations of courses, to making sense of jokes in English.
Balogun says he has grown from the experience, too, gaining leadership skills, a broadened cultural outlook and something else.
“It’s the satisfaction of helping somebody change their outlook on university,” he says.
The Right Fit
Feeling at ease in residence is as important to success as feeling good in class
Sometimes he’s a mediator. Sometimes he’s resumé coach. He is always a good listener.
For five terms, Amer Abu-Khajil has been a University of Waterloo don, an upper-year student who, besides working toward a degree, helps other students cross rough terrain on their own way to success.
“A lot of our role is pointing students to resources — I’m not a counsellor,’’ says Abu-Khajil, a fourth-year civil engineering student. “A big part of what we do is follow-up: ‘Did you have a chance to see somebody? What was the outcome? Is there anything I can do as a don?’”
This year, Abu-Khajil is among almost 100 dons at Waterloo. He lives in Columbia Lake Village South, which has a mix of first-year and upper-year students. It’s one of five on-campus communities.
Dons are supported by residence life co-ordinators, community co-ordinators and other staff at Housing and Residences, the department providing on-campus housing for more than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students.
Together they keep the link between housing and achievement taut and secure. The department’s lead brochure bears the title, Students Success, and staff operate under a theme — “The Right Fit,” with a mission statement that stresses personal and academic success for students. Students have people to talk to, outlets for stress relief, opportunities to live and study with classmates in similar programs, and lots of internet connectivity.
“Residence life is one of the most recognized elements of the university experience,’’ says Alex Piticco, director, Student Development and Residence Life. “One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is the importance of peer mentors — students who have been through it.”
Abu-Khajil and his residence-life teammates organize such events as karaoke nights, coffee houses and movie nights to build a sense of belonging. Drawn into a conflict, they urge each side to view the issue from the other’s perspective, then encourage both to come up with a joint solution.
Besides taking away a bachelor of applied science degree, Abu-Khajil expects to leave Waterloo in April with a solid set of people skills.
“When they finish here, they are very capable, competent professionals,’’ Piticco says of his team of dons. “They, at times, deal with very heavy stuff.”
Some of the ways Waterloo supports student success:
- Working with the Federation of Students and faculties, Student Success helps about 6,700 students flow into first year
- Support services — including SHADOW, now known as International Peer Mentors — are offered to about 4,500 international students
- The Writing Centre assisted 2,000 students — under-graduates and graduates — with assignments in 2012
- VeloCity enables entrepreneurial students to live and innovate collectively as they try out ideas for new products
- Success Coaching, launched in 2011, offers one-on-one mentoring to help students set academic, career and life goals
- Connecting with students online or through group sessions keeps administrators tuned into state of the student experience at Waterloo.
