Abstract
What is the secret to success in college? Approach most recent college graduates and they will likely tout the relationships they made during their time on campus as being a key to their success and engagement. Educators worldwide seek to provide purposeful interaction, and programs across all areas of academia explore new ways to engage students in learning. Authors Peter Felton and Leo M. Lambert propose that a relationship-rich education is key to academic success. Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College provides an agile framework for revitalizing college culture and is a valuable resource that models multiple applicable relationship-building activities and different strategies for institutional leaders to integrate into their campus culture. A strength of the text are the different examples of a relationship-rich education being applied across diverse types of higher education contexts.
Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College focuses primarily on undergraduate education and provides examples practitioners can use to transform their institutions into flourishing relational environments. The recommendations offered by these authors drew upon data obtained from 385 students, faculty, and staff from 29 different higher education institutions from across the United States. The authors provide an overview of higher education and the diverse environments that comprise each institution, particularly emphasizing the value faculty and peers bring to an academic environment.
In chapter 1, the authors offer examples of a relationship-rich undergraduate education and then introduce the framework to higher education. In particular, four guiding principles are described in considerable detail with each guiding principle followed by an example of the principle being applied in different colleges or universities.
Chapter 2, the authors discuss the challenges of creating and sustaining relationship-rich education. Readers may find content focused on the concept of the imposter syndrome to be particularly insightful, including how students may be experiencing the pressures of academic rigor for the first time. Felton and Lambert conclude the chapter by emphasizing the importance of fostering student relationships by faculty and staff, advocating that educators should strive to make visible the invisible efforts faculty and staff cultivate continuously.
In Chapter 3 the authors examine the importance of college culture in nurturing a relationship-rich education. Strategies for intentionally scaling a campus culture centered around relationship building are described with five factors highlighted.
The content offered in Chapter 4 centers around classroom experiences and relationships. Felton and Lambert observe that each faculty member creates a unique learning environment for their students and foster relationships in multiple ways. In addition to faculty-student relationships, faculty cultivate student-to-student relationships. The authors also discuss the challenges of educational environments during contentious times and conclude by illustrating how faculty work to build curricula and sustain relationships that extend beyond the classroom.
Chapter 5 presents helpful descriptions of the various programs on specific campuses that are fostering relationship-rich experiences.
Chapter 6 explores the role of mentorship opportunities. Felton and Lambert note that mentorship opportunities can be informal or formal; regardless, they can have lasting impact on student success and are more common in environments that value and practice mentoring in multiple forms. Mentoring matters and the effects can last a lifetime.
The book concludes with practical application of the principles that emerged from the research of Felton and Lambert that can be beneficial for educational leaders and practitioners in post-secondary settings.
Throughout the book, the authors weave examples from the nearly 400 interviews conducted. From urban to rural institutions, community colleges to private universities, the participants comprised the broad spectrum of higher education students, faculty, and staff. Sampling this spectrum provided the authors with the opportunity to gain a comprehensive understanding of what it means to embody a relationship-rich education. Of note is the authors’ attention on undergraduate education, given that many students leave higher education in the first semester, never to return (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). This pattern underscores the need to focus on the beneficial influence of creating a relationship-rich environment for students at the undergraduate level. In addition to insights that can be gained by campus educators, institutional leaders facing pressures from their boards, new legislation, or donors will find this text as a practical tool and resource. While Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College references multiple sources of relevant literature and includes data from a robust qualitative study, related quantitative research would be useful to substantiate the efficacy of relationship-rich education described in this book. For example, based on the data gathered from the interviews conducted, what findings led the researchers to emphasize the insights presented and in their particular order?
As educators consider how their institutions might be transformed in the direction of becoming more relationally, the four guiding principles outlined in the first chapter of this book offer measurable goals that can inform the development of desired outcomes. Practitioners looking for examples and activities that can be implemented immediately to create a more powerful campus culture for the delivery of post-secondary education will find this book as a helpful resource.