L&AD: Student Experience

Goal

As a student-centered institution, F&M will strengthen residential learning, support students’ health and wellbeing, and empower students to engage in an inclusive and joyful community, building lifelong connections while exploring their individual interests.

Objectives & Activities

1. Pursue inclusive excellence through academic and co-curricular programs that challenge students and support their personal development and success.

   1. Centralize additional student support services.

   2. Create closer alignment between academic and career advising.

   3. Support integration of co-curricular experiences into courses.
       

2. Prioritize student activities, organizations, athletics, recreation, and entertainments that support a sense of belonging, build affinity and community, and cultivate campus pride.

   1. ​Build traditions with and for students that create a sense of belonging and connection.

   2. Support athletics activities that build community and campus pride.

   3. Establish an intercultural space that brings together groups of different faiths, cultures, and ethnicities.

   4. Expand campus-wide programming that brings students together around common cultural themes.

   5. Enhance College House activities that support belonging and community.
       

3. Create greater and more purposeful mentoring connections for students with faculty, professional staff, student peers, members of the Lancaster community, and alumni.

   1. Create a speaker series or program for professional staff and community members through which students can learn about potential career paths.

   2. Coordinate and strengthen existing alumni mentoring programs. Increase student access to these programs.

   3. Assess and build on peer-mentoring structures to improve belonging.
       

4. Revise policies and practices to better support students’ health and wellbeing.

   1. ​Encourage and empower students to prioritize their own health and wellness.

   2. Increase students’ awareness of and access to health and wellness-related programs and services.

   3. Increase support for recreation and intramural sports.

   4. Ensure all student populations are served effectively by health and wellness programs.

   5. Maintain and expand training for faculty and professional staff to best support students’ mental health and wellbeing.
       

5. Embrace and amplify F&M’s global identity and cultural fluency through enhanced diversity among and support for international students, better connections with the College’s international community of students, scholars, and neighbors, and expanded opportunities for study and experiential learning abroad.

   1. ​Recruit international students from a broad range of countries and regions.

   2. Expand opportunities for engagement between domestic and international students.

   3. Work with international alumni to identify mentorship and networking opportunities for students, including internships.

   4. Facilitate opportunities to engage with globalized Lancaster.

   5. Reduce curricular and co-curricular barriers to off-campus study.
       

6. Better engage students with the Lancaster community and surrounding region.

   1. ​Formalize collaborations and connections between units, offices, and student organizations that focus on community engagement.

   2. Create pathways to encourage students to enter the workforce in Lancaster; continue to build connections with community employers.