Rethinking What Student Support Should Look Like
When I look back on my career, one of the most important things I learned is that student support cannot be an afterthought. It cannot be a set of disconnected services that students are expected to find on their own. It has to be built into the structure of the institution itself.
Students do not experience college in neat categories like “academic advising,” “tutoring,” or “disability services.” They experience it as a whole environment. When that environment is confusing or fragmented, students struggle. When it is coherent and integrated, students are far more likely to succeed.
Much of the work I did at Lehman College and Bard College, and now as an independent educational consultant, has focused on trying to make that environment more coherent.
The Problem With Fragmented Support Systems
Students Do Not Know What They Do Not Know
One of the most persistent challenges in higher education is that students often do not know what support exists for them. Even when strong services are in place, students may not know how or when to access them or may be scared or embarrassed to do so..
This is especially true for first-generation students. If you have not seen someone navigate college systems before, it can be difficult to recognize when you need support or how to ask for it.
Silos Create Barriers
At many institutions, support services are organized into separate offices. Advising is in one place, tutoring in another, disability services somewhere else. Each office may do excellent work, but the separation itself can become a barrier.
Students are then expected to navigate these silos on their own, often while also managing academic and personal pressures. For many students, it is an unrealistic expectation.
Building Instructional Support Services and the Learning Commons
A More Integrated Model
One of the most meaningful initiatives I worked on at Lehman was the integration of several campus tutoring centers – each with its own director, budget, reporting structure, etc. – into a single program. We did much the same thing at Bard when we created the Academic Resources Center (now the Learning Commons). On both campuses, the idea was to bring together different forms of academic support into a shared space and a more connected system.
Rather than treating tutoring, writing support, and academic guidance as separate services offered in separate places, we aimed to create an environment where students could move more naturally between them. The goal was not just convenience. It was clarity.
Making Support Visible and Accessible
A key principle behind these innovations was visibility. Support only works if students can see it and understand it. We worked to design spaces and systems where students would encounter support as part of their everyday academic life, not as something separate or hidden.
When students see support as part of the normal structure of college, they are more likely to use it early, before small challenges become big problems.
Academic Advising as a Central Practice
Advising Beyond Course Selection
Academic advising is often misunderstood as a scheduling exercise. In reality, it is one of the most important forms of student support an institution can offer.
At Bard, I worked on developing advising practices that went beyond simply helping students choose courses: we helped them understand how their academic choices connect to their broader goals and experiences, and how those goals and experiences connect to their academic interests.
Advising should also help students make sense of the institution itself. College is full of systems and expectations that are not always obvious. Advising is one of the places where those systems can be explained and humanized.
Building Relationships Over Time
Effective advising depends on relationships. Students need to feel that their advisor knows them and is invested in their progress. This does not happen in a single meeting. It develops over time, through consistent conversation and engagement.
When the advising relationship is strong, students are more likely to ask questions, share concerns, and seek guidance early. That can make a significant difference in their experience of college.
Designing Systems That Work for Real Students
Starting From Student Experience
My work has privileged the student experience. When developing a new system, policy, procedure, program, I ask: What does this look like from the student’s point of view?
It is easy to design systems based on administrative convenience. It is harder to design them based on how students actually move through their day, where they get confused, and when they need help.
When we start from the student experience, we often discover gaps that are not visible from an institutional perspective.
Reducing Friction
This entails reducing friction. Every extra step a student has to take to get help increases the chance that they will not get it.
This might mean creating a ‘one-stop shop’. It might mean simplifying referral processes or making it easier for students to move between advising and academic support. Small changes in programmatic and physical structure can have a large impact on student behavior.
The Role of Faculty and Staff Collaboration
Shared Responsibility
Student support is the work of the campus community, not a single office. . It requires collaboration among faculty, advisors, and staff. Each group sees different parts of the student experience, and each has something important to contribute.
When communication among these groups is strong, students receive more consistent guidance. When it is weak, students often receive mixed messages or fall through gaps.
Creating a Culture of Attention
One of the most important cultural shifts is encouraging everyone on campus to see themselves as part of the student support system. A faculty member noticing a struggling student, a staff member offering guidance, or an advisor following up at the right time can all make a difference.What I Learned From This Work
Systems Shape Behavior
One of the clearest lessons I have learned is that systems shape behavior. If support is hard to find, students will delay using it. If it is easy to access and well integrated, they will use it earlier and more often.
Design matters. Structure matters. The way we organize our campuses and institutions has real consequences for student outcomes.
Good Support Feels Natural
The best support systems do not feel like extra work for students. They feel like a natural part of the college experience. Students should not have to figure out where to go for help. The system should guide them there.
Conclusion
My work has never been about adding more services for the sake of adding services.. It has been about creating environments where students could navigate college with greater clarity and confidence.
When institutions are designed with students at the center, support becomes not just an entry in the college catalog , but something students can reliably find and use as part of their everyday experience.