Belonging Champions
Belonging Champions Program Overview
The Belonging Champions program is made up of faculty communities of transformation centered in care, dialogue, problem-solving, and praxis. The program seeks to build relationships between faculty members and explore student success from the dimension of key conditions for thriving, such as belonging. Participants in these communities of transformation have the opportunity to apply easy-lift, high-impact, evidence-based practices shown to improve student belonging and success, to gather real time student feedback on the key conditions for thriving, to explore the larger contexts in which this work occurs, and to empower efforts to support student success in the classroom and beyond. All full-time and part-time faculty teaching at least one course are eligible to apply.
Key Learning Conditions
The Belonging Champions Program is centered on evidence-based learning conditions that have been shown to support success for all students, as highlighted by the
- Social Belonging
- Trust and Fairness
- Institutional Asset Mindset
- Self-Efficacy
- Welcoming Environment for all Students
- Social Connectedness
- Purpose and Relevance
Expectations
The expectations for community participants are as follows:
- Availability to meet for orientation meetings and weekly community meetings.
- Willingness to implement evidence-based practices to improve belonging and student success in at least one of your concurrent semester courses.
- Use of a validated online survey tool to gather formative feedback from students that can be used in real time to improve the student experience in your classes.
- Commitment to engage as a full member of a Belonging Champions community of transformation, working together to explore and confront difficult issues, sharing ideas and supporting each other in our work.
Application
Application for the spring program will be available soon
Leadership Team
This program was developed through the collaboration of a leadership team, including Denise Bartell, Jenny Marcinkiewicz, Nicole Willey, Eric Taylor, Hayley Arnold, Charmaine Crawford, and Francisco Torres. The program is modeled on
For more information, contact one of the following:
- Denise Bartell, dbartell@kent.edu
- Jenny Marcinkiewicz, jmarcink@kent.edu
- Nicole Willey, nwilley@kent.edu
Belonging Champions Origins
The Kent State University Belonging Champions program is grounded in work from the Student Experience Project . Belonging Champions program has utilized the “by faculty, for faculty†vision for these communities developed out of this prior work, even as we have adapted it for our Kent State context.
Our work takes an evidence-driven approach to creating learning conditions in the classroom that can improve pathways to student success for all. A central part of our community is utilizing a set of easy-lift, high-impact classroom practices derived from research conducted by leading scholars in the field of social psychology who have evaluated interventions that support student experience, including Mary Murphy, David Yaeger & Greg Walton, Carol Dweck, and Claude Steele. This research is part of a larger base of empirical research supporting the importance of the student experience in improving outcomes for college students.
During the spring and summer of 2023, a development team crafted the vision, goals and model for Kent State Belonging Champions communities of transformation, with an initial focus on the regional campus system. The leadership team consisted of faculty and administrators from across Kent State (see: /ctl/belonging-champions for a complete list of leadership team members).
Through exploration of relevant literature and peer models, centering of the larger system of higher education, and taking into consideration the unique contexts and culture of Kent State University and the regional system, the development team sought, with Belonging Champions, to create meaningful learning experiences for all of our students. We sought to create learning conditions where all students belong, are respected, and trust that we believe in their capacity to learn and grow. We believed the best way to do so was to work together, in community, to create those conditions for each other, and to center the voices of our students. The goals of the project for the regional system were to increase student persistence and retention, decrease DFW rates, and build social connections among faculty in the communities, including between campuses, as well as between faculty and students and among students. 
A key aspect of Belonging Champions is providing faculty with real-time data on students’ experiences in their courses through the Ascend survey. Ascend, developed through the SEP by an ed-tech nonprofit organization called PERTS, is a thoroughly validated survey, utilized by dozens of colleges and universities across the U.S., to assess student experience on the evidence-based key learning conditions addressed in the SEP, including belonging, instructor growth mindset, and self-efficacy. Champions survey their students three times a semester. Course reports generated through PERTS, the results of which are available only to instructors, help identify opportunities for improvement of student experience in that course, data which instructors can then use to identify and implement evidence-based classroom practices that address the learning conditions they seek to improve.
Another important aspect of Belonging Champions is the centering of community as a key lever for real and sustained change in higher education, both in the classroom and beyond. Faculty champions come together each week in small communities, co-led by faculty facilitators who have previously participated as champions, to learn together and support each other in service of creating learning environments that value the assets all students bring to the learning experience and support each student’s ability to learn and grow.
Fall 2023 Pilot
In Fall 2023, twelve faculty champions from across the regional campus system were recruited to participate in a pilot community through outreach to the regional campus deans. Deans identified faculty who were campus leaders with a demonstrated commitment to student success.  Our pilot community was facilitated by our leadership team in the Fall 2023 semester. We sought to create a space where all faculty felt as if they belonged and were working together, as part of a supportive community, to create learning conditions in their classrooms that fostered the thriving of all students. As a linguistic cue for our unique approach, we began to call our weekly engagements with champions “gatheringsâ€, not meetings.
During the fall 2023 semester, the leadership team held weekly development meetings, planning for upcoming gatherings and thinking ahead to the spring term. We strove to take a continuous improvement approach in the development of our communities, intentionally gathering and using information from the pilot semester to inform program revision, an approach that continues to be a mainstay of our work with the communities. During the pilot semester, for example, although we started with detailed plans for each meeting, based on mid-semester feedback and learnings from the first gatherings we pivoted to a three-question model that focuses on faculty experience, exploration of key learning conditions, and discussion of relevant classroom practices. 
In addition to these efforts, the University Teaching Council supported an institution-wide Student Belonging Faculty Incentive program from fall 2023 through fall 2024. This grant provided faculty the opportunity to learn some of the foundational practices from the Student Experience Project, gain experience with the Ascend survey, and meet with other faculty two to three times over the course of a semester to discuss their learning.  
Regional System Expansion
Utilizing the learning from the fall 2023 pilot to inform key revisions to our model, in spring 2024 we expanded Belonging Champions to seven regional system communities with 14 facilitators and 82 faculty champions from every campus in the regional system. This expansion was supported via one-time funds for the Regional Campus System, under the leadership of Vice President Peggy Shadduck.
We created Canvas spaces for each community that included materials that facilitators use to guide their weekly gatherings. We continue to meet weekly with all facilitators to make plans for the coming week, adapt to faculty needs, and troubleshoot any problems. At the end of the spring 2024 semester, we held a celebration for all Belonging Champions at the Stark Campus. Dozens of champions, the leadership team, campus deans, and other regional staff and administrators came together to recognize the deep commitment Belonging Champions have for this work and their communities. We also created a Belonging Champions advisory council, charged with providing guidance on program goals and components, supporting continuous improvement efforts, including consultation on assessment, and representing the work to university and larger communities. Members, including faculty, staff and administrators from the entire institution and faculty who have participated as champions, serve two-year staggered terms.
During the fall of 2024, five regional communities, including ten facilitators and 49 champions, participated in Belonging Champions. Through fall 2024, 127 regional faculty have participated in Belonging Champions (for a list of all participants, please see: /ctl/belonging-champions). Additionally, as an outgrowth of one-time funds provided by President Diacon for Regional Campus support, a group of experienced champions were identified to lead initiatives that move Belonging Champions forward in a sustainable way, particularly as we anticipate the end of these one-time funds. Two champions, Leslie Heaphy and Jessica Leveto, worked on creation and curation of additional practices that will provide a more extensive library of practices for instructors. Another team, Marty Daniels, Shelley Marshall, and Eric Taylor, worked on ongoing engagement around lighter-touch extensions of knowledge and community; they also planned our second Belonging Champions Celebration. In addition, six groups of faculty formed Changemaker Teams to extend the learning from Belonging Champions in ways that effect substantive change within key courses. For more information, contact ctl@kent.edu.  
Movement to the Entire Kent System
In spring 2025, we launched Belonging Champions for Kent campus faculty. Through funding from the University Teaching Council, two of our five communities, co-facilitated by Kent and Regional campus faculty, were dedicated to Kent campus faculty, with 58 total faculty participating this spring. Our goal moving forward is for fully integrated communities, with Regional and Kent campus faculty working and learning together, and supporting each other, in their efforts to create learning conditions that support positive student experience. We have three communities scheduled for Fall 2025 with six facilitators and 30 champions scheduled to do this work.
Goals and Assessment: Forthcoming
Since its inception, Belonging Champions leadership, planners, and advisory council members have been shaping our assessment plan, which is based on holistic assessment, with a focus on continuous improvement. Our goals for students are to build a strong and supportive learning environment that attends to students’ needs for belonging, to increase persistence and retention and to decrease DFW rates. Our goals for faculty include pedagogical growth and reflection, social connections between faculty and students, and building authentic learning communities for faculty across campuses and disciplines. Measures that we are using to evaluate the program and work toward continuous improvement are the validated survey that demonstrates student experience, end-of-semester faculty self-report surveys, and institutional data that can help us determine student retention, success, and persistence. As reports beyond the pilot semester become available, we will share our findings here.  
“Participating in this program has heightened my awareness of the compelling research findings that emphasize the pivotal role of belonging in students' academic journey.â€
Sarah Andreas
“Any doubts I might have had (I’ll admit to some, not many, but certainly some) regarding a focused approach to reaching students and modifying pedagogy or simply my own classroom behavior quickly subsided as I saw the results in my students. . . . .The community itself is a welcome bright spot – the support, compassion, and understanding from other instructors is particularly valuable.â€
Wayne McDonald
“Being a part of the initial cohort of Belonging Champions has been a positive experience. It has helped me grow professionally since I have reflectively examined my classroom practices in the Belonging Champions structure. There are elements that have been affirmed and others that I had not considered. I have changed some practices and added others.â€
Marty Daniels
“The Belonging Champions program fosters a sense of camaraderie among the participants that really feels like we’re all striving for similar goals across our various disciplines and classes. We are encouraged to reflect on our own courses and policies to make our classrooms places where students can feel they truly belong and succeed.â€
Scott Tobias
“I learned how to make small changes that help welcome and support students by communicating belonging and in turn enhancing their ability. I changed many of my policies to be more flexible and I removed some of the common identified student roadblocks.â€
Kay Amey
“We can’t control the lives of our students outside the classroom- they come to us as they are, and they deal with all kinds of struggles that we sometimes don’t know about. The program helps identify ways that we can reframe our mindset and establish better classroom behaviors to help our students be successful. We can’t change their home situations or what they learned before they came to us- we can absolutely change our classroom policies to help them be successful."
Bryan Jones 
“Being a member of the inaugural Belonging Champions Community of Transformation has immeasurably impacted my teaching. Although I have been committed to trauma-informed teaching for many years now, my work has been mostly on my own, so the structure and the support of this community served to enhance my pedagogy as well as my personal commitment and belonging. Most specifically, I learned to view myself as both a facilitator and a member of my classroom belonging community, as a writing teacher, a writer, and as a first-generation college student who spent her freshman year of college in a state of uncertainty and confusion. I've learned to share my vulnerabilities with my students as a way of fostering their growth mindset, and honestly, my own growth mindset, too.â€â€¯
Kristine Harrington
“Belonging Champions has given me the opportunity to carve out time in my week to think about what I can do to make my course more inclusive, so ALL my students feel like they can grow as learners and succeed in the course. While providing a nurturing environment has always been part of my pedagogy, being in Belonging Champions pushed me to be more intentional about developing strategies that make my students feel like they belong..â€â€¯â€¯  
Ana Wetzl
“Mathematics is the least favorite subject of many students. As a math professor, I find that it is more challenging to engage students to learn math than to teach math contents. This “Belonging Champion†program is very beneficial and effective. I learned many useful ideas and strategies that I can use to engage students to learn math and help them to fit in the math learning community. â€â€¯
Min He
Spring 2025 Cohort
Facilitators are marked with a *
|
|
| |
| Belonging Champions Groups funded by the University Teaching Council (UTC) | |
|
|
Fall 2023- Inaugural Community of Transformation
- Katherine Amey, Ashtabula
- Sarah Andreas, Tuscarawas
- Ginger Bihn-Coss, Tuscarawas
- Martha Daniels, Stark
- Rebecca Frazier, Geauga
- Kristine Harrington, Salem
- Min He, Trumbull
- Bryan Jones, Ashtabula
- Velvet Landingham, Geauga
- Wayne McDonald, Stark
- Scott Tobias, Stark
- Ana Wetzl, Trumbul
Spring 2024 Champions
Organized by Cohort
|
|
|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
Fall 2024 Champions
Organized by Cohort
|
|
|
|
|