What do Guilford College and Noble Academy have in common? Hear from Guilford's Associate Vice President for Enrollment and Retention talk about a school that, like Noble, offers small class sizes, values student diversity, and provides academic resources to students who learn differently. It’s exciting to imagine the potential for future collaboration!
Gayle:
Today we are talking about a small school in Greensboro, North Carolina, where each individual student’s needs are valued, and resources are available to support the development of executive functioning skills. I am sure that sounds like Noble Academy, but actually today we are talking about Guilford College. I had the chance to visit recently to talk with some of Guilford’s campus leaders about what makes their school a great option for Noble grads, and how we might continue to develop the relationship between our organizations. I want to share with you just a portion of my conversation with Dr. Steve Mancini, but he says we can just call him Steve.
Steve:
My name is Steve Mancini, and I serve as the associate vice president for enrollment and retention at Guilford College. I've worked in higher education for 24 years, and at Guilford College since 2010.
There's been a number of Noble students who have come to Guilford College over the past few years and have become integral members of our community. And I really appreciate the opportunity to build the relationship between Noble and Guilford College.
I think in many ways, both places have similar aligned missions and I love that we've been able to build this relationship over the years so that way more Noble students can come receive the excellent undergraduate education that they deserve. The part that I am most appreciative of is the aligned missions of the institutions.
At Guilford, one of our distinctive factors is this community. We have 1200 students. We have an average class size of 13, no class larger than 30. It is that individualized classroom experience that students will get at Guilford College where the professors will know who you are and care about your success. There are wonderful things about larger institutions in terms of being able to offer a wider variety of majors and experiences different than in a small college and those are wonderful institutions as well. They do great things. There is just a distinctive thing that happens at Guilford College in this small community with the Guilford College values with the Quaker influence where we're valuing each student in their individual experience. It's really a magical place where students are able to have the undergraduate experience that they need and deserve in order to receive their bachelor's degree and get to where they want to go eventually. So it's great to be distinctive in this higher education marketplace.
So when students come to Guilford College, I hope that they get a sense and a belief or an understanding of how Guilford values each individual as they enter our campus. And we have a Quaker phrase that's called the inner light, the belief that every person has a divine inner presence, And I, my hope, is that when Noble students, or any student visits our campus, they get a sense that we truly value each individual person who is a part of our community.
I think the focus of the Noble program on helping students develop the executive functioning skills is so important for the success of a student, wherever they end up at college. And so because of that development that students are receiving in high school, they're developing the tools in a toolbox to be able to utilize when they get to college and they need to manage the workload of four college classes or five classes, depending on the semester, and so being able to prioritize assignments, being able to develop a plan of action For an assignment, to be able to think both short term and long term, and developing those skills is most certainly something that all college students have. A certain skill set when they come to college, and then we as a college and experiences that they have while in college will enhance those executive functioning skills. I also think about the ways of engaging in relationships and advocating for oneself as being extremely important. I know that Noble does a great job of being able to both enhance the relationships and then also working with students to be able to advocate for themselves for what they need in their educational environment.
I teach our first year seminar class at Guilford, and the topic is ethical leadership, and I had a Noble Academy student in that class, and what I viewed
in the class was that they were able to bring different perspectives than many of the other students had in the ethical leadership class. And so I have always finally thought of Noble and its purpose and the students that have come from the institution, and what a great fit it is between the Noble Academy student and the Guilford College student.
At Guilford College, we have a number of places where students are able to receive the support in that scaffolding that is necessary to eventually get to the work quality that we are looking for. And so I'll share a few of those spaces at Guilford College. One of them is the accessibility Resource Center. This is staffed by Clarissa and Christy. Both of them are fantastic individuals who work with students who have documented or undocumented, documented needs if and so we don't strictly follow a medical model at Guilford College, where in order to receive accommodations, you have to have documentation. We can work with students to receive that document. They have that documentation, great. And we can work with those students to figure out what are the necessary accommodations that students will need in their classroom. And start that process. What's unique about the college setting is that students have the ability to share the accommodations if they want to with their professors. The ARC, Accessibility Resource Center, doesn't automatically do that, so the student has to share that information with each of their professors, what the accommodations are that they need for that particular class, and Christy and Clarissa are fantastic at working with students in that way.
The Accessibility Resource Center works with over a hundred students each year and and so we're probably about 15 to 20% of our students would identify with a learning difference.
Additionally, Clarissa runs a separate program for students to help with executive functioning skills, and so there's a one credit class that students can register for or and it sort of creates a community of individuals. And again, whether there's an official diagnosis or not, you can sign up for that class on executive functioning skills, and you can work with Clarissa and the team on a weekly basis on those executive functioning skills. And so that's one office that provides support at Guilford College.
Another office is our learning and writing center. So this is open for students who need tutoring in a particular area. If they need help writing a paper, they're not there to write the paper, they're there to They're there to help students figure out what they need to produce a paper that the professor is looking for in terms of whatever the assignment is, and it could be even a journal assignment, all the way to a research paper, right? There's lots of different types of writing and so they're there to work with students on their writing skills, have individual tutoring sessions for a particular class that they might be struggling in. And so that's another resource at Guilford College.
One of the distinctive factors of our education is the accessibility with our faculty. The faculty want to know who the students are and engage with the students inside and outside the classroom. So there is a thing called Office Hours. Office hours are where professors say to the students, I'm going to be in my office during this time. I'd love for you to come visit me during that time. You know where that professor is going to be. And so sometimes it can be scary for students to walk into a professor in the office hours or outside of the office hours, and, you know, to meet with them in a one on one setting, to be able to engage with the professor around the topic, around where the struggle is happening, or I'm not understanding this concept, or can you help me think more critically about this particular topic? And so that's what the professor is there for, is to be able to help their students be successful in the class.
And then the last thing that I'll share specifically at Guilford College is an office called CAPE, the Career, Academic and Personal exploration. There's an Office specifically at Guilford College for holistic advising called the key office. And so there is a person who was there both for your academic advising and your career advising. And then their job is to work with students around those particular areas. And so at Guilford, we have a number of layers of support.
In all of those instances. It's where the student is taking it upon themselves to access those spaces. We are going to be available, but we're not going to know that you need help, unless you ask for help, and so that is going to be an important shift in your in students experiences in schooling is that the help is available, that that's the person in the classroom, but those other spaces are going to you need to take the steps in order to access those.
As we move forward in the post-pandemic world, and there are two specific things I think, that will be developing over the upcoming years that
an intentional cohorted program for students who need additional support in their first year, we're looking at an opportunity for recruitment into this cohorted program students develop the community together and a and it mentioned Clarissa is working there to really build a more engine that is more developmental, that I am excited about us moving into in the future. The second is we're sort of in a spot where we are able to reimagine it. And one of the things that we've, I've started to work towards, is in what ways can some of our departments creatively come to for a particular purpose, interdisciplinary? So let me share.
We might have a group coming together, and could take a track in climate change, but from a variety of different perspectives and interdisciplinary perspectives. So not only you learning about the political aspects of climate change, but you're learning about the social aspects of climate change and who it affects, and you're learning about the scientific aspects of climate change, and then you're learning about public you uh, but around that particular topic, or another interdisciplinary topic, we're Guilford College is active, sort of, in the In the refugee issue, and so learning about all the the human migration and refugee issues in, you know, a variety of different areas. And so we must get my major in biology. And it's just biology that I'm studying, which doesn't really happen in a liberal arts school, but it can happen at other schools, but it's this interdisciplinary refocus on a particular topic versus on a major. So it's just a different look and I'm excited about seeing how that might play out over the next few years.
This campus is pretty fantastic. It's fantastic in many ways. And one of the ways is in the diverse student population that we have at Guilford College. Let me share a little bit more about that. More than half of our students are students of color. More than half of our students are PELL eligible students. We come from 42 states and 12 countries. The rich religious diversity, the rich gender expression diversity. And then all along the intellectual and physical spectrum. We have students of all kinds at Guilford College and that's really special. Most institutions that are our size don't have the diversity that we have. We really do mirror what the future US and world is going to look like. And it's amazing to have that experience in your undergraduate.
And so for students at Guilford College who may have differences in whichever way, our faculty are accustomed to working with students who are very different. They wouldn't come to work at Guilford College if that wasn't something that they valued.
We have our seven core values. Community, diversity, excellence, integrity, justice, stewardship. Those are our values. That's what we are all about. And I gave you six. The seventh is equality. We treat each individual as someone who is equal to ourselves. Another distinction about Guilford: We go by our first names. I'm Steve. I serve as associate vice president. That means nothing. I have a doctorate. Who cares? I'm Steve. Your professor will go by their first name.
One of the best things about Guilford College is our community and more than 80% of our students live on campus and most of the individuals who are listening to this podcast may qualify for their student to live off campus given how far they live away from campus. And so we have a number of students who are commuter students and we have a number of students a majority of our students are residential students and um the engagement in the on campus living. I want to encourage students to think deeply about the opportunity to live on campus. It provides a richness as part of uh the education and we really value at Guilford College the inside the classroom and the outside of the classroom experience.
The other things are the number of student organizations that students can be a part of and the activities and the life that they bring to the campus. Students planning programs for each other is amazing. We have fantastic athletic division three sports, intramural sports and then the wonderful thing of living here in Greensboro is the opportunities that are also off-campus uh not just on campus. And so, it creates a really vibrant community that I'm I love, as part of, you know, we're able to be our small college, but we also have access to so much more because of where we're located.
Gayle:
We have covered a lot of territory in this conversation. Is there anything else you would like to add?
Steve:
I'll share one more story Gayle, and that is, there's a subset of colleges that are called colleges that change lives. CTCLis the acronym that they use. Go, go, look it up online. And Guilford College has been a part of this collection of 40 colleges for over 30 years, and it is What is distinctive about this subset of schools in the higher education marketplace is that they're small, they're intentional, they have These wonderful experiences, and by the time that's to be for the better. I feel like Wicked right now, but their lives are changed for the better, and it is incredible to be a part of this subset of of higher education and we're the only school in North Carolina that's designated as a college that changes lives and so it's a distinction and and I don't think that sometimes the local folks think “It's just Guilford College, it's right down the street,” and don’t realize what a gem we have here in Greensboro.
Gayle: Thank you so much for talking with us, Steve. I look forward to more conversations about building the Guilford/Noble connection.