Student Belonging
How institutional climates, educational relationships, learning environments, recognition, connection, and legitimacy shape participation and belonging.
Research
I study the institutional conditions through which student success becomes more or less possible.
My research treats belonging, help-seeking, navigation, participation, and persistence not simply as individual student outcomes, but as experiences produced through interaction with institutional structures, organizational practices, educational relationships, information systems, and learning environments.
Central Research Question
What can colleges and universities intentionally change to create more equitable conditions for student success?
Institutional Navigability
How students make sense of institutional systems, identify support, interpret information, and move from need to access.
Educational Transitions
How students encounter new expectations, roles, systems, and relationships as they enter, move through, and adapt to higher education.
International Student Experiences
How mobility, pre-arrival conditions, communication, institutional climate, and support infrastructures shape adjustment and participation.
Living-Learning Communities
How residential and academic environments structure connection, engagement, support, participation, and belonging.
Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education
How AI is reshaping help-seeking, advising, academic support, institutional decision-making, and the relationship between technological efficiency and human care.
Institutional Navigability
Institutional Navigability is an emerging construct I am developing within my broader research agenda. It conceptualizes navigation not merely as a student skill, but as a property of the relationship between students and institutional systems. The construct asks whether an institution makes its support structures sufficiently visible, interpretable, actionable, and accessible for students to move from a real-life need to an appropriate institutional pathway.