The Complex Factors That Drive Students’ Sense of Belonging
An expert in student belonging and engagement in the digital environment explains the nuances of belonging, mattering and inclusion as well as how to foster well-being in higher education.
Ruth Simmons was the first African American president of Brown University which she led for 11 years. Before that she was president at Smith College where she set up the first engineering program at a women’s institution. She was recently called out of retirement to lead Prairie View A&M, a historically black institution in southeast Texas. As she approaches the end of her tenure there, THE Campus editor Sara Custer interviewed her for THE Campus Live US.
Here she speaks about her pioneering work to research Brown’s historical links to slavery, the future of affirmative action, legacy admissions and how to get more people that look like her into university leadership.