Description:

As professors at a small, liberal arts university, we strive to create a community of scholars—a physical and intellectual space where students feel welcomed, connected, and encouraged. Although our students’ experiences and needs vary, from the first-year residential student to the commuting transfer student, all members of the Lynchburg community benefit from a sense of belonging. The importance of connection and community has been heightened by the isolation and disconnection imposed by the pandemic, and the shift to online distance learning has forced us to find new and creative ways to forge these necessary relationships. This panel, therefore, seeks to address strategies for intentionally cultivating community and fostering connections in and outside of the classroom experience, including experiential learning and extracurricular activities designed to work in the classroom, on the campus, and in the larger Lynchburg area.

These strategies are designed to help develop relationships among students as well as between students and faculty. They are also meant to help students connect with their home department/discipline, the campus, and the community at large. Although most instructors are attempting to develop these connections at some level in their online and hybrid classes, we feel that perspectives from new faculty are particularly unique in this moment of pedagogical upheaval because we have the same goals for ourselves as we have for our students: establish a sense of connection and develop a network of support. Both of us were in our first year at the University when the pandemic began, so we were not yet fully integrated into our new academic community. Neither of us is new to teaching, but we were new to this institution and the unique culture at the University of Lynchburg. As we all shifted to online learning, we were just beginning to navigate our new sense of place—connecting with our students and colleagues, learning the ropes of our new positions, and understanding the opportunities and resources available. Thus, even as everyone was thrown into survival mode in the spring of 2020, the circumstances were particularly challenging for new faculty. Our experiences, therefore, can provide some unique perspectives on community building because we empathize with our students’ feelings of disconnection and their need for community in a way that established instructors at the university may not. Like our students, we desire the sense of belonging and connection that we know this moment demands, and through our panel presentation, we hope to open a dialogue with our colleagues about how we all can be more intentional and effective in our community-building endeavors.

Objectives:

1. Recognize that students need to feel connected and acknowledge our role in intentionally creating and fostering connections in and outside of the classroom (whether ultimately successful or not)

2. Provide and solicit examples of community-building activities—what has worked, what hasn’t?

3. Demonstrate awareness of new faculty perspectives and the responsibility of the entire campus community to support efforts to build and strengthen connections.