How does poverty affect our students and keep them from being retained?
The 2018-2020 FACET Leadership Team was tasked with assessing existing initiatives and research studies, underway or already completed, with existing reports and power points of quantitative and qualitative data on the impact of underserved student status on academic retention and graduation. The team developed a video assisting faculty in targeting the ramifications of the context of poverty on inequality among students and the effects of poverty-related issues on retention. The team aims to reduce the barriers that inhibit faculty from better linking students to existing resources, including: (a) lack of awareness, (b) information overload, (c) checking themselves out of the applicability of relevant information (e.g. overlooking emails), and (d) needing to better understand the “meaning framework” -why and how it is useful.