Division Accomplishments

The Culture of Care represents Student Affairs’ approach to supporting students’ overall health and well-being. In 2022–2023, the Culture of Care became a focus point in the new website design for prospective students. It highlights the eight dimensions of wellness and provides students with an overview of campus support for each dimension. In addition, well-being became the focus for the Quality Enhancement Plan associated with UNCG’s 10^th year reaccreditation. 

UNCG also added a professional and peer coaching program in 2022. Through a UNC system office grant and private donor, a full-time coach and peer guides were hired to support students’ subclinical mental health needs. As a result of this programs, students can receive guided coaching to support their social and emotional development. The program was developed in Fall 2022 and implemented beginning Spring 2023. A yearlong pilot will commence in 2023–2024.

The Esports arena officially opened August 2022. Since launching, it has supported four weeks of Esports Summer camps in July & August 2022 and two E2 weekend tournaments and Unreal Engine trainings in October 2022 and February 2023. Esports hosted 30+ events in the Esports arena that ranged from intramural tournaments to state-wide esports competitions. There was 30+ college and high school visits/field trips to the Esports arena. One of the areas of focus for the arena is connections to academic programs. Through this focus, the arena hosted academic course instruction from faculty in Religious Studies, Bryan School of Business, and the Grogan Residential College. All intramural gaming events were scheduled to be held in the Esports arena with only one not being able to be supported due to a conflict. Finally, a gaming & Esports Club was added to the Club Sports Program.

The Gaming and Esports Engagement Assessment was administered in April and May 2023. The assessment received 115 responses. Key findings:

• 87% of students felt that being a part of the gaming community at UNCG has helped them fit in socially.
• 88% of students felt that their participation at the Esports Arena has improved their connection to the gaming community at UNCG and enhanced their sense of belonging on campus.
• Student Quote: “I like the sense of community that comes with having a physical gaming space. I would not have been able to meet some of the friends I have met and gotten in touch with other competitive teams if there was no physical arena. I’m not really a social person over Discord or other social media, so having a physical space where I can interact with other gamers has truly helped me in developing my social skills and stepping out of my comfort zone to talk to people.”

The new curricular approach program will launch in Fall 2024. The Spartan Experience will focus on the following five areas: Connections (belonging, student success), civic leadership, career development, well-being, and inclusion (intercultural skills). Through the Spartan Experience, students will augment their curricular experiences to develop the 21^st century skills they need to be successful in their professional and personal lives after graduation. The curriculum will provide students with a guided pathway, spiraled experiences, and will deepen their learning outside of the classroom. The first year will focus on the first-year student class beginning Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 and expand to include all students in 2024. Part of this intentional approach includes an introductory emphasis on Connections (belonging) and Well-being. 

SpartanConnect

In order to better support student curricular engagement, a new vendor was secured to host the platform. Through this new platform, there are better integrations to host different types of experiences to demonstrate student learning and engagement. In the first year, the refreshed SpartanConnect platform launched with 353 organizations migrated, 3,371 members, and 6,663 event attendees in the new platform.

The Division’s Student Employee Experience Committee continued to refine a central curriculum and standards to help standardize the experience for student employees. With this program, students are supported through three coaching appointments with four targeted questions to discuss their experiences and help frame how the skills they are developing as student employees will help them in their chosen profession. The program pilot launched for Student Affairs student employees and other supervisors of student employees on campus who wanted to participate in the program. Approximately 300 students were part of the year-long program. The goal is to expand to all student employees for the Division and make the program available to the entire campus for Fall 2023.

The Office of Intercultural Engagement created a new initiative focused on academic and out-of-the-classroom support to Black students. In collaboration with the Academic Recovery Office, OIE delivered 1:1 sessions throughout the Spring 2023 semester for Black students in need of academic assistance. In the 2023 Spring semester, students not receiving direct service from the other units in the Division of Student Success were placed in one of three tiers based on their level of academic need (see below). These students either received an academic warning, academic or continued probation, failed a course during Fall 2022, or had a cumulative GPA lower than 2.5. 

• Tier I is for students with the most heightened risk of academic dismissal. Nine students were in this category for Spring 2023. These students received multiple email communications and completed cultural coaching, which included four 1:1 sessions throughout the semester and weekly email or text check-ins.         
• Tier II is for students on Academic Warning. Two hundred thirty-five students were in this category. These students received invitations to 1:1 sessions with cultural coaches and invitations to all cultural support events offered by this program within the Office of Intercultural Engagement. These students have a 2.0 cumulative GPA but earned less than 67% of their credits in Fall 2022.  
• Tier III is for students in good standing but who failed at least one class in Fall 2022. Three hundred forty-seven students were in this category for Spring 2023. These students received email communication from cultural coaches and invitations to all cultural support events offered by this program within the Office of Intercultural Engagement.

All students in these tiers received personalized invitations to attend events planned to create a sense of belonging and positive academic social environments for Marginalized students.

UNCG’s CHANCE Program has been cited as one of the major campus-wide diversity initiatives that has earned UNCG five consecutive (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022) Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) awards by Insight in Diversity Magazine. In 2019, CHANCE Camp was featured as a “Program to Watch” by the national advocacy organization Excelencia in Education. 

CHANCE attendance and enrollment

The Bias Education Support Team affirms and promotes anti-bias work in alignment with the mission of UNC Greensboro to create an inclusive, collaborative, and responsive student community. The team educates, supports, and advocates by working to enhance the overall campus climate for students, faculty, staff, and friends of the University. The Team presented to various student groups, departments, and classes. The goals of these presentations were to increase both the awareness of the Bias Education & Support Team, its reporting tool, and to provide education about the negative impacts of bias and hate. There were 19 total events with 1296 total attendees. 

50 bias reports were submitted in 23–24. Of those reports, only about half of the reports were classified by the Team as bias. The months with the highest frequency of reports occurred around the same time as the Team’s major programmatic and outreach efforts. Religion was the highest nature of bias in the reports submitted. There were multiple drawings of the anti-Semitic symbol (((ECHO))), which the Anti-Defamation League defines as a “typographical practice used by some antisemites online.