"The Strength to Stay Here": Rural Black College Students' Meaning-Making Through Relational Capital

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 9:00 am
  In Roundtable Session: Engaging Students' Strengths and Assets to Foster Postsecondary Success (Table 28)

Abstract

Understanding factors that contribute to the success of rural, Black students at four-year institutions is critical both for expanding our examination of institutional retention efforts and more significantly, for the larger work of re-visioning the project of higher education. This study focuses attention on the centrality of relational capital in supporting meaning-making processes for college students who identify as rural and African American or Black. Findings suggest the essential role that mentors play in supporting narrative identity processes enabling students’ successful adaptation to college. Through role-modeling and facilitative conversations, mentors foster students’ abilities to make meaning of personal characteristics, salient identities, behaviors, and choices within and between social contexts, supporting the development of resilient and adaptive biographies.

Authors

• Wendy Pfrenger, University of Mississippi

• Erica Noll Crawford, Miami University (OH)

• Roger Davis, University of Mississippi