About three in five college students experienced some level of basic needs insecurity during the 2024 calendar year, according to survey data from Trellis Strategies. Over half (58 percent) of respondents said they experienced one or more forms of basic needs insecurity in the past 12 months.
Student financial challenges can negatively impact academic achievement and students’ ability to remain enrolled. About 57 percent of students said they’ve had to choose between college expenses and basic needs, according to a 2024 report from Ellucian.
While a growing number of colleges and universities are expanding support for basic needs resource centers—driven in part by state legislation that requires more accommodations for students in peril—not every campus dedicates funds to the centers. A 2024 survey by Swipe Out Hunger found that of 300-plus campus pantries, two in five were funded primarily through donations. Only 5 percent of food pantries had a dedicated budget from their institution as a primary source of funding.
Inside Higher Ed compiled four examples of institutions that are considering new or innovative ways to address students’ financial wellbeing and basic needs on campus.
Penn State University—School Supplies for Student Success
Previous research shows that when students have their relevant course materials provided on day one, they are more likely to pass their classes and succeed. Penn State’s Chaiken Center for Student Success launched a School Supplies for Student Success program that offers learners access to free supplies, including notebooks, writing utensils and headphones, to help them stay on track academically.
Students are able to visit the student success center on the University Park campus every two weeks to acquire items, which are also available at two other locations on campus. Learners attending Penn State Altoona and Penn State Hazleton can visit their respective student success center for supplies, as well.
The program is funded by a Barnes & Noble College Grant program and is sustained through physical and monetary donations from the university community.
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts—Essential Needs Center
The Essential Needs Center was developed from a Service Leadership Capstone course, which required students to complete a community-based service project. One group of students explored rates of basic needs insecurity and established a food pantry to remedy hunger on campus.
“The program started as a drawer at my desk,” said Spencer Moser, assistant dean for Student Growth and Wellbeing, who taught the course. “Then it grew to fill a shelving unit, a closet and eventually its own space on campus.”
The center, now a one-stop shop for basic needs support on campus, provides students with small appliances, storage containers, personal care items and seasonal clothing, as well as resources to address housing and transportation needs, including emergency funding grants. Students can also apply for a “basic needs bundle” to select specific items they may require.
Paid student employees maintain the center but it’s also left “unstaffed” at some hours to address the stigma of seeking help for basic supplies. Between November 2023 and January 2025, over 1,300 students engaged with the center.
University of New Hampshire—Financial Wellness
A lack of financial stability can also have a negative impact on student thriving and success. To support students’ learning and financial wellbeing, the University of New Hampshire created an online digital hub that provides links to a budget worksheet, financial wellness self-evaluation, college cost calculator and loan simulator.
Students can also schedule an appointment to talk with an educator to discuss financial wellness or engage in a financial wellness workshop.
Roxbury Community College—the Rox Box
Most colleges operate on an academic calendar, with available hours and resources falling when class is in session. Roxbury Community College in Massachusetts launched a new initiative in winter 2023 to ensure students who were off campus for winter break didn’t experience food insecurity.
Before the break, staff at the college’s food pantry, the Rox Box, handed out Stop & Shop gift cards and grab-and-go meals, as well as a list of local places students could visit for meals over break.
Do you have a wellness intervention that might help others promote student success? Tell us about it.
There are over 4,000 universities and colleges in the United States employing over 1.5 million faculty, over half of which are either tenured or on tenure track. The National Center for Educational Statistics estimates that there are 160,000 assistant professors at any one time, so given the approximate time to tenure, it is therefore reasonable to conclude that there over 20,000 newly minted faculty hitting the ground running every year on their quest for academic establishment—most of them with relatively little preparation, training, or even awareness of the rigors and pitfalls of the tenure track journey ahead.
Much has been written about the substantive pedagogic aspects of the profession—research methodologies, student success and satisfaction, diversity and inclusiveness, etc.—but relatively little about the fundamental survival strategies necessary in the early days of a fledgling appointment while struggling with a new environment, a hefty teaching load, and demands of students and colleagues. Balancing these multiple demands can be stressful; mistakes can be made and the success rate in some disciplines can be unnervingly low.
Here, then, are 10 very basic, practical strategies for new faculty to consider during their early exploratory quests in the profession, based upon my experience of faculty development over the past 40 years. They are not necessarily appropriate for all institutions or all disciplines but offer a preliminary checklist of actions that put the challenges of academic career building in a realistic perspective. Plunging headlong into the process without any planning, forethought, or guidance is not a recipe for success, so a little reflective thinking beforehand may be prudent, even for the most talented and confident amongst you.
1. Know Your Institution
Even if you land a job at the institution that educated you, take time to find out the official philosophical and administrative underpinnings of the place. There are considerable differences between private institutions and public ones, shared governance and union campuses, and factors such as size, program mix, and location that will determine the character of each institution. Start with reading the rules, regulations, byelaws, and any recent accreditation reports that are available. Review the official website, recent news stories, and major committee minutes and note any interesting programs and initiatives that define the academic environment. Familiarization with your department and campus can help ease your transition, enable you to avoid any obvious political pitfalls, and concentrate on the immediate challenges of the new job.
2. Know Your Colleagues
If you didn’t do it before the interview, find out more about your new departmental colleagues. Web searches are quick and easy, and more detailed information on faculty backgrounds, achievements, and curricula can often be found in recent accreditation reports. Showing a general awareness of and interest in your colleagues’ work is flattering (although, should not extend to an appearance of unhealthy obsession) and can indicate shared fields of interest that could complement your own teaching and research agenda.
3. Find a Friend
The tenure process should not be a hazing exercise, and senior colleagues and academic leaders have a responsibility to mentor new faculty. However, institutions vary in their commitment to faculty development. Sadly, some still rely on the sink-or-swim approach, but others have excellent, supportive approaches to developing their new talent, so check into institutional and departmental programs that might be on offer. If none exist, explore national opportunities for mentorship within your discipline or, if appropriate, ask your departmental leader or senior colleagues to take on the role, meeting with you regularly and providing feedback and guidance.
4. Build a Network
A mentor is good, but a whole cohort of colleagues at the departmental, institutional, and national/international level can be invaluable as you shape your academic persona. Consciously seek out appropriate senior faculty whose work you admire at scholarly meetings, conferences, and online and try to engage them. Ask about their work and whether you may send them your own recent accomplishments in teaching or research. This might appear pushy and may be met with indifference, but you’d be surprised how willing some really impressive scholars can be in nurturing the next generation. If they know about (and are impressed by) your work, they may even see opportunities to work with you collaboratively or nominate you for guest lectures or conference roles.
5. Make a Plan
There is always a danger of trying to do too much too fast in the quest for tenure, so it is important to pace yourself (see #7). As a preliminary exercise, try writing a first draft of a case statement:
outlining your academic focus,
how you are exploring it in teaching, research and service,
and listing your collective accomplishments in each area to date.
Reflect on how you might continue this trajectory over the next few years to establish what you hope will be an adequate record of achievement to merit tenure. As you are unsure what that is, share the plan—which should only be a short, reflective narrative of your academic essence and activities—with your mentors and network to make sure you’re on the right track.
6. Juggling the Big Three
One of the fundamental challenges new faculty wrestle with is maintaining a balance between the seemingly conflicting demands of teaching, research, and service. On many campuses and in some disciplines, research and scholarly activity are likely to be emphasized as the primary vehicles for tenure success. However, this approach may seem disadvantageous to those who entered the profession for a love of teaching and can also result in the role of service being diminished or trivialized (see #9).
Obviously, consult with your colleagues about the appropriate balance—they after all will play a major role in your future—but rather than compartmentalize the three areas, think creatively about blending them. Can you ‘piggyback’ your efforts in teaching, research, and service and form a coherent whole that exceeds the sum of the parts?
Can, for example, student work completed in a teaching assignment form the basis of scholarly papers, exhibitions, or newspaper/journal articles? Can the work be submitted for awards for either students or yourself for teaching excellence? Similarly, could service activities for a community group or similar organization generate grant funding or recognition that could be expanded into a paper or article?
This approach, which requires some flexibility and ingenuity, helps to elevate teaching and service by transforming their outcomes into more conventional means of enquiry and recognition more consistent with tenurability. It enables an individual to concentrate on their field of focus, avoid seemingly pointless work, and still develop a coherent career profile embracing all the aspects of a well-rounded academic.
7. Pace Yourself
One downside of thinking a lot about your career and tenure too early—such as reading too many cautionary articles like this—is an increased awareness and subsequent panic in the face of the rigorous challenges ahead. Theoretically, sound foreknowledge of the process and careful, reflective planning should minimize career-focused worries and free up time for the real joys of teaching, research, and practice. Establish your annual and long term gameplans, engage regularly with your colleagues, and remember, there are six long years to achieve them all.
Of course, there may be pitfalls, missteps, and diversions into academic cul de sacs along the way. That big research grant or killer article for the top journal in your field you’ve spent the summer preparing? Both rejected—but don’t panic. Nothing is ever really wasted. Can the work be resubmitted or sent in a modified form to another funding agency or publication, less prestigious or financially impressive maybe, but still a potential win. Can either be reconfigured into a conference paper or online outlet? Could it be the genesis of a new course or even a news story? There are a number of ways to demonstrate acceptance of your academic worth (see #8). They may have less scholarly impact, but by assembling a portfolio of success indicators of varying perceived worth, the collective impact can add up to a significant body of work.
8. Making the Grade
What do I need to do to get tenure? Is this enough? These are questions asked by generations of faculty, understandably looking for quantifiable benchmarks of achievement. Obviously, there is no answer that fits all. Some disciplines and departments may quantify their standards—which journals for publication, how much grant funding, etc. But many are less specific and leave it to the candidate to prove their case. So, what if that prestigious journal rejects your masterpiece after two years of consideration? Or the national granting agency you are depending on for support is cutting back or refocusing its funding elsewhere? Or your book proposal is turned down by a major publisher? Consider other means of demonstrating your quality and achievement. An individual’s worth should not be reduced to a list of publications or a tally of funding successes, and other means of determining impact and peer recognition are possible. This, by the way, is a personal perspective that may only be appropriate for some disciplines. Discuss it with your colleagues first, but consider framing your academic worth in three ways:
a. Peer Review
Obviously, the most recognized form of demonstrating quality is through the impartiality of blind peer review, preferably by the most recognized publications, grants organizations or awards programs in your field. However, putting all your eggs in one basket is a risky proposition. Don’t focus exclusively on the best, but explore other opportunities at the same time. Building a portfolio of more modest achievements that can supplement major accomplishments (or replace them if necessary) and can collectively demonstrate an impact on your discipline.
b. Peer Approval
This is probably not a recognized criterion, but is based upon your worth as an academic, rather than solely on your published work. You may be invited to review a book, to chair a workshop, or give a lecture at another institution. In such cases, it is not just your work but your reputation that is being validated. A cluster of such invitations and activities can be a helpful supplement to your peer reviewed work to demonstrate your impact upon the discipline, a process that can be accelerated by establishing a network of colleagues nationally and even internationally as early as possible (see # 4).
c. Dissemination and Impact
All too often, discussion of a tenure candidate revolves around the number of publications or grants rather than how the individual is enriching the department’s teaching excellence and adding to the advancement of their discipline. Remember, your work can reach broader audiences than just your department, so think about the differences you have made and the impact you have created. For example, has your work been included in the curricula of other institutions? Has your work been referenced in other publications? Have you been asked to consult on local or national issues, or has your opinion/input been sought on discipline-related matters? Have your ideas been implemented in tangible ways, such as the creation of a neighborhood park or a local sustainability plan?
Remember, this three-point breakdown is a personal one and tenure criteria vary considerably across campuses and disciplines. As always, check this viewpoint out with your colleagues. Even if it is not appropriate to your situation, it may be useful in opening a dialogue as to how it differs from their understanding of tenurability, and in clarifying their expectations of your performance.
9. Making a Difference
Service always appears last in the trinity of academic expectations and is all too often sidelined to perfunctory appearances on a moribund committee that meets infrequently (I remember my time on the Contagious Diseases Committee with mixed emotions). Frankly, this is a waste of time, opportunity, and initiative.
Service can be defined in a number of ways, some of which will hopefully match your interests and passions. It can be undertaken to enrich your department, your institution, your academic discipline, your professional affiliation, or your community. Look for opportunities to constructively engage and bring your strengths to bear on relevant issues to make a positive contribution. And remember ‘piggybacking’ (See #6). Can you focus your coursework on real world issues of the community, or reflectively rework that governmental report or committee action into a paper or article?
10. Getting Ready for Tenure
Obviously, it’s way too early to spend a lot of time on tenure preparation, although there are a couple of steps you could take now that will make the final push a little easier.
Firstly, review the tenure regulations for your department (and institution) and familiarize yourself with their requirements. Ask your colleagues about any questions you have, especially the ones who have recently passed through the process themselves. Being aware of the parameters should demystify the process and help to avoid any pitfalls or unpleasant surprises in a few years.
Secondly, start collecting evidence (articles, papers, press cuttings, curricula, student work etc.) of your academic achievements and activities now, while they are fresh in your mind and easily accessible. Don’t be too selective and keep as much as possible—a modest contribution to a local newsletter isn’t much on its own but, added to a batch of similar activities, may grow into an impressive collection. It may not, but it is easier to discard something later on than try to find evidence of it if you change your mind. Collect all press releases, journal statistics (readership, approval rate, editorial board members, etc.), student work examples, and other materials that might be useful in your tenure documentation. Add to the file as you progress. You do not want to be scrabbling about collecting materials in the final months before tenure when files may be hard to access, editors may have retired or passed, or materials may have been discarded or long forgotten.
Finally, consider your approach to seeking tenure as a process akin to an attorney making a legal case. If you prepared a rudimentary case statement in your first year as recommended (see # 5), this one-page narrative, updated and refined each year, provides an effective introduction to your documentation. It should clearly justify your role within your department and your discipline and enumerate your contributions to both, in quantitative and qualitative terms, providing evidence of success. It is a powerful route map to what has become a complicated document, and an early start on outlining the case statement guides your progress through tenure track.
There is no magic formula of performance that can guarantee tenure and, ultimately, a worthwhile academic career. Too many variables connected to the discipline, institution and personal circumstances will be major determinants in success or failure. However, reflective planning at the beginning of the process—a review of the basic issues outlined here coupled, of course, with full engagement of your colleagues—can help to set the parameters for sound progress, prevent wandering into academic backwaters, or getting lost in the minutiae of everyday activities. Good luck.
Robert Greenstreet, PhD, is professor and dean emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has authored/coauthored over 200 papers and articles and 8 books, including The Junior Faculty Handbook 2nd Edition (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 2009)
During the 2016-2017 school year, the Brothers to Sisters Club at Compton College reserved a portion of their meetings for “Real Talk.” This allowed students to share their current feelings and experiences. During one of these meetings, two students spoke up and shared that they were homeless. This moment inspired Joshua Jackson and Dayshawn Louden, then student leaders at Compton College, to begin campaigning and advocating for student housing and increased basic needs on campus.
“Immediately, Dayshawn and I went into planning,” says Jackson,
Eight years later, Compton College is breaking ground on a 250+ bed housing facility, becoming the first community college in Los Angeles County to offer campus housing to its students.
CCCD Student Housing RenderingCompton College President and CEO Dr. Keith Curry says Jackson and Louden were worried about their peers’ lack of basic needs and immediately brought their concerns to him.
“It was a great conversation when they first brought it forward, and their question was, ‘How do we do it,” says Curry in an interview with Diverse. “I give them the credit for it because they got me to think about it differently and what we could do. I’m a former student activist, so seeing student activists seeing what we need was good.”
Jackson and Louden had just begun their roles as Compton College’s Associated Student Body President and Vice President when they approached Curry.
“We were motivated, and I think we felt that space gave us the courage to believe that we could create change,” says Jackson. “Our roles also gave us the conviction that we should.”
Rallying The Community
After their conversation with Curry, the student leaders called on their community at Compton College for support. Under Curry’s leadership, their efforts grew into a larger task force committed to addressing housing, food, and basic needs for the student body. Their next step was to identify Compton College students who identified as homeless.
“We took it upon ourselves,” says Louden. “I recall me and Joshua going into classrooms to say, ‘hey, utilize your voice,’ because the school can’t address a problem if there’s no need for it.”
Louden says that their roles as campus leaders positioned them to advocate for their fellow students and the longevity of the institution.
“Housing was like a five-to-six-year plan, but to address the needs that we could see that Compton College had, we pushed for a pantry, opening the showers that were going unused by the football team, and supplying bathroom kits and supplies,” he says.
Within weeks, Compton College began implementing additional programs designed to serve students’ needs.
Dr. Keith Curry“It’s not just about a lack of physical space to live. It’s about the absence of opportunity, the absence of safety, the absence of stability,” says Louden. “This was not just about providing resources. This was about fostering community and belonging.”
Curry, who previously served as the Dean of Student Services at Compton College and has been instrumental in the college’s growth, success, and rebuilding, says that his role in this process was to also be courageous.
“I announced at one of our professional development days the need to build student housing, and I think people were like, ‘What is he talking about,’” he recalls. “I said, ‘we’ll be the first ones to build housing,’ and sometimes you have to dream. Sometimes you have to say stuff and get people united because you said it.”
Curry also became one of the founding chairpersons of the Chief Executive Officers of the California Community Colleges’ Affordability, Food & Housing Access Taskforce in spring 2018. This group provides system-wide recommendations to address housing and food insecurities for California Community College students.
“I was advocating statewide for basic needs, so then I was able to fold in that advocacy to include food and also housing,” says Curry.
Once Compton College gathered all of the data and support they needed, college leaders submitted a proposal. Curry, however, was intentional about the request. “I think the most important piece to this was we didn’t ask for the planning grant,” remembers Curry. “We went directly for the project funding grant. We went for the entire dollar amount, and that was the strategic plan.”
Over the course of about five years, what began as a conversation in a student club meeting eventually became a reality.
Celebrating In Community
In June 2022, California lawmakers moved to include a student housing grant totaling $80,389,000 in the 2022-2023 State Budget for the Compton Community College District to build their proposed 250+ bed student housing facility.
“We proved our critics wrong,” says Curry, who has emerged as a national thought-leader on community colleges. “When we’re talking about student housing and having conversations, we were able to take a dream that some people thought was not possible and made it possible for the community that we serve.”
The Compton College Housing Project Groundbreaking Ceremony took place last month, a win that those involved hope to share with the entire Compton community and Compton Community College District (CCCD).
“We’re serving Black and Brown individuals within our community, and for me, it gives these students hope,” says Curry. “They can see a college campus that looks like a four-year college with new facilities but also with student housing. That means that they will not be looked at as less than.”
Phase one of the 86,000-square-foot building will include three floors of affordable student living quarters with 100 percent occupancy designated for students in need. The facility will provide three types of living configurations: 50 double-room units with access to shared bathrooms and common spaces, 50 double-suite units with bathrooms and access to common spaces, and 50 studio units for single occupants. The student housing will also include study areas, lounges and shared kitchens.
“We’re showing other colleges that this can be done,” says Curry. “Compton is the model for that. When you think about our history, we’re the first community college in the state of California whose accreditation was revoked, and to go from that in 2006 to be where we’re at now and to be on the cutting edge, that tells you that transformation can happen, but transformation can happen in communities where we look like the students.”
Curry marks this moment as one of hope, not just for Compton but for communities of color all over the country.
“We’re always criticizing what we don’t do in our communities. Now we see what we can do, and that gives people hope that change is coming,” he says. “But also, this gives the students the opportunity to say look at my backyard, and my community college matters.”
Big things have been on the horizon for Compton College for some time now. Just last year, rapper Kendrick Lamar surprised 2024 Compton College graduating students as their graduation speaker.
“If you look at our video from graduation, you can see the words from Kendrick Lamar where he talks about the value of our degree and how important it is and what it means to be a Compton College graduate,” says Curry. “It gives our students hope. When you’re told you’re not good enough, and now you see a college in your community that is doing stuff that makes you proud, that means you know you’re a part of something that’s bigger than us.”
Phase one is just the beginning of Compton College 2035, a comprehensive master plan outlining the college’s plans to provide students with state-of-the-art facilities, including a physical education complex and a visual and performing arts complex, over the next decade and beyond.
“The city is already going up, as you can imagine why, but this is another notch to add under the belt of why Compton is just a historic and beautiful place,” says Jackson.
Serving As A Model For Other Community Colleges In California And Beyond
In addition to Compton College being the first community college in LA County to have student housing, the housing project is also the first prefabricated modular student housing project that is design-approved by the California Division of the State Architect.
A prefabricated modular means that most of the building will be built thousands of miles away.
“It’s a unique project,” says David Lelie, senior project manager with Gafcon, the construction management company managing the project. “They’re going to build them in a factory in Idaho, and then they’re going to ship them by truck to our site and use a crane to place them.”
This model is designed to decrease construction time and disruptions.
“What we’re saving is sustainability and time nuisance for the students,” says Lelie. “So, instead of bugging students for two years, you’re dropping all those modules into place in two weeks.”
Once the building is placed on campus, the exterior and final touches will be completed, which is projected to be done by May 2027. This will save about six months of traditional construction time.
“It’s a seed, and eventually other campuses will use this idea and this method of prefab modular in order to build their student housing,” says Lelie. “Yes, we’re housing 250 students, but now other colleges, especially in California, can take this model and replicate it, and every time you replicate it, it’s like a car, they get less and less expensive.”
HPI, which is the architecture company responsible for some of the first non-modular student housing on community college campuses, took on this project to continue building cutting-edge experiences and homes for community college students.
They wanted the design to provide not only a place to sleep but also academic support and integration into the broader campus.
“As we learned about how to deliver modular student housing, it was really taking the program that [Compton College] had already established in terms of number of beds and the types of beds and then looking at how we could do that in a way that created community,” says Larry Frapell, principal and president of HPI architecture.
“We wanted the amenities to be easy to get to, a combination of both indoor and outdoor spaces, and a sense of security.”
HPI has a long history of serving higher education and, specifically, larger community colleges.
“We have a good understanding of not only the need for housing but how housing relates to community college students and how to integrate that in a community college campus,” says Frapell. “It’s part of a greater campus and part of a greater community, so we hope that this becomes a home for students and that this is a desirable place to live.”
Jackson and Louden are proud of the legacy they left to be continued for generations to come. Jackson says that he recently spoke with the two students who inspired the project’s advocacy.
“They’re housed, and they’re happy,” he says. “So, I’m grateful to be a part of history in this regard. I’m grateful for what I call following a tradition of activism that’s taking place at Compton College and just through our history as Black folks generally. We didn’t know it at the time, but that’s what we were doing. We just wanted to help.”
Louden believes now, more than ever, that Compton’s faith in humanity is one of its superpowers.
“Compton made that choice as an institution to restore faith in humanity,” says Louden, “and in the words of Compton College’s late great Dr. Joseph Lewis, ‘Compton makes the world go around.’”
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