Council Corner - August 1, 2022

I am thrilled to serve as interim vice president for Student Affairs. Twenty years ago, after finishing graduate school, I got my very first job here in Student Affairs at Virginia Tech, and I have been fortunate to have had a variety of opportunities to work alongside you and our amazing students ever since.

As the start of the school year approaches and we prepare to welcome the class of 2026, I’ve been thinking a lot about belonging: what it means, how it feels, and how we can foster it for our students. This thinking started earlier this summer, when I read Brene Brown’s 2021 book, Atlas of the Heart. In it, Brown catalogs 87 human emotions across 13 categories as a way of helping map our feelings across the wide array of experiences in our lives. She uses the analogy of a map to suggest that naming and understanding our emotions at a deeper level is fundamentally linked to how we make meaning of and navigate the world.

One section stood out to me, in particular, because of the work we do here in Student Affairs. Titled “places we go when we search for connection,” the section lists “belonging” as an emotion that sits alongside “fitting in, connection, disconnection, insecurity, invisibility, and loneliness.” Brown argues that the desire for human connection and belonging are hardwired into our humanity and are, in fact, critical to our well-being. Most of us who work with college students would agree wholeheartedly with this assertion because we’ve seen students flourish when they find belonging and struggle mightily when they don’t.

We know that this innate yearning for true belonging can lead students toward trying to fit in and find acceptance at the expense of who they really are and what they truly value. Fitting in may be a starting point for belonging, but it doesn’t get to the heart of it. As Brown shares, “If I get to be me, I belong, if I have to be like you, I fit in.” To belong, then, is to believe that you can share your most authentic self with the world and be fully accepted. The only requirement, according to Brown, is “to be who you are.”

Yet belonging requires courage, vulnerability, and self-acceptance—all of which can be steep paths, particularly for new students. But in Student Affairs, we have the opportunity to build environments and experiences that lessen the climb. This starts with each of us being curious about students’ lives and asking them to share who they are. By listening deeply to their stories, we signal that they are welcome at Virginia Tech. We can also build opportunities for students to connect with one another, and provide places where meaningful relationships can develop. And perhaps most importantly, we can build spaces for self-exploration and reflection so that students can learn to recognize, celebrate, and share their authenticity with confidence and joy.

I believe the work of cultivating belonging is our greatest purpose in Student Affairs and our highest hope for students. It is also my highest hope for you, colleagues, because the need for belonging is not limited to students. I invite you to “be who you are” each day you come to work and to share your story with others. As Brene Brown says: “Be here. Be you. Belong.”

In Hokie Spirit,

Frances Keene, Ph.D.

Interim Vice President for Student Affairs