Do You Identify as Belonging? An interview with Dr. Terrell Strayhorn

I was recently told “I’m not in it [academia] for the citations. I’m in it to help administrators, faculty, and students, and to get more people across the finish line. If my work isn’t doing that, then my work isn’t done”. I share this quote with you to introduce readers to the wonderful human being- expert scholar on belonging- Dr. Terrell L. Strayhorn.

Terrell Strayhorn is Professor of Education and Psychology at Virginia Union University, where he also serves as Associate Provost, Interim Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, and Director of Research in the Center for the Study of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Author of over 13 books and more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and reports, Strayhorn is one of the leading DEI experts on sense of belonging in education and work settings. He's Chief Editor of the Higher Education Specialty for?Frontiers in Education, Co-Editor of Sage's?Belonging?journal (forthcoming), Board Chair of Oregon Outreach Inc., and writes for?Thrive Global, Entrepreneur, AllBusiness,?and leads the "Belonging Matters" blog for?Psychology Today.

It was an honour for me to meet and interview Terrell, and I hope that all of you will enjoy our conversation.

- In A Spark: Why is belonging an area of interest for you?

Terrell: Belonging is important to me because it's really been in many ways the connective tissue for my research and scholarship, actually it became the connective tissue for my research and scholarship over the course of my career. It was not my dissertation, which is often a question I get, it was not my thesis in my master's program. I didn't train for it; I sort of fell into it. And I realized I said this in the 2019 book, that rather than sort of me discover or rediscover or recover, belonging, belonging sort of found me when I needed it most.

I had been doing social science research primarily in education and psychology on historically minoritized and under-represented, underserved, misunderstood, vulnerable populations in society, especially in educational fields, and I had learned a lot from quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods studies about students’ experiences- largely undergraduate and graduate- and that like all people, students need support to be successful. And that support is not just academic, it is not just financial, it is at all times emotional, psychological, and physical. It is to respond to their mental health needs, their basic needs, as well as students who are newer, diverse, and those living with disabilities.

All students need support. But what I learned from these studies over the first decade of my career is that the supports are not all the same. They don't hold the same relative importance, and they are not fixed or static, they are shaped in part by who the student is, context where they're studying, under what conditions, what their background is, what their future aspirations are, and ultimately for students to be successful, they need to feel the power of those relationships, resources, and supports. And what we know before the pandemic, but we certainly know after the pandemic, is transaction is not the goal. Students are not looking for a transactional experience, they're looking for a transformative experience that is very relational.

For me, belonging has become important because otherwise I would need all day to talk to you about all of these studies and what came out of them and how they relate and who do they relate to, but who knew that I would bump into this concept of belonging that starts to bring it all together in a humanizing way and relational at all times, sort of a value-driven perspective that can be tied to student success.

In A Spark: Your work examines and speaks about belonging and mattering- what is the difference?

In A Spark: In Lisa Nunn’s work from 2021 she writes about belonging from the lens that it is a gift and has to be given from a community to a member. What do you think about this approach towards belonging?

Terrell: I'm not entirely opposed to that perspective. What I can offer is there are points of connection and disconnection with my own research and insights from students. So, I think of maybe three points: one is immediately front of mind and relates to how often power or privilege and other social forces which are always operating in communities and societies would have denied the offering of that gift to a person or even a particular class and group of people who actually needed a sense of belonging to belong and were privileged to sort of receive the gift.

We do live in a world where over the course of our history we have been unaccepting, unwelcoming, sexist, racist, homophobic, anti- fill-in-the-blank to groups of people that I don't think we would have been very generous to in terms of offering the gift. I do have evidence that there are groups to which students in my studies aspire to belong, that have powerful influence on their sense of belonging, and it does require sort of acceptance, admission, right, and offering a sense of membership. Students in college yearn to be a part of these organizations. And you cannot be a part of them, are accepted as a member of them, without someone admitting you. Now, once a member, you feel this sense of importance, and it affirms your identity, and you're connected to the sisterhood or the brotherhood, and you're accepted as you are and receive the benefits of belonging.

I've also written about belonging at the graduate level, and there are graduate students who aspire to be part of a profession. And you cannot be a part of that profession without that sense of membership. One has to pass the doctoral program or in the medical profession, going through the labs, this rite of passage, and being accepted into a medical school and a residency and moving on to a career.

And then lastly, I wrote a piece about fitting in, which is in the 2019 book. I write in a footnote of the book, I have learned that some people can find a sense of belonging by fitting in, it works for them, there's no damage to their self-identity to be a part of a larger group identity. But there are some people who are positioned in the world to stand out and to be different from others and that's really about creating community versus gaining acceptance into the community. I'll give an example. I met a student who identified as LGBTQ. She was a white woman who gets to this campus, and she says, ‘I'm looking for my people. I'm looking for my family, and I can't find them anywhere.’ So, she says, one of the things she worried about was, maybe I just look like everybody. Maybe I fit in too much and nobody knows anything about me. In her story she says she dyed her hair blue, stated wearing a rainbow button and then people started coming up and saying, ‘Hey, are you part of our community?’ And she did this as a way to queue to others who she was. It made her stand out. And then she says, once she had her people, she dyed her hair back, removed the button and everything was in check. Now, I realize, and I write this in the book, not everyone can do that, and I don’t even know if she should have to do that. But that is the way that some students do find their community. And it’s not about getting the gift, it’s about creating the gift with people who share common interests.

In A Spark: Identity is frequently mentioned in your work. How does identity affect our motivation to belong?

While Terrell and I spoke about many other things during our conversation, like pedagogies of care and yearning to be in community, I believe these four questions and responses provide important insights to be considered and mulled over in consideration with the stories shared and our own experiences with belonging and identity.

Thank you very much to Terrell for your time and speaking with me about something which you are clearly passionate about. I had a lot of fun learning from you!

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References

The book Terrell refers to frequently in this interview is College Students’ Sense of Belonging (2019).

Strayhorn, T.L. (2019). College students' sense of belonging: A key to educational success for all students (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315297293