I can be cracked, made, told and played. What am I?
Look at the end of this story for the snappy answer to this riddle from McLaughlin College’s Monday morning announcements. It’s just one of the many steps the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies’ (LA&PS) four colleges take to create a sense of community and make students feel at home.
“They really like the riddles. A bunch of them will respond,” says Vanessa Otello, the team lead for McLaughlin College’s peer mentor program. “It’s something we do for first-year students, letting them know the events we have going on that week.”
“Home, well, that's what we see ourselves as,” said Stevie Bell, college head of McLaughlin College and associate professor in the Writing Department, LA&PS. “I think we put that in our vision documents. The colleges are a home.” The four colleges are McLaughlin, Vanier, New and Founders.
LA&PS has re-envisioned the role of its colleges; students are still connected to the college affiliated with their program, but they also have their needs, according to where they are in their university careers, met by various colleges. For example, McLaughlin College caters to early-year students.
“When we started thinking about this, we thought maybe the better thing to do would be to address the students by their student journey,” said Michele A. Johnson, associate dean students for LA&PS and a professor in the Department of History.
“First-year students have particular needs. They need to be welcomed in. They need to be shown the ropes. But upper-year students don't have those needs. What they need is to prepare to leave the institution. As we talked with students more, they said what they wanted were things that cut across programs but were more about the stage they were at in their academic journey.”
McLaughlin College is the early years college. That’s Bell’s college. Vanier is the upper years college, headed by Eric Kennedy, associate professor in the School of Administrative Studies.
New College – formerly Atkinson College and originally created for working people who attended night school – is home to graduate students. Zachary Spicer, associate professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration, is head of New College.
Founders College is for diverse groups of students, including those who identify as international, Black, Indigenous, 2SLGBTQIA+, first-generation, women and student-athletes. Daniel Kikulwe, an associate professor in the School of Social Work, is the head of Founders College.
The plan for each college to be a refuge for its students sprang from the results of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which showed a need to address equity issues and gaps in student experiences, Bell said. The NSSE is a survey that targets first-year and senior students and measures student participation at universities and colleges in Canada and the United States.
Informed by NSSE, the role of the colleges changed three years ago to improve equity and student experiences.
The colleges create community by offering programs to support the students. McLaughlin has a peer mentor program that matches early-years students with students further along in their studies, as well as the First-Year Experience resource for new students.
Vanier College focuses on leadership training programs, and hosts Pizza with Profs events where students and professor can discuss careers and research.
Programs for Indigenous students are available through Founders College, which also offers the Advancing YU mentorship program which features York alumni. One stream is for Black alum and students, the other for female alum and students.
“They come back and do a mentorship quartet, so three students meet with one mentor. They meet once a month to talk, to strategize about the students’ post-graduation plans and to support each other as they address the challenges they might face,” said Johnson.
New College caters to grad students with monthly cafes, themed discussions, a student choir and a lounge with toys for children of grad students.
“One thing York does is seriously believe in the promise and potential of radical inclusion,” Bell said, with a nod to the original vision of York as a university for everyone. “It’s a value system, right? We value inclusion, we value belonging. How do you show that you value that? You bring people into community.”
And that Monday morning riddle sent to first-year students? What am I? I am a joke.
With files from Julie Carl