The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 42, No. 2 - 63

Strengths-Based Approaches

eﬁts of employing strengths-based practices in
ﬁrst-year seminar courses. Emerging research
suggests that strengths-based approaches are
positively associated with students' sense of belonging, engagement, self-efﬁcacy, and retention (Soria & Stubbleﬁeld, 2014, 2015a, 2015b);
yet within the existing scholarship regarding
strengths-based approaches and practices,
there remains a noticeable void with regard to
understanding whether strengths practices in
college and university housing can be leveraged
as a catalyst to stimulate students' success.
Given the lack of research on the beneﬁts of
strengths-related educational approaches-especially within housing and residence life contexts-we investigated potential associations
between ﬁrst-year students' strengths-based
interactions in housing, their engagement in
college, and their second-year retention. We
focused our attention on ﬁrst-year undergraduate students who participated in strengthsrelated discussions, activities, or programs
within housing and residence life. The research question framing the present study is as
follows: Among ﬁrst-year students who live in
university housing, what are the relationships
between students' interactions with strengths,
engagement in higher education, and retention, controlling for demographic, college experience, and academic variables?

STRENGTHS-BASED APPROACHES
IN HOUSING AND RESIDENCE LIFE
The university featured in this study is situated
on an urban campus in the upper-Midwest
of the United States. The university enrolls
28,000+ undergraduates, with approximately 5,500 undergraduate students living on
campus in residence halls each year. Students

are not required to live on campus during their
ﬁrst year of enrollment, although approximately 85% of all ﬁrst-year students choose to
live on campus. The ratio of students to community advisors (CAs, i.e., resident assistants)
is approximately 35:1, and, during the time of
the study, there were 157 community advisors
and a total of 16 live-in professional staff (resident directors and assistant resident directors)
across campus.
During the fall of 2012, the university was
in the second year of a three-year pilot led by an
ofﬁce of student engagement within student
affairs. As a part of the initiative, all incoming
ﬁrst-year students (N = 5,514) were provided
an opportunity to take the StrengthsFinder®
assessment for free. Before they arrived on
campus for matriculation, 5,309 ﬁrst-year
students, 96.3% of the ﬁrst-year class, took
the online assessment, which provided students with their top ﬁve strengths. This was a
campus-wide initiative, with several hundred
faculty and staff on campus also taking the
StrengthsFinder®, participating in Gallup-led
educator and mentorship workshops, embedding strengths programming into their classes
and advising sessions, and working daily with
students on a variety of different levels such
as employment supervision and leadership
development. While students encountered
strengths-based programming in several different contexts, including with academic advisors or in ﬁrst-year seminar classes, given the
nature of the large, decentralized university,
not all students received the same strengthsrelated experiences.
To facilitate strengths-based interactions
in housing and residence life, all live-in professional staff including community advisors

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 42, No. 2

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