Birgit Schreiber, Ph.D., is a consulting expert for the international higher education sector, has served in senior leadership positions, with expertise in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe higher education with focus on student experience and success, leadership, DEI and gender. Birgit has worked with a range of national and trans-national bodies, notably USAf South Africa, DAAD and ERASMUS, teaches, does research and supervision, programme design and policy evaluation. She is appointed as Extraordinary Professor at her Alma Mater, UWC, in Cape Town. Her PhD is in psychology, registered as psychotherapist at the HPCSA. Birgit has over 90 articles, chapters and books, on various themes around social justice, student affairs, student engagement and higher education leadership. She was the founding editor and is the editorial executive of the Journal for Student Affairs in Africa (JSAA), she is on the board of the Journal of College Student Development (JCSD) and a Column Editor for the Journal of College and Character (JCC). After being the Africa Chair, she serves as the Vice-President for the International Association of Student Affairs and Services. She has received numerous awards, most recently the Noam Chomsky Award for international research and the NASPA Award for international practice. She is a member of the Africa Centre for Transregional Research at the Albert Ludwig University Freiburg, Germany, research associate at Pretoria University, Germany Director for the STAR Scholars Network and sits on the board of the South African National Research Centre at the University of Johannesburg. Birgit lives with her husband and children in the Black Forest in Germany. 

Just a passing ship or changing the map?
Transitioning into and Navigating through University towards Student Success

Education plays a pivotal role in social justice, sustainability, equitable participation and emancipation of individuals, a concept deeply explored by many theorists in Student Affairs. Some of the many concepts that are relevant are ideas around hegemony and habitat and how these play a critical role in enabling students to have access to and participate in higher education. Education has the potential to emancipate and embolden student to become active role players and advocates for change, and we in Student Affairs play a decisive role to shape education to become a catalyst for societal transformation towards greater equality and social justice.
 
This paper explores our role in shaping the educational experience in such a way that our students navigate and impact the higher education context towards student and institutional success. In this paper, I will explore questions around concepts and definitions of success, challenges around student access and participation, our role in shaping the educational context, and the importance of students in the wider social movement towards social justice for all. The paper will respond to the question of what it means to promote student success in our higher education contexts.

A/P Leong Ching is Vice Provost (Student Life) and Associate Professor at the NUS Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. She works on water institutions and environmental collective action problems. Her research explores institutional change dynamics, and has investigated policies such as water privatization, recycled drinking water and more recently, willingness to accept vaccines and honesty in public behaviours. As Vice Provost (Student Life), she has focused on ensuring greater access and equality for all its students and made student life including in sports, arts, and community engagement - an essential part of an NUS education.

Professor Colm Harmon is Vice Principal (Students) at the University of Edinburgh, where he leads the strategic focus on the University commitment to the student experience.  Prior to moving to Edinburgh, he was Vice-Provost (Academic Performance) at the University of Sydney. An economist, his main research interests are in the economics of education, labour economics and applied economic policy. He served as Head of the School of Economics at Sydney (2012-18) including a period as Pro-Dean (Teaching and Learning) in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (2014-16). Prior to joining Sydney in 2012 he was Professor and Director of the UCD Geary Institute at University College Dublin. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University, University of Chicago, the Australian National University, University College London and the University of Warwick.

From Transaction to Transition - Rethinking the Student Journey (joint with Lucy Evans)
Students no longer view university as giving them the certainty of outcome - of career, of the value gained from higher education and of the sense of liberty and freedom that comes from their time in University.  This presents itself in a myriad of ways - from the growing demand for health and well-being services, but also to the growing sense of unfairness that these concerns are new to them, removing something about University life that previous generations enjoyed.  The ambiguity which is created challenges them and so challenges us.  Their expectation of us as educators are being raised to meet the challenge - and offset - this ambiguity and provide the right support structures to absorb the risk that modern student life brings in making the right choices, dealing with the financial strains, well-being, the student life experience and, critically, the next stages post university.  These changing expectations feed through into how we act and shape our services - an evolving relationship between student and university in a new model of lifelong engagement that goes far beyond the conventional ‘alumni' perspective.   

We focus in this paper on how universities can move from a model of transaction ‘management’ to a model which is promoting the transition through University and the relationship between the student now and their future self.   Building on an extensive body of work at the University of Edinburgh and beyond, we draw together a modern perspective on student support across the journey from applicant to alumni, focused particularly on the interaction between a continuous (and relentless) focus on students experience alongside shaping the culture of student support in the model of academic performance, aligned to major strategic initiatives in student services provision and curriculum with an emphasis on agency and delivery.  Our work suggests that effective student support and positive experience faces ever-present conundrums of balancing interests that can only be managed holistically - with the students as partners in a dialogue that is built on transparency and clear communication to ensure we know their demands, how we can meet them, and, where we cannot, that we articulate the constraints we work to.  We also encourage creativity and experimentation in activity, managing issues of core business alongside trying new things, and learning from failure and growing initiatives where successful.