Sense of Belonging Among Black College Students

This chapter proposes a socioecological framework to aid college/university faculty and administrators in fostering a sense of belonging among Black college students. A socioecological perspective is useful for identifying factors across the ecology of a campus community that require change. The chapter synthesizes empirical insights related to factors that influence Black college students’ sense of belonging, drawing from Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory of human development. It presents promising strategies and interventions that campus stakeholders should consider using to facilitate student belonging. Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems model offers a useful heuristic for identifying individual- and contextual-level factors that impact sense of belonging among Black students. Within this framework, Black college students are at the center of four nested systems (micro, meso, exo, and macro) that affect their sense of belonging. All faculty and staff must accept personal responsibility for Black students’ inequitable academic and social experiences and work to remediate their practices and pedagogies to promote their belonging, well-being, and academic success.