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“We made a total mess. We threw flour at each other, but it just felt perfect. It felt like home,” said Emily Andrews, a junior at Grand View University.

Andrews was referencing the first time that GV felt like home to her, a place where she belonged. It was her freshman year at an event that her resident assistant hosted in Nielsen. Her floor made stress balls using balloons and flour. This was the first time she was able to connect with other students and have fun while making life-long friends in the process.

In an article called “How Colleges Can Cultivate Students’ Sense of Belonging,” Beckie Supiano, reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education, showed research that a student’s overall well-being is linked to belonging at their university. Kent Schornack, GV’s director of leadership and counseling, has thought a lot about belonging at Grand View. Schornack agrees that students are happier, healthier and successful when they feel like they belong. 

But what does it mean to feel a sense of belonging?

“I feel a sense of belonging through being known and finding others that I share values with and (who) value me,” Schornack said.

According to Schornack, Grand View is made for connections at our core. He believes that relationships are important, and GV tries new methods to facilitate those connections.

In January, President Kent Henning attended a gathering of college presidents. There was a speaker from Harvard University who brought awareness to the importance of belonging. The speaker conducted a research project on the determining factors of success in college, and belonging was one of them.

According to President Henning, belonging fits in the Grand View mission. It is his goal to make GV a place where students feel a sense of belonging.

“For me, the concept of belonging is very rich, very broad, (and) it covers a lot of what the students are feeling about their experience here,” Henning said.

Grand View not only focuses on belonging within the campus environment, but also within the growing diversity. GV’s Director of Multicultural and Community Outreach, Alex Piedras, spends a lot of time ensuring that students feel respected on campus. Piedras is the advisor to Multicultural Ambassadors and Diversity Alliance, an international student advisor, a secondary advisor to students of color and a part time GV complete coach.

Piedras wants people to understand that diversity does not stop at ethnic backgrounds but continues with being all-inclusive. Over the last several years, this campus community has been working hard to make GV an all-inclusive school where everyone belongs. 

“It starts with looking inwards,” Piedras said.

Emily Andrews’ sense of belonging comes from being a part of Team GV, Student Leadership Team and being the president of Viking Volunteers. Andrews finds that it helps to connect yourself to a whole new network of people.

Getting involved on campus is a way that students can find their sense of belonging. GV has roughly 35 clubs and allows the opportunity for students to propose new ones. Getting involved in a club requires attending the hosted meetings or events. There are also 11 leadership teams that require a formal application, such as Team GV or Student Leadership Team that Andrews is involved in.

Freshman student, Jasmin Barroso, also felt that she could call GV her new home through being a Multicultural Ambassador.

“I feel like I’ve known them for a long time, but we just met 4 weeks ago,” Barroso said when talking about her new friends.

Grand View offers many ways for students to engage with each other through leadership teams, athletics, clubs, religious activities and small class sizes. This begs a question about how students feel after they graduate. Do alumni still consider themselves a Viking?

Director of Annual Giving, Carrie Sponheim, works alongside the director of alumni relations, LB Lyons, to ensure that alumni still feel the sense of belonging. There is an alumni relations office that is meant to maintain those relationships. It helps to remind alumni that the GV community is more than just the students: it is faculty, staff, alumni, church members and anyone who makes this environment prosper.

According to Sponheim, alumni value the relationships they created here. This is what made them feel a sense of belonging when they were students and even post graduation. There are alumni who still come back to see professors, their old friends and even the staff. Those relationships that were built here are valued and keep graduates feeling like they will always be a Viking.

Alumni not only come back naturally to visit, but they also attend events both on and off campus to reunite. The alumni office is constantly reminding them that this community is strong. Annual alumni events can range from hosting Disney on Ice, tailgating for homecoming, cooking classes and athletic reunions.

The alumni office wants to convey a message that once you graduate, Grand View is still here for their students.

“We are here for you wherever you need, for whatever you need,” Sponheim said.