Final Report By Amani Hassan

“Student Life”: A New Profession for a New Institutional Priority 

International university ranking systems have increasingly shaped how institutions like the University of Toronto structure their priorities. Following an observed influence of student input on universities’ global ranking, a new profession emerged in many academic institutions that specifically intends to support and enrich the student experience.  UofT’s “Student Life”  is one such example as an organization composed of multiple departments that all aim to assist students in different areas of well-being, including their physical and mental health, as well as their social, academic, and career prospects. However, the impact of this new limb on the university is difficult to grasp as all stakeholders, including both students and faculty, are still actively adapting to its presence. Their complex role is further emphasized by its greater context within a bureaucratic institution, as despite a seemingly pastoral motivation toward supporting students, all activities are informed by and operate under university legislation. Departments focused on bolstering students’ social experience through clubs and leadership opportunities for example, can only do so according to the regulations set by the university– thus introducing a number of limitations for both staff and students. Regardless of the individual motivations of staff members at Student Life, who may all genuinely intend to help their students, students are sometimes aware of and thus deterred by the bureaucracy inherent in their interactions with the organization– resulting in a contradictory relationship between SL and the group it intends to help. 

 I explored both sides of this relationship for one semester at two research sites: the Clubs and Leadership Development Department at Student Life and formally recognized student groups at UofT. My methods of data collection included participant observation and auto-ethnographic reflections on my experiences in a newly recognized student group; structured and semi-structured interviews with Student Life employees and student group leaders; and field observations of the club and administrative offices at 21 Sussex, as well as the digital realm of Student Life (i.e., the main Student Life website and its associated components). In this paper, I compare the concerns of students in recognized groups to the experiences of individuals at Clubs and Leadership through two student-facing aspects of their jobs: the formal recognition process, and leadership workshops. In doing so, I examine various constraints that the department works under as a new and rapidly evolving extension of the University; the tensions or congruencies that arise or deepen as a result of these constraints; and the ways in which SL employees negotiate meaning in their unique, often conflicting job descriptions. Ultimately, I argue that a closer look at the more ‘unseen’ aspects of Student Life’s work in Clubs and Leadership reveals employees’ significant efforts toward a mission that aligns with students’ desires to belong and feel connected, despite the ambiguity and limitations created by their still-evolving role within the bureaucracy. 

The Formalization of “Found” Communities 

My own understanding of Student Life as a formerly ‘unengaged’ student was that of a seemingly benevolent extension of the university that remained in the background of my academic experience. Yet, after joining the new student union for my minor program, there seemed to be a disconnect between what was being advertised, and the experiences my peers were describing: As a ‘student leader,’ Student Life seemed to now represent several administrative ‘hoops’ that complicated our goals, rather than assisting them. Such adverse sentiments displayed by individuals in my community sparked my curiosity about the formal recognition process for clubs through the perspectives of both student leaders and SL administration: If the goal of SL’s Clubs and Leadership is to support student leaders, what is the significance of formal procedures that feel more like obstacles in our leadership journeys? If we have successfully formed a community through a shared goal, why must we bother with any formal processes to ‘become’ official? 

The concept of “community” is widely understood as something that emerges organically as a result of social human nature, whether through organized efforts to meet over a shared purpose or on accident through frequent interaction and a shared purpose that develops over time. Though starting a student club at a university seems to follow this process as students may naturally band together to create communities based on shared interests or goals, the act of creating a formally recognized club is different, as it necessitates the university’s involvement or approval to function– thus introducing a set of potential institutional barriers that could impede the group’s core motivations. What then, is the reason for seeking formal recognition? While student groups or course unions are not required to seek recognition at UofT, the process offers several benefits not otherwise made accessible by the university. According to the Student Life website, formal recognition allows Student groups the right to: Use the University’s name in conjunction with their activities; use University facilities and spaces “at a lower cost or at no cost compared to external organizations”; access web server space and other dedicated programs and services; and listings in directories provided to the University community such as the ‘Student Organization Portal’ (SOP) (“Recognition Status”; “SOP”). The creation of my small program’s course union did not include any deliberation over whether or not our group would seek formal recognition: As we represented a particularly underrepresented fraction of the student population, recognition was ubiquitously understood to be the most beneficial step forward in establishing the union to ensure opportunities for the growth of our community. 

The formalization process at UofT appeared relatively simple however: Any undergraduate or graduate student looking to start a campus group or club can do so online through the “Student Organization Portal” (“Recognition Status For Aspiring Student Groups and Clubs”). However, there are a few mandatory processes that the student(s) must first follow, such as providing a group constitution, the membership information for one primary contact, two administrative officers, and each remaining executive member. In total, each group must have at least five general members, as part of the policy requirement (“Apply for Student Group Recognition”). Students’ responsibilities do not end when the group is recognized, though, as each group must submit an annual request for renewal to continue benefiting from university resources (“SOP”). The nature of both of these processes is relevant as, despite Student Life’s stated mission to assist student leaders in their club activities, some students seem to view them first and foremost as a disciplinary structure that determines whether or not their club has access to funding and opportunities that significantly impact their success. In discussions with the presidents of two student clubs, I discovered that the recognition process in particular may be a major point of frustration for student leaders. The process of crafting and submitting a constitution for example was described by one student leader as an “unnecessary hoop” she had to jump through, as the work she put in was not inspired by her own aspirations for starting her group: She simply followed the exact guidelines set out by Student Life in the template on their website to ensure approval (Student Interviewee 1, 2024). Two students I spoke with also discussed a long wait time to get their constitutions approved, which likely contributed to an unfavorable view of the overall process. 

However, while administration at Clubs and Leadership appears to students as a disciplinary structure that attempts to formalize their inherently valid communities, its real role is to act as a ‘mediator’ between the university and the student body. When I spoke with individuals at Student Life about their perspective, it became clear that these administrative ‘hoops’ were not only understood as such by students: According to SL administrators and the SOP, a recognized student group must meet the requirements set out in the University’s Policy on the Recognition of Student Groups and Tri-Campus Guidelines on the Recognition of Student Groups at the time of its application, and for the duration of its recognition.” Clubs and Leadership’s role is thus essentially to present the rules in these two documents– the university’s mandatory guidelines for how a recognized student group ought to function– and assist students in satisfying them. Moreover, long wait times reported by students were also revealed as a symptom of the university’s approach to organizing the department: The time it takes to approve documents for student clubs is likewise a point of frustration for club administration, not only as many students submit too close to deadlines, but also the fact that only one individual is assigned the task of approving constitutions and renewal requests for over 600 groups on campus. Ultimately, it seemed that these bureaucratic processes are equally an obstacle for clubs and leadership administration, as their position as the first point of contact with students wanting to start a club hinders their ability to reach students as professionals who could help them navigate the complex institution they both are required to operate under. 

“Training” The Student Leader and the Professional

The clubs and leadership development division of Student Life aims to support their mission statement: “To enrich the university experience for and with students by fostering learning, growth, connection, communities and support” by providing clubs with the necessary resources, including not only external support through attempting to simplify the recognition process, funding, and space-booking– but also individual internal support by offering regular workshops geared toward helping students improve or build upon their existing leadership skills (“Clubs and Leadership”). Before beginning this project I had never once heard of such workshops, despite having experience as an executive member of two recognized student groups. Curious about the level of outreach for these events and whether I had simply missed out on something obvious, I asked a few fellow student leaders about their perception of these events– but all seemed equally unaware. While my sample size is admittedly small, how are any number of student leaders unaware of services made specifically for them? Upon further observation, these workshops also seem to offer a clear incentive for participation through the provision of co-curricular credits (CCR), which are added to students’ transcripts, allowing them to include the experience on their CVs as evidence of their engagement (“Co-curricular Record”). Yet, Clubs and Leadership administrators explained that despite this added benefit, engagement is often drastically low compared to the massive number of active clubs at the university. 

It is clear that SL staff is motivated to foster engagement at these events, but their efforts seem to fall short for a few reasons. For one, student interest in workshops aimed at ‘developing’ leadership skills may be low as their existence implies a need for improving leadership ability. Such workshops thus seem once again, intend to provide structure to a naturally occurring event (i.e., ‘leadership’), and ‘professionalize’ students through expert training. This ‘professionalization,’ which can include “associations which initiate and host professional development opportunities, capacity building, and activities such as support and development of communities of practices… as well as explicit codes of ethics, principles, competencies, and standards” may deter students from engaging by way of creating an unnecessary formal aspect to progress they are already making in their journeys as spearheaders in their own student experience (Moscaritolo and Schreiber 2023, 7). However, administrators’ overarching claim about these services in interviews had been that they “guide” rather than “lead” students in their leadership journeys by “meeting them where they are.” As such, I did learn that many of their workshops have been developed to assist more practical skills such as navigating the formal recognition process and event planning– while workshops surrounding more personal reflections of leadership qualities were led in such a way that encouraged engagement but did not force it (“Event Planning for Clubs and Groups”). So, if imposing professionalism onto students is not real the issue, what is? 

Considering Student Life’s unique role as a recent profession in higher education, much of its organization is still evolving as the institution slowly learns and adapts to its needs (C. Smith et al. 506-507). The whole of Student Life is a massive entity with at least fourteen departments all aimed at targeting different areas of student experience– collectively aiming to reach a student body of over 68,000 (“Departments’; “Quick Facts,” 2024). Yet according to an SL contact, their communications team is comprised of a small group of only eight people, who push out information for all departments through just a few general social media channels. As our interlocutor explains, this poses a major issue for individual departments within Student Life like Clubs and Leadership, as it limits their ability to disseminate valuable information and ensure accuracy and detail that would assist both students and the division: “–they’ll be the ones doing the final editing and make the final decisions on what it looks like, when it goes out, who it goes out to, and things like that. So because it’s run by this separate entity… I can’t just go and like, see only 10 people showed up for my workshop in like five minutes— I can’t like make a last minute post or something like that” (SL Interviewee, 2024). 

Moreover, beyond issues of understaffing and insufficient avenues for effective mass communication, both of our interlocutors at SL reported having the desire to make foundational changes to procedures at the department, but not having the time as a result of daily ‘checklist’ tasks that were more demanding. In particular, when asked about her ability to make changes to more relevant workshop topics for increasingly “tech-savvy” classes of students, our interviewee stated: “-there’s definitely a lot more of an administrative load to this role than I had initially anticipated. It’s a lot of when we are actively doing the planning… You’re using critical paths, which are Excel documents, tabs for attendance, budget, this and that. You’re tracking every single thing you do. You’re doing after-action reports, so reports on how they went afterward. Those could be four or five pages. Collecting the feedback, doing all the things, summarizing stuff. So there is definitely a lot. I have to say how long I actually spent on it… Every other day, I don’t know. Yeah, it is very frequent. Like definitely like a weekly thing at least” (2024). She describes here the regular documentation required of each staff member, which involves creating a document that is used to help audit and keep track of their roles. She referred to these documents as ‘anchor documents,’ explaining that they are also used to help any future employees who will take on the job to understand and adjust to their role. Ultimately, we discovered that the significance of these documents lies not only in the fact that these novel professions operate under such uncertainty that they require detailed documentation for regular audits as they rapidly evolve– but also in the fact that they seem to be used to strategically support adjustment in roles with relatively high staff-turnover rates to prevent instructions for the role from getting “lost” (SL interviewee 1, 2024). Furthermore, such heavy focus on administrative aspects like documentation and preparing for audits seems to suggest that much of their daily work revolves around navigating their own roles, leaving significantly less time for the student-facing parts of their jobs. Central to this aspect of their job, however, is processing feedback. Despite the reported struggle of having to navigate these administrative duties, the interviewee explained that student feedback in particular was the best part of her job: “I love hearing feedback, even when it’s like, ‘I didn’t love this part’… that gives me somewhere to actually start in terms of like changing things. Obviously the positive feedback is amazing. Like when you’ve really impacted a student, and it helps… students apply to like law schools… getting their like messages saying, ‘I got in!’”… it’s also really nice just, like, hearing students succeed with their clubs and events and outside of school too. That’s the most rewarding part” (SL interviewee 1, 2024). 

Ultimately, while student engagement may be lacking in some areas of Clubs and Leadership Development, Student Life professionals we spoke to seemed to be genuinely concerned for the needs of students as they aimed to provide more practical assistance through their workshops and acknowledged the constraints they face in communications. Their ability to focus on student engagement also further seems to be counterintuitively hindered by their responsibilities in documenting their roles for auditing by their supervisors at the university. Despite all this, our contact still found meaning in her work by embracing feedback as an opportunity to assist student wellbeing through administrative work– thus re-negotiating a partial ‘roadblock’ into a motivating opportunity for development (Smith et al. 2021, 515). 

The Value of Third Spaces and ‘Third Space Professionals’ 

Throughout my meetings with staff at Clubs and Leadership, I eventually moved from initially viewing them as a disciplinary structure to understanding their roles as “third space professionals,” The term “third space” in this context was coined by Celia Whitchurch, and refers to jobs in higher education that exist in the intersection between academic and professional roles, underscoring a group of “blended professionals” who navigate both domains— thus bridging the gap between the traditional academic environment (i.e., the “first space”) and the external, community-focused world (i.e., the “second space”) (Whitchurch 2012, quoted in McIntosh and Nutt 2024). The term effectively describes the organization of Student Life as a complex domain that offers various contributions to the overall university environment: According to Smith et al., “Third space staff increasingly possess postsecondary and graduate education” and take on interdisciplinary roles that oscillate between “specialist, academic, and policy domains” thus assisting the academy in a multitude of ways by blending academic, administrative, and community-oriented responsibilities (2021, 506). As such, real insight into the work lives and perspectives of individuals at Clubs and Leadership was a necessary aspect of trying to understand their contributions to my own social and academic experience at the University: Beyond the digital sphere of SL, and the few mandatory points of contact that most commonly bridge them to the student body, Student Life exists to offer students clarity and guidance in navigating a structure that is otherwise complicated and inaccessible. 

This is apparent as they can strategically re-define the more institutional aspects of their job descriptions towards supporting a more holistic goal of supporting the student communities and the institution they operate in. For example, when asked about the more administrative aspects of his job, an interviewee stated “I feel like I support students in that by like, yeah I guess helping people like understand all the things they have to do … I feel like I’m like, very much a part of helping them navigate through systems, which is like, just in life a very valuable skill, like life will have many, many systems that you have to navigate (SL Interviewee 2, 2024). This is a meaningful re-direction of an aspect of the job that he understands is generally misunderstood, as he explained: “- a lot of the frustrations that students have sometimes towards me is because I present a bunch of systems that they have to navigate. It’s like, oh, you want a bank letter to open a bank account? Well, here’s this form… like, you know, all of these things where… you just have to like navigate this thing, and then navigate that, and then navigate this” (SL Interviewee 2, 2024). Despite this, it motivates him to hone parts of his job that allow him to help students: “- they still have to find the information themselves and then like, find out how to navigate things, and then I can support them like you know, through the way. But hopefully, they leave being a club leader with, I guess, yeah, more of a stomach for bureaucracy” (SL Interviewee 2, 2024). 

From the perspective of a student group leader, the structure provided by rules and regulations can be beneficial as it encourages responsibility to our communities– but the majority of us are ultimately driven by a core desire for social and academic growth through a strong community of practice. This has been abundantly clear in the first semester of my student union through the many times our group willingly engaged with one another outside of scheduled monthly meetings; showing up for one another spontaneously during midterms and exam seasons; and the many hours spent physically and mentally preparing for events that we knew would only reach at most, three or four other students. As I sat down earlier this month to hand-carve and stamp 40 bookmarks and 20 pencil cases that I volunteered to create in preparation for our union’s exam resources event, I reflected on every little effort made to support and engage our peers, and how they compared to the seemingly ‘invisible’ tasks carried out by staff at Clubs and Leadership. They depend on each other almost entirely: Even without consistent communication between the two groups, the mere existence of Student Life at the university allows each student group an opportunity for a ‘third space’ on campus, which then encourages the ‘success’ and growth of the community. Even my small course union, which only represents about 0.088% of the overall student population, can access meaningful opportunities for connection after becoming recognized through Student Life. Clubs and leadership thus enriches the ‘third space’ by not only fostering the growth of student communities, but also enabling a vital partnership between students and university staff– both of whom are tasked with navigating the complexities of the university’s overall structure. Furthermore, the individuals who work in the department not only make the university’s complexity easier for students to digest and navigate, but also manage it themselves within the context of their roles in a way that makes it possible to effectively support students in the best possible way. 

Bibliography

2023. Ahmed, Alyssa. Event planning for Clubs and Groups. Powerpoint file. 

2024. “Apply for Student Group Recognition.” Student Organization Portal. https://sop.utoronto.ca/apply-for-student-group-recognition/.

2024. “Clubs and Leadership Development.” Student Life. https://studentlife.utoronto.ca/department/clubs-leadership-development/.

2024. “Co-curricular Reccord”. Student Life. https://studentlife.utoronto.ca/service/co-curricular-record/.

McIntosh, Emily, and Diane Nutt. 2024. “Blended Professionals: How to Make the Most of ‘third Space’ Experts.” Times Higher Education. Times Higher Education. October 1, 2024. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/blended-professionals-how-make-most-third-space-experts. 

Moscaritolo, Lisa Bardill, and Birgit Schreiber. “Towards professionalization of student affairs across the Globe.” New Directions for Student Services, vol. 2023, no. 183, Sept. 2023, pp. 7–10, https://doi.org/10.1002/ss.20487. 

2024. “Recognition Status for Aspiring Campus Groups and Clubs.” Student Life. https://studentlife.utoronto.ca/service/recognition-status-for-aspiring-campus-groups-and-clubs/.

Smith, Cameron, Michael Holden, Eustacia Yu, and Patrick Hanlon. 2021. “‘So What Do You Do?’: Third Space Professionals Navigating a Canadian University Context.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 43 (5): 505–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2021.1884513.

Whitchurch, Celia. 2013. Reconstructing Identities in Higher Education : The Rise of Third Space Professionals. 1st ed. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; Routledge.