By Yunshan Li, Richard Wu and Amani Hassan

On an early afternoon in October, we visited the reception office of the Clubs and Leadership Division of Student Engagement for a social event for club leaders. We arrived to find only one club leader, accompanied by two staff members. Half an hour later, another student showed up, making a total of two student attendees. At the end of the session, the onsite manager made sure to take attendance. 

At around the same point of the semester, the Mentorship and Peer Division of Student Engagement held an online workshop on communication skills for peer mentors. Despite this being a pleasant Saturday morning in early fall, a time most students would spend away from the university, over sixty students showed up. That same afternoon, the division held another workshop– this time on boundary-setting. Upwards of fifty-five students showed up, many of whom had already attended the earlier one. The stark difference in the levels of student engagement between the Clubs and Leadership event and the Mentorship and Peer workshops aroused our curiosity: Why was there such a difference?

Our ethnographic investigations revealed at least three extrinsic incentives effective at drawing student engagement. The Mentorship and Peer workshops likely tap all three of these incentives. First, students are sometimes paid to engage in Student Life events. For example, many aspirant peer mentors are paid by U of T’s dispersed peer mentorship programs to attend these training sessions. By contrast, club leaders are usually not paid to attend Student Life socials or workshops. Second, even without payment, attendance at such workshops may be mandated by mentorship programs as part of the entry requirements for being recognized as mentors. Third, participation in such workshops also earns credits toward a co-curricular record (CCR) certificate, which students can place on their resumes. We would soon learn, however, that such extrinsic incentives are not the only means of drawing student engagement. 

On days when no special events are happening, 21 Sussex feels no different than any other office building. When we visited, the building felt especially mundane: The only sounds you could hear apart from our creaky footsteps were silent work-related chatter and muffled typing behind closed doors. Yet, upon entering a student club office, we were welcomed by a scene that immediately distinguished the space from the staff offices we saw. A bright, lively room, covered in posters and decorated with multiple shelves housing comic books, action figures, and assorted memorabilia. Student Life coordinators informed us that students who had registered for club space in the building made all the alterations themselves. The space was made entirely their own – and such was the case, as the room was full of students, all present and engaged as they sat around the television playing a video game. Here, we see the power of intrinsic incentive, as club members naturally gather in a given space to have fun in their preferred way– with little structure imposed by the institution beyond the requirement of registering for the space.

In sum, we found that students’ engagement with the events and opportunities at Student Engagement tends to vary according to these different forms of incentives provided. This echoes the division head’s vision of using all avenues and spaces– structured or unstructured, formal or informal– to get students engaged and offer them opportunities to feel like they belong.