Veterinary Students' Sense of Belonging: Growing Community with Small Group Academic Enhancement

A student's sense of belonging to a university is associated with success in academic setting, happiness, and satisfaction. It is therefore unsurprising that universities commonly strive to improve student measures of belonging especially considering its negative correlation with attrition rates. This study documents the implementation and assessment of a new curricular intervention at Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine (RUSVM) and measures associated changes in students' feeling of belonging to the university and accountability for their success. Specifically, small, group, faculty-guided weekly discussion sessions were introduced to the Veterinary Professional Foundation (VPF) course to complement a series of updated didactic only lectures. Voluntary surveys ("belonging to the university scale" [1] and the "personal accountability in education scale" [2]) were utilized to document student attitudes and feelings surrounding these variables. Likert scores from a control group of students who completed the VPF course prior to the curricular change were compared to the intervention group who engaged in the weekly guided discussion sessions via a Wilcoxon test. The intervention group reported significantly improved feelings of belonging to the university (p-values ranging from 0.008 to 0.027). Minimal change was noted between groups associated with accountability. The addition of weekly small group meetings has proven valuable at RUSVM in improving student sense of belonging to the university. Further research is indicated to determine if accountability may be improved over a longer period of monitoring with continued interventions.