Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Project, in June 2022, undergraduate student Sarah Craig (SFS‘23) interviewed Michael Cozart, director of student support services and TRIO director at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama.
For the record, can you just first start by telling me your name, pronouns, and your position here.
Michael Cozart, he/his. And the director of student support services (SSS).
Perfect. And how long have you been the TRIO director?
So I was hired, April. My start date was April 14, 2021.
Oh, wow. Okay. And can you just start by telling me what your engagement looks like with students?
So I'm hands-on; I'm in your face. I'm very interactive with students—I don't know if you got a chance to observe yesterday, during Badger Connection.
I had a superintendent 20 years ago who basically never came out of her office. And so she got the lay of the land from the principals, from our meetings; we would have our meetings, principals would tell her what's going on with the school, directors would tell her what's going on with programs. And so she didn't really know the culture. She really couldn't tell you beyond what people told her. And I just thought that was terrible. So I vow to always have skin in the game and be hands-on. So I will forever be engaged in-person and involved with students.
Yeah, no, that's great, I think especially in a program like TRIO. I don't know if I mentioned I was in a TRIO program in high school.
Around or a talent search Upward Bound?
Upward Bound.
Oh, good. So TRIO works.
Yeah, yeah. Yes, it definitely does. And could you actually tell me a little bit about the structure and demographics of the TRIO program here in terms of size, recruitment, things like that?
So we were a new program funded in 2020 and we're funded to serve 140. So that first year was a COVID-19 year. So, substantial progress was 90 students. So I was hired in April, and when I came to the program, we actually had 11 students. And so I was able to get to about 61, 62. So I was able to actively recruit 50 students within, I want to say four months—I came in April, school was over, and that semester was over. The summer was virtual. I was transitioning from Kansas City to Mobile, so I was able to actually recruit 50 students within that four-month period.
We are now at 110. We need to be at 126 by August, and I imagine we will be at 126 by the end of this week or beginning of next week. When that would connect the applications from the first Badger Connection to the applicants from the second Badger Connection, that will get us to where we need to be.
So our students’ demographics—I'm looking at numbers. We have so many submitted reports on the rise. On Friday, we had 102 students. Today we have 110 because we were taking eight applications. Friday we had 24 males, 78 females. And so I would imagine of those eight, that's probably at a mix. So we're probably 28 male, 82 female. Just this is more on our demographics. As of Friday, we served 30 Black students, 40 white students, 11 Hispanic, and one Asian. Of those eight applications that we took in, I would probably say there’s a mix. There was one Asian. There were two Hispanic, two Black students, and three white students.
So like I said, we're getting there. We have to be at 126 by the end of August to make sure that we're in compliance. And so, like I said, we'll knock out 16 applications by next week. We'll have 16 new students from the meeting from this Friday, then applications that are still coming in. So that's kind of where we are. You know, students we serve with first[-generation], low[-income], students first, you know, so we have a good mix. Good mix of students.
Yeah. I believe the eligibility criteria, it's like first-gen, low-income, Pell Grant, and then disability status? Do you have any numbers that you can share on that?
Yeah. So I'm looking up a report. So right now we're at 62 first-gen and low-income, 24 first-gen only, 11 low-income, and then 12 students with disabilities. One that's just disability and low-income. And those numbers are going to change because our first/low numbers need to increase our percentage. So those will select...the next 30 students that we take in will be first and low. And those are hard numbers, but they'll change. Because we do have more because some of our students that are low-income are actually supposed to have documented disabilities that we also service. So some of those numbers are going to change, so we’ll end where we need to be.
Yeah, no, that's great. I mean, I'm a first-gen student, of course, coming out to open ground. We don't have a TRIO program at Georgetown, so I don't know. I'm just really interested in even just the structural aspects.
Yeah. You know, having programs like this I think is really important. You take a student who’s first-gen and they don't get connected in those first four weeks where you take Georgetown students. We're a small school, but that really doesn't matter whether you last. A small school student either feels connected or they feel disconnected. These incidents are too far away. What we're trying to make sure that we do [is] capture those students so that they can have that sense of belonging, because without that sense of belonging, it is a challenge. It's a challenge. So we're trying to make sure that we really set an environment in the atmosphere for students to feel like they can really excel; they don't have to be here by themselves.
Right? So yeah, I was going through your website and I saw the different things that TRIO offers like advising, financial aid stuff, tutoring, counseling, and a bunch of other things. Would you mind just talking about some of those courses which you feel are the most utilized or the most beneficial for TRIO students?
Advising. So I am like a secondary advisor for all your students. Students’ main advisor, someone that's in their division or department—some of the marketing majors, their primary advisors will be marketing—somebody in that area from secondary. So, you know, sometimes it helps that we can kind of help navigate, help students make sure they're taking the right courses. Our tutoring is still a work in progress. Last year, we were able to hire professional tutors. And this year we're going to do a professional tutor who’s actually a former TRIO employee who was a tutor in Florida. And so she's working on a doctorate degree at the University of South Alabama. Of course, she can actually come in and she can tutor, you know, in multiple areas. So that's going to be something new for us.
And then we're looking to utilize an online tutoring component as well, so that you can come in the office and get tutoring. There's tutoring that the college offers and then there's tutoring with students online. So you can access it 24/7 virtually. So that's what we're looking at that as another possible means for offering tutoring.
Mentoring and coaching. I'm a certified life coach, so, you know that's something that's just an additional benefit for students. So we can help students navigate this process, this thing called life. And so I think it's been beneficial particularly for the students that we serve. That's what they’ve stated, so, just help them any way we possibly can.
Yeah. And would you say that students ever come to you or anyone else who works with TRIO to get in contact with the wellness center or counseling?
So I don't know if, well, I mean there have been times in sessions where we've offered that kind of service. But I did a session, a workshop with our—at the time she was a new counselor—and I had her come in and do a session. And so it was kind of a break. It was a way of introducing her to our students. And so she kind of came in and talked about life, wellness, and mental health and offered some phenomenal tips to our students. And then I had her come into another group that I advise, come in to talk to them as well. And after that presentation, she was saying, “Thank you. I've had a lot of students come here looking for support and asking for support.” So, we try to advise students to utilize every resource available. So yeah, that's a workshop I'll do every semester because they'll be more students.
You know, sometimes it's the means to listen while you're here trying to process and, you know, navigate this whole thing, to know what resources that are available and bring them in. And so that was last year. We had one counselor and now we have a new counselor. So I think I'll probably do another session with the new counselor this semester and follow up—kind of rotating both counselors, just so the students know what resources they have at their disposal.
So yeah, definitely. I appreciate hearing that you kind of bring someone in-house because I think, if anything, it can be kind of intimidating to go to someone initially. So yeah, that's really important.
Something I just wanted to ask. Would you say that within the TRIO program, are the students aware of each other? I'm assuming some of them know each other, but are they regularly in the same space? Like how much contact is there between, like, a hundred or so students that are in the program?
Last semester, we utilized COVID-19 protocols. This semester, I don't know if we'll have as many. And so yes, they are. Whether it's live sessions or whether it's virtual sessions, students recruit students. And that's another thing that we're going to utilize. I've been in this thing for a long time and these gray whiskers don’t grow overnight. I'm actually interactive with students so, you know, my door is open if students come here and have a question they can always call. That's my number one priority.
Then we're going to use students to recruit other students. We're hiring students to recruit students, not just to recruit, to mentor students, to recruit students to kind of be a face, as a recruitment tool and a face for the program. They see me; they know me. We got students, so we’re going to use them. These first six weeks intensely, we'll set up in the student union and I'll have students recruiting. And we will give them the equipment and the tools that they need to be successful, to recruit other students, to draw in other students, to give shirts or whatever they need to be successful.
In my 20-plus years in education, when I first started I was young, and wisdom said stay active, but then use your resources. And so we're looking to go digital, technical, virtual, mobile. Everything that we do this because that's the generation—that's your generation, you know? Yeah. So we're looking to utilize social media in our arsenal, persistence, reaching out to students on just the days you have to be where they are.
Right. Yeah. And I guess, kind of thinking about all of these resources. And of course, like you said, TRIO is a fairly new program here. Would you say TRIO and the way the program is sort of forming right now, is it all influenced by the Jesuit values and Spring Hill's identity as a Jesuit institution?
No and yes. TRIO has its own culture, and some of that culture would coincide with some of the Jesuit culture. I am not from a Jesuit background, but I think there are some similarities. For me, we look to serve the host, not just while they're here, but look to form lifelong relationships and ties and connections. For us—and for me—I would say it's important that we establish relationships with students, because that's where it all starts. This only works if there's a relationship, you know. Your program is only as good as you are and as effective as you are. I want relationships.
So for me, for my staff, it's important. That's kind of the culture that we're really looking to set is about relationships, an open-door policy. And, you know, we could have set appointments and you can come in here. You know, this is kind of as this might be. We can make appointments, but if you need us, we're here. If we're not serving you, we're not doing our job, which is here. So, you know, that's kind of what we're letting students know. You know, we have an open-door policy. You can see us whenever; you have access to us. Now, there are boundaries. But we try to make this thing very user-friendly and based on relationships. It’s about the establishment of rapport. I've seen it where there's no rapport, and when there is no rapport, you have a lackluster program. When you have an open-door policy, there is rapport and students are engaged. And so that's what we're looking to bring to the program. We're continuing to do.
So, on caring for the whole person. You know, it's not just what we can do for you here, what you can do for us, but what we can do to benefit you when you leave this place. What can you say that will benefit you when you leave here? You know, so think about, like, financial literacy. How do you engage? So some things that we're looking to be able to do, bring in some training on not just banking and budgeting, but what do you do when you leave here? Buying your house, and buying a car? Those are things that are going to benefit you when you leave here. But it's our goal first.
So if this thing works effectively, this is my belief. If we work this thing effectively, then we change lives and change generations; we impact generations. If we do what we say we’re going to do, then we're breaking cycles and curses, and we don't have repeat families in TRIO. We may have siblings, but we should have no children. Yeah. And so that's changing. That's changing culture. That's changing families, changing generations. And so I've seen that firsthand. I'm a former TRIO student, but I didn't take advantage of it like I should have, like my older brother and sister did, and it's changed the trajectory in our family. So I know it works for me.
Yeah. I'm going to get to the caring for the whole person thing, but first, you said that TRIO kind of has its own culture. Being a TRIO student, I know what you mean. I was just wondering if you can kind of elaborate on that in the context of Spring Hill. How would you define TRIO culture here?
SSS is new to the campus. So I'm having to create the culture. But TRIO is not [new] because SSS had a thriving Upward Bound program for years. And so we've written for Upward Bound and we're looking to get refunded. And then we want to bring back some of those who were part of Upward Bound, like alumni that I've interacted with who were part of Upward Bound. Just what people say in the community about Spring Hill’s Upward Bound: it was very effective. Very effective. It was very impactful. We have judges. We have city leaders, doctors. A lot of people came out of this program and it changed a lot of people's lives. And so we’re really trying to bring that back, that influence and that impact on SSS students. And trying to utilize alums.
So I had a student, a first-gen student. I connected him with an attorney. The student studied pre-law law. He was a Spring Hill alum who is a practicing attorney and so connected them two. This attorney took this young man and talked to her mentor and sent him some money for him to apply to some more graduate schools. Didn't have to do it. Didn't ask for that. Just, you know, giving back.
And so the TRIO culture, you know, even in our work. There's a new director, assistant director at Bishop State College, a community college. So a couple of months ago I went to Bishop State to try to connect because they're a junior college. And so the director wasn't there. I connected with the director. As a matter of fact, I have a meeting tomorrow with the new director, just trying to help her learn the whole process. But that's the TRIO community. Yeah, we compete; we write grants against each other, but this is a sharing community. I've never seen a community in all the workforce that is like this community. We help each other. We strengthen each other. We support each other. State, regional, national. It's a team. Either way, you win.
It's not even about that. It's about if you win, that means your students win. If your students are winning, then you’re winning. So this culture, it's really it's infectious, it's contagious. And colleagues call each other all the time, you know, “I need some information: What are you doing? What are your best practices? How can I do this best?” And so that's the TRIO culture. And so we want to try to bring that culture here so that our students understand it's a team approach. When you win, I win; when I win, you win; we all win. So that's the culture that we really want to establish, that this is a place that you belong when you come to this office, this suite, you know you belong, you know you're welcome. This belongs to you. And whatever we can do to help you win, that's what we want to do. And so that's the culture that I really, really want to establish here during my tenure. And we're hoping that even when I'm gone, that's the culture that's just been established.
Kind of getting back to cura personalis (care of the whole person). Can you just talk a little bit about that in the context of TRIO and having this program for students with various marginalized identities, kind of what cura personalis looks like when a part of your whole person is an identity that is so often suppressed and are left under-resourced?
So for me, I don't, just...first-gen, low-income is not just helping. I don't look at it like “those students” because that was me. And so I had people to help me, to guide me, you know. And so you've got to care for the whole person. It's like, you know, what can work? Can you do [that]? What kind of services that you can provide for a student that's not just impacting them, but their family; not just when they’re here, but when they leave; not just academically, but mentally, emotionally, socially. You have to look at people as a whole and not take them in segmented parts. “We're all in the academic world,” but academics mean nothing if I'm hungry. I can't learn if I'm hungry; I can't learn if I'm struggling. So how do we help the whole student? This is kind of the way that I'm built. This is what we look out for each other. I'm here and I'm funded. I work with the TRIO, you know, but as a Black male, I have a responsibility toward other Black males, TRIO or not TRIO.
And so if there is a student that is not in TRIO, let me reach out. I met with some parents yesterday. Their daughter did not qualify for TRIO. Both the daughter, an athlete, and the parents were athletes in college, probably doing well, probably not going to qualify for TRIO. But you know what? You're hundreds of miles away. If your daughter needs a place to go to talk to somebody, here is my card. And since she’s not in TRIO, I can’t serve her that way. But that doesn't mean this is just, that's just a TRIO number—I'm still a person. I think you have to think about “How do you better the whole person?” Think, well, we only think about how to be better students in one phase and we miss out on the whole person. So, you know, we try to give them resources that they can take out of these walls, you know, because when you leave here, you still have to be a better person. You have to think. You have to know how to think. You know how to know how to talk, transform, how to act, how to be curious. So if we just say math, math, math, or yeah, don't do anything else, then [we] set them up to fail.
Yeah. Now I have so many questions; I'm trying to think of what order I want to ask them in. I think something I am just kind of wondering about is obviously a sector of your student population is students with disabilities. What kind of support systems are outside of TRIO? I don't know what kind of culture exists for disabled students on campus. I think that's something that I've been really interested in but haven't been able to hit directly on.
At my previous institution, we had an entire suite specifically for disability services. And so we were a public institution. We had two, three staff. And here, our disability services is, I think it's just Dr. Collins. Previously, there were three full-time staff in disability services. I think there will be areas for roles in our disability services as far as resources and that comes with resources. Again, we had three staff that were strictly just disability services; we had computers, resources. So, I think it varies from institution to institution.
And I can't really say what the staff involvement is here, but at my previous institution, the staff were very welcoming and supportive of utilization of disability services, accommodations for all students. Students did have to self-identify. And so, [at Spring Hill], we serve students, but we're limited in how we can serve them beyond emotional support. We're very limited based on what resources our campus has. So I think that's an area of growth. And maybe beefing up that department would be really good because it's more than one person trying to provide resources and accommodations. Then there are so many more resources that could be available.
So yeah, and I guess kind of something related to that, or at least in my mind: I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between disability and mental health. I know we talked a little bit about the whole person and kind of what that means. But I'm just interested in hearing how you would characterize TRIO students specifically, like their attitudes towards not just mental health in general, but mental health on campus and maybe what that culture looks like.
I would say this. I've never seen in my tenure in education as many students with mental health abilities or different abilities or challenges as I have now. With anxiety—and a lot of this could have been some of this, a lot of this could have been brought on by the pandemic, where these different abilities were exposed with the change, and so could have brought out more anxiety. And again, I don't know, this could be the pandemic, the impact it had on new cases of the rise in mental health challenges. But I don’t know—I can't document that. But pre-pandemic, I would imagine the numbers weren't as high as they are now.
And these are students that are disclosing and identifying. How many more students that are not identified have not gotten treatment because of the resources? You know, and we're in an environment and in a space where students have resources and can get the attention, the medical or mental health attention needed, because they have the resources to say, “Hey, I need some assistance,” and get diagnoses where you take students who are first-gen or low-income or from disadvantaged backgrounds, who still have to deal with some of these same issues, just aren't resourced enough to be able to identify what it is or to get examined or checked. So yes, after the pandemic, there are so many more. Just looking back over the semester, I can think of students who suffered from anxiety but were not resourced and could not go get the attention needed. I can think of students who are resourced and use that to get a diagnosis and get the treatment and the help.
I think something I've been thinking a lot about recently in terms of just disability on college campuses is the difference between accommodations and accessibility. And I think a lot of times, college campuses rely a lot on the formalities and accommodations. And when that does happen, as you were just describing, the students who don't have the resources to go get those diagnoses because the college will accept formalized accommodations and they won't be able to access those. So I think it's tricky.
Yeah, I just had an encounter with a student who is going through some mental health challenges and the student just is not resourced enough. Because it would be very expensive to go get the proper treatments for diagnosis, to come back and say, “I need accommodations.” So I think it is.
On the bottom of our app, we have some new applications, not new applications but updated applications. And this is the statement we have on them: Vincent Tinto, a statement that says “Access without support is not an opportunity.” We in the TRIO community utilize Tinto and his work, and so “access without support is not an opportunity.” I can think about my student who had access, but the support was not there. So that's really not an opportunity. So the student probably did okay and could have done better with the support.
Yeah, definitely. And last kind of big question for you, on the theme of support. I think sometimes the tricky thing with programs like TRIO that serves specifically marginalized students is that sometimes a college or university can kind of rely on those programs to become like a one-stop shop for any problem that those marginalized students may encounter. How do you think that Spring Hill as an institution can do a better job of sustaining students in a way that does not just rely on TRIO?
So I think that comes with a lot of education and training. I think it's particularly in a space like this where you are a private institution, and the average student is probably resourced not from a marginalized background. And so that's in our hiring practices, making sure that we're intentional in hiring people, a diverse workforce, more training, cultural competence. So that faculty and staff can get it. Cultural competence and some training, you know. TRIO isn't the space for troubled kids; this isn't the troubled kids' program. Any time there's a kid with trouble, you can’t just send them here. That's not who we are. You can’t just say, “Oh, this kid is failing; send them to TRIO.” We are a completion program. And so we take the students who are from marginalized, disadvantaged backgrounds and help them and support them through.
Now, as a result, our average GPA is 3.5. So we take first-gen students, low-income students, students with disabilities. And this is where they are. We have a 95% retention rate, persistence rate. So, you know, we are here to help students to try to get through and be supportive. If we're in students' lives when they start, then we can help them as they are going through challenges. But if they're only introduced to us when they're halfway out or messed up, it's hard for us to say, “Okay.” Because then it's like you put us in a tricky situation where we can't serve the student if they're on the way out the door, because then we have to worry about making sure the students are retaining the content. So, you know, some of the education and the training, it's my responsibility.
But we need that support, you know, from the President's Office now to get us in front of people, let them know who we are, what we're about, how we best serve students. I mean, he's pretty much done a good job, done a decent job at that. We've done some things to reach out to the staff and we're going to do more things. Last year we did National First-Gen Day, and we have faculty and staff that self-identify, and we'll continue to do things like that so students know that they have allies on campus, that other faculty and staff who are first-gen. And I think that helps, that helps give us some friends in spaces. But we're always trying to get better and do better and do more. So if we think that we can, that's the goal.
