April Johnson, Ed.D., has joined Boyd Copeland as one of two new vice presidents on boarded by the St. Louis Community College System. Johnson brings 17 years of experience to her new role, having worked at predominantly-white four-year colleges, four-year HBCUs, and also community colleges prior to this position. She spent most of her career working in career services, and student activities. Now, as vice president for student engagement at the Meramec campus of St. Louis Community College, she wants to streamline the student experience across the College’s four campuses.
Johnson said she’s adapted her strategies as an administrator to the drastically different populations she’s served. Most recently she served as assistant vice president for student affairs at Bowie State University.
A study in the Journal of Adolescent Health from 2018 showed that only 21% of Black students with a mental health problem received a diagnosis, compared to 48% of white students.
“The roles I had dictated the functions that I was doing, and how I did things differently throughout those 17 years,” she said. Right now, Johnson noted, colleges and universities across the nation are pivoting to an increased focus on student affairs–that is to say, any and all aspects of students’ lives and engagement that exist outside of the classroom. This pivot has happened for a variety of reasons: an increased awareness of student mental health challenges, particularly those among underserved populations, for example; as well as the strain on community-building caused by the pandemic. Several studies indicate that college students from communities of color, for example, are more likely to have unmet mental health needs than white college students: a study in the Journal of Adolescent Health from 2018 showed that only 21% of Black students with a mental health problem received a diagnosis, compared to 48% of white students.
In a community college context, student engagement is particularly difficult and important: students at STLCC commute, and only 36% are full time students, meaning engagement takes more than just showing up in a student’s dormitory with a bonding activity to do. One way Johnson plans to do this is to “establish a First Year Experience” that is consistent across all STLCC campuses.
“It has a direct correlation with retention, the way that you onboard and connect your students, get them connected to resources, services, clubs and orgs…help them to understand what college life is, how to calculate a GPA,” Johnson said. “All that will help you be successful, and help us maintain and retain our students.”
She also plans to implement a more comprehensive student leadership training program, so that students themselves can help with student retention and community-building. This program, she said, would also prepare students to enter the workforce after graduation.
“We are ensuring that our students are obtaining and making sure that they are getting proficient in all of the skills that employers are looking for today,” Johnson said. Students who are already in student leadership are prime candidates.”They’re already in leadership roles and so just fine tuning those leadership skills and competencies, I’m looking forward to doing that as well,” she said. This program would help student leaders with ‘soft skills’ such as communication, ethics, and decision-making.
Johnson is also now responsible for much co-curricular event planning and activities creation at STLCC. But “of course, you can’t be together like you could before,” she said, referring to the still-limited capacity of in-person events. This can be a strain on the College’s budget, too: if an event that would ordinarily draw hundreds of students is now capped at 50, Johnson explained, the solution might be to run that event at a smaller capacity twice–which incurs double the speakers’ fees.
“So we’re just figuring out a way to still have meaningful programs, while still staying safe,” Johnson said.
