Rick Ezekiel

Creating student communities is vital for Student Affairs teams in Higher Education institutions. Positive environments in communal spaces like classrooms and residence halls enhance learning, promote well-being, and instill a sense of social responsibility in students, providing them with critical interpersonal skills necessary for success. 

Dr. Rick Ezekiel, Vice-Provost of Student Affairs at Dalhousie University, sat down with Co-Host of The Interview, Max Webber, to discuss why a sense of community enriches the overall student experience, and how his team creates social accountability among the Dalhousie student body.

Rick's Journey

Max: Let’s start with an introduction to yourself and your institution… 

I’m Rick Ezekiel, the Vice-Provost of Student Affairs at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. I’m also a sessional instructor in applied psychology and education at the University of Toronto, where I teach neuroscience, and mind, brain, and education. 

Max: What drew you to a career in Student Affairs?

While I was studying developmental cognitive neuroscience for my undergraduate degree, I was very involved as a student leader, so there was a connection between my study of human behaviour and my experience in Student Affairs. When I decided to undertake neuroscience research for my postgraduate work, a contract role opened up in the Student Affairs office where I’d worked as a student leader. I went for it, and as soon as I got back to that work I realized how immediately impactful it was for students. It’s very different from scientific research, where the work you’re doing might only make a difference 20 years in the future. That’s when I decided to pursue a career in Student Affairs, as well as keeping up my neuroscience research.  

Max: How do you create a safe and positive campus climate?

Communities that promote psychological safety, mental health, and well-being are realized through interpersonal interactions, so in our case, that’s student-to-student and student-to-faculty interactions. We focus on cultivating a sense of community that brings out pro-social behaviours in our students during those interactions. By making our 21,000-strong student body feel like a much smaller community, we can create social accountability, make sure students feel an obligation to support each other, and generally foster a safe and positive campus environment. That approach is most successful in classrooms and residence communities because those smaller spaces allow us to move away from a university policy compliance approach, and toward building a sense of citizenship. When they feel that sense of community, staff, faculty, and students are able to build meaningful relationships, engage in positive behaviour, and care for each other.

Max: How do you ensure all students are engaged with community policies? 

During critical periods like orientation, our team can get thousands of students to feel a connection to our institution, and prompt them to engage with our policies. While that approach has its benefits, the most meaningful changes in perspective and behaviour happen in smaller environments that students already feel a connection to, like their residence floor or classrooms. In particular, we’ve been working with faculty to build classroom communities wherein students can support each other, and be engaged in conversations about how we create a positive atmosphere. When there’s a common interest, and students are co-creating and pledging to those community commitments, they’re more likely to be engaged on an emotional level. 

Max: In an increasingly polarized political landscape, how do you facilitate conversations across difference among students?

Students need a connection as humans first before they can move on to passionate or heated disagreement with those who think differently. The best way to create that relationship capital is through shared experiences within our learning or residence communities. Faculty and staff also have an important role because we can model how to disagree with a scholarly approach, bringing different perspectives to bear on an issue without dehumanizing our partner. I also make sure that I never use the code of conduct in my role for silencing purposes, so when I get called upon to help students solve a disagreement, I course correct their conversations and facilitate respectful dialogue without dismissing the disagreement outright. Students need to have difficult conversations because that’s how they solve complex problems, learn, and grow as people, so uncomfortable dialogue is much more rewarding than silence. 

Max: What are the challenges when setting expectations for student behaviour?

Setting behavioural expectations at an institutional level is difficult because, until they feel a connection to our community, students aren’t going to demonstrate meaningful engagement with our policies. We have several institution-level policy workshops and e-learning modules for new students, as well as our Student Code of Conduct, and Residence Community Living Guide, that set out campus-wide expectations for respectful behaviour. But, the process is far more likely to succeed if we allow students to co-create behavioural expectations within their communities. Classrooms, degree programs, student cohorts, and residence floors are critical spaces because living next to 40 other people in a dorm feels much more tangible than a 20-page policy confined to our website. When students come together to develop substantial community expectations for behaviour, it’s easier for them to become invested and change their behaviour accordingly.

Max: Post-pandemic, what’s been the biggest change in focus in your Student Affairs work?

Supporting student learning of key interpersonal skills has become much more salient post-COVID, and it’s something we’re going to grapple with for the next decade. During the pandemic, we spent three years separated from our communities, and students missed out on a key developmental period during those last years of high school when they realize that their behaviours impact others, and learn how to manage that impact. Since our return to campus, we’ve seen an increasing number of conflict reports, and found that students are more likely to come to us for solutions rather than work out issues amongst themselves. That’s why we’ve focused on rebuilding those foundational social skills like navigating conflict, de-escalating disagreements, and intervening if someone’s causing harm to others. Rather than solving conflicts on a student’s behalf, we act as sounding boards so they can find useful paths to resolution themselves, and develop those important social skills. 

Max: What’s the best advice you’ve received during your career?

The late Dr. Charles Pascal, a coordinator of my PhD cohort at the University of Toronto, told me, ‘If you feel like you’re the smartest person in a room, leave that room.’ Always make sure you’re putting yourself in situations that challenge you, and surrounding yourself with people who challenge you because you’ll learn about yourself and your field, and get feedback on how you can improve and grow.