Posts by Laura Ann Rall

Our project focused on assessing the needs of rural students at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor campus. As two Master of Social Work students hailing from Bloomingdale (Laura) and Dowagiac (Ana), two rural towns in Southwest Michigan, we felt very connected to this project from the beginning. We distributed a Qualtrics survey titled “Rural Students Needs Assessment” to help us identify the challenges and needs of rural students at the U-M. The survey was also used as a reference to determine if people would be willing to participate in focus groups and share their experiences on campus as a rural student. The responses on the survey were then utilized as a guide to create the questions and themes introduced during the focus groups that we wanted to explore further. Our first goal was to identify the challenges and needs of this population and to identify some solutions to better assist these students. Once we obtained these findings, we sought to offer recommendations to the University of Michigan, certain departments within the institution who expressed interest in this group of students, such as the College of Literature, Science, and Arts, and with the CEW+, who had previously identified rural students as a nontraditional student identity at the Ann Arbor campus. The ultimate goal was to raise awareness about the challenges that rural students experience and to provide recommendations that could help address the current gaps.