Tonight I watched the Lilly Conference Online 2022 session “Dressing for Success: Implementing a Professional Clothes Closet to Reduce Barriers to Student Achievement in a Professional Environment” by Sarah Marie Berry (Winthrop University), Tammy Burnham (Winthrop University), and Mary Slade (Towson University). Their objectives for this recorded twenty-minute session were to discuss common barriers to student success in higher education, explain how to design service-learning experiences that are sustainable, and create a plan for implementation of service-learning in coursework. Slade spoke about the barriers to student success including financial challenges, time (for example students working multiple jobs), transportation, social capital, and mentorship. Students in their program seem to have a significant amount of field experience. Slate explained that Berry identified the social capital that learners acquired from field-based experiences and that for this, professional dress is key. Slade described how students wore the same suit for several events, for example, in a one-week internship. The timeline that Berry described for the Winthrop University Professional Clothes Closet started in the fall of 2017. After interviewing students and doing a need analysis, they were able to get donations and begin advertising the program. Slate spoke about how they expanded and began talking about professional clothing. They put a statement about this opportunity in syllabi. People began donating as student needs were recognized. They focused their efforts on professional wardrobes. After a while, students came to the closet and it became open to all students with common barriers. They both mentioned how the culture changed and the amount of clothing has been tracked over years. They have also tracked how students are using clothes and most are using clothing for fieldwork and internships. Berry created sustainable frameworks for volunteering at the Clothes Closet. Student feedback has helped improve organization and advertising. I thought it was really important that they both shared that while they started the project, it is driven by students and there is a sustainability plan. They emphasized that the needs analysis was critical to determine what was actually needed by students, not what they, as faculty thought, was needed. I hope to do this and remind myself that student-driven projects need to listen to students’ needs and opportunities and that I must think about sustainability.
