Creating belonging for minority university students through multicultural organizations

This study explores how minority students who participate in multi-cultural student organizations find belonging on their university campuses. Using focus groups from students across the University of Houston system and institutional demographic information, the results from this study demonstrate that students believe that their involvement with a multicultural student organization helped them to find belonging at the university and that belonging extends to other parts of a student’s identity besides race or ethnicity. It also found that difficulties for many of these students lie within their university's administration and representation in faculty, as well as the vocalization from their institutions to youth and new students about the opportunities on campus and diverse groups available to help them transition from high school to college. The research concludes that while the University of Houston has a minority-majority populations in terms of race and ethnicity, if would benefit from evaluating ways to create belonging in an intersectional manner, connecting all parts of a student to campus.