“That Truly Meant a Lot to Me”: A Qualitative Examination of Meaningful Faculty-Student Interactions

The majority of research on faculty-student interaction has been primarily quantitative to date and has focused primarily on determining what kinds of interactions students have with faculty. This study furthers the literature on faculty-student interaction, taking a qualitative approach to examine what types of interactions with faculty students find meaningful. Our findings indicate that students appreciate the types of interactions that research shows benefits them the most, suggesting that there is less of a disconnect between the types of faculty behaviors that benefit students and the types of faculty behaviors that students appreciate than many might assume.