{"id":7455,"date":"2026-06-19T11:57:51","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T11:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.marsal.umich.edu\/studentstories\/chile-sites\/graduate-student-meeting-on-higher-education-2026\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T18:46:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T18:46:21","slug":"graduate-student-meeting-on-higher-education-2026","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.marsal.umich.edu\/studentstories\/chile-2026\/chile-sites\/graduate-student-meeting-on-higher-education-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduate Student Meeting on Higher Education 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Our CSHPE experiential learning cohort had the incredible opportunity to engage directly with peers, scholars, and policymakers at the Graduate Student Meeting on Higher Education 2026<\/a>. Hosted at the Vicu\u00f1a Mackenna 20 Complex at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, the conference served as a vibrant, interdisciplinary space. The goal was simple yet profound: to foster dialogue, reflection, and collaboration between master’s and doctoral students from both the Chilean and U.S. higher education systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day kicked off with warm welcomes from Professor Alicia Salomone and contextual overviews of our respective higher education landscapes by Chile\u2019s Professor Sergio Celis and our very own Professor Lisa Lattuca. From there, the schedule broke out into parallel oral presentations, poster sessions, and roundtables that highlighted just how much our two systems can learn from one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The range of topics presented throughout the day was incredibly broad, touching on nearly every corner of higher education policy and practice. In the morning sessions, presenters dove deep into:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u25cf Financing and Institutional Behavior, examining graduation rates, financial aid administration, and the unique impact of junior college athletics on enrollment in the U.S.
\u25cf Student Professional Identity, which explored how medical students form their professional identities in clinical settings and looked critically at what “counts” as engineering education.
\u25cf Access and Equity, featuring poster and oral presentations on critically designing college access programs for first-generation students, gender equity tensions in quality assurance, and supporting non-traditional students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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During the afternoon sessions, I had the opportunity to present our own research during the roundtable on “Access and Student Success,” chaired by Carlos Rilling. Along with my co-presenter, Ella Smith, we shared our research, “More than Mascots: Understanding School Spirit and Its Role in U.S. Higher Education.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Coming from the U.S. context, and specifically from a place like the University of Michigan, we often take things like school spirit, sports culture, and campus mascots for granted. We view them as standard fixtures of the university experience. Presenting this topic to an international audience, however, sparked a really lively and crowded discussion. It was fascinating to see how our Chilean peers reacted to the sheer scale of American campus culture. The conversation quickly turned into a rich, comparative debate about how institutional branding and student involvement shape the holistic student experience, and whether that kind of cultural
focus serves as a bridge or a barrier to the core academic mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day concluded with a group lunch where we were able to keep the conversations going informally. Ultimately, the conference proved that while our institutional structures, funding models, and historical contexts might differ, graduate students in both the U.S. and Chile are wrestling with the exact same fundamental question: how do we build higher education systems that truly serve, support, and empower our students?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Bailey Price<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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