Is Academic Advising a Game‐Changer for Student Belonging? A Mixed Methods Study on Community College Athletes of Color

ABSTRACT College athletes at the community college level, specifically athletes of color, may experience unique threats to their belonging along multiple dimensions, including but not limited to academic spaces of learning, assessing their athletic merit by comparing themselves to Division I athletes, and racialized tensions within white‐centric campuses. At the intersection of these experiences, we examine how academic advising may be a significant functional area for supporting a sense of belonging for community college athletes of color. Our sequential explanatory mixed method design study combined a quantitative approach using secondary data from the Community College Survey on Student Engagement (CCSSE) with a qualitative approach using collaborative (trio)ethnography to share stories from study authors with experiences as college athletes and academic advisors. Quantitative findings suggested that community college athletes who developed an academic plan with their advisor experienced higher belonging; furthermore, working on an academic plan had cascading influences on self‐efficacy, motivation, and perceptions of campus support, which in turn, were positively linked with belonging. Qualitative findings reinforced the critical roles academic advising can play to foster belonging, especially when adopting a holistic and activistic approach for supporting athletes of color. Implications for practice are included.