VCU news

By Dina Weinstein

Jaelyn Grooms felt isolated and out of place when she arrived at Virginia Commonwealth University in fall 2023. She had lived around the country with her military family, ultimately settling in Colonial Beach. Life in that small town on Virginia’s Northern Neck was unlike the world she encountered at VCU’s urban Richmond campus.

“VCU is really different,” Grooms said.

So Grooms made her way to the Campus Learning Center and connected with Sara Rafuse, Ed.D., a senior academic coach. And their bond, rooted in their mutual background, helped spark a new coaching group: Introduced this past fall, Rural Rams is creating a sense of community among VCU students whose life stories risk being overlooked in the transition to higher education.

“There’s an extra layer of imposter syndrome for rural students, and it’s not just, ‘My parents didn’t go to college,’” said Rafuse, who is from rural Maine – and whose high school graduating class had only 113 students. “Coming to a place where little things that we take for granted every day – like using public transportation, how to navigate the streets and crosswalks – these are things that rural students may have never had to navigate before in their lives.”

At VCU, more than 1,800 in-state students are categorized as coming from rural backgrounds – a couple dozen from remote settings, a couple hundred from what are considered distant rural communities, and more than 1,500 from rural fringe areas.

When students came to Rafuse’s office hours to describe the bumpy transition to college life in the city, “I started making connections with ruralness as an identity … though it’s an invisible identity,” she said. “I started thinking, this is probably bigger, and that’s when I started digging in.”

With support from departmental leaders, Rafuse reached out to students and established Rural Rams as a coaching group. This spring, in its second semester of existence, Rural Rams will continue to meet on the first Wednesday mornings of the month (at 9:30 a.m. in Hibbs Hall, Room 107). At the Feb. 5 gathering, participants will discuss their rural identity. The March 5 event will focus on wellness and self-care, and the April 2 meeting will discuss advocacy for future endeavors. Meanwhile, a bit sooner on the schedule, a special Jan. 29 event, at 2:30 p.m. in the Office of Adult and Non-Traditional Student Services (912 W. Grace St., seventh floor), invites Rural Rams to a tasting event for a liquid favorite: sweet tea.

Grooms, a political science major, said last semester’s initial slate of gatherings with fellow rural students helped her feel grounded as she began her sophomore year.

“While also learning their stories and how different rural communities can be, it was also a reassuring feeling that you’re not alone,” she said. “I’m excited to see where it goes this semester.” 

Hilda Quansah, a senior majoring in social work, described her hometown in Spotsylvania County as a spread-out country setting, peaceful with farms and livestock.

“I wanted connection with people who understand what it’s like going from a country place to a city,” Quansah said of Rural Rams. “I’m not a city girl. I was looking for a group that could understand issues that students from rural communities could face – that sense of loneliness or isolation.”

Rafuse noted that fewer rural students enroll in college to begin with, and retention and graduation rates are lower. They often are the first in the families to explore college, feeling different pressures to excel based on their decision to leave home. Their financial aid is often lower, and anxiety can run higher amid sensory overload, such as larger crowds, louder noise and more artificial light. In her conversations with students, Rafuse also found that students sometimes did not arrive with the same number of AP, dual enrollment or international baccalaureate credits as their peers, making them feel as though they started college behind. 

Rafuse noted that rural students at VCU are a diverse population, with many layers of identity.

“You get a lot of images in your head when you think of a rural student – you might think of a white male,” she said. “When I started digging in, I saw we have a lot of Black students, Latino students, students that are identifying as multiple races. It’s not just white students. I would put other populations in there – like LGBT, too.”

Safwan Safadi, a freshman studying computer science, is from Warrenton in Fauquier County, where horses, ranches and farms dominate the landscape. Rural Rams offers an outlet to discuss topics that students from other settings might not think about in the transition to an urban campus. For instance, Safadi said that his biggest adjustment to Richmond has been finding the best ways to engage with nature in the city – something he always found readily accessible at home.

Still, despite the challenges, Quansah said she has found that “every single day has been different” in Richmond, and she appreciates the excitement that accompanies that pace.

“I see different people every day,” she said. “And that's not how it was in Spotsy. In Spotsy, especially if I wasn't going to school, I would see the same people every day. My neighborhood … was just quiet. Here, I'll see 50 different people every day spark up a new conversation.”

Advocacy – and the resolve to endure challenges – is common among students from rural backgrounds, said Rafuse, who believes “being problem-solvers is all part of rural identity.” For instance, Fellipe Moreto, a sophomore in Rural Rams, organized a Hurricane Helene supply drive for people in western North Carolina and drove donated materials there.

As Rural Rams plants deeper roots, Rafuse sees potential for connection with VCU faculty and staff from rural backgrounds with invitations already extended to Rural Rams to see VCU staff bluegrass bands and the possibility of fun forays into the water or wilds of Richmond’s nearby nature. And she hopes that the students themselves take the lead in fostering community.

“I would love to see the students create a student organization, where they take it upon themselves,” Rafuse said. “That could be something that I would be maybe an advisor for, but it would really be student-led.”

For more information about Rural Rams, contact Sara Rafuse at rafusese@vcu.edu.