Moments that matter: Undergraduate students' perception of care from staff beyond course-based instruction

Care can help students feel included, navigate uncertainty, and remain engaged in university life. This research explores how undergraduate students perceive care in their interactions with staff beyond course-based instruction. Conducted at Simon Fraser University, a public research university in British Columbia, this qualitative study aims to answer the following questions: In everyday university life beyond course instruction, how do undergraduate students view care in their interactions with staff, and what qualities make those encounters feel caring? I conducted semi-structured interviews with five undergraduate students from the Faculty of Applied Sciences. They described their encounters with staff in situations such as advising, student support, student employment, work-integrated learning, international programming, email communication, and informal follow-up. From their stories, I identified five themes and then used care scholarship to interpret their significance. Participants expressed that care was evident when staff attended to their individual circumstances, actively engaged with them, turned understanding into meaningful action, remained connected beyond the immediate exchange, and worked within institutional systems in responsive ways. They emphasized that care did not depend on any specific staff role or interaction type. Instead, it became visible through the alignment between a student's situation, the quality of the interaction, the response that followed, and the institutional conditions surrounding that response. Overall, care emerges in this study as both an interpersonal and institutional practice. This research deepens understanding of how undergraduate students perceive care in varied staff encounters beyond course-based instruction. It also highlights implications for staff practice, institutional design, and future research.