Background and Objectives: Today, the university plays a decisive role in the life of society, and student associations are one of the most fundamental components of the university. Cultural and social empowerment of students through the mediation of student communities is one of the most important conceptual and theoretical topics of this article.
Methods: information was collected through individual and group interview techniques. 60 active activists in student groups, such as student-scientific associations, cultural, artistic, literary, social and religious centers, and student publications, were the people who took part in deep individual and group discussions. In these conversations, by focusing on the indicators of social and cultural activities in the context of the university, the cultural empowerment of students was sought.
Findings: In general, several functions can be imagined for student communities in Iran and the world: educational function, social function, scientific function, cultural function, psychological function, and hopeful function. One of the important findings of this article is that two basic approaches for cultural empowerment of students have been identified. In the first approach, which consists of "centralized and top-down" planning, empowering programs and activities are designed and implemented for students by the educational, research and cultural officials of the universities based on the needs assessment. In this way of empowerment, the whole program is designed in a centralized manner in the responsible institutions and is carried out based on the prioritized needs of the students. Group work training, art training, job search and entrepreneurship training, identity programs, scientific and research activities, leisure and entertainment activities, religious activities, charity and public benefit activities, and life skills training are among cultural empowering activities.
Conclusion: The second approach through the students' cultural activities is "community-oriented" empowerment. In this approach, student communities are formed and activities needed by the target groups are presented through collaborative and group processes. The responsible institutions have appeared only in the form of a "facilitator" and can promote and support the formation of groups, participation, teamwork, etc. in order to form small student communities. Therefore, the program is designed at the level of student communities and announced to official authorities in order to gain support for the implementation.