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Awareness to Action

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Identifying and working through barriers to doing anti-bias work

by Laura Parson—Faculty Innovation Fellow, North Dakota State University

The murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests in the summer of 2020 led to a wider awakening about the importance of activism for racial justice. Along with the MeToo movement and activism for gender equity, there have been increased calls for more conversations, resources, and discussions about how to create more equitable professional and educational settings. Those calls have intensified in higher education, a historical site both of injustice and change. Yet, as the political divide in the United States has deepened, rifts between those fighting for social justice, those staying silent, and those actively working to subvert civil rights movements have grown. 

“Doing anti-bias work requires that one be able to process emotions like guilt, shame, anger, and fear in a way that acknowledges them, provides strategies and opportunities to [work] with them, and suggests a path toward action.”

This Faculty Innovation Fellowship project, “Awareness to Action: Identifying and working through barriers to doing anti-bias work” seeks to reach those who think they want to do anti-bias work but are not sure where and how to start – perhaps reaching those who are staying silent because they are unsure of how to react to and process conversations about power and privilege. 

Doing anti-bias work requires that one be able to process emotions like guilt, shame, anger, and fear in a way that acknowledges them, provides strategies and opportunities to [work] with them, and suggests a path toward action. The Awareness to Action project seeks to create programming for higher education faculty, administrators, and staff that, without accusation or judgment, helps participants identify one’s positionality (e.g., understand layers of privilege and how privilege and marginalization impacts their position in the institution) and provides strategies to respond and work through any resultant guilt and shame with a focus on self-compassion as a tool to develop empathy. The programming will cover different higher education roles (e.g., teaching, administration, service, advising) and allow participants to consider if and how their identity is implicated in each context.

Over the next two years, the Awareness to Action projects aims to develop, test, and refine programming for higher education faculty, administrators, and staff to help them understand and work through their positionality in order to better serve stakeholders who identify as traditionally marginalized persons in higher education. The final aim of the project is to develop programming that would be available to faculty, staff, and administrators. Program content areas will 1) focus on the ways to identify one’s positionality; 2) strategies to respond and work through any resultant guilt and shame with a focus on self-compassion as a tool to develop empathy, and 3) lessons that focus in on different areas of life (e.g., work, daily life activities, social media) given what one knows about their positionality. This project began as a book proposal, but as I have worked through the Faculty Innovation Fellowship program, it has evolved into developing an institutional program that may, at some point, be accompanied or supported by a supplementary text or workbook that could also be worked through independent of the programming.

Awareness to Action programming will pull together resources and supports from a variety of fields into one cohesive program. For example, while identifying one’s overlapping identities and how they relate to one’s privilege, referred to as positionality, is not uncommon in the academic qualitative research fields, that content is needed in an accessible format with examples from day-to-day academic life that uses language that describes without ascribing responsibility. Additionally, support is often needed to discuss one’s different reactions and emotions to questions about power and privilege that pulls from psychology, neurology, and mindfulness. Finally, while empathy has been well-discussed in some circles, the role that research suggests self-compassion and empathy can play in the social justice movement has not been discussed in a way that is accessible and includes strategies that promote both. Awareness to Action aims to do all three in accessible language, with concrete strategies, supported by examples. 

“The goal of the programming is to provide a primer on working through the emotions and reactions that often come before and may arise as one is beginning justice work that might cause them to retreat.”

One final note: The intent of this program is not to replace existing programs and books created by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) who discuss the impact of racism and concrete ways that white people can be allies and work toward racial justice – instead, the goal of this project is to create an intervention that seeks to help individuals be ready to engage with anti-bias programming, learning, and action. The goal of the programming is to provide a primer on working through the emotions and reactions that often come before and may arise as one is beginning justice work that might cause them to retreat. I hope that programming will be complementary to books like Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad and How to Be an AntiRacist by Ibram X. Kendi. Altogether, programming will also suggest specific resources authored by BIPOC to learn how to take activist action and the final chapter will review and organize those resources comprehensively.

The original article can be found in the Enhancing the Higher Ed Ecosystem section of the 2022-2023 Change Forward Journal— Visions and Voices of Higher Education’s Future.

Designing Mobile Clinic with the Community

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Connecting universities and disciplines around formal/informal learning opportunity

By Ilya Avdeev, PhD—Faculty Innovation Fellow; Alex Francis, PhD and Antonina Johnston—University Innovation Fellows from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 

During the summer 2022, our human-centered design lab’s team at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) was approached by the Froedtert Hospital leadership with an intriguing proposal to get involved in designing a future mobile health clinic addressing women’s health in the community with limited access to healthcare. Moreover, the question on everyone’s mind was how might we involve the broader community to be involved in the clinic design from the start? As academics, we saw an opportunity to tie this real-world project to curriculum. Complexity of the task offered us a chance to engage medical, engineering, nursing, art and design students in interprofessional formal and informal learning of design principles and their practical application.

An 18-inch rule

Resembling an unfinished tiny house at the framing stage, everything in the 8-foot-tall, 24-foot mobile clinic model displayed for two months in the MCW lobby was designed to be moved around, including mockups of mammography equipment and other OB-GYN elements constructed of foam core boards. A tool for learning and discovery, the mockup model supported creative process and facilitated full-scale exploration of design possibilities.

Interestingly, the mockup model was also considered a fire hazard because it was built within 18 inches of the ceiling. We used this unexpected hazard, reported by the fire department, as a metaphor for pushing boundaries and testing the limits of what is traditionally accepted. This project represents an experiment in collaborative, community-driven design, where we work with the community, not simply design for them.

Mobile clinic development project – a platform for experimentation

We saw tremendous potential for creative exploration and discovery when Dr. Mark Lodes and the Population Health Team proposed last summer that the Human-Centered Design Lab participate in developing the mobile clinic. This project clearly would challenge our ideas and assumptions about academic collaboration, the adaptability of medical curriculum, and the creative confidence of stakeholders involved, including Milwaukee community members and organizations, and an intricate network of MCW/Froedtert Health individuals.

For the past six months, the following questions have guided and driven our work forward:

·   How can we involve a wide range of diverse stakeholders in our design process and empower their creativity and sense of control?

·   What would a collaboration between University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and MCW students look like?

·   How can we balance the dynamic nature of a real-world project with a structured curriculum to benefit learners?

·   How can we bring value to the Froedtert team developing the clinic through innovative design-based activities?

·   What can we learn about incorporating healthcare design projects into medical education?

Expanding our design team

Designing with the community, not just for them, is the cornerstone of our approach. Developing a mobile clinic is like putting together a puzzle where the pieces are not yet clear, and the final picture is uncertain. Creativity and innovation are required to overcome the ambiguity.

We took a unique approach by expanding our design team beyond the Population Health and Human-Centered Design Lab teams. We included anyone from the stakeholder map interested in contributing their expertise and ideas to the problem space (issues such as access to healthcare, managing chronic conditions, insurance coverage gaps, staffing, scheduling, safety, and business models) and the solution space (clinic layout, workflow, atmosphere, technology, services offered, etc.). There were 150 designers in total!

This approach is like citizen science or distributed scientific inquiry projects, where the collective intelligence of many individuals is more impactful than the brilliance of a few. By engaging stakeholders early on, we also cultivate buy-in and support for the pilot implementation and future iterations.

Snapshots from design sprint. Group of people and also discussion at white board.

Design sprints – exploring problem and solution spaces through play

To engage a broad range of stakeholders and tap into their collective imagination, we arranged a series of 90-minute design sprints. Over the course of multiple sprints, 100+ designers were invited to collaborate in teams of four to tackle 10 different scenarios centered around a person in need of medical and social care at a mobile clinic.

To guide the design process, each team was provided with a framework prompting them to consider the needs and wants of the patient, necessary actions and workflow, clinic layout and ambiance, and technology elements involved. Using low-resolution prototyping techniques, such as brainstorming and building mockups with LEGO blocks and foam core, participant teams rapidly designed the clinic for each scenario. At the end of each sprint, each team presented their ideas and “walked” us through their clinic prototypes, providing valuable insight and inspiration for the design process.

This activity allowed us to equally engage experts, novices, providers, and patients in creative play. By randomly assigning teams and encouraging diverse participation, we were able to cultivate an environment of imaginative play, where experts, novices, patients, and providers alike could contribute. These design sprints not only highlighted the complexity of the design challenge but also demonstrated the passion and commitment of the community toward making this mobile clinic a reality.

Collaboration with students and curriculum

This project also provided a valuable opportunity to bring together students from different disciplines and backgrounds. Engineering and design students from UWM worked together to design and construct clinic models as part of their coursework in the ME-405/ART-405 Product Realization course, taught by Drs. Avdeev and Francis. UWM and medical students from the Health Systems Management and Policy Pathway participated in joint design workshops, and graduate nursing students from the UWM College of Nursing played a critical role in piloting the design sprints at UWM before the clinic model was moved to MCW. Medical students also facilitated and participated in the design sprints at MCW, making this a truly interdisciplinary and collaborative effort.

Including students in the design team proved to be highly enriching and fulfilling. However, we also encountered challenges in aligning this dynamic project with the structured medical curriculum. This highlights the need for reimagining and streamlining integration of such projects into the curriculum in the future.

What Have We Learned?

More than 500 ideas were captured during 6 design sprints. We developed a map of design variables that helped focus ideation on critical areas of the clinic (Figure 1). After capturing 500 ideas, we analyzed the data and synthesized the following themes or idea clusters (Figure 2).  We then clustered ideas within a theme (Figure 3).  

What’s Next?

With a talented and diverse design team made up of both community and internal stakeholders, we have been gifted with a wealth of ideas and perspectives. Our challenge now is to carefully put these pieces together to support the mobile clinic development project. Our goal is to produce a result that will not only inform and inspire the development team, but also have a tangible and meaningful impact on the communities it serves.

Circle diagram divided into fourths with arrows pointing outwards. Segments are: Neds/wants; actions; floorplan and workflow; ambiance and tech.
Figure 1
Figure 2

The original article can be found in the Enhancing the Higher Ed Ecosystem section of the 2022-2023 Change Forward Journal— Visions and Voices of Higher Education’s Future.

Rural Connections

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Leveraging I&E ecosystems to strengthen university-community partnerships

By Hallie Neupert—Faculty Innovation Fellows candidate, Oregon Institute of Technology

When we think of a university town, it is easy to imagine two distinct and largely separate networks: “the town” and “the gown.” Structural and organizational differences between universities and their communities contribute to this disconnect. Those immersed in community and economic development, however, recognize that universities are an integral part of their communities rather than separate from them. To close this gap, universities should engage in learning and scholarship that both furthers their academic mission and addresses the needs of their communities. Doing so will build social capital and mutual respect, creating a foundation upon which universities and communities can collaborate on shared visions and goals.

In rural communities, limited disposable income, intergenerational poverty, and subsequent workforce challenges can hinder economic growth. For universities that reside in such communities, providing access to university resources can help leverage shared expertise while strengthening a sense of place and willingness to engage among stakeholders. Actively building these kinds of collaborative networks not only improves university-community partnerships but may also improve economic development outcomes.  

But what role should a university play in their community’s broader economic development ecosystem? While there is no one right answer to this question, there are strategies that connect and strengthen organizations, creating stronger communities and regions.

The Ecosystem Landscape

Community and economic development proponents have adopted the language of ecosystems, recognizing that communities are made up of complex, adaptive, and interdependent networks of people and organizations. This includes entrepreneurial ecosystems which collaboratively connect people and resources, and innovation ecosystems which share knowledge and skills unique to invention-based enterprise. Together, these overlapping ecosystems support broader economic development efforts to improve economic well-being across communities.

In my home state of Oregon, the Lemelson Foundation is at the forefront of ecosystem discussions. Through their work they have proposed common capacities and roles necessary to support thriving innovation ecosystems including mentors, conveners, evaluators, catalysts, and advocates. How communities choose to identify with these roles offers opportunities for them to leverage their assets innovatively and creatively. 

My community is constrained by the same socioeconomic challenges common to rural communities. And development of my community’s economic development ecosystem, while moving forward, must also navigate these challenges. Using the Lemelson framework, organizations in my community are working to convene and connect innovation and entrepreneurship resources as well as catalyze and leverage those resources to elevate economic well-being. As my university reimagines its engagement in this space my focus is on the student, both the roles they can play and the experience they can gain. 

To support and lift up the organizations already doing good work in the ecosystem, my Faculty Innovation Fellows (FIF) project advocates for increased student engagement to strengthen connections between university and community. Bringing university resources to oftentimes underfunded and understaffed community projects provides valuable learning opportunities for students, enhances a culture of collaboration, and strengthens sense of place, leading to more intentional integration of universities in their local ecosystems while giving students real-world problem-solving experience. 

A Pilot Project 

In Fall 2022, I led a diverse group of university and community stakeholders in piloting a day-long design thinking workshop, enlisting area high school, community college, and university students. While this workshop provided participants with an opportunity to apply human-centered design to ideate innovative solutions to a community challenge (How might we increase tourism in our small, rural town?), it also marked the culmination of a year-long collaboration throughout which community members informed the design of this university experience. The project demonstrated the benefit of incremental and sustained collaboration across stakeholder groups; the importance of listening to the community’s needs and aligning goals; and the need to build capacity to ensure this work is sustained and supported. My FIF project builds on this, using the tools provided through the University Innovation Fellows program to leverage student engagement to explore solutions that will work for my community. Specifically, it will:

  • Focus on Collaboration: Rather than lead this work, how might we socialize a model of sustained collaboration?
  • Prioritize Connections: What are the university-based systems and processes beneficial to connecting stakeholders across the ecosystem?
  • Redefine Success: How do we share vision? Are our goals aligned? Do we have a common set of objectives across all community organizations that clarify our direction and outcomes?
  • Increase Awareness: How might we increase visibility of university resources and programming to optimize university contributions to the economic development ecosystem?

In this moment, when both the community and the university are eager to embrace innovation and entrepreneurship to support economic growth, my project looks to bring town and gown together to create experiences that will shape how students engage with our community while formalizing university-based infrastructure, systems, and processes to support this work and ensure university-community relationships are long standing. Shifting our focus from one another to instead focus on the student creates a catalyst for collaboration across the ecosystem. Moreover, when students are the nodes that connect universities and their communities, they become contributors to the ecosystems that help communities thrive.   

The original article can be found in the Enhancing the Higher Ed Ecosystem section of the 2022-2023 Change Forward Journal— Visions and Voices of Higher Education’s Future.

Ten of my Favorite Classroom Activities

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How a surprise dose of empathy for my students inspired me to reinvent my classes

By Charles M. Wood, Ph.D.—Faculty Innovation Fellow, University of Tulsa

Early in my teaching days, I invited a guest speaker to share their work and experiences with my class. After introducing the speaker, I took a seat at the back of the room to listen and take notes. The speaker did almost exactly what I had been doing – bringing up a deck of PowerPoint slides then reading through and elaborating on each bullet point. After 20 minutes, I was pulling my hair out with boredom. I asked myself, “How do the students do this all day?!” and I resolved to improve the way I teach.

Ideation and prototyping

I began looking and brainstorming for experiential in-class exercises that related to my course material. I started collecting an assortment of failed products that I called my “Wall of Shame.” I began a daily practice of scouring the internet for current and thought-provoking news stories about our class topics. And I researched how other great teachers engaged students. After a few years of this, I had a collection of hands-on experiences and exercises that I now build into nearly every class session I teach. Here are 10 of my (and my students’) favorites. I hope there are a few that are new to you:

Main LessonExercise Name
Innovation ideas can come from odd combinationsTwo Buckets
The best innovations start by considering real human needs and problemsiWish
Every student is an innovator, but in unique waysInnovation U
Learn what it feels like not to edit yourself or others during brainstorming sessions100 Uses
Innovations often arise when technology meets human needR&D
Experience how collaboration improves outcomesInnovation Challenges
Experience how building on each other’s ideas improves outcomesBuild-Up
If stuck, stop pushing and jiu jitsu your creative mind to pull ideas forwardVisioning
Gain empathy for a group of people to consider product improvementsElder-lympics
Find lessons and nuggets of good / promise in failed productsWall of Shame
Two different groups of post-it notes
Two buckets activity

Two Buckets

Share with your students several innovations that have come from unusual combinations. For example, Netflix began as “Book of the month club” + “DVD rentals,” Kiva.org is “venture capital” + “relief for developing nations,” Google Ads is “Online auctions” + “Online ad placement,” etc. Then ask students to form teams of 3-4 people. Each team should randomly draw a major brand name from one deck of blue index cards, and a product category from another yellow deck. Then, tell the students, “Congratulations, you now work for the company on your blue card, and they have asked you to develop a new product for them in the category on the yellow card.” The task is to figure out the new product’s features and benefits, who might buy it, what it should be named, and at least one ad idea. After about 10 minutes, they should stand and tell the class what they came up with. The combinations are never the same twice (e.g., Lego fast food, Colgate theme parks, Cover Girl concrete, Porsche toothpaste).

Debrief ideas: “How did you feel about this challenge at first?” “Which of the results do you think have the most potential?”

iWish

Ask students to think on their own about a problem or hassle that a particular group faces often – it is easiest to choose from their experience as students. Examples of problems include avoiding parking tickets, getting help with remembering people’s names, finding a list of today’s fun events in the region, repelling bugs, etc. Then they should make groups of 2-3 and share their ideas with each other and decide on one that they believe can be solved by an app. In effect they are saying, “I wish I had an app that could ____.” Then, distribute large whiteboards that are made to look like iPhones and ask them to use dry erase markers to draw the app interface on them. Large sheets of paper with an iPhone outline can also work fine if they use thick markers. After a few minutes, each team should present their idea.

Debrief idea: “Do you think that identifying a problem first helped you develop a better app idea?” 

Innovation U

This take-home assignment involves each student creating a display that contains their unique qualities and interests. In whatever format they choose, they are asked to display their favorite quote, an inspirational person, what they know the most about (outside of family and school), when they have experienced “flow,” their Jung typology, which of Gardner’s multiple intelligences they have, and a 3-D item of some sort. The results are always creative, inspiring, and encourage students to appreciate others’ differences as strengths.

Debrief idea: “What did you learn about your classmates and yourself through this exercise?”

100 Uses

This is a well-known exercise, and I use it to illustrate the benefits of not editing ourselves or others during brainstorming. Ask teams of 3-4 students to work together to come up with 100 uses for a basic material (e.g., newspapers, plastic bottles) in 10 minutes. This is challenging, but I find that it helps lower inhibitions for sharing ideas. After the activity, ask them to remember the feeling they get during the exercise of welcoming and celebrating any and all input.

Debrief ideas: “Was this stressful for you?” “How did you come up with so many uses?”

The R&D

The standard design thinking process starts with empathy and ends with testing and retesting prototypes. This exercise asks students to work that process in reverse. Starting with a list of new technologies and inventions in materials science, nanobatteries, AI, etc (drawn from a site like R&Dmag.com), ask students “what other needs might we meet using this technology?” One example is spider silk (5x stronger than steel) finding application in improved ropes, fabrics, or camping equipment.

Debrief idea: “Does this technique seem to help you better develop new product ideas on your own or in a team?”

Innovation Challenges

These events can take many forms, but the simple challenge is simply to “Add Value” using basic materials such as unused pizza boxes, old computer diskettes, old CDs, post-it notes, etc. The resulting student creations can be surprisingly impressive! If there  are prizes, we often bring in outside judges from the community to help determine winners.

Debrief idea: “In what ways are you more comfortable innovating and creating with your hands?”

Build-Up

Write several “How might we…?” questions at the top of large index cards. Students form a circle of 7-10 people, and each student receives one of these cards. In the line beneath the question, each student writes an idea to address it, and passes to the right. The next student reads the next card and must build on, improve, or expand on the previous idea given, and they add this to the next line. As the cards progress about halfway around the group, encourage wild and out of the box ideas for the remaining entries to the cards. A variation of this is the “The Worst Idea Ever,” where each student in a smaller circle receives a card with a description of a truly terrible product idea (taxis filled with bees, shoes made from ice, fish flavored toothpaste, haircuts given by monkeys, etc) and their task is to make each idea worse somehow. Then, after the cards have made their way around, the students group up and their task is to uncover and identify nuggets of what could be a good idea somewhere among the awful.

Debrief idea: “How is this similar to any improv sessions or performances you’ve experienced?”

Visioning

Use this website to create a fictional but authentic-looking news story about an amazing thing your school did or an innovation award students at your school received http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp. Tell students that you came across this news story, but sadly, it’s incomplete – and ask “What might we have done to earn this recognition?” Ideas for new noteworthy activities usually arise!

Debrief idea: “How does working ‘backward’ like this seem helpful?”

Elderlympics

This is an experience to build empathy for the elderly. Give students foggy glasses to put on, super bulky gloves, and old jackets to wear. Then, give them basic tasks such as finding the right medication from an assortment, measuring out liquids, buttoning their jacket, opening battery packages, peeling a banana, throwing a frisbee to a mannequin, opening a pickle jar, etc. As a debrief, the students are asked to identify what was the most challenging tasks and ideate for products or modifications of current products that would help the elderly every day.

Debrief idea: “How did it feel to be elderly for a few minutes?”

Wall of Shame

We can learn from bad examples too. In my office, I keep an assortment of inexpensive products that have failed or I believe will fail, and I bring them to class regularly to illustrate a point from the course material. Examples include: bottles of Coke Blak, several Amazon Dash buttons, Honest T, 7-Up’s DNL soda, etc.

Debrief idea: “We regularly learn from good examples of new products. What can we learn from bad examples?”

Back to empathy again

Since that opening surprise dose of empathy while listening to my guest speaker, I’ve formed a habit. A few days before each semester begins, I go to my assigned classrooms, sit in the back, and visualize how my upcoming class sessions should go so that the students keep all their hair.

The original article can be found in the Reimagining Teaching and Learning section of the 2022-2023 Change Forward Journal— Visions and Voices of Higher Education’s Future.

Breaking the Taboo for a Better You

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How Shaw University is prioritizing mental health care and wellness

By Marc Brown, Janell Odom, Tamara Wood and Louichard Benjamin— University Innovation Fellows, Shaw University; Dr. Vonda Reed—Faculty Innovation Fellows candidate, Shaw University

“Strengthening Our Bears’ Mental Health”      

Shaw University is the first Historically Black University in the South, founded in 1865 by Henry Martin Tupper. Shaw University is prominently known as the “mother of African American colleges.” The founder of North Carolina Central University (NCCU) and the first presidents of North Carolina Agricultural & Technical University (NCAT) and Elizabeth City State University were all Shaw University graduates. Upholding our history of “firsts,” through leadership, students were trained through the University Innovation Fellows (UIF) Early Training Program and hosted our university’s first Mental Health Wellness Week.

“We began analyzing our campus ecosystem to get our stakeholders’ points of view through one-on-one interviews, stakeholders’ meetings, and surveys.”

During a UIF training session on Design Thinking, we were asked to explore how our university might support students’ social and emotional wellbeing. We began analyzing our campus ecosystem to get our stakeholders’ points of view through one-on-one interviews, stakeholders’ meetings, and surveys. Two of the stakeholders we interviewed were President Paulette Dillard and Vice President for Academic Affairs Renata Dusenbury. Through these collaborations with our stakeholders, the majority of them expressed that our university did not have the proper awareness of mental health within our campus ecosystem. Mental health care is an important issue to explore when analyzing collegiate life, especially at Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs), where it is considered taboo among the Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) population. Moreover, the impact of COVID-19, national exposure to traumatic racial events, systemic oppression, and struggles with identity have further increased the demand for mental health care for BIPOC. Consequently, we asked, “How might we inform our campus stakeholders about the importance of self-care and how to improve it mentally and physically?”

We planned our Mental Health Wellness Week by partnering with our counseling center, Center for Teaching and Learning, and Student Government Association. In the past, our counseling center hosted one mental health day during the academic year. We believed that a week would be efficient so that students could participate in fun and enriching activities geared towards mental health care for an entire week rather than hours for a day. With the extension to a week, stakeholders would be able to attend various events that could positively impact their mental and physical well-being. We also decided to execute this Mental Health Wellness Week the week before midterm examinations. This would allow students, faculty, and staff to unwind mentally, physically, and emotionally before enduring a traditionally stressful week.

On Saturday, March 4, 2023, each UIF and a resident advisor engaged in an eight-hour training to become certified Mental Health First Aiders. During this training session, participants became familiar with various mental health disorders, the sources of trauma, available mental health resources, and ways to assist stakeholders within our campus ecosystem that may experience mental health challenges. After the training, participants completed an assessment and received their certificates. Counseling Center Director Jerelene Carver shared that her office will ensure that additional students, especially resident advisors, become certified in Mental Health First Aid (MHFA).  

The Mental Health Wellness Week was launched during March 6-10, 2023. Empathetically realizing that numerous factors influence one’s mental health, we agreed to host 13 activities to aid our stakeholders in understanding the importance of self-care and how to improve it mentally and physically. We began our Mental Health Wellness Week Monday by offering yoga and ended the day by organizing a walk to the local YMCA. Those who joined the walk to the YMCA signed up for the free 7-day pass to access the gym amenities, excluding the pool. 

Tuesday morning, stakeholders learned how to implement self-care and health and wellness practices into their daily lives to enhance their academic and professional lifestyles through the Re-Creation, De-stressing in a Stressed-out World event. Later that night, they learned techniques to improve their financial literacy from our Senior Financial Aid Counselor Daniel Warari, followed by the Lets TACO Bout It, a table talk event led by the SGA.

Wednesday consisted of free massages, which allowed participants to fully relax and decompress before continuing their busy day, followed by a session on navigating through life’s difficult times, breaking through barriers, and learning how to survive. The final event for Wednesday was a dance-based workout to help with de-stressing.

Thursday also consisted of 3 events. The first event was Barbers for Bears. During this event, local barbers provided free haircuts to stakeholders. Partners with Paws was the next event where stakeholders interacted with therapy dogs to experience comfort, affection, and warmth to ease their anxiety, reduce stress and increase their joy. Next, it was time for stakeholders to wind down the evening through the Sip and Paint, an event catered by Thompson Hospitality. They provided stakeholders with high-quality service and individually customized, healthy smoothies while they enjoyed soothing, relaxing music!

The last day of the week ended with stakeholders learning how to cope with stress through various body-tapping techniques and affirmations that can be done in class or at work, followed by another dance-based workout session.

Marc Brown, Janell Odom, Tamara Wood, Louichard Benjamin (University Innovation Fellows), and Dr. Vonda Reed (Faculty Champion and Faculty Innovation Fellow Candidate)
MT for Me
Students getting haircuts
Barbers for Bears
Enjoying yoga
UIF, Tamara Wood working out at the Y
Sip and Paint
Students holding up individual paintings
Sip and Paint

Results from oral and written feedback support that Mental Health Wellness Week was a success! One hundred eighty-six stakeholders participated in the week’s activities; most were students, and some attended multiple events or events numerous times (e.g., massages). After each event, stakeholders rated events on a 5-star scale. Ratings ranged from 4.43 (lowest) to 5 (highest). A survey was also sent to stakeholders; most were female respondents. Most of them rated the Sip and Paint event followed by the massages and Re-Creation, De-stressing in a Stressed-out World events. They shared that their mental health and/or physical health improved because of the events, and the events provided them with skills and strategies to cope with stressors. Most of them agreed (strongly agreed: 69% and agreed: 31%) that their overall mood improved after participating in their events, and most agreed (strongly agreed: 63% and agreed 31%) that they plan to make changes to their health and wellbeing as a result of the events. Results also support that they will attend another Mental Health Wellness Week, and most of them shared that we should host it twice a semester.

Our next steps are to host more Mental Health Wellness Weeks and increase the number of certified Mental Health First Aiders on our campus. We also want to partner with other HBCUs to increase culturally competent and targeted interventions to improve mental health and overall well-being on our campuses. Shaw University is setting an example for other HBCUs by prioritizing mental health care and wellness for our stakeholders and creating an environment where mental health care is not taboo but necessary for our survival. We challenge HBCUs to become a part of the UIF Program. Join us and follow our tracks!

The original article can be found in the Focusing on Belonging and Well Being section of the 2022-2023 Change Forward Journal— Visions and Voices of Higher Education’s Future.

Re-Futuring Starts From Campus

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Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can with whom you can!

by Magdalena Ionescu, Faculty Innovation Fellow from Sophia University

Faced with an impending environmental collapse, more than ever before our generation is asking itself: what are we leaving to the next generation? Frankly, however, it seems to me that the question needs to be rephrased! Rather than focusing on what we leave to the next generation, I believe it is far more important to ask ourselves what we leave in them. 

Let me explain. 

The 20th century was powered by an industrial mindset that has been characterized as defuturing, since, in treating the earth as a resource rather than a responsibility, it has effectively led to a colonization of the future, thereby robbing future (human and non-human) generations of the resources necessary to fulfill their own needs.

I believe that by far the biggest task before us today is that of shifting away from this de-futuring mindset (on which all major systems and practices are based) to a re-futuring one. Framed as a challenge, this can be formulated as: how might we enable a shift in our self-perception as separated from nature to radically interdependent on the entire array of animate and inanimate components that make up the Chain of Life? And how might we redesign our socio-political and economic systems to reflect this perception shift in ourselves as “responsible custodians”, rather than “entitled owners” of our natural world? 

Without this perception shift, any current and future attempt to avert the impending ecological disaster caused by our rampant crossing of planetary boundaries is doomed to fail, amounting to nothing more than greenwashing. After all, as Einstein famously enunciated, we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. 

So, what to do?

Age-old wisdom informs us that change comes in only two ways: by accident or by design. Although not a task we have chosen for ourselves, we cannot be as reckless as to passively wait for an accidental change! In truth, the only way in which we can assume the responsibility our generation has been entrusted with, is to intentionally envision and design the blueprint for the sustainable kind of future we wish for ourselves and our children. Therein lies my own power and responsibility as an educator.

I embarked on this University Innovation Fellows’ journey a little over two years ago out of the need I felt to open up new spaces where my students could explore on their own terms solutions to some of the big challenges we are facing. With its mission to equip students with the changemaker mindset and the tools required in the process of creatively designing and implementing solutions to challenges on and off campus, UIF has been delivering. 

Although they have just recently embarked on their journey as changemakers, the UIF Sophia fellows are already contributing to their community, putting their knowledge and skills to use in a flexible and mobile way. In various ways they are reframing the debate around sustainable campus life and facilitating the co-creation of solutions/practices towards sustainable futures.

Starting on a journey like this with your students may seem daunting. It did for me! At first, all I could see were limitations and obstacles. But throughout any period of self-questioning and self-doubt, I kept reminding myself: “My students need this! And our communities need them!” I realize now the only thing that was truly required was my openness to the new and the trust in myself and my students that we would eventually find a way. We did, and, inspired by Jacqueline Novogratz’s advice to “be more interested than interesting” and to “let the work teach you”, we are continuing along this path with passion and confidence.

Sophians Toward Sustainable Futures

by Mana Short, Giuli Nagai, Haruka Oizumi, Hana Saeki, Maria Sjoeblom Bjoerndalen, Kokoro Kuroiwa and Tomohiro Loeer—University Innovation Fellows from Sophia University

  • We are collaborating with organizations on campus, such as KASA Sustainability and the Sophia Office for Sustainability Promotion, to organize forums about campus sustainability. Through these cross-campus partnerships, we are striving to close the student-teacher hierarchical divide and bridge the seniority gaps in Sophia by bringing students, faculty, and staff together for collective discussions on how we may drive change for sustainability from within our campus and beyond.
  • We are stepping beyond the university campus and building bridges with secondary education institutions by hosting youth-empowerment workshops. In April 2022, we partnered with RISE to deliver a 40-minute workshop for students at Seisen International School based on the theme of the Butterfly Effect. Our workshop, RISE Together for Change, guides students to find their strengths, encourages them that they are enough to create the change they want to see in the world, and shows them the power of taking action together with others.
  • We are breaking down disciplinary silos in the Sophia Program for Sustainable Futures (SPSF) by bringing together students from a wide range of different departments to tackle sustainability challenges using elements of Design Thinking and Systems Thinking. We have designed a workshop for SPSF students intended to empower them to move from being passive bystanders to becoming active change-makers who use their skills and knowledge in the process of shaping socially just and ecologically sustainable futures.
  • We are fostering both creativity and a culture of collaboration across professions and status by creating spaces where campus stakeholders unite to take concrete actions towards solving challenges on campus. The SDGs x Innovation Sparker Workshop is a university-wide event that our team will carry out in October 2022 that applies design thinking skills and tools to SDGs related challenges.
  • We designed an experiential learning program where design thinking, with its core elements of empathy and creativity, acted as the foundation for participants to develop new skills and feel empowered in their work of opening new pathways for sustainability on campus. We tested this 8-day prototype in March in collaboration with Green Sophia, a student organization taking on big environmental challenges on campus. Going forward we intend to use this learning program as a way to gather multiple stakeholders (students, professors, student affairs and administrative staff) behind a campus design challenge. 

The original article can be found in the Perspectives section of the 2021-2022 Change Forward Journal— Visions and Voices of Higher Education’s Future.

Earning a Degree When you Have Kids

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Building student-centered supports for student-parents

By Erica Hernandez, Faculty Innovation Fellow Candidate from Bowie State University

As I rush into class a minute late, quickly logging into the instructor computer station, I suddenly hear the unexpected sound of a toddler squealing in delight. This adorable visitor is the two year old daughter of one of my students. The student gets her daughter settled into watching a video while also getting her own notebook out for class. Today, this student-parent is trying her best to balance caring for her daughter with pursuing her own education to create a better future for her growing family. There are a myriad of challenges that student-parents must overcome to earn a degree. How might we help student-parents to attain their educational goals while also honoring the importance of their role as parents?

“The Faculty Innovation Fellows (FIF) program has provided a great community for feedback, ideas and encouragement for this project. One of the best pieces of advice came from a Faculty Innovation Coach: ‘try stuff’.”

Student-parents make up approximately one in five college students in the United States, for a total of 3.8 million students (Ascend & IWPR, 2020). Student-parents frequently face barriers to graduation such as a lack of institutional resources geared towards students with children, challenges balancing family and school responsibilities, and feeling isolated and different from other students. However, it’s not all bad news: many student-parents find supportive faculty and staff at their institutions. Student-parents report that they are motivated to graduate because they want to set a good example for their children and gain financial independence for their family (Ajayi et al., 2022). At Bowie State University, I found that there are many individual faculty and staff who are supportive but there are no institutionalized services for student-parents. I decided to focus on creating a set of institutional supports to increase student success while ensuring that student-parents feel seen and valued. 

The Faculty Innovation Fellows (FIF) program has provided a great community for feedback, ideas and encouragement for this project. One of the best pieces of advice came from a Faculty Innovation Coach: “try stuff.” I started by reaching out to faculty and staff who support students with different types of special needs to find allies with the power and willingness to support student-parents. I found campus partners whose existing services, from tutoring to medical and disability accommodations, might be adapted to meet the needs of student-parents. From this, I started building support among colleagues to propose a Student-Parent Resource Center. In July 2022, I will apply for a federal CCAMPIS grant to provide financial support for student-parent childcare expenses while also providing wraparound support services using existing campus resources. I am also working with colleagues at different institutions to create a research hub to compile existing research about student-parent support services and educational outcomes.

“I realized that an effort to support student-parents will be more impactful if the voices of student-parents are included from the beginning stages of design.”

Another essential concept that I learned through FIF at the 2022 Silicon Valley Meetup was “co-creation”. I realized that an effort to support student-parents will be more impactful if the voices of student-parents are included from the beginning stages of design. I have been honored to work with University Innovation Fellows who are student-parents themselves. They are very effective advocates for positive change for student-parents, and their voices have guided this effort. The Fellows also connected me with other student-parents to launch the Student-Parent Association. This will provide an opportunity for student-parents to connect with other students like them, reduce isolation, and advocate for impactful positive change on campus.

Bowie State student with her two children
Credit: Eric Anderson

Over my first year in the FIF program, my project has taken a three-pronged approach to supporting student-parents: proposing institutional supports, starting a research hub to consolidate national efforts, and launching a student-organization to amplify the voices of student-parents. My vision is that all student-parents feel seen, valued and supported as they attain their educational goals. Creating these supports at a Historically Black College / University (HBCU) like Bowie State University elevates HBCU’s as part of the national conversation about student-parents. Considering the millions of student-parents in the United States, finding an effective, scalable solution for increasing student success among student-parents will have a dramatic impact on the education and financial independence of both the student-parents and their children.

This article was featured in the latest edition of the journal, Change Forward, published by the University Innovation Fellows program. Read the journal online here.