AAC&U Webinar: "Let’s Start with ‘How Are You Doing?’”
Yes, it’s a cooling rack…
On May 15, 2020 I attended the AAC&U Webinar, ‘Let’s Start with “How Are You Doing?’: How Resilience and Hope Can Shape a New Normal for Learning and Teaching.” I have been particularly concerned with my students’ well-being during the current crisis, and I am (or was) involved in a study of growth mindset and motivation, so it seemed like a good fit. The panelists included Adina Glickman of the Academic Resilience Consortium, Daniel Pascoe Aguilar of Drew University, Mays Imad of Pima Community College, and Denise Larsen of the University of Alberta. The session was moderated by Ashley Finley of AAC&U.
Dr. Imad echoed my concern that both students and instructors are feeling unusual levels of stress and anxiety. She described responses on three levels: at the individual level, she proposed teaching through a “trauma-sensitive lens”; at the department level, an examination of obstacles facing both students and faculty; and, at the institutional level, an examination of resources available. Her points were well-made. If nothing else, this is a time for charity: we are all walking through this together. While we have good people at HPU in both the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning, and Employee Wellness, I wonder if there’s a more efficient way of assessing the specific needs of faculty and students, and connecting them to the available resources. This is probably best done on an individual basis, and I might explore the idea of creating departmental liaisons with both offices.
Dr. Larsen provided a definition of hope that I plan to adopt: “the ability to envision a future in which we wish to participate.” She also talked at length about the Hope-Lit database maintained by the Hope Foundation at the University of Alberta. I was immediately intrigued; I teach a Summer online music gen-ed course, and as she spoke, I realized that “music and hope” would be a timely theme for the course. I visited the database immediately after the webinar and collected a preliminary bibliography of potential sources that ran to several pages.
Dr. Aguilar spoke exclusively about diversity/inclusion throughout the webinar, and made several important points. The ones that resonated with me the most were that “this is no longer a competition”: we will have to work together to create the new reality; and that change is at the center of diversity: if we bring in a diverse student body and expect them to adapt to the existing culture, we have not really accomplished anything. He also reiterated a cognitive bias that I’m sure I encountered before, but had forgotten: we tend to see ourselves as complex and nuanced, and others as simple and predictable. He challenged us all to resist this, and to imagine what our policies, instruction, etc. would look like if we truly saw others as multifaceted individuals.
Finally, Dr. Glickman introduced the Academic Resilience Consortium (which I petitioned to join). She made two especially good points, first that we had an opportunity to re-frame COVID-19 as a shared experience that could form the basis for community, and we should be intentional in our approach between balancing compassion with academic rigor.
My biggest take-aways from the closing discussion concerned 1) building community in virtual environments, and especially giving a voice in the process; and 2) this is a crisis that exists at the intersection of Academic Affairs and Student Life. I feel that, in spite of being involved with the Common Experience since its inception, I have under-valued Student Life as a resource. I will definitely be rethinking this going forward.