Quadcast Episode 19: Community College President Pam Eddinger on What the Pandemic Exposed and the Promise of “A Just Recovery.”
On this week’s Quadcast, we continue our non-consecutive series on College Presidents and Covid-19 with Dr. Pam Eddinger, President of Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. President Eddinger described how the events of this past year have shone light on decades-long disinvestment in the social networks that are critical to community college students’ success; and how a “just recovery” could impact their mental health and wellbeing in preventative, sustainable ways.
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Our series on college presidents’ experience with Covid-19’s impact includes Howard University President Wayne Frederick, Elon University President Connie Book, University of Miami President Julio Frenk, and Emerson College President Lee Pelton. Find those episodes on our website or your preferred podcast app.
Mental and Behavioral Health
Main Stories
The American Council on Education, in partnership with the TIAA Institute, released a new Pulse Point Survey, one of a series of surveys of college and university presidents on how they are responding to the challenges of COVID-19. Key findings show that the “mental health of students” was the most commonly selected across all sectors including presidents at public two-year (79 percent), public four-year (78 percent) institutions, and private four-year institutions (70 percent).
In an Op-Ed for The Hill, Representative Rosa Delauro (D, CT) stresses the importance of increased funding for mental health services post-pandemic: “In March, I held a hearing on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our nation’s already growing mental health and substance use crises. And I am continuing to push for increased targeted funding for mental health and counseling services in our nation’s schools.” Delauro, who is also Chair of the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education subcommittee, states, “As students return to school, many will continue to grapple with the anxiety and grief of losing loved ones to the pandemic, while others will face new challenges with homelessness, food insecurity, or unemployment. Others may face increased bullying, anger management issues, or opportunities to obtain substances through peers. Still more will feel increased pressure to achieve after a year of learning losses.”
In The Chronicle, Lauren Mitchell, a recent 2021 graduate from North Carolina A&T University and Campus Correspondent for The Chronicle, writes on life at an HBCU during a turbulent year. Mitchell writes that Covid-19 has disproportionately harmed Black communities, citing the death of George Floyd in the midst of the first Covid-related shutdown and, before that, the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. She writes, “Since then, Black students have had to grapple with constant, hard-to-process societal conversations about police brutality and racial injustice.” Writing, “HBCUs are places where Black lives have always mattered,” Mitchell interviewed students who also shared their experiences of having found support at an HBCU. One student says, “Going to an HBCU, you’re surrounded by people that just get it. Growing up, I’ve always been in white spaces. I’ve always been the one black girl in the class. I wanted just four years that I could dedicate to just being surrounded by African American people, and not being the only one.”
Other News
Johns Hopkins University announces the launch of a Behavioral Health Crisis Support Team to respond to crises related to behavioral and mental health on their Homewood campus. Previously, campus safety and security officers have been the primary respondents to behavioral crisis calls.
The Daily Northwestern reports on a new student-led response to form a Muslim mental health advocate for more inclusive mental health services. Junior Northwestern student Fizzah Jaffer co-founded the Northwestern Muslim Mental Health Initiative after examining a list of over 200 therapists from Northwestern’s Counseling and Psychological Services and not seeing a single Muslim counselor listed as a resource.
In an op-ed for James Madison University’s Newspaper The Breeze, student Summer Conley argues that JMU is neglecting students’ mental health. She says, “That hasn’t stopped the onslaught of assignments, exams, tests and mandatory meetings each of my classes has demanded. My ‘mental health’ days were spent quietly sobbing over my laptop, desperately trying to keep up with the work. It was never enough.”
Students mourn three deaths of first-year students at Dartmouth College. As students gathered on campus in the wake of the death of Elizabeth Reiner ‘24, campus administrators pledged for more mental health support. Many Dartmouth mental health resources during the pandemic have focused on accessibility, but barriers still remain.
UCLA students launch PeerUp, an anonymous peer-led mental health resource. The app’s mission to address accessibility does so by offering support in both English and Mandarin in order to serve the campus’s community of international students. For Asian American students who grew up in households where mental health is oftentimes not discussed, the platform helps reduce stigma.
In an Op-Ed for the UD Review, University of Delaware student Wyatt Patterson writes, “It is time to restore modified grading systems for the duration of online courses, time to encourage professors not to dismiss scheduled breaks, and time to put their money where their mouth is and fund professional mental health services for the students who call this campus home.”
A new international, 8-week, mental health program called “Art to Living International Youth Alliance Workshop Series,” is connecting students at a D.C. charter school to peers overseas. “One student said that connecting to other teens across the world with the same problems she had was eye-opening.”
The Pacific-12 Conference, a collegiate athletic conference, shares student-athlete and university efforts to raise awareness during the month of May, Mental Health Awareness Month. Teams, athletic departments, and university students move to social media to promote destigmatizing mental health.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
GBH News details new efforts in higher education to combat racism by requiring students to take a course on race, equity, or anti-racism. The rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the murder of George Floyd has prompted some universities to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion course curriculum. Some states may see legislative changes to their education system as well. Under a newly enacted state law, the public California college system will begin requiring all students to complete an ethnic studies course in order to graduate.
In a new report from the Council of Opportunity in Education, equity indicator data illustrates the systemic barriers that low-income and non-traditional students face at institutions. Margaret Calahan, co-author of the report and director of the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, says, “The system is becoming more and more stratified by socioeconomic status.” The data shows “a divided higher education system for adult learners, low-income students and students of color, who are concentrated in colleges and universities that spend less per student than better-resourced institutions.” Furthermore, the report also reveals that the share of Pell Grant recipients attending schools that spend the least on education grew by several percentage points over the last two decades, falling at schools in higher-spending brackets.
In a Student Voice piece in the Hechinger Report, Lily Nagengast, a graduate teaching assistant in the English Department of Georgetown University, argues that students like her – from rural parts of the US – are necessary to bridging the gap between higher education and rural communities. She writes that improving rural students’ access to higher education is critical and possible. “Rural voices must be heard and taken seriously to improve college access for rural students,” Nagengast writes. “By sharing my experience, I hope to encourage other rural students to share their experiences and pave the way for others to bridge the gap between rural America and higher education, so that the distance between the two — both literally and figuratively — will become smaller.”
Boise State University suspended sections of a diversity and ethics course two months ago, a move that garnered national attention and was largely viewed as a reactionary move to right-wing political forces in the state. The suspension was based on an allegation that a student had been made to feel “humiliated and degraded” in class “for their beliefs and values.” An investigation by an outside law firm was not able to substantiate that such an incident had taken place.
In a column for The Hechinger Report, Generation Hope’s CEO, Nicole Lynn Lewis, and author of a new book on student parents titled “Pregnant Girl” advocates for policy changes and funding support for U.S college student parents. According to data from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, one out of five U.S. college students are parents, many of whom attend community colleges. The National Center for Education Statistics also reports that college student parents are ten times less likely to finish college. Lewis hopes policy change under the Biden administration will increase emergency support and financial aid.
Basic Needs
In a blog post for the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), policy analyst Ashley Burnside argues that Congress must repeal SNAP student “Work-for-Food” requirements after a financially difficult year for college students. Burnside writes, “The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one critical resource that can help students afford food while attending classes. But the SNAP eligibility rules for students are overly complicated, forcing those who don’t meet other qualifying criteria to work at least 20 hours per week to be eligible for food benefits in addition to meeting other SNAP income and eligibility requirements. But long hours of work can make it harder for students, particularly those with low incomes, to succeed in school and graduate.”
College Affordability
According to preliminary data from the National Association of College and University Business Officers, tuition discounts are expected to hit an all-time high for the 2020-21 school year. For the 361 schools studied, discount rates reached 48.1% for all undergraduates, an increase of more than two percentage points from the previous year. Colleges often use targeted discounting to enroll more students who are unable or unwilling to pay high tuition costs.
Student Success
The Hechinger Report highlights the mandatory advising program at San Antonio College, which recently won the 2021 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence for its improvements to student success measures. At San Antonio, students are required to meet with an advisor after they enroll and at various points during their enrollment. Prior to the pandemic, San Antonio was moving towards a case management model, where advisors would help not only with academic concerns, but also try to address personal barriers to success. That only increased during the pandemic. Robert Vela, the president of San Antonio College, said advising has become more like social work, and that technology issues, basic needs insecurity, mental health, and caregiving are some of the barriers that students have been navigating over the past 14 months.
Inside Higher Ed explores the new “recruit back” strategies at historically black colleges and universities, which hope to reach students who earned some college credit but never graduated. According to Census Bureau Data, over five million Black Americans, 25 or older, report having some college, yet no degree. The United Negro College Fund (UNCF), an organization representing 37 private historically Black colleges and universities, launched an initiative to bring 4,000 students back to HBCUs to earn their degrees with the help of one-on-one coaching. The program will provide students with free, personalized coaching to ease their transition back into college life, guiding them through re-enrollment and financial aid, helping plan their academic path, and navigating personal finances and childcare.
According to a new report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, state funding is associated with student success outcomes. According to the report, included in Higher Ed Dive, state funding cuts cause modest decreases in graduation rates and college credentials awarded.
The Hechinger Report profiles Anne Fletcher, professor of English and developmental writing at Austin Community College, and her efforts to reach students that are falling through the cracks. About half the students she teaches are considered at high risk of not completing college, many of them from low-income families or from historically marginalized communities. “From the very beginning of my career, I was concerned about the students who struggled,” said Fletcher. “Those students need extra help. I think I understand their needs.” She said that in each of the last three semesters, she’s lost more students than in any previous semester. She often provides support outside her classroom, offering special online sessions to those struggling with the work and extra credit to those who turn in a biweekly confidential journal where they note how they’re doing. “My goal is to do everything possible to keep everyone, and to have them be successful,” Fletcher said. “I owe it to the college, and I owe it to the students. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do everything possible.”
Physical Health
On Inside Higher Ed’s Academic Minute short-form podcast, Amy Bidwell, an associate professor in the department of health promotion and wellness at the State University of New York at Oswego, discusses her work on a holistic, multifaceted behavior change program aimed at fostering long-lasting changes in college students’ wellbeing and preventing weight gain. In her program, “students set weekly goals to incorporate strategies they learned in the program and then reflect on them in their journals. The students think about what successes and challenges they had that week and highlight why they thought those successes and challenges occurred. Over time, they begin to recognize the habits that result in specific behaviors.”
Coronavirus: Safety and Reopening
Inside Higher Ed reports on colleges navigating new State Department travel warnings after a year that has upended study abroad programs. The new recommendations have been implemented to better align protocols with travel health notices from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The change in mid-April resulted in a substantial increase in the number of countries that indicate “Level 4: Do Not Travel,” the State Department’s highest warning.
Inside Higher Ed reports that in the wake of the new masking guidance from the CDC, which states that fully vaccinated people do not need to wear masks in most settings, colleges and universities are scrambling to revise their safety protocols or determine if any changes should be made at all. While some have begun lifting mask mandates, others are leaving them in place citing the inability to determine who is vaccinated.
An NBC News analysis of nearly 400 colleges and universities that are requiring the Covid-19 vaccination found that the majority have unclear directives, loopholes or legal complications that are causing confusion and frustration. NBC reports that with no federal guidance and shifting legal boundaries, colleges and universities are struggling to develop plans to reopen.