FRONTLINES with Jamie Davidson, Associate Vice President for Student Wellness at University of Nevada at Las Vegas
In the latest installment of her column “Frontlines,” former associate Dean for Health, Counseling and Wellness and Director of the Health Center at Bentley University, Gerri Taylor, interviews Jamie Davidson about his path from studying business at a local community college in Florida to becoming Associate Vice President (AVP) for Student Wellness at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV).
In 1994, Davidson arrived at UNLV, where there was a single PhD-level psychologist on staff—him. To keep the center from closing, he threw himself into pioneering research assessing the link between counseling services and student learning and retention. He spent the next several years climbing the ranks from director of counseling to AVP by 2001, when he spearheaded the integration of physical and mental health services at UNLV.
Mental and Behavioral Health
Main Stories
According to Inside Higher Ed, the president of Oglethorpe University, Nick Ladany, is putting his background in clinical psychology to work, investing in a “revamp” of the school’s counseling center to address pandemic-level needs. Part of these efforts to improve services includes eliminating the cap on how many counseling sessions students are allowed and hiring an additional counselor to facilitate this change. While some schools limit counseling access by referring students off campus or requiring payment after a certain point, Oglethorpe joins the ranks of those without these restrictions. President Ladany says he looks forward to being able to study the relationship between increased counseling services and retention over time.
Other News
Time explores the impact of ambition on mental health, suggesting that the way people channel their ambition (i.e., towards material gains, rather than personal growth) could affect personal happiness.
The Washington Post presents a list of tips from mental health professionals for those wondering how best to approach seeking help in the midst of a national therapist shortage.
Students and faculty across the country offer diverse perspectives on the evolving state of higher ed for The New York Times, revealing increased efforts and expectations around supporting student wellbeing.
The New York Times also highlights the academic challenges—and mental health consequences—for students who suffered pandemic-induced learning loss and are now starting college for the first time.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
The Supreme Court started hearing arguments this week in the cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for their use of race-conscious admission practices. The lawsuits, brought by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), specifically accuse the universities of discriminating against Asian American applicants. Reporting on nearly five hours of argument on Monday, several papers of record, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR, all seem skeptical of the future of affirmative action given the Court’s conservative majority.
In light of the Supreme Court cases, media outlets are also directing attention toward the issue of admission preferences for legacy students. Higher ed policy expert James Murphy in The Chronicle and George Washington University professor Iris Rotberg in The Hechinger Report make similar arguments that schools will need to eliminate these preferences in order to address race and income-based educational inequities, especially if affirmative action ends up outlawed.
Student Buzz
The Catalyst, the Colorado College student newspaper, covers the responses of the community’s two presidents—the college president and the student government association president—to the recent death of another student (the third in six months).
In an op-ed, another writer for The Catalyst passionately expresses his frustrations with the school’s “cookie-cutter” response to the most recent student death and pleads for proper recognition of the severity of the mental health crisis on campus.
According to The Dartmouth, the administration granted a “Day of Caring” on which classes were canceled to allow students to take a break, reflect, or engage in mental health programming after the recent deaths of several students and recent graduates over the summer and this fall.
A columnist for The GW Hatchet, the student newspaper of George Washington University, suggests the school should extend the option to take classes pass/fail to first-year students to help them adjust to the academic challenges and general stress of college life.
For The Duke Chronicle, one writer considers the ethical implications of inflicting mental trauma on animals to better understand human mental health, suggesting it may be an unfortunate necessity for progress in the field.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
Despite a movement in 2019 bent on recognizing and addressing widespread gender and race-based discrimination in the economics field, The Chronicle reports that discontent prevails again three years later. Several high-profile economists have faced accusations of sexual harassment over social media in recent days, as frustrations swell regarding the failure of institutions to fulfill promises of change and accountability.
Reproductive Justice
The New York Times covers the major dilemma for OB-GYN residency programs in states with abortion bans after the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education made clear that programs are still expected to offer access to abortion training. On the one hand, these programs risk legal prosecution if they continue to teach students how to perform the procedure, and on the other hand, they risk losing accreditation if they don’t.
Student Success
Kevin Gannon, director for the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence at Queens University of Charlotte, takes issue with calls for “innovation” in higher ed that equate “novel” with “better.” In an op-ed for The Chronicle, he suggests colleges can foster student engagement and belonging by drawing from and cultivating the resources—particularly faculty capabilities—that probably already exist on their campuses.
In light of results showing steep declines in math and reading levels for fourth and eighth graders nationwide, Inside Higher Ed discusses how leaders in higher ed may approach supporting students who suffered pandemic-related learning loss. Some experts encourage reinforcing existing resources for underprepared students or intervening at the K-12 level; some discourage the establishment of new remedial programs that will prolong the time it takes for students to earn their degree.
College Affordability
The Biden Administration announced plans last year to revamp the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program after investigations showed it was largely not fulfilling its purpose: to provide student debt relief to nonprofit and government employees who made payments for ten years. As of this week, Inside Higher Ed reports the new regulations for the program—ready to unfurl in July 2023—will allow borrowers to “count late or partial payments and to count certain periods of forbearance or payment suspension toward PSLF.”
According to The Chronicle, the Department of Education also recently released new regulations for colleges interested in enrolling incarcerated Americans, who can expect to be eligible to receive Pell Grant as soon as July. Schools accepting incarcerated Pell Grant recipients will need to offer accredited prison-education programs and ensure those programs serve the best interests of the prisoners (i.e., don’t leave them with untransferable credits or unusable licensures).
Higher Ed Dive explores a recent report from the National College Attainment Network, suggesting that the average Pell Grant recipient in 2019-20 couldn’t afford tuition at 76% of four-year public colleges and 60% of community colleges. In fact, attending two and four-year colleges was even more inaccessible for Pell Grant recipients in 2019-20, compared to those in 2015-16.
Basic Needs
The Hechinger Report spotlights the nursing program at Eastern Maine Community College in Bangor, where partnerships with rural hospitals allow students who don’t want to or can’t travel further away to receive a clinical education. By breaking down traditional barriers to access—travel costs and times students can’t afford—the Eastern Maine program addresses both the national shortage of nurses and low enrollment among community colleges.
Physical Health
For The Chronicle, six faculty members from colleges and universities in the U.S. and Britain urge institutions in higher ed to instate strategies protecting community members that suffer from long Covid. To combat the culture of ableism they say widely dominates academia, the authors encourage schools to make access to medical evaluations and accommodations as simple and flexible as possible.
