11/27 – 12/3

Mental and Behavioral Health

In an op-ed in Inside HigherEd, Andrew Joseph Pegoda, a professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Houston, recommends that instructors schedule regular times for lessons in student wellness. He believes that “asking students how they are really doing should not be a rare occurrence.” To encourage more professors to adopt the practice, Pegoda recounts what a wellness lesson looks like and how students have responded.

The Daily UW reports that the University of Washington mental health task force is currently exploring how the university could restructure its entire mental health system, consolidate current resources and change campus culture. According to the Daily, the task force has identified major concerns among students, including confusion about what resources are available, limited resources, long wait times, and an inability to set up regular, long-term counseling sessions. Additionally, the task force acknowledged that the system benefits students who have higher motivation to seek help.

The Chicago Tribune reports on the long wait times for mental health services at colleges across the country.  According to the Tribune, many universities have expanded their mental health clinics, but the growth is often too slow to keep up with surging demand. The wait times have provoked protests in some cases, and counseling centers are grappling with low morale and high burnout as staff face increasingly heavy workloads. The Tribune reports that many universities are rethinking how they provide help, steering more students to group therapy or anxiety workshops, offering yoga and meditation, training students to counsel one another. Some have contracted with companies that provide therapy over the phone or through video chats. According to the Tribune, some say those changes won’t do enough to help if clinics remain understaffed.

As the increased demand for mental health services continues to stress institutions’ already-strapped counseling centers, some colleges are turning to online support options. According to Education Dive, in order to keep waitlists in check, some schools are implementing telehealth services, which provide digital care through text messages, phone calls and video chats.  Tiffany Howard, who coordinates online counseling and psychiatry services for the University of South Carolina’s Student Health Services said that having online support could reduce the number of students who need in-person counseling, and it can let colleges bring the service to students “where they are,” she added, “on their phones.” However, Education Dive reports that working with an outside partner requires college officials to think carefully about how to screen students and which conditions are better handled with in-person care. Colleges’ use of such services is still somewhat limited. Ayesha Chaudhary, staff psychiatrist at Duke University’s Counseling and Psychological Services center, told Education Dive that in an informal show of hands during a recent American College Health Association event, about 40% of people in the room said their schools were using online counseling.

According to TCU360, Texas Christian University’s mental health center is rethinking the traditional model of college mental health through the implementation of new programs and initiatives. The counseling and mental health center received a three-year, $300,000 grant from the Department of Health & Human Services to create dedicated intake and crisis response teams. Eric Wood, the director of the counseling and mental health center, is in charge of spearheading these initiatives. One program that will be implemented is the Comprehensive Care Model, an initiative unique to TCU that pairs the Counseling and Mental Health Center with local treatment centers and private donors to offer advanced care programs to students on campus. The removal of session limits will be one of the biggest changes, Wood said. “Our hope is that these changes expand our scope of care and focus our mission at providing treatment, recovery and after-care services to students,” Wood said.

The Ohio State University is reporting a significant rise in the number of students seeking mental health treatment. According to Dr. Micky Sharma, the Director of Student Life’s Counseling and Consultation Service, there has been a 69% increase in the number of students receiving mental health assistance over the last five years.  Sharma says the increase is due to a number of factors. “Number one is there has been, with this generation of students, a reduction in the stigma around mental health,” he explained. “Students are more therapy-friendly. That’s a good thing. We have more students on campus today who have had treatment before.”

State legislators and University of Washington students are hoping to mitigate mental health issues on college campuses by putting crisis hotline numbers on the back of newly issued ID cards, according to a report in the Daily UW. These numbers would most likely include the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and local crisis lines. It’s a change that’s already been implemented at Gonzaga and Washington State University, and last spring state Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-46) introduced a bill that would require all state universities to do the same. While it ultimately did not pass, Pollet noted that the change could happen without governmental action. “I’m a little bit scratching my head about why the UW and other schools aren’t doing it without a legislative mandate,” Pollet said. “There’s no real cost … it’s a real easy change to make.”

US News reports the Kansas Board of Regents plan to ask for more state funding in the 2020 session for mental health care for students. Board president and CEO Blake Flanders said, “Our demand for mental health services is growing dramatically on our campuses,” Flanders said. “I don’t anticipate that cost driver reducing.” An influx of money would be well spent, said Pam Botts, a psychologist who helps run KU’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). Since the KU center started drop-in appointments in February, it no longer has months long wait times for initial appointments. But, Botts said, it needs 10 more therapists to meet the demand. Plus, it could use more office space. “Budget is an issue. We have no more funds,” she said. “If we had the funding, we would hire more clinicians.” According to Botts, the 13 therapists who currently work for CAPS can only see students once every three or four weeks, rather than the ideal of every other week.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln wants to improve access to mental health services by placing counselors in residence halls. The national trends in student mental health have compelled universities across the country to embed counselors into specific colleges, academic departments, athletic departments and residence halls.

In an editorial for the Daily Texan, University of Texas student Neha Dronamraju writes that, “to open a dialogue around mental health, UT’s Center for Asian American Studies should make their collaborations with the Counseling and Mental Health Center more visible to students, especially the Asian community on campus.” Dronamraju cites the stigma around mental health issues in the Asian American community.

The Dickinson Press reports that counseling centers in North Dakota are booked out for two weeks, and when school counselors are forced to refer students off campus, the wait can be even longer, especially in rural areas. Katie Fitzsimmons, student affairs director for the North Dakota University System said, “This is a huge concern as it plays into the direct health and wellness of our students,” she said. “Not addressing these needs can have tragic consequences from the destruction of personal relationships to suicide to threats of violence on our campuses.”

As part of a new mental health initiative, Roos for Mental Health, the University of Missouri Kansas City is now offering students free access to a mental health app, Sanvello, that uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) methods to improve users’ mental health. The app’s features include a journal for daily mood tracking, coping tools, progress assessments and guided journeys designed by clinical experts to help users feel better and more in control over the course of the journey. The app also allows users to connect the account with their mental health professional, allowing for personalized treatments.

Diverse Education reports on the series of Young, Gifted and @Risk conferences put on this fall by the Steve Fund, a nonpro­fit dedicated to improving mental health for students of color. According to the article, while the conferences focused on the same broader theme of mental health for students of color, The Steve Fund worked with each school to create a conference agenda tailored to their interests. University of Michigan’s conference “Young, Gifted, @Risk & Resilient” focused on how campus climate impacts mental health for students of color. At Georgetown University, the “Young, Gifted and Advancing” conference emphasized how mental health and emotional well-being affect retention rates among students of color. Dr. David Rivera, an associate professor of counselor education at Queens College, CUNY and a national adviser for the Steve Fund says the goal of the conference series is to not only bridge the gap between mental health experts, staff, parents and students of color but to make sure participants leave with ideas for practical solutions to improve minority students’ mental health on each campus. Anuja Khemka, the executive director of The Steve Fund, said that themes emerge at each of the campus conferences. One issue frequently brought up is that students of color are less likely to seek out mental health services when they’re struggling. “For young people of color, the stigma seems to be more,” she says. “Conversations about mental health need to be normalized.”

Diversity and Inclusion

Recent protests at Syracuse University were fueled by students’ anger over what they felt was the university’s sluggish responses to racist and anti-Semitic incidents. Black, Latino, Asian-American, Jewish, Muslim, Indigenous and international students staged a sit-in at the university’s new campus center under the slogan #NotAgainSU. The protesters’ 19 demands included that those involved in the November incidents be expelled, that steps be taken to diversify the faculty, that $1 million be spent on a mandatory curriculum addressing issues of diversity and racism, and, ultimately, that the chancellor and other senior university officials resign. Last week, Syracuse’s chancellor, Kent D. Syverud, agreed to most of the demands, calming the protests. Syverud announced a series of measures to increase security on campus, including doubling the number of safety patrols, but made it clear that neither he nor other top university officials would resign. “I hate testifying for myself, but my whole career has been about caring about students, particularly about international students and students of color,” Mr. Syverud said in an interview. “These last 10 days, I’ve talked to so many students and they’re so afraid and angry,” he said. “And I understand why.”

Silent Sam, the confederate statue toppled by protesters at the University of North Carolina last year, will be owned by a Confederate heritage group and will remain off the public university campus under terms of an agreement announced Wednesday. The decision allows the statue to be preserved – but keeps it away from the public university where it had become a flash point. After a crowd toppled the monument, which had been a source of tension for years, in August 2018, the proposal from university leaders to return the statue to campus elicited shock and anger. In January, the former chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill ordered the remnants of Silent Sam removed from campus. Few activists are satisfied with this outcome, as the university agreed to pay $2.5-million as part of a settlement to a group that celebrates the Confederacy, funding a trust that “may only be used for certain limited expenses related to the care and preservation of the monument, including potentially a facility to house and display the monument.”

Washington state voters narrowly rejected Referendum 88, a measure that would have allowed state universities to consider race in admissions. The vote also bars other public institutions from using affirmative action to make hiring or contracting decisions. If it had passed, experts say, the referendum would probably have altered enrollment most significantly at the state’s selective universities, had they decided to include race. Officials at the state’s top public universities say they intend to continue using other methods to recruit a racially diverse student body.  Patricia Loera, University of Washington’s associate vice president of college access said that the university is facing a “very real” uphill battle in attracting underrepresented students. “We’re doing the best we can and making the best investments we can with what we have,” she said. “There’s definitely more we could do.” The year after residents voted to end the practice in 1998, the percentage of University of Washington freshman students who identified as underrepresented minorities, not including Asian, dropped from 8.8% to 5.6%. Applications from racial minorities dropped, too, suggesting the law had a chilling effect. News and publicity about the law may have caused some students to think, “the University of Washington wasn’t the place for them,” said Charles Hirschman, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington, who has published research on the law’s effects.

Sexual Assault and Title IX

A three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston unanimously ruled that Boston College may suspend a student the college found had sexually assaulted another student. The ruling reversed a lower court decision that had ordered Boston College to reinstate the suspended student.

College Affordability

NPR reports that wealthy businessman Ben Cutler has pledged to pay college tuition and fees for students in the small manufacturing town of Neodesha, Kansas for the next 25 years. With the gift, Cutler hopes to turn around the fortunes of a dwindling town. The donor and community leaders are banking on families moving here to qualify their kids for free tuition, an influx they envision would boost the local tax base, bolster the shrinking school district and bring back customers for the local economy.

The Chicago Tribune reports on the trend of employers launching benefit programs that help workers reduce their college debts, including making direct payments to lenders and offering online tools to help employees track their loan balances and repayment options. Some companies are also matching an employee’s student loan repayments with contributions to a 401(k) retirement plan.  According to a survey last year of 250 companies by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 11% offered student-loan repayment subsidies and 13% planned to add it as a way to attract and retain employees. Companies using these subsidies include Kronos Inc., Hulu, HP, Travelers Cos., Raytheon, Abbott Laboratories and Fidelity Investments. Fidelity spends about $13 million a year on its Step Ahead benefit for employees who meet certain requirements. The company covers up to a lifetime maximum of $10,000 in student-loan debt repayments.

Student Success

The Chronicle reports on changes in developmental education around the country that are allowing students to bypass remedial classes and jump right into their first college-level course. But significant challenges remain. Prominent figures in the national effort to overhaul developmental education shared their thoughts about the progress they’ve made and the problems they’ve encountered during a conference last week at the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness, a joint effort of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College and MDRC, a nonprofit education- and social-policy research group. Michael Schoop, vice president for evidence, inquiry, and retention at Cuyahoga Community College, in Ohio and Philip Uri Treisman, a professor of mathematics and public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, outlined challenges they faced in attempting to spread the most promising practices across higher education including: skeptical faculty, lack of funding leading to declining momentum, and challenges with part-time students and faculty.

Education Dive reports on a new study showing that access to virtual advising services did not increase college enrollment and acceptance rates of socioeconomically disadvantaged high school students. University of California, Los Angeles researchers gave more than 6,500 California students access to one of two programs: one that alerted them to important college application deadlines and gave gift card rewards for completing key milestones and another that included those offerings plus virtual advising. Although students in both groups reported feeling more supported during the application process and were more likely to apply to a four-year institution than did those in the control group, the services did not significantly impact whether or where they went to college.

Hunger and Homelessness

In an op-ed in the San Diego Union Tribune, Vince Hall, CEO of Feeding San Diego, cites that colleges and university students disproportionately experience hunger. According to Hall, community college students are hit hardest by economic challenges, as many of them work, raise children and support aging parents while simultaneously pursuing their education. Hall writes, “We cannot allow our students – tomorrow’s leaders – to face such obstacles in pursuit of their dreams.” He argues that student success benefits the entire community, fueling the economy and expanding opportunities. He concludes, “Let’s all work to ensure that our students are fueled for success and that hunger never stands between an aspiring student and academic achievement.”