LearningWell magazine: Where higher education meets life-long wellbeing
On July 24th, the Mary Christie Institute (MCI), together with the Coalition for Transformational Education (CTE), will launch LearningWell, a magazine about the people and practices that make higher education a holistic, health-promoting, and inclusive experience for students—both on campus and throughout their lives. We are excited to capture the news, ideas, best practices, and perspectives that help enrich the lives of students as they struggle to find identity, purpose and agency at a seminal period of their development. Our first issue includes a range of stories, profiles, and interviews on mental health, teaching and learning, flourishing, and equity and access. We can’t wait to bring it to you. If you receive the MCFeed, you will get LearningWell via a newsletter once a month that gives you the latest content. If you would like to contribute to LearningWell, we’d love to hear your ideas via our new LearningWell website. It is also where you can direct your friends and colleagues to read articles and sign up for the newsletter.
As always, thank you for being part of the MCI community.
Marjorie Malpiede
Editor, LearningWell
Executive Director, MCI
Mental and Behavioral Health
Inside Higher Ed compiles four strategies to consider when implementing programs aiming to support student athletes, including: make it mandatory, make it accessible (to accommodate for already busy schedules), encompass a wide range of health topics, and put it online (as student athletes often struggle with mental health stigma).
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy joined the NCAA Mental Health Advisory Group for a meeting, stressing the importance of student-athlete mental health. The NCAA Mental Health Advisory Group includes student-athletes, NCAA member representatives, and representatives from medical and scientific organizations with mental health expertise. “The need for counselors is great. Providing early care is vital,” Murthy said at the meeting. “One thing we’ve dramatically underused as a country is the power of peer support. It can provide immense support to people before they’re in full-blown crisis. It’s critical when we think about how we can get people help when symptoms are still mild.”
Inside Higher Ed highlights a program at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), where first-year students receive mindfulness training in their first-year seminar courses to help them learn self-care and stress-relief skills. Pre- and post-intervention survey data showed that a majority of the student participants favored the mindfulness practices; students indicated they have implemented strategies in their lives when faced with stress.
In an op-ed in the Hechinger Report, Mary Dana Hinton, president of Hollins University in Virginia, discusses some of her creative initiatives to promote student mental wellbeing on her campus, a women’s college. While her institution was already taking a public health approach that included establishing early alert systems, providing mental health first aid training to faculty and staff, and increasing group therapy, Hinton wanted to address her students’ loneliness and lack of community. She described technology-free programming like “game nights.” “What our students needed was someone to connect with them, to let them be young people free of the demands of the world and technology. A generation that has experienced active shooter drills, a pandemic lockdown, rampant racism, sexism, homophobia and a democracy far from its best needed a moment to simply be cared for,” she wrote.
WBUR reports on a new study from the University of Cambridge suggesting that helping teens feel competent and purposeful may improve their grades.
Other News
The New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR report that a legal activist group filed a complaint with the Education Department, requesting a review of legacy admissions, a term used for the special admissions treatment for students whose parents are alumni, or whose relatives donated money. The group argued that the practice discriminates against Black, Hispanic and Asian applicants. “Why are we rewarding children for privileges and advantages accrued by prior generations?” asked Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, which is handling the case. “Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process.”
Sonny Perdue, the University System of Georgia chancellor, previously a Republican governor of Georgia and agriculture secretary under the Trump administration, recently defended the system’s DEI expenses in a report to the state’s Lieutenant Governor. The letter stated, “We continue to attract and retain more than 334,000 students from diverse backgrounds and work with industry in communities across the state to develop academic programs and research that grow the state’s workforce and economy. As stewards of taxpayer dollars, we take this responsibility seriously.”
Diverse Education reports on new findings from Forbes Advisor showing that 56% of all college students in the U.S. are first-generation college students.
Rutgers University’s Educational Equity and Excellence Collaborative (E3C), launched in 2022, is aimed at increasing access and support measures for first-generation, underrepresented minority and low-income students. Inside Higher Ed reports that E3C is the first university-wide initiative to bring together resources, best practices, and research support across the institution to improve outcomes for these groups. “We know there are many incredible programs and opportunities for students, but as many have indicated, finding information about them can be challenging,” said Aramis Gutierrez, executive director of E3C and assistant vice president for educational access and success. “The clearinghouse, convenings and varying forms of outreach will connect students with curated resources to propel them forward.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Affirmative Action
In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, The Chronicle of Higher Ed comprehensively covered the decision and fallout for the higher education landscape. An op-ed by Jon Boeckenstedt, vice provost for enrollment management at Oregon State, included the varying reactions from college presidents, ponders how the ruling will change college admissions (and suggests policies like going test-optional and ending legacy admissions). An analysis examines the small slice of the higher education system that is directly affected by the ruling (highly selective colleges like Harvard and UNC). Chronicle reporter Eric Hoover considers the path forward, writing “Will the court’s decision prompt a moment of retrenchment, or a new push to recruit, enroll, and finance a student body that reflects the diversity of the nation? And what are institutional leaders prepared to do, and not just say, about their commitments to such goals?
A column in the Hechinger Report points out that while many college leaders decried the decision in statements “touting the importance of race-conscious admissions and having people from different backgrounds represented on their campuses,” colleges have not done enough to diversify their student bodies—with Black student enrollment dropping overall, flagship universities lagging in enrolling their state’s Black and Hispanic high school graduates, and many schools raising prices paid by their lowest-income students—who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.
The New York Times extensively covered the impact of the decision. An interactive report highlights the findings of a Times Opinion focus group, held in mid-June, which highlighted young Black Americans’ experiences related to race in college and views on affirmative action in college admissions. Some critics of the ruling point out that it may lead to an admissions system that is even more subjective, as the decision left room for considering the effects of an applicant’s racial or ethnic background on their life. “Will it become more opaque? Yes, it will have to,” said Danielle Ren Holley, who is about to take over as president of Mount Holyoke College. “It’s a complex process, and this opinion will make it even more complex.” The paper reported on the complicated reaction from Asian American students—for many, the decision did not assuage doubts about the fairness of college admissions.
The NYT published a mix of op-eds from experts to offer their ideas on how higher education should move forward.
University of California Davis medical school has implemented the socioeconomic disadvantage scale, or SED, which rates applicants from 0-99, taking into account their life circumstances, such as family income and parental education. The scale has made UC Davis one of the most diverse medical schools in the country. NYT reports on the possibility that adversity scores could be adopted across the country, as schools look for alternative ways to enroll a diverse student body.
In an op-ed in the New York Times, Richard Arum, a professor of sociology and education at the University of California, Irvine, and Mitchell L. Stevens, a sociologist at the Stanford Graduate School of Education writes, “We should recognize that, in practice, affirmative action mattered a great deal for very few and very little for most.” While the decision will likely dramatically reduce the racial diversity of incoming classes at highly-selective institutions, they argue, the ruling will make little difference for most college students who don’t apply to America’s most elite institutions.
The NPR podcast It’s Been a Minute examines the experiences of Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas, who both attended Yale Law School “as beneficiaries of affirmative action policies,” and how that shaped their opinions about affirmative action.
Some state and college leaders are unsure what the ruling will mean for financial aid aimed at students from underrepresented groups, with a few, like the University of Missouri System, moving to discontinue the scholarships. Eli Capilouto, president of the University of Kentucky, notes that “based on our initial understanding, it appears that the Court has restricted the consideration of race with respect to admissions and scholarships.”
Views on Higher Education
A new Gallup poll shows only 36% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, down by about 20 percentage points from eight years ago.
Student Success
Two new studies indicate that “nudges,” or academic alerts meant to motivate students to step up their performance, help students do better on assignments early in the semester, but their performance falls in line with their non-nudged peers as the semester progresses.
A new, large-scale effort is underway to replicate and scale the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, known as ASAP, an academic support program for low-income students started in the City University of New York system. The program, founded in 2007 at six CUNY community colleges, includes comprehensive wraparound support services, including intensive academic advising, and covers tuition and textbook costs, campus fees, and various other expenses. The system now has a team dedicated to helping other institutions, a network called ASAP|ACE National Replication Collaborative, to develop their own versions of these programs.
An op-ed in The Hechinger Report by Elizabeth Davidson Pisacreta, the director of Educational Transformation at Ithaka S+R and Katherine Giardello, the senior policy advisor at the ASAP|ACE National Replication Collaborative, promotes the benefits of the program and argues that “ASAP can, and should, be expanded to benefit hundreds of thousands more students.”
College Affordability
NPR reports that quickly after the Supreme Court struck down the administration’s student loan forgiveness plan, the White House announced three debt relief proposals: one that creates a legal workaround to debt forgiveness, one that institutes an income-driven repayment plan, and one that establishes an “on-ramp” for borrowers making monthly payments that were suspended during the pandemic.
The Washington Post reports that The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced that it will provide free tuition for families from the state that make less than $80,000 a year.
