Every year, undergraduates at the 91̽�� start their college experience, often in cavernous classrooms, learning alongside dozens, if not hundreds, of their peers. Research shows that taking these courses — some prerequisites and other classes on popular topics — can make students feel isolated, scared and not up to the task.

To confront loneliness and promote student well-being, the 91̽��is piloting a two-year project called “Five for Flourishing” that provides instructors with five simple academic interventions to support students and help them succeed. Sponsored by the , the and the Provost’s office, Five for Flourishing’s initial cohort — 13 instructors of large classes from all three 91̽��campuses — will use the strategies to help welcome students, show compassion and support them in their academic journeys.

“Addressing mental health and well-being on a college campus requires a comprehensive approach,” said , director of the Resilience Lab, whose mission is to promote well-being among 91̽��students, faculty and staff. “This is an intervention where we can activate the learning environment for undergraduate students in large classes with minimal effort by the instructors and make a difference.”

Inspired by similar, but more intensive programs at other institutions, Philip Reid, vice provost of Academic and Student Affairs, and Marisa Nickle, senior director of Strategy & Academic Initiatives, saw an opportunity for the UW’s students. What emerged is a simple turnkey program that provides instructors with interventions to work into their curriculums.

“We know that students, especially incoming first-year students, can experience anxiety and stress at times,” Provost Tricia Serio said. “We’re so excited to offer our instructors a program that welcomes students and helps set them on a path to succeed in the classroom and on campus, while acknowledging that they may be navigating these challenging feelings.”

In 2020, the Resilience Lab published an for instructors that outlined a number of interventions to support student well-being. By contrast, Five for Flourishing is designed to be a streamlined, simple tool for instructors to add to their teaching plan.

Here’s how it works: Five for Flourishing begins by adding a message to course syllabuses that welcomes students, creates a sense of belonging and normalizes asking for support, even when students are stressed by factors outside the classroom.

Next, Five for Flourishing provides a quarter’s worth of welcome-to-class slides specific to each 91̽��campus that point to wellness resources, cultural happenings, ways to participate in democracy, and opportunities for students to connect with one another.

Instructors will encourage students, especially before and after exams or big assignments, to adopt a growth mindset — the notion that these academic tasks aren’t a reflection of their self-worth or intelligence, but rather a method to determine a student’s strengths and areas for additional learning.

“This builds on a lot of research on the misperception that intelligence is fixed,” said , director of the Center for Teaching and Learning. “The reality is that intelligence isn’t fixed and that people can grow.”

Research also shows that when students connect with one another, they’re more likely to do well academically and socially, which in turn makes them more likely to graduate. Five for Flourishing instructors will place students in small groups and invite them to discuss course material, build their professional communication skills and experience group problem solving. The students’ only assignment is to take notes on their discussions and share those with the instructor.

“This builds on the idea that prompting students to get together in really low-stakes environments helps establish a secondary support network that they can tap when they run into trouble,” Moon said. “It overcomes the idea of just going into class and looking straight ahead and not looking sideways.”

Finally, Five for Flourishing instructors conduct a mid-quarter check in with their students to ask what’s working well and what could be better, what’s helping them to learn and what’s hindering their success.

“Many of the professors at 91̽��have real compassion and care for students, and this project helps them to channel that compassion and care in really productive ways,” Moon said.

Every student will be asked to complete a survey at the beginning and end of the quarter. That data will inform how to adjust and continue to scale the program. Instructors will also receive a small stipend for participating.

, a teaching professor in the School of Engineering and Technology at 91̽��Tacoma, is in the inaugural Five for Flourishing teaching cohort. He’s already been using similar academic interventions for all his classes, including high-enrollment courses like popular games programming. Building upon his existing tools, he’s excited to see these student supports scale up and reach more undergraduates.

“Every single faculty member that I’ve had a chance to chat with, all of them care so deeply about student experience, that is also what I care about,” Marriott said. “Spreading this out to more faculty, after we have some data and feedback, is going to be awesome.”

In Seattle, also plans to use Five for Flourishing in her Intro to Medical Anthropology course, with 225 students, and Comparative Study of Death, with 80 students. While she too had compassionate components to her teaching, she appreciates the framework of Five for Flourishing, the training she’s received, and, as a scientist, she’s looking forward to seeing the data from the student surveys to see what is and isn’t working as intended.

She’s seen students who struggle with anxiety and loneliness, students who are afraid to walk into class, or are balancing long commutes, family demands and academics. Programs like Five for Flourishing establish universal accommodations to uplift and support the entire student body.

“The University, in doing this Five for Flourishing, is setting a stone, a ground stone, to say to our community, ‘Look, we do have a problem here, and this is one way to solve it,’” Saravia said.

Helping students understand that they are not alone will have benefits for their entire lives.

“Feeling lonely has social impacts. If you feel lonely, you’re less engaged. And if we are less engaged, we have less possibilities of a thriving democracy. If we don’t know how to talk to one another, how to find common ground, or how to set boundaries, or how to see a problem together, how to even think about it together … If we don’t have that, we are in trouble as a society,” she said. “I’m very hopeful that Five for Flourishing will give all of us a strong start to change that and to inspire students to learn from one another, to see each other. I’m hopeful, too, that engagement with one another will build community, and teach them to have effective engagement with the world.”

The seventh annual Center for Communication, Difference and Equity (CCDE) Conference, “Resistance Through Resilience,” will be held in collaboration with the (UWRL).

The two-day conference will consist of listening sessions, workshops and a spotlight panel. This year’s theme builds off last year’s event, “.”

“What we started to hear overwhelmingly from those who were involved in the ‘Quarantining While Black’ project was that they were exhausted,” said, CCDE director and 91̽��communication professor, “and that they needed other ways to help take care of themselves and their community members.”

With that in mind, Joseph and Resilience Lab director started discussing how to bring contemplative practices into anti-racist work. A grant from the, a nonprofit based in Virginia that was co-founded by the Dalai Lama, the CCDE and the Resilience Lab to unite and address those issues.

The “Resistance Through Resilience” training and speaker series brings together leaders on campus and in the community to focus on mindfulness and compassion-based practices as tools for interrupting racism.

For months, those thoughts leaders have engaged in conversations about resistance and resilience, said , a doctoral student in communication and a CCDE research assistant. Heading into the conference, she’s most excited for the opportunity to reflect on those discussions.

“Resisting is tiring work,” moultrie said. “The point of this conversation is to have the opportunity to say, ‘How do we tend to ourselves through the work? How do we tend to our bodies? How do we tend to be present in those moments?’ How do we say to ourselves, ‘I want to affect change in my communities, but I also want to take care of myself?’”

Kennedy said working with the CCDE was a chance for the Resilience Lab to think deliberately about racism and how to address it: with a set of practices designed to help people build dialogue.

“I think we are really in the moment where we’re needing these types of skills to not just think about, ‘How I disrupt this moment of microaggression,’ but also, ‘What do I do with the surging anxiety that happens before and afterward?’” Joseph said. “I hope people will leave the conference feeling like they have some skills in that area.”

The conference will open May 18 with two online sessions. The morning session, “Everyday Microaggressions, Everyday Awareness” will serve as a primer on the forms of lived discrimination. The afternoon session will be: “The Power of Inquiry: Introducing Questioning as the First Anti-Racism Tool for Interrupting Microaggressions.”

“Given what we know about college, mental health and well-being, we know that BIPOC students are experiencing high rates of mental health struggles,” Kennedy said. “That points to social factors like the climate and culture and experiences of imposter syndrome, discrimination and microaggressions.”

On May 19, four community leaders will participate in an afternoon spotlight panel. The speakers are, an information systems retiree who grew up in Texas during the Jim Crow era;, acting chair and associate professor in the Department of Health Systems and Population Health at the UW;, assistant director of graduate student affairs in the 91̽��Graduate School; and Marsha Rule, retired editor of 91̽��Medicine Newsroom.

“The way that we do our work matters,” Kennedy said. “Part of resisting is working collaboratively rather than at cross purposes with one another toward common outcomes. I think coming together is part of how we’re going to create better outcomes for students and all of us. How we work together matters.”

The conference is sponsored by the Mind & Life Institute, the UW’s Diversity and Inclusion Seed Grants, the 91̽��Department of Communication and the Office of Undergraduate Academic Affairs.

There’s a mental health crisis on college campuses across the country.

Recent show that 53% of first-year students reported a substantial increase in mental and emotional exhaustion. Inside Higher Ed that 30% of students noted increased depression, 27% said they experienced greater loneliness and 20% felt more hopeless.

Traditionally, the intervention to help students was to send them to individual counseling. While that remains an important pillar of support, the 91̽�� is broadening the way it provides help not just to students, but to faculty and staff as well. Using a broad toolbox of mindfulness, compassion and well-being centered programming, officials are trying to change campus culture, said , director of the and co-chair of the .

“By aligning and strengthening the work that we’re doing as a campus writ large, around supporting student mental health, we’re actually preventing some students from getting to a point where they need more serious intervention,” she said. “We can bolster the resilience of folks within the system at multiple levels and in doing so, support our entire community.”

Research over the past several decades has shown that teaching social and emotional learning skills to K-12 students has promoted higher academic success and persistence to graduation. Extending that into higher education makes sense, officials say, catering to students’ emotional intelligence, better preparing them for a career and allowing them to be their whole selves.

Students at 91̽��were arriving on campus with skills to succeed, but not to stumble and then rise, said Ed Taylor, vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs.

“When they actually got here and encountered situations where they might trip up or even fail, students were underprepared for that,” Taylor said. “What students were saying — high on their list of things that concerned them — was their fear of failure and not being able to recover when they did encounter difficulties or challenges once they left home and came to college for the first time.”

Facing uncertainty, let downs and even failure is part of the college experience.

“They should be stepping into those challenges, especially here,” Taylor said.

The Resilience Lab helps students — and now faculty and staff, too — do just that.

Founded by Anne Browning in 2015, the Resilience Lab originally was intended to help support and retain undergraduates by helping them cope with stressors, including failure. Then in 2019, Browning transitioned to become assistant dean for well-being at 91̽��Medicine. That’s when now-director Kennedy came on board.

Officials decided to take a step back to view student well-being and mental health along a continuum, broadening the scope of the Resilience Lab to embrace faculty and staff as part of the mission.

Today, the Resilience Lab’s three-fold mission is to support 91̽��students in becoming change-makers on campus and in their communities; provide students, staff and instructors with training and tools to build their self-awareness, respond to stress more effectively and cultivate compassion; and advocate for policies and systemic changes that promote a more resilient, compassionate and inclusive campus culture.

They do this through a growing variety of programs that includes research, community building, instruction and programming.

Resilience Lab programs focus on well-being

 (Resilient Attitudes and Living) is an initiative that promotes mental health and well-being by equipping participants with cognitive behavioral skills to manage emotions and cope with stressful situations, mindfulness skills to strengthen self-awareness, and practices to encourage compassion for themselves and others. Be REAL was developed and evaluated by the UW’s Center for Child & Family Well-Being and, in partnership with the Resilience Lab, expanded to staff and students on all three 91̽��campuses.

To date, most of the Be REAL skills groups and trainings have been open to the entire 91̽��community, but moving forward the intention is to develop expertise within university units and departments. For example, several people in the College of Engineering went through the Be REAL program over the summer and the entire staff at the 91̽��Alumni Association are scheduled for fall quarter, Kennedy said.

“It’s really encouraging to see these teams wanting to learn together and dive into this work together,” she said.

Tyneshia Valdez, who works as the assistant to the chair in the Department of Astronomy, said that participating in Be REAL has helped her through the pandemic, return to work and in interactions with others.

“If I’m more graceful and less burnt out and I do things to make myself happy, I know that that will really trickle downstream,” she said. “Be REAL is surprising. It’s free. It’s easy to do. You don’t have to bring a lot with you, just yourself, your authentic self.”

In 2020, the Resilience Lab published an 87-page combining research, best practices and personal testimony tailored to support the whole student. The guidebook was distributed to all instructors, deans and chancellors and advising staff across the UW. Leaders convened a tri-campus community of practice where more than 40 instructors and staff across nearly 20 academic departments still meet monthly to exchange ideas and teaching strategies. A new community of practice started within the School of Medicine this fall across their five-state region.

“What we’re doing is creating both a venue and a map — if you will — toward healing and compassion in our community,” Dean Taylor said.

Partnering to ‘interrupt racism’

In a new partnership, the , led by , and the Resilience Lab are developing a new training and speaker series, “Resistance through Resilience,” that focuses on the application of mindfulness and compassion-based practices to interrupt racism.

Prior to COVID-19, many people wanted to come together in community to talk about racism and combat microaggressions, but the months of isolation — combined with a national dialogue sparked by the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis — left the BIPOC community and other anti-racism activists feeling exhausted, said Joseph, who also is a professor of communication in the College of Arts & Sciences and associate dean for equity & justice and student affairs in the Graduate School.

“People also needed to attend to the health of themselves and to their communities while still continuing to do the vitally important daily work of protesting racism,” Joseph said.

Bringing together the Resilience Lab and the Center for Communication, Diversity and Equity will help lead to systemic change, leaders say.

“We’re really committed to addressing the systems of oppression and racism that exist, and to think critically about why we have a system that promotes so much stress,” Kennedy said.

Fueled by a $15,000 from , a Diversity and Inclusion Seed Grant and Communication Department funding, the groups will focus on bringing mindfulness and compassion-based practices together to address racial exhaustion, nourish each other and confront everyday oppression.

“The mindfulness and stress-reduction skills Megan has taught me provide me personally with other strategies, and give a whole other set of tools to my students, my community members, people that I know and love and am connected to. These are ways to make their lives healthier,” Joseph said. “The CCDE’s new partnership with the Resilience Lab just gives me hope in this moment, and I think that that’s what we need to make it through right now and to continue garnering the strength to fight.”

Sowing resilience through seed grants

In partnership with the , the Resilience Lab awards  to support projects that cultivate resilience, compassion and sustainability at the UW. To date, over $118,000 has been disbursed to fund projects led by students, faculty and staff across all three campuses.

For example, 91̽��Bothell Assistant Professor received a grant to support BIPOC students in sharing their personal stories during the pandemic. Chen had facilitated similar story circles prior to COVID-19, but had yet to bring them online. Chen worked with graduate students and undergraduates, and they came together in a safe, empathetic community to share challenges they’d faced through a difficult year.

“It was something different than what they got in their day-to-day in their classes,” said Chen. “It was a space of support, a chance to build community in a different way.”

Chen, who participates in the monthly Resilience Lab community-of-practice meetings, continues to work with BIPOC students in telling their own stories as part of the larger project, “Breathing in a Time of Disaster.” And, they’re implementing techniques in the classroom, like playing music or doing a grounding exercise to start class.

A path forward

The UW’s Resilience Lab also is part of the Flourishing Academic Network, an emergent consortium of research and teaching centers throughout North America. Together, the institutions are collaborating to explore innovative pathways that integrate academics and student affairs, with the overall goal of supporting student mindfulness and well-being.

This work has taken on new meaning during the pandemic, as students, staff and faculty were forced into months of being apart. Now, everyone is facing the stress of returning to a new normal.

“We don’t want to go back to business as usual but rather develop consciousness about how we’re returning to campus,” Kennedy said. “Staff and students are turning to the Resilience Lab to learn some strategies for managing stress effectively.”

That approach has made a world of difference for , a lecturer in Landscape Architecture who works at 91̽��Friday Harbor Laboratories and is part of the cohort of faculty engaged in the Resilience Lab’s work.

“This work has been transformational in my ability and desire to stay in academia,” Sullivan said.

She’s using a Resilience Lab seed grant to bring the compassion work to the College of Built Environments. She is also helping support compassion and mindfulness at Friday Harbor Labs and is participating in the cross-campus community of practice.

“Faculty are empowered and supported to reflect on and make needed change in higher education, and in turn, model resilience culture in our lives, disciplines and to our colleagues and students,” she said. “The results have been substantial.”

A strong culture of care and competence around these compassion issues is needed in all disciplines and is the backbone to a thriving and resilient university environment, she said.

“There is simply not enough vulnerability and compassion in higher education,” Sullivan said. “We are not robots. We can take the agency to change this culture — one interaction at a time. In fact, we already are.”

For more information about the Resilience Lab, contact Kennedy at meganken@uw.edu.