Mini-Conference Recap: Cultivating a Resilient Campus
Dr. Danielson worked with participants to brainstorm key characteristics of resiliency, and defined it as the ability to recover from setbacks and stressful situations. Resiliency is something we’re born with and something we can cultivate in ourselves and others throughout life, and it can fluctuate and change, as well as express itself to different degrees in different facets of our life.
As stated earlier, stressful situations activate a person’s resiliency. Stress is short-term, situational, and is a typical experience in daily life. Oftentimes stress affects us physiologically, behaviorally, and emotionally. The pandemic has presented us with several stressors all at once, in addition to stressors that have always been around.
Resilience on a campus can be cultivated in five ways.
Through:
- building connections,
- fostering wellness,
- embracing healthy thoughts,
- finding purpose, and
- seeking help.
All of these keys may be currently functioning at different levels or be absent in the different systems within our campus, both big and small. Stabilizing and increasing these keys will improve our campus resilience.
So, how do we do that in our current campus roles? The participants brainstormed some excellent suggestions, including:
- normalizing the experiences of those we’re interacting with,
- doing small things and not getting caught up in thinking it needs to be a “big” thing (a small thing might be taking the stairs instead of the elevator), and
- allowing time for students to be students, as well as others.
The video had a lot of more specific information that isn’t included in this post. You can learn more by watching the full video on the OTL YouTube page. You can also access a copy of the slides here.
Mark your calendar for the 2022 Teaching and Learning Mini-Conference to be held May 24, 2022. We will see you there!
About the Author:
Amy Tichy is pursuing her M.Ed. in clinical mental health counseling at NDSU. She graduated with a Master of Arts in theatre with a concentration in drama therapy from Kansas State University (2014), where she was a graduate teaching assistant, lecturing 6 credits of public speaking per semester, and with a Bachelor of Science in history education and theatre education from Dickinson State University (2010). Amy is a registered drama therapist. She works in the Office of Teaching and Learning as a graduate assistant.