Lisa S. Kaler:
Large amounts of graduate students dealing with some very severe mental health issues and the need for higher education to think very intentionally about how to support them because they aren’t undergraduate students. They have different needs. A lot of graduate students might be coming back to school with like fully formed professional lives. They might have families, they may be caring for elder parents, right. Really complex lives that they’re bringing with them into graduate school. And they’re trying to fit school into these other life roles. Whereas for some undergraduate students, right, they’re fitting their life roles into their school. So it’s kind of a reverse picture. And I think it’s important to always think about that.

Keith Edwards:
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW. I’m your host, Keith Edwards. Today, we’re talking about supporting the wellbeing and success of graduate students. I’m joined by four folks who have thought about practice and written about this topic. And I’m so excited to learn from each of them. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside adjacent to the field of higher education and Student Affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find details about this episode or browser archives at Studentaffairsnow.com. This episode is brought to you by Stylus visit Stylus, pub.com and use promote code SANow for 30% off and free shipping, this episode is also sponsored by Vector Solutions, formerly EverFi, the trusted partner for 2000 and more colleges and universities, Vector Solutions is the standard of care for student safety, wellbeing and inclusion.

Keith Edwards:
As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he, him, his. I’m a speaker, consultant, and coach. And you can find out more about me, keithedwards.com. I’m broadcasting from Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of the Dakota and the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to the conversation. I’m so grateful to have all four of you joining us today, sharing a little bit about what you’re learning and what you’re recommending and what you’re suggesting as we think about graduate students population. Sometimes it gets left out of our focus on undergrads. So I’m excited to learn from you. Let’s begin with some introductions and just learning a little bit about you and your role and your work here. And Dave, I think you’re going to kick us off.

Dave Nguyen:
All right. Well, thanks so much for having me. My name’s Dave Nguyen. I use he series pronouns. I’m an associate professor of higher education and Student Affairs at Ohio University. My focus and experience supporting grad students largely stems from my role as a faculty advisor. And so thinking about the masters and doctoral students that I interact with, whether they’re in graduate assistantships or full-time employees, so thinking about how best to support them as they move to through and beyond their graduate programs and my interest in supporting them also stems from my scholarly interest in thinking about my time as a doctoral student and what I wanted to explore as part of my dissertation, which was how does money act? How does access to money influence doctoral student socialization. And so really starting to explore how does money shape participation in different kinds of activities or ability to engage in different kinds of things? Like, can you be a teaching assistant when you have to work a 20 hour a week assistantship? And so thinking about how does one, how does money show up in being able to participate in conference going? So a lot of my interest initially came from the piece around my dissertation, but now it, it extends its life into my role as a faculty advisor. Thanks so much for having me.

Keith Edwards:
Wonderful. And one of the things you did mention is you’ve this new book with Christina who is also here to join us. We’ll hear more about that in a little bit. Go ahead, Christina, tell us a little bit more about you.

Christina W. Yao:
Hi, I’m Christina Yao, I’m an associate professor of higher education at the University of South Carolina. Also the program coordinator for the higher education and Student Affairs master’s program. So my work in supporting graduate students stems from a lot from the program coordination piece where I work with all of our, HESA master students trying to figure out curriculum advising and just generally, you know, the recruitment piece all the way through to graduation, which is coming up in one week, which is a very exciting time. And also working with our graduate students, our doctoral students, excuse me, who are researching writing interesting and becoming scholar practitioners in the field of higher education. My start in Student Affairs and in this interest actually started with my background working in Student Affairs, mostly in housing and which led me into getting a doctorate at some point.

Christina W. Yao:
And working with my dissertation, which was specifically on Chinese international students over the years, my research interests have morphed into some interconnected areas, including scholar, practitioner preparation, particularly how are graduate students prepared to work within continuously changing global context and also the experiences of international students of color and how they navigate being here within the us context, which we know has been pretty contentious in the past few years. And we’ll get into that a little bit more into our, the next part of the podcast. So great to be here.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Wonderful to have you here. And we’re also joined by two of my neighbors here in the twin cities, Michael and Lisa, Michael, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself.

Michael J. Stebleton:
Wonderful. Thank you, Keith. And, and thank you for including this in this important conversation. My name is Mike Stebleton. I’m professor of higher education at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. I use he him pronouns. I’m also the coordinator of our masters in PhD programs here in the, the higher ed program. And I actually got my start in interest in college student mental health as a Student Affairs professional. So I did a master’s in counseling psychology and then worked in Student Affairs academic advising career development for numerous years before going back for my doctorate and then eventually to, to join the faculty. And so much of my interests stem from this idea of supporting students holistically, right? Looking at some of the early foundations of student development theory and practice, and really supporting students in different dimensions and aspects of their lives.

Michael J. Stebleton:
And so I’ve been able to carry out this interest both at the undergraduate level, but also the graduates student level. And as you alluded to Keith earlier, I think undergraduates right now get a lot of attention around the mental health crisis is the language oftentimes used in some of the, the different venues and media. But I think graduate students also merit additional attention. And as we’ll talk about their needs and issues are oftentimes different. At the University of Minnesota, our program, we developed a new course called college student mental health and wellbeing, and it’s a graduate level course for our masters and PhD student. And so we’re trying to engage our students, our faculty and staff collectively around this important discussion. So thank you.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah, that’s really great. Excited to learn from you and you and Lisa wrote a piece that came out in February of 2020 timely. And we’ve been wanting to do this episode and then saw that this handbook that Dave and Christina have edited coming out, so really excited to learn more. And you wrote that with Lisa. So Lisa, go ahead and tell us a little bit more about you.

Lisa S. Kaler:
Hello, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be a part of this. My name is Lisa Kaler. I use she her pronouns and I live in Minnesota. I was until very recently a PhD student. I finished my PhD in higher education at the University of Minnesota in August of 2021. So I had the distinct pleasure of dissert during a pandemic, depending on zoom, it was a great time. So I used to work in Student Affairs at UC Santa Barbara, and I was on the behavioral intervention team there. And that’s how I became interested in student mental health. And I decided to pursue graduate studies and I wanted to focus on suicide on college campuses. And as I was finishing my, or, you know, engaging in my PhD work, I began to be really interested in graduate student mental health, partially because of my own experience, but also because my peers were coming to me to talk about their mental health concerns, because they knew I was somebody who was researching and writing in this space.

Lisa S. Kaler:
And I was Mike’s research assistant. The two of us started writing about graduate student mental health and doing some research about graduate student mental health. It sort of turned into my thing. So I did write my dissertation about suicide on campus, but I’m now focused almost exclusively on graduate student mental health and wellbeing. And I started a consulting firm focused on that and helping institutions promote graduate student mental health through more systemic change instead of focusing on students and the sort of paradigm that we’ve stuck ourselves in, in higher education, which is to refer students to counseling, but not think more intentionally about how we’re supporting them before they get to the point where they’re they find themselves in a crisis. So I’m excited to be here and have this conversation today. Thank you.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah, I think this would be great. I think it’ll be really helpful for the many of our listeners who work with graduate students who teach graduate students who work in the graduate student support realm, but then also many of our listeners are graduate students or will be soon again as they go back for their doctorate. And so I, I think we, we can talk both about supporting and being right all of that. So as we mentioned this sort of first got on our radar with the piece that Mike and Lisa wrote for NASPA promoting graduate student mental health, the role of Student Affairs professionals and faculty will get a link to that in the show notes for folks who want to connect with that. And that, as we said, that came out February of 2020, probably written at least a couple months before that. And you outside mental health challenges facing grad students and call to action, how faculty and staff can better support graduate students help us frame the challenges and promising solutions here. And I think Lisa, you wanted to share with us some things to kick this off.

Lisa S. Kaler:
Sure. Thank you. So I’ll start with a couple statistics, not too many, cause I know it’s kind of hard to follow in this format, but I think maybe one of the most profound ones is that from the American College Health Association’s most recent survey, the national college health assessment, they do a survey of just graduate and professional students nationally and, and they’re using new metrics now. So it’s hard to compare to some of the years before, but in the most recent survey from fall of 2021, 73% of graduate students were in moderate to severe psychological distress, which is a lot of graduate students. And

Keith Edwards:
We can’t get 73% of people to agree which way is north right now. So that is a remarkable number, right?

Lisa S. Kaler:
Yeah. I mean that think about a, write a seminar class with 10 or 12 graduate students. That’s right. That’s three quarters of them. That’s most of your students in that class are dealing with moderate to severe psychological distress. And unfortunately these numbers are much higher for marginalized students in the NCAA, data it’s a little difficult sometimes to access some of the data by race and ethnicity, but they do break it down among gender. And for example, overall, 30% of graduate students in that survey reported that anxiety had negatively impacted their academic performance, but among trans students, that number was 53%. So that’s just really representative of some of the disparities that we see in mental health, among graduate students that students from marginalized populations are dealing with mental health issues at much higher rates and it’s affecting their academics. And I think it’s very important to frame the issue in the context of academics, because I think it helps to create buy-in among stakeholders who might be a little bit reticent to engage with graduate student mental health.

Lisa S. Kaler:
But if we’re able to demonstrate that mental health is part of academic success and academic health, then I think it, we can pull more people into the conversation to think about how to promote graduate student mental health. And so that’s something I think about. And I talk about a lot in, of course, in the context of the pandemic, more and more people are talking about graduate student mental health, right? It’s been in the Chronicle, it’s been in nature. There have been recent studies. I think one of the ones that really jumped out at me at the beginning of the pandemic was an NSF rapid study that was done out of the University on Montana and about a third of students in that study had symptoms consistent with the PTSD diagnosis, post traumatic stress disorder. So that’s just another example of these really big issues, right?

Lisa S. Kaler:
Large amounts of graduate students dealing with some very severe mental health issues and the need for higher education to think very intentionally about how to support them because they aren’t undergraduate students. They have different needs. A lot of graduate students might be coming back to school with like fully formed professional lives. They might have families, they may be caring for elder parents, right. Really complex lives that they’re bringing with them into graduate school. And they’re trying to fit school into these other life roles. Whereas for some undergraduate students, right, they’re fitting their life roles into their school. So it’s kind of a reverse picture. And I think it’s important to always think about that. So I’ll stop there cause I could just go.

Keith Edwards:
That’s great. I think you’re, I love this framing about connecting it to their academic success because these are not separate. Right. and it, it puts students wellbeing, not as an additional thing we do to support, but as central to our purposes, institutions of higher education and, and, and that creates space for us to be, as I know, Mike wants to talk about holistic in our thinking about students and proactive rather than just reacting to the crisis of the moment. And as you said, we’ll just refer you to the counseling center. Good luck with that. Great. Mike, we want to add here.

Michael J. Stebleton:
Yeah. Thank you. And, and Keith really glad you said some context. Lisa and I have been talking and thinking about these issues for several years and we started crafting this NASPA blog. We also had a piece in the journal of, Student Affairs, the Colorado State University publication, and literally these P two pieces came out. I think it was January and February of, of 2020 respectively. So literally right before our world dramatically changed in March of 2020. And so it’s important to reiterate that the, the gears were sort of in motion around the need and attention to support graduate students and their mental health, even before the pandemic and, and everything else that has resulted since that time. And so the numbers that we cite in those articles have now been exacerbated. And I think the situation has been accelerated in, in the last two plus years.

Michael J. Stebleton:
And so I think that context is always important to, to consider when in talking about college student mental health and in graduate students in particular, we’re also talking about professional students as well. So it’s not just the students in, in say higher ed or humanities or social science, but physical therapy, medical school pharmacy, any students that are doing, you know, post, post secondary advanced training. And so I think these are important issues to, to think about. And as Lisa alluded to, I think the, the roles are, are different. So we know that a lot of our graduate students have care taking responsibilities and those responsibilities have likely been heightened since the, the pandemic. So they might be not only childcare, but, but elder care or other types of responsibilities. And so the I don’t think we really believe in work life balance anymore, right?

Michael J. Stebleton:
That’s that’s out the window, it’s, you know, work life integration. So how do we support students around meeting the needs of a student and as Lisa alluded to being a strong academic and an emerging scholar, but also these other important life roles. And I think this holistic approach is really important for Student Affairs educators and faculty that are working with students, but also to look at mental health as being everybody’s business. Right. I think in the past, maybe we’ve said, okay, we’ll refer students to the campus counseling center, or if we have a, a mental health clinic on campus, like we do at the University of Minnesota’s like, okay, we’ll make a, a referral. And I think that’s still really important to do for Student Affairs educators and faculty and staff to be more proactive in this type of engagement around supporting students. And so Lisa and I have been talking about the language of building the community of care, and we’re not the first, you know, to, to use that language but we’re trying to use that language as it relates to supporting our, our graduate students. So I think it’s obviously really these issues are really timely, but also important to, to talk about in different contexts.

Keith Edwards:
Right. I think it’s also important to note these issues were present that number of 73% wasn’t that high pre-pandemic, but it was still really high and now and it’s not just COVID. I think we over asigned the struggles people are facing to COVID, which is absolutely true and not just an illness, but the virtual, the isolation, the loneliness, the care taking the inability to go places on vacation. The worry all of that. And social media amplifying the most polarizing, the most vitriolic things in our culture, the political discourse, not even being remotely close to discourse the, the calls for racial justice, which are not new, but also those calls which can be inspiring. And then how unheated those calls have generally been in reality can be further demoralizing. So there’s just so much going on here in our collective ethos contributing to this both before March, 2020, and also since.

Keith Edwards:
So I really appreciate the framing and thinking about this collectively Dave and Christina, you edited new book from Stylus. So if you want to grab it, you can use that promo code SANow and, and get that discount and free shipping a handbook for supporting today’s graduate students. We were going to do this episode of seeing what Lisa and Mike had shared. And then when we got into it, we saw this book was coming out. So we wanted to wait and, and have all four of you here together. And your book is really bringing it together, many authors, right. Edited bringing in lots of different people to really look at this in three parts, right? The first part is intersectional perspectives on, on graduate student, mental health and wellbeing. And then how do we support that academically? And then how do we really thinking about faculty maybe? And then how do we support that more broadly thinking about sort of the Student Affairs role admin role, I’m just describing the book you wrote and how you’ve organized it probably poorly. So feel free to clean that up in ways to be more clear. But could you give us a quick overview and then I’d love to hear some of your biggest learnings as you learn from the authors. Dave, do you want to kind of clean up my description here?

Dave Nguyen:
Well, I mean, I think it’s a good place to start. So again yeah, we’re really excited. This book is actually coming out in May 2022. So really appreciate the opportunity to tell people a little bit more about it. You know, a lot of this conversation that Christina and I initially had when we were talking about graduate students, is that so much of the literature, so much of, you know, what is known about graduate students tends to happen on tends or tends to focus on what happens within the academic context or in the classroom. And we were trying to think about, you know, what happens outside of the classroom is just as important as what happens inside. And so, trying to think about how does that, you know, how do we capture that? And so we started to look around at different institutions to try to figure out, you know, who’s who do we think is doing this relatively well in trying to capture more of like graduate student life in the same ways that people have been thinking about and conceptualizing undergraduate student life.

Dave Nguyen:
And so trying to kind of think about it from, from those perspectives. Absolutely. So there are three parts to this book. The first part is about context and identities. And when we started writing this, it was before COVID 19 pandemic began. And so, as we were thinking about it, you know, we’re kind of thinking like, oh, online education, this is like a new way to think about graduate education. However, that became something that everyone did in March of 2020 and beyond. So we, we looked at parts of who participates in graduate education, asking some of the bigger trend questions in terms of, you know, who is it, how much debt are they taking on, or ultimately who really, or where do they go when they graduate too. So asking some of those bigger questions about graduate education, sort of writ large from masters in doctoral level perspectives, and then focusing on different kinds of different types of academic and professional skills.

Dave Nguyen:
So certainly there’s an emphasis on socialization, right? Like that is one of the leading ways that people look graduate education, try to understand what’s happening. But what we try to do is try to break it down a little bit more in terms of academic skill development in the second part of the book, trying to figure out, you know, how do people develop their scholarly voice? What are some tips and tricks for producing a literature review, or just thinking about how does one scaffold writing and then the third part focuses in, on, you know, supporting students beyond the classroom. So, as we’ve seen, I think more broadly in the field, people have started to look more closely at the graduate student experience and trying to figure out are they building organizations to support these folks? Are they helping them to understand the financial implications of the different kinds of decisions that they’ve made during their graduate education?

Dave Nguyen:
So for example, like, do they understand how student health insurance works and the kinds of subsidies that may or may not be available on the different campuses? So we tried to kind of think about it from those perspectives, but also how does that affect or influence mental health as well as their career development? So I think one of the big questions that, you know, we’re kind of thinking about now, as we sort of grapple with the, the effects of the pandemic is how does the career of graduate students change as a result of what has happened over the last two and a half years? And how might that shape or shift, you know, people’s priorities in terms of maybe they were more recently interested in pursuing the professorite, and now maybe not trying to think about something that has remote options. So these are things that we were just kind of kicking around as ideas a few years ago, but we’re really interested in trying to figure out how do you support graduate students, but especially when we consider that 50% of doctoral students don’t complete their degrees. So what happens to those folks and how are we better preparing or situating them for what, what comes next?

Keith Edwards:
Yeah, I appreciate that you’re talking about doctoral students and, you know, 50% not completing, but then we sort of imagine this one way path to the faculty. We know that that’s not true and, and I think even less true and will be even less true going forward. But I’ve also, as I speak with a lot of master’s level folks who are getting ready to graduate maybe now , and what they’re telling me about the jobs they want and is really like dramatically different from the jobs that they were seeking two years ago. What they’re interested in, what they’re looking to do. I just spoke with someone yesterday who had seven positions open, brought 10 candidates offered nine of them, one accepted another kind of scrambling, because I think folks are really I think we’re all asking ourselves bigger questions.

Keith Edwards:
Not just what’s the job I can get, but is this a job I want, is this a life I want, do I want to live there? Do I want to have this be a part of my experience, these bigger questions, Christina, I want to turn to you, you get to back clean up, you got to listen to all these folks, share their ideas and their thinking and their perspective and their framing. I’d love for you to tell us what’s fallen through the cracks. What did we miss? What do you really want to add to this? Or what has been mentioned briefly that you want to highlight for us?

Christina W. Yao:
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think what I’ll talk about first is that, you know, we often talk about the pandemic as this like cataclysmic event that changed the way that everything, the way that we operate in the world and everything right. I mean, to a certain extent it is and has, and has continued to be, you know, I don’t want to, I’m not making any assumptions that the pandemic is over, even though, you know, people aren’t on, midflight taking off their mask and going back to normal and everything. But you know, the reality is if you, you know, so our book, our, I I’ll speak about our book in particular is that, you know, pre-pandemic and also pre the great resignation, right. That you kind are, are talking about and hinting at also Keith and everything is that even though, you know, I was thinking even several months ago, I’m like, man, is this even going to be relevant?

Christina W. Yao:
Right? Like, I mean, things changed so quickly. Like, is this even important? But yes, it is because, you know, in my opinion, is that the pandemic, all this other stuff, that’s happened. I’ll use the pandemic as an example, but the pandemic is really just an acute issue that highlighted some chronic ills that we’ve had in higher education, right. The issues of fair compensation has always been around, right. The issues of remote versus being, working in person has always been around. Right. The issues of, you know, we talked a lot about this already, but you know, the mental health and the wellbeing of graduate students has been around forever. You know, that’s nothing new, right? So, you know, Lisa, when you’re talking about like, what is it like 70%, right. 70 some percent. I mean, that’s not surprising at all. We know that these have been issues yet, you know, definitely exacerbated in the COVID pandemic. But what it really did was also highlight that we’ve had these issues and we’re not fixing them. And so to me like, oh, go ahead.

Keith Edwards:
I just, I just want to add, I think it’s a really wise point, but because, and I think this is about graduate student wellbeing and so many other things, these things existed, these questions, these challenges existed pre pandemic, but the pandemic has called to question. Now we’re actually need to address it. We need to do something rather than just let them linger out there in this realm of curiosity for other people to go with.

Christina W. Yao:
Right. Exactly. And exactly what you were talking about before, about, you know, people thinking about getting into graduate education, whether getting a master’s a doctorate or a professional degree is that the ultimate goal is to get a job doing blank. Right. But nowadays I think, you know, especially within the pandemic, let’s be honest, you know, our mortality was right in our face, right there. That’s, that’s where that concern about going to the grocery store and everything right. Initially and, and you know, hand handshakes or no handshakes. I think there’s a lot of us in this room who either have lost people or have people who’ve lost people during the pandemic. . And so when situations like that, you’re like, wait a minute, what is it that I really want to do? And what am I, and honestly, what am I willing to put up with?

Christina W. Yao:
And to do, to get to that step, or do I want that step? Or how do I change things like that? I think, you know, thinking about supporting today, graduate students is that for a long time we put the onus of responsibility on the graduate student, right. Or you’re having some depression issues take yourself to the counseling center, right? Oh, you’re, you’re not really picking up on the academic styles of writing that we need and want for you to do. We need you to go to the writing center, right. Or, you know

Keith Edwards:
Practice self care.

Christina W. Yao:
Exactly. Like you, right. Self care, you need to figure out your work life balance. But me as your supervisor, I’m still giving you all this work that you have to do over the weekend. Right? Yeah. You have to figure out how to manage your relationship with your advisor. But I think now, especially with the pandemic, with the great resignation, with everything that’s going on, I think when we’re talking about supporting graduate students, this is where it’s really, really shifting the focus of responsibility, more so on the institution. Right? So whether it’s the institution as a whole, but also within different units, because we know that graduate students relate relate more closely with their program. And so what is the program doing to try to cultivate, you know, the wellbeing of their students and everything. And so so that’s, I’m really excited about this conversation because I think what we’re all kind of getting at here is that yes, graduate students have a responsibility for their wellbeing, but even more so higher education institutions, departments, programs of study, whatever. We’ve gotta really take this up and do a lot better.

Lisa S. Kaler:
Yeah. Christina, you have you been inside of my brain? I think, I mean, everything that you just said was exactly what I think about and say to people all the time, that was unbelievable. Watching someone else say it. Thank you.

Keith Edwards:
Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, well, I think we’ve, we’ve done a good job, not thoroughly and not as complexly as we would maybe want, if we had more time sort of laying out the challenges and the issues facing why this is an important thing, let’s get a little practical and pragmatic. What are some of those promising practices? The things that you’re hearing about the things that you’re seeing, or the things that you’re not seeing, but you really wish you were what would you recommend to faculty and staff who see this issue who want to do better in supporting graduate students, mental health, wellbeing, and success? Mike, what things would you put out there for folks to put into practice and explore?

Michael J. Stebleton:
Sure. Thanks Keith, that’s an excellent question. I mean, you’re going to hear from others around other strategies and promising practice. I also think it’s important to know, and I think we alluded to this earlier, but I think it’s important to maybe stress is that graduate students or professional students are not a monolithic group. And we know that there’s certain disparities between students, between our, our marginalized and BIPOC student population compared to our white students. And we know that access to, to care and use of service is, is not equitable. And so I think that’s important to just clearly state and, and note, I think there was an article there was in the Chronicle of higher ed some time ago, its it was something like our BIPOC students are not doing okay and it, you know, discussed, you know, challenges, but also ways to, to support our marginalized students.

Michael J. Stebleton:
At least I mentioned some of the statistics around trans students. So I think it’s just important to call out those, those disparities. And there’s a lot of work to be done. And at least I kind of frame that in some of our written work, we call it a call to action. Of course we’re not the first to, to use that phrase, but I think there are important promises and practices that, that certain institutions are using. I’ll give you a couple examples. I’m glad Christina, you mentioned this idea of affiliation that students have more with their, their program or their department rather than a large institution. Here at the university of Minnesota, our department of chemistry, you wouldn’t think chemistry would be a leader when it comes to supporting graduate student mental health. Maybe that’s a generalization, but I was kind of surprised that they were taking proactive steps to work with their incoming masters and PhD students around really creating a culture of wellbeing, right.

Michael J. Stebleton:
And welcoming students into this new culture really as, as graduate students. And so they talked about mental health, they talked about supporting students right at the time of orientation and they worked with their group around these issues throughout their time there. And so oftentimes they would have you know, discussion groups with faculty members, they would have support groups where they talked about resources to to help foster kind of an affiliation. And it’s kind of, I think some of the stigma around use of mental health services has decreased. We’re seeing that with our younger students. I, I like to think that’s true also for our, for graduate professional students, but I, I think more and more, if you can talk about it in an open and accepting way in a faculty, in other Student Affairs educators can take the lead in that. I, I think that can help welcome students and, and help them feel comfortable in these new cultures. Lisa, what would you add to that? You, I know you’ve done some work also on the graduate student level prior, prior to your finishing your degree, what, what else would you add to that?

Lisa S. Kaler:
I think that one of the things you sort of mentioned was that they talked with their incoming students. I think that this is something for programs to start to become more conscious of is that as more and more gen Z students matriculate and start to look around at graduate programs, they’re going to want to see that a graduate program has already thought about how they’re supporting their mental health and the chemistry department at the U is an example of that, right? So thinking intentionally about mental health is not only going to help the students that are in graduate programs. It’s also going to be a recruitment tool saying we’ve already thought about how aspects of our program might impact you and where you might need additional support and we’ve built that into your program. So I think students are going to be looking for that. Particularly students who as undergraduate students were seeking mental health services or needed to seek mental health services, right?

Lisa S. Kaler:
They’re going to come into graduate school, wanting a department that is thought about that and not have it as an afterthought, right, as a, the last page on the syllabus. And it’s not even mentioned in orientation. So I think that for graduate programs, building mental health, into their orientation, into their recruitment, really making it part of the, the culture in that graduate program is a really proactive step. As Mike said, to reduce the stigma too, and have faculty talk about graduate student mental health, have them talk about their own mental health and their experiences. As I mentioned, when I first chatted here, students used to come to me when I was a graduate student, because they were having mental health issues. So I another graduate student and I co-founded a departmental initiative to research mental health in the department and try to take some steps. And we found that students really wanted to talk about their mental health. And so I think if programs can find ways for students to create community and talking about mental health, I think that can address some of the issues, right? because then it’s building community, which is a huge piece of, of student mental health and wellbeing is having a space where you feel like you belong and you’re welcome. And you can share openly about what’s happening in your life.

Keith Edwards:
so it’s so far, I’m hearing two really great things. One is, is normalize this from the very beginning, be open about it, be talk about it. This is not a stigmatized thing. This is something we want to help you address to help you be successful overall and get to retention and recruitment and all of these things. And, and how do, how do faculty and program directors do that from, from not even the beginning, but as Lisa saying before the beginning in the recruitment and the program and the interview and the application process, and then also how to graduate students create their own communities or with the help from faculty and staff, bringing people together to do that. And I think we’re talking about mental health, but also it’s broader wellbeing supports mental health, right? So that’s one part of this, but how do we think about the, like we’re talking about the worst, like integration and, and how do faculty and staff role model this? I’m sorry, I can’t be with you at that time. because that’s when I meet with my therapist and that’s a non-negotiable for me or here’s what I exercise in the morning or, you know I’m taking, I can’t do that because that’s my daughter’s piano recital. I’m going to have to miss that. I’m so sorry, but this is important too. These things are, are really important. What else would we add here in terms of some pragmatic and practical suggestions for folks, Michael? I think you want to add one more thing? Yeah.

Michael J. Stebleton:
I want to add one more thing, but Keith, I’m glad you mentioned faculty and I think faculty have a really important role and I think had we had this conversation a couple years ago, I think most faculty might have said, well, mental health. That’s not, that’s not my domain. I’m teaching physics or I’m teaching, you know, Student Affairs 101 or it might be. And I think over the last two plus years, faculty members and I don’t want to generalize, but I think most faculty members care about their students and they want to support them. They want them to be successful. And so faculty members have been called to, to play new roles. And I think some of us have stumbled along the way and, and we’re learning. And I think there is a research study done by Sarah Lipson out of Boston that came out about a year ago specifically looking at how faculty members have been called upon to respond to students and resources that they might need.

Michael J. Stebleton:
And something like over 75% of responding faculty members said they want to continue to work with students, but they need the resources. They need additional training, they need development. Yes. They know how to make a referral to the student counseling center, but beyond that they wanted some additional support. So I think that’s really important to add to this conversation is that there needs to be ongoing support around training and development, professional development. And that’s maybe not just one off, you know, training sessions here or there at the end of, you know, the faculty you know, retreat or faculty training development, but ongoing sustainable support for faculty and Student Affairs educators. And I know many of folks that are going to be listening to, to our conversation work in different areas of Student Affairs context as educators. And I think it’s important for them to become a broker of of services is what I call it. And so knowing not only where the counseling center is, but maybe knowing where we know that many people who experience mental health issues might have other presenting concerns like food insecurity. So in that case example, knowing where the food banks might be on campus, but also off campus. So knowing where those resources are and then being able, informed, and comfortable referring those students to those possibilities.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Great. Christina, what would you add that you would hope people would start putting into practice or, or wonderful things you’ve seen that you think would be great to expand?

Christina W. Yao:
Yeah, I think, I think overall, I mean, I think what, what has worked well and what is important is just a general philosophy of transparency and care, right? Like Keith, what you mentioned, you know, be, be great if faculty were like, Hey you know, our staff were like, I can’t meet at that time. I have to go see my therapist or I have to go have this family obligation of this responsibility. And I can say, I think years ago that would’ve been something kind of taboo, right? Like, oh my gosh, I’m not going to share my personal life with my students. You don’t even know what I’m doing. Right. Or even some, a sense of guilt that I’m taking time to worry about other things besides, you know, teaching or advising or things like that. But but I think we moved past that a little bit, right?

Christina W. Yao:
Like we have to, because when we’re talking a lot about the wellbeing of our students, I mean, we can’t take care of our graduate students if we’re also not taking care of ourselves and I can put it out there. I think most faculty in university administrators right now are not doing a great job taking care of themselves. We see that in the great resignation. And we see that in a lot of the conversations we’ve seen in the Chronicle of higher education, blog posts, all of that, all the conversations about honestly, people are so unhappy and higher ed, right. So, so unhappy. How do we, you know, how are we going to make sure our students are happy and doing well and stuff. So so I think there’s so two particular things that can be done that I’ll talk about. One is, you know, we really need to unveil the hidden curriculum of graduate education so much.

Christina W. Yao:
We actually have a chapter in our book from some authors who did a great job, talking about graduate education is really all about the hidden curriculum, right? It’s really all about, you know, what are the norms, right? What are the expectations? And those are things that we don’t ever explicitly say. So even here. So for example, here at the University of South Carolina and the college of education some of my colleagues started doing these PhD, so professional development that have different topics. I just I was just a facilitator for one last week about navigating the publishing process. and you know, for a lot of our, especially our doctoral students, like I want to publish and people are saying, you need to publish, there’s not a lot of time dedicated to talk about what is the hidden curriculum of publishing.

Christina W. Yao:
Right. Cause I think a lot of students think like, oh, I submit a really good class paper and then it’ll get accepted. And it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Nope, there’s this revision, this revision, you know, talking to them about who is reviewer two, you know, so like the, like talk about the hidden curriculum, a reviewer two and everything. So the other piece I’ll also say is to really establish relationships, right? I think it’s very difficult for one individual person to say, I’m going to establish a relationship with every single graduate student in my department. But you know, I think as a team, this is where it’s important to have those communication as the faculty team or as a team of people who are working in a department to say, Hey, are we reaching out to different students or at a minimum, do the students feel comfortable coming to at least one of us to be able to address any concerns or talk about different things.

Christina W. Yao:
Right. and I think, you know, as faculty and as staff, we need to establish a sense of as much trust as possible. Right. We know, for example we know that after the, the murder of George Floyd, it was a very, very difficult time. Right. now, but what happens is that the next day for a lot of people going back to work, it’s just going back to work. It’s not a big deal. Right. But for my black student, my black colleagues, it’s not just a normal day. Right. But you kind of have to open the door to say, Hey, do you need to take a day off? Right. Or what do you need or on the team, what do we need to do and everything. And so really just thinking about how do we, how do we do better with supporting people through you know, the many issues that we’ve seen come to light in the past couple of years?

Keith Edwards:
I think that that point merged with what Mike was talking about raises an issue, which is, I think a lot of folks are not doing well at supporting graduate students because not because they don’t want to they don’t know how. And so when a student says, I can’t turn this paper in because my bipolar is flaring and I can’t get out of bed. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t feel, and then they want someone else to just tell me what to say right. When we can’t predict all of this or do faculty come in and not address the murder of George Floyd, because they’re not thinking about it. It’s not on the radar. It’s not something they care about or they just don’t know how to manage that. Right. So there’s a, there’s a capacity issue.

Keith Edwards:
And I think, you know, faculty and really all of us in higher ed are socialized to be experts and know, and have all the answers. Right. And we don’t. And if we could just open ourselves up to being a little bit more messy and like, I’m not sure how can I help you? What would that look like? Or I don’t know how to facilitate this conversation, but we’re going to have it anyway. I think it’d be really great. Dave, what would you suggest? What, what things are you seeing that would be really helpful in addition to what we’ve already talked about?

Dave Nguyen:
Well, I think to echo the points that I think every single one of us is making here is about normalizing, help seeking behavior. I think that that’s one of the biggest priorities. Anyone can do. I gave the graduate commencement speech at my, or the commencement speech at my institution. And I stood up in front of a couple thousand people and said, I wish I asked for help because that’s what would’ve made me a better student. It would’ve made me a better person. And would’ve ultimately helped me like figure out how to navigate some of the life challenges that I experienced as, as an undergraduate and graduate student . So I think that that is kind of one of the biggest pieces here. The other, some of the other things that come out from these, this conversation too, is that some of what we’re talking about doesn’t really cost the institution anything.

Dave Nguyen:
So for example, in the chemistry department, or if you’re in the education college and you have a graduate student organization and doing some of these professional development kinds of things can be particularly helpful for demystifying the hidden curriculum, or at least creating a space for people to say, I need help, or I don’t know how to handle this particular situation. I think that’s so much of what this really comes down to is a lot of times people think that this requires a substantial amount of financial resources to be able to do, but really at, at a minimum, we’re just trying to create space for people, you know, before COVID, maybe it would’ve been a little bit harder to convince people, to leverage technology, to feel connected. , but now we see the utility of that, right? Where you can have a professional development speaker that can just, you know, Skype in from their office, right.

Dave Nguyen:
To talk to you a little bit about something and they don’t even have to be on your campus. Right. So I think that that that’s one particular piece of this, the other piece is that there are institutional responsibilities, right? Like if we’re going to admit a student there, the resources should be in place at the institution to best support that student all the way through graduation. And then something, when I was a program coordinator, I was really trying to be intentional about was the language that I used with students that, you know, we didn’t make a mistake in admitting you, we want you to know that you’re here to thrive and to flourish, and we want to make sure that that’s happening. And if you’re not tell us how we can do that. If, if you have ideas about how we can do it or tell us what you’re struggling with, because I think that that’s the piece that people really, when they come to graduate education, they should know what they want to do.

Dave Nguyen:
But I don’t know. I sometimes I think as a faculty member, I don’t know what I want to do. And so I think really just trying to encourage people to know that it’s okay to not know, but I think it’s also important for them to consider that, that they need to ask for the things that they might not be getting in terms of experiences or the different kinds of supports that are out there. So I, I think that those, those are the really important pieces here to really kind of think about, but, you know, bottom line, helping students know that it’s okay to ask for help. And just because they’re asking for help doesn’t mean that anyone’s going to think any less of them. It actually probably means more that they stopped for a moment and said, Hey, I need help with this. Or right. I don’t know how to navigate this particular situation. And I think that that’s actually where faculty members are really good, right. They’re problem solvers. They’re trying to solve some sort of complex puzzle and they might not necessarily have the tools that their disposal, that they need to help that particular student, but they can, they can help them figure it out together.

Keith Edwards:
What you, what you’re mentioning and what Christine’s mentioning is reminding me how much graduate student experience can feel like hazing can feel like there’s all these obstacles and unknowns, and you only really understand comps when you’re done with comps and all of that hidden curriculum and navigating through that. How can we not make that feel that way? Go ahead, Christina.

Christina W. Yao:
All right. Yeah. If I can just tag on to what Dave said, you know, I think, I think one thing that we also have to take into consideration is some of the, the cultural differences right now, I’ll speak a little bit more about my research, particularly on international students is that for many cultures, it’s not okay to disclose that you’re having any mental health issues, right. It’s not okay to say, Hey, I’m really struggling academically, right. Especially if you know, the whole purpose of, to be transparent, the whole purpose of your visa is to be here is to be an academic student and you have to make academic success in order to, to stay here. Right. because it puts your, it puts your residency in jeopardy and everything. So I think that’s also areas where, as an institution, as a program, as faculty, as administrators, we’ve gotta really, really be sensitive to even some of these things that might prohibit students from seeking help or asking for help and everything like that.

Christina W. Yao:
Right. because again, from different cultures, it might not be okay to talk about this also, you know, we’re also talking a lot about, you know, with mental health and, and everything like seeking counseling seeking therapists. We also know that on our college campuses, we’re short staffed. Like we were short staffed before the pandemic, even more short staffed now. And not just that many campuses may not have as many counselors or therapists who are as culturally responsive as what our students may need. Right. So again, that’s what I would also add in is just as is that as an institution, we need to do better with putting those resources in place where this stuff, you know, I know Dave, you mentioned a lot of these things don’t cost the institution, anything, but at the same time as an institution, if you’re saying this is important, you gotta put your money where your mouth is and invest in some of this.

Keith Edwards:
Well, and therapists are hard to find, not just on campus, but off campus too. Yeah. Right. If you have a good therapist, hang on them. right. They’re hard to find at the moment. We, we are running out of time. And so I want to move to our, our closing question. The podcast is called Student Affairs NOW. And so we always like to end by asking each of you to just share, what are you thinking or troubling or pondering now might be your research or this thing that you’re thinking about, or the thing that every time you have dinner with folks keeps coming up, or it might be something that really is just salient with you now, as we come to the conclude this conversation. And also if you want folks, if folks want to connect with you where they might do that Christina, what are you pondering now?

Christina W. Yao:
Probably the thing that I’m pondering the most right now is honestly, is very much related to the great resignation, right? We have a lot of higher ed professionals, including faculty and staff who are leaving higher education. I can say that that has a direct correlation to the number of applicants into my graduate program. where, you know, a lot of time people who get into higher education is because somebody said, a mentor said, you’d be great at this. You should, you know, think about getting a master’s in the field and then you can come work and do all this. But if people are leaving because they’re disgruntled or they’re not being treated well, they’re not recruiting other people on everything. Right. so overall I think the field of higher education and Student Affairs it’s particularly related to graduate education is going to look really different in the next few years.

Christina W. Yao:
And I honestly can’t even predict exactly what it’ll look like, but it’s something that definitely I have concerns about. And I am interested to see kind of what, where things will go and, you know, even in thinking of my role as somebody who’s a faculty member, somebody who used to be a Student Affairs administrator, like I’m just not, I’m just not really sure. Right? I’m not even sure what, what I can personally even do about all of this. I think there’s a lot of talk right now between faculty, between people who supervise graduate assistants. So Student Affairs professionals around campus with the different associations, there’s a lot of concern about this, but not probably not enough focus conversation to try to think about what do we need to do next. And so that’s what I’m thinking a lot about right now, which is a whole other topic I think in student affairs in higher education. But but if people want to reach me, you can always find me on Twitter, which is @ChristinaYao. Or you can shoot me an email, always happy to chat.

Keith Edwards:
Thank you. Thank you, Lisa. What are you troubling now?

Lisa S. Kaler:
I think I’m troubling. How institutions can do a better job, really accepting their responsibility for supporting student mental health, when Christina was talking about international students and the, you know, the burdens that they have related to their visa and mental healthcare. I think about that as an institutional issue, not as an individual student issue. And I’m always wondering, like, what is the right language? What’s the right way to frame this issue. So that campus leaders really acknowledge that this is their issue that they need to address and stop asking students and individual staff and faculty to shoulder the burden and help themselves, and really make the care, start at the top and, and work its way down through structural supports. I don’t have the answer to that. That’s just what I think about basically all day, every day. so no big deal. If people want to find me to talk to me about that, I’m on LinkedIn. I don’t have a Twitter. I try to, I try to say sort of mysterious on social media, but I do have a LinkedIn Lisa S, Kaler is my name. Thanks again for having me. This has been great, and it was great to connect with Dave and Christina too. So hello.

Keith Edwards:
Awesome. Dave, what are you troubling now?

Dave Nguyen:
Yeah, so I think one of the things that I’ve been thinking a lot about is, you know, what, what does career development look like for grad students now at this present point and, and where it’s going to go in the future. And, and I think it’s sort of a multi-pronged approach of thinking about what kinds of experiential learning things do students need to gain while they’re enrolled in their master’s or doctoral program to help them get to where they want to go. The second piece is how do we help people broaden their understandings of different kinds of careers, even if the faculty that are supporting them, haven’t had those kinds of careers. And so how might we leverage different kinds of networks and, and so forth to, to bring that out. And then the third piece is really around curriculum. So how, how does the curriculum support these different ways of thinking about where do I want to go with my life?

Dave Nguyen:
Where do I want, what do I need to be exposed to? You know, the more and more we follow things on Twitter. We see a lot of people leaving the academic profession in particular to pursue a wide variety of careers, but how do we, instead of having people leave the professor, how do we, or the academic profession, how do we prepare them for something beyond just the academic life? And I’m thinking largely about doctoral students in that way, but the same thing with master students that entered under entered a program, thinking like, just because I entered this, I’m going to do, you know, A, but knowing that there’s a, a lot of different things that people can do and trying to help people articulate what their translational or translatable skills maybe I think is a really important onus. The other piece, I’m always thinking about the financial aspects of, of graduate education.

Dave Nguyen:
And so thinking about, you know, who is able to participate has the effects of the pandemic actually shrunk the population of folks that would be ordinarily participating. Are we only privileging those that can afford to go to postsecondary or, or postbaccalaureate education. So trying to think through who’s, who’s able to do that in, and in many ways, like how are we creating different kinds of opportunities for people to learn about the profession that they seek to enter, but also other professions alongside that? There are a whole bunch of ways that you can connect with me. I’m on Twitter, it’s @DaveNguyen191 feel free to email me, or I’m also on LinkedIn as well.

Keith Edwards:
Awesome. And Mike, what are you troubling now?

Michael J. Stebleton:
Great, Dave, I, I feel like you took my material. , I’m also thinking about career development, I guess, like mines you know, think like here, but I’m also thinking about how you were talking about strategies earlier and how programs and departments might partner with other units across campus. And I think the career development center or the career services on campus can play a vital role. I’m thinking about graduate students who may at one point have, may have dreamed about a tenure track position. There’s not a lot of opportunities out there and the number of opportunities are actually decreasing. And so I think a lot of students and this goes back to what you were saying earlier. Christina are reevaluating career opportunities in terms of what they might want to do with their life after they graduate.

Michael J. Stebleton:
And Lisa and I recently got done with this study, where we looked at advanced PhD students in humanities and the social sciences. And we asked about stress, mental health. We really wanted to focus in on the relationship with the faculty advisor and perhaps not too surprisingly faculty members weren’t really well prepared to advise their students on academic alternatives because they just didn’t know much about ’em. And they were ill prepared to really talk with their students about alternative diverse career pathways is the language that we’re we’re using are sometimes used in the literature. And so helping a faculty, you know, become more well versed in, in those different possibilities, I think is a potential growth area as well. So I’m thinking a lot about that. Another potential finding that came out of our study is that graduate students were sometimes resistance to even share that with their faculty members, that they are thinking about not going into academia, like this would be a huge letdown to their faculty members.

Michael J. Stebleton:
And so what they were doing is they were withholding that information and as we know, that’s not healthy either. And so I think, you know, faculty members have a role. I think Student Affairs educators of course have roles and really looking at what I was saying earlier about building this community, where mental health becomes everyone’s business. So that’s a little bit about what I’m thinking about recently. I can be reached on Twitter @MJSTEBLETON. Also my faculty page at the university of Minnesota via email. Thank you. This has been a great conversation.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah, it has been terrific. And I really appreciate all of you congrats on the new book congratulates on, on the the piece in NASPA and the research and the consulting and the doctorate and all the many things. So thanks for your scholarship, your leadership and your guidance to us today. Thanks also to our sponsors Stylus and Vector Solutions, which are super relevant to what we’re talking about, Stylus, which published the handbook that Christina and Dave are offering is proud to be a sponsor of the podcast, browse their Student Affairs, diversity and professional development titles at styluspub.com. You can use promo SANow for 30% off all of their books, including this one and free shipping. You can also find them on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, all @Styluspub and Vector Solutions. How will your institution rise to reach today’s socially conscious generation today’s students report commitments to safety, wellbeing, and inclusion are as important as academic rigor when selecting a college it’s time to reimagine the work of Student Affairs as an investment, not an expense as we’ve been talking about for over 20 years vector solutions, which now includes the campus prevention network.

Keith Edwards:
Formally EverFi has been the partner of choice for more than 2000 colleges, universities, and national organizations with nine efficacy studies behind their courses. You can trust and have full confidence that you’re using the standard of care for student safety, wellbeing, and inclusion transform the future of your institution and the community you serve. Learn more at vectorsolutions.com/StudentAffairsNow as always a huge shout out to Natalie Ambrosey the production assistant for the podcast who does all the behind the scenes work to make us all look and sound good. Thank you, NA, and if you’re listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website at Student Affairs. Now.Com scroll the bottom of the homepage to add your email to our mail Chi list while you’re there, check out our archives. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to our fabulous guest today. And for everyone who’s watching and listening, make it a great week. Thanks all.

www.steinerkaler.com

ACHA/NCHA Fall 2021 Mental Health Graduate Student Statistics:

https://www.acha.org/documents/ncha/NCHA-III_FALL_2021_GRADUATE_REFERENCE_GROUP_EXECUTIVE_SUMMARY.pdf

https://www.naspa.org/blog/promoting-graduate-student-mental-health-the-role-of-student-affairs-professionals-and-faculty

https://styluspub.presswarehouse.com/browse/book/9781642670653/A-Handbook-for-Supporting-Today-s-Graduate-Students

The Role of Faculty in Student Mental Health:

https://marychristieinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/The-Role-of-Faculty-in-Student-Mental-Health.pdf

–73% of faculty reported that they would welcome additional professional development on the topic of student mental health in order to support students