Steve Sutton
You know, I think that you know, for anybody who supervises a team of folks you know, or even for people who are Chief Student Affairs officers, it’s, you know, it’s really important to spend time talking with your staff. You need to be out there. Need to see what, what they’re experiencing, what they’re encountering, see how they’re doing. You know, walking around the organization, I know that said sometimes it’s, it’s so easy to kind of, you know, sit behind your your zoom screen, or just be in the meetings and get so focused on on solving those problems that come up there. But, you know, needed, you know, we need to get out and talk to people.

Glenn DeGuzman
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs NOW. I’m your host, Glenn DeGuzman, today, we are focusing on a topic that seems to be on the top of many student affairs professionals, minds, and especially to those working in residence halls. From speaking with many of my colleagues, it can be a very difficult topic to talk about. Many professionals, newer professionals, and especially those living in residential living, want to show their professional competence by serving students. They want to really demonstrate they can, they can handle the work. But we know the expectations they have to respond to incidents and results are starting to change and increase. Data showing that the type of amount, the type and the amount of incidents, is shifting, and today’s resident director job description, does it really fully describe the realities the day to day work? Are we aware of the emotional burden that accompanies the role of student affairs professionals working directly in the front lines with students? So it’s critically important for leaders at all levels to be aware of the impact. And this podcast today hopes to hit some of these points. We have three experts on this topic, and more importantly, all sit at various levels in the higher education hierarchy to weigh in on this topic. And before I introduce my guest today, I’m going to share more about the podcast and today’s sponsors, Student Affairs now is a premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. You can find details about this episode or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com this episode is also sponsored by Routledge Taylor and Francis. View the complete catalog of education titles at routledge.com forward slash education. This episode is also sponsored by Huron, a professional global services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice. I’ll share more about our sponsors at the end of this episode, as well as I mentioned, I’m your host. Glenn DeGuzman, my pronouns are he, him, his. I’m currently the Associate Dean of Students and Director of Residential Life at the University of California Berkeley. And I am broadcasting from Livermore, California on the unseeded lands of the Ohlone peoples. And I am joined by doctors Tanya Koroyan and Steve Sutton, also from UC Berkeley, and Dr Jason Lynch from Appalachian State University. To me, this is a reunion of sources. We all have ties to UC Berkeley, and so I’m very excited about having this conversation, because this topic of professional staff wellness is important to me as it really actually started, you know, and Jason knows this story, but this is, this started in a conversation I had with Jason years ago when you were a resident director at UC Berkeley, back in like, 2014 ish around that time period. So I’m really excited to get this conversation started because, and this episode specifically is because Tanya came to me and said, I want to do an episode on this topic, because your dissertation topic is focusing on this. So this is like a really special episode for me. All right, let’s get started. Let’s do an introduction of sorts, and have you all, we’ll show a bit about yourself and your familiarity, or sort of like your background with this topic. And feel please feel free to share your pronouns as well. Let’s start with let’s talk with Dr Cory on

Tanya Koroyan
Well, thank you so much. I’m Dr. Tanya Koroyan. I use sheher pronouns, and I am currently a Senior Assistant Director for residential life at UC Berkeley. And I recently completed my dissertation, class of 2024 and my dissertation was on the experience of caregiver burden and burnout among the resident directors. So really looking at the resident director position, I was an RD at UC Berkeley for three years. That’s where I started my professional career and my professional journey. And this is really my first entry into research. So I’m really excited to discuss this really important topic of staff wellness today during today’s podcast episode, because this really is a topic that we need to continue to prioritize in the field of student affairs.

Glenn DeGuzman
Most definitely looking forward to hearing what you discovered in your in your research. All right. Dr Jason Lynch.

Jason Lynch
Hi friends. So I am Dr Jason Lynch, he, him pronouns. I’m an assistant professor of higher education at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, and my ties to UC Berkeley. As I was also a former resident director in puffer in freeborn halls out in unit one exciting times. And I was also on a kekua intern, which kind of are at UC Berkeley, which kind of started me off in my professional journey in Residence Life. In addition to my professorship, I’m the executive editor of the Journal of Trauma studies and education and so kind of obviously my research areas around this idea of trauma, but also with a parallel three. Line of workplace wellness, particularly within college Residence Life organizations. And I think just having been a resident director and assistant director and doing a lot of scholars research for practice activities, I guess with a cuckoo I like I am just continually interested in issues of workplace Well, being right for resident directors, a lot of it grounded in my own experiences, right? Of doing this really good work with a lot of great colleagues and I brought a lot of great mentors and just learning how we can continue to do this great work without burning ourselves out, right?

Glenn DeGuzman
Thanks, Jason and Dr. Steve Sutton.

Steve Sutton
Hello, Glenn, hello colleagues. It’s so honored to be here today. I’m Steve Sutton. I serve as the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs here at UC Berkeley. My pronouns are he, him, his. I’ve had the opportunity to work in higher education for close to 40 years. Started off as an RA at a very large public institution in Ohio, and moved to Berkeley after getting my master’s degree, and worked as a resident director at UC Berkeley for a few years, and moved on and worked in other areas of Student Affairs. A big part of who I am is really informed by being a first generation college student myself and Glenn, I’m so happy to be here on this topic today, because this is something that I talk about, you know, almost every single day, is issues related to mental health and how we support not only our students, but our staff. It’s something that’s talked about in my peer group across the country, when I get together with colleagues. And so I’m looking forward to jumping in on this topic now.

Glenn DeGuzman
Stanny, I’m looking forward to hearing from all of you today. So let’s jump right in and Tanya, you’re gonna get the first question, because obviously you did your dissertation on, on, on the on aspects of this topic. But I’d like to start with just hearing, what did you discover and how does it relate to, you know, this ever increasing body of knowledge around Pro Staff wellness.

Tanya Koroyan
Yeah. So for my topic, I utilize the caregiver burden framework, which focuses on the impact that caring for another person can have on an individual, mentally and physically, impacting their health and well being. So my findings specifically demonstrate that the RD position is really, as you can imagine, not like any other professional role in student affairs, and that with the RD position itself, caregiving is a core component of that because of the way the individuals in those positions experience it, the interpersonal skill sets that they utilize when caring for students. The rd job position, it supports such a wide range of supporting students through student emergencies and different traumatic events that they might be experiencing. And oftentimes, they really are those first individuals to support a student in need. And so, for example, they are that resource to a student who might be experiencing harm or svsh or a mental health emergency and so on. And so I really want to look at this position because of such, the core role it plays for students and supporting students, and through that lens. So through my research, I discovered that among many things, with the rd position comes this consistent sense of always being on, you know, with the resident director position, it’s typically a live on position, so you literally live where you work. And so with that comes this ongoing sense of, you know, really always being on, whether you are off duty or are on duty. And with that, also tensions between work life balance. There’s a significant pool of emotional labor, and this can be greater when it comes to rds, who hold marginalized identities and share an affinity with their students. And then, you know, there’s this unique discovery of feelings of fulfillment and emptiness at the same time with this role, because it is just such, such a wide spread of, you know, support that already offers. And so those are just a few things, but mainly my research offers a different view of the rd role, one that I didn’t see in my own kind of research and literature review. And using the caregiving as a primary function of the position really uplifting that. And so my hope is that I can contribute to this growing body of research that can showcase that there are lasting impacts on folks who serve in the rd role, given the amount of student crises they face by supporting students in need. And you know, depending on this might depend on the size of an institution, but sometimes the institution may not realize or understand the rd experience and the magnitude of their role. And so really kind of allowing for more more research and more, you know, conversations to exist about this position for that and so the other big kind of discovery I learned was. That there’s a tension that kind of exists when it comes to residential life roles. The rd role, for example, has so many administrative responsibilities to it, but again, the core of their role is Crisis Response and student support. So at the end of the day, they will drop everything administrative to report to a student crisis and support a student in need. So that tension that exists between the administrative and the caregiving aspects of the role was something that came to the surface the lived experience of already is actually pulls on the caregiving because of that interpersonal skill sets and those qualities, how they actually interact with students in crisis and support them through those next resources. So on paper, you don’t really get to see the full scope of what the work entails, which is why I felt like this was an important topic. And Residential Life professionals are those, again, those individuals who show up to support a student who might be experiencing the lowest or scariest moment of their life. And so because of this, wellness for residential life staff is extremely important, because they face so many different student cases, and that could be traumatic for them in that helping position. So the rd position, you know, holds a lot and so ultimately, if Residential Life professionals are not caring for themselves or given adequate support or resources, and how can they really continue to care for students to the best of their ability.

Glenn DeGuzman
You know, I like how you, you, you brought this, this, this phrase up, always being on. I hear that a lot. I’ve heard I hear that all the time. And you that that tension often times of having the administrative workload, and then you also have to respond to crises. And like you could have an eight to you can be working administratively eight to five, and then in the evenings, you’re now responding to crisis, and it could also be during the day or, you know, but, but it that definitely does impact the investment of the emotional labor that’s needed to do, to be to do the work. Now let’s, let’s kind of, let’s go deeper into that. Jason, I know that back in 2021 we had you on another podcast episode with Leah Ward, Jamar Clark and Dr Molly Mistretta, talking about the trauma, the burnout, the compassion fatigue among student affairs practitioners. And since then, you have been busy. My friend, you have been working. I’m sure in your research, I know you’ve been working with national associations and organizations really digging into this, this topic, and it’s brought attention to a variety of different areas, like professional preparation, hiring, onboarding, practices, etc. So I want to just turn and open it up to you, you know, and open it up and you know, if you have you can talk to the field here, the Student Affairs profession. What have we learned? What has your research garnered in the last couple of years?

Jason Lynch
Yeah, no, appreciate that, and I’m excited to say that since our last meeting, that jamarco art and Leah Ward are now both doctors, so we have ushered in a couple new wonderful researchers and practitioners into the field, and they’re still doing that really great work and kind of connecting theory to practice in those ways. And I think that what we’re kind of discovering, and Tanya really hit the nail on the head here, right, is that these issues or the more people that are looking at this, the more realizing how nuanced and interconnected these issues are with like I entered into the space with this idea of secondary trauma, right? But now Tanya has come in with the caregiving piece, right, which adds a another lens of how there’s just such a web of sort of this ecology, right, of challenges for the resident record, and kind of a lot of the residents life roles even live off. And so some of the things I’ve been looking at least recently, Dr Jonathan O’Brien down at CSU Long Beach, and I’ve been doing some research on what’s labeled as moral moral injury or moral suffering, right? And we kind of talk about this through the lens of like, well, like, we get socialized with certain values in higher ed, particularly in resonance life around community and justice and all these things, right? But the the practicalities of of in of working, particularly in public institutions, right, where those values aren’t always met warmly or gracefully or we’re not able to live them in the way that we want to, creates another layer of challenge for professionals, particularly professionals, right? We also in partnership with the Dr Brittany McDaniel, who’s, I believe, now, and Dr Kendall Pete, who’s the director of ResLife at Radford University, with this large national study of workplace well being in Residence Life, particularly, right at all levels, whether it was senior SHOs all the way down to live in professionals, right? And we, we found a bunch of different things, right? We did it was mixed. Methods, and from the survey that we found, we had about 30 ish participating organ or Residence Life departments across the country, and we found that the number one predictor of workplace well being with psychological safety, and really kind of what correlated with that was this idea of recognition and perceived trust from leadership. And so in our qualitative follow ups. What that really kind of looked like is the what I kind of label as agency, right? It’s like, alright, we went to this master’s program. We live with our students. We know or we’re if we don’t live when we’re front facing staff, right, we won’t be treated as professionals and like and that we know what we’re talking about, and that when we have new ideas that they’re considered right, it might the idea might take shape, and the upper level folks might help us to mold those ideas to better make them a reality. But for a lot of folks that were struggling with their workplace, well being it was they just felt shut down, right, or that they didn’t think that they were they were just a warm body on campus, and the leadership didn’t trust them to do their jobs, right? So those were just a couple of the things that have been coming out as of late.

Glenn DeGuzman
That’s very interesting, Jason. So thanks for for sharing that and and shout out to Dr Leah Ward and Dr jamarco Clark. I have a quick follow up, Jason, and this is sort of like a little tangential, before we dive back to the topic as as you as you share some of the folks who are doing the research, or as you’re interacting with the people who are doing the research around this growing topic. Are we finding that a lot of the folks who are contributing to this are former practitioners? Right? Obviously, I know that Dr Ward, Dr Clark were practitioners instant affairs before shifting to the the research side of the house. But is that? Is that something you’re experiencing? I know you’ve been interacting a lot of folks nationally, yeah,

Jason Lynch
yeah. I think a lot of the folks that so Dr Clark is now Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at University of Illinois, Springfield, and Dr Clark was promoted. She’s the director of the Women’s Center, so yeah, all kind of former residence life folks at some point. And I think that then you still have people like Tanya, right, that are kind of getting engaged in the field. And I think kind of what, what, what we’ve seen happening is the and I’ll say even in my case, I was like, well, we’re always told, we’re socialized, that higher ed is a very small field, so we need to watch what we say, right? So I was like, All right, well, I’m gonna go become a faculty member. So it doesn’t really matter. At that point, I was like, my tenure is not tied to being nice anymore, right? About about topics. And so I think the you found that folks outside left and then are being able to reflect on those experiences. But I think that things are, I mean, I tend to be an optimist in my general sort of worldview, I guess, and so not to be too polygon about it. But I think as we’re seeing scholars like Tanya or Dr accordion come in, right, and others that are remaining in the field and still able to research and draw attention to this as a positive sign, right, that things are kind of shifting in a good direction,

Glenn DeGuzman
well, and thanks for sharing that. I was just really curious about that and, and, but what you said earlier, this idea of frontline staff, resident directors, or folks who are working directly with with the students, this feeling of being shut down regarding their wellness. So this is actually a good bridge to Steve. You and I, over the years, have definitely talked about the growing concern of mental health for students, and I know we did. We’ve done some we did a journal article. It’s going to be prefaced at the very bottom of the podcast. Notes for anyone who’s interested to learn about what we wrote about. But we also know that mental health of students has become a critical focus nationally for those on college campuses, Student Affairs, residential life, any areas of student engagement, we’re starting to see that this is a growing concern, and it was brought to my attention, and it’s fascinating to discover that how we need to pay attention to particularly those new professionals who just three to five years ago were the very students we were supporting through some of their mental health challenges. So while there have been many factors that influence what campuses can do to support their staff. Love to hear your perspective and your thoughts from your experience as a senior executive level administrator. What have you experienced, or what have you heard from your peers nationally regarding this awareness and trend? Do you think senior leaders are aware of this and and I’m wondering if there is a disconnect maybe leading to what Jason was saying about this mistrust of leadership or being are feeling being shut down.

Steve Sutton
Yeah, thanks, Glenn, and I want to emphasize that point that you made about just three to five years ago. You know, many of our new professionals were also students themselves, and they were migrating through, through, through the challenges. Yes, I. Think that, or I know I should say that this is being talked about. I mean every professional development group or activity I participate in, whether it’s ACPA, NASPA, the AAU, the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is our new athletic conference, anytime I’m with those colleagues, we’re talking about mental health, not only of students, but also staff too, and the challenges involved with that. You know, I think that senior leaders do know about about these challenges. I think the question is, what do they do about it? That’s really the question, right? It’s, it’s it’s we know, oftentimes in our administrative life, that there are problems, and we know what the problem is, and we can frame the problem well, but what do we actually do about it with the resources we have and cultures that we we where we sit, etc, and so that’s a big part of of the challenge. I think one of the benefits of the pandemic, I mean, if I can phrase it that way, is that it is given us permission to talk about these issues. The pandemic didn’t create mental health challenges, though it did exacerbate, I think, many of the mental health challenges and the trauma we’ve been talking about and the caregiving. Tanya, I want to get your dissertation and read it now based on what you’re describing. But it’s, it’s, it’s, again, really what we can do about it. And so just a few things come to mind. One is that we just need to talk about it. I think the fact that we have a student affairs now podcast, I know that a big part of what I try to do at the Chancellor’s cabinets, since I’m the primary Student Advocate at that table, is to to talk about these types of issues, to make sure that my colleagues know consistently, that you know, we are trying to address mental health challenges of both our students And our and our staff members. I think it needs to be in things like our strategic plans, right? And, you know, here at Berkeley, you know, health and well being is one of our five pillars in our strategic plan. That’s really, that’s really crucial. I think that, you know, Jason talked about recognition, and I think I also look at recognition from the fact that we need to reward people for the good work that they’re doing. And we just, you know, it’s saying thank you can go a long way. I mean, just yesterday, our Chancellor sent me a note saying, Hey, good job to your team for the things that they they were doing yesterday, to handle a situation and pass it on to the team members. You know, people are very happy to see that kind of recognition also, too. I think that we have to be practical, right? I mean, you know, we know in Res Life, we would never allow the entire Res Life team to leave campus at one time, right? Because we need to have somebody back to handle a crisis that might arise. We should look at how we support staff from that same practical type of way, in terms of, okay, if somebody has dealt with, you know, a protest or a fire, or really difficult, you know, dibj issue in the residence halls. Do we need to give them some time away so that somebody else can step in and cover just so they can recharge recenter do things and bring them joy and help them to get back to, you know, the mental health state that they want to be in, so that they can continue to do their work. And then I think this issue just continue to educate our peers and educate people, even outside of higher education. I think it’s important, right? I mean, I think we’re, you know, we’re so ingrained because we’re in these, these worlds every single day. 24/7, you know, when I talk to others outside of higher education, you know, colleagues, friends, family members, others just letting them know that this is something that that we’re challenged by, because many of them are parents, right? And they will even ask me, they’ll say, You know what, what’s your university doing? I mean, our son seemed really stressed about, you know, the fact he couldn’t get into the club and organization he wanted to get into, and he can’t get an internship. He’s not quite sure what his major should be. What’s your institution doing for students in that respect? And so I think just trying to educate people about the systems that we have in place to try to support students and again, staff as well. Because I think we have to make sure this is a dualistic conversation in terms of both students and staff, yeah, well,

Jason Lynch
sorry, go ahead too. Like, I know that one of the questions that you posed was sort of like, what do we do about it? And I think you provided a really good example of one of the findings that came out of a recent study around organizational trauma that we did where this idea of recognition is like, they, a lot of the folks are just like, like, Well, yeah, we’re good at recognizing each other. And even up to, like, the senior level within student affairs is the they were feeling sort of this lack of recognition from the broader campus. And it kind of ties into what Tanya was saying around like they people just don’t know what Residence Life does and what that job entails. And so for the Chancellor to email you and for you to have recognized these folks is exactly kind of what they were talking about. It’s like I need to feel seen by the Greater campus. And one of the things that emerged was the senior lure for from folks on the more front lines was they want their senior leaders to advocate up and educate up and out in the campus. About, sort of what their roles are in those ways. And, oh, shoot, had another point that was coming to me around that and see if it comes back, I’ll jump back in when the when the train realigns itself in my head, okay?

Glenn DeGuzman
And if it does, I’ll keep the train going. You know, I actually appreciate that question as well of, what do we do about and UC providing some practical examples, you know, I would even add some of the, you know, I might be stealing from Tanya here, but like at the canvas level of the affinity groups, just having staff come together and to be able to support one another. And then I know that we do that departmentally as well, but let’s keep those examples rolling. Tanya this question. Oh, Jason, got it.

Jason Lynch
Sorry. It came back on track. And I’m going to, like, kick it over to Tanya, ties into what I think we want to ask you, is that I just remember when I was a resident director, so we talked about, or Steve gave the example of, like, well, we don’t want to have all the residents, like, people go off campus. Yes, we definitely, completely agree with that. I think what, through my own sort of experience, what I realized looking back is that this is particularly true when I was at Berkeley, is that I made really good friends with my colleagues and and just lifelong sort of connections with these folks, right? And so whenever it was time to kind of go and do something, it was either we kind of do things in small groups or wanting to as a big group, to not to leave people out, but I didn’t have any friends off campus. And I think that’s something that’s common for a lot of residence life experiences, is the we do so much of this work, and we end up being friends with each other. And it kind of is this positive feedback loop where many people don’t have campus or have community off campus. And one of my biggest regrets around living, living in the area was the I was one of the funniest cities in the world, and rarely spent time in that city, right? And it wasn’t, I wouldn’t say, because of I was being overworked in those ways. I just chose like, Well, I was scared. I’m just looking like, kid from first generation, kid from North Carolina and the swamps. And I was like, going into the city was scary, and getting to know people was scary, right? And so I just leaned in on what I knew, which was the community that was around me. So as far as what we could do, right too, is, how are we, how are we equipping new professionals, particularly with building off campus community, which is really healthy too, because then you’re not talking about work all the time, right? And so I’m going to kick this over the time, because I’m interested to hear if that resonates with what you were hearing and what your experience was when you were also a resident director in the area,

Glenn DeGuzman
take it away. Tanya,

Tanya Koroyan
yeah, definitely. I think that that could be really challenging, because for the resident director position, oftentimes that is a new position, for a new professional, it is one that provides housing, right? So folks will move all across the country and relocate their entire lives, and so it could be really hard to, you know, settle somewhere new and naturally in this work, you bond a lot through all of the hard situations that you navigate. You are in a lot of training as a new rd, a new professional, and you again. You live where you work, your neighbors are your co workers, and you see really beautiful friendships blossom. And it can, it can be hard to not have a community outside of that co worker bubble. So it did come up in my own research. And even like reflecting on my own experience, I’m from the area, Bay Area. I worked at Berkeley, so I was, I know I didn’t have to navigate that same challenge as maybe some of my peers who actually relocated and took that really brave step to do so, but finding communities off campus is really, really essential to help kind of build those boundaries and give yourself some opportunities to really expand your own circles of community, and it could be really challenging. So I know, working with rds, but also learning from the folks I got to interview my own research, finding ways to get involved, even if it’s in the same city or just outside of campus, was really, really critical, and it took, you know, communicating with others, maybe learning from other folks on campus, of what are some other social circles or opportunities to kind of find community within the same general area. And it was really helpful to be a part of their self their own self care plan, to have that be a part of it, to strategically make sure they are getting off campus when they don’t have to be there when you’re on duty, you are required to essentially be on campus for those span of days or kind of close to the campus vicinity. And so really making a point to actually physically get off campus. Go see a new a new place. A common thing I see in self care plans is, if they’re new to the location, go do all the sightseeing things. Go, go away from campus, and so, yeah, definitely comes up, and I think still does, and it’s, it is healthy to kind of work that in, and it’s a really challenging thing to do, because it could be really hard and you are exhausted from work, so maybe the last thing you want to do is hop on BART and go to San Francisco. You know, Tanya,

Glenn DeGuzman
I’m gonna, I’m gonna keep. Keep you on this and do a follow up. So obviously, we’ve, I’m hearing some strategies that people can can do for self care, right? Things that they can do they can go up to, you know, the challenge of trying to meet folks, find community outside of the work environment, or just trying to find different things. I’m curious to to hear, like from your experience working, particularly obviously at UC Berkeley, what do the resident directors, do they work? Do you think they work with their supervisors? And maybe or the supervisors are they able to with they’re able to identify signs of burnout? You know? Are there any strategies that that can be taken to help alleviate or to help newer, newer resident directors, or just newer professionals in general?

Tanya Koroyan
Yeah, I think from my experience, when it comes to recognizing signs that a staff member might be struggling or having a hard time navigating their role, it first starts with building that relationship. So I think I can, I’ll take a step back and share kind of what I do to start to really learn what individualized support looks like for an RD, really taking the time to build that relationship. Understand what support looks like to them, what they need to be successful, what are the tools that they need to have access to, and making sure that I can support the their onboarding process, to ensure that they have those things lined up so that they can do the job to the best of their ability. Building that trust is really important, because that’ll allow me to kind of see, you know, maybe they’re missing deadlines that they usually don’t miss, you know, or maybe things are looking a little bit different, and so having that trust and that relationship, spending a little bit of time there in the beginning of our working relationship, will help me as a supervisor, hopefully see these signs and be able to ask those questions and check in really intentionally, and name a few examples of, you know, maybe the response that they offered, you know, a crisis. You know, there was a couple things that I can offer feedback on, and that’s maybe not quite like their usual, their usual response. And so being able to let them know, like, Hey, it’s okay if you need to take a pause right now. Or let me remind you of the resources available to you as staff and your rights and what you can do to take care of yourself, because your wellness really is the most important thing. So how can I, as your supervisor, you know, support you in taking those next steps to get the support resources maybe time off that you need? Did I miss a part of your question?

Glenn DeGuzman
Glenn, no, you, I think you’re hitting it. I think that’s a you’re hitting on the importance and really reminding folks how critical it is for supervisors and their supervisees, resident directors or program coordinators or, you know, residential living educators, to have that strong trust relationship at the beginning and recognizing if that relation can be established early and it authentic and it’s genuine when burnout or when when things emerge, there can be that, that generative conversation where good things could potentially happen, and we can connect folks to the resources that campuses offer, if you know, if the campuses offer the type of resources, but just ensuring that we there’s attention to it well,

Jason Lynch
and I wanted to share real quick, just the story that links to what Tanya was saying and how Her type of leadership and supervision could save a life and being vulnerable into kind of the situation. So when I was a at Berkeley, I wasn’t out as a gay man or during my internship, in the first part of my time as a resident director, and I came out during that time, and James Carroll was my supervisor at the time, and he had done that with me, right? He had done all those things that he was talking about. And I, and he, he recognized in me sometimes, right, that I was like, if I’m super stressed out, I could become kind of hyper critical, and it’s not something I’m proud of, right? But it’s that he knew me well enough to know that, like, if Jason’s starting to, like, just be critical about things, something’s the matter, right? And so he built enough trust with me that I was able to tell him about my coming out process that happened pretty quickly, and he was able to connect me with the university. I forgot what they call it, but it’s the whoever the University Counseling Services is, and I know that that sometimes they get a bad rep on campus, but I’ll be honest, they saved my life. They connected me with the best counselor I’ve ever had in the Bay Area, which I know is a privilege compared to some other campuses that might not be near those resources, but I would say the mine’s a singular experience, but I do think the campuses, like people that work at those spaces and campuses do want to support staff that and it all kind of links back to what Tanya was saying. Is the my supervisor created enough trust and psychological safety to connect me with the I revealed that he connect me with the appropriate resources, and everything kind of fell into place. You know,

Steve Sutton
that’s one resource plan. If I can quick resource and Jay. And thank you so much for sharing that story. I read a very compelling book about a year ago called the burnout epidemic by Jennifer Moss, really, really compelling, and her, one of her primary points in the book is that burn, the issue of burnout is an organizational problem. It’s not an individual problem. And that really resonated with me, because, you know, as we’re talking about the things that Tony was just describing, Jason was describing in terms of what we can do as supervisors and colleagues to just help our our the people that we spend so much time with every single day, help them with managing what they’re experiencing, which is the stress, the anxiety, the questioning, etc. That’s something I’d say as a person, have to work on, but the issue of a burnout is something that the organization needs to work on.

Glenn DeGuzman
So let’s continue. Steve, so let’s, let’s go up and up into the balcony here, divisive civil discourse, anti semitism and Islamophobia. We have, we’ve had the the European Russian conflict have just pervaded, and just it’s been, it’s a part of our world last couple years, and now we have a presidential election on the horizon. The amount of stress and anxiety is heavy on both new and experienced staff, and so as a senior campus leader, and as it relates to the staff who directly interact with the students who are also impacted by all this, then the stuff that, you know, we were just talking before the the podcast, about the protests that are they’re already emerging on campus. What should campuses do? I mean, like, you know, the I know you touched on a bit, but like, what do you as a leader? What do you think campus you do to support staff, wellness?

Steve Sutton
Yeah, that is such a crucial question, Glenn, and you hit the nail on the head there in terms of talking about the issues that we’re going to be encountering. And you know, the elections probably isn’t going to be over on that Tuesday in November. It’s probably could very likely continue in the future, as we have seen in the past. You know, I think that you know, for anybody who supervises a team of folks you know, or even for people who are Chief Student Affairs officers, it’s, you know, it’s really important to spend time talking with your staff. You need to be out there. Need to see what, what they’re experiencing, what they’re encountering, see how they’re doing. You know, walking around the organization, I know that said sometimes it’s, it’s so easy to kind of, you know, sit behind your your zoom screen, or just be in the meetings and get so focused on on solving those problems that come up there. But, you know, needed, you know, we need to get out and talk to people. You know, I also find, at least for our campus, this probably is true of other campuses. There a lot of resources in our campus, HR, and what we call here on our campus, people and culture that we could tap. They’re ready to assist, you know, whether it’s professional development programming or employee assistance programs, like Jason was talking about things like that, that we need to be mindful of, you know? So I think being mindful of what resources exist. You know, I think this professional development, you know, making sure there are funds available for for staff to expert, you know, have professional development opportunities, is really crucial a chance to maybe get away from campus and participate in something that our professional associations is offering to help people recharge to be with people who do the same kind of work that they do, that they can talk about, you know, how they’re doing, and new ideas in the profession that that’s really that’s really crucial. But I think one of the biggest questions, and probably the hardest question, from my experience, is, what are we going to stop doing? You know, in higher education, we just continue to add, add. But you know, sometimes, you know, we can achieve addition through subtract, subtraction, addition through subtraction, subtraction. And what I mean by that is, you know, there are things that we continue to do, year in, year out that maybe we don’t need to do because, you know, we only have so much capacity, so much bandwidth. I mean, in higher education, you know, and I know, especially for our campus, we are very much influenced by what happens in the world around us, because our students are very much in touch with what’s happening globally and nationally, and they want to know that they’re seen, they’re heard, they belong, and that we’re there to support them with managing these issues. And so I think just thinking about what we can do as organizations to stop doing things is really crucial, you know, we’ve been talking about that for years, and Student Affairs here at Berkeley, and you know, it’s not an easy question to tackle, because there’s so many things, and once we start going down the list, like, well, we can’t give up that, and we can’t give up that, you know, and so, but I think having, you know, giving some real, having some real self reflection on things we couldn’t stop doing is is important,

Glenn DeGuzman
bestie, that that’s, that’s a that’s a key part and key part of not only stop doing certain things, but how difficult that is to do. You know, I recently had a conversation with my supervisor about no. Longer having these monthly meetings with a certain group of students and in just modifying it, so instead of every month, we’re just going to do it once a semester. How hard that was, how hard that was, particularly because we’ve always been, you know, so committed to the student experience and wanting to make sure that we’re connecting with the students and figuring that out, but having to make these tough choices makes me a better professional, and that allows me to stay more focused. So really, really good point there, Jason, I know, and we kind of alluded to it earlier, you have been spearheading efforts with a kawaii you’re creating a receptacle research and strategies to assist campuses and departments struggling to support the professional staff. Can you tell our audience more about this and how to how can they access the resources? I know that when I need to access the resources, I just email you so or even how to contribute, because obviously we’re starting to see more and more professionals get into the research or getting into ways they can the work that they’re doing on their own campuses, and being able to share it with others. I know I’m about to do a another webinar for a national group on this very topic. So love to hear what you have to say.

Jason Lynch
Yeah, definitely. Well, first I want to shout out our awesome colleagues at Google, the Association of College and University student housing officers. They are a small but mining staff, and I think that I’ve just really been appreciative of their willingness and desire to start bringing in these conversations around wellness and mental health at all levels, whether it’s students or the professional staff, right? And so kind of, out of that, my colleague, Dr Louisa, no way. One of my favorite people in the world is ATP out at Vassar College, and works in housing in that area. He and I co led the future of the profession Task Force on community mental health. And out of that came a lot of different deliverables. And one of these is this repository of sort that you were talking about, Glenn, so it’s the easiest way to start finding resources, right? Is just a Google a Google help, and the first thing that that pops up on is the new web page that they’ve created as a deliverable from this task force that is sort of amalgamation, a living document of all these different kinds of resources. And they even have it divided into like for students or for staff, right? And new professionals, senior professionals, things like that. But another thing that we’re hoping to launch soon and add to that website is this sort of Bank of best practices, and we’re have people from across the country submit, right? We’ll have sort of this template that you can use to be like this really didn’t work well on our campus, but the form will help you tease out what the transferability of that is, right? So like UC Berkeley, it works really well here. Well, you’re in an urban area, you’re on the West Coast, in California, you’re a large public institution, right? So like being able to identify why things work in that context, and putting it in this form. So other people could go and be like, alright, well, this is my context, and maybe some of this transfers, or maybe it doesn’t, or like, this is my exact context. And so, yeah, I’m gonna, like, Take this, this on right? And so we’re hoping to launch that pretty soon. And then also, I’m working with Linda Wiley, their new person that’s focusing really on online education, to develop some some series of professional development events and interventions right, to really focus in with skill development around issues of personal wellness and supporting wellness of colleagues and students. Send people to a Google they’re doing really good work.

Glenn DeGuzman
Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna ask a follow up question. And this, I don’t know if you know the answer to this, but I know that years ago, so you know, and let’s just say it was about 810, years ago, and you were, you were a part of this. I was trying to get a better understanding on the wellness of my team, right? And we, we worked with University of Washington. We did a stress anxiety survey. We worked with you that if campuses or departments, Residential Life departments specifically, but just in general, wanted to just get a sense of what’s happening in their own department and and maybe they’re having a difficult time doing it themselves, like, should they contact a consultant? Is there an assessment out there? What can people do?

Jason Lynch
Yeah, there’s a variety of things, right? So I know that I developed this instrument called the secondary trauma skill and student affairs professionals. It’s validated for lots of different functional areas. There’s one for RAS as well. It focuses specifically within the context of Student Affairs and secondary trauma. Another popular window is the pro Q, well, it’s the professional quality of life skill. And the advantage of that is that it looks at compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary trauma, right? But I think the kind of starting high level, right? You can even we have the article coming out about workplace well being, and it’s based off of a. Brief assessment the sort of the workplace thriving scale, I think, is called, and kind of starting broadly and start understanding what the nuances of your particular campus are like. Berkeley, for instance. I know it’s a very politically active campus, and so issues of moral injury might be a little bit more pervasive there than maybe a campus that is not as politically active, right? So I think that by starting broad and then narrowing it down, really listening to your staff, and then you can figure out how to connect with the appropriate resource for what that particular issue is on campus. But yeah, so I think that there’s lots of folks doing particular consulting work, always feel free to like as you’re hearing about, folks that are doing work in this space, just reach out to them and ask for a conversation, or you might want to bring them to campus just to get their perspectives on it. I know that me and my colleagues have just literally been invited like, hey, like, just do listening tour or whatever and tell us what what we might be missing in those spaces. Right? So I think that, I think that shows the staff to the that you’re investing in that. But the trick is, right? Isn’t that we invite people and then not do anything with the information, we present the information that was gathered, and we strategize around that, right? So we don’t want to miss that key part,

Glenn DeGuzman
for sure, for sure. All right, y’all, we’re starting to get to the end of this podcast, and we always want your final thoughts. And this podcast is called Student Affairs NOW, so if you take a minute or two just to summarize, sort of like, what are you thinking about now? Sort of your final thoughts. Is there anything you’re pondering based on this conversation? Still questioning something that, oh, I wish I could have said something about this, or something that’s still troubling you, and let’s go. Let’s let’s go in the same order we started and open this episode. So Tanya, you want to get us started on this last question?

Tanya Koroyan
Sure. So my, my hope, just kind of final thoughts on this conversation, this topic is my hope that institutions and campus leadership continue to begin, Continue, or begin to really develop that better understanding of the selfless work that Residence Life does, or resident directors do, and the toll that it can take to literally live where you work, be among the students you serve. It’s such a unique role, so just knowing that more conversations are happening about it is great, and so I hope that it continues this role, along with any other helping roles on campus, must really not be forgotten about or feel forgotten about. So I know campus leadership plays a huge role in that So kind of going back to recognition, more recognition, appreciation offered to student affairs professionals who serve in positions like these, my hope is that conversations like this one can continue to happen so that we can do our part as a field to explore more ways to support our staff, which will, you know, support our students even better. And through continuing these conversations and doing more research, hopefully there will be more resources and more support, more funding that can be poured into this corner of Student Affairs. So I am excited for the future of this work for higher education graduate programs to start, I’ve recently learned they’re building in more curriculum around crisis response and trauma informed care, and that’s really exciting to hear. So I’m excited for the future of that and preparing our new professionals, and also just for the future of more resources for our students and staff, like the employees, employee assistance program that we spoke to that connects staff members to resources that will help them in their own self care journeys, but also resources like campus mobile crisis response units, which are trained professionals who come and support our students who are experiencing a mental health crisis just knowing that there’s more I more more units like this coming up is really great, so that we can continue to do really good work to take care of our own well being, so that we can continue to do a great job taking care of our students well being.

Glenn DeGuzman
Well said. Dr Koroyan and I did not know that grad prep programs are starting to focus in on that. That’s awesome to hear. That’s really cool to hear, Jason, your final thoughts. Oh,

Jason Lynch
well, it ties directly into what you just said. Dr Koroyan was saying it was grad prep programs, right? I think that my positionality, I guess, as a faculty, automatically makes me kind of think in that direction. And while, yes, I do, I do think that we’re heading in our good direction, there. We gotta go faster. I think the there’s a combined issue that’s going on where our grad enrollments are really taking a hit nationally for progress, because people see sort of the work that is being done, and they’re like, No thank you. I want to be paid good and I don’t want to have to be stressed out all the time. And so I think that that But, and I think that part of it is the professional preparation of our students, and that lies in partnership with practitioners, but also with the graduate preparation programs. And I think that students need to learn beyond just the theory, the theory is important, trust me, it is, but they also need to learn the. Technical application of how to do this, how to create cultures of care. I want to shout out Dr Rosie Perez the University of Michigan and her work on community care. Sorry, my cat decided to show up, and her great work around going self care is important. I want to underscore that and how to develop skill to do community care and create organizations that balance the work that we do right is going to be a critical importance if we want to stay employed as faculty in that way too. Yeah. So those are my final thoughts.

Glenn DeGuzman
Thank you. Dr Lynch, for your final thoughts. Dr Sutton, you get to close this out,

Steve Sutton
right? All right. Well, I really appreciate this conversation. I mean, I think I’m going to be thinking about this all day long, and probably even longer than that, you know, Jason, one of the things you just said really struck me, which is looking for good models out there that exist for how we can promote this culture of care. We can focus on either assessing how our organizations are doing around these issues is really crucial. You know, I think having collaborators is one of the things that’s most important in higher education. I mean, very rarely can we solve a problem on our own. And so I think it’s important to think about, you know, who on your campus, who locally Can you work with to to make sure this is an important conversation that’s happening at all levels of the institution, and then looking for, for, you know, ideas and resources for trying to address it, you know, Tanya, I’m lucky that you’re just, you’re on campus here, so you and I need to talk about ways that we can collaborate and do some things locally. And then then that final issue of, what are we going to stop doing? I mean, as I was talking about that topic, I’m thinking, you know, I need to work to role model this myself, you know. And even though I’ve tried to, you know, I think I need to redo my efforts in that respect. I mean, Glenn, your story that you just shared, it really struck me in terms of what you’re trying to practically do to address that. It’s, it’s interesting because I work for a provost who’s an economist, you know. So he talks a lot about incentives, cost benefit analysis and frames issues in that way. And so I think sometimes, you know, I found that being able to solve a problem I’m dealing with, if I can look towards some other type of framing, that I might be able to use that to help me come up with some solutions. And so I’m going to, I’m going to follow up on that. So thank you. Thank

Glenn DeGuzman
you. Wow. This has been terrific. I want to thank all of you for your leadership in this space so Dr. Tanya Koroyan, Dr. Jason Lynch, Dr. Steve Sutton, thank you so much. Wanna also thank our sponsors for today’s episode, Routledge Taylor, Francis and Huron. Routledge Taylor and Francis is the world’s leading academic publisher in education, publishing a wide range of books, journals and other resources for practitioners, faculty, administrators and researchers. They have welcomed Stylus publishing to their publishing program, and are thrilled to enrich our offerings in higher education, teaching, Student Affairs, professional development, assessment and more. Routledge is proud to support Student Affairs NOW. You can view their complete catalog of education titles routledge.com/education. Huron it’s a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice by creating sound strategies, optimizing operations, accelerating digital transformation and empowering businesses and their people to their own, to their future, by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging this as quo Huron creates sustainable results for organizations they serve. And then, obviously, huge shout out to our producer, Natalie Ambrosey, who does all our behind the scenes work to make us look good also has ties to UC Berkeley. So this, this is like a lot of intersection and connection with this group here. So you know, obviously we love the support that these conversations have for our greater communities. Thank you to all our listeners and our viewers. Our numbers keep rising, continue to give us a five star review. Give a shout out. And if you want to contact any of these panelists, their contact information is on our website. It’s going to be on, just click on the link and you can contact them and ask them for questions. I’m sure Tanya’s going to be up for consulting gig soon, Doctor Koroyan, so I’m, I’m, I’m just so super excited. This was a great conversation. I’m Glenda Guzman, thanks again for our guests and everyone who’s watching, listening. Everyone have a great week. Bye, everybody.

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