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Our North Star: DoingWell

MIND

RELATIONSHIPS

PURPOSE

BODY

Provide world-class student support

Promote and educate about health

Influence the academic environment

Create physical spaces that promote wellbeing

A New, Holistic Approach

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healthy habits

getting support

DoingWell

+

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Wellbeing Pillars

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Predictors of Wellbeing

I am confident in my ability to get along socially at MIT

I feel that I �belong at MIT

I have friends

at MIT

I feel I am prepared for life after graduating from MIT

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Promoting a Culture of Wellbeing

Dynamic Spaces

Strong Support Network

Prevention & Education

Student Center, New Vassar �and Site 4 Residence Halls, �DAPER spaces

Dean on Call, CARE Team, Student Mental Health,

After-hours support, Food security and Living Communities

DAPER PE & Wellness, Faculty Trainings, SMH&CS�Outreach, Peer Education

Coordination, Wellbeing programming

We will create healthy living and learning environments by focusing on three areas:

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Assemble student advisory groups
Collect course feedback mid-semester
Invite student reps to faculty/department meetings�
Encourage faculty to take At-Risk online training
Include messages about support in syllabi, including S3, GradSupport, and DAS
Allocate time at every department meeting to discuss any student or department concerns.�
Invite support resources to a department meeting
Ask faculty at the start of each semester to identify one support resource that they know that they can reach out to if they are concerned about a student
Ask graduate advisors for plans for funding graduate students at the end of every year

Get Student Feedback

Influence the Culture

Engage with Support

Fostering Wellbeing in Academic Departments

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Wellbeing Pillars

MIND

BODY

RELATIONSHIPS

PURPOSE

Wellbeing is core to MIT’s educational experience and can be broadly categorized into four pillars.

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Wellbeing in Practice

Practicing self-care
Learning healthy coping strategies
Managing stress appropriately

Getting good sleep
Exercising regularly
Eating well

Building healthy relationships
Navigating difficult conversations
Finding community

Asking “Why?”
Finding meaning
Establishing goals and values

MIND

BODY

RELATIONSHIPS

PURPOSE

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A Curricular Approach

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What can faculty and instructors do?

Check in with students following big events at MIT and around the world

Share the Faculty Guide and online trainings
Invite support resources to a department meeting

Include information about support in syllabi and refer back to it throughout the semester

Get mid-semester feedback and add questions about wellbeing on end-of-semester subject evaluations

Now, what can we do to help influence the environment, specifically THE ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT?
Before asking faculty AND STAFF to do anything more, we completely recognize that right now, faculty AND STAFF are feeling stressed and overwhelmed too. We saw this with a group of Undergraduate Officers last week AND AGAIN on last Friday’s 8am call. These past two years have made us all think about our own wellbeing in ways that we probably haven’t before. We certainly feel this in the support world.
WE ALSO know that a lot of faculty are already doing a lot to care for and support students. We’re hearing increasingly more that faculty are being flexible this semester - checking in with students after big events at MIT and in the world, supporting students who test positive, and granting extensions on assignments. For those faculty, we don’t want them to feel like they have to do more right now. That level of care and support that they’re offering is having a big impact on students in positive ways.

[ADVANCE] BUT WE ALSO know that there are faculty who are looking for advice and resources on how to support students. Not knowing what to do can add to feeling more stressed. In our meeting with Undergraduate Officers last Monday we shared some things that they can do to support student wellbeing in the classroom and labs.
So, for those who don’t know where to start, these are suggestions for some really simple things that they can do to show students they care about them and encourage them to care for themselves.
These are broad principles and examples of small things that can be done that can have a huge impact.

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Here’s what we’re excited about!

Lead the way in higher education and make MIT known for our culture of excellence and wellbeing.

With your partnership and support, here’s what we’re really excited about.
Before we started this work a few years ago, we visited and looked at research being done at many other schools - Duke, UVM, Wake Forest, USC.
One thing that we’ve always been A LITTLE envious of is that unlike some of those schools, we don’t have a school of public health, medical school, or traditional psychology department where the research that we were looking at was coming out of.
We know that there’s a lot of great research being done at MIT in all of the schools and the college that touches on aspects of wellness but to our knowledge - nothing looking at the impact of the academic environment on student wellbeing.
BUT, we’re really excited to have Pawan, John, and Sanjay - even while he’s on his sabbatical - here because they’re working with their colleagues to lead some of this research HERE at MIT!
They want to study how we can create academic environments that promote student learning and student wellbeing. They’re in the process of formulating the research question to guide this work and developing the research design.
This new idea of faculty, other colleagues in academic departments, and staff in support and wellbeing COMING TOGETHER AND USING RESEARCH as a foundation of our work is so exciting. It is the perfect example of bringing together the knowledge and innovative spirit from MIT that Suzy talked about earlier.

From that, we hope to BUILD a consortium of faculty colleagues - those who participate in the research, those who are doing small things, those who are passionate and interested in student wellbeing - to help us advance our collective goals.
We know that a lot of faculty are thinking about this and engaged in some work that can help contribute to advancing this effort. We know of efforts in Physics, Brain and Cog, SHASS, the Media Lab, and all around MIT. We want to bring those people together so they can learn from one another and make even greater change.

Lastly, we want to make sure that we’re giving faculty and instructors the tools to help shape this culture. On the previous slide, we shared some examples of small things that faculty can do to positively influence the academic environment. That’s not an exhaustive list of practices by any means. We know this because students are telling us other things that faculty are doing that help them feel supported. We’re actually compiling a list of best practices - things that students are telling us that faculty are already doing - that we will be sharing with all faculty.
Our goal is ambitious. BUT, WE KNOW THAT’S THE SPIRIT OF MIT. We know this isn’t a problem that is isolated to MIT so we want to lead the way in higher education and make MIT known for our culture of EXCELLENCE AND WELLBEING.
As you can see, we’re really excited about all of this work. We think that one big step for us is getting you, our senior leadership, to think about one big question that David is going to pose to us and that we’ll think about together in small groups. With your support, leadership, and good thinking, we’re really excited about what we can do. I’ll turn it over to David.