Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show host or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emerg.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: It's six o' clock in time again for Brain Matters, the official radio show of the UA Counseling Center. We are broadcasting from the campus of the University of Alabama. Good evening. My name is Dr. B.J. guenther and I'm the host of the show along with my colleague and producer Kathryn Howell. And in case you don't know, this show is about physical and mental health issues that affect college students and in particular UA students. So you can listen to us each Tuesday night at 6pm on 90.7 FM or you can listen online at WVUAFM UA. Edu. You can also download some apps that have us on the on there live. I like the MyTuner radio app and I just type in www.wvuafm90.7. So another thing, this is our last show for this semester and we won't start back up. We only do shows in the fall and the spring, so we'll have we'll go on our winter break and then we won't come back until, I'd say mid January will be our first show for the spring. So if you're listening and you have ideas for show topics, please email those to me at brain mattersradiovuafm ua.edu I'll try to remember to give this out periodically throughout the show tonight, but of course I'll entertain any topic ideas that you may have as long as it has to do with college mental health or physical health either for that matter, that affects college students. Tonight's topic is an interesting one, I think. Kathryn, I think you were doing research for the show and found this website and we thought it would be a great topic, basically helping college students to thrive.
And that's what we're trying to do here at the Counseling Center. If you really look at the big picture, we're joined by Dr. Laurie Schreiner, a professor of higher education at Azusa Pacific University in Southern California, and she's the director of the thriving project. Dr. Schreiner is nationally recognized for her work on student success, well being and the factors that help college students not just persist, but truly thrive. And her research integrates intellectual, interpersonal, and psychological engagement to give us a fuller picture of what students need in order to flourish during their college years. She has advised universities across the country, and her work has helped reshape how institutions think about student development and campus culture. I am thrilled to have her on today to talk about what thriving actually looks like for today's students and how we can help more of them experience it. Thank you so much for being on the show, Dr. Schreiner.
[00:03:20] Speaker C: It's a pleasure, B.J. thanks for inviting me.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Tell us about. Tell the listeners about your background. What is your degree in, where you're from? Where are you right now? What time is it right now? We talked about this right before the show, right?
[00:03:34] Speaker C: Well, right now I'm on the West Coast. Yeah, I'm in Southern California right now, and that's where I've lived for the last 23 years. But my grew up in East Tennessee, so.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: So I just came from there.
[00:03:47] Speaker C: Your neck of the woods, sort of in the grand scheme of things. And so my background is as a psychologist, and yet I've been a faculty member all of my professional life. And so I really bring to this work. I'm a researcher, but I'm.
I really have tried to place myself at the intersection of psychology and higher education, using what we know work psychologically to help students succeed, but also to help faculty and staff support their students.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: That's a good point. You don't really ever hear many people talk about faculty and staff as much, you know, as we do, focusing mostly on students.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: Right.
We tend to see students as, let's call them the author of their own success.
And so, you know, the successful students, that's great. They can take credit for it. The ones who are struggling, we tend to kind of blame the victim a bit there.
And so really, my focus as a community psychologist is the environment, to say, what kind of environments are we creating on university campuses that are contributing to a student's ability to thrive or not.
And so it means looking in the mirror ourselves as university leaders and educators, and not just expecting students to figure it all out for themselves and do it for themselves.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Yeah, throw them to the wolves, basically.
That's hard. What. For listeners who may not be familiar with your work, what exactly is the thriving project?
[00:05:26] Speaker C: So the thriving project really began about 20 years ago as we started thinking about. And I'd done a lot of research and consulting work in student success and retention. And I thought there's just something missing here. We're missing a piece of the puzzle. By focusing only on GPA or retention from first to second year, even graduation rates, of course we want our students to graduate, so those things are important.
But we lose. Almost half the students who ever try college don't make it. And so figuring out how do we reach those students so that they're. They don't feel like their only choice is to leave? Right. How do we create the kind of environment where they want to stay, are able to stay, are committed to staying. And so to do that, you have to look psychologically. You can't just look at, well, do they have the academic skills to be successful? It. And so the thriving project really began as a way of conceptualizing student success as more than retention and graduation rates, of saying, yes, there is this academic component, but we. We really thought about that more as engagement. It's academic engagement. Am I making sense of what I'm learning? Am I energized by the learning process? So there's that intellectual engagement, certainly, but it's also about relationships.
And I think, as. As any student knows and as we know as educators as well, if relationships are not for you, it is hard to concentrate in the classroom. It's hard to be successful in many other areas of your life. And beneath all of that is kind of, how do we help students make the most of their college experience?
How do we help them really come alive to all that is meant to be happening for them so that they can be kind of active co constructors with us of their learning experience that goes on. It shapes the rest of their lives.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And I agree with you. I don't think you're right. I don't think it's just about academics, but that's what most people are focusing on, especially parents. I'm just gonna. There. I threw it out there because here's the thing, like, I don't. I was gonna ask you, I wrote down, what's the number one reasons students leave? What do you think's the number one reason students leave? You know, I feel like they're. They're doing well or they wouldn't get into college anyway. So they make it this far. I usually tell them, they make it this far, you're doing or you wouldn't have gotten in school wherever you go. But it's after that, there's something missing. I just met with a student this morning who came in in a crisis, and he just has completely. He's a freshman, and he's lost the motivation he said, I'm just not motivated. What do you think is the number one reason students leave?
[00:08:32] Speaker C: Well, you know, it's complex. So let me say that, you know, is. Is if we had it all figured out, then students wouldn't leave.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:41] Speaker C: But, you know, I think we overlook how important it is that students feel that they belong in a place. Right. And we think of that sometimes as this fuzzy, warm feeling. But belonging is essential to learning. Your brain cannot process what you need to learn if you are sitting in the classroom, looking around, going, I'm not sure I fit here. I'm not. Boy, they seem smarter than I am, or they seem more dedicated than I am.
Oh, I'm not doing it. So. So, you know, we may say, well, that student is. Feel. Is struggling academically or is feeling inadequate. No, they feel like they don't belong. Right, right. And anytime you struggle, your conclusion is, I must not belong here because I look around and I don't think anybody else is struggling. Now, you're wrong about that because.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Because nobody's talking.
[00:09:34] Speaker C: Because we all struggle. And, you know, the. The university experience in the classroom is supposed to be hard. Right. But we don't. We act like if it's supposed to come easily to people, and if it's not coming easily to you, then you just think, well, I don't belong here.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:54] Speaker C: And so that's one of the first questions that students ask when they come into a university environment is. Is like, what does it take to succeed here? Do I have what it takes?
Do I belong? And, you know, when there's a negative answer to any of those questions, students vote with their feet.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Right? They do. They do.
[00:10:16] Speaker C: No one. No one wants to stay in an environment where you feel like, this, I wasn't meant for this or this. This is not. These are not my people, or this is not where I feel like I can become the person I want to become.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: I know, and I feel like probably going to get fired for saying this, but here it goes.
When they told me I could have a radio show, they said, just don't cuss on the air, B.J. that's all. That's the only thing you can do on the air.
[00:10:44] Speaker C: I'll try to support you.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: I'm not worried about that. But I am, you know, when students. I'm in a little bit of a different position. I feel like then maybe faculty or other staff here at campus, because students will come in and I have had them. I've got one that I'm seeing right now who. Who is exactly Feeling exactly what you're talking about. And I can't encourage that person to stay when they don't feel like they belong. You know, I have to encourage them to. To do what they feel they need to do. And if that means leave.
[00:11:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Maybe they have to leave, you know.
[00:11:19] Speaker C: No, I know, but especially universities get a little nervous when their faculty say that.
[00:11:26] Speaker C: Priority, our first priority has to be to the student. What is in the best, best interests of the student.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:11:32] Speaker C: And sometimes it is to leave. Although I would say that there's lots of intermediate steps we can take before that.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I. I find that a lot of times they haven't taken any kind of steps. You know, like the person I mentioned this morning who lost some motivation, he said he's very lonely, but he hasn't really taken too many steps to combat that. So hope he. Hopefully he's come here in time and we can do that before he. If he decides to leave. I don't know. He didn't mention that.
What about what motivated you to study this field, to study thriving rather than just what we've been talking about, rather than just academic performance or retention?
[00:12:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
So, you know, I spent a lot of time researching and doing a lot of consulting around retention and academic success. And again, I just felt like something was missing as I worked with my own students in the classroom. And that's the advantage to being faculty and doing this kind of research. Right. Is I. I get to experience it every day. There were so many psychological factors that. That were affecting the student experience and that were up to us as the university.
So when you, as a student get a letter of admission to the university, you're being told, we think you can succeed here. So now the burden shifts to us. We have to then make good on it. We thought succeed here. Let's create the kind of environment where you can.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well, we're going to take our first break now, and when we come back, I want to piggyback on the faculty. You mentioned faculty. You are a faculty member at your university. I want to. I want to talk about what faculty can do. So let's just stop right there. We'll be right back. You're listening to brain matters on 90.7. The capstone.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: Wvuafm Tuscaloosa.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling, and no relationship is created between the show host or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling Center. At 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: You're back listening to brain matters on 90.7, the capstone. I'm BJ Guenther. We're talking tonight about helping students thrive while in college. And before I forget, Captain just reminded me if you have any ideas for upcoming topics for our show, especially in the spring when we start back in January, email those to me at brain mattersradiobuafm ua.edu and I'll consider using your topic suggestion. My guest tonight is joining us from Southern California. She is a faculty member, but she's at Azusa Pacific University. But she's also the creator, the director of the Thriving project. And we've just been talking about what that is. But you mentioned Dr. Shriner about faculty. How can faculty help create the learning environments where students feel energized and curious and motivated? I mentioned a student who I'm seeing who's lost his motivation. What could a faculty member do to help? If they knew it, I guess, you know, they'd have to know it. You can't just read your students minds, but what can they do?
[00:15:17] Speaker C: Well, that's a great question. And you know, the, the one experience every student has in common when they attend a university is they go to class, they encounter faculty. And so faculty play a really pivotal role in the students experience.
And so in thinking about that we've talked and I think that's one of the things about my research that I love is it it all began in talking with students.
So we felt like something was kind of missing from the equation if we only looked at their academic performance and whether they stayed to graduate. And so we asked faculty and staff to give us some names. And this was at nine different universities give us names of students that when you think of a thriving student, we never defined it. We said whatever that means to you, just give us some names. And then as we talked with those students and we asked them what does what does this mean to you? And you know, how do you, how do you begin to think about yourself and whether you in fact are thriving or not?
I think faculty came up not directly but indirectly.
And in our then quantitative work that we've done since, it's one of the biggest predictors of student thriving, it is how student see and interact with faculty. And faculty often don't Think about themselves.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: I think you're so right. Yeah.
[00:16:54] Speaker C: I just tended. I mean, most of us enter it, enter the field because we're passionate about our discipline and we may or may not have had a single class on how to teach. And sometimes, sometimes that's evident.
And, you know, we're kind of learning by doing trial and error. But, you know, it comes as a surprise when I talk to faculty to say, do you realize how you are shaping the environment in which students can.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Impacting these students.
Or not. Or not.
[00:17:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: I hate to say that, but that's the truth.
[00:17:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
So when you think about what they. Oh, go ahead.
When you think about what faculty can do, I would frame it this way. It is. They need to see students. When students feel seen.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: And by that, I mean they feel like that faculty member knows them, knows a little bit about their circumstances, is genuinely trying to understand their experience.
And that then as a faculty member, if I'm truly seeing my students and I see my goal as. It's my job, it's what I get paid to do every day, is to engage students in their own learning.
That's my job.
Yeah. I gotta get across this content. But, you know, if it were all content, I mean, that really isn't what we can do as faculty. Because Google would probably do it a lot better.
Yeah. If it was just transmitting information. But if it's. My job is to light the fire.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: I don't know how. How large. What's the enrollment of your university? ASUSA Pacific.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: Yeah. So we're at about 10,000 students. Right. So I know there are large classes.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Well, and this was. My next question was leading into that. We're at about 42,000 now. I know we have quite a few large classes and I would say I would categorize a large class 100 to 200 students, you know.
[00:18:57] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: How do you. And you might have had large classes. Maybe not that large, but pretty big.
[00:19:04] Speaker C: 300 before in a class.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: How do you. How do you get to know your students? How do you make them feel. Feel like they are making a difference or they're being seen, like you mentioned.
[00:19:16] Speaker C: Huh? Yeah. Well, I think there's. The trick is making the classroom psychologically small.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:23] Speaker C: So you may be one of 300 students, but if what we're doing in class puts you in smaller groups and maybe with a peer leader. Right. I can't, you know, be all things to all 300 people, but I can work with peer leaders. I can engage students in particular exercises where. And I can also Use examples and texts that connect to the student experience so that the student feels like, oh, I see myself in that PowerPoint slide. I see myself in that text, or I see myself in that guest speaker, or, you know, so that. That every student in the classroom has some way of connecting to each other, to me as the instructor, to the material, it's all about connections. So engaged learning is about connections. It is.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: That's. That's the magic word right there. Maybe that needs to be a topic for the spring. Somehow I need to figure out how I can do that in a show. How can schools help students move simply from surviving to truly engaging, you know, with learning? Do you have any ideas for how schools can do that?
[00:20:37] Speaker C: Well, and I think when you think about what an institution can do starts in the hiring process, right? You know, that we're looking for faculty who really enjoy students.
And.
[00:20:54] Speaker C: You know, we frame one of our goals as, you know, we want to engage students in the learning process and we provide support to faculty to learn ways of doing that.
And we, you know, I think those are things that we can, can do to help students engage in the learning process. But it also goes beyond the classroom because I think there are ways in the co curricular experience, whether that is in the residence halls or in campus organizations, so that we're connecting what students are doing with what they're learning in the classroom. So it's not just I leave the classroom door, it's done.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: Yes, Right.
[00:21:35] Speaker C: But everything I'm doing is a learning experience.
And so thinking about how we equip all of our staff, including our student staff, to engage each other. And so part of this, I think, BJ that we've learned along the way is that thriving is, is not about just what's happening to me. So one of the most common things we heard when we interviewed students, we said, tell us what it means to thrive. What, what is that to you? The most common phrase we heard is thriving is not just about me.
[00:22:11] Speaker C: So these high thriving students.
[00:22:16] Speaker C: Were very invested in other people.
So they were doing things to make a difference in their immediate environment. If they were feeling like, oh, it's, I've had a rough day.
[00:22:31] Speaker C: They knew to connect with other people. They knew to reach out. And the interesting thing is it wasn't just, how do I get support from others? It was more about, what can I do to help somebody else else? What can I do to connect and help somebody else have a better day than I've been having. Right.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: That is it. Yes. Yeah.
[00:22:53] Speaker C: It's like Stop thinking about yourself so much.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Well, and that, you know, that is what I see a lot of. And, and I don't think they, sometimes, I don't think they realize they're doing it. I think it's a certain level of immaturity versus maturity.
[00:23:10] Speaker C: Well, you know, my mom always told me when I was, I was kind of a shy, my teenager and she, and I didn't always like to, to be around strangers. And she said, stop thinking about yourself and look for somebody else who's having a worse time than you are.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: That's a good point.
That's a good point. I'm gonna have to remember that to tell my students. What do you think are the early signs that a student is not thriving?
You know, whether it's academically or socially even, you know.
[00:23:40] Speaker C: Yeah, well, and I think, I think it is this disengagement. I think it's when they start pulling away.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: You know, so, so if you see isolating behavior, somebody staying, if they live in the residence hall, they're staying in their room when there were other options, they're not going to class, or if they go to class, they're the last one in. Slipping in the back, first one out the door. You know, those are clear signs that I don't feel like I belong. I mean, that's really what, what that's a signal of.
And then, you know, I asked, actually asked this question. I was working with some first year students at a university a couple weeks ago and I said, you know, what would you look for in your peers to say that they're, they're not thriving?
And he said, oh, they're sleeping too much, they're staying in their room. But they also said, and they stopped taking showers.
[00:24:35] Speaker B: I know.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: Yeah, that personal hygiene issue is often one that, that we overlook and think. But that's, that's one of the signs, you know, is that you're really not, you don't care about your, about yourself, you don't care much anymore. You, you, you are, you are maybe physically present, but you're not psychologically present.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Absolutely. That's the truth. What about.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Like you emphasize, we just talked about psychological well being, you know, as essential for student success. But what are the biggest psychological barriers do you think you're seeing in students today?
[00:25:15] Speaker C: Well, I think we, we live in a society that.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: That hasn't served them well.
So I, I think we've, you know, it's tended to bubble wrap our kids. Yes.
And you know, I think when you've not experienced adversity, when we never let you fall down and skin your knee. You never learn how to get up and have coping skills often and deal with it. Right. And so I think we've got, we've raised a generation of, of young people who haven't had to do, to figure things out. You know, either their family systems have either done for them or said it's okay, you don't have to do it or you know, there's been kind of a protective layer that I think has not served them well.
And we're in a culture that puts all your laundry out for everyone to see on social media. And so we've normalized, kind of like everybody has a diagnosis and, and then that puts a lot of stress.
So I think, you know, you've got these, this pressure cooker of a lot of stress and expectation from families to do well and then you've got, you know, all the, all the other pressures coming in from social media and nobody's taught you how to cope with it.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: No. And it's like, how do you fix that? Because I think sometimes the. I totally agree with you 100 and I feel like at my age I'm blunt and so I just say it like it is. And I warn students, I'm like, if you can't handle that, you need to get a touchy feely therapist. That's what I and most of them, I will say nine times out of 10, they will say, I want that. I don't want you to candy coat it.
[00:27:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: But it surprises me sometimes because they come from like you say, a generation and an environment where it is candy coated a lot of times. And so what I say, sometimes they don't like hearing, they don't want to hear it. So it's students who are really at a level where they really know they have some, what's the word I'm looking for? They have some, you know, insight into what they need that the therapy will work for them.
[00:27:38] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Let's list bounce back on this on when we come back. We've got our second break. Let's talk more a little bit about a resilience then.
[00:27:48] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: This is basically what we're talking about. How you know exactly what is resilience. How you know, how, how does somebody.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Start developing resilience when they come to college? Because that's what's going to keep you in college in the long run if you think about it. We'll be right back. You're listening to brain matters on 90.7. The capstone.
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Wvuafm Tuscaloosa.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling, and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Hey, you're back listening to brain matters on 90.7 the Capstone. I'm Dr. B.J. guenther. We're talking tonight about thriving in college. And My guest is Dr. Laurie Schreiner. Dr. Schreiner is a faculty member at Azusa Pacific University in Southern California. She's also the director of the Thriving Project, which. It sounds to me like you do the all. A lot of research, Dr. Shriner.
[00:29:22] Speaker C: I do. I love to do research.
[00:29:26] Speaker C: Because it affects students, right? It, it. It's like the research helps us understand things and, and come up with some new ideas. And I love thinking about the numbers as people.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: I love trends, too. I like talking about, you know, the different trends. How would you know? We left off talking about how this generation has changed and sometimes doesn't appear resilient. What do you think? And, you know, like, what role does mental health play in student thriving? How can educators, you know, support.
Support it without overstepping, you know, because I have to catch myself and stop saying this generation, you know, that's offensive to them. I know. It would be to me.
So how do we go move past that, that.
[00:30:13] Speaker C: And because every gener, every generation, the generation before it refers to them as this generation.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Of course I know, you know, so.
[00:30:21] Speaker C: That'S, that's nothing new. And, you know, I think as, as each new wave of student comes along, we want to understand them, we want to learn about them, we want to enter into their experiences. And so it's in that spirit, not to categorize or label, but to say, oh, their brains actually work different than my brain work. That's a fascinating thing to me as, as an instructor to say their brains are primarily kinesthetic and visually wired now.
And so old lecture habits, I mean, they just aren't going to work because.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: And you can learn so much. Like, I remember the moment it happened to me when I stopped getting. I'm just gonna to, you know, disclose here for a minute when I stopped getting defensive with them knowing more than me, I had to realize they do in some respects they do know more about their phone than I do. And so it, you know, that's when the light bulb moment happened when I was like, I think I'm going to use them to help me instead of like fight against that.
[00:31:29] Speaker C: Exactly. You know, and I think when we look at, at and, and it's, it's pretty well established empirically that, that we don't have highly resilient young people in the United States. So that's in all the nat. The International Indicators. The U.S. yeah. Course. Pretty in the bottom quartile of resilience.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: Not great.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: So that's not just old fogies talking about the new generation.
You know, it really is to say we as the prior generation have created conditions where we have not, not built resilience in our children.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:32:04] Speaker C: And so it's, you know, you don't blame the children for that. You look, you look at what are the practices, what are the ways we've thought about things as a culture.
And you know, if we think about, well, what is resilience? It's the ability to bounce back.
[00:32:21] Speaker C: From adversity. Yes. And in some ways even to bounce back better.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Better.
[00:32:27] Speaker C: Right. That I'm a better person because of the adversity. I've learned some things. I've gained some new skills. I have a new way of thinking about things because of the adversity. And you know, and I think when we think about how do we build that, part of it is you do let some adversity happen.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Yes, yes. And that was. I was going to ask you what. But are the first thing that comes to mind on a college campus for me with regards to resilience are student athletes. Student athletes or even actors on campus, you know, if that's their dancers performance that their musical performances, there's going to be a lot of failure.
[00:33:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: And those chosen, you know, know.
[00:33:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: Hobbies or whatever you want to call it. Majors.
[00:33:21] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So anybody who had, who has a performance orientation, whether that's athletic or musical or dramatic, you know, I think those who've, who've had performance wired into them from an early age do tend to be more resilient because they have had a lot of practice.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:43] Speaker C: With negative experiences, there's been rejection. There have been times that they don't. Don't make the cut. Gut. Right.
And so I think that population probably has learned, has learned some of the, the resilience skills. But it's. How do I interpret those negative events?
[00:34:00] Speaker B: I know, right.
[00:34:02] Speaker C: If I see it as the end of the world. Then I never get back out on the field or I never try out for another play. If I see it as, oh, I'm such a, a loser, it's never going to get better. This is the end of the world. It's always going to be like this, you know, so, so people who, who aren't resilient are very passive because they have, have taken everything personally. They see it as, it's this pervasive sense of it's always like this and, you know, I'm never going to be able to recover from it. It's the end of the world. So I think teaching students, and I see that as our job, whether we are their families or the educators who surround them once they get into, into college, it's our job to teach kind of this, we might call it an explanatory style, right?
How do I interpret? How do I see myself? How do I see the situation? How do I see others? How do I see the future?
There's some great research on what's called wise interventions.
[00:35:07] Speaker C: And what is that? And so wise interventions really, and I think, you know, this is where student success research is going, but it really, I think, also helps us understand resilience, that it's the way we explain things to ourselves. Not just the bad things, but just whatever is going on in our life, our interpretation of it is what.
[00:35:32] Speaker C: Leads us to behave in certain ways.
Right? And so, you know, actually this, this example was, was given by one of the authors, so Greg Walton at Stanford University, you know, he said, if you've got an abusive parent, that's a horrible thing. And, and it's like, how do we make some changes in that? Well, you have to change the way that abusive parent sees the child. So that's, you know, if you see your child as. This is someone who's an imposition, who is, you know, doing this on purpose to me to be bad. To me, this is a bad child. You, you behave very differently than if you look at your child and say that' a loving but imperfect little creature, right?
And, and that little creature is looking to me for everything you're going to. So the way you see your child is what's affecting your behavior. So the same thing can be said when we look at students, right? If they, if something happens to them and they interpret it as evidence that they're not meant to be in college, their behavior is to leave, right?
And so, and resilience is, is all about being able to see the bigger picture.
And to see what can I learn from this situation. This situation, okay, it was bad. I wish it hadn't happened, but it did.
What do I need to do differently next time.
[00:37:03] Speaker C: And, and realize these things happen to people. I'm not the only person this happens to. This happens to people. And you know, they can begin to see failure. And I use that term loosely, it might mean the B minus. I know it's not truly failure, but when they begin to see it as a temporary setback, that's the key. B.J.
[00:37:25] Speaker B: That'S the key.
[00:37:27] Speaker C: Because you can't see it as a temporary setback.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: Well, and I've, you know, learned the hard way. You can't say in our generation, I'm assuming you're close to my age, our generation has a tendency to say things like, suck it up, buttercup.
You know that, that, you see that, I saw that on a tv.
Yes. I have to hold myself back. Because they don't, based on what you just defined, they don't know how, maybe they haven't been taught, you know, they don't know how to be resilient. That's part of my job as a therapist. Is exactly my question to you. Does the Thrive project, do you do trainings with parents, with, with teachers, with therapists even about how to teach resilience?
[00:38:13] Speaker C: So the interesting piece about this, so the, the answer is yes, we do trainings, but it's more targeted toward university.
[00:38:21] Speaker C: Staff and faculty. So even a university counseling center. Certainly.
[00:38:28] Speaker C: I have done some things with parents more in the sense of if there's a family orientation.
[00:38:36] Speaker C: Opportunity, how to, you know, how can parents, how can family members support their students? So certainly we do that.
[00:38:45] Speaker C: Now. Resilience.
[00:38:48] Speaker C: As we measure thriving.
A lot of people say, well, why isn't resilience one of the scales on there? Right?
And it's because it's embedded and that is the statistical thing. But you know, as you, as you measure things, if I know that I, a student.
[00:39:06] Speaker C: Has a level of optimism, then I know they're going to be resilient. Right? And so we don't need to ask a lot of questions about resilience. It's, do they have this positive, we call it a positive perspective. And that is to say, okay, in the long run I think things will work out because I'm going to learn the right strategies and put in the time and effort to make it work out. So it's not this, this unrealistic optimism, but it is this, this long term view that's realistic that says if I Put in the work, it's going to be okay.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: And I think they have experienced that somewhere in the past too.
Might not be in school, necessarily in school, you know, might not be academically.
[00:39:54] Speaker C: Yeah, but we can teach that, you know, in a first year seminar, through residence hall education, through co curricular opportunities, that even, even what faculty, some of the messages that they convey in the classroom, you know, to say, hey, this is going to be hard for you at first. It's supposed to be. But you will. I'm going to teach you the strategies and if you practice, I know you can succeed.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Absolutely.
We've got an email question.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: Kind of along the same lines. I get a positivity. I'll say it like that. So what positive results have you observed since implementing the Pro, the Thrive project?
[00:40:34] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I think what we, what we're seeing is that students are more engaged and, and I would say that the, the results that we see are also happening with the educators, with faculty and staff and senior leaders. And I, I would say, BJ that most of my focus is with them because I feel like, like a lot of burdens are placed on students. And we certainly want to provide help to students as well. But there's also a lot of support that they could access in the university. But the university itself has to normalize the struggle. And to say, we know this is tough, but we're going to provide you with strategies, with support, with access to the resources that you need to be successful. Not just to be successful, but to really thrive, to come alive to who you are and who you, you want to be.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: That's cool. I love that word thrive. I don't use it often enough, but I think it needs to be used more because it connects positivity in my mind.
[00:41:41] Speaker C: Right. And it's a more holistic view it that also, you know, I, I think it, the image I always think about is just like a flower blossoming.
[00:41:52] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:41:52] Speaker C: You know, and that's how I see students, is they are coming into their own.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: They are.
[00:41:58] Speaker C: And I love that.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: It's fun to see them.
[00:42:00] Speaker C: Very fun.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: It is fun.
We're going to take our last break. When we come back, I want to, I hope I can get to some of this. I want to talk about technology a little bit. I want to talk about, since you do so much research, I want to talk about the outcomes and then we'll wrap it up a little bit. Hope we have time to get to all this. So you're listening to brain matters on 90.7. The capstone we'll be right back.
[00:42:33] Speaker C: Wvuafm, Tuscaloosa.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 3483.
If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: Hey, you're listening to brain matters on 90.7 the Kids Capstone. I'm BJ Gunther, and before I forget, because I forgot during the last segment, if you have any ideas for show topics for our upcoming semester, which will be the spring semester, please email those to me@brain mattersradiovuafm.ua.edu and I'll consider using your topic ideas. Tonight. We're talking about thriving in college. My guest is Dr. Laurie Schreiner. She is a faculty member on at Auza Pacific University, but also director of the Thrive Project. How long has the Thrive Project been around?
[00:43:50] Speaker C: Well, 2007 is when we first started doing the research about this.
[00:43:57] Speaker C: And then it's. It's really blossomed since then.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: How is the. And you may have said this already, but specifically, how. How do you measure? You know, how's it. Is it more qualitative or is it. How's it quantified? God. Thriving.
Right?
[00:44:13] Speaker C: So that.
[00:44:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:44:15] Speaker C: Yeah, that's okay. So we have an instrument that we've developed over the years called the thriving quotient. So it's an instrument that has 24 items on it, and it measures five different aspects of thriving. So one is, are students engaged in the learning process? So engaged learning is one component of thriving.
The second component is called academic determination. It's kind of like, are they putting in the effort? Do they know the strengths they have that they can. Can really access to when they face challenges?
And then there's the interpersonal component, which is social connectedness. So do I have people in my life who care about me, who listen to me?
[00:45:00] Speaker C: You know, am I. Am I feeling connected in healthy ways to other people?
And with that is. We call it diverse citizenship. But what we mean by that is there's an openness to difference.
A thriving student is one who is open to difference, realizing that it enriches their life, and they also want to make a difference in other people's lives. And then the final piece is the psychological piece that we call positive perspective. It's that realistic optimism we were talking about earlier. So those are the five scales on the instrument.
So the online survey asks a lot of other questions because we like to do predictive analyses. So in university. And it's meant to help a university see what aspects need to be tweaked a little bit to help more of their students thrive.
But we have that for undergraduate students. We have a version for adult professional learners returning to college, we have a version for graduate students.
And then because the focus really is on how do we become a thriving campus, we recognize that if faculty and staff aren't thriving, it's pretty hard for them to support students in their thriving. And so we also have the faculty thriving quotient and a staff thriving quotient. So we do measure, see, you know, we measure what matters. And so there has to be a way of measuring thriving so that we can also see, well, are we making a difference difference?
If we do this intervention, what difference does it make?
[00:46:39] Speaker B: You know, and it really factors into retention, doesn't it? That's. I think that is what might be so attractive.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: For universities to use this quotient.
[00:46:54] Speaker C: It. It does. I would say there needs to be more than thinking about that, because that's the whole point of.
Of coming up with a different, more holistic version of student success is it's not just about butts and seats, you know, or some. Or students finishing their program.
Those are important aspects, but it's really more about is the student making the most of this investment of their time and energy and, and money and feeling.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: Like they have a purpose.
[00:47:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: Here on campus, too. What about technology? How is technology, you know, both positive and negative influencing student thriving today?
[00:47:36] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I think.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: Or not. Yeah.
[00:47:39] Speaker C: Yeah, I think. I think there are challenges and there are opportunities, as with anything. And so I think the challenge is mostly around the social media where it looks like everybody else has a better life than you do. Do you know, they're doing more fun things or they're in better relationships or their body looks better or, you know, whatever.
I think that social comparison that's happening, not to mention cyber bullying or any of those things, but I think just the social comparison is such a negative.
[00:48:15] Speaker C: Because it's like everybody else gets to curate their life. Life, and yet you're looking at your life uncurated. Right. So of course you're going to look worse off. Right. You haven't had. You haven't put the filters on yet.
[00:48:32] Speaker C: So I think that that's the, The Big downside. And a lot of the research shows that there is also.
[00:48:39] Speaker C: If you're never involved in anything technological, that's not good either. So there's, there is a, an element to where it can enrich your life. It's a way of connect other people, it's a way of getting work done. But there, there does become a point where it, it starts interfering and I think psychologically it, it is that social comparison piece.
The other piece is with learning is it's way too easy for somebody else to do it. For me and I think we're finding, you know, with AI, with, with the challenge there is how do I remain a person of integrity in my own learning, learning process.
Right. Of how do I. And as I often say to my students, you know, at the end of the day when you're at work.
[00:49:30] Speaker C: You'Re going to be asked questions. You have to be able to interact with human beings and answer those questions. You can't say, oh, let me check my phone and, and do a chat GPT.
[00:49:43] Speaker C: Right. I also tell them examples that when I try chat GPT with my own research, they get it right about 80% of the, I said, you know, there, there's too many mistakes.
[00:49:56] Speaker C: You know, you don't, you don't want to do that. But I think, I think there are lots of opportunities with technology and again, I think that's where we as universities have an, an opportunity to appropriately embed, to teach critical thinking around social media, around the technology, around, and to, to, to say that's something you can't, you need the interpersonal interaction.
[00:50:27] Speaker C: To really learn how to be a good critical thinker, to learn how to be a decent human being.
[00:50:33] Speaker C: Who'S able to interact and, and, and really learn from other people.
And technology has a role to play. But I, and so I would see it as a tool. Tool.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: Right?
[00:50:45] Speaker C: It's, it's a tool that we can teach people to use appropriately and that when it's used appropriately, it's a great thing.
[00:50:55] Speaker B: But because they're going to use it no matter what. I mean, think about it. The kids who are in college these days, they've never known life without, you know, a computer.
[00:51:05] Speaker C: That's right. That's right.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: That's hard to, oh my gosh, that's hard to think.
[00:51:09] Speaker C: Or if you think about those who are first year students since even this year they were born, the year the iPhone came, came into being. Yeah.
[00:51:22] Speaker C: Lori.
[00:51:26] Speaker C: That ages both of us, doesn't it? BJ.
[00:51:30] Speaker B: That makes me weak.
[00:51:33] Speaker B: What do you think schools in the next 10 years. Let's just talk about the future.
In the next decade, what do you think schools need to do to help their students in the next decade or so thrive?
[00:51:47] Speaker C: Wow. Well, now, if I could answer that.
Oh, definitively, that, yeah, could be a whole new career. You know, I think when we think about what. What needs to be done to help students thrive, I think, what are the trends?
[00:52:04] Speaker B: I guess.
[00:52:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I. I think we need to be. To, first of all, all say we're in this together. So higher education tends to be in silos. You know, we have student life who's responsible for this, and then faculty do this, and then, you know, so. So we are all in our. In our little ivory towers. And so I think we've got to find ways to collaboratively engage and to say, how do we create a kind of environment where students want to engage? What does that look like? And that means we collaborate with our students to help create that. It's not something we go off and do. So I think it is this. How do we actually involve our students in the creation of something new? How do we begin to take what they know about technology and to take the kinds of. The passion that they have about the challenges the world is facing, Their.
Their intense commitment to making the world a better place? How do we really leverage that, capitalize on that so that they are creating and collaborating with us? I think that's. I don't see it very often, but I've seen it happen a couple of times, and I've been astonished because the first time I saw faculty, staff, and students in small groups thinking about how to create a thriving campus when it.
I thought, this is never going to work because it's too hard. Faculty are going to dominate as the experts.
You know, students are going to feel intimidated. No, that didn't happen at all. The students absolutely stepped up. The faculty absolutely stepped back in appropriate ways. Sort of like I did.
[00:53:53] Speaker B: Like I was talking about my light bulb moment.
[00:53:56] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it was a lovely thing. And they came up with such creative ideas. And more than that, the energy in the room shifted.
And, you know, luckily there were some senior leaders in the room as well who were like, oh, we can work with this. Let's run with it. And so I. I think that's where I see the future going is. Is with more. Or maybe that's where I just want it to go, to be honest.
[00:54:26] Speaker B: Well, I think you're right. No, I think it is going that way. It's just going to be slow.
People are going to have to let their guard down a little bit.
[00:54:35] Speaker C: Yeah, well, there aren't quick fixes, you know, and I'm a community psychologist. And so prevention takes time. And you often, you know, when you say, well, what are the outcomes? Well, if you've prevented something, you don't always know. Low.
[00:54:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:50] Speaker C: Right. And so prevention.
[00:54:55] Speaker C: Focuses on the environment and every person in it.
And it, it shapes the way, it changes the way that in that environment is so that everybody is benefiting. And so you're putting a lot of money often in the front end or a lot of time or invent. So the investment is very heavy at the front end.
And we tend to not like that in higher ed. Yeah, we tend to want to try little things, little quick fixes. And, and this is, this is not something that's amenable to a quick fix. It's a long, it's a long term commitment to doing the right thing.
[00:55:32] Speaker C: To help our students.
[00:55:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a systems, it's a system mentality.
[00:55:37] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:55:38] Speaker B: Really think about it.
[00:55:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:55:39] Speaker B: Wow. This hour has gone by fast. I can talk about this way more than I have. And like I said, I didn't get to all my questions. This is a fascinating topic and I, I love talking about this because it is very hopeful. You know, when, when you start thinking, you know, I've come up, just while you were talking, I've come up with a few ideas for just some of the students I've worked, that I'm working with.
[00:56:02] Speaker C: Well, you know, we've taken a deficit.
Yeah, we've, we've been so deficit focused and higher education tends to be that way. What don't you, what aren't you able to do what you're not ready for? And I, I just really love an asset or appreciative, strengths based approach that says let's, let's go for it. Let. If we want students to really come alive to learning and not only students.
[00:56:26] Speaker B: Like we've talked about for most of the hour, the faculty will thrive also.
[00:56:30] Speaker C: Yes, that's right.
[00:56:32] Speaker B: Thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate it so much. This is, like I said, it's been a real treat for, especially for our last show. It won't air during finals week and I think, I hope people will listen and take the heart. What we've talked about tonight, it's timely. This is a timely topic for right now.
[00:56:51] Speaker C: It's been my pleasure, bj. Thank you.
[00:56:53] Speaker B: Don't forget, our shows are recorded and podcasted on Apple podcasts audioboom.com and voices UA edu just type in Brain Matters and you'll find some of our past shows. There's also a link to Voices on our Counseling Center's website. That's Counseling ua Edu don't forget this. Like I mentioned, this is our last show, but we'll be back mid January with more shows. We usually do about 12 to 13 shows a semester, so if you're listening and you have ideas, once again, email ideas for topics to me at Brain mattersradiobuafm ua Edu I always like to thank a few people who've made the show possible. Dr. Greg Vanderwaal. He's our executive director here at the Counseling Center. Of course, my producer, Katherine Howell. She's also my colleague. My colleagues here at the Counseling Center, Gareth Garner. He has done a great job editing our shows for this semester and I hope he'll stay doing those for next semester. Of course, the WVUA staff and my guest tonight, Dr. Laurie Schreiner. Don't forget, like I mentioned, we'll be back in January, so keep listening and go back and listen to our past shows. I appreciate it. Thanks again and have a good night.
[00:58:24] Speaker A: This show was not intended as a substitute for professional counseling. Further, the views, opinions and conclusions expressed by the show hosts or their guests are their own and not necessarily those of the University of Alabama, its officers or trustees. Any views, opinions or conclusions shared on the show do not create a relationship between the host or any guest and any listener, and such a relationship should never be inferred. If you feel you're in need of professional mental health and are a year UA student, please contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's Crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
