There has been a compassion backlash in higher education. After a few years of high flexibility due to emergency remote teaching, and teaching during the pandemic, this last academic year saw several universities resolve to go “back to normal”. Many seemed to not notice that “normal” was not great. There was something else missed by many: The fact that students and teachers accumulated wear and tear from coping with the pandemic. This is a critical time to advocate for more compassion in the academy and I am thankful for being invited to being part of Cate Denial’s Care in the Academy Project.
Earlier this academic year, I have the pleasure to join thirty-seven other individuals from colleges and universities across the United States. The team signing on to the “Pedagogies, Communities, and Practices of Care in the Academy after COVID-19," a Mellon-funded project, all have a common goal. Under Cate’s leadership, the team aims to extend “compassion and care beyond classroom activities to be centered and then applied to the work done by all members of a given campus community.” Working with the different group members and participating in frequent zoom gatherings pulled back the curtain on many important realities, two of which I want to focus on in this short essay.
First, our colleagues are very tired. Higher education has always been demanding. Higher education is rife with inequalities and division between groups varying in privilege, access, and power. Add the challenge of coping with a pandemic and what seemed to have been mostly hidden is now clear to see. In conversation after conversation, we shared stories of burnout and fatigue. Many of us knew it was around, but the magnitude of the issue was greater than imagined.
In my work at Oregon State University’s Center for Teaching and Learning, I speak to a lot of faculty. I also get to interact with faculty from different institutions as part of my research and training efforts regarding teaching and learning. In all these venues, the stories of burnout are becoming more outspoken. Our center identified the need for faculty to be compassionate to their students, but now it is time to increase care for each other. In our meetings for this group, we worked to identify many of the factors exacerbating the poor mental health of colleagues and are laying the foundation for alleviating the crisis. Faculty and staff want to be heard and need recourses and understanding. Compassion and care should not be dirty words tied to weakness and shame, but attributes to be nurtured. Flexibility and compassion do not mean easy or lacking rigor. Just as instructors should not be ostracized for wanting to be compassionate to their students, supervisors and administrators need to be compassionate to their staff. To have this happen policies need to change. For policies to change we need champions at different ranks, in various roles, and across disciplines. It is going to take a collective effort across the academy to make it happen.
My training as a health psychologist alerts me to a second major reality. We need to provide more ways to cope. We all have different coping strategies and while no one way is the best, there are times for active coping (addressing the problem head on) and times for avoidant coping (ignoring the issue to not increase stress). While avoidant coping may keep emotions at bay in the short run, it is not a long-term solution. Of the range of coping techniques discussed, unplugging from, or at least minimizing our ties to technology, carving out more time to ourselves, setting clear barriers to work life and non-work life, mindfulness, meditation, and walks in the woods and nature, are all empirically tied to well-being. Notwithstanding this, participation in the Care in the Academy group highlighted one of the most powerful aids to coping with them all: Social Support.
The power of compassionate groups cannot be underestimated. Our meetings provided venues for emotional expression and sharing, both practices that aid coping. Most importantly, the regular meetings provided a sense of both perceived and received support. The distinction is important. We have all heard that social support is good, but there are some key types that vary in their utility. There is global support (a general belief in how much support you have) and specific support (support for specific areas of life). There is informational support (how to fix a flat tire), instrumental support (money for rent), and emotional support (the belief you are loved, esteemed, and cared for). We all walk around with memories of support we have received in the past and this feels good. We also walk around with a sense of perceived support – the knowledge that if we needed it, support would be available. This can be a gamechanger. This is powerful stuff.
Try this little exercise. Think of the names of people who you could turn to if you needed money. Write down their initials. How about who you could turn to if a loved pet passed away? Write down their initials. Count it up. Research shows that the more initials you write down, the higher your levels of perceived social support. The astounding fact is that the higher perceived support you have, the higher your well-being, resilience, and health. It does not matter if those people really would come to your aid or not, your belief in them is the key. Cultivate your friends and supporters so your list is long.
We need to build social support structures in higher education. The more individuals know they have people who can help them, if necessary, the better they are likely to cope. Sure, more pay, more time off, and reasonable workloads, are all great for the mind too, but we should not underestimate the psychological power of social support. I am excited and energized by the activities of our group. It is positioned to increase social support in higher education, enroute to promoting more care in the academy. Stay tuned.