Mathew: I am here today with a few extraordinary individuals who work with our students at USF under special circumstances. So, what I want to do first before we get involved in our conversation about distressed students is have everybody here tell us a bit about them, your name, what's your job, and briefly what goes on inside of that job description.
Dr. Barbara Thomas: Hi, I'm Dr. Barbara Thomas. I'm the Senior Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, which is a Jill of all trades. We have a staff of 16 clinicians, some in training who are in their pre-doctoral or post-doctoral years, and additional staff are licensed clinicians, all psychologists. We do individual and group psychotherapy and see about 900 students a year through the Counseling Center. It's brief therapy, time-limited and typically, if someone has issues that need a broader safety net or if they are interested in psychiatry, we will do a referral to outside services.
Tom Merrill: Hi, my name is Tom Merrill. I'm the Assistant Dean and Director of Student Disability Services here at USF. We oversee services and accommodations to over 700 students who are registered with us at the university and that includes graduate and law schools. We have four disability specialists who work with students on an individual basis to determine appropriate accommodations and services and we also work with faculty and staff in putting those accommodations and services in place.
Laleh Shahidi: I'm Laleh Shahidi. I'm the Associate Vice Provost and Dean of Academic Student Services. I oversee CASA, which is the Center for Academic and Student Achievement. We oversee all the operations for the undergraduate population at USF. It's an umbrella that covers the operations from pre-admission, we collaborate with that admission for recruitment, and then orientation registration. We collaborate with faculty within various departments and colleges and schools for advising and registration and all the way to graduation and what falls in the middle in a nutshell.
Mathew: Fantastic, thank you so much. I think really the first question to get the ball rolling and then we'll get to more general things is as an instructor or a faculty member at USF, how do I know when to contact one of you or do I never contact you because it's always student-initiated? When I'm seeing something that I pick up that might be a problem, and we'll go into that later about what are real problems and not, what's my potential relationship with you, or is it all student-initiated?
Barbara: At Counseling and Psychological Services, we welcome contact with faculty and staff. Also, in addition to the individual psychotherapy that we provide, consult with about 600 people a year. If anyone has concerns about behavior inside or outside of the classroom, we are happy to consult with them. We do have students every semester who are hand delivered by faculty members to counseling and psych services and we welcome that as well if they feel like someone needs to be seen in an emergent situation.
So, at any point that a student is struggling in a classroom or exhibiting disruptive behavior or seems to be in distress, we're happy to consult with faculty. In addition, we have an after-hours consultation line that faculty can call. It's called CAPS after hours, which goes into force at 5 PM and is available until 8:30 AM every day and 24 hours on the weekends, and faculty can consult with the clinicians on that line as well.
Tom: In STS, we too welcome faculty referrals and inquiries. Faculty referrals are probably one of our most common methods of student referrals. As Barb said, we welcome this and are happy to share information about our services and how students can access services. However, the one big caveat would be if a faculty member were to call up and say, "This student in my class is doing XYZ, are they registered with you," which is a very common inquiry and we understand very much but due to confidentiality rules and policies, we're not allowed to disclose whether or not a student's registered with us without their written approval.
While we can speak in generalities and help faculty to understand our process, we can't disclose whether or not a student's registered with us without their permission. Barb.
Barbara: I want to echo what Tom just said, it's a very good point. Even those faculty who hand-deliver students to us do not have access to information about the therapy that they're involved in or whether or not they engaged with the center at all unless we have a release from the student.
We often find that students are willing to say, "Yes, you can verify to Professor so and so that we are attending therapy." Again, even if the student that the faculty member is concerned about is being seen at CAPS, we can't say that but we're happy to receive information.
Laleh: I am very excited about this opportunity to share some of the thoughts with faculty. The first thing I would start with is for faculty to be very mindful about what they put in their syllabus. There are models that they can get from colleges or, of course, from your center. It is very important to set the guidelines about their expectations about behavior, whatever that may be.
There is a fine line between academic performance or disruptive behavior. There is always a gray area where I have noticed where, unfortunately, faculty, justly so, I'm not saying why but I'm saying because faculty don't have the background information on how certain disabilities, for example, may manifest themselves in terms of disruptive behavior, they misinterpret certain behavior as people behaving badly in their classroom.
For example, we know so many cases of students with ADD or ADHD that students are restless or they may even need to leave the classroom more often than others and faculty because they don't know what's going on, they misinterpret as this person disrupted the classroom, moves too much, fidgets too much, or talks too much. Obviously, that is disruptive so the question becomes, how do they handle it? That's very, it's important that they use the resources that are available to them at Student Disability Services, Counseling Center, and CASA.
Of course, we work very, very closely with the Student Conduct Office. For me, the most important thing becomes training and the openness for faculty to take the initiative on their own to seek the training in advance. Especially for faculty who are new, it would be so much less headache for the lack of a better word if they invested about half an hour to an hour of just meeting with individual people or attending trainings that you provide. Your center has been extremely proactive in providing these trainings that have proven to be extremely helpful.
Unfortunately, I don't think faculty take advantage of those opportunities until it's too late and some incident happens in their class, and then they're going to say, "Oh, yes, now I wish I had known who I was supposed to call."
Other things that I would want to share with faculty is that 99.9% of these students really come from a place that they are hurting. If it's the behavior seems to be disruptive, it's not about the faculty. One of the things that if the faculty can put themselves in that state of mind that is not about me, they're not being disrespectful to me or the classroom environment and put themselves outside for a minute and see, where is this behavior coming from and how I can connect this student to resources. Then it would be based on the assessment that our officers make in collaboration with faculty that we can determine.
Sometimes we even collaborate and remove the student from that faculty's class if it's appropriate, but sometimes then we can't collaborate and set guidelines or support services, and then it would make it possible for students to continue and build that relationship with faculty. Thank you.
Mathew: Thank you so much. This is a broad question and so I don't know exactly how you respond to it. Really, the broad question is, what level of behavior is acceptable in the classroom? That is, what kinds of things-- I think it's faculty, there's so many differences between us as faculty, and depending on our background, what we see is almost normal versus non-normal. I think it's very unlikely that as a faculty, we have a shared understanding of what might be the initial signals of things we should pay attention to, and if they crop up, initiate some sort of action, either from ourselves or contacting you.
The spirit in which I'm asking this question is, it seems in most cases, it's easier to solve or resolve things if you're catching it early rather than later. There's a certain point at which everybody in the world knows there's a problem, but that typically is not the most helpful point to start changing things.
Tom: With our students, this is a great point because we oftentimes get calls from faculty saying so and so is in my class and they're doing X behavior and is this a problem? To which I always refer them to the code of conduct and not to get overly administrative with faculty and beat around the bush or not give them a straight answer.
I think it's really important for faculty to understand what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior because speaking for my area and students with disabilities, it almost doesn't matter if the student has a disability or not. A violation of the Code of Conduct is a violation.
So whether or not the student has bipolar disorder or is on the autism spectrum or has a nonverbal learning disability which affects the way students interact conversationally and behaviors could be considered odd or weird or what have you, that really doesn't matter. I'm sure Barb can speak a lot more accurately to the psychology behind it. As far as behaviors in and of themselves, if a student violates the Code of Conduct whether it's posturing towards another student or disrupting the class, things that. If they're an SDS student, they're held to the same standard as a non-SDS student.
Barbara: I think, Matt, that you hit on part of the issue is that the faculty have a wide range of what they're willing to tolerate and embrace in the classroom. The first thing I would say is proactively, preventatively, they should have articulated in their syllabus something around behaviors which are acceptable or unacceptable, some parameters set in advance so students have a sense of that.
There are certainly students who have a fair amount of quirkiness and we embrace that. Embrace your quirky and some of the faculty do. Others are a bit unsettled by that. That's their discomfort. Having some sense of their own comfort around what they can tolerate in the classroom. Sometimes the faculty will just have to push themselves a bit to be more comfortable with that, but I echo what Tom has said about disruption.
If it is disrupting the classroom, it need not be tolerated and the other students are looking to the faculty to set that limit, to address it. We've often heard about faculty who, well-meaning, have allowed behaviors to exist in the classroom that are quite disruptive and it feels to the other students that, whoa, they've lost control. Again, I think if the faculty is willing to consult, it may be with someone in CASA with Dean Shahidi or with counseling or with SDS. Consult about does this sound like something we should find acceptable in the classroom?
Mathew: Thank you, that helps a lot, and this whole notion of-- Really, there are a couple of different issues I want to explore here because there's a student, as a faculty member, sometimes I'll notice a student who's distressed. They're having a hard time with writing assignments or whatever it may be, but they're not a disturbance in the class. I want to separate those two things out. For the moment, if it's okay, I just want to focus on people who are not necessarily distressed in that wide spectrum but really are creating a consistent disturbance in the class.
I think all of us have our good days, hopefully, but we certainly all of us have our bad days. I've had situations where a student kind of acted out a little bit once because of something going on in their personal life and that really wasn't an issue because we could all understand it. There was some background with the student, but it was a one-off and it was relatively mild. What I've been hearing about from other faculty and their bigger concern is not with a one-off that can once in a long while occur, it's the very consistent or relatively consistent disturbances that are created in the class.
One of the things I'm hearing from both of you, which I'm guilty of not doing myself, is putting something in my syllabus. I guess part of my question would be-- I'm going to deal with this on a mechanical level first and then go back to kind of a more conceptual level. The proactive of putting something in the syllabus is obviously going to be the greater starting point then, relative to what I do, which is nothing right now. Is the best thing in terms of the syllabus to really lift wording from the Code of Conduct or from something else, or there's something where I can borrow the wording or I'm like really creating that from scratch?
Barbara: I think that it could be created from scratch because then it is aligned with your personal parameters. Some coaching around that, again, in consultation, could be helpful. I know that there are some documents that CASA has available to assist faculty in putting those parameters in place. That said, I think it's a good idea for faculty to be aware of the Student Code of Conduct so they know what has been put into place already, that they can say address the student code of conduct around these issues.
Again, I think there are those things thinking broadly as I want to put this in my syllabus, what would be disruptive of the rest of the class? Some faculty would say, "I don't want someone in the back on their cell phone through the whole class." That's disruptive. Others would not be bothered by that, would not see that as problematic. I think there's that individual faculty choice around it, but some things in particular that they may want to mention.
Tom: I agree and the only thing I would add to that would be definitely start off with your own interpretation or thoughts about what you consider appropriate, respectful behavior in the classroom, and then cite the code of conduct and not to sound like we need to cover ourselves but taking this to the next level. If faculty were to have a student who was disruptive, if the faculty conjured and created their own behavioral expectations and put it in the syllabus, and it was completely out of sync with the code of conduct, then we would probably get into some difficulty if the faculty had to report that student to the office of Oscar.
Barbara: Student Conduct Rights and Responsibilities.
Tom: Right and Responsibilities. The reason we mentioned them is because they're all about documenting behavior and then responding in a methodical, deliberate way to the students. So, having your own statement in there, I think is great, but also cite the Code of Conduct within that statement, but a behavioral expectation statement centering around mutual respect and what's tolerable and what's not, I think is an excellent idea for faculty to put in their syllabus.
Mathew: We are at the relative beginning of a semester and just parenthetically, I want to say next semester, I will be putting my own version of this in my syllabi, because I'm guilty of not doing it although, I think all of us as faculty have had experiences. I can cite places in my syllabus where it looks like a general statement about something, not about creating disturbances in the classroom, but that paragraph is named after a student. There was some inspiration for it that has lived on and I learned from the negative experience in the sense of now I knew to put it in my syllabus to prove it and I never had the problem after that.
I don't know if it was just a one-off in the syllabus didn't make any difference or the syllabus actually did clue people in. I think it's fair to assume that it's better to clue students into your expectations explicitly rather than making it a mystery.
I just want to explore a couple of things that are in the disturbed students a little more and then go off to other things with distressed students. Mike, you brought up a couple of examples that are worth exploring. One is, let's say the student who's fidgety for whatever reason, right? They just need to get up and walk or stand up sometimes or walk around or whatever it is. This may be my lack of experience, but I've been a high school teacher and then here I teach doctoral students and really, what's important about that is they're adults.
With high school, there are other ways of dealing with things but here, I think my students who fell into those categories. They were adults and they were comfortable enough with the environment that they would tell me about the situation. More importantly, they were pretty good about telling their fellow students. When somebody got up, and they weren't actually a disturbance, but they just-- It's the thing that's not a natural disturbance but could be perceived as weird. So, because of their communications, both, neither I and more importantly, the other students in the class, they knew what was going on. They weren't actually distracted or anything like that.
If I put myself in the place of a faculty member who's working with undergraduates, so they're 18, 19, 20, whatever age they are, instead of 30, 40 or 50, I'm going to assume that overall, their communication skills are not going to be as good or they're not as comfortable communicating to me and the students about what's going on. I guess if I saw something like that going on class afterwards, right away, I'd say, "What's going on here?" I would get the information from them.
I think the part where I would feel more nervous though is how do I clue in the other students to what's going on because I don't want to make that student, for lack of a better term, let's call it the fidgety student, I don't want to make that fidgety student feel really uncomfortable. On the other hand, if I'm clued in but the rest of the students are not clued in, it still can be a slightly distracting environment. Are there any good tips for how to handle that?
Barbara: One of the thing that occurs to me is being proactive in addressing it, which you would do in that situation. The faculty member being proactive in addressing it and then perhaps coaching this student about how they might share what's going on with the other students and why. Not stigmatizing the person in any way, normalizing that we're all different and we all have different ways that we might need some accommodation. However, this could be distracting if people were trying to figure out what's going on for you and coaching them about how they might in a unladened way, share this with the rest of the class. That's the first thing that I think of.
Tom: Absolutely. I agree with Barb. It's all about communication, especially with fidgety student. One thing I would add and listen to you speak, this popped into my head, universal design. I had an ADHD student in my office the other day saying this class is two-and-a-half hours long. We get these undergraduate classes that are basically built like graduate school classes and you've got an 18-year-old kid. I don't care if they have a disability or not, they're going head to need to get up and move around but this one girl--
Yes, exactly this one girl in my office said, Tom, the teacher's great because after 45 minutes, he said, people aren't really paying attention after. You can only really focus for 45 minutes. Let's all get up and take a five-minute break and she said, "I don't need an accommodation at that point because the teacher gets it." You think back to, when we were in graduate school or we go to conferences, if a session is more than an hour, we're looking around too and we need to get up and stretch or stand. Thinking about it in terms of universal design, what would be good for the whole group, stand up, stretch do something silly and then shake it out and then sit back down. That helps everyone. That's another option for faculty.
Laleh: I completely agree with both Barbara and Tom. I would actually take it a step further back and recommend that faculty because it's the dynamics and the chemistry changes from class to class as we all know but if we set a standard in the syllabus again to say and to when the first day of class, we are talking about it to bring sensitivity to that issue. I think that is very important because at that time nothing has happened yet. You are not sitting any prejudices. You are just learning opportunity and they can add that, just say as part of their learning experience in a classroom. It is also our sensitivity towards each other.
I give you an example recently we are all have been dealing with veterans that, God bless them for their service and a lot of the veterans are back into the educational institutions. They're studying but oftentimes some of them, unfortunately, have suffered from brain trauma and obviously, their behavior becomes, for the lack of a better word, they may be awkward to other people.
Faculty, because there is a fine line as, again, we've talked about and what Barbara mentioning, they cannot make announcements because of fair probe, because of disability act, but they can empower for the lack of a better word, both the student who needs the compassion from others and they can set a platform for better understanding of, okay, this is 40 individuals in one classroom.
We may come across students who may have disability, we may have across students who come from a different culture, et cetera, et cetera. Let us go into this classroom environment for the remainder of the semester with a more open mind and a more compassionate heart and see, I'm here if anybody feels that they want to share anything, they can come see me during my office hours and then they can take it from there.
Matthew: This is one version of a story I've heard from several faculty, but it falls under that, whether it's fidgety or something else, it falls under the idea that other students in the class are seeing something that from their background seems weird or unexplainable or whatever it is. That's one thing. The other kind of story I've heard from faculty, which I think they're and you've given great recommendations here, there's some things I'm going to change for next semester, just myself from this. Maybe the stronger and more perplexing thing to some faculty is, I really don't know what this falls under, but here's the case study scenario.
Usually, there's no more than one, maybe odd times two if it's a really large class, but there could be one or two students who are always interrupting and dominating a discussion that may go on. By interrupting, I mean literally if there's a lecture going on, almost not even asking questions but just interrupting with, I don't know what, random commentary, I'm making that up.
The other one is if they're doing some whole-group discussion or it might be a small group work, this individual completely dominates the situation. I know for many faculty that they just seem really perplexed and about how to handle that. I already know part of your response, which is now some of these things can at least be previewed in terms of how we write up the syllabus, that's important.
Now let's pretend that I put this in my syllabus or I'm going to do it next semester so that's step one. What other kinds of things? I think this is a more touchy situation. Both of these are touchy and you can make mistakes as faculty but I think this one's more touchy and in a way, more threatening to faculty so they feel more hesitant to deal with it or they feel at a loss how to deal with it. I don't know if you have thoughts on that.
I also should say from what I've heard, I don't know this directly, this doesn't necessarily seem to be related to people who have some disability, at least from the faculty member. They've gotten nothing from disability services about anything of the sort or even any compensation of other things. As far as they know this isn't a disability, but it' a behavior that's difficult to deal with.
Tom: We would never recommend that Joey be allowed to interrupt as an accommodation even though we may get those requests like I just blurt things out but that's a really good point, Matthew, and that is going back to what we talked about earlier, we don't want to assume anything. I think Laleh spoke very well to the point that the changing landscape of postsecondary education is really different than it was 10 years ago.
To assume that so-and-so is interrupting because they have a disability is really shutting out a lot of other reasons and it could be they didn't eat breakfast that day or something, but I think it really goes back to what's acceptable in the classroom. In the moment, I think we're limited to what our behavioral skills are as far as setting limits. You mentioned you work with high school kids, so I'm sure you're pretty good at setting limits and helping people understand what's acceptable and what's not but I think for a lot of faculty, you're right, it is very uncomfortable.
Trying to manage it as best you can with the skills you have is what you can do in the moment. Then talking to the student in a private area after class, not in front of other people and trying to be nonjudgmental, but just going over helping them understand that that was inappropriate, not acceptable. Also, really keeping in mind Laleh's point about not taking it personally because a lot of times kid could just be really excited and you're saying something that's really getting them riled up in a good way and they just have to blurt it out and they might need an accommodation as a result of that or need to come talk to us or Barb or Laleh but it could also be, this is just their personality.
In summary, managing the actual behavior in the moment as best you can, trying to establish control of the classroom, setting limits and then following-up and checking in with the student afterwards and just doing some reflection and processing of the behavior and what is acceptable and what's not is what I would recommend.
Barbara: Echo what Tom has said there. I would say sometimes individuals do not understand the interpersonal impact of their behavior, so really sharing what might be going on because of this. I love the idea of contextualizing it as you're excited about this topic and you have a lot that you could say about it, but the impact interpersonally is this. The impact on me when I'm up there doing this lecture and you interject repeatedly is this. It sets me off my game. I feel like it throws the lecture trajectory for me, et cetera, so just talking about what's the impact of this. You had no desire to create a negative environment, but that could have been the ramification
Laleh: Matthew, I will go back to, again, using resources as setting parameters in advance in addition to what my colleagues recommended. I would actually go back to the syllabus and have faculty set some groundwork to say I'm so excited. This seems such a dynamic group. In the interest of democracy, let's set a policy. Hey, let's set a policy that because we want to give the opportunity to everybody to have a voice, how about if some of you have more of your ideas that you want to explore with the rest of the group and we feel that is a little bit goes over what we have agreed upon together.
The catch is together, they do things together and let's agree upon something that in those cases and they can become innovative. They can say, you can come to my office hours or your faculty feel comfortable to go that extra yard. They can say, how about if we agree that the questions become more than what we-- if time will allow us, then you guys can go on if they have the canvas, let's post your questions on canvas and then we can all benefit. I'll answer them and then everybody can benefit from that.
Become casual about it. Remove that tension that is like, "Wow, that's too much." Also, the other thing is we have great academic success coaches in CASA, every single student, hopefully, by next year they will be assigned to an academic success coach. CASA would be a great resource for faculty to do brainstorming. They can call CASA or they can send us an email. Say, "Could you please tell me who is so and so's academic success coach" Then they can talk with this academic success coach. The academic success coach may have some background information on the student or may not. Then we can collaborate. We can brainstorm. My recommendation is that they should set parameters really early on. Students are very clever in testing the boundaries and if they get away with an inch, then they will go for the whole yard. To find that balance and also to make the conversation and the environment as light as possible.
Mathew: These are fantastic examples. I think what's maybe a little, from what you're saying is one fantastic example, is two, it can be a little intimidating, especially, well, it doesn't matter, but I'm thinking especially new faculty, but depending on the faculty member could be anybody because the response may be, I'm really good at physics, but I'm not really good at how to word things well to negotiate stuff.
I can't even do that with my husband or wife well, so how can I do it with my students well? I think at some level we probably, as faculty have to be willing to stretch our uncomfortableness too, to a certain extent in terms of, we have to as best we can, even if it's one step at a time, get better at how we communicate about what could be difficult or uncomfortable topics. At least for us, we all have different comfort levels.
Laleh: Barbara and Tom are also great in terms of getting feedback. I often consult with them myself and we brainstorm. We are here to brainstorm all of us.
Mathew: Part of what I'm hearing in all of this is, my big takeaway is that it's always better to deal with something earlier rather than later. One early is my syllabus, and then I can go back to that. If I haven't done something, my syllabus, at least if I notice Tom's acting out again, if this has being recorded in fall semester. If I start trying to deal with Tom in mid-October, even though he's been doing this since late August, that's much more problematic.
It seems everything, whether it's in the syllabus or when I start to notice a behavior, whether it's in the syllabus or not dealing with things earlier, rather than later, no matter what my skill level is, is going to be better because even if I have a high-skill level, if the first time I approach problematic Tom is November one, I can just see. Certain things have been put into place and it's hard. It's going to be much harder to change things.
In our time together, I tried to ask the best questions I could, but I could have obviously missed something really big or even fairly big that's important for faculty to know about or to consider when working with students. From your perspectives, are there any key things you'd like to communicate to faculty that we haven't had time to talk about yet?
Barbara: One of the things I would add is we've talked a bit about distressing students. There will also be distressed students. I find that it is a slippery area for faculty. Some are very concerned if they have a student in class suddenly breaks into tears or isn't showing up and they'd been a very good student or some other change of behavior is there. Some faculty are hesitant to approach them about that. Again, encourage them to consult. Other faculty in their compassion sometimes take on too much.
Knowing what their parameters are around the amount of time they want to spend with the student, the amount of process around what's going on with the student, occasionally faculty will get in over their head into an arena with a student that could be problematic. Case in point I can think of a student who was very triggered by some information around sexual assault.
The individual had been sexually assaulted, suddenly became more of a therapeutic relationship with the faculty member. I think that's problematic. Knowing, okay, I want to be supportive, but I feel like I'm beyond my role in our interactions now. I want to hand you off to someone at Counseling and Psychological Services who can give you more of the ongoing support. I would encourage faculty, consider what their parameters are in terms of caretaking as well.
Tom: The only thing I would add would be one of the most common questions we in Student Disability Services get asked by faculty is, how do I refer a student to your office without saying, do you have a disability or it seems like you're fidgeting, do you have ADHD? What we tell a faculty is you don't need to even mention the word disability at all. It's really again about your level of comfort, how comfortable you feel talking about the topic with the student.
If you're not comfortable at all, I think an easy way to refer a student would be to say, "Have you met with your CASA advisor?" Because they are so well-trained, the coaches there, they're going to drill down and figure out if there is something going on in the classroom, that's preventing them from demonstrating their knowledge through a paper on exams. They're going to drill down and figure out, oh, maybe you need to follow-up with SDS and get screened for a learning disability or ADHD and we do provide free screening or the student can disclose to a CASA coach, "Yes, I used to get extended time on tests," and things like that so they can refer there.
If the faculty is a little more comfortable talking about this topic with a student, they can say, "Did you ever get accommodations in school? Did you ever get more time for exams, special tutoring, things like that. Then again, they don't even have to go into anything more like Barb said. You can draw the line there and then refer and say, you know what? SDS is a great office. You should go talk to them. You can get these services here through them.
Laleh: Great points. I would add again, would be to use the resources as much as possible, examples that Tom gave often time they can be either on one side of the spectrum or the other are either professor who absolutely don't know how to start the conversation about how do I ask a student, maybe he or she may have a learning disability or learning difference or on the other hand, they feel comfortable and they say it, but they say it in a way that really offends the student and it ruins their relationship.
Especially for new faculty, my recommendation would be that even colleagues within the department, if faculty often are assigned to a faculty mentor, it's okay to ask the faculty mentor or anybody else that say, "Hey, I want to consult or brainstorm or talk about this case that I've had" Often time what I have found out that faculty think they should handle it themselves and they hold it in until it's too late to damage control.
The other thing is, as we all work in the Jesuit University is to literally come from a place of compassion when they are looking at every single case, because frankly, neither one of us or the students gets out in the morning say, "I'm going to ruin the classroom environment for so and so today." Come from that place that says, "Why is this person hurting or what he or she may need? How can I provide that support and just start doing the steps and having this web of support that we provide." We are so excited about our collaboration with faculty and we cherish our relationship so we welcome them, contacting us anytime. Thank you.
Barbara: I have to throw in one more little add here. If faculty are not familiar with the red folder project, to acquaint themselves with the red folder and have one in their office and take a look at it if they run into issues where they're concerned about a student.
Mathew: I'm assuming if they actually lost their red folder, that it exists somewhere in a PDF format. We'll provide a link to that. I want to say, I think there's several times I've run into situations where I'm not sure what the right thing is to do and I'm sure that's true for other faculty too. It would seem from what in totality, all of you are saying, I thought rather than me making a unilateral decision if I'm unsure, actually sometimes even if I'm sure [laughs] but I think I'm sure that before I just automatically send them somewhere that it doesn't seem like it would take too much energy on my part to send off an email to one of you and go, "This is my take on things.
Would this be the best action for me to refer them to Tom?" That kind of or whatever the moment is, but it seems like you are three partners that as faculty members I could take advantage of instead of just magically sending students off to you.
Laleh: Yes,there actually are more partners are Julie Orio's office, Ryan Garcia who handle red folder. There are a lot of other key members behind the scene that can help. I also wanted to add another thing. A lot of time faculty tell us, for example, I want to refer the student to you, but I don't want he or she to know I'm referring them to you. How do I handle that? Believe it or not, we can actually do it.
We can do it and we can say, we want, now that you called this student to our attention, but we will do outreach very casually and then as Tom was saying, our academic success coaches are trained enough that they can draw the information out of the students without breaking that trust between faculty and the student. Faculty can feel comfortable that they can depend on reaching out to us without breaking that confidentiality of their conversation with any of us.
Mathew: I'm guessing our suggestion would be that you do that as last recourse. My own personal feeling is if I had a problem in the class, at least I'd want to have a try at talking to the student and seeing what's going on first. I don't want to encourage people to just do the anonymous stuff all the time, but there could be situations where a faculty member feels, perhaps rightly, that doing so could physically threaten them in the future. There are certain situations where I could understand that's the best course of action to take.
Laleh: Not necessarily even physically, but emotionally because a student may have confided some confidential information that is sensitive to the faculty and may have asked faculty, "I don't want you to share this information." The faculty feels concerned, then they are caught between the dilemma of, "If I tell the student that I've shared this information, I have broken that confidentiality and the trust. On the other hand, I think this student could really benefit from extra help. I don't want to let it go just as this student gave me this information."
Then, there is specific information that it would be helpful, also, for faculty to learn later about title nine or the things that they ought to report that even if the student asks them to no report them, that they are obligated to report. Those are other things that they should familiarize themselves with.
Mathew: Fantastic. I wasn't thinking of that, but those are great examples. Thank you all three of you for the generosity of your time. We really, really, really appreciate it. We're hoping by putting this in an audio format, that it makes it easier for people to access and listen to when they're driving to work or something or on Bart and have nothing else to do. That kind of thing. I've learned a lot from this conversation, so hopefully, other faculty will too. Thank you so much.
All: Thank you.
[00:41:27] [END OF AUDIO]


File name: distressed students mix.mp3
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