It has been a hard twelve months for higher education: the SCOTUS decision dismantling affirmative action, a rising tide of state legislation targeting DEI initiatives; the congressional hearings which have resulted in the resignation of President Gay from Harvard and President Magill of University of Pennsylvania; the untimely deaths of two Black female presidents, Dr. Joanne A Epps of Temple University and Dr. Orinthia T Montague of Volunteer State Community College and the recent suicide of Dr. Antoinette Candia-Bailey at Lincoln University; a number of college closures and announcements of terminations of various academic departments across the country due to financial crises; a sharp rise in public skepticism about the value proposition of higher education; the pain and atrocities of the war in Israel and Gaza as well as increasing rates of antisemitism, the FAFSA form nightmare , islamophobia, and anti-Arab sentiment on college campuses, and, the first presidential election cycle after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. We are also in the thick of a highly divisive presidential campaign–one where misinformation, deep fakes, and questions of the future of democracy itself may be at stake.
It should come as no surprise then that the demands for higher education to reaffirm its moral obligation to safeguard the future of democracy are on the rise. For example, Eboo Patel (2023), argues, that higher education institutions need to do a better job of creating pluralist spaces where students are prepared to engage in curious and thoughtful dialogue across a large spectrum of differences that include, but are not limited to, race, religion, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality, culture, and political ideology. Paul Brest (2024) offers similar suggestions in a recent article on the need for the cultivation of critical community on college campuses. The increasing rates of faculty stress, burnout, and mental health challenges, points to why colleges and universities might struggle to teach students the skills needed for a pluralistic society. I contend that colleges and universities will struggle to teach the skills needed for a thriving pluralist and democratic society if we do not attend to those who are being asked to do this important work in their classrooms — our faculty. It is important to note that the needs of staff are equally important, given the important work they do with and for students, but for the moment I will focus my attention on the faculty and the classroom.
My background as a gender and sexuality studies scholar, psychoanalyst, and current Dean of the Faculty at a small liberal arts institution is what shapes my thoughts here. There is ample clinical literature on secondary trauma — also popularly referred to as “compassion fatigue”— which can result from empathetic listening to the pain, trauma, and challenges of an individual or a group. Without interventions clinicians burn out, are unable to work as well with individuals and groups, and can fall ill physiologically and psychologically. I believe we should take the insights on compassion fatigue and secondary trauma seriously because the rising mental health needs of students and the continuing reverberations of the collective trauma of COVID-19, racialized violence, and other stressors have compounded the emotional labor and psychological burdens of faculty (Halat et al., 2023). Unless and until we find institutional ways to creatively address this collective trauma, we will not be able to fully realize our moral obligation to prepare students to engage in civic discourse and thereby ensure the future of democracy. I say this fully realizing that to those outside of the academy (and even for many non-faculty members inside the academy) the work of faculty seems opaque and comparatively privileged. Complaints by faculty are often viewed with little sympathy and summed up as the tone-deaf calls of the obstreperous and entitled. To be clear, it is true that being a faculty member is a privilege, particularly for those relative few who are tenured at institutions with robust enrollments, large endowments, and generous compensation packages. However, the faculty experience is not monolithic, and neither are institutions (Carvajal & Guedea, 2022). It is also the case that increasing faculty burnout and low morale also exists in well-resourced institutions and that the challenges faculty face are not only about compensation, even as calls for sustainable compensation for faculty are undoubtedly important and exacerbate disengagement (Halat et al., 2023).
Emotional bandwidth and a wellspring of what some term grace and others call receptive capacity is necessary to promote a pluralistic classroom. This kind of classroom builds reflectiveness and dialogue capacity with students. It requires that students journey through both cognitive and emotional dissonance to get to a more curious and open place. To this end, a faculty member must create the conditions where students can experience the necessary emotional dissonance and discomfort that happens on the way to fostering a pluralistic space. However, one cannot give what they do not have. To put it another way, bridges are hard to build if the foundations needed to support the structure are not taken care of first. To be clear, I am not arguing that faculty or higher education administrators should be therapists — rather I want to underscore that the capacity to hold the distress and/or dissonance of another and/or a group is far more difficult when someone is in distress themselves. Cultivating this type of classroom becomes far more challenging if our faculty do not have the emotional bandwidth themselves.
Recent findings from the Stress in America 2023: A Nation Recovering from Collective Trauma Study highlight the lasting collective impacts of COVID-19 (APA, nd). The American Psychological Association Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Arthur Evans (APA, nd), argues that although the dominant discourse of our culture is that things are back to normal, the Stress in America Study suggests that we are living with widespread collective trauma and are expressing symptoms correlated with the psychological and physiological post-traumatic stress. In a narrative review of the literature, Halat and her colleagues show that close to 30% of faculty in the United States self-disclose feelings of depression, stress, and high levels of burnout and that it disproportionately affects BIPOC female-identifying faculty under 40 years of age (Halat et al., 2023). Burnout is being experienced in three ways: emotional exhaustion from the psychological labor of the work; depersonalization, indifference, and detachment; and inefficiency and doubt regarding professional capacity (Halat et al., 2023). A recent survey conducted by the Healthy Minds Network on faculty and staff at eight institutions of higher education revealed that over 60% of those surveyed were experiencing burnout (Vyletel et al., 2023). Although the majority of respondents expressed that they felt “capable and competent” in their work, it was also the case that 84% of female respondents stated that they felt overwhelmed at work and over 50% said that their work had “taken a toll on their mental health” (Vyletel et al., 2023). The emotional labor of helping students dealing with high levels of depression and anxiety further compounded staff and faculty mental health impacts (Meeks et al., 2023). Although colleges and universities are not the only institutions being affected, and faculty are not alone in their distress, these findings can provide some insight into why the increase and extent of emotional labor faculty are engaging in with their students has had such an impact on their wellbeing (Imad, 2021).
Why do these results matter in the work of promoting a more pluralistic society? Beyond a basic level of compassion, we have for the distress of our colleagues, stress, trauma, and burnout have a direct impact on the vitally important for the work of creating spaces where vulnerability, dissonance, and challenge can arise in fostering pluralistic spaces (Hosseini et al., 2022). Research has shown that trauma impacts a student’s capacity to learn, form relationships with their teachers, and poses a greater risk of failing and dropping out (Johnson, 2018). But what about the impact of collective trauma on teaching? There are no large studies on this, but one might infer that trauma would impact the dialogical nature of a classroom. Psychoanalytic theory and practice have long highlighted how unprocessed conflict or trauma does not go away, but rather can manifest in psychological and physiological symptoms.
While there is no easy fix to this issue on our campuses, I believe that research on the impacts of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) can offer important insights. ACE research highlights how early childhood trauma impacts have direct psychological and physiological impacts which can range from heart disease to cancer (Felittti et al., 1998). The good news is that there is also ample research on interventions that can be used to ameliorate early childhood trauma some of which can offer administrators solutions (La Charite et al., 2023; CDC, n.d.). A basic conclusion from this research is that relationships, which are supportive and invested in our flourishing, matter. To this end, community building and informal, but intentional social ties matter. Although this literature has not traditionally been one higher education has drawn on to think about faculty development, I believe that the level of emotional labor faculty have had to use in their work with student mental health, coupled with the collective trauma many are experiencing, is requiring us to expand our thinking and practice. There is a burgeoning literature on data informed methods for fostering community resilience (Matlin, et. al., 2019; Newman & Antonelli, 2022).
There is no simple solution and like any relationship, it requires continuous investment and commitment. We must draw on macro level approaches and address departments and interpersonal relationships. Our approaches need to be context specific and cannot be perfunctory or performative. Depending on resources, one might draw on a variety of intentional community building opportunities such as:
- Once a month lunches where faculty gather for soup, with no agenda, other than getting to know one another.
- Sponsored affinity meet ups and other opportunities for faculty and staff to share stories, build community, and serve as a resource for one another.
- Building on the work of disability justice activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018), create a Community of Care Series. This is a community-based approach where faculty and staff co-create and envision social resources and co-create opportunities for and with colleagues. For example, childcare coops, game nights, and other community lead connections.
- Review the Care in the Academy Project at La Fayette for helpful ideas (Addison, Garrison, & Hicks., nd).
- Adapt methods from high school educators who have actively created programs for battling compassion fatigue (Newman & Antonelii, 2022)
If we want to have institutions that meet the moral obligation of safeguarding the future of democracy by creating pluralist and civically engaged educational opportunities, then we need to expand the frame of how we think about our work as higher education administrators. We need to create institutions where we take a holistic approach to faculty and staff development, and where we attend to structures, community, microclimates (e.g., departments), and individuals. Creating classrooms where bridge building happens requires that we attend to those who make it possible — our faculty. To this end, we as leaders need to use both our heads and our hearts in our work. If we don’t, then we are not working to ensure that our institutions of higher education can meet their moral obligation for the public good and the future of democracy.
Works Cited
Addison, T., Garrison, M., & Hendrickson, A. (n.d.) Care in the academy project. https://citls.lafayette.edu/care-in-the-academy-project/
Brest, P. (2024 January 15). Reviving critical community on campus. Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/reviving-critical-community-on-campus?sra=true
Carvajal, R.F.P., Guedea, M. T.D. Stress in university professors: A systematic review. Salud Mental 44, 5 doi: 10.17711/SM.0185-3325.2021.032
Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.) ACE’s Can be prevented. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/prevention.html
American Psychological Association. (n.d.) Stress in america survey 2023: A Nation recovering from collective trauma. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2023/collective-trauma-recovery
Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., Koss, M. P., & Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American journal of preventive medicine, 14(4), 245–258.
Halat, D. H., Abderrezzaq, S., Dalli, R., Alsarraj, L., Malki, A. (2023) Understanding and fostering mental Health and Well-Being among University Faculty: A Narrative Review. Journal of Clinical Medicine 12, 4425. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm12134425
Housseni, M., Torabizadeh, C., Shirazi, Z.H. (2022) Prevalence of burnout and related factors in nursing faculty members: a systematic review. Journal of educational evaluation for health professions, 19, 16. https://doi.org/10.3352/jeehp.2022.19.16
Imad, M (2021, July 7) Pedagogy of healing: Bearing witness to trauma and resilience. Inside Higher Ed https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2021/07/08/how-faculty-can-support-college-students%E2%80%99-mental-health-fall-opinion
Johnson M. E. (2018). The effects of traumatic experiences on academic relationships and expectations in justice-involved children. Psychology in the schools, 55(3), 240–249. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22102
La Charite, J., Khan, M., Dudovitz, R., Nuckols, T., Sastry, N., Huang, C., Lei, Y., & Schickedanz, A. (2023). Specific domains of positive childhood experiences (PCEs) associated with improved adult health: A nationally representative study. SSM – population health, 24, 101558. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101558
Matlin, S. L., Champine, R. B., Strambler, M. J., O’Brien, C., Hoffman, E., Whitson, M., Kolka, L., & Tebes, J. K. (2019). A Community’s Response to Adverse Childhood Experiences: Building a Resilient, Trauma-Informed Community. American journal of community psychology, 64(3-4), 451–466. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12386
Meeks, K., Peak, A.S., Dreihaus, A. Depression, anxiety, and stress among students, faculty, and staff. Journal of American College Health. 71, 348-354
Newman, L., & Antonelli, J. (2022) Building resilience among educators: A Continuation high school shares strategies with its district to address compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress among teachers and staff. California Learn Collaborative on Alternative Education. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED618203.pdf
Patel, E. (2023, November 9) Why campuses need centers for pluralism. Inside Higher Education. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2023/11/09/why-campuses-need-centers-pluralism-opinion
Piepzna-Samarasinha, L.L. (2018) Care work: Dreaming disability justice. Arsenal Pulp Press: Vancouver, B.C.
Vyletel, B., Voichoski, E., Lipson, S., Heinze, J. (2023) Exploring faculty burnout through the 2022-23 HMS faculty/staff survey. American Psychological Association Magazine https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/psychology-teacher-network/introductory-psychology/faculty-burnout-survey#:~:text=Burnout%20was%20higher%20among%20women,were%20satisfied%20with%20their%20job.
