Add, Drop, Withdrawal and Course Voucher System

The Academic Policies and Practices Working Group instituted major changes in the course drop and withdrawal procedures. Examining policies regarding course registration was identified as an early priority for the Task Force, with full understanding of the administrative challenges of such an undertaking. The work of the Task Force drew attention to challenges students face in selecting classes. The working group studied available data on student decision-making and conducted benchmarking of peer institutions to understand the historic practice in context. They also engaged student governance groups to iterate and refine a new set of deadlines that would support student success and wellbeing. The new deadlines aim to help students manage challenges with their workload, stress and work-life balance while also minimizing disruptive changes to class rosters that may negatively affect team-based work.

The new processes and deadlines are part of a comprehensive plan to improve the student experience. They were developed over the course of 18 months with substantive engagement through town halls and in consultation with governing bodies on campus that included deans, associate deans, Faculty Senate, Student Government, Student Senate, the Graduate Student Assembly and the University Education Council. The academic policies and practices working group was sensitive to CMU’s practice of allowing students to explore classes of interest through a generous withdrawal process. Before the work of the Task Force, the drop deadline was the tenth week of class and students could withdraw from classes up until the final day of class.

Effective for Fall 2018, the university rolled out a revised academic calendar as well as a new voucher system to address concerns with registration. Once the syllabus repository and course profiles were established, the course drop deadline was moved to the sixth week of class and the course withdrawal date was moved up by five weeks. By the 10^th week of class, students have enough time to get a sense of their workload and class outcomes as well as assessment measures. This change also addresses concerns from project-based courses where student teams are formed.

The voucher system supports the important culture of exploration and risk-taking, allowing students a limited number of opportunities to drop a course up until the last day of classes without the course appearing on their transcript.

Combined, these changes contribute to a greater ability for students to balance academic rigor with attending to their basic needs, make informed decisions early in the semester, experience increased opportunity for engagement outside the classroom and improve the academic experience.

Add, Drop, Withdrawal Assessment

In tandem with changes made to course drop and course withdrawal policies, the Academic Policies and Practices Working Group developed a plan to assess these changes and deliver a set of recommendations to the provost for evaluating the impact of the approved changes to the academic calendar. This will inform decision-making about the future of the academic calendar.

Auto-Bump and Overload

Prior to the Task Force’s work, the university had a standard policy to create an automatic, system-generated increase allowing students to overload their course registration—called an auto-bump. Many students were allowed to register for more than one additional course over a standard load each semester. There was a strong sense that this administrative practice as default nudged students toward a culture that viewed overloading as the norm—rather than encouraging deep engagement in a “normal” course load. The initiative eliminated this automatic increase and established standard definitions and procedures for unit registrations in excess of normal established student loads. Effective for Fall 2018, students are required to speak with their advisor prior to overloading their schedule. 

Free Group X Fitness Classes for All Students, Faculty and Staff

University leadership embraced the Task Force’s recommendation that all students, faculty and staff members have free access to Group X classes. The Group X offerings include aerobics and strength-training and early 60 other weekly exercise classes, including yoga and dance. With the Cohon University Center expansion and David A. Tepper Quadrangle opening, courses are now offered from four studios plus a dedicated indoor cycling studio. During nice weather, some classes are even taught on an outdoor terrace overlooking the Oakland skyline.

JED Foundation Self-Assessment and Report

In 2016, CMU partnered with The Jed Foundation (a non-profit organization that exists to protect emotional health and prevent suicide for the nation's teens and young adults) to assess the university’s mental health response programs. The effort seeks to drive progress in program and policy that can build upon existing mental health, substance abuse and suicide prevention efforts to ensure quality care that aligns with best practices in the corresponding fields. Topics addressed have included promoting social connectedness, increasing help-seeking behaviors, documenting crisis management protocols and limiting access to lethal means. Ongoing topics to be examined will be resiliency programming and messaging, outreach to persons at risk and delivery of substance use and mental health services.

Orientation Enhancements on Student Mental Health and Self-Care

First-year undergraduate orientation, orientation for students’ families, orientation for new faculty members and incoming graduate student orientation were revamped to provide a more holistic approach to social connectedness and a lens toward overall wellbeing. Explicit language related to help-seeking and identifying resources available on campus was included in the updated programming, as well as skill-building opportunities to help students communicate their needs. The message that seeking help is a strength is reinforced throughout the updated orientation programming, alongside explicit emphasis on well-being, self-care and reflection.

Pilot Course: Hacking Your Life

Students in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences will be offered the opportunity to “hack” their life—explore who they are, how they learn and how they can take care of themselves. The course gives students the opportunity to explore the CMU student experience, the science of learning and issues central to students (e.g. resilience, social connections and mental health). 

Unit Alignment

The Academic Policies and Practices Working Group determined opportunities to improve the alignment between units assigned to courses and the workload experienced by students. Beginning in Fall 2017, the workload of each class was analyzed using faculty course evaluations (specifically, student effort reports) with an eye toward unit appropriateness. These analyses were conducted by the University Education Council, deans and department heads. It was provided to faculty to guide course development.

Video Series on Seeking Help

One of the key priorities of the JED Foundation working group was to increase help-seeking behavior among members of the Carnegie Mellon community. The working group initiated the development of a series of videos regarding mental health treatment and how to seek it. These educational and awareness videos were posted on the CaPS website and are also used regularly in outreach presentations. 

The Wellbeing Project at Carnegie Mellon

Student organizations with a shared mission to support health and wellbeing on campus came together during the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 academic years to convene discussion and action surrounding enhancing campus culture. They hosted CMU Wellbeing Week and inspired a new component for first-year undergraduate orientation in 2018.

Wellness Language as Part of Syllabi

Multiple sub-committees worked together to develop language regarding mental health for inclusion in all course syllabi university-wide. The Eberly Center on Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation maintains a checklist for faculty developing their syllabi in accordance with Faculty Senate recommendations, which now includes the Statement on Student Wellness.

Calendar Innovation

Carnegie Mellon’s academic calendar has more instructional days than most of our peers. The Task Force has suggested that innovations to our calendar could transform the ways we work and pause from work to create a more healthy, productive and sustainable CMU experience. The provost has embraced this notion and will charge a calendar innovation committee to benchmark our peers, conduct a literature review on any research that supports a new approach, and propose inventive ways to adjust the cadence of our academic schedule. The committee will be comprised of faculty, staff and students and will engage the broader campus in the development of the calendar.

Waitlist Process Changes

The Academic Policies and Practices Working Group identified and plans to implement changes for improvements to waitlist procedures at CMU. Strategic and careful plans need to consider course planning and transparent processes for entering and exiting the waitlist. Both anecdotal and quantitative data pointed to problems related to students taking course overloads only to drop courses late in the semester, while other students were unable to get into courses from waitlists that later had capacity once drops occurred.

Wellbeing Programming for Graduate Student Orientation

The Offices of the Vice Provost for Education, Graduate Education and the Division of Student Affairs are developing new content to enhance offerings during graduate student orientation, including video links on the Graduate Education Website coupled with educational sessions to increase knowledge and visibility of wellbeing resources at CMU.

Required “Design Your Life“ Course for All Undergraduate Students

The Design Your Life Working Group has submitted a road map to the Office of the Provost that develops and implements a university-wide course based on the framework developed by the design your life committee. If pursued, the effort would require significant investment to bring relevant expertise to create such a course along with a teaching team that would later be identified and resourced. The body of this group’s work will be available for future consideration should this project be prioritized. At the Task Force’s culminating retreat, it was the near unanimous recommendation that this be deprioritized for now given approaches being taken at the local level in some colleges that likely provide the most appropriate path forward.

50^th Anniversary Student Exhibition

The Tartan Reboot Working Group sought innovative ways to highlight the work of CMU’s student organizations, student scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and artists at the university’s 50^th Anniversary Celebration in 2017. The group proposed an integrated exhibition of student work that featured demonstrations and performances throughout the afternoon of Founder’s Day. The faculty-judged competition was broken into three categories: I Built Something; I Impacted Something; and I Dreamed Something. The initiative was coordinated by the Office of Student Leadership, Involvement, and Civic Engagement (SLICE) and offered a $1,000 prize to the winners of each category.

College/Department Town Halls

The Campus Culture and Student Success Working Group sought opportunities to engage the CMU community on issues aligned with the Task Force’s mission. As a first step, the Task Force partnered with the colleges to host town halls to open discussion on the CMU experience. The Campus Culture and Student Success Working Group engaged the deans in Fall 2016 to execute meaningful conversations on challenges and issues facing the campus and nation, and CMU students responded in a big way. Many colleges, fittingly, handled the town hall project in their own way—some holding smaller, more intimate discussions for each major or program, others conducting conversations entirely online, and still others incorporating creativity and student performance into their discussions.

Life@CMU Study

The study represents a world-leading approach to carefully assess the student experience, using a rich battery of self-report, sensor and smartphone, and experience-sampling measures. Two administrations of the study were conducted with first-year and sophomore undergraduate students that yielded a rich data set that is available for continued analysis. The Task Force has recommended expansion of the study to include graduate students and possibly faculty and staff.  The provost is convening a small working group to identify the research questions most beneficial to study, which will guide resource allocation for expansion.

Racism is Real Lecture Series

One priority of the Campus Culture and Student Success Working Group was to create an opportunity for community groups to engage in conversations about difficult topics. The Racism is Real lecture series highlighted current research and scholars working in this area and was begun to provide the campus community insight into the reality of racial prejudice and discrimination. Students throughout the university expressed a need for these forums for difficult conversations. The Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion guided the speaker series, which in its first year covered topics ranging from how to talk about race to actions allies can take to combat racism.

Task Force at the Fence

In partnership with the Offices of the President and the Provost, the Campus Culture and Student Success Working Group initiated and planned an event at the Fence in Fall 2016  to assemble the campus for community reflection and dialogue. Nearly 200 community members met at this central, very visible campus location to reflect on and informally discuss global issues of concern, including race relations, inequality, xenophobia, hate crimes, sexual violence and the current nature of U.S. political discourse.

Community Reflection Installation Following Synagogue Shooting Community

In October 2018, 11 people were murdered in an attack on a synagogue near campus housing Congregation Dor Hadash, New Light Congregation and Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Congregation. The city, the campus community and the world were reeling in grief and shock. As a response, the UPLift Challenge subcommittee of the Task Force facilitated the installation of a temporary community art project, where CMU community members could visibly express their sorrow, prayers, support and hope. The project temporarily revamped a section of the Cohon University Center Lobby, creating space to sit, reflect and share personal sentiments following the tragedy. More than 500 responses written on compostable tags in 20 languages and hung on the exhibit. When the art project concluded, the responses were digitized, archived and used in the soil to plant a memorial tree located on campus.

Creating Common Language Around Wellbeing as a Community

The Ecosystem of Support Working Group submitted a proposal to the Division of Student Affairs to create common language regarding the themes and needs when providing wellbeing resources. Among the diverse constituents of CMU, wellbeing is defined and activated in various ways. Until and unless a common language and meaning around wellbeing is articulated, celebrated and activated, the working group has determined there will continue to be challenges mapping and maintaining progress in this area.

Tartan Community Day

The Tartan Reboot Working Group submitted to a proposal University Events, the Office of the Provost and the Division of Student Affairs to create and formalize an annual event for the CMU community nicknamed Tartan Community Day. The inaugural annual day of engagement will occur on Friday of homecoming weekend. Events will be coordinated and marketed with homecoming festivities so that alumni may participate alongside students, faculty and staff. This day off from classes and business-as-usual will allow all community members to connect with CMU and the ideals that unite us.

Additional Funding for Informal Faculty/Student Interaction Opportunities

The Campus Culture and Student Success Working Group has submitted a proposal to additionally fund informal opportunities for faculty-student interaction. The working group has heard from students that they would like more informal opportunities to interact with faculty outside of the classroom. At the culminating retreat of the Task Force, members encouraged local-level activities be the driver for such initiatives to be successful. As such, this did not rise as a priority for centralized coordination. Academic programs interested in taking up the laudable goal of increasing informal faculty-student interactions could look to the School of Drama and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, both of which provide successful examples of catalyzing this type of activity.

Expansion of the Grand Challenge Series

The Tartan Reboot Working Group has proposed continuation and expansion of the Grand Challenge series of seminars, currently required of first-year students and housed within the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Existing seminars tackle big questions and problems facing society, such as work-life balance, mental health and higher education, while incorporating best practices related to unconscious bias training. The seminars use intergroup dialogue in the classroom and are a valuable part of the undergraduate curriculum. This recommendation was identified by the Task Force as one that is worthy of consideration after the accomplishment of other initiatives that were more highly considered.

Speaker Series for the Community

The Tartan Reboot Working Group has submitted a proposal to fund an additional speaking or workshop series (perhaps called Campus Conversations) that would be advertised and open to the entire community. The Task Force did not elevate this recommendation as a current priority for the university to adopt at this time, given other investments being made in elevating the University Lecture Series that has similar goals.

Academic Advisor Onboarding Plan

The academic advisor is a key component of the advising ecosystem. As such, the Advising Working Group has focused on how best to hire, train, supervise, support and reward the individuals who inhabit the “advisor” role. Building off the foundational work of Carnegie Mellon Resource Advising Center (CMARC) and campus-wide advisor breakfasts, new initiatives were launched to add depth and breadth to the professional development of advisors. The Advising Working Group developed a training and onboarding program for new hires into the advising community to support those doing this critical work. The onboarding training provides a common core knowledge about the theoretical foundations of advising, campus policy and practices, and knowledge of important campus resources.

Advising Conference

The Advising Working Group collaborated with neighboring University of Pittsburgh to plan presentations, invite a keynote speaker of national prominence, and build a program of high-level recognition presentations to support local professional development for university advisors. The summit will convene for the first time in March 2020.

Advising Logic Model 

Working to create a logic model that identifies key core needs, key inputs and expected outcomes for the advising experience, this initiative provides an opportunity and foundation for building a comprehensive and nuanced assessment plan. Such a model enables the university to understand advising effectiveness and identify gaps of multiple inputs beyond an advisor’s interaction with students. As of 2019, the undergraduate and master’s advising working groups are engaged in building this model.

Advisor Celebration

The Advising Working Group created a celebration of advising event to recognize and celebrate advisors on campus. Senior campus leadership attends the now-annual event and participates in discussion about advising accomplishments and best practices. The provost and other senior university leadership deliver remarks and celebrate the achievements of the advising community.

Advisor Certification

A new portfolio and certification process provided CMU advisors with the ongoing opportunity to pursue additional knowledge and professional development. Trainings are focused on nationally recognized key competency areas. This offering creates a strategy for career ladders and systematic recognition of advisor achievements, with potential to track promotion opportunities for this critical sector of CMU staff.

Bias Training

The Campus Culture and Student Success Working Group identified ways to expand existing bias training offered to students, administrative units, and college faculty and staff members. Engineering, Computer Science and Student Affairs bias initiatives were developed in concert with Google’s Bias Busting@Work program, as well as research from the University of Virginia and research from Facebook. Unconscious bias training was extended to 175 faculty members and staff including the entire Office of the Provost, members of the Office of General Counsel and the Division of Student Affairs.

CMULead

The CMULead Working Group created opportunities for increased professional development for staff members through a series of workshops. These were designed, coordinated and delivered to the inaugural pilot group of 23 staff leaders from across campus, who were nominated to partake in opportunities to build skills throughout a series of day-long workshops covering topics such as how a global research university is organized and governed; inclusive leadership; and strategy, vision and impact at CMU.

Faculty Leadership Development Workshops

The Faculty Development Workshop Working Group, the vice president for faculty, and the Committee on Faculty Diversity, Inclusion and Development saw a need to build administrative skills, enable faculty members to engage with the institution, and gain leadership opportunities. The Faculty Leadership Development Workshop for emerging faculty leaders was launched in 2018 and has since engaged 37 faculty, who were nominated by their respective deans.

Identifying Students at Risk

The mental health and wellbeing services, JED Foundation and both iterations of the ecosystem of support working groups each recommended the development of a series of in-person training sessions for academic departments intended to assist faculty and staff in knowing how to identify and intervene with students at risk. This was universally endorsed by the Task Force and has been in development over Summer 2019 for deployment in the 2019-2020 academic year. In tandem with the in-person trainings, the group designated an online mental health training option (Kognito) to further support learning and development opportunities for the entire campus community.

Mental Health First Aid

Both the Ecosystem of Support and Mental Health and Wellbeing Services Working Groups recommended increasing the number of offerings of mental health first aid, an internationally recognized mental health certification training. Health promotion and CaPS staff attended an annual train the trainer session to become certified to deliver monthly sessions during the academic year. The eight-hour training is available to all interested staff, faculty and students, and has also been offered to dining and custodial services staff employed by outside vendors to enable the whole community’s commitment to supporting student success and wellbeing.

Wellness and Resilience Course

The Ecosystem of Support Working Group created a semester-long, for-credit course (6 units) designed to teach coping and emotional regulation skills, resilience strategies, and building positive routines based on tenets from positive psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior theory and acceptance and commitment therapy. The course is part of a national research study and is being piloted in Fall 2019.

Coaching for Faculty on Mentor-Mentee Relationships

The Doctoral Student Mentoring Working Group has submitted a proposal to create and offer professional development courses and coaching for faculty on mentoring. These sessions will include: opportunities to learn about advising-mentoring best practices, assessment tools and access to one-on-one support as well as expert feedback on mentoring strategies. An institutional lead is being identified to carry on this work, which will be within the Vice Provost for Education, Vice Provost for Faculty or Eberly Center units.

Comprehensive Advising for Undergraduate and Master’s Students

In 2018, the Task Force on the CMU Experience identified “holistic improvements to advising across the life cycle” as a key strategy for improving the undergraduate and graduate student experience. A committee has been examining the practice of academic advising at the undergraduate and master’s level, with a focus on reviewing and/or establishing agreed upon expectations, outcomes of the advising experience, robust professional development strategy for advisors, and related assessment of quality and impact. The committee’s work now lies in shifting attention to determining key outcomes of the advising ecosystem as an important step towards assessing what is impactful and the existence of gaps. By interacting and engaging with the CMU advising ecosystem, students have the opportunities and resources they need to exhibit student success behaviors. By creating a comprehensive advising ecosystem, CMU is committed to creating an environment that fosters long-term outcomes that benefit students both while they are students at CMU as well as lifelong alumni.

Professional Development for Faculty in Understanding General Needs of Today’s Students

The Faculty Ecosystem Working Group submitted a proposal to implement professional development programs for faculty. These programs will: promote life-work balance; promote inclusion, diversity and equity; teach the impact of unconscious bias and ways to mitigate it; teach diversity in learning styles; and teach/promote institutional values, especially in times of distress. The Vice Provost for Faculty and/or the Eberly Center will lead this initiative going forward.

Recognizing the Role of Faculty and Support Staff in Supporting Doctoral Student Wellbeing

The Doctoral Student Mentoring Working Group submitted a proposal to incorporate doctoral faculty and doctoral support staff into the “campus ecosystem of support” for doctoral students. The proposal considers the unique challenges of doctoral students and faculty in the provision and design of both services and facilities for mental health and wellbeing. The Division of Student Affairs will lead this initiative.

Shared GSA Survey Results within Schools/Colleges

The Doctoral Student Mentoring Working Group has proposed further exploring and understanding the differential advising and mentoring experiences reported by doctoral students in the GSA Advising Survey of Underrepresented Groups. Sharing these results enables schools and colleges to properly address concerns. Each school or college’s diversity, equity and inclusion strategic plans will lead this work.

Survey of Mentoring for Doctoral Students

The Doctoral Student Mentoring Working Group suggests institution of regular review of support programs created for doctoral students and doctoral faculty at the university or college levels. The working group recommends the Institutional Research & Analysis staff design and deploy a survey with specific objectives on doctoral student mentoring and advising—for both faculty and students. They also recommend the survey should follow up on findings suggested by the Graduate Student Assembly (GSA) Advising Survey regarding differential advising and mentoring experiences for underrepresented groups. This specific information will be important for the colleges’ diversity, equity and inclusion strategic plans. The deans’ offices and Institutional Research will lead this work.

Wellbeing Training to Increase Campus Ecosystem Capacity

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Services Working Group submitted a proposal to support the development of the campus ecosystem of support by growing the number of faculty, staff and peers who are trained to support and engage in student wellbeing. The Division of Student Affairs will lead this initiative.

Professional Development for Faculty

The Faculty Ecosystem Working Group further recommends professional development for faculty that is developed, evaluated and shared broadly across campus. The working group identified the need to systematically define competencies that can guide training offerings. The working group calls for assessment and evaluation to be woven into professional development offerings from conception, and for it to be benchmarked with peer institutions and similar programs. The offices of the deans are recommended to lead this ongoing, future work.

Review of Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure Policies for Weighting to Identified Competencies

The Faculty Ecosystem Working Group has proposed that the promotion and tenure process consider elements of how faculty engage with students as part of the review process. The Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Faculty Senate are recommended to lead this future initiative.

Student Professional Development on Seeking Mentorship Opportunities

The Doctoral Student Mentoring Working Group recommends creating and offering professional development courses for students seeking mentors. The working group notes that faculty-student relationships require engagement and development for both mentor and mentee, but students have few opportunities to learn about advising and mentoring, or even to examine their own expectations. Such opportunities with one-on-one support would help develop professional skills of value throughout a student’s programs and careers. These activities could be incorporated into orientation for new students. The working group recommends the Office of the Provost lead this future initiative. In order to be successful, the Task Force recommended this work follow other current commitments made to develop a common understanding of and training for mentorship of graduate students by faculty.

Andrew Carnegie Society Gift

With the help of University Advancement, the Campus Infrastructure Working Group secured a gift from the Andrew Carnegie Society—a campaign designed to continually finance placemaking efforts like Nooks and the UPLift Challenge.

Campus Branding

Marketing & Communications worked to improve campus branding. The Campus Infrastructure Working Group recommended updated, coherent banners that tie in to the CMU identity and brand, as well as overhauls to interior and exterior signage and wayfinding across campus and within the Cohon University Center to enhance the visitor experience.

Nooks

The Campus Infrastructure Working Group developed the nicer nooks initiative to locate and identify improvements that could be made to small, indoor spaces on campus, including spaces adjacent to classrooms set for refurbishment. To date, eight projects have been completed: two in the College of Fine Arts, two in Doherty Hall, one in Margaret Morrison, one outside Adamson Wing in Baker Hall, one outside classrooms in Porter Hall, and one at Cooper Simon. By Fall 2020, Campus Design and Facility Development will provide status reports and a completion timeline to the Office of the Provost. Nooks in Wean Hall on floors four through six have anticipated upgrade installations over the 2019-2020 academic year.

Outdoor Spaces

The Campus Infrastructure Working Group facilitated the donation of 30 Adirondack chairs from the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at CMU in conjunction with their 25^th Anniversary Celebration for the program.

UPLift Microgrant

The Campus Infrastructure Working Group coordinated the UPLift microgrant challenge—a program that emphasized unique and temporary placemaking efforts. Community members submitted creative ideas ranging from an adult swing set to an outdoor grill. The UPLift team implemented six out of eight winning projects, with additional projects set for completion in the 2019-2020 academic year.

Health and Wellness Digital Signage and Media Campaign

The Divisions of Student Affairs and Marketing & Communications will lead an initiative to institute signage promoting health and wellness. The Campus Infrastructure Working Group recommends creation of marketing materials ranging from digital signage (e.g., tennis court scoreboard, signage monitors and computer cluster home screens) to promotion of messaging about the CMU experience, health and wellbeing, etc. In collaboration with the JED Foundation Working Group, the Ecosystem of Support Working Group recommends this project to showcase mental health resources on campus as well as an integrated multimedia series of brief, educational, culturally relevant and inspirational videos to be developed for easy access by community members. Topics will include mental health de-stigmatization, resiliency, alcohol and drug harm reduction, and pivoting from failure.

Information and Active Learning Spaces

The Campus Infrastructure Working Group has proposed an assessment of potential informal but active learning spaces (also called “dead spaces”) for additional infrastructure changes. The Classroom and Learning Spaces Renovation committee will continue to assess these spaces.

Innovations with Space: Outdoor Lighting

Facilities Management and Campus Services will lead ongoing work to enhance outdoor spaces. Recommendations from the Campus Infrastructure Working Group include moving up the timeline for the university’s next outdoor lighting survey to identify areas where changes to lighting could easily be made as part of a comprehensive overhaul of outdoor lighting on campus.

UPLift Microgrant Institutionalization

The UPLift program will be institutionalized and funded through the departments of Marketing & Communication and Campus Design and Facility Development. This will include rolling submissions and the award of one grant per year.

Assessment and Data Infrastructure in CaPS

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Services Working Group has helped to secure the appointment of a principal research analyst within CaPS to assist with data collection and analysis.

Availability of Syllabi

A syllabus registry was established alongside expanded course profiles—initiatives that resulted from close partnership with CMU’s Faculty Senate, who drafted a resolution to ensure syllabi were available on the first day of classes. The Student Senate also worked on the initiative in order to allow students to make more informed course decisions. Prior to the adoption of these course documents, some students felt it was necessary to register for a class in order to understand the course structure, outcomes and prerequisite knowledge. The expanded course materials have been particularly useful for defining prerequisite knowledge for master’s students, who have different registration procedures than other student groups. Syllabi are available to the entire CMU community via Canvas, CMU’s password-protected course registration software.

CaPS Expansion

Early Task Force meetings, specifically with the JED Foundation Working Group in the Summer and Fall 2016 and their resulting discussions, led to CMU’s central funding increase to expand Counseling and Psychological Services. These improvements to this crucial service included funding to hire more CaPS therapists as well as a full-time psychiatrist. Increased funding allowed CaPS to expand availability for individual and group therapy, open an annex location, and partner with University Health Services to more holistically support student health and wellbeing services. These expansions represent a clinical full-time staff increase of 54 percent since 2016. CaPS has more than doubled the funding and availability of contract clinical staff who assist with additional clinical hours in times of high need. Between individual and small-group sessions, CaPS now impacts more than 35 percent of CMU’s student population at some point in their academic career, with more than 4,000 students additionally impacted by 134 outreach events during the 2018-2019 Academic Year. Additionally, CaPS has worked to build a strong network of community referral services for those who need long-term care.

CMU Cares Folder

The Academic Policies and Practices Working Group partnered with the Mental Health and Wellbeing Services Working Group to develop a CMU Cares folder, a guide to helping students. The resource is available to all student-facing faculty, staff and graduate students who teach (roughly 6,500 individuals) to utilize when they encounter a student in distress or in need of additional support. Housed on the website for Student Affairs, the document lays out university resources in an easily accessible manner and guides readers toward the appropriate contact for each service or type of support.

Codified Goals for Academic Advising

The Advising Working Group identified a common set of goals and outcomes for advising as a system and practice across undergraduate and graduate student populations. Previously, there had never been a set of articulated advising expectations and outcomes that could be assessed systematically beyond a survey of individual advisors.

Course Profiles

Course profiles were established to provide students more detailed information on courses prior to registration. Course registration infrastructure was updated to allow students direct access to information such as key topics, prerequisite knowledge, course relevance, course goals/learning outcomes, assessment structure, learning resources, extra structured time commitments, course tags and links to sample syllabi.

Headspace App

CMU invested in a subscription to Headspace App, offering 1,000+ hours of content at no cost to the campus community seeking resources for meditation and mindfulness. Headspace has more than 54 million users across 190 countries, and as of Fall 2019, 3,620 of those users are from within the CMU community. On average, community members log in 3.2 times per week and since adopting the subscription, our community has meditated more than 500,000 minutes.

Mapping Existing Support Services

The Ecosystem of Support Working Group, in tandem with the JED Foundation Working Group, created a listing of current resources that support overall health, wellbeing and success on campus, particularly related to student health and wellness. These efforts have helped in the ongoing development of a virtual wellness hub site.

Undergraduate and Masters Statement on Advising

The Advising Working Group created a review and draft of a comprehensive statement of advising for both the master’s and undergraduate domains.

Crisis Postvention Plan

The JED Foundation Working Group has submitted a proposal to the Division of Student Affairs to create a documented Crisis Postvention Plan. The current documentation of practices is in draft form, set for finalization in Fall 2019.

Digital Wellness Hub

The university’s Divisions of Marketing & Communications and Student Affairs are working to create a digital wellness hub to serve as a one-stop shop to guide students on their wellness journeys. Conceived as a content-rich site, wellness-related resources and services will be displayed along with information about how to engage in the university’s myriad offerings to support holistic health and wellbeing.

Lethal Means Restriction Action Plan

The JED Foundation Working Group has submitted to the Division of Student Affairs a proposal to convene a city-wide working group to develop a lethal means restriction action plan that will identify and mitigate locations on and near campus that are self-harm high-risk areas (such as bridges).

Leave of Absence Policy for Students

The JED Foundation Working Group has submitted to the Offices of the Vice Provost for Education, Student Affairs and Enrollment Services a proposal to explore increased coordination across campus divisions, departments and colleges regarding leave of absence policies and procedures. This effort is designed to improve transparency and consistency for all students who take a leave of absence.

Mental Health and Wellbeing Treatment

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Services Working Group has submitted to the Division of Student Affairs a proposal to support CaPS and community health and wellbeing (CHWB) leadership in their efforts to: continue diversification and expansion of therapeutic approaches, including CBT offerings; seek American Psychological Association (APA) accreditation for CMU’s doctoral psychology internship program; and continue to seek expert consultation and benchmarking information from the field of college and university center leaders (IACS, AUCCCD, ACHA, JED Foundation to guide the use of DSM-V diagnoses at CaPS and UHS. This proposal aligns with plans consistent with the CHWB strategic plan and are already in progress.

Transportation Options

The Campus Infrastructure Working Group has submitted a proposal to the parking and transportation committee to explore improved transportation options, including the expansion of shuttle and van services, installation of additional bike racks and partnership with Health Ride—a City of Pittsburgh community bike rental program.

Codified Value Statement for Doctoral Student Mentoring

The Doctoral Student Mentoring Working Group has submitted to the deans and provost a proposal to develop explicit value statements regarding doctoral mentoring. They propose working with departments, colleges and schools to provide formal guidance on expectations for doctoral faculty and doctoral students within CMU. The Task Force’s perspective is that these will be most successful if they are designed at the local level to ensure resonance with unique characteristics of the academic community in which the program is situated.

Improve Current Support Mechanisms in Doctoral Mentoring Processes

The Doctoral Student Mentoring Working Group has submitted a proposal to the deans, the Office of the Vice Provost for Education and Graduate Education to identify and fill gaps in departmental, college and university support mechanisms for challenges and conflicts that might arise within the doctoral advising relationship. The Task Force recommendation is that this work will be most successful if it follows other efforts to first engage and develop faculty in their roles as mentors.

Resources and Services: The Academic Resiliency Consortium

The Ecosystem of Support Working Group has recommended that the Division of Student Affairs submit their ongoing efforts to the Academic Resilience Consortium—a national association of faculty, professionals and students in higher education dedicated to understanding and promoting student resilience. Recommended submissions could include the wellness and resilience course being developed as well as CMU’s digital hub for wellness. This will be considered as these efforts are completed.