#25 - Defend My Dissertation Proposal (Part One)

This may be the item that has taken the longest to prepare... though I hope it only holds that title for 10 more months.

2011 could have been the toughest year of my life to that point.  But it wasn't.  Because of this list, this idea, this blog.  On that initial list, I wrote "Apply to a PhD program."  And I did.  Several, actually.  On each application I wrote about campus mental health and the immense potential for positive change there is in that area, growth that could save a lot of people from a lot of suffering.  The only bad guy we have to fight is ignorance.  Because I know we all want our students to be well, our communities to be well, our world to be well.

Like most things in life, this interest came from a seemingly random intersections of experiences.  Now, I'd probably call it the emergence of a need from the right intersection of experiences.

I have been a Student Affairs professional since 2006, and I have been on 5 different campuses in various capacities since 1998.  When I wrote my applications, I had 5 solid years of full-time experience working with college students and 6 years of professional engagement at conferences.  Most of those conferences were for recreation professionals (NIRSA, IIRSA), but every now and then I went to a regional Student Affairs organization conference.  I'd rather not say which one because I haven't been to enough to know if the following story is characteristic of the organization nor this particular region.  At the conference, sessions were labeled with symbols, an artifact of their culture meant to tell you which sessions might be of interest.  There were also symbols of exclusion, as in, some sessions were only meant for people of a certain status, something that was very foreign to me and my comfort in the NIRSA world.

One of these sessions happened to be one of the few at the conference that seemed interesting to me.  It was meant for deans and up.  I wanted to go.  Not many people knew me.  Very few people in that room would know me.  I could play dumb if someone called me out.  And I wanted to go.  So I did.

The session, from my memory, explained a new practice of employing case workers in working with students demonstrating severe signs and symptoms of mental illness.  I can't remember the exact year, but I believe this was after 2007, a year that marked a change in the approach to mental illness in higher education.

In 2007, 32 members of the Virginia Tech community were killed in a mass shooting.  17 more were injured.  The university focused its attention on caring for its community.  The media split its attention between the victims and the shooter, whom we soon learned showed many signs of mental illness and distressing behavior, which was noticed by various members of the Virginia Tech community.  The media described his delusions, his violent writings, and the lack of any system for identifying students who could cause such terrifying, traumatic events.

A desire to create a system to identify such students emerged.  The campus practice "Behavioral Concerns Teams" emerged.  Though they are not required in most states, many campuses quickly created them, not wanting to be the next Virgnia Tech.

Then not wanting to be the next Northern Illinois.  The next Oikos University.  The next UC Santa Barbara.

The incidents are tragic, random, and few.  The media coverage was more predictable.  Fear spread quickly, and more and more campuses have incorporated at-risk student identification teams.

Administrators, like this one in that session, were concerned with students safety, but they were also concerned with liability and institutional accountability.  It's a tricky balance.  Unless you consider how unlikely mass shootings are and how inevitable suicides seem to be in campus settings.

This administrator was extremely concerned with liability and institutional accountability.  He told a story about a student who had attempted suicide and shortly after took a voluntary leave of absence.  He expressed relief that she was now off campus, a campus he described as having issues of easy access to lethal means.  He expressed concern about her return.  Since she took a voluntary leave of absence, he could not put any restrictions on when or how she returned, if she chose to do so.  He asked the speakers what he could do to keep her off campus so that she would not return and kill herself, leaving the institution liable.

From what I remember, the speakers did not answer the question but awkwardly further explained the case worker process and how case workers would support such a student in a personal way.

Shortly after this conference, I attended my first Depression on College Campuses conference.  The theme that year had to do with suicide prevention.  I remember sitting in various rooms in the beautiful Rackham Graduate College at the University of Michigan and feeling repeatedly inspired by the wonderful work that people were doing all over the country to improve mental health, and, that year, to prevent suicide on campuses.

I remember learning about the structural limitations counseling offices had -- limited staff and space, which limited session availability and caused long waiting lists.  I remember hearing about how counseling sessions were filled with students who already know how to seek help and how little time there was to reach out to students who were not seeking help.  I also remember hearing how many sessions were filled by students who could just as easily benefitted from participating in a number of other campus programs or services, students who were lonely and looking for connection.  The presenters talked about how they were so busy in their offices serving students that they didn't have time for outreach, and so much of that time was taken by students who likely did not need counseling, only connection.  They wanted to know, how could they reach the students when they didn't have any way to create relationships until the students showed up.

I sat there thinking, I can do that.  As a Student Affairs professional, I have continuous, direct relationships with students.  I know them personally.  They trust me.  They come to me with problems.  I do my best to help them.

I thought, if I had a better relationship with my campus counseling center, I could be that connection they needed.  So could any of my colleagues.  The counseling center didn't need to be doing this all alone.  We could help.

We could also help with the second problem: students seeking counseling when what they are really looking for is connection.  My job is to create community, to foster genuine connections.  If we had better relationships with the counseling center, we could connect students to them and they could connect students to us.

My work has come a long way from that place.  I still believe in the power of connections and in recognizing the importance of each other's work.  I still believe that the mental health of our communities should be a shared responsibility and that we should work with campus mental health professionals to guide our work with students.

Despite my passion and connection to this topic, I genuinely believed I would change topics multiple times while in my doctoral program.  I thought maybe I'd study generational differences, recreation, and I did, a little.  I even delved deeply in to Third Space theory.  But I always came back.  And each time I attended the Depression on College Campuses conference I reconnected with this idea of shared responsibility and the potential of and within healthy communities.  My fire was stoked each time I learned about the beautiful work my fellow conference attendees and the presenters.  There were so many people doing innovative, passionate work to reduce the amount of suffering and to increase the amount of joy in this world, starting with college campuses.

And so various iterations with various perspectives brought me back to my final topic: "Campus Mental Health Practices and the Stigma of Mental Illness."

I saw such inspiring work at the Depression on College Campuses conference, but no one seemed to have researched the effectiveness of the practices.  I was hopeful that they were working: that students were mentally healthier and that more students experiencing the signs and symptoms of mental illness were seeking help.  But no one seemed to know except anecdotally.

There is a major data set about student mental health, but I could only get access to the data in aggregate, which meant I couldn't link the practices to outcomes of health.  I also did not have a good way to measure help-seeking behaviors.  However, I learned through a review of the literature that help-seeking behaviors are negatively correlated with the stigma of mental illness.  In our survey research methods class, we were challenged to create a scale of measurement for a concept, and through that work, I thought that maybe I could measure stigma.

I chose Student Affairs professionals as my lens, due to my own experiences and belief about the accessability of the population.

I chose to examine the topic quantitatively, exploring for possible associations between campus mental health practices and the stigma of mental illness, to explore for hope.  Does anything appear to be working?  Is anything possibly contributing to lower levels of stigma?  Are there things we can do to make our campuses happier, healthier communities?

Depending on the results, there could be so many implications for practice and further research to really explore practices that might be working.

After a semester in Dissertation Seminar, I worked the topic, with the generous feedback of our instructor and department chair Dr. Afsaneh Nahavandi and my classmates, all of whom have been tagged here.

Then, with some thoughtful, energetic work from my dissertation chair, Dr. Christopher Newman, and my committee members, Dr. Lee Williams and Dr. Zachary Green, I was approved to defend my dissertation proposal.  I am really, honestly grateful that Christopher agreed to be my chair and that Lee and Zachary agreed to be on my committee.  I want to do good work, and I know they won't accept anything less.

Although I had to really work hard to solidify my argument, methods, and analyses, I won't bore you here with those details.

In Part Two, I'll talk about the actual defense, and all of the wonderful people who challenged and supported me during those hours.