Author: Clare Creighton

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Abundant Learning from Conducting a 360-Degree Review

by Clare Creighton

This past spring I initiated a 360-degree review of myself. The general goal of a 360° evaluation is to gather feedback from people who are organizationally oriented to an employee in different ways. The name “360” is meant to refer to people who are organizationally on all “sides” of the employee hierarchically including people who report to the employee, their supervisor(s) or people above them organizationally, lateral colleagues and peers, and more. I initiated this activity to learn more about how people experience my leadership, supervision, communication, and facilitation, but also to learn about the process as a practice in general. Here’s how I approached this and a reflection on process elements in case this project is of interest to others.

Question Design

As I conceptualized this process, a colleague reminded me that everyone has different values and beliefs about leadership. I realized the evaluation would be more effective if I shared what I was trying to do (e.g. communicate clearly, provide opportunities for input) and ask if I was accomplishing that. Drafting questions based on my values and areas that are important to me produced feedback that was more meaningful.  

Working with a Reviewer

One of my priorities was to create a process where people felt comfortable to give quality feedback without holding back and to draw out perspectives I don’t currently have or can’t see.  I opted to work with a trusted colleague who would serve as the reviewer, receiving the responses and summarizing them for me. While some respondents could choose to give me access to their original comments, this approach created an additional level of anonymity for folks who wanted it. I would take this route again; I appreciated the opportunity to have someone help make meaning of the results.  

Invitations and Response Rate

I invited 46 people to complete the review. This resulted in 30 responses. I built the Qualtrics survey, but my reviewer copied it and sent it out so I wouldn’t have access. The challenge in this format was not being able to monitor response rates, and I had no way of knowing who to nudge to complete it. I also found myself wondering what perspectives I missed because I did a more targeted invitation instead of putting out a broader call.  

Explaining Myself

Throughout the early stages of this process, I encountered a few folks who heard I was doing this and asked, “what problem are you trying to solve?” There seemed to be a common perception that 360-degree reviews were for performance issues and not part of a natural feedback cycle to help leaders see potential areas for growth. When I sent out invitations, I included a document that detailed the rationale and purpose of this exercise, and I also think if we normalize this feedback loop more, it won’t be viewed as reactionary or negative. 

Unpacking Results

After the reviewer had completed the analysis of findings, we met and he walked me through a summary of responses to different sections, general themes, and provided me with a box folder of the 19 participants who gave permission for me to read their responses. I appreciated the space to ask the reviewer follow-up questions and have a conversation about what I was hearing in the data. Being able to review the raw data for some responses was by far the most valuable part of this process as it added nuance and understanding to some of the individual responses. Following my own exploration of the data, I circled back with the invited participants to thank them for their insights. For the folks who report to me directly, I shared results and take-aways in more depth.  

Strengths & Limitations 

Spending time reflecting on my values and what I wanted feedback on was not originally part of my process, but it proved to be an invaluable exercise. Giving folks the opportunity to release their verbatim responses to me was an element I would keep as it gave me additional rich data, but with their permission.  

While the format was helpful to gather a range of feedback from a group, it was challenging to have anonymous feedback at times. Some comments and suggestions would have been better with context. Some suggestions seem so specific to one respondent that it would have been useful to gather that feedback in a 1:1 so we could have created a plan moving forward to better meet those needs.   

Overall, I really enjoyed both the process of setting this up and the learning that came from the results. I think this is a useful tool within the feedback toolbox and would recommend it for folks in any position type. Questions? Comments? Interested in seeing the survey tool I created? Please be in touch, I’m happy to share more about my process and questions. 

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Student Trip Leaders Reflect on the Experience Co-Leading an Alternative Spring Break Trip

by Peter Wilkinson, Alternative Spring Break Coordinator, Community Engagement & Leadership

The OSU Alternative Spring Break program is a special experience in student peer leadership for both participants and trip leaders. Run by Community Engagement & Leadership (CEL), Alt. Break offers immersive community-engaged service & leadership trips to 3 communities across the west coast during OSU’s spring break. Teams of 10-12 students immerse themselves in a community to learn about its historical, cultural, and political background by engaging in a variety of service projects, educational sessions, & reflection with local leaders and change-makers. Students explore complex social issues and how to create social change to build a more equitable, caring world. Alt. Break is all about experiential learning, team building, and growth through student peer leadership!

The really unique thing about our Alt. Break program, is the trips are entirely student led! A team of student employees, which includes 2-3 logistics staff & 6 trip leaders, plan and deliver the trips. The Alt. Break Coordinator, Peter Wilkinson, supervises the team, but no professional staff or faculty go on the trips. We believe in giving students the opportunity to develop their leadership skills and identities by taking on this big peer leadership role! Trip leaders work in pairs to lead the trips and logistics staff play a support role. The team starts planning in November to deliver the trips in March. They outreach to community organizations & leaders to build partnerships and co-facilitate pre-trip team meetings to orient participants to the program and conduct team building beforehand. They lead all elements of the trips (itinerary, reflection sessions, travel, meals, & supplies) while serving in an on-call crisis response role.

Below are some reflections from 3 of the 6 trip leaders from this year’s 2024 Alt. Break program. They were asked to reflect on their peer leadership including what it was like to lead an Alt. Break trip as a student, the impact of the program on them and participants, how they built their team, and tips they have for other peer leaders & mentors at OSU!

Maddi Moore

Trip: Ashland, Oregon | Digging Deeper: Environmental Conservation, Restoration, & Justice

A student standing on green grass and next to green foliage. In the background is a small building and a blue sky with a few wispy white clouds.

Alt Break supported my learning, growth and development by allowing me to develop my leadership skills and gain more confidence in those skills. I enjoyed connecting with the participants, leading reflection activities and creating a welcoming environment. At times I felt overwhelmed without having professional staff, but I could still admit when I didn’t know something and ask for support from my other co-lead.

We developed a strong team dynamic before and during the trip by leading with honesty and humor. We were always honest when we messed something up or didn’t know something ,and we often joked around with participants. We covered some uncomfortable topics on the trip, and because we were so open with the team, people felt more comfortable to share during those conversations. Throughout the trip people clearly felt comfortable to let loose and be themselves, and we created an environment where people felt safe.

Ismael Rodriguez Cardoso

Trip: San Francisco, CA | Change, Not Coins: Housing & Food Insecurity
A group of nine people wearing white aprons and hair nets. They are smiling and posed in front of a large window. On the wall above them is a sign that says "Food = Love."

Being part of this program has been an incredibly enriching experience—from immersing myself in the experiences of the houseless community to sharing heartfelt moments with individuals from diverse backgrounds, and contributing to the legacy of the Alt Break trip. Every aspect has been truly remarkable. This trip offers a unique opportunity for personal and leadership growth that I believe everyone should participate in. Stepping out of one’s comfort zone to engage in service projects and educate oneself on various topics is a great way to grow as a leader and unlearn many social biases. My time in San Francisco has not only broadened my understanding on social justice but also ignited a passion to continue learning about different issues, both locally and globally.

Leading up to the Alt break trip, our team invested their time in three meaningful pre-trip meetings. Within these meetings, we got a better understanding of one another, explored our individual leadership values, and identied our preferred modes of interaction. This groundwork fostered a sense of connection among us. What truly made us connect and bond was the shared enthusiasm and readiness to take on this Alt Break trip together, to engage with the community, and to learn from one another’s cultural backgrounds.

I also want to thank my other co-lead, Jenny, for taking on this trip with me. We collaborated closely on creating the itinerary and Zoom calls with community partners. This not only strengthened our bond, but our energy rubbed its positive impact on our participants. To this day, the whole San Francisco Alt Break trip team keeps in touch with each other, and post-trip, we all have attended cultural shows around campus and events with Community Engagement & Leadership.

Seneca Moback

Trip: Yakima, WA | Tangled Roots: History, Land Use, & Cultural Engagement
A group of 13 people, many wearing maroon shirts, sitting in a circle in a green field. There are hills in the background and mostly blue sky with white clouds.

Leading Alt. Break was a great opportunity to step entirely into my role as a leader. I enjoyed facilitating conversations, hanging out in the kitchen, and checking in on students throughout the week. It was strange at times when students viewed me as an authority figure, but I still was able to balance the power dynamics. I am still a student just like them, all from different backgrounds and areas of study. I didn’t mind admitting not knowing things and asking students if they knew more than me.

Without a faculty or staff member, I felt more confident in my abilities as a leader because it was actually harder to second guess myself in moments of insecurity. We did have our supervisor on call the whole time and plenty of other types of support in place. I would encourage more programs to explore and experiment with sending students on trips like these to practice more autonomy in their groups.

These reflections illustrate some of the impact leading Alt. Break has on student leaders. We often find trip leaders return believing in themselves more than when they departed! While it may be intimidating in some ways, we seek to create a supportive, care-centered experience that prioritizes growth and learning rather than getting things “right.” As we know, students are capable of so much more than they may realize! Co-leading an Alt. Break trip, or taking on similar peer leadership roles & challenges, is one way for students to unlock and recognize that potential!

If you know students who might be interested in attending or co-leading an Alt. Break trip, encourage them to apply next year and reach out to CEL (cel@oregonstate.edu) or the Alt. Break Coordinator, Peter Wilkinson (Peter.wilkinson@oregonstate.edu). Thanks for reading and supporting student leadership development at OSU!

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SEE Your Growth in Student Employment

by Emily Bowling, representative from the SEE YOUR GROWTH workgroup

Summary

Student Experiences & Engagement (SEE) believes in the power of leadership development via student employment and creating quality student employment experiences. Student employment represents one of our largest investments as an organization, both financially and in terms of professional faculty time invested in hiring, training, and providing ongoing supervision, mentoring, coaching, and support. SEE has created a process called SEE YOUR GROWTH to embody our goals, values, and investment in student employment. The SEE YOUR GROWTH process is an annual reflective, meaning making process for student employees to synthesize, summarize, and celebrate accomplishments, skills, growth, and lessons learned from their year of student employment. SEE YOUR GROWTH is an approach that has evolved over time and has shown effectiveness at scale across departments and diverse supervisors and advisors while centering the individual student employee’s development over the course of their employment with us. This piece summarizes this initiative as a model that has potential to be adapted to other areas of OSU employing students. 

SEE, established in 2019, is composed of four departments: Experiential Learning & Activities, Craft Center, Diversity & Cultural Engagement, and Community Engagement & Leadership. In 2020, representatives from each department came together with a desire to create some organizational cohesion and consistency to how we support student employee leadership development in alignment with our protocols and values. Now this group is called the SEE YOUR GROWTH workgroup. We also had an interest in how we could iteratively improve and tell the collective story of student employment across our organization. The annual SEE YOUR GROWTH process was created through that collective work and was born in Spring 2021. 

This process is the manifestation of a belief in utilizing critical reflection as a tool for personal and professional growth. Each spring term, student employees reflect in writing on their growth and learning in the areas of wellbeing (personal and collective), social justice, community and belonging, leadership, and career and beyond SEE; they then deepen and expand upon their answers in dialogue and conversation with their supervisor and often their peers as well. These categories were created to align with SEE’s values and protocols, shared learning outcomes and goals for the student employment programs across SEE, and annual and ongoing training and professional development opportunities. You can view the 2024 student reflection questions in pdf format here:  SEE YOUR GROWTH Student Reflection TEMPLATE Form.

Additionally, our workgroup annually updates a SEE Your Growth Supervisor/Adviser Companion Guide – 2023-2024 to support supervisor and advisor preparation for the process. We have over 20 different supervisors each year engaging in this process, and this helps establish shared language and a common entry point regarding the importance and goals of the process, role of supervisors and advisors, and tips and guidance for implementation and success with students. 

Process Overview

The SEE YOUR GROWTH process occurs throughout the year:

Spring Term

  • Supervisors and advisors distribute SEE YOUR GROWTH reflection forms to student employees
  • Supervisors and advisors meet 1:1 and in groups to discuss responses with student employees
  • Supervisors and advisors complete a Supervisor/Advisor Reflection Form to identify themes in each category of student responses, pride points, and growth opportunities for student employment. 

Summer Term

  • Supervisors and advisors engage in department and unit level meaning making from the SEE YOUR GROWTH process.
  • With unit leadership, supervisors and advisors update learning outcomes and goals for student employment.

Fall Term

  • Supervisors and advisors implement updated student employment strategies.
  • Supervisors and advisors deliver fall training and student employees set goals for their positions and learning for the year. 

Winter Term

  • SEE YOU GROWTH workgroup iterates and updates materials for the next cycle.

Ongoing: Supervisor/advisor coaching and developing of student employees and continued learning and development for supervisors/advisors and student employees. 

Lessons Learned and Next Steps

We are entering our fourth cycle of SEE YOUR GROWTH. Annually, SEE has approximately 200 student employees participate in the SEE YOUR GROWTH process. We have tweaked the student reflection questions each year to narrow in on questions that work best in an individual reflection process. There are strengths to both 1:1 supervisor conversations and group or peer to peer conversations on the reflection questions; students benefit from practicing sharing their learning and growth out loud and hearing about the growth and changes others have observed in them. 

We have found that students tend to undersell or describe their accomplishments more narrowly in relationship to the actual impact and scope of their work. Therefore, we have found significant benefit to providing space for students to practice telling the story of the impact of their student employment and the skills they have gained and strengthened with a supervisor they have worked with for 9 months or longer as well as with peers they have worked with for an academic year. These conversations are also a time for supervisors to reflect back to students the learning and growth they have observed.  

Student responses help inform adjustments to fall training topics and ongoing coaching and training during the year if student responses are less robust or deep in particular categories. Students in their last year at OSU especially appreciate the opportunity to draw connections between their student employment experiences and their future goals and plans, to practice identifying the transferability of their skills to new contexts and applications. Students across the board have appreciated the opportunity to update their resume with the student employment highlights and practice speaking out loud about their growth in their student employment role. 

We are starting to see more consistent themes in student responses. Past response themes can be viewed here: SEE YOUR GROWTH Reflection Summary Slides. Here is a sample student quote from the process: “My employment in SEE has taught me incredibly valuable facilitation and public speaking skills. These are skills that I had very limited opportunity to explore and develop before my time in SEE, and I’m very excited that I know I have them moving forward in my professional career.” 

The Supervisor/Advisor Reflection Form was added in our second year as a way to engage supervisors and advisors after the process, support assessment and theming skill practice for supervisors, and also  identify topics for supervisor professional development; it’s been hugely effective at achieving these goals. It also allows each supervisor to assume greater responsibility over the student employee experience in their area. We are hoping to grow more annual skill building and shared learning sessions for supervisors across SEE as we move forward into 2024 and beyond. SEE YOUR GROWTH has been one way to build organizational buy-in to the importance of yearlong student employee development and training as well as celebrating our collective impact as an organization. It’s been a labor of love supported across SEE and it is becoming a tradition to celebrate our growth — of our student employees, of our supervisors, and of our organization as a whole.

If you’re interested in learning more or adapting SEE YOUR GROWTH for your unit or organization, please contact Emily Bowling, emily.bowling@oregonstate.edu.  

SEE YOUR GROWTH workgroup:

  • Whitney Archer, Diversity & Cultural Engagement
  • Ange Purviance, Craft Center
  • Velyn Scarborough, Experiential Learning & Activities
  • Emily Bowling, Community Engagement & Leadership
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Can Attending to ZPD Support Belonging?

by Clare Creighton

This past year, I watched Adam Lenz (SI Coordinator) facilitate training for new Supplemental Instruction (SI) leaders. As he talked through Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) construct from Vygotsky’s learning theory it unlocked an insight for me – I heard a connection to belonging that I hadn’t heard before. What if attending to the Zone of Proximal Development contributes to a learner’s sense of belonging?

A quick side bar on the theories themselves: The Zone of Proximal Development is the space between where someone is with their current understanding and knowledge and where they are capable of getting with support from instructors and peers. This graphic simplifies it a bit to demonstrate that between what a student can already do and what they can’t do, there lives a developmental area of what they can do when given support for their learning. Strayhorn (2012) frames belonging as the ability to feel connected to, included by and cared for by other people – respected and valued as a part of a community or system larger than you. Framed in an academic domain, belonging can be a part of learning settings if (a) students feel like a part of a community within a classroom, (b) they feel a sense of connection to the course, classmates, the instructor, the discipline, or the academic environment, and/or (c) they feel accepted, valued, included, and encouraged by others within the class and related to the course. There is far more research on this. I’m also going to use Nevitt Sanford’s (1967) theory of challenge and support to help me tie these thoughts together.

The connection I heard was this: perhaps in attending to ZPD through designing learning exercises and training within students’ zone of proximal development, we have the opportunity to also support students’ sense that they belong in that learning environment.

If a learning environment (new job, coursework) is constantly beyond the zone of proximal development (or for Sanford – too much challenge, not enough support), I imagine if it can inadvertently send messages to learners that they don’t belong: you should already know this, other people already know this, and you’re behind. Or perhaps you should be able to do this and if you can’t, you’re not cut out for this job/class/degree. Those messages can exacerbate imposter syndrome and lead to folks leaving the position/class/group, or perhaps they persist, but the experience impacts their sense of self-efficacy and therefore the way they engage in new challenges and opportunities.

On the other hand, if tasks are consistently on the other side of the zone of proximal development (too easy, not enough challenge) it can convey a different message: I don’t think you’re capable of doing hard things. If there is zero challenge, it can still make folks feel like they don’t fit and should be somewhere else – the result of which can cause folks to divest energy and taper off motivation and investment.

Balancing challenge/support and working within the zone of proximal development can convey that learning and growth are part of their experience, that you believe they can do it, and that you’ll offer support until they can do it on their own. I’m painting with a broad brush here because there are elements of either of these theories that don’t align with belonging as a primary goal (situating a “more knowledgeable other” as a key part of ZPD). But there is enough that piqued my curiosity to draw this connection.

As I’m designing and facilitating a supportive and effective learning setting, here are a few ways I can consider this connection and apply it when supporting students:

  • Recognize, honor, and create space for them to bring in their existing knowledge and skills
  • Normalize that there is a learning curve for this new environment and the skills associated with this role (“you haven’t done this before” or “I remember when I learned this for the first time”)
  • Bring in language of growth over time (“you haven’t learned that yet, and that’s okay; you will”)
  • Build positions and work environments that help students learn new skills
  • Offer opportunities to practice new skills with support or scaffolded over time
  • Be aware and attuned to where they are and what they (an individual or a group) already know/what they don’t know, and then build trainings, activities, feedback, and other opportunities that challenge and support them in a space of new learning,

Citations

Strayhorn, Terrell. (2012). College Students’ Sense of Belonging: A Key to Educational Success for All Students. College Students’ Sense of Belonging: A Key to Educational Success for All Students. 1-141. 10.4324/9780203118924.

Academic belonging. (n.d.) Retrieved October 2, 2023 from https://tll.mit.edu/teaching-resources/inclusive-classroom/academic-belonging.

Sanford, N. (1967) Where colleges fail: A study of the student as a person. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass

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Career in the Classroom: Lessons Learned from Teaching ALS 114

by Brenna Gomez, Director of Career Integration, Career Development Center

Part of my role as the Director of Career Integration in the Career Development Center is to collaborate with my colleagues in the University Exploratory Studies Program (UESP) and teach ALS 114: Career Decision-Making once a year. Each time I teach the course, I make updates reflecting student need, the evolving role of AI, and more.

If you’re not familiar with Career Decision-Making, it’s a course largely for UESP students to explore majors and career paths that make the most sense for their individual goals. Students engage in lots of personal reflection about their strengths, values, and interests, while participating in career activities.

With Core Education right around the corner, many instructors and faculty are working to integrate career into existing courses or create new career courses. In this article, you’ll find some tips and tricks for thinking about career in the classroom based on my experience with ALS 114.

Share your own career path

I teach ALS: 114 on Ecampus. After my spring 2023 session, I received feedback on student evaluations that it didn’t seem like there was “enough of me as a person” in the course. As a result, I recorded personalized videos with my results from some of our career activities. Focus 2 is an interests and values assessment that gives students ideas for majors and career paths (free to use for OSU students through the Career Development Center). I have students download their results and submit them for a grade. This year, I completed the assessment myself, showed students my results in a video, and talked through the majors and career paths Focus 2 suggested, including what aligned with my personal and professional goals and what did not.  I also did this with a community map assignment, showing students who has had an influence on my life. It can feel vulnerable to share with students, and as instructors we should never share anything we aren’t comfortable with. But doing the assignments we ask them to do, and talking through our own results, can build students’ connection to me and to the course, while clearing up any questions they may have about the assignment itself. That said, these assignments are relatively short and did not take me much time to complete. That wouldn’t be true of every assignment in every course, so this may not be a realistic solution for everyone.

Yes, you do need an AI policy

In spring of 2023, I taught ALS 114 for the first time and naively believed I could avoid an AI policy because the writing assignments my students completed were mostly personal or career reflections. To me, these reflections seemed short and like it would be more work to get AI to answer them. I was reminded that we don’t know the full picture of students’ lives. If they are in a difficult period, or incredibly stressed about their future, AI can be a tempting tool that provides answers without the student having to engage in the mental process of reflection. In fall of 2023, I introduced an AI policy that largely reduced the AI usage I saw in the course. Students were allowed to use AI to help them organize their thoughts but not to draft assignments wholesale. Being transparent and communicating about AI use allows students to stay within assignment guidelines and understand instructor expectations from the start of the term

Define your preferences, especially whether you prefer a “professional tone” or an “authentic voice”

Some students were tempted to still use AI to produce a more “professional tone.” In talking with students about this, they felt a professional tone reflected higher level diction than they would consider using on their own. To them, this diction made the assignment more formal. This resulted in an excellent opportunity to discuss my bigger priority than word choice: authentic voice. I was able to speak to our reflections as informal writing with my emphasis on getting to know each student’s authentic voice. We also discussed professionalism as a skill that can be built over time and does not need to be done all at once in a single assignment by changing specific words. In other courses I teach, I’ve started giving disclaimers about how authentic voice is my priority. My hope is that by discussing authentic voice in informal reflections on the front end, students won’t feel the need to use AI to enhance their word choice.

Each time I teach this class I learn new things about my teaching practice, what I’d like to emphasize for students, and what students need to feel connected. I know I’ll continue to make changes that center students and hopefully encourage them to reflect on their lives and careers in their own authentic voices.

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Fall Student Survey Results – A Sneak Preview

by Clare Creighton

Each fall, our Fall Student Survey team works with campus partners to develop a survey administered to all undergraduate Corvallis-based students. This effort began in April 2020 when we wanted to understand how the remote learning and pandemic conditions were impacting students. Over time, the survey has evolved to help us get a general pulse of the student experience and timely information on a few key topical areas relevant to OSU initiatives and efforts.

For Fall 2023, the survey was opened on October 23, ran for approximately two weeks, and closed on November 9, 2023.

This year we asked questions in a few key blocks:

  • General overview questions that ask students about how they’re doing, their level of concern with different elements of the student experience, and their perception of their success this term.
  • A block of questions about their experience with on-campus and off-campus work/employment (hours, goals, desires)
  • A block of questions about the email communication students receive from OSU was devised in consultation with the Beaver Hub implementation team to gauge the impact of Beaver Hub on how students experience communication from OSU.
  • A block of questions about perceptions of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in students’ academic experiences.

    • Results from the full survey will be presented at an upcoming FYI Friday presentation on March 8, 2024 (via Zoom). Registration for that event is online (OSU Login). Following the presentation, the report will be released in a Box folder to internal OSU audiences.

    The Final Question

    In anticipation of that, however, I wanted to share a bit about my experience coding the final question “What else should we ask about”? Because this is an open-ended question, students can use this space in a number of ways. Here are a few trends, along with some insights those trends offer for future survey construction.

    First, many of the respondents provided example topics on which they’d like us to ask questions. This was valuable data that showed us some of the issues important to students. Additionally, some of the topics were particularly grounded in the timing of the survey (e.g. referencing October safety announcements).  These results provided a useful reminder to ground interpretation within the context of when the survey was run and cues us to keep timing and current context in mind when drafting surveys and evaluating the results.

    Second, a number of respondents used the open-ended question to provide answers for the questions they wish we had asked. While it’s challenging to code responses for essentially a “wild-card” question, we gathered insights from a range of topics we might not have thought to ask on a survey of this scale. Quite a few students wanted to give input on programs, services, or other ways they experienced OSU. I appreciate noting for myself that students are interested in opportunities to provide feedback on programs and services and recognized that they may not always be clear on where they have opportunities to do so outside of this survey – an area we can improve on locally within each program and more broadly across the OSU experience.

    Third, some students gave feedback on the survey itself or indicated places of confusion with the available responses. There were a few places where questions or answer choices that make sense to us, did not fit the wide array of choices students need/want. In the next round of the survey, we can take into account student perspective more fully by planning time for student review of the format, options, and wording prior to the survey launch.

    I hope you’ll join us for the FYI Friday session to learn more about how student perspectives are shaping our understanding of the student experience. For questions about the Fall Student Survey effort, contact Maureen Cochran, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Assessment, Division of Student Affairs.

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A Reflection on the Collaborative Effort for the College of Engineering Mental Health Improvement Project

by Bria Kettenhofen and Bonnie Hemrick

Background and Scope of the Mental Health Improvement Project

Oregon State University’s (OSU) Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) was approached by the College of Engineering (COE) to engage in a collaborative effort to assess and create an action plan to improve the mental health of COE students. Starting in Fall 2022, CAPS has participated in a collaborative project with COE to complete a thorough needs assessment, which informed the creation of an action plan to improve on three focus areas of impact. The collaborative effort to create the Mental Health Improvement Plan concluded as of January 2024, with a recommended implementation and assessment to occur over the following three years.

The scope of the project was to collect and analyze existing and newly collected data to understand the experiences and challenges of students in COE and determine an action plan to guide efforts to improve the mental health of COE students. Risk and protective factors which were associated with mental health challenges in OSU’s COE students were determined based off surveys, facilitated focus groups, and ongoing dialogue and engagement with an Advisory Board (AB).

Advisory Board Makeup, Collaboration, and Guidance

A diverse Advisory Board was formed and consisted of COE students, COE administration, COE faculty, COE academic advisors, and other key OSU stakeholders. The AB was involved at the outset of the COE Mental Health Improvement Project, meeting weekly during the 2022-2023 academic year (AY) and Fall 2023 to collaboratively create needs assessment data collection tools, interpret themes from analysis, and provide perspective on the culture and policies of COE. Five COE students from various majors, lived experiences, and extracurricular involvement served as active members of the AB alongside OSU Faculty and staff, to center the student voice and perspective, and keep the student experience central to the project activities and decision making.

Maintaining student participation in the AB was one of the primary goals of the Mental Health Improvement Project. The AB was frequently consulted with relating to the needs assessment content and logistics, and the goal was for efforts to reflect the genuine student perspective and experience in COE.

What We Learned and What We Can Take Forward

The process of including an Advisory Board made up of subject matter experts, COE Faculty and staff, and students with lived experiences proved to be invaluable to the COE Mental Health Improvement Project. This suggests that this process could be duplicated in other colleges and communities which could benefit from informed and intentional intervention and advisement. Upon the culmination of the COE Mental Health Improvement Project, it became evident that the completion and fidelity of this community assessment was only made possible through active stakeholder engagement and involvement at all levels of the institution, from students to college leaders. Foundational to this endeavor was the buy-in from administrators in COE, as the leadership at COE was catalyst for this multi-year needs assessment effort.

Throughout the data collection, analysis, and interpretation phases of the project, COE administrators were provided updates and reports detailing the extensive efforts of the AB. After careful review and evaluation, the AB identified three priority areas for impact:

    • Academic Practices
      • Practices in the classroom, on Canvas, during advising, or relating to an academic obligation of a course. Such practices include group work requirements, universal flexibilities around deadlines, discussion requirements, exams, and assignments.
    • COE Culture & Classroom Climate Practices
      • The current attitudes, behaviors, and standards of faculty, staff, and administrators that influence the culture in COE. The shared beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes of students and teaching faculty in the classroom setting which determine the ways in which students interact and learn.
    • Personal Well-being
      • How to address individual level well-being; how to teach students about mental health and supportive practices for their personal well-being.

    COE administrators continuously demonstrated an openness to shift practices, policies, and embed health education throughout the curriculum and culture in COE, which made the project possible. With an engaging and open partnership between CAPS and COE, the COE Mental Health Improvement Project demonstrates that similar efforts can be undertaken at other colleges and institutions with the support and intentional buy-in from administrators.

    If you have any additional questions about the COE Mental Health Improvement Project, please reach out to Bonnie Hemrick (Bonnie.Hemrick@oregonstate.edu).

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Prompts for Meeting 1:1 with Student Employees

by Clare Creighton

One-on-one meetings (or 1:1s) is the shortcut term our department uses for meeting individually with someone, most often with a direct report or supervisor. Student employees meet with their supervisor in 1:1s at various frequencies throughout the year, and professional staff meet with their reporting line supervisor in 1:1s on a regular basis as well. I love thinking about how the questions we ask open up possibilities for different conversations. I asked the team what kind of prompts they use in their 1:1s with student employees and there were a lot of thematic similarities.

In these conversations, the question below is just a starting point, from there we can ask follow-up questions and unpack responses in detail. Some supervisors give their questions to the team member in advance, and not all questions make it into every conversation. Here’s a collection:

  1. How has this past [week, month, term] been?
  2. Tell me about a highlight from this past [week, month, term]. Or What do you feel like you’re doing particularly well?
  3. What challenges have you experienced/faced? Or What’s been challenging about your work?
  4. What is on your radar as you look ahead? What’s coming up?
  5. What skills do you want to further develop this term? What types of projects do you want to take on? What areas of development do you have in mind?
  6. In general, or specific to the projects and skills above, what kind of support would you like from me? What would be helpful this [week, month, term]?
  7. Here’s an upcoming project, change, or workflow ____. What role do you want to play in that project? What do you think your strengths or contributions might be?

These prompts strike me as useful in a range of conversations – in your own 1:1s or similar conversations. I’ll add one of my favorite prompts to the list as well, which is to ask folks, “what would you like me to ask you about/check in on when we meet next?”

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Revising a Survey Question

by Clare Creighton

For the fourth fall in a row, Maureen Cochran, Erin Bird, and I collaborated with campus partners on the questions that make up the Fall Student Experience survey, which goes out to all Corvallis-based undergraduate students to understand their experience and perspective in a few key areas of interest. The survey ran from October 23 – November 6 and I anticipate sharing some findings in a Winter issue of The Success Kitchen. In this post, however, I’m interested in a conversation I had with Nicole Hindes, director of the Basic Needs Center (BNC) as we worked on the wording of some questions in October.

We have a stock question we have asked on all the surveys that asks students to what degree are the listed items are a “Significant Concern,” “Somewhat of a Concern” “Not a Concern” or “Not applicable.” One of the listed items is “Meeting my current financial obligations” and this year, we wanted to understand more about the “Significant Concern” or “Somewhat of a Concern” responses to that question. 

In brainstorming what to ask as a follow-up question, we were considering asking about the financial concerns students were having. Was it concerns with things like paying rent or tuition or groceries? Not being about to save for unexpected expenses or keep up with existing debts? What kinds of things were they having trouble paying for?

That question felt off, but in reaching out to Nicole, she helped us understand why. At best that’s a misleading way to understand degrees of poverty and need, at worst, it’s laden with the assumption that we can make meaning of what they can and can’t afford and what that means for them. Here’s where we landed with the wording instead (it’s not a perfect fit either, but it’s better!)

You indicated a level of concern with meeting your current financial obligations.  Please indicate which of the following are relevant for you:

  • I have utilized resources previously and they helped me improve my financial strategies
  • I am currently using resources where I can go to ask for help to address some of my financial stressors (CAFE, BNC, Career Development Center, Financial Aid, Scholarship Office)
  • I intend to utilize resources to address my financial concerns in the next month.
  • I do not know what to do to address my financial concerns
  • I do not believe I can improve my financial stressors.
  • I am confident I will utilize resources to address my financial concerns if the situation becomes more challenging or serious than my current reality.
  • Other (please specify): ___________________

Nicole offers this as an explanation for the rewrite:

What I like about this reframe we did, was that it brings out more of the student’s agency and capacity into what we’re all understanding about the student’s current situation (including how we’re asking the student to understand their resources). A drill-down into the concerns really only gives us more information about a problem and functionally little information about a student’s experience with help-seeking behaviors. It’s regretfully far too common for students who are low-income to be seen by what they don’t have or what they lack, a deficit-orientation. Not ignoring the impact of systemic limitations/conditions, I generally operate from the mindset that if students use their resources, they can improve their situation/conditions and that it’s possible to thrive and graduate inside of varying levels of income/financial need.

The rework of this question does a few things. We’ll learn much more useful information from this question like how they are engaging in support resources and to what degree they see an ability to change. Those answers will help us understand where students are confident they can get help to improve their conditions and where they need invitation (from us as administrators) to engage in resources. The places we put our attention or focus create the understanding we have about who someone is or what their lives are like. The reframing of this question also brings in more of a student’s capacity to affect their situation, their ability to ask for help to address their stressors, which is a more empowering framework than drilling down into their concerns.

This conversation was a helpful one as we worked on the wording of the survey, but more broadly, I carry a few lessons forward. This question offered a great example of an instance when the wording of a question and how it’s framed have a ripple effect, on the student as they’re taking the survey and how they see themselves in relationship to their finances, on the folks who read the results and the meaning they’re making from responses. Most importantly for me, I appreciate that I’m already in relationship with Nicole as it was easy to “pick up the phone” and connect both to improve the question itself, but also to learn more about what I didn’t recognize in the original version.

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Exploring Student Communication through Fall Survey Engagement

by Clare Creighton

In April 2020, a small team of folks from Student Affairs and Academic Affairs designed and administered a survey to undergraduate, Corvallis-campus based students to better understand the student experience during the transition to remote learning. Since then, this team has conducted four additional surveys to gain insights into students’ experiences and perspectives.

In late October 2022, we initiated the fifth survey in this series and received responses from 2600 students. We will be releasing the full findings within the next few weeks, but I wanted to pull out a few key points that piqued my curiosity on the broader question: “What should communication look like between students and OSU?” Fortunately for all involved, I’m not the one answering this question. In fact, the Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) team is engaging in that work right now, and that group will review the responses on a few questions they helped design. For the scope of this blog, I want to highlight some areas of curiosity that came up relative to that theme of communicating with students:

  1. I coded the question “What support do you think you most need so you can be successful this year at OSU?” – the top two themes were financial support and academic resources, but many students used that space to give feedback on a specific course or instructor. The survey isn’t designed for local feedback of that sort, so I interpret this to mean we have a gap in our communication structure. How do we empower students to talk to their instructors? And, when needed (although rare), what mechanisms are in place for students when genuine issues with an instructor arise? I am intrigued by the feedback form the College of Science has in place and wonder what the role this form or others like it might play in supporting interaction between students and instructors.
  2. Near the end of the survey we asked “What do you wish we would have asked about in this survey?” Erin Bird coded these responses, and I saw in those themes an opportunity to do more to hear from students. They asked that OSU ask more about their experience as a student, ask questions about their mental health, and check in on them more. We don’t need to survey students more to create spaces for them to feel heard and to convey that they matter to the university. What opportunities already exist for students to share about their experience, or for an instructor, advisor, or support personnel to indicate interest in how they’re doing? What would that look like?
  3. At the end of the survey, we asked students to leave their name and email address if they’d like to receive follow-up information and resources. Getting email outreach after finishing a survey isn’t an ideal way to connect, and yet 33% of our respondents were interested in additional communication at the end of the survey. There is a clear interest for students in timely information about resources. I am curious where the appropriate home might be for an “I want outreach/help/information” request within our university ecosystem.
  4. The overall survey response rate was low (under 20%)—lower, in fact, than the other surveys in the series. On the other hand, the students who completed the survey gave rich and robust responses. When asked to define success, over 2100 respondents offered up 35,000 words. With both of those data points in mind, I am curious: how can we create routine mechanisms for students to share feedback that will be reviewed and shared more broadly?

I may have just offered four reasons not to administer a large-scale survey, but I actually believe wholly in this effort (and want to increase the response rate).  But a survey alone can’t accomplish our communication needs, and I believe that students and administrators, faculty, and staff would benefit from more nuanced conversation. For students, the value is in learning about resources in a timely fashion, an ability to give input and share their experience, and, at times, be checked-in on. From OSU’s perspective, having student input and perspective is vital in key success initiatives, effective communication, and our overall understanding of what needs and concerns exist.

We can and are working on large-scale communication through the CRM project and survey efforts like this, but I don’t want to lose sight of the ways we can do the work of communication at the small scale too. Individual people – student support personnel, advisors, instructors can play an important role here through day-to-day conversations with students. This week I’m going to pay attention to the conversations I’m having, and identify places where checking-in, inviting perspective, and offering resources can show up within existing dialogues.

For those interested in the full results of the survey, Erin Bird, Maureen Cochran, and I will be presenting as part of the FYI Friday series on Friday, February 3rd, at 1:00 pm via Zoom. Registration is required. If you are unable to attend, a recording will be available in Box along with the final report.