This first post was actually part of our Fall 2017 Newsletter on Teaching @ Learning Penn State York I’ll re-post it here since it is a good summary of the project so far!

FOSTERING RESILIENCE

York is leading a pretty exciting project happening this fall across multiple Penn State campuses. Faculty from Altoona, Mont Alto, Harrisburg, Fayette, Lehigh Valley, and York are incorporating a survey into their classes to measure resilience with the hopes of understanding various aspects of the trait and its impact on student success and retention.

In May, Dr. Leo Flanagan of the Center for Resilience Advisory (CFRA) came to York to give a workshop to 38 faculty, staff, and administrators from five Penn State campuses on building student resilience. During the daylong session, he presented CFRA’s model which includes 10 factors that define student resilience.

During the session, participants received an overview of the model and examples of interventions to address the different areas.

After the session, interested faculty joined a cohort which met several times over the summer to develop individual research projects or classroom-based approaches for using the tool with students.

Desired outcomes of the project are as follows:

To develop:

1. a predictive model of student resilience at the campuses which would allow for more targeted and timely interventions
2. benchmark resilience data to be reported to the participating campuses to support retention processes
3. a deeper understanding of the role of resilience as it impacts student success at the classroom level through action research and Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) projects

Faculty are investigating the connections between resilience and student success within disciplines or other academic areas such as HDFS, Engineering, Math, First-Year Experiences, and academic support courses.

I want to thank those people who attended the workshop in May and those participating more fully in the fall projects who are listed here with their campuses:

• Amber Seidel (HDFS, York)
• Joe Seidel (Engineering, Harrisburg)
• Kristy Hove & LV faculty teaching FYS courses (Lehigh Valley)
• Robin Yaure (HDFS, Mont Alto)
• Jackie Schwab (HDFS, Mont Alto)
• Lauren McConnell (HDFS, Altoona)
• Mary Prescott (Counseling, Hbg)
• Sonia Molloy (HDFS, York)
• Joan Smeltzer (Math, York)
• Ann Fetterman (PaSSS, York)
• LeighAnn Fry (PSU 008, York)
• Danielle Mitchell (FYS, Fayette)
• Jay Precht (FYS, Fayette)
• Michelle Kaschak (FYS, Lehigh Valley)
• Keysha Whitaker (Engl, Berks)
• Deirdre Folkers (IST, York)
• Suzanne Shaffer (College Reading, York)
• Jorge Santiago-Blay (Biology, York)
• Andy Landis (Chemistry, York)
• Fulgentius Lugemwa (Chemistry, York)
• Amy Krtanjek (Engineering, York)
• Judy Higgins (Business, York)
• Anne Greenawalt (English, York)

We will continue to meet over the course of the semester to share approaches and interventions as well as lessons learned which we will share with the wider PSU community in SP or FA 2018. Stay tuned for what we learn!

This and related projects are being supported through grants from the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, Teaching & Learning with Technology, and from the generous support from the folks at Penn State York and CFRA who are working with us gratis to build the predictive model for higher education.