Amy Rock (0:00): Hi everyone, and thank you for joining me for today's podcast. My name is Amy Rock, I'm Campus Safety's executive editor, and joining me today are Ali Tartaglia, Associate Dean and Director of Integrative Wellness at Bennington College in Vermont, and Isabel Roche, Executive Director of Special Programs in Higher Education at the Endeavor Foundation.

And today we're going to discuss initiatives that improve student mental health and overall wellbeing, particularly those that are currently in place at Bennington College. And so thank you both for speaking with me today. I know we were chatting before this about how it's such a hectic time of year, so I really appreciate your time. I'm going to start with you, Ali. Can you just give a brief overview of your work and also your background and your work background, excuse me, and your current role at Bennington?

Ali Tartaglia (00:45): Sure. I'm, as you said, the associate Dean and director of Integrated Wellness, and I started here, this is the beginning of my ninth academic year. I started here about eight years ago and was hired as the Director of Student Health Promotion. And over time, that role has and changed as I've taken on new responsibilities, but also as we've seen a need to really improve the integration of our counseling center, health services wellness. And we've added case management onto the work that we do here. My background is in public health. I have a doctorate in public health from Drexel University. And the majority of my background prior to at least the last 12 years has been more community. Community health aspects of what I've done throughout my work have touched upon mental health, but I've focused a lot on women and marginalized communities in my previous work. Yeah, I am thrilled to be here and talk about the programs that we do at Bennington.

Amy Rock (02:18): Thank you. I appreciate it so much. And now, Isabel, same for you. Can you give a little bit about your background and also your current role with the Endeavor Foundation?

Isabel Roche (02:27): Sure. I'm also delighted to be here with both of you today. I am, as you mentioned, Amy, the executive director for special programs in higher ed at the Endeavor Foundation in New York City where I help oversee the foundation's higher ed grant making initiatives, endeavors, private Family foundation that's been around since the 1950s and since the beginning, higher ed has been the centerpiece of its grant making work and liberal arts colleges in particular. It now works in a number of other areas, but higher ed remains a really strong through line for the foundation. And I joined the foundation three years ago after being at Bennington College where Ali is currently for the bulk of my career, first as a faculty member and then in administrative roles including provost and interim president for a year.

Amy Rock (03:20): Bennington is part of the Endeavor Collaborative. Isabel, can you give some insight into the collaborative, how it was started and what it does?

Isabel Roche (03:28): Sure. So about eight years ago, the foundation began convening a group of very small liberal arts colleges that had around 750 students or fewer so that they together could think about the very particular challenges that were facing small liberal arts colleges and think about how they could work together to come up with solutions to some of those challenges. And so I would say in the first years of meeting together, it was a very open conversation where the presidents of the institutions were sharing and learning from each other and talking about the big vulnerabilities and issues in higher ed and also how those impacted smaller institutions that are typically newer tuition dependent, where enrollment fluctuations make a big difference year to year and so on. And so the college presidents and Endeavor had this series of conversations over several years that culminated with a real sense that doing something together to address these challenges would be a much stronger way to move forward than individual grants to individual campuses. And so the presidents began to think about what are the issues that are the most important issues to our students, faculty and staff, the things that would make the biggest difference on our campuses. And the one that rose to the top was around student mental health and wellbeing, but really more broadly around campus mental health and wellbeing in the context of the liberal arts, what can the liberal arts bring to how students live and learn and work together and attend to their mental health and wellbeing at the same time in a very integrated way.

Amy Rock (05:23): Now this question could be for either of you, and I'm kind of assuming it can vary from campus to campus, but you mentioned unique challenges that liberal arts colleges face, what are some of those challenges? That's kind of a generalization, but I'm sure there's some similarities across a lot of campuses.

Ali Tartaglia (05:42): Yeah, I mean I think that as Isabel mentioned, one of the challenges that we experience here at Bennington have both to do with our size and also our location related specifically to kind of mental health issues. Being in a rural space means that you're in an area that frequently, not always, but frequently is limited in what the resources are around you, which means that you are putting more resources into what students have available to them on campus, which for a resource sensitive institution like Bennington can be a strain.

Amy Rock (06:37): Right. Well put.

Isabel Roche (06:40): I would just add that what Ali said really does apply to the majority of the colleges in this group. So just to build on what I said before, there are 12 colleges that endeavor invited to be in this conversation and move forward into this collaborative grant. And they are in large part, rural and suffer in the same way that Ali said from certain challenges that urban schools just don't have around services, for example,

Amy Rock (07:17): We cover hospitals on campus safety and that happens a ton with rural hospitals. If they don't have a level three trauma unit near them, it's like all of that falls on them, but half the time they don't have the stuff that they need to address unique medical emergencies. So I'm sure there's a lot of similarities there.

Isabel Roche (07:36): And also the size, I mean, I think the small size is an additional real challenge for these schools where of course, having an infrastructure of support isn't all college and universities need those, but when you're small, that puts in more of a burden on the institution because there are fewer students and resources, financial resources to spread that over. So our institutions, as they were coming up with the idea for what would be the strongest possible collaboration kept coming back to how do we turn these challenges into shared strengths? And small colleges are certainly not the only institutions where student mental health and wellbeing is an issue. We know that nationally, this is perhaps the largest current issue facing colleges and universities of all sizes, but being a cohort of small colleges, these institutions could think really well together about how to address some of those challenges in ways that not just solve a problem but truly enhance what's being offered to students in a very unique context.

Amy Rock (08:53): Thank you. Now, and Ali, I know kind of went over this a bit, but what are some of the mental health challenges that you're seeing among your students? What are their biggest worries and concerns? And I'm sure with the new school you're starting, it might be a little bit different from what it was last year, but from, I guess going off of what you said, you worked there 12 months out of the year, but what are some of their challenges?

Ali Tartaglia (09:17): Yeah, I mean I think that over the last several years we've seen, and I would say that none of these are new to us, but the volume is different. So we deal a lot with concern and anxiety around social situations. That is certainly one of the bigger issues that we deal with here. Loneliness, which is pretty rampant on many campuses. We have many students, that number has grown over time of students that identify as neurodivergent, which pushes us to think differently about how we're offering services and ways in which students can connect with us from the kind of professional side. And there's certainly the traditional, we have students that struggle with depression, anxiety, the more diverse of a population that we bring on campus, which has changed a lot over the time that I've been here, which has been really exciting to see. We have students that come to us with concerns about finances and financing college. We have students that are coming from, we've international students that are coming from places where their home country isn't stable in lots of different ways. So a lot of what you would consider little or big T trauma that students experience prior to being here, which of course impacts how they integrate with the rest of the community, how they access services, all the fun stuff.

Amy Rock (11:35): Right. Now you mentioned neurodivergent students, which kind of made me think, I feel like it is a hard position because I'd assume a decent amount of neurodivergent students might prefer a smaller campus for various reasons, whether it be sensory or whatnot, just working better in smaller groups. But then you have limited, like you were saying, outside resources to pull from for them and they might need more support from a student who's not neurodivergent. So that puts a lot of pressure and expectations on the backs of small colleges. So that's why I think collaborations like this one are so important so you can share resources and help each other out in that way.

Ali Tartaglia (12:14): And from meeting with folks from the other colleges, these are things that we've all kind of seen across that we all talk about shifting and changing populations on our campus. So it's certainly something that's helpful to have more folks broadening the conversation and helping to collaboratively think about how to best meet those needs.

Isabel Roche (12:45): May I add something, Amy?

Amy Rock (12:46): Yes, please.

Isabel Roche (12:47): I think one of the real strengths of the grant as it was proposed by these colleges is that a liberal arts education is meant to be a layered and integrated one. And so they're really looking at, as Ali was just describing how to give students the right anchors to be able to fully engage in the kind of self-discovery discovery of self-discovery of the world that a liberal arts education enables. And they're doing it in multiple ways in the grant. So there's the collaboration around services and supports that we've been talking about, but there are also these three other areas, purposeful life and work, really helping students connect to what will be the most meaningful way for them to engage in the world because we know that wellbeing comes from having a sense of purpose. Experiential learning is another dimension where all of these small colleges already really excel in putting students in settings in which the education that they're getting has applied experience. And so really doubling down on that. And then the last one is, but certainly not least, is really thinking about the curriculum as not a place that's kind of cordoned off for intellectual inquiry only. But where there too, there can be really integrated ways of self-exploration, self-discovery where the question of mental health and wellbeing is brought into the classroom in new and innovative ways, whether it be through study of content or the introduction of new practices and new ways of really being attentive to how students are doing and how they're learning.

Amy Rock (14:40): That's a good segue into my next question, continuing mental health. Now, specifically as it relates to suicide, the CDC released new data that found 40% of LGBTQ teens considered suicide in the prior year and 20% attempted suicide. And it also found female students are more likely to experience poor mental health compared to male peers. And now we know that not all populations fall within these stats. But Ali, would you say that this is reflective of what LGBTQ students are experiencing at Bennington?

Ali Tartaglia (15:11): Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. That's certainly something that we see represented on our campus.

Amy Rock (15:22): Yeah, those are some terrible hard stats to read and to hear that you're experiencing that as well. And to address suicide prevention, Ali, you recently received a grant -- we were talking about grants -- to advance the Applied Suicidal Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) Program at Bennington. And now I know Isabel, you can speak to the grant as well. So both of you feel free to answer this, but can you talk about what grant you used for this and also provide some information about the program?

Ali Tartaglia (15:54): Sure. We were able to, so I will absolutely say we happened upon this training. It wasn't one of the ones that I initially was familiar with, but we hired two staff people in our CAPS office who came from community mental health program where they were offering ASIST out in the community. So they are trained to provide this training. What the funding from Endeavor has allowed us to do is to take their existing training and be able to offer it with the materials and whatnot here on campus. So we've been able to offer the train, it's been offered once we train nine staff, I believe eight or nine staff. And this is something that we're planning on offering, again, offering to students, offering to faculty, hoping that the first training and excitement, if you will, around the skills that the first group that has gone through has received will garner some excitement from students and other staff and faculty here so that we can continue to keep growing that program and that training here.

Amy Rock (17:39): What makes ASIST a successful program in your eyes, Ali?

Ali Tartaglia (17:44): I think that this is one of the more comprehensive programs. It's very much of a skill-based program. I think some of the mental Health First Aid programs that exist are really around identifying and referral. Not that there's anything wrong with those other programs that are not as long or intense as ASIST, but I think what we've been experiencing here on campus has, particularly around student facing staff that are interacting with students. Simple questions even around academics and whatnot at times can create a lot of anxiety and stress in students that can heighten a situation when you're not even aware of it. So this is given some skills to those staff that are doing that day-to-Day work with students to really offer them the ability to gain the knowledge, to help to kind of ground someone as well as the resources on campus, what's in the community if you are or nationally available if you're talking to somebody, for example, during a field work term and they're not here on campus or something like that. So I think for us it is partially the intensity, partially the staff that we have that are doing the training are incredibly skilled individuals and therapists and we're excited to have them here to be able to offer that program for folks.

Amy Rock (19:33): Okay. My next question would be for both of you. Do you have advice for any college campus looking to win a grant for improving mental health on campus?

Ali Tartaglia (19:44): I mean, I think that there's lots of opportunities right now to whether they're competitive grants or not, to look for funding. Opportunities for programs that folks are doing on A lot of funding is earmarked, if you will, for populations of students who are not as likely to engage in your traditional programming. So for campuses that have populations of students that fit into marginalized categories or categories that don't typically seek out services, it's a great way to look for other funding opportunities. And in my experience with grants, one of the wonderful things about them and Endeavor certainly fits into this space are the people and the relationships, especially if it's kind of a cohort grant situation for other folks that are doing mental health work on campuses or health education work, especially on small campuses, it can feel really isolating because you feel like you're one of the very few people on campus that's very focused on that work and endeavor. And again, some of the other funding opportunities that are out there offer you the opportunity to be able to interact and engage with others that are doing similar work. So you don't feel as isolated. You are able to bounce ideas off of each other either through email or in meetings that you're having or whatnot. So in that way offers speaking as somebody that does this work, it offers another opportunity to have kind of a whole new set of minds, if you will, helping you to problem solve around complicated issues, which is lovely.

Isabel Roche (21:59): I would just add from a funder's perspective, I think one of the things that we're seeing, as Ali said in response to the nature and level of this crisis is that there are a fair number of funding opportunities out there and there absolutely need to be, I think what Ali said about colleges and universities, really understanding that this work needs to shift away from being the job of a certain portion of the campus. Typically the counseling center and experts who sit there and seeing it's everyone's job in very different ways, in very different roles, but everyone has a hand in creating a culture of care on their campuses. And I think colleges and universities that understand that and understand that paradigm is shifting and that they can really serve their students best by operating in new ways are the ones who will likely be the most successful in securing support for that work.

Amy Rock (23:16): Awesome. Now this is also a question for both or either of you. Can you give two to three or more if you want action items that campuses can take now to improve student mental health or initiatives as a new school year starts? And I know people want like, oh, give me three quick things that I can do. I realize it's not that simple, but if there's any steps that you think that they can take to get started.

Ali Tartaglia (23:41): I'm a huge fan of multidisciplinary committees or groups of people on campus that includes students. I think having a group either that focuses solely on mental health, more broadly on wellbeing, those types of things allow to echo what Isabel said, this is something that impacts everyone on campus and having the entire campus be able to look at an issue as something that we're all a part of and we all have the ability to impact people's wellbeing, I think allows a shared responsibility and understanding that's a really helpful thing to have on campus. So if I was to give one suggestion, that would probably be my number one suggestion, that looking for kind of champions in different areas that, particularly for campuses maybe that haven't quite gotten there yet, finding those champions and pulling them into those conversations allows you to have other people helping you with the messaging around why this is important.

Isabel Roche (25:22): I'll just give one as well, but first I'll say that in everything that I'm seeing from the colleges within our groups and even more broadly, really heartened to see that there are lots of great initiatives coming out of the gate this fall, and very resource and student centered and ways of really making sure that students are attended to inside and outside of the classroom. And as a community, I would just say, because it, it's easy to forget this, it really is about the campus and the whole community. And going into the fall, I would love to remind and urge colleges and universities to take good care of their faculty and staffs too. Those are the people that are not only doing this work but are modeling how to strive for positive mental health and a sense of wellbeing in their lives. And so there's a lot of colleges and university jobs across the board have a lot of pressure attached with them and they're done by people who care a lot about what they do. And so oftentimes those kind of people are the ones who will do and do and do and do, and it's the jobs of the leadership of colleges and universities to make sure that they're cared for as well and that they can strive for some balance in their lives.