Homecoming: Axiom 8 – a Culture of Care

Homecoming: Axiom 8 – A Culture of Care

As I exited Stroger Hospital after visiting [a student hospitalized for chemotherapy], one of the resident physicians asked if I was from Chamberlain. He said that the Stroger staff and physicians have discussed how “Chamberlain treats the students like family.” The young resident said, “As a student, I have needed someone to care for me and wish I had that type of experience in my learning environment.”. . . I realized that our roles are so important to the lives of so many – we have many opportunities to make a difference every moment of every day. I am humbled to work for an organization that truly walks the walk.1 ~ Susan King, President of Chamberlain College of Nursing, Chicago Campus

Since we began our journey through these axioms, we’ve discovered better approaches to our work as educators than we may have attempted before. In this installment of the series, I invite you to explore the idea of a culture of care.

Historically speaking, higher education has not enjoyed a reputation for being especially caring. Institutions encouraged competition between students through highly selective admissions policies, and faculty delivered first-day speeches touting their courses’ difficulty and warning students that many of them wouldn’t make it to the end of the semester. Harmful legacies of inequitable power dynamics tarnished collegiality among faculty, and many of us fell victim to the temptation of overwork and overachievement.

Fortunately, none of these conditions is set in stone. One of the most impactful books I’ve read is Carol Dweck’s Mindset,2 which explains that the way we see ourselves powerfully shapes our reality. People with a fixed mindset believe that their talents and abilities are innate and cannot be changed, whereas those with a growth mindset believe people can develop their capacities through effort, persistence, and determination. I believe that we can collectively apply a growth mindset within our institutions, too. Our institutions are not limited by their legacies or traditions – we have the power to work towards something better, bounded only by the extent of our courage and passion. A growth mindset means we are not indebted to “the way it’s always been” but are free to take a new and better path forward.

Perhaps the most important change ahead of us begins when we decide to turn our backs on historically un-caring practices and truly embrace care: feeling concerned and interested; identifying what’s genuinely important; and providing what’s necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection 3 of ourselves and our students, our colleagues, and our institution.

Self

Institution Care Colleagues

Students

Care for Self

We already know that science has proven the benefits of self-care through regular exercise, eating a healthy diet, and getting sufficient sleep, but self-care also includes our relationship to work. If you’ve ever flown on a commercial aircraft, you’ve experienced the flight attendants’ pre-flight safety demonstration telling passengers to put on their own oxygen mask before helping a child with whom they’re traveling. Why? Because you can’t help your child if you’ve lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen. This metaphor is equally applicable to the high cost of neglecting self-care in favor of work. Contrary to centuries of the American work ethic that tells us we will achieve happiness if only we work harder and earn more money, the truth is that we are happier when we spend more time with friends and family.4 Harvard Business School’s Ashley Whillans writes, “An abundance of research has examined the relationship between subjective wellbeing and discretionary time and money available. . . .How people navigate trade-offs between time and money holds important implications for the happiness that people derive—not only from their days—but possibly from their entire lives.”5 I’ve often heard vocalists, dancers, or actors speak of how their body is their instrument. For scholars and academics, our minds are our instruments, but caring for them encompasses our physical, emotional, mental, and

2 spiritual wellbeing. We must prioritize self-care across all aspects of our lives if we are to be our best selves personally and professionally.

Care for Students

As we discussed in Axiom 2, our job as faculty is to teach every student who shows up in our classrooms, meeting their needs where they are. We also know that “professors who cared about students as people” is the second item in Gallup-Purdue’s “Big Six” in terms of its lasting impact on students’ lives and careers. Caring for students rests squarely on empathy – making a conscious decision to treat students the way we would want someone to treat us (or someone we love) under similar circumstances.

We demonstrate care for our students at many levels. It can be as simple as smiling and saying, “Hello,” when encountering someone on campus. We care for students when we choose to extend a deadline or refrain from penalizing late work. Care can also take the form of holding students accountable for meeting our expectations if we do so kindly, explaining the rationale for our decision and how the student can take the lesson learned and apply it in their future. I tell every student in each class I teach, “When life happens to you, just send me an email. Your success in this course is my highest goal. If something is standing in your way, we can work together to find a solution that supports your learning of the course content.” That does not mean giving every student an A without taking an exam or doing any work. That’s not caring because students have not learned anything. Caring is finding a way to make things work for the student, even if it’s inconvenient or different from other students’ paths.

Care for students can also be an institutional priority. One of the most powerful examples I’ve heard about happened during the early phases of the COVID-19 crisis when toilet paper was in notoriously short supply. Warren County Community College in New Jersey purchased toilet paper from industrial suppliers and distributed it to students, faculty, and staff. It purchased gift cards from local restaurants and gave them to students who had suddenly lost their jobs. Warren students received no less than three phone calls from faculty checking on their wellbeing during the 2020 Spring semester. As Warren president Will Austin said, “Our students at Warren are learning the most important thing is not how much my professor knows, it’s how much my professor cares.”6

Care for Colleagues

Establishing a culture of care within our departments, programs, or schools requires setting aside our natural tendencies to be competitive rather than collaborative. We choose to celebrate one another’s

3 successes, lift each other up when we’re down, and rally together when one of us is facing a personal tragedy or hardship. We prioritize our relationships with one another above everyday matters that, ultimately, are of far less importance. Faculty are certainly not immune to normal office conflicts around issues like allocation of office space, committee assignments, and course schedules; however, those who embrace the culture of care choose to approach such matters in a spirit of collaborative problem-solving rather than competition. Care is also found in small gestures: pausing on your way down the hall to congratulate a coworker on their latest publication, inviting someone to join you for lunch instead of eating alone in your office while you grade papers, or sending a kind email expressing your sincere condolences when a colleague loses a loved one.

Formalized care for colleagues can include peer mentoring programs or professional development that addresses the needs of everyone with a teaching role – not just tenured or tenure-track but part-time, adjunct, lecturers, online, and contingent faculty. Santa Monica College sets the bar high in this regard, providing targeted development for adjunct faculty beginning with Adjunct 411 – an all-day orientation event for new adjuncts that lets them begin to form peer relationships with each other and receive onboarding information. Targeted support for adjuncts continues throughout the academic year in conjunction with a faculty mentoring program. Then Spring Flex Day is an all-day professional development session for adjunct faculty with sessions about applying for full-time lecturer or tenure- track positions, writing an effective resume and cover letter, stress management, and innovative pedagogical practices. Paying special attention to the needs of adjunct faculty demonstrates care and respect, and it upholds their value to the institution and its students.7

Care for Institution

The institutions for which we work also need our care and attention. At a purely pragmatic level, we ought to care about our institutions because their ongoing success provide for our continuing employment. However, a culture of care allows us to see beyond self-interest to the greater good of the institution. We demonstrate care whenever we speak well of our institution when in the company of external colleagues, such as at a professional conference. We act as our institution’s unofficial ambassadors when we’re out in the community and have informal opportunities to promote the institution, even just by wearing its colors or logo. Care includes choosing to speak well of the institution when interacting with students and coworkers, maintaining a positive attitude instead of sinking into negativity or complaining. This is not to say we ought to gloss over the challenges and frustrations that occur in every workplace, but caring for our institutions means approaching difficult

4 issues as problems to be solved, taking appropriate and positive action to make the institution a better place for everyone.

Meeting Needs

To care for someone or something is to meet their needs. One of the most influential theories of human motivation is found in Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.8

Self- Actualization reaching one’s true potential

Ego self-esteem, power, recognition

Social love, belonging, inclusion

Security safety, shelter, stability

Physical air, water, food, rest, health

As I said in Higher Education by Design,9 Maslow’s theory explains that,

Deficiency needs must be satisfied in order of importance, beginning with the most basic physiological needs: hunger, thirst, or other bodily discomforts. Next, the need for safety and security must be met, followed by the need to belong and to be loved. Finally, an individual must meet their need for esteem: to achieve, to be competent, and to find approval and recognition. Once these deficiencies have been addressed, an

individual can act upon growth needs. These include cognitive needs to know, understand, and explore, followed by an aesthetic need for symmetry, order, and beauty. An individual can then move towards self-actualization, or realizing one’s potential, and finally to self-transcendence where the individual is able to connect to something beyond the self and help others to find self-fulfillment. These highest levels result in wisdom, or the ability to know what to do in virtually any situation.

Maslow’s ideas have endured because they echo universal experiences and common sense. We know that being hungry, thirsty, too hot, too cold, or in pain will prevent us from learning or from doing our jobs well. We know that students who feel unsafe are too fearful, anxious, and distracted to learn. Conversely, a strong sense of belonging and involvement in caring relationships help us to be happier and more successful. Some critics have taken Maslow’s theory to task for being overly simplistic or subjective, and others point out that certain individuals have become self-actualized despite experiencing hardships preventing their most basic needs from being fully met.

Nevertheless, we can apply this theory to the ways we enact care. Teaching focuses on students’ growth needs but limiting our attention to this level may cause us to overlook barriers preventing their learning, such as homelessness or food insecurity. The same is true of our care for colleagues. Consider the new faculty who join our institutions each year: how do we help them develop a sense of belonging in our departments or build relationships with their new coworkers? We should also be mindful of not creating deficiencies for others. If we deliver dishearteningly negative feedback on a student’s work, we undermine their self-esteem, which is also the case when we fail to recognize our colleagues’ accomplishments. Perhaps it’s a stretch to think of our institutions as having needs, per se, but shouldn’t we work towards helping them reach their full potential and achieve recognition for excellence? Maslow’s framework gives us a template within which we can identify opportunities for care and prioritize our actions according to the urgency of the need.

Physical needs: campus wellness programs, exercise facilities, mental health services, food pantries; health insurance, sick leave, parental leave, counseling

Safety needs: for students: emergency housing, campus security, referrals to community support services; for faculty: providing job security and support for retention

Social needs: creating a sense of belonging through social events and co-curricular activities, mentoring, intentional inclusion, removing barriers to access, and increasing attention to diversity and equity; establishing a supportive and caring community

Ego needs: providing opportunities for success and recognition, participation in governance and leadership, recognition of achievements and accomplishments

Self-Actualization needs: for students: provide opportunities for experiential learning and growth such as study abroad, internships, student leadership, undergraduate research, working on long-term projects; for faculty: support for research and creative activity allowing them to achieve excellence in their fields, recognition for excellence in teaching, achievement of promotion and tenure

New Beginnings

Our institutions can do much to foster a culture of care, especially as this intersects with campus offices or services. We can also institute policies that prioritize care and revise procedures to prevent the inadvertent creation of barriers and deficits.

However, there’s no need to wait for institution-level changes before we enact a culture of care. It begins within each of us when we choose to take better care of ourselves, treat our students and colleagues with empathy, kindness, and respect, and actively promote and support our institutions. Our decisions to care can change everything! Conversely, even the best-intentioned, most generously funded policies and programs designed to establish a culture of care cannot succeed without our engaged participation. Each decision creates a ripple effect, for good or ill. At the most fundamental level, the choice is up to every one of us every minute of the day. The only question is: what will you decide?

Axiom 8: Establishing a culture of care can improve our institutions and the quality of life for our students, colleagues, and ourselves.

1 Groenwald, S. (2018). Designing and Creating a Culture of Care. League of Nursing. 2 Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House. 3 Oxford English Dictionary. (2021). Care. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/care 4 Thompson (2019) 5 Whillans, A., Dunn, E. (2018). Valuing time over money predicts happiness after a major life transition” a pre- registered longitudinal study of grading students. Harvard Business School. Working Paper 19-048. https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/19-048_a3814174-e598-46af-ae70-0c81cdffdb9e.pdf 6 Inside Higher Ed. (April 24, 2020). The Great (Forced) Shift to Remote Learning: a survey of instructors and campus leaders. Webcast. Inside Higher Ed.

https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=reg20.jsp&partnerref=ESE&eventid=228401 1&sessionid=1&key=83FCC1EADB0A4255DD68A65282E2DA09®Tag=&V2=false&sourcepage=register 7 Harper, J., Scott, D., Kezar, A. Creating a culture of care for contingent faculty through professional development at Santa Monica College. Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success. pullias.usc.edu/delphi 8 McLeod, S. (2016). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Simply Psychology.org. https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html 9 Mackh, B. (2018). Higher Education by Design: Best Practices for Curricular Planning and Instruction. Routledge.