Register now for the Teaching and Technology Summit, a free virtual conference featuring innovative teaching practices and their intersections with technology.
Sarah Rose Cavanagh will present the opening keynote, “Hope in a Time of Monsters: Supporting Student and Faculty Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge.”
Session Date/Time: Thursday, March 21, 8:30 – 9:30 A.M. Eastern
Session Description: Teaching is a vocation. When supported with resources and security, it is a constantly renewing source of excitement and richness. The last several years of disruption, uncertainty, and overburdened workloads have exhausted teachers and students alike. Monsters have reared their heads, and we have understandably shrunk from them. Faculty are burnt out—sacrificing their own mental health, phoning it in out of desperation, or leaving the profession entirely. Students are experiencing an epidemic of mental health problems, especially of anxiety.
As instructors, we can support and encourage student mental health through pedagogies of care. A pedagogy of care involves high-touch practices like frequent communication, flexibility, inclusive teaching practices, learning new technologies and techniques, and being enthusiastic and passionate. All these practices involve both a heavy investment of time and a high degree of emotional labor. How can we support our students without burning ourselves out? How can we revive our sparks? In this interactive keynote, Sarah Rose Cavanagh will present some research and food for thought based on her book on how higher education should respond to both faculty depletion and the student mental health crisis.
Speaker Bio: Sarah Rose Cavanagh is the Senior Associate Director for Teaching and Learning in the Center for Faculty Excellence at Simmons University, where she also teaches in the Psychology Department as an Associate Professor of Practice. Cavanagh is the author of four books, including The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion (2016) and Mind Over Monsters: Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge (2023).
Register now for the Teaching and Technology Summit
The Teaching and Technology Summit is hosted by the Division of Online and Strategic Learning. If you have questions about the Summit, email strategicrln@bsu.edu.
The Division of Online and Strategic Learning provides support and assessment for technology-enhanced teaching and learning for on-campus, online, and blended courses and programs. Our aim is to establish an institute of good practice that all faculty will find useful, formidable, and essential to their aspirations of excellence in teaching.