Resilience Through A Belonging Intervention (Miniproposal #3) Merrilea J. Mayo Consultant to the Center for Curriculum Redesign merrileamayo@gmail.com

Resilience = Positive Adaptation in the Face of Adversity Positive Adaptation will be measured primarily as retention (in school, on the job) Adversity will be in the form of social belonging uncertainty When minority or first-generation college students confront the new environment that is college, they often have self-doubts as to whether they “belong” or “fit in.” The same is true of female students in engineering (e.g., “chilly climate” work by Roberta Hall and others).

Logic Model for Demonstration of Resilience Mindset Action Result New environment Social isolation is perceived as temporary Increased engagement with people, resources Higher probability of retention then then Belonging intervention Social Belonging Uncertainty Social Isolation is perceived as permanent Withdrawal from people, resources Lower probability of retention No Belonging intervention then then

Walton-Yeager Belonging Intervention Students read (via computer) summary data and personal essays from upperclassmen about their initial college experiences. The material is designed to convey the lesson that initial feelings of not belonging are very common, but those feelings inevitably fade over time as students become more integrated and see themselves begin to succeed. After reading through the stories and data, students are asked to write their own essay explaining why peoples’ experience in college changed the way the survey data (from the lesson) described, using examples from their own lives. The writing exercise serves to internalize the lesson the students have just learned. Package is available as a standardized intervention through the College Transition Collaborative

Efficacy of Walton-Yeager Belonging Interventions Full time continuous enrollment increases from 32-45% after one-time intervention (Yeager et al, 2016, working with minority students from charter high schools) Full time continuous enrollment increases from 69-74% after one-time intervention (Yeager et al, 2016, working with first-generation college freshmen at public universities)

Miniproposal #3 Key issue: Are the students we serve likely to have belonging uncertainty?

Extra Reading: Other Resilience Interventions Growth Mindset – work of Carol Dweck. Children who are praised for effort, rather than intelligence, try harder and longer. Currently the center of some large scale trials through Stanford’s PERTS Center. Most of the impact is seen on GPA increases and task-level persistence. This approach was discounted because we would need a 1000 person sample size to see the effects. Mindfulness Training (yoga, deep breathing and similar) – huge impact on work absenteeism (up to 50% reduction), largely due to decreases in cortisol levels and consequently stress-related illness. (Deaths in hypertensive workers also reduced by 23%!). Additional benefits include improved task focus and short-term memory in medical trials. For academic studies, some positive effects seen on grades. To the extent all these things together may lead to persistence in school or on the job, mindfulness training might be worth studying. This approach was discounted because a) establishing a mindfulness-persistence link would represent “new” research and b) technician student participation in the required 3x weekly mind-body training did not seem possible to enforce.

Extra Reading: Other Resilience Interventions Personalized, high frequency contact – Bill Hodge’s experience increasing retention 50-70% between certification renewals; also, private data from the campus product Vibeffect (3 to 20 percentage pts increase in short-term retention). This approach was discounted because a) never published in the open literature and b) does not have an obvious psychological measure we can pin to it. VIBEFFECT