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My Professional Background and Perspective

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My Professional Background and Perspective

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I am currently a Registered Dental Hygienist (RDH) in Abilene, Texas. I graduated from Midwestern State University with a Bachelor in Science (applied Dental Hygiene) in 2015. Upon completing a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction, I hope to be an instructor or program chair of an accredited dental hygiene program at either the associate or baccalaureate level.

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Exploration Option 1 - Interview with a professional

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Exploration Option 1 - Interview with a professional

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For this portion of the assignment I chose to interview Barbara DeBois, the program chair for the Dental Hygiene Department at my alma mater, Midwestern State University (MSU). The top five things I learned during our discussion are as follows:

1. I learned that dental hygiene educators are in a unique position that requires a combination of multiple legislative bodies. Dental hygiene educators must follow legislation from the United States Government, the American Dental Association (ADA), Commission of Dental Accreditation (CODA), and the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners (TSBDE). In addition to the governing bodies listed above, dental hygiene educators are entrusted with introducing the concepts of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to students.

2. In my discussion with Barbara, I learned about the following current issues and legislation that may be changing in her role as program chair: concealed carry, sexual harassment and reporting, discrimination, and tobacco policies. Since MSU is a state university, Barbara explained to me that it is of the utmost importance for the university to be current on legislation in order to apply the legislation on campus.

3. My discussion with Barbara introduced me to House Bill 2504 (HB2504). Barbara explained that she has to ensure that the faculty meets the needs of HB2504 every semester. Essentially, this Bill requires all instructor(s) to post and maintain course syllabi on the University website for at least two years. Before my conversation with Barbara, I was not familiar with this Bill.

4. Midwestern’s Dental Hygiene Program is accredited; this means that the program must meet the standards outlined by the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA). CODA requires ongoing statistics and records to demonstrate compliance, an annual survey of every program, and documentation from an accreditation site visit every seven years.

5. Lastly, I learned that Barbara utilizes one of the same resources that I do, the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners (TSBDE). As a state registered professional, I consult the TSBDE website on a regular basis for new rules and legislation affecting dental hygiene. As a program chair and dental hygiene instructor, Barbara also uses this resource in order to provide her students with the most current and accurate information regarding dentistry and dental hygiene in the state of Texas.

(DeBois, B, email conversations, October 19, 2018)

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An informative article on a mobile wellness Application (App) that is helping universities address students with mental health struggles. The App, "YOU at college," is helping colleges think more intentionally about mental wellness by aiding students who may struggle with speaking out about their various mental health concerns.

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There are students who struggle with issues such as anxiety and depression on every college campus.

Some students will seek help on their own and find a mental health counselor or other health-care professional.

But reaching students who are reluctant to come forward, or who don't realize they need help, is another story. This is a challenge that Colorado State University and many other colleges are trying to address while balancing increasing demand from students who already use mental health services.

Three years ago, Colorado State approached a company called Grit Digital Health about working together to build a technology to reach those students who might never speak out - particularly those at risk of harming themselves or others. The campus had experienced a handful of student suicides and was looking for new ways to reach students who might need help.

The college and the tech company developed YOU at College, a platform that gives students information on how to recognize mental health issues and access resources on campus that might help them. The platform doesn't put mental health front and center, however, and it's not marketed to students as a "mental health" tool. Instead, the platform addresses mental health as just one part of academic success and well-being.

"It's kind of like hiding the vegetables," said Janelle Patrias, manager of mental health initiatives at Colorado State.

Students might not visit the platform thinking they have a mental health issue, said Patrias. They might just be having trouble sleeping, for example. But by searching for advice on how to get better sleep, users will find information about stress and anxiety and be directed to resources on campus that can help.

Since YOU at College was launched at Colorado State, 20 other U.S. universities have launched the platform, and five more are planning to launch soon, said Nathaan Demers, vice president and director of clinical programs for YOU at College. Each platform is tailored so that students see information relevant to their own campus. The cost to institutions ranges from $0.75 to $3.00 per student per year, depending on campus enrollment and the level of customization they require, said Demers.

Kevin Kruger, president of NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, said many colleges are thinking more intentionally about how to promote wellness on campus and are encouraging students to eat right, sleep well and exercise regularly, as happy and healthy students are more likely to graduate.

"The context of all of this is that there has been a year-on-year increase in the number of students who present with mental health issues," said Kruger. He said over the last seven years, colleges have been increasing mental health staff, "But there's an acknowledgment that you can't hire enough counselors. That's why there's interest in taking a sort of public health approach -- looking at what you can do to proactively address wellness issues in a broader way."

There are a number of digital tools that explicitly address mental health issues, such as Talkspace, SAM, PTSD coach, CBT-I Coach, Operation Reach Out and Optimism. However, Amy Galley, director of well-being and accessibility at Western Wyoming Community College, said that the YOU at College platform was different because it takes a holistic approach to students' overall health and academic success. She also "loved the ease and look" of the platform, which was partially inspired by Pinterest -- a popular virtual pin board for saving and sharing links and images.

YOU at College contains a wide variety of short articles, fact sheets and tips covering three broad areas - academic success, personal growth and overall physical and mental well-being. The platform encourages users to take surveys called "Reality Checks" in each of these three areas to determine where they might have room for improvement. The results of these surveys can be used as a benchmark for students to set goals.

When students log into the platform using their institutional ID, they see a lineup of content that is personalized to them based on the results of their Reality Checks. The content can also be tailored based on personal demographic information that students provide (if they choose to) such as gender, age, ethnicity and other details such as whether or not they have served in the military.

Although students log in to the platform with their institutional IDs, all their activities on the platform are anonymized to protect their privacy. Students wouldn't likely use the platform if they knew they were being surveilled by administrators, said Demers. Institutions can see pooled data such as the most popular topics students are viewing.

Though YOU is designed with students in mind, it can be used by anyone on campus -- including faculty and staff, said Demers. Patrias sees YOU as a hub for campus information. The platform links students to resources on campus such as career advising and mental health services, as well as to student clubs and support groups that might be of interest to them. Although inspired by social media, the platform doesn't contain any messaging function.

Patrias said that [email protected] has been "really positive for our campus" and "a good way to deliver information" to students, particularly about mental health. She was pleased to see that many Colorado State students are looking at the platform before they even arrive on campus -- proactively reading about how to succeed academically and manage stress, as well as checking out what clubs and social activities are available on campus. More than 5,000 new students registered to use the platform this summer, she said.

Patrias has a student staff member working with her 15 hours a week to make sure the content, all of which she personally reviews, is relevant to students. Colorado State and Grit Digital Health recently won an award from the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies for their work on YOU at College. The WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) Awards recognize initiatives that apply innovative technology-based solutions to problems facing students.

Colorado State has seen good student engagement with the platform, said Patrias. Between February 2016 and September 2018, [email protected] had over 56,000 users. Around 20 percent of users used the platform more than once. Colorado State's total student enrollment is around 33,000.

More than 10,000 students have completed the Reality Check screenings in the platform, said Patrias. Survey results found that 75 percent of students said using the portal helped them better manage their stress. Among first-year students, 98 percent said they learned new skills to support their academic success through [email protected] .

"This isn't the kind of resource students need every day," said Patrias. "We want it to be the place they go to look first when they have an issue."

In a recent promotional video created by Colorado State and Grit Digital Health, Colorado State students said they liked that the platform was accessible at any time and described how they used it to look up study tips and articles on mindfulness during final exams.

Kiera Butler is an applied psychology student at CSU, and vice-president of the campus chapter of Active Minds - a national non-profit organization that ends to help end the stigma surrounding mental health and connect students to resources. She thinks YOU at College is effective because it's "applicable to everyone and anyone."

"Even if you don't believe you need to change in a certain area, YOU can provide articles or resources that can spark an interest and expand that person's knowledge," she said.

Mental health counselors at Colorado State have seen increased demand since [email protected] was introduced, but it's difficult to know whether this is because more students have become aware of counseling services through the platform, said Patrias. Colorado State and Grit Digital Health are planning to conduct more research to determine the impact of the platform on student success.

"We don't really have anything to benchmark the efficacy of this with," said Patrias. "But we feel encouraged to see engagement grow from year to year." She noted that the platform is "still pretty early in its development" but has "so much potential to reach students in different ways."

At Western Wyoming Community College, initial engagement numbers are promising, said Galley. The college has a total enrollment of around 3,600 students, and 600 students signed up over the summer before classes started. Galley hopes that three-quarters of full-time students will register over time. She is excited about what the institution can learn from the analytics the platform collects (example dashboard pictured below); the articles that students read could guide what initiatives the college launches.

Western Wyoming previously sent students an e-magazine addressing wellness issues called Student Health 101, but it has discontinued this subscription in favor of YOU at College.

"We liked the content in the newsletter," said Galley. But YOU at College felt "fresher, offered easier access and is more campus orientated."

She said the platform is costly but college administrators believe it's worth it for students to have a "place to go to 24-7 to get information about the campus, wellness and mental health, plus emergency contacts and all of those things."

Connecticut College also rolled out the YOU at College platform this year but doesn't yet have any data on engagement. Sarah Cardwell, associate dean, said she looked into the platform after hearing about Colorado's success with it. The platform fit in well with Connecticut's strategic plan to "educate students on the relationship between health, well-being and success," she said.

"What particularly struck a note with us is that the platform is designed to meet students where they're at, which is online," said Cardwell.

Tina Hardy, disability services coordinator at Illinois Valley Community College, said she applied for a grant to bring YOU at College to her institution last year, and the college budgeted money this year to keep the platform going.

"Engagement has been excellent since the inception," said Hardy. "To date, we've had almost 900 student account registrations and 80 faculty staff registrations." The college has a total enrollment of around 3,700 students.

Users are spending seven minutes on average on the platform and are most frequently searching for information about anxiety, study skills, prioritizing their time and how to connect with clubs and activities, she said.

"We are using this information to build opportunities and resources for students in the areas we know they need help with," said Hardy. "I would say that IVCC has found YOU to be worthwhile."

Still, the anonymity of the platform comes with a big drawback. College administrators aren't alerted when a student indicates they are at risk of hurting themselves or others. Whether keeping students anonymous under these circumstances is advisable is "something we wrestled with," said Demers.

The company built in features that will enable students to get immediate access to support when they need it -- with pop-ups advising students on whom to contact on campus in a crisis, and referrals to outside services such as suicide prevention hotlines with 24-7 messaging services.

Janelle Johnson, senior mental health counselor at Santa Fe Community College and president of the American College Counseling Association, believes there should be some way to contact students "if it is clear they are in danger of suicide or harming others."

Apps and platforms can help students access information, but they "don't replace the human connection" many students need, she said. "Assessments of mental health concerns must still be done by trained professionals."

"I think that colleges see the use of tech as a way for students to explore and communicate about difficulties they may be experiencing, and to normalize the student experience," said Johnson. But apps and other technology "cannot replace services provided by licensed counselors and mental health professionals."

"While these apps have become more prevalent, we also see more colleges coming up with additional funding to increase staffing in their counseling centers," said Johnson.

Santa Fe Community College does not offer YOU at College, but it did offer an app that "students never really adopted," said Johnson. "Oftentimes it seems that the technology of the apps is not impressive to students who are very tech savvy," she said.

Lynn Linde, senior director of the Center for Counseling Practice, Policy and Research at the American Counseling Association, said while investing in student well-being is a good thing, platforms such as YOU at College and a growing number of other platforms and apps for college counseling -- including chat bots powered by artificial intelligence -- should be seen as a supplement, not a replacement for in-person counseling services.

"This is a huge market," she said. "Institutions need to make sure that companies have the best interests of students in mind. We need to ask questions about who is developing these products."

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Colleges turn to wellness app to address student mental health

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There are students who struggle with issues such as anxiety and depression on every college campus. Some students will seek help on their own and find a mental health counselor or other health-care professional. But reaching students who are reluctant to come forward, or who don't realize they need help, is another story.

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This article is about a professor at Auburn University who is suing the school for retaliation after he helped reveal the number of student athletes claiming a public administration major. This article brings to light the importance of free speech for faculty and will certainly be an interesting case to follow.

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An Auburn University economics professor is suing his institution, accusing officials of removing him as a department chair and limiting his raises after he helped reveal that the institution's public administration major was overwhelmingly stacked with athletes.

Tensions between administrators and Michael Stern, who was removed as economics department chair in May, extend back to 2008, when he served as a source for a local news report about the university's ties to the Charles Koch Foundation, as detailed in his lawsuit filed last month. Stern is suing for violations of his First Amendment rights. He is demanding that officials reinstate him as chair and provide him back pay he sacrificed after being dismissed from the position.

The bad blood came to the fore in 2014, when Stern first started to question the composition of the public administration program. In the years following, Stern continually clashed with officials, he said. They gave him smaller raises than his colleagues and confronted him when he publicly pointed out the athletics department's interference with the major. In one case, Stern said in the complaint, an administrator stopped him in a parking lot and screamed in his face about speaking with reporters.

In a statement, Auburn spokesman Mike Clardy said the university "consistently demonstrates its support of the free speech rights of its students, faculty, and staff. There is more to this story than has been made public to this point, and each of Dr. Stern's allegations will be addressed in the appropriate forum, which is the court. Auburn will vigorously defend this matter."

The larger conflict over the public administration program began when a faculty committee recommended the major be cut because of falling enrollment and questions over whether it benefited students. But athletics officials lobbied hard to keep the program alive, even offering to subsidize it at one point -- and ultimately top administrators ignored the committee's proposal. Public administration was saved.

The decision may have gone unchallenged if not for Stern, who began pressing officials about the major in 2014 at a University Senate meeting, where an athletics representative was making a presentation. He asked about the saturation of football players in the program. The next day, Joseph Aistrup, then the College of Liberal Arts dean, emailed Stern, chastised him for a lack of diplomacy and pressed him to apologize to public administration faculty.

Aistrup allegedly suggested the next month that Stern step aside as chairman, which Stern refused to do. In December 2014, John Urschel, a former professional football player, mathematician and blogger, published an analysis of the majors football players had selected -- he found that 23 of the 48 upperclassmen players picked public administration, though only 88 of more than 11,400 upperclassmen in the entire university were enrolled in the program. Over all, that represents 48 percent of upperclassmen on the football team, but just 0.8 percent of all upperclassmen.

Stern used public records he had obtained and worked with The Wall Street Journal to eventually publish an article in August 2015 that made public the faculty committee's recommendation to discontinue public administration and athletics' attempts to save it. Stern said that despite later positive performance reviews, he received only a 1 percent salary bump and 1 percent merit bonus, which he viewed as retaliatory for being a source for the Wall Street Journal report. Comparatively small raises were also given to him in 2016, he alleges.

Stern met with the former president Jay Gogue in 2017 to share his concerns, and while he and the now retired president developed a plan to shift the economics department out of the College of Liberal Arts, leaving Stern to report to less hostile administrators, he said the move never happened.

Still frustrated, Stern contacted The Chronicle of Higher Education in late 2017 about the athletics department and public administration major, which in February led to another expansive piece that revealed administrators' attempts to rescue the major -- the enrollment of which eventually plummeted -- and the extent of Stern's whistle-blowing.

In May, Stern presented to the Faculty Senate about how the public administration scandal may have affected the academic performance of athletes -- to the chagrin of the new athletics representative, the lawsuit states. Weeks later, Stern was kicked out as chairman, locked out of his office and kicked off the computer system, he alleges.

In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Stern said administrators have left him undisturbed since filing his lawsuit last month. He continues to teach.

"There's been no direct contact," Stern said. "But there's obviously a problem here."

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Auburn professor sues, alleging retaliation after he revealed athletics scandal

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An Auburn University economics professor is suing his institution, accusing officials of removing him as a department chair and limiting his raises after he helped reveal that the institution's public administration major was overwhelmingly stacked with athletes.

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Researching Student Mental Health in Higher Education

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Researching Student Mental Health in Higher Education

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In the exploration process, I became intrigued with the issues regarding the legal and ethical practices of student mental health in higher education. In my role as a dental hygiene educator, I will undoubtedly encounter students who may be struggling with mental health issues; I chose this topic because it will be important for me to be well informed on the student's rights and resources for seeking help.

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Researching Student Mental Health in Higher Education

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Researching Student Mental Health in Higher Education

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In my research in the Angelo State University Porter Henderson Library online database, I found an article titled "Mental Health Stigma and Communication and Their Intersections with Education" (Smith & Applegate, 2018). The article discusses the dangers of the stigmas associated with mental health, reviews literature on mental health in higher education compared to K-12 education, and proposes solutions for reducing the stigmas related to mental health disorders.

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Researching Student Mental Health in Higher Education

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Researching Student Mental Health in Higher Education

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In my Internet research regarding mental health in higher education, I discovered the Mental Health in Higher Education Hub (MHHE). This website is a collection of educators, practitioners, and students who aim to create a healthy network of mental health resources across all academic disciplines.

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mhhe aims to increase networking and the sharing of approaches to learning and teaching about mental health in higher education.

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Mental health education is a phenomenon that will affect my future students in more than one way. While college is a stressful time in a student’s life, dental hygiene programs especially feature rigorous curricula, long clinical hours, and demanding tests. I understand first-hand how difficult dental hygiene school can be to balance and can thus exacerbate mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. However, my students will also be faced with treating patients that may have mental health illnesses such as anxiety, bipolar disorder, and depression among others. Therefore, it will be of the utmost importance that I educate future clinicians on the importance of eliminating stigmas surrounding mental health disorders (Smith & Applegate, 2018). The Mental Health in Higher Education Hub website (Anderson, 2018) has many resources available for educators and students to incorporate in the classroom.

Eisenberg, Hunt, and Speer (as cited in Smith & Applegate, 2018) reported, “in a study of thousands of college students, 32% reported symptoms that were consistent with at least one…[mental] health issue” (p. 383). In the face of this statistic, it is highly likely that a significant number of students I come into contact with will be struggling with a mental health concern. The main legal and ethical concern related to mental health in higher education is barriers to care and access to resources for students. Smith and Applegate (2018) explain that one potential barrier to care is the stigma that is attached to mental health disorders. In order to diminish mental health stigma, the first step would be to education my students on mental health, their access and right to care, and the resources that are available to them.

In conclusion, as my students are molded into competent clinicians, it will be valuable for them to have a respect and sensitivity to patients who may experience mental health disorders. I am currently a practicing dental hygienist and I encounter patients who are experiencing anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder. By reducing the stigma of mental health in my classroom, I can model respect and sensitivity for all health issues and conditions, especially mental health. In my opinion, bringing attention to the problem of the stigma is the first step towards improvement.

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Anderson, J. (2018). Resources. Retrieved from mhhehub.ning.com/page/resources-3

Bauer-Wolf, J. (2018, October 5). Sanctioned for speaking out. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/05/auburn-professor-sues-alleging-retaliation-after-he-revealed-athletics-scandal

McKenzie, L. (2018,October 5). Colleges use technology to help students manage mental health. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/05/colleges-turn-wellness-app-address-student-mental-health

Smith, R. A., & Applegate, A. (2018). Mental health stigma and communication and their intersections with education. Communication Education 67(3), 382-393. doi: 10.1080/03634523.2018.1465988