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Programming Innovation for Youth-serving Organizations​

"A Young Academic’s Rules to Live By" By Taylor Layne Crisman

11/6/2018

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My introduction to undergraduate studies was a unique one. My first course was an honors course titled, “Our Search for Meaning.” Pretty heavy stuff. Many of the experiences from that course will stay with me for the rest of my life, but one of the most impactful moments was when my professor, Dr. Planer, shared a list he had compiled titled, “Dr. Planer’s Rules to Live By.” Throughout his life, he has pondered lessons learned and continually updates the list of rules he wants to live by. After sharing his list, he gave us an assignment to create our own.

​I had just turned 19 and had never thought of myself as wise. As other students shared the same concern, I realized I was not alone. Dr. Planer assured us that we all had wisdom and knowledge to share. To this day, I look back on this lesson and remind myself that my experiences are valuable. To celebrate 4 years since the original draft of my own lessons to live by, I decided to create a list of lessons specifically for academics.

A Young Academic’s Top 5 Rules to Live By:
  1. Embrace failure. This has, oddly enough, become pretty common advice. When I was a kid, I was never really told that failure was okay. Now, I have reframed failure as a window of opportunity that opens when a door is slammed in your face. From my experience, this rule of embracing failure is incredibly important. My plans have fallen apart so many times throughout my studies. However, as I worked to piece them back together, I’ve learned important things about myself and discovered new research interests and career opportunities.
  2. Establish work-life balance. During my first two years of undergrad, I worked and studied nearly all hours of the day and night, rarely making time for my family and friends. I fell into the trap of “romanticizing the exhausted college student.” After those first two years, I realized how important it is to establish a balance between the work I care so much about and my personal life. We are people first, academics second. Make time for the people and activities that matter to you outside of your academic life.
  3. Appreciate your peers and mentors. Nobody enters academia as a superstar. We are all a result of the hard work, dedication, and mentorship of those we encounter during our academic journey. This is not to say that we are not capable, intelligent individuals. I simply mean that we should appreciate our peers and mentors, because they help make our ventures and successes possible. This should not be taken lightly.
  4. Be trustworthy. A common theme I have encountered in all of the academic settings I have been in is the importance of trust. We rely a great deal on being able to trust those we work with. In fact, most labs operate as teams, where trust is a crucial component. Be a trustworthy teammate!
  5. Be unrealistic. This is my favorite lesson of all. My undergraduate advisor, Dr. David Johnson, taught me this. Throughout my entire undergraduate experience, he never encouraged me to set realistic expectations. Rather, he encouraged me to apply for long-shot grants, conferences, lab gigs, etc. He helped me realize that I don’t have to choose educational or career paths that are safe or expected. This rule continues to bring amazing experiences into my life and I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.

I plan on adding to this list throughout my lifetime as an academic, and I highly encourage others to create their own lists. Looking back on the original list I made four years ago was a great way to reflect on my experiences and note areas of personal growth. As a burgeoning academic, I think this is a particularly great exercise. It’s a great way to remember why you chose the path you did and what you’ve learned along the way. Thanks, Dr. Planer, for introducing me to this great practice!

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"Grad school 'on the other side' (of parenting)" by Sara Stacy

10/19/2018

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I am currently entering my fourth year as a graduate student in the Ecological-Community Psychology program and partner in the Community-AID Laboratory. That being said, a lot of things feel normal and routinized: I am getting started on coursework and readings, departmental and program events are happening on a more regular basis, projects and manuscripts are in full swing, and I am *eagerly* balancing all of the responsibilities that come with each of those domains. However, this year also feels different for me, because it is the first semester in which I will be doing all of these things as a mom.

​I am now the mom of a happy little 7-month chunk of a child, who has brought so much love and light into my family life. It has truly been a whirlwind of emotions, but getting to watch him grow, learn, and change has been such a fun experience for my partner and I. With the great joy of that experience also comes some great challenges. I now have another human being I need to consider in all of my decisions. My work schedule is completely dependent on my child and family life. And “working from home” has become a great challenge when you have an adorable little munchkin that just wants to play peek-a-boo or snuggle and does not necessarily prioritize those three articles you have to read for your class.
Since becoming a mom as a graduate student, people are now impressed with my ability to still “get things done.” But the truth is that it doesn’t really feel very impressive at all, because I am just doing what needs to be done, in a way that works best for me. I know my other graduate students have a ton of other things that demand their time, and my experience isn’t that different from theirs. (The only exception perhaps is that my personal demand is objectively the cutest type of demand ever.) I think it is important for all students to to have a life outside of their graduate school experience and each of us must balance both our school and personal life in unique ways.

Balancing my identity as a mother and a student hasn’t drastically changed the way I view work, school, or family, but it has helped me to learn a few lessons in these first seven months that I’d like to share here.
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  1. Make your breaks count. Since I started working after having my son, my partner and I have made it part of our weekly routine to have lunch together on campus as a family as frequently as we can. This has been a great addition to my week to get some additional quality time during the work day. Before having a child, I might have spent a break from work just mindlessly scrolling on Facebook or reading some article online, but now I am spending my breaks in a more thoughtful and intentional way, which has really helped my mental sanity. Even just forcing myself to get out of the office has been a great component of my work schedule, and I think it is something that everyone can benefit from. I am certainly not the first person to come to this conclusion, but I am definitely a strong advocate for it now.
  2. Work intentionally and with purpose. Since becoming a mom, I really do not have time to waste. I have found that this drastically changes the efficiency and productivity in the work I do . Whenever I am working, I always feel a sense of urgency because every hour of work is an extra hour away from my son and my family who I absolutely love. That being said, I really try to work intentionally. I minimize the distractions, focus in on the task at hand, and try to get things done in the time I have. Again, this is not necessarily a new or novel idea, but I think it is an important lesson. Get work done in the time you have allotted, and work as hard as you can when you have the time. Then, put it away and live your life until the next time you come back to it.
  3. You are more than the work you do. Within work domains, and academia specifically, many of us feel that we are diminished to the work we produce. You are constantly demanded so many different actions and people. expect. so. much. of. you. Before having a son, I think I had the tendency to always be thinking about the work I could or should be doing, and diminish views of myself, and sometimes others, based on the work I was able to accomplish during a particular day or week. Since becoming a mom, I am constantly reminded: I am more than the work I do. I am more than the articles I read, the presentations I give, the manuscripts I publish, and the projects I complete. Thinking of myself in this view reminds me that the people I work with, too, are more than the work they accomplish. They also do other great things with their time that deserve to be recognized. I try to remember this when working with folks and see them first as a human being that I get to share my time with, and second as a work partner or colleague.

​Again, these are not new and novel insights, but I have recognized the importance of each of these lessons since  becoming a mom, and I hope that grad students and other people find them helpful.

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"The Pressures of Being 'Successful' as a First-Generation College Student" by Karina Mojica

8/8/2018

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“Graduate school?” my older siblings question. It’s not something that is common in my family nor is college in general. “Are you going to go far again?” they continue to ask. I shrug, “maybe”. We all stay silent.

In my immediate family, my sister was the first to go to college. Everyone felt a certain pride that she had made it that far, and were confident that I would follow in her footsteps. Which, I did. The thing they never thought of nor I completely had thought of was what lay beyond my four years in undergrad. Its difficult having to explain to your family and friends that you’re not quite done yet. There is still a long way to go before you can begin the coveted successful career your parents hope for. Not to mention that there is also a massive amount of pressure to “put my education to good use” from my older siblings. As I rant about school, my father and mother smile and nod, and all they can really say is “we support you, because the more education you get, the better you’ll be, right?” Constantly reminding me that I didn’t have to worry about anything besides school is a thought that lingers on in my head. What they don’t seem to understand is the amount of stress these expectations can cause.

As I think of graduate schools, I can’t help but think of things like, is graduate school right for me? Do I have what it takes to go through with it? Which program is correct for me and how do I make sure I’m good enough for it? These thoughts seem silly, but at the same time, it’s difficult to find the relief you need when there aren’t many people to turn to.

When I first began college, I didn’t doubt myself as much, but I also had no sense of what direction I wanted to take. I didn’t know what I was majoring in and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. All I could really say was that I wanted to do something that involves helping people, in particular, people who were minorities like me. After taking various classes, I realized that I wanted to work in schools, where I could interact with children. I wanted to become someone that was professionally equipped to work with them, but also someone they could rely on. After that, I declared as a Psychology and Spanish double major with intentions of becoming some sort of counselor that could advocate for mental health and be the support I would have liked to have in my school as a student.

When I applied for the Summer Research Opportunities program at Michigan State University, I didn’t expect a summer experience like this one. Being given the opportunity to conduct research and work closely with faculty and graduate students has provided me immense relief. Not only was I able to perform research on a topic that was of high interest to me, but I was able to familiarize myself with the organization of a lab in a research institution, and most importantly meet amazing mentors who could better guide my postsecondary journey.

By going through their undergrad training process, I was able to narrow my research and graduate school interests, as well as calm my continuous concerns. Throughout my two months here, I visited and interviewed various faculty, staff, alumni, graduate students, and partners of the lab to learn more about their passions and current jobs. I was interested in learning about how they ended up where they were. As for the research aspect of this program, I was super interested on the topic of Community Schools. While at first, I didn’t know too much about them, I would have never guessed the amount of information I would have read and learned on them, as well as their contribution to society. With all of this, my aspirations were strengthened in that I wanted continue working in schools, but that I was also interested in implementation research! I am focused on promoting the well-being of students, but I also want to use evidence-based practices that can evaluate and recommend interventions for practices in communities with low-income minorities.

This summer I learned to let the daunting expectations of “being successful” go and learned to truly embrace the opportunities granted to me. I was able build a great relationship with my mentor and the lab, and met many amazing scholars in the program. By learning about everyone’s passions, dreams, and what drives their desires, I learned that if I truly wanted to go to graduate school, I had to go for what drives me. I will have to set goals to give me a sense of what I need to do and what I want get out of graduate school. In the long-run, it’s about where I see myself in the future and who I hope to help.

I do know that I will attend graduate school, however, that won’t be for another year or so. Instead of giving into family and peer pressures and attending right away, I’m going to take some more time to continue to look and reflect on what I want to get out of my graduate school experience as well as what I what I want to accomplish after I receive my degree. In the meantime, all I can really say is that know I want to work to provide supports to communities like mine, so that students like me can grow up with people who were once in their shoes. I want other first-generation students to understand that with every new experience comes new doubts and fears, which eventually will go away because we’ll have to make room for new experiences and all of the feelings that come with them.
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"Letter of Recommendation: A Gap Year Before Graduate School"                            by Meg Normand

5/8/2018

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For much of my undergraduate career, I had a plan for my life: graduate, go to graduate school, and then work at my job that I’d prepared for in graduate school. This plan was halted when professionals during my undergraduate experiences explicitly told me NOT to follow that plan. I was told that I should take at least a year off school, or a “gap year,” before moving onto graduate school. Although I initially rejected this advice, I’m happy I decided to listen to it.

Originally, the idea of taking time off school before graduate school didn’t make sense to me. I worried that taking a gap year would mean one less year of working at my “actual” job. I worried that losing the momentum from 16 years of schooling meant that I would never return. I worried that a future graduate program might think that I’m not serious about their program because I took a break to do something else. When I began working in the Community-AID Lab, though, I found that almost the opposite happened.

Students often use their gap years to pursue an internship, volunteer, complete a fellowship, or work in their career field. During my gap year experience, I decided to volunteer as an AmeriCorps VISTA serving in the Community-AID Lab. In this position, I’ve (among other things) assisted on a wide-scale implementation of a community school program, led a project to evaluate needs within a local non-profit housing organization, and worked on a research project focusing on Medicaid reimbursement within schools. While I was an undergrad, I had multiple part-time and full-time internships and several research experiences. While I learned a lot, nothing compares to the amount I’ve been able to learn working full-time for an extended period of time.

As someone who is interested in pursuing a degree in public health, specifically health policy, my position in the Community-AID Lab aligns well with my future studies and career. I’ve learned firsthand how communities implement community-based programs that are either directly or indirectly related to the social determinants of health. I’ve also worked with a team to publish research in academic journals. During this experience, I’ve honed my research and practice interests, which focuses on the intersection of federal-level legislation and the community-level impacts of policies.

While a gap year may not be right for everyone, I recommend that everyone thinking about going to graduate school, thinks about taking a gap year. I’m more competitive for a graduate-level program because of the significant amount of research and practice experience I’ve gained this year. Through this experience, I sharpened my research and career interests, which means I’ve been able to focus on applying to graduate programs that closely align with these interests. Now that I’m sure that I’ll enjoy and succeed at these graduate programs, I’m more excited to go to graduate school than I was during undergrad.
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I had assumed I would go to undergrad, grad school, and then start my career. It seemed like a very simple path. Now that I’m almost finished with my year in the Community-AID Lab, I understand the perspective of the professionals I spoke with during undergrad. I am now more sure that I want to go to grad school and I’m more competitive for a graduate program. I now understand that a productive gap year can be beneficial and I recommend recent grads consider taking at least a year off of school before moving to the next degree.

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"Academic Critical Consciousness: An Ongoing Conversation"                                   by Lucas Al-Zoughbi

4/3/2018

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PictureLucas Al-Zoughbi, first year doctoral student in the Ecological-Community Psychology program.
APOLITICAL INTELLECTUALS BY OTTO RENE CASTILLO

Apolitical Intellectuals

One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.

They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.

No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with “the idea
of the nothing”
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.

They won’t be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward’s death.

They’ll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total lie.

On that day
the simple men will come.
Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they’ll ask:

“What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?”

Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.

A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.

Your own misery
will pick at your soul.

And you will be mute in your shame.

      What is the role of the Academy (intellectuals) today? What has the role of the Academy been historically? What is the Academy? These are big questions that should be answered on a regular basis in conversation with each other. I think of helicopter researchers that drop down, collect data, and fly off. I think of the state of our world, my country, my family, my friends, and strangers. I think of Nelson Henderson’s often repeated “meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit”. I contemplate climate change and the realities of the suffering that will follow, and how they will mostly be felt by people of color in countries that are less developed according to Western standards. This is particularly relevant as March 22, 2018 is World Water Day, and water is one of the resources most important for survival and most affected by climate change. I recall my visit to South Africa for a conference of young leaders from around the world working for justice. The conference was held at Stellenbosch University, which was referred to as the brains of Apartheid. I think of all this, and I question my decision to enroll and actively pursue a role in the Academy. I am reminded of why I chose to continue my engagement with the Academy when I attend my courses, the lab meetings at the Community-AID, and meet with my advisor. In those contexts, there is space for learning about ways we can further the dismantling of oppressive power imbalances and historical inequities that have dominated traditional research in the Academy. I have come to the conclusion that being a part of the academy while having a commitment to justice, does not necessarily mean foregoing justice. However, our membership in the Academy as community psychologists should have an undertone of a dialectic conversation, which means weighing the options and the outcomes of those options; thinking about thesis and antithesis of our continued relationship with the Academy. We must be reflective about our position in the broader historical context of injustice and ways we leverage our positions to either dismantle or enforce the oppressive status quo.
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     I chose community psychology because I saw the opportunity to bridge my experiences with psychology and peace studies. This field is one that does not require nor suggest that I should be apolitical. Rather, I can engage in research that is guided by my experiences and with the goal of correcting injustices and inequities. Despite my conflicted feelings of being part of the Academy, I see the potential to engage with community members and serve as a bridge by which the distinctions between the Academy and broader society are dismantled. Though I have yet to come to a conclusion of whether this is the most effective path in my pursuit of justice, I do also realize that this is a path that will likely lead to more security in my personal life and future. Sustaining the possibility of my work for justice in the future and equipping me with the skills needed to shift structures of injustice. I don’t know if I will come to a definite answer concerning my role in the Academy as a mechanism for change or a means by which I am complicit. I will conclude this reflection with Audre Lorde’s prominent “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Can we bring about justice through the Academy, in spite of a foundation of sexism, racism, and elitism? Is this what an academic critical consciousness would like?




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"Unfamiliarity Breeds Personal Growth" by Audrey Von-Maszweski

2/27/2018

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     As a stereotypical high--strung perfectionist, I’m very accustomed to having a routine and knowing what I’m getting myself into. Throughout my four years of high school I knew exactly what to expect every single day: go to school, rush to dance class at exactly 2:30pm, and start my homework around 10pm after greeting my family before they crawled into bed.

    By the time senior year arrived, I was certain I would attend the University of Michigan and become a Wolverine like my mom. If you had told me that I would instead be offered a scholarship and paid research position at Michigan State University--an opportunity I’d be crazy to pass up--I wouldn’t have believed you. It was quite literally the first time in my life where everything completely deviated from the plan. Before I knew it I was a part of the Spartan community, the biggest rival of my previous dream school.
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    Upon joining the Community-AID Lab, I was surprised to find that I was the only undergraduate to be a part of this group of individuals with infinitely more experience in the research field than myself. Before I knew it I was given the opportunity to organize a teen dating violence intervention within a Michigan public school district. Immediately I thought to myself, “how on earth do I have the authority to do any of this?”. I had previous experience with organizing a similar program my senior year in Massachusetts, but never as a researcher from a respectable university.

    With the arrival of February--Dating Violence Awareness Month--our lab lead assigned me a research task pertaining to gender equality that could potentially result in a published paper with my name under authorship. I have a great poker face: upon being assigned the project I appeared confident in my abilities to do the job correctly. But on the inside, I again asked myself how the hell anyone could put this much trust in an 18 year old to get this job done.
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    Even as I get more comfortable working within the field of research, I still constantly get the feeling that I have no idea what I’m doing and that I’ll royally screw everything up. That said, I’ve learned this feeling isn’t a result of those around me misjudging my competence--it’s due to the fact that for the first time in my life I’ve been asked to do a job that is out of my comfort zone and was never in my previous life plan. Truthfully I’d be much more comfortable with the school directors asking me to get onstage and perform a full ballet than advising them on a possible intervention for their students. However, staying in your comfort zone only results in stagnation. I haven’t even completed my first year of undergraduate education and I’ve broadened my skill set more than I ever thought possible. Growth can only result from saying yes to unfamiliar and even uncomfortable experiences, but more importantly, a willingness to learn and challenge yourself. You have to be willing to take a backseat and become satisfied with baby steps, but the personal growth in payoff will be monumental.

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"How Collaboration Feels" by Lauren Vollinger

1/30/2018

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   Most of the conversations or lessons I’ve had about collaboration center around logistics. How can we collaborate? What is the best practice for forming collaborative partnerships? How can we collaborate MORE? The truth is, collaboration isn’t easy. It’s deliberate, time-consuming, and at times, exhausting and frustrating. Yet, as community psychologists we still put it at the forefront of our values. It can take us months to develop relationships with community partners before we start doing research or evaluation with them. Meanwhile, researchers in other areas can crank out multiple studies in the same amount of time. So why do we keep doing this?

    What doesn’t get talked about very often is how collaboration feels. Admittedly, my analytic, academic brain takes over most of the time and ignores reflecting on how my work makes me feel. Now that isn’t to say I don’t care deeply about human trafficking or the needs of survivors. I wouldn’t have signed on to be in school for an extra 6-ish years if I didn’t care about these issues, but it’s rare that I give myself a chance to reflect on it. However, this past week I was bombarded with “the feels” after many of my collaborative partnerships I’ve fostered since moving to Michigan came full circle.

    Last week I helped plan a free community conference to raise awareness about human trafficking in the tri-county area with the regional taskforce I started working with during my practicum. Speakers presented on trauma – informed care, criminal justice perspectives and remedies, community responses, and healthcare protocols. The afternoon concluded with a panel discussion where community members could ask the speakers questions. At the conference, I saw law enforcement personnel speaking with community members, people from faith-based organizations speaking with people from DHS, academics speaking with practitioners, military personnel speaking with youth, and many more. However, the moment that truly made me appreciate the amount of collaboration and engagement occurring at the event was when a survivor of sexual assault and intimate partner violence shared her story about her ex-partner trafficking women before he dated her. She wanted to know where she could go back to school to get a degree that would allow her voice to be the loudest so she could speak out against human trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence. I was able to speak with her personally and offered to connect her with some colleagues at MSU who could be more helpful than I.
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   I’d be lying if I said this interaction didn’t make me beam with excitement and hope. I was so focused on creating a collaborative space to raise awareness about human trafficking that I overlooked the sense of empowerment that accompanied it. THAT’S why we continue to value collaboration. Sure, collaboration has its trying times and, maybe selfishly, it makes us feel good when things go well. However, it also has the power to make others in the community feel good and empowered and that’s a good enough reason for me to keep trying.
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"A Change of Perspective" by Erica Nordquist-Szafranski

12/1/2017

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“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely” –Auguste Rodin

Earlier this semester I was selected as an Emerging Engaged Scholar at a conference called Engagement Scholarship Consortium (ESC) which was held in Birmingham, Alabama. As an Emerging Engaged Scholar, I had the opportunity to attend a workshop intended to improve knowledge and insight in community-engaged research in the context of working in academia. This was my first time attending this conference and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I did go with specific goals in mind:
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  1. Obtain relevant information about methods I could use for my comprehensive exams and dissertation. I was currently preparing to rewrite my comprehensive exams and in search of methods for community-engaged research practices I could use to improve my paper.
  2. Attend sessions that could provide some clarity for ideas, projects, and papers I had been working on. Again, I was hoping to obtain something I could use towards my comprehensive exams I was rewriting.
  3. Take time to explore Birmingham. One of my favorite ways to explore a new area is to run. Runner’s World had mentioned one of the most beautiful places in the U.S. to run was near Birmingham, and I had also found the Rotary Trail. Oh, and did I mention that prior to leaving for the conference, I was given the news that I had to rewrite my comprehensive exams? I was actually in dire need of physically leaving East Lansing and doing something—ANYTHING—rather than think about rewriting comprehensive exams.  ​
Prior to the conference, I had been feeling like a complete failure. For about a week, anytime someone said the word “comps” I would burst into tears. The other members of the Community-AID Lab can attest to this. It was awful.

Failure isn’t something that is talked about in academia. The more pronounced narrative is focused on achievement. How many papers have you published? You need to publish more. What conferences are you presenting at this year? Make sure you submit a research poster. If you don’t want to follow a R1 trajectory, why are you here? Just get your one required publication and get out. Messages such as these create a high amount of pressure to fit into a specific academic mold, and it’s no wonder half of graduate students experience psychological distress (Levecque, Anseel, De Beuckelaer, Van der Heyden, & Gisle, 2017).

At the very end of workshop at the ECS conference, something wonderful happened. The workshop organizers stood up and said, “Last year, we received feedback that said ‘We always hear about how to do community-engaged research, and what has worked, but we haven’t heard about failures. Hearing about failures would be helpful and so we’re going to talk about failures in our community-engaged projects”. AND THEN THEY DID. All of the faculty members sat next to each other in the front of the room, and one by one told stories of failures and mishaps with community partners. This actually happened. It was so refreshing to see a successful group of people making an effort to change the narrative of failure by recognizing it as part of research process. One of their key suggestions was to  admit that it happens, move on, and learn for next time so that you can do something different. By normalizing failure and recognizing it as inevitably part of the process, the narrative of achievement can be changed.

The next day, students and faculty all went to dinner together. One of my comps committee members was there- one of the faculty that had reviewed my initial comprehensive exam submission. I was dreading seeing him, and had seriously considered not going to dinner in order to avoid him. But, you know what happened what happened while we were walking to dinner? He told me that he had to rewrite his comprehensive exams when he was a doctoral student too. Quite a bit of my failure-related-stress disappeared after he shared that bit of information.

My experience at the ECS conference showed a completely different side of academia than I was used to. I had gone to this conference with specific goals in mind, but gained so much more than I thought I would. Being around a network of academics who were working to normalize failure was exactly what I needed at that point in time, and I hope that continued acknowledgements of failure combat the traditional narratives of achievement in academia.   


Levecque, K., Anseel, F., De Beuckelaer, A., Van der Heyden, J., & Gisle, L. (2017). Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students. Research Policy, 46(4), 868-879.
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"The Intersection of Public Health, Policy and the Community-AID Lab" by Meg Normand

11/2/2017

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When I graduated from Michigan State University in May, my career interests in public health and public policy aligned with many of my fellow graduates who decided to move to Washington, D.C. post-graduation. As a recent graduate with an interest in health policy and a couple of health policy internships under my belt, my family and many of my friends assumed I would follow a similar path. Given my interests in public policy, specifically health care policy, it might seem an odd fit that my first job out of college is a position at the Community-AID Lab, but the work of the Community-AID Lab intersects with public policy and public health quite often.

Health policy is a macro level field, while even the name of the Community-AID Lab implies micro, community level work. But when I learned about the lab’s work on the implementation of integrated student supports (ISS), I was immediately drawn to the lab, based on its connection with public health and public policy. ISS programs are wraparound supports, like physical and mental health services or family resource centers, that are implemented in schools through partnerships with community-based organizations. The lab assists organizations, like the Flint Community Schools, with the evaluation and implementation of ISS programs. 

ISS programs are implemented at the community level because they serve the unique needs of each community. As such, they must also choose strategic community partners based off each community’s needs. This is far from a policy intervention that occurs at a state or federal level, but these community-level interventions often need funding from the state and federal level. For example, schools can implement targeted or comprehensive interventions, like Community Schools, through federal funds from the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) if the interventions are evidence-based. The Community-AID Lab, through data collection and evaluation, plays a key role in building the evidence base for effective ISS programs with their community partners.

​Public policy often begins and ends at the community-level. Without evidence that programs are effective, policymakers shouldn’t invest in programs like Community Schools or other integrated student supports. Effective health policy might not mean a massive piece of legislation like the Affordable Care Act, but it could be something as simple as funding community health centers within schools. The work that begins in the Community-AID Lab and with their partners ensures that these programs are piloted and supported by evidence. The micro level work of the lab seems far removed from macro level policies at first glance, but practices implemented at the community level are reliant on macro level policies and vice versa.


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"Thriving in Graduate School: Brief Thoughts on the Beautiful, Ruthless Journey" by Ignacio D. Acevedo-Polakovich, PhD

10/24/2017

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I smile when I think back on my graduate school journey. It made me a better professional and person, and provided me with some of my closest and most enduring friendships. Graduate school was a time I built beautiful, warm memories.

Graduate school was also one of the most dispassionate, ruthless challenges that I’ve faced. Amidst the building of warm memories and lasting friendships, I questioned my capacity to succeed for years on end, snot cried in more than one faculty member’s office, and did so while chronically deprived of both sleep and income.

Since graduate school, I’ve had ample opportunity to think about, and observe in the graduate students that I’ve trained, what the things are that help students thrive by having more of the beautiful moments and less of the ruthless ones. I can say with confidence that thriving in graduate school requires dedicated work, done consistently, over years. While students must work out their own equation for thriving, that equation includes at least two variables: A beginner’s mindset, and a commitment to healthy and balanced living.  

The first variable, a beginner’s mindset, is the fundamental acceptance that you are in graduate school to learn from people with more experience than you. The vast majority of people in graduate school—including you—have beautiful, capable minds. In most cases, what sets your senior colleagues’ and faculty’s minds apart is not having greater capability, but having acquired experience by failing more times than you have ever tried. Your most successful senior colleagues and faculty have used these experiences to learn how to better and more efficiently deploy their beautiful minds. Listen and learn from these folks, they can spare you difficult learning experiences that will challenge your sense of worthiness.

The second variable is a commitment to healthy living. The dispassionate and ruthless elements of graduate school can be incredibly stressful, and are experienced during long hours of difficult work in challenging environments where you have limited control. The likelihood that you’ll thrive is higher when you prioritize self-care. Make time for those things that will increase your chances of thriving amidst stress. If you don’t take care of your physical health, make it a priority. If your emotional health has been a problem, look for help. If you are disorganized (or a perfectionist), learn to plan efficiently. Providing you with an orientation to the resources that can help you make any of these changes would take up an entire blog post; however, my main point is that each change is achievable, and each will increase your chances of thriving in graduate school.
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I hope that at the end of your graduate journey you find yourself rendered a better professional and person. I hope that this happens amidst beautiful memories and friendships. I know that your journey will at times be dispassionately ruthless. I know also that showing up humbly and committing to caring for yourself will make those parts rarer and more bearable. Wherever that beautiful, ruthless journey takes you, I look forward to seeing you, smiling and proud, on the other side.
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