Project Investigator: Ingrid Price, Associate Professor of Teaching, Pharmaceutical Sciences
Additional Applicants: Alex Smith; Jas Jawanda; Parisa Safavi; Jennifer Chatterton
Project Description
In order to support student success, the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences (FoPS) has committed to collaboratively build and implement a student wellbeing plan centered on a culture of self-care, resiliency, and empowerment. As a central step in a collaborative approach to change, this project will explore the perceived value, benefits and challenges of promoting and supporting student wellbeing to FoPS faculty and staff. This knowledge will ensure that the plan and its implementation align with the perspectives and motivations of these key individuals and groups.
Project Questions
How do faculty and staff describe:
– The current student mental health and wellbeing in FoPS?
– The positive and negative influences on student wellbeing in FoPS?
– The role wellbeing plays in success as a learner? In overall career success?
– The impact wellbeing has on student engagement and the classroom environment in FoPS?
– What motivates and inhibits faculty and staff to further support and promote student wellbeing? What, if given the opportunity, would faculty and staff, do more of or differently, to support student wellbeing and what support would they need to be able to do this?
Impact on teaching and learning at UBC
Education change initiatives, regardless of their conceptual soundness, ultimately succeed or fail based on whether individual faculty, staff, and students do things differently (Bridges & Bridges, 2006). Successfully implementing change is both complex and effortful; individuals enacting change must be effectively supported and motivated to do so. The change literature clearly asserts that exploring and respecting the perceived value, barriers, and motivations for change at the level of the individual are key to ensuring success (e.g., Arbuckle, Foster, Talley, Covell & Essock, 2020). The results of this project will benefit any educational program interested in improving student learning outcomes through enhancing wellbeing.