Cura in Mind: SLU + STEM Equals a Focus on Student Well-Being
09/23/2020
While they fire up Bunsen burners to create chemical reactions, the students, staff and faculty members who come together for morning runs, virtual yoga sessions and brown bag talks are seeking to solve an equation: one where scientific inquiry plus a commitment to cura personalis equals a community of friends, mentors and supporters fostering wellness with a STEM-twist at Saint Louis University.
The SLU STEM Wellness Initiative is a collaboration spearheaded by Asmira Alagic, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, and students Margaret O’Brien, Catherine Cline, David Turk and Elizabeth Kelley. Graduate student Seth Appleton joined the group’s steering body in fall 2020.
The initiative is a holistic learning program that aims to emotionally uplift students while encouraging their personal growth and career discernment through wellness and community building exercises, including physical fitness.
“The most meaningful part of the SLU STEM Wellness Initiative for me is empowering students to learn outside the classroom, in ways that benefit their mental health,” Cline, a junior majoring in nutrition and dietetics in the Doisy College of Health Sciences, said.
“It quickly morphed to become about more than the classroom,” O’Brien, a junior studying in the College for Public Health and Social Justice, said. “Instead, it’s about viewing a student as a whole person, and encouraging community, mindfulness and wellness.”
As wellness – mental, physical, emotional and spiritual – becomes an increasingly visible issue on campuses across the country, the SLU community has stepped in and stepped up to care for their fellow students, faculty and staff members with new programs, resources and opportunities to connect in the spirit of cura personalis.
Nationally, the incidence and awareness of mental health and wellness issues has increased on college campuses. The Chronicle of Higher Education, among others, has highlighted the rise in student mental health needs in recent years.
Founded in 2019, the group meets weekly during the semester to run and to come together. Students, faculty and staff also gather for group fitness and wellness classes and for brown bags focused on building a personal and professional life in fields like the sciences, mathematics, engineering, health care and medicine.
A desire to build a STEM community that supports mental health and wellness is at the heart of the effort, its organizers said.
“It challenges me to become the best version of myself,” Turk, a junior studying investigative and medical sciences, explained. “I was first drawn to mental health and wellness as a campus issue when exchanging feelings of confinement and solitude that I was experiencing with a number of my friends. I quickly discovered that those fields were common among students on campus. SLU STEM Wellness has given me the chance to turn a desire to alleviate those struggles into action.”
“The pressure to excel is present in virtually every field,” Turk continued, “and a lack of education on how to cope with this pressure may amplify its effects. If our initiative impacts just one student for the good, then it is a successful one.”
Teaching Students to Build Connections to Create a Healthy SLU
For Alagic, who teaches introductory courses in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, the stress and tension she saw on students’ faces was similar but different from what she remembered from her own student days. While STEM programs can be rigorous and tend to attract high achieving, driven students she said, the anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed that students shared with her were alarming.
“We, as faculty know they are struggling,” Alagic said, “but we are not trained to help them when they are having a hard time because we are not counselors.”
While Alagic and other faculty members are quick to point students to resources like SLU’s University Counseling Center (UUC), Student Health Center (SHC) and to related departments, she wanted to take more direct action to help students, many of whom were isolated from one another or who did not appear connected to SLU’s wider campus life.
“I think the biggest lesson I have learned so far is not to use others’ apparent success as a yardstick,” O’Brien noted. “So often I get overwhelmed thinking that everyone else in class is miles ahead of me, but actually getting to know people outside of the classroom made me realize that no one has it in the bag. We’re all struggling with something.”
To help students connect with each other, and to begin a process of positive change, Alagic wanted to start small.
“I think we get overwhelmed when we just think big picture,” Alagic explained. “And I’m saying, ‘Let’s just think about this week, or even just today.”
Students Bound In and Out of Class
Alagic began implementing group projects and assignments in her large classes. Her goal was to bring students together, to help them bond.
Cline recalls bonding with O’Brien and Kelley as they designed a coffee roasting sensor in Alagic’s class in spring 2019.
“We realized the goal of these projects was really to get students more involved in chemistry and STEM in creative ways that built up a community of collaboration among students,” Cline said. “I was ready to be involved in something like this because I’ve seen first-hand the isolation some STEM students can go through. When ‘I had a panic attack’ becomes a casual staying among undergraduate students, poor mental health on campus becomes an unavoidable issue.”
Their chemist professor then began inviting them to her morning runs during the spring of 2019.
Running for a Cause – Cura Personalis
Initially, two junior students took Alagic up on her invitation. As word spread, more and more students, faculty and staff members began meeting at 6 a.m. weekly to run and bond. Most, Alagic recalled, wanted to relieve stress and to improve their wellbeing.
Through summer 2019, the group evolved into SLU STEM Wellness.
“It’s so students realize that they don’t have to be overwhelmed,” she continued. “They don’t have to have it all figured out at 19. Faculty and staff, we’re just like you. We need help with our mental health, and with our overall wellbeing, too. There’s a need in all of us.”
“From there you had this burst of energy,” Alagic said, “and from there, it was a positive cascade. We want to form good relationships. It’s not this competition. We’re helping each other grow into better versions of ourselves.”
In addition to the group’s runs, SLU STEM Wellness members have taken part in mindfulness and fitness classes. They have also come together for brown bag discussions, “Coffee with Professionals,” with experts in STEM fields to learn about living balanced lives as scientists, engineers and health care professionals.
Creating a Community Where Colleagues Care Post-COVID
Students see themselves as serving others, Cline explained, while also forging connections with faculty and staff members that give them added support as they continue on their paths at and beyond SLU.
“In the classroom, I’ve learned to remind myself that I’m not alone in those hard classes, and that professors know what it’s like to go through touch classes like we are now,” she continued. “Outside the classroom, being part of the Initiative has pushed me to take care of myself and to be honest about my mental health state. When we’re advocating so much for self-care, it’s important that we remember to heed our own advice.”
“This semester, we feel its even more important than ever to try and build community and escape isolation,” Alagic said.
The group is doing so by continuing their morning runs, which follow all COVID-19-related protocols including requiring RSVPs, wearing masks, and other social distancing measures. The runs are held at 6:15 a.m. on Mondays.
SLU STEM Wellness is also hosting outdoor yoga on the law behind the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (ISE) Building on Thursday nights at 5 p.m. sharp, with masking and social distancing required. The group is continuing its former Coffee with Professionals series in a new form – “Fridays with Professors,” via live-streams on social media.
Want to Join?
Get Involved with SLU STEM Wellness
In Asmira’s Words
STEM wellness is an open community for all students and faculty to promote physical, mental, and spiritual wellness. It’s about people who consistently show up and are there for one another. STEM wellness provides an anchor for its members and participants. Right now, a lot of events are canceled, and there is a great deal of uncertainty. Through STEM wellness, we want to minimize that uncertainty and give individuals a space to express themselves, both through conversations and small (safely distanced) group activities.
We’re collaborating with the Simon Recreation Center, Agora Wellness Center, and SLU Running Club to enhance the opportunities for individuals to get together and have a sense of belonging, despite being physically distanced.
This semester more than ever, we need connection. I personally look forward to seeing my former and current students, and others. We are all going through this difficult time together and sometimes you just need someone to vent to and share a few laughs with.
Nationally and at home here at SLU, mental health and wellness issues have become increasingly visible. In the spirit of cura personalis, the University community's call to “care for the individual person” and to respect the dignity of each person as a child of God, Cura in Mind, a limited series, is shining a light on the ways that Billikens are helping students cope, manage and thrive mentally and emotionally on campus.
The series aims to give those working on mental health issues on campus a chance to reach out to let Billikens know that there are friends, faculty and staff members who are here to help.
Story by Amelia Flood, University Marketing and Communications