Focus: Strategies to Care for Your Own Mental Health and Well-Being
Description: The 2021-2022 school year has hardly represented a return to “normal.” As highlighted in the Chronicle of Higher Education in February 2022, a team at UW-Milwaukee took a trauma-informed approach to crafting their responses this academic year to honor the lessons of the COVID-19 public health crisis that has now spanned two full calendar years. This session covered how research at UW-Milwaukee and beyond has illuminated faculty and staff experiences during the pandemic and what instructors can do in their personal and professional lives to combat the corrosive effects of the pandemic. As time allowed, the discussion extended to how faculty can detect and respond to stressed students during this time with the use of trauma-informed classroom practices.
Presenters:
- Dimitri Topitzes, Ph.D., LCSW, is a Professor of Social Work at UW-Milwaukee and also serves as the Director of Clinical Services for the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being. He conducts applied research, partnering with community-based agencies to implement and test innovative trauma-responsive programming. He created the Trauma-Informed Care Graduate Certificate at UW-Milwaukee and teaches master’s courses in trauma counseling, mindfulness, and community building.
- Adam Jussel, J.D., serves as the Dean of Students for UW-Milwaukee, where he helps assist with student advocacy and engagement; support resources, including basic needs; crisis response; and campus healing initiatives. Before UW, Adam was the Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Student Conduct at Washington State University. He previously represented WSU as an assistant attorney general and has a certification in higher education law and policy from the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA). Adam served as a faculty member for the Foundations Track at the 2018 Gehring Academy and has been fortunate to speak at a number of conferences about how to better serve students, including the National Conference on Law and Higher Education, University of Vermont Legal Issues Conference, the Higher Education Alcohol Other Drug & Wellness Summit, and the National Conference on Campus Sexual Assault and Violence. Adam was also a member of NASPA’s Culture of Respect CORE Constructs Advisory Board, advising NASPA on creating best practices regarding sex and gender-based violence.
Access resources: Mathematics faculty, staff and administrators at UW System institutions are invited to enroll in the Math Initiative CoP Canvas course at https://uws-td.instructure.com/enroll/XTXRCM, where they will find resources and the recording link.
Information: To join the mathematics CoP distribution list and receive notices of events and the Zoom link, please contact Sandra Kallio at apulvermacher@uwsa.edu.
Evaluation: Participants are asked to complete a brief evaluation.