Funded Projects | Year of Emotional Well-Being

Through the Year of Emotional Well-being, we're pleased to support projects that are interdisciplinary, that involve many parts of our University and broader community, and that foster community, collaboration, and conversation around restoring and enhancing our emotional-well-being.

Read more about the funded projects:

2023 Super Analytics Challenge - Finale Planning

Katie Bennett (Staff) and Christopher Barlow (Staff), Katz Graduate School of Business - KGSB MBA Programs

The focus of the 2023 Challenge is leveraging data to address topics related to mental health, with particular focus on frontline workers and labor supply, such as difficulties attracting, retaining, and incentivizing that workforce. Further topics, including scaling mental health operations& offerings as demand increases, resourcing NGOs focused on this subject, and reducing barriers to mental health workforce development, may also be covered by the students. While starting points, students will have the opportunity to identify & hone a particular problem of interest within the overall topic of mental health.

BCAP Youth Arts Program

Michelle Khattri (Student), David C. Frederick Honors College

This is an opportunity for Pitt students and the Bhutanese Community Association of Pittsburgh (BCAP)community partner to instill emotional well-being practices through art therapy. Our program includes general arts, theater, and music topics that integrate well-being practices to build confidence, express emotions, reduce stress, and foster mindfulness. Pitt students will actively participate in learning emotional well-being techniques for themselves and have the chance to pay it forward to the future generation. This is a unique opportunity to innovate an existing partnership, artistic medium, and well-being practices to create a resonating experience for underserved young students.

Don't Be Lonely at Work

Linda Tashbook (Faculty) and Lori Molinaro (Faculty), University Faculty Senate Task Force

The Mental Wellness Task Force proposes to reduce workplace loneliness for faculty and staff at all of the Pitt campuses. Employees who feel lonely at work are typically in a cycle of not feeling informed, not feeling invited to participate, and not feeling that their involvement is even wanted by co-workers and supervisors. A common symptom of someone who is lonely at work is the feeling of being unseen. Sometimes, the lonely employee is a long-time reliable worker who feels ignored. Other times, the lonely employee is one who is too new to be an insider. Sometimes, it is simply because of one employee’s personal characteristics that they don’t feel a part of team at work. Workplace loneliness has been identified as a significant source of stress that leads to poor performance and complications in other realms of an employee’s existence. The Harvard Business Review has explained that workers’ “psychological safety” tends to be lacking when employees experience workplace loneliness. Psychological safety is “the perception that a given environment is conducive to interpersonal risk-taking.” When employees lack this kind of safety, they feel inferior and undervalued and are less inclined to contribute ideas and insights at work. Lonely workers are also less inclined to remain at a job—which means that the workplace itself suffers from worker loneliness. According to the Cigna Loneliness and the Workplace2020 Report, three out of every five Americans are lonely. Lonely employees are five times more likely to miss work, seven times more likely to feel disengaged at work, and twice as likely as other employees to think about quitting. Our project seeks to reduce those negative occurrences. Toward that end, this effort will be both a service project and a research project.

Giving Voice and Making Space: Understanding Concepts of Emotional Well-Being in Order to Support Researchers and Their Fields of Study

Bridget Keown (Faculty) Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

The Gender and Science Program is dedicated to promoting representation in research fields by offering comprehensive support for students from a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and identities, with the understanding that the success of future research relies on emotional well-being of our researchers. This application addresses several interrelated structural and methodological problems that challenge these goals. First, many contemporary notions of health and wellness tend to overlook those who are not physically able, neurotypical, or socially privileged, thus perpetuating stigma against multiple-marginalized individuals and communities (for example, persistent fatphobia in medical research and wellness culture). Second, traditional methods and institutions practices often fail to support a diverse range of students and researchers, including people of color, working-class and first-generation students, and neurodiverse and disabled individuals. Finally, isolation of scholarly fields often prevents comprehensive discussion about issues that require multidisciplinary input, including issues of mental health, resilience, and changes over time in the way these issues are discussed. The proposed programming in this Year Of application will draw attention to these problems by inviting speakers and sponsoring research that focuses on issues of well-being across several fields and on multiple levels, ranging from the individual to the community, to the global. To help ensure the long-term efficacy of these goals, and the potential for gaining insight about best practices and emerging discourse, this application proposes a multi-year series of programming that will engage with multiple pre-existing speaker series, such as the Research, Ethics and Society Initiative, the Health Humanities Speaker Series, and the Gender and Science Program over the course of the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years.

Integrating Attention to Emotional Well-being into Healthcare-focused Forums

Lisa Parker (Faculty) Center for Bioethics & Health Law

While both healthcare and bioethics recognize that emotions play a role in decision making and that emotional well-being is a critical component in overall well-being, both fields have an uneasy relationship with emotional well-being and emotions. Emotions are sometimes considered impediments to sound reasoning (for example, deciding about medical treatment) or to pursuing ethical action (as when anger, fear, envy, or even love “get in the way” of acting as one should). Moreover, in healthcare, those who tend to patients’ emotional and psychological well-being are often considered to be engaged in “soft” or lower-level work, because pastoral care, psychiatry, psychology, social work, palliative care, and hands-on nursing are less technical, measurable, quantifiable—and are even less observable, or at least less observed or recognized—than specialties employing high-tech interventions, lab values, and algorithms. Yet the pandemic forced clinicians to recognize their own emotional needs. Similarly, most ethical theory urges people to correct for the effects of emotion, overcome weakness of will, and reason carefully to discern the right action or a vision of human flourishing.

Following on programs for the Year of Data and Society that examined how data can inform and improve humanistic healthcare and the health humanities, the programming proposed this year will demonstrate how(i) attention to emotional well-being is integral to providing appropriate healthcare interventions, (ii) the humanities provide resources complementing professional mental healthcare, (iii) data-informed research can serve humanities-based approaches to promoting emotional well-being, and (iv) individual and community well-being are interconnected and served by a focus on meeting the emotional and identity-constituting needs of individuals within myriad communities—families, workplaces, neighborhoods, peer groups, congregations. Through partnership with City of Asylum, clinical grand rounds, and other forums, this programming will bring these ideas to students, faculty, other Pitt employees, and members of the public.

Joy is an Act of Resistance

Timothy Maddocks, Faculty, Department of English/ Public and Professional Writing Program

We’ve titled our project — “JOY IS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE” — a literary series and community event(s) facilitated by Sampsonia Way Magazine designed to celebrate and explore the powerful idea that the expression of joy isa practice we can cultivate individually and in our communities. Sampsonia Way Magazine is the in-house magazine for City of Asylum, edited and promoted by Pitt undergrads. The magazine’s stated mission is to give voice to persecuted writers from around the globe and to celebrate literary freedom of expression.

Love Data Week 2023: Year of Emotional Well Being

Dominic Bordelon (Faculty) University Library System; Melissa Ratajeski, (Faculty) , Health Sciences Library System

The University has identified data science and computational research skills as strategic priorities. Across many disciplines, there is an increasing demand for graduate students and early career researchers (ECRs) to acquire and apply computational skills such as data management and transformation, statistical analysis and modeling, data visualization, and machine learning (ML). Maier-Matei et al. note in their comparative study that “data processing and handling, teaching and management skills could be considered core competences for R&D professionals that transcend all the analyzed fields” (2019). In the research industry, graduate students are training and performing as de facto computer programmers, data analysts, data scientists, and research software engineers. The computational aspect of research can be a source of great frustration and anxiety for students and faculty alike. Negative affective states such as confusion, frustration, and anxiety have been shown to occur frequently in novice computer programmers while coding, and certain negative states and state transitions have effects on performance (Bosch and D’Mello 2017). Impostorism or the impostor phenomenon—the belief among certain high-achieving individuals that their accomplishments are a product of chance or luck rather than their ownabilities—has also been identified among women enrolled in STEM graduate programs (Tao and Gloria 2019). For computational research to be engaging and satisfying rather than draining, scholars need a multifaceted and social support system that includes both peers and experts.

Mental Health Champion Certificate Program

Bernadette Smith (Staff) and Ahmed Ghuman (Staff), University Counseling Center

Each year in the United States, approximately 1,100 college students (ages 18 to 24) die by suicide and roughly 24,000 college students report a suicide attempt (Fernández Rodríguez & Huertas, 2013). Student well-being also has a major impact on retention and persistence, with an estimated 3-5% of college students withdrawing due to mental health related concerns (Hunt, 2010; Eisenberg 2013). Positive contributors to well-being and mental health include supportive relationships with care providers, access to physical and mental health care, and connection to community support. The Mental Health Champion Certificate Program, hosted by the University Counseling Center (UCC), is designed to provide staff, faculty, and students the knowledge, awareness, and skills to support the well-being of our diverse student body.

Scholarship and Self-care: Strategies to Improve the Well-Being of Single Mothers in Higher Education

Christine McClure (Staff), Health Policy and Management; Tammeka Banks (Staff). School of Education; Victoria Lancaster (Staff), Business and Operations

Research indicates that single mothers have higher rates of depression, anxiety, and stress than partnered mothers (Liang and Brand, 2019). This is because the normal stressors of motherhood are exacerbated by being the sole caregiver for the child(ren). Single mothers also report an increased feeling of isolation and loneliness from having to make decisions for their children alone and being overwhelmed by basic responsibilities like running errands, attending school functions, cleaning, and cooking. These responsibilities limit the amount of time single mothers can spend pursuing hobbies and other outside interests, attending adult-only events, and engaging in self-care activities, all of which have been shown to improve overall well-being (Carr, 2008). According to the US Census Bureau, in 2021 of the 11 million single-parent homes, approximately 80% of them were headed by a single mother. In Pennsylvania, 31% of families are headed by a single mother with more than 36,000 of those single mother-led families living in Allegheny County. The University of Pittsburgh was named one the top three largest employers in the region with more than 14,000 employees. While there is no data available on the number of single mothers working at the University, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 77.6% labor force participation rate for mothers who were single, widowed, or divorced. It is reasonable to suggest that a considerable number of single mothers are employed at the University and many may be experiencing single mother-related stressors that are negatively impacting their well-being.

This project will provide a series of well-being workshops focused on single mothers and those interested in learning how to provide support. The workshops will provide the mothers with a safe place to interact, while participating in enriching discussions on relevant topics, and to engage in self-care activities.

Stay Ready Medical Education

Marrissa Muchnock (Student), David C. Frederick Honors College

The pandemic illuminated the public’s mistrust with medical science, understanding of medical services, and disparities in mental health treatment. Pittsburgh is a medical metropolis, yet many have limited understanding of their medical safety net, the emergency response system. This project aims to educate the general public on an essential resource while providing a continuing education tool for health providers.

This project will produce an episode of “Stay Ready”, following a diverse night class for Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) training. The first episode focuses on the mental health of health care workers and patients. In addition to providing insight into health provider experiences and training, this project educates the general public on mental health resources. Characters’ storylines will be woven into this health information, allowing other organizations, such as hospitals or ambulance companies, to use clips for internal continuing education. The current misunderstanding many individuals have with health care can be addressed through resonating, credible, and entertaining materials such as a television show. This misunderstanding can leave individuals vulnerable to misinformation (often with serious consequences to themselves) and exacerbates the challenges medical systems face, including patient overflow, staffing shortages, and burnout. This need has encouraged us to create meaningful media, specifically a series that presents valuable information to audiences, and offers insight into the individuals within the Pittsburgh medical field.

The University is concentrated with aspiring health professionals, and our project provides insights on the field itself and student experience. EMT is an entry-level position, and the series follows students from diverse backgrounds while exploring concepts such as emergency systems and health provider education, health disparities, and prejudice. Student characters and thus viewers will learn about common diseases, treatments, and emotional health of providers as they follow the lives of compelling and relatable characters.

"Struggling in Silence" Documentary

Kevin Smith (Faculty), Film & Media Studies

“Struggling in Silence” is a documentary that addresses student-athlete mental health awareness. It is told through the experiences of two student-athletes, Marley Washenitz, an athlete on the Pitt women’s basketball team, and Tre Tipton, a former member of the Pitt football team. By using the voices and stories of current student-athletes, “Struggling in Silence” resonates with other student-athletes, while providing cautionary examples of mental health concerns. 2022 saw a surge in student-athlete suicides and a mental health crisis. Five NCAA athletes died by suicide in a seven-week period, leaving their families grieving. From the outside looking in, it may have seemed like they had everything going for them. They all shared the same love of sport. But their suffering and struggles were undetected and unknown. Recognizing severe depression, anxiety, self-harm, and dangerous thoughts may seem impossible. But it can be averted. Marley was on course to become a statistic. The two-time West Virginia high school player of the year seemed to have everything ... popularity, intelligence, and a loving family. Only Marley was aware of her personal struggles. Tre's story tells of the tough trials he faced as a kid witnessing death in his family, childhood molestation, sports-related injury, and how he found strength throughout his life to maintain balance. During his collegiate years, he faced depression, anxiety, and pain. Although he faced many trials and tribulations, Tre was still able find positivity in his life. Marley’s crusade is to shed enlightenment by sharing the journey she and Tre have taken so others will not need to struggle in silence because there is no “one” particular face of suicide. In addition to an insightful look into student-athletes’ challenges in navigating mental health, “Struggling in Silence” is an empowering and uplifting testimonial to recognition, awareness and subsequently addressing mental health illness.

The Art of Healing through Poetry and Connection

Carolina Hernadez (graduate student); Darrelstan Ferguson (graduate student); Don Joseph (graduate student); Luana Moreira Reis (graduate student) from Addverse+Poesia (student organization)

We use poetry to help heal and uplift marginalized and underrepresented social groups, including women, Black, Indigenous and disabled people, and the LGBTQ community. We view poetry as a powerful means of self-expression that anyone can practice or engage with in order to gain a sense of well-being. Addverse+Poesia was founded on the premise that poetry is a tool for social intervention and activism because it has the capacity to empower oppressed peoples in the context of their histories and current realities. Our members, who come from all parts of the globe and speak various languages, embody different stories of oppression. They build a sense of community by sharing their stories through poetry, which enables them to feel heard, seen, and validated. Our group provides a safe space for people to teach and learn from each other, a space where radical empathy is constantly being cultivated with the aim to inspire others outside of our space to love one another regardless of our differences. Our goal is to share poetry's potential to create safe spaces in a world that is often hateful and exclusive. We seek to expand our membership base and continue to use the power of words to create our own narratives, protest oppressed conditions, and ultimately heal and transform ourselves and others in the process.

The Sleep Center

Emma Zaret (Undergraduate Student), School of Nursing

As I sit down to write this proposal, I deliberated for hours on how to begin. So, I will start by describing a typical week for a Pitt nursing student. It is currently Sunday at 11 a.m. I came back to Pittsburgh from Thanksgiving break on Saturday because I have an eight-hour shift from 3-11:30 p.m. at Western Psych on Sunday. On Monday, I have a clinical from 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. After that I have class at 4:30 p.m. and wrap up around 6 p.m. Then I have a couple of meetings and homework to catch up on. Throw in an exam and a paper and classes later that week, not to mention another clinical day on Wednesday, and I find myself booked and busy for the entire week. I will have to squeeze in laundry and working out and food shopping and and eating and socializing and sleeping. This is a normal week for a nursing student. So, as I sit down to write this proposal, I find that the easiest way to begin is to set the scene for a nursing student's typical routine As a student representative of the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Nursing, I propose the implementation of a Sleep Center in the Victoria Building. The Sleep Center will be located in a designated room in the Victoria building. This room will be transformed into a calm and relaxing space for nursing students to go to when they need a quick nap to recharge before they continue with their studies.

Writing and Healing Arts: Stories Can Make Us Whole

Lori Jakiela (Faculty), Pitt Greensburg, Creative & Professional Writing Program

According to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the United States (and beyond) is facing an epidemic of loneliness. This, coupled with the political divisions in our country, the ongoing effects of a global pandemic, climate crises and more, has left many people feeling lost and isolated. As evidenced by the Story Center at Berkeley, and the national/international StoryCorps project, one thing we can do for one another is share our stories. By coming together in storytelling, we can alleviate loneliness and help one another heal. By articulating our individual experiences, we can find common ground--that shared humanity--that can help us heal. What we are proposing is a week-long celebration of the power of stories—with readings by poets and writers, performances by songwriters, workshops in both digital and traditional storytelling that would be open to the wider community, and more. We would couple these events with other wellness activities, such as a writing workshop that incorporates yoga and meditation into the writing practice. What we are envisioning is a festival that would bring together our students, our faculty and staff, and the broadest swath of the community. Ideally, we would want to promote this as a cross-generational event—bringing together storytellers of all ages. We would also want to emphasize diversity--bringing together people of diverse backgrounds, cultures, and experiences to share their stories in a supportive, communal space

Staging Care & Well-Being

Hyunjin Kim, Graduate Student, French & Italian Department

The department of French & Italian has not had an in-person student conference for many years, due to the pandemic. For next year, our student organizing committee is preparing an in-person FRIT student conference, under the theme of “Staging Care & Well-Being.” Also, this year is the Provost’s Year of Emotional Well-Being, and our conference theme suits its purpose very well. This conference is to be held at Pitt, May 11th to 12^th, 2023, and the keynote speaker is Jennifer Boum Make (Georgetown University), a Pitt alumna who is currently working on a book on decolonial care. Our department sincerely needs this funding, because the initial internal funding set up for this entire conference was only $690. Even if we consider the external funding from other departments, there is no guarantee that we will secure enough amount of funding for the conference. In our department, many students have not properly experienced in-person conferences, due to the pandemic. This is also why having a conference under the theme of care and well-being is precious to the department of French & Italian. Through this conference, we will be able to learn how important it is to care and share our ideas through a professional platform.

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Liveability and Well-Being: A National Disability Awareness Month Reading

Ellen McGrath Smith, Faculty, Department of English

Representation, free expression, and the sharing of experiences are all essential to the emotional well-being of members of historically marginalized groups. For people who identify as disabled, the focus of our institutions is all too often on legal rights and accommodations, which, though central to equity, are not fully fleshed out without a larger cultural awareness of the diverse experiences of disability. Literature by disabled authors about their experiences not only helps to build that awareness; it also brings out the impact of ableism on the lived daily emotional well-being of those with invisible and visible disabilities. Thus, events showcasing the creative writing generated by individuals who identify as disabled validates the experiences of disabled faculty, staff, and students while enlarging awareness among a nondisabled audience. Events that call on the expressive talents of disabled writers also inspire others who deal with disability to create out of their experiences and identities. Furthermore, it is a commonplace among the disability rights community that there is enormous pressure to be "affable" in order to negotiate the abled world's barriers; the constant need to advocate for oneself is part of that negotiation. In the realm of literature, however, a high premium is placed on the telling of difficult truths that may not always leave readers feeling comfortable. For this reason, centering literature by disabled writers furthers emotional well-being by its openness to difficult truths that, when repressed, further the emotional harms of ableism. Disability is the most intersectional identity there is, as one in four American adults have some sort of disability. Within the University, this identity cuts across all affiliative roles, including faculty, staff, and students. Emotional well-being inheres in a sense of belonging, not just in letter but in spirit.

Sticking Up for Emotional Well-Being

Ann Black (Staff) Center for Teaching and Learning

Peer-reviewed research reveals an elevated level of mental health services needs and a lack of on-campus help-seeking among university students."...[A]bout 88% of students [at a college in Kentucky] experienced moderate to severe stress, with 44% of students showing moderate to severe anxiety and 36% of students having moderate to severe depression. In particular, female, rural, low-income, and academically underperforming students were more vulnerable to these mental health issues. However, most students with moderate or severe mental health symptoms never used mental health services." (Lee, Jeong, Kim, 2021, 1)"Undergraduate and graduate students have a higher risk of mental illness than the general population. Multiple barriers may contribute to decreased help-seeking, including mental health stigma, lack of awareness of available resources, lack of prioritization of self-care, busy class schedules, and different preferences in communication styles." (Davis, Wolfe, Heiman, 2021)

The primary audience will be Pitt undergraduate and graduate students; the secondary audience will be all other members of the Pitt community.

Goals:

- give users and viewers awareness of Pitt’s confidential mental health services
- reduce stigma
- remind students to stay aware of emotional wellness,
- give them an emotional boost, and
- encourage conversation among students about emotional health.

Public-facing acknowledgment of mental health issues can contribute to de-stigmatizing them. Stigma is a leading factor in avoiding treatment among college students, according to a study across “150 colleges and universities, with more than 175,000 people responding... College students who experience suicidal thoughts are less likely to seek treatment if they go to school where there is a high level of stigma around mental health issues, a UCLA-led study found.” (Wolfe, 2018) According to Somapika (2019), to reduce mental health stigma, we must “normalize the struggles,” “talk about it,” “educate others,” and “be a little more sympathetic.”

Women in Medicine & Science Forum's Innovative Program for Men and Women

Dariene Zellers (Staff) Office of Academic Career Development

The WiMS Forum is an annual, intensive, and interactive, multi-day event that was established to foster an inclusive academic culture at Pitt that supports the retention and advancement of women faculty members, postdoctoral and clinical fellows, and graduate students in medicine and science at the university. The WiMS Forum brings together women faculty members and trainees and fosters a noncompetitive learning community where participants collectively focus on their own professional career success, personal career satisfaction, and emotional well-being, and unselfishly share their energy, expertise, and experiences for the benefit of other women. The forum’s annual objectives are 1) to positively represent institutional culture by exemplifying how Pitt welcomes, supports, and advances women; 2) to demonstrate to decision-makers the impact of women upon our institution’s scientific discoveries, educational achievements, and contributions to our local, national, and global communities; 3) to educate woman on how to view their own fit within the academic culture at Pitt; and 4) to prepare women to strategically effect institutional change so as to increase equity, diversity, and inclusion for all The theme for the University of Pittsburgh Women in Medicine & Science (WiMS) Forum in 2023 is “Professional Well-Being: Fostering Culture Change from Me to We”. It was designed around Pitt’s theme of emotional well-being and will highlight ways to support ourselves as women, as part of a team, and as members of this institution that lead to both emotional wellbeing and career success.

Find Your Anchor

Bernadette Smith (Staff) University Counseling Center

Suicide was the third leading cause of death for individuals ages 15 to 24 in 2020 (JED Foundation, 2022). In the same year, of young adults aged 18 to 25, 11.3% had serious thoughts of suicide, 4% made a suicide plan, and1.9% attempted suicide in the past year; this is the highest percentage across all age groups (SAMHSA, 2021).Each year in the United States, approximately 1,100 college students (ages 18 to 24) die by suicide and roughly24,000 college students report a suicide attempt (Fernández Rodríguez & Huertas, 2013). Institutions of higher education must commit to developing and maintaining effective suicide prevention efforts that are accessible to a diverse student body. Through these efforts, institutions must recognize the need for creative, non-traditional initiatives that connect with students in new and meaningful ways. In an effort to support the University of Pittsburgh’s suicide prevention initiatives, the University Counseling Center (UCC) will partner with Find Your Anchor – a grassroots movement aimed at suicide prevention, awareness and education. Find Your Anchor is currently partnering with Born This Way Foundation, Wounded Warrior Project, American Association of Suicidology, University of Louisville and Mississippi State University, as well as many other national organizations and institutes of higher education.

Opening Our Eyes: Supporting Student Well-Being by Supporting Advisors

April Belback (Staff) Office of the Provost

The 2023 University of Pittsburgh Mentoring and Advising Summit will take place virtually on Friday, March 3 with workshop sessions and engagement spaces available for attendees from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Each year, this event attracts approximately 1,000 attendees from across the U.S. and we are already on track to exceed that goal. Attendees include Pitt faculty, staff, and administrators from all of our colleges, schools, and campuses. This year, we are seeking a special speaker as our keynote anchor session (3:50-5:00 p.m.) to end the day and put forward a "charge" for the advising and mentoring community. Dr. Vincent Tinto has been researching and writing about student retention and well-being since 1970 with the creation of his theory of departure and with his work on student success, he has truly become one of the field's leading experts in this space. He has accepted our invitation to speak as our anchor keynote and address some issues in his most recent work, "Through the Eyes of Students." As such, the focus on sense of belonging and emotional well-being of our students is a key focus to their higher education experience. And, as advisors and mentors, we also have a key part to play in the engagement of these factors. Having Dr. Tinto speak at the Summit will highlight these important issues and provide a "roadmap" for future conversations in the mentoring and advising space around how we can support our students' emotional well-being.

Speaker on Wellbeing Research and Education

Kristen Asplin (Faculty) Pitt-Greensburg

The speaker, Carla Chugani, PhD LPC, will be the keynote for the 25th annual Laurel Highlands Undergraduate Psychology Research Conference. Her topic is "Mental Health and Wellbeing: Research and Emerging Trends."

This presentation will discuss how to improve mental health and well-being as well as discussing some of the current research and research methods in the field. The audience will include students and faculty from the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, who will be able to attend without registering for the larger conference. The audience will also include psychology students and faculty from other local campuses, such as Pitt-Johnstown, Saint Vincent, and Saint Francis.

Stress-Less Student Survival Table Event

Jaime Lorenzo (Staff) Student Health Services

This project targets all students in every major and year both commuter and on-campus. Finals week is a very stressful time for students. During this time, students lack proper sleep and nutrition that can affect their academic performance. Stress also weakens the immune system and the body's ability to fight off infection. During the weeks leading up to exams and during exam week, we have an increase in student visits to Health Services for a variety of physical and mental health complaints. Most students are unaware of some simple decisions they can make and interventions they can do to help support their bodies and minds during this difficult time. This project will be an opportunity to provide students with knowledge, tools and samples of ways to reduce or manage stress.

Global Health Day 2023: Addressing Compassion Fatigue

Jocelyn Schmersal (Graduate Student) School of Pharmacy

Addressing compassion fatigue within the healthcare workforce is an incredibly pressing issue both for healthcare providers as well as the patients and communities that they treat. Compassion fatigue, the result of secondary trauma in combination with cumulative burnout, can have serious consequences, including several negative provider health outcomes which have the potential to impact practitioners’ capacity for optimal clinical decision making .1 As healthcare providers are pushed to their limits, health outcomes are at stake. This risk demands change in the current culture of the healthcare system. Current workplace cultures facilitate burnout through time constraints, long shifts, or other workplace stressors thus adding to compassion fatigue. 2Although work environments have an impact, it’s important to acknowledge that part of the problem is inherent to working in healthcare as providers are firsthand witnesses to various traumas that their patients face throughout their treatment. This side of compassion fatigue, known as secondary traumatic stress, has been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic due to the overwhelming impact that this disease had on our health systems as providers experienced higher exposure to patient suffering and death. 3 As health systems still struggle with workforce shortages following the pandemic, it is important to understand what options exist to prevent and care for providers with regards to compassion fatigue. Aside from the pandemic, it’s important to consider specialty-specific factors that may further precipitate compassion fatigue in healthcare workers. In safety-net settings where providers care for underserved communities, between the added social and economic stressors that the patients face as well as the harsh limitations of resources available to the providers, it can lead to further overextending, self-blaming, and persistent worrying. 4 For these reasons, providers in this area are at risk for compassion fatigue.

Cultivating Wellness: Pitt Greensburg Therapeutic Horticulture Initiative

Elizabeth Tiedemann (Staff) University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg Campus

This project will expand the use of Pitt Greensburg’s underutilized greenhouse to provide a series of therapeutic horticulture activities for students, faculty, and staff. These activities and the peaceful, indoor green space that will be created within the greenhouse will support emotional health and well-being. The greenhouse provides us with an excellent opportunity to add another dimension to the wellness activities that are already taking place at the Greensburg campus. Currently, we have a Pitt Seed Project to create an ecosystem of wellness on campus. Given the multi-dimensional nature of emotional wellness, offering our campus community some kinesthetic, nature-oriented options would help round out current offerings.

Inward: Wellness Retreat

Sarah Arend (Graduate Student) and Jamie Kulzer (Graduate Student) SHRS-Rehab Science and Technology

Over the past decade, the declining mental health of graduate students has received increasing attention: graduate students experience higher rates of stress, depression, and anxiety relative to age- and gender-matched populations (Evans et al., 2018; Garcia-Williams et al., 2014), and the pressure of completing a graduate program often results in a variety of adverse outcomes such as disturbed sleep, substance misuse or abuse, declines in physical health, burnout, and poor academic and professional performance (Yusufov et al.,2018).

Inward: Wellness Retreat is a one-day initiative for 10 graduate students in the health sciences focused on reducing burnout and increasing psychological well-being. Facilitated by experts in the community, and with support from a community partner as well as multiple University entities, this retreat will incorporate holistic practices of yoga and meditation paired with application opportunities that provide psychoeducation and moments for reflection. This will impact multiple communities within the University of Pittsburgh as it is open to graduate students from a variety of health science disciplines including mental health counseling, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology/audiology. This project aligns with the Year of Emotional Wellbeing as it is directly designed to restore and enhance the emotional well-being of students—specifically, graduate students at an increased risk of developing mental health issues. This retreat will assist these students in managing stress and reversing burnout, offering an opportunity for students to enhance their psychological functioning by participating in curated wellness activities.

Self-Care Workshop

Anushka Konka (Undergraduate Student); Calli-Marie Neil (Undergraduate Student); and Janna Oh (Undergraduate Student) Active Minds

Our project addresses the eight pillars of wellness (physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, financial, occupational, and social) by providing resource information and links as well as activities for students to partake in. This project would give students the opportunity to identify and address their mental health concerns while finding ways to best manage these concerns through various interactive self-care activities. Additionally, our project takes into consideration general challenges and stressors that college students typically face during the semester and works to address them. Many students have difficulty developing self-care practices since one form of self-care that works for one person may not work for another individual. Many students are also only aware of well-known self-care practices such as meditation and are not aware of the different forms that self-care can take. Our workshop will provide each student with the opportunity to learn about and try out different methods of self-care to determine what works best for them and effectively addresses their individual needs. We will also provide students with general resources and campus resources to utilize in times of stress and/or crisis. It is our hope that students leave this event feeling empowered to face any challenges that may arise during the school year and are well-equipped to handle them.

Spring into Wellness

Alecia Young (Graduate Student) School of Education and Hallie Stotsky (Staff) Student Health Services

Spring into Wellness invites University of Pittsburgh students and the Pitt community to develop identity-centered wellness routines in preparation for potential end of semester stress. As students and staff anticipate a climactic demand for studying, this time of transition will be used to offer tools to sustain participants through the semester and beyond.

Senate Library Committee Journaling Workshops

Charlotte Johnson (Faculty) and Karen Shephard (Faculty) University Senate Office

The Senate Library Committee (SLC) is uniquely situated to improve the emotional well-being of students, faculty, and staff through a series of journaling workshops. Participants will have the opportunity to begin a reflection journal with materials, prompts, and guest speakers prepared by the SLC. The SLC is uniquely positioned to reach the entire Pitt Community since the committee is comprised of student, faculty, staff, and administrative representatives; further, they work with the Hillman, Barco Law, and Health Sciences libraries among others. Journaling workshops will improve both participants’ subjective and objective well-being. The speakers will facilitate reflective conversations designed to reduce stress. The process of “telling one’s story” through journaling can improve self-awareness which will contribute to subjective well-being. Objective well-being will be improved by giving participants an outlet to improve their writing skills. Additionally, when seeking feedback from students about what types of programs would improve their emotional well-being one response stated “food is salve for the soul” so our workshops will offer light food and refreshments as an opportunity for participants to refuel and take care of their objective well-being Ultimately, We believe that reflective journaling workshops can help participants attain a higher level of emotional well-being.

Clean Green

Emily Gagliardi (Student) Geology & Environmental Science; Delaney Wright (Student) Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences; and Lydia Ciani (Student) Geology & Environmental Science

Our project is primarily addressing Pitt students’ objective well-being by providing access to sustainable laundry products. Leading liquid and pod laundry detergents contain harmful chemicals (sometimes carcinogenic) and microplastics that pollute our waterways and cause adverse health effects. 68% of liquid detergent jugs are not recycled properly, ending up in landfills and leaking harmful chemicals into soil and groundwater. Due to unclear instructions on liquid detergent bottles, students often overuse detergent when washing their clothes. This causes washing machine pipes to clog, damaging laundry machines and increasing Pitt’s maintenance costs. Also, detergent pods commonly fail to activate, leaving a gooey residue on students’ clothes and machines’ interiors. This leftover detergent builds up and causes clogging and damage to Pitt’s washing machines. According to Pitt’s CSC Service works data, Pitt spends an estimated $36,534 per year on running their washing machines, including $1,743 in gas costs used to heat the water. Through our sustainable laundry education efforts, we collected 313 student signatures pledging to wash their clothes on cold. Encouraging students to use cold water helps Pitt decrease their CO2 emissions and reach carbon neutrality by 2037. Our project aims to alleviate these problems by providing students access to free, sustainable laundry products. We have established a correspondence with the founder of Generation Conscious, a company focused on tackling hygiene inequity by installing refill stations containing their liquid less laundry detergent sheets on college campuses. These machines have been installed at over 20 universities, including Duke, Amherst, and Wesleyan. Ideally, each school allocates enough funding to fully pay for the machine’s installation and sheet refills. This allows each university to eliminate laundry-related hygiene insecurity, promote sustainable practices amongst their student body, lessen energy costs, and come one step closer to meeting students’ basic needs.

The Undergraduate Literature Conference

Jeremy Justus (Faculty) and Jeremy Justus (Faculty) University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown, Humanities Division

This project will support UPJ's annual Undergraduate Literature Conference, which will solicit papers that consider representations of "Emotional Well-Being" in literature and other cultural products, and in support of bringing in the founder of the Appalachian Prison Book Project (APBP) Katy Ryan to deliver a talk on the good that literature can do in our lives and in the lives of others. While the conference draws in students from other, Western PA regional colleges, most participants will come from UPJ. It is our belief that a conference like this one can promote the idea that interactions with ourselves and with others via both reading and writing can be good for our well-being and mental health.

Dental Medicine Emotional Well-being

Natalie M. Young (Staff) and Anchal Malik Chopra (Faculty) School of Dental Medicine

In 2023, the School of Dental Medicine will be hosting a morning social gathering to support a sense of community in February. The Office of Academic Career Advancement with the Office of Student Affairs will be hosting a faculty development training in February on how Faculty and Staff can assist with student’s well-being. Our Mission at Pitt Dental Medicine is to improve oral health through teaching, research, and service. When we take time to care for ourselves and our team, together, the Collective Us can achieve so much. We plan to continue offering programs, events and casual gatherings that support our Emotional Well-Being, hence support for these programs would help us make these programs available for a larger audience.

One Caring Person program

Kyoungah Lee (Staff) Student Affairs

We launched a new program called One Caring Person program which is a staff-international student mentorship program. We are creating mutual benefits for both international students and staff. We need a program on campus designed to allow engagement between international students and staff outside of their classes. We have to take care of marginalized and overlooked populations through one-on-one caring system and meaningful relationships.

Student

Based on my observation and interaction with international students, I get anecdotal feedback from international students that, when they meet new people or network, initiating conversation and small talk is always challenging due to their langue and cultural barriers. Although they keep hearing that they need to practice small talk and that it is important to initiate small talk, especially in American culture, they know neither where to start nor how to practice which is different from talking to their close friends. They also expressed they don’t know enough about American culture, so they feel awkward having small talk. This is because they have never experienced talking to people or adults who are not their professors or advisors. When they talk to their professors and advisors, they already have a topic to talk about with them, but not when are networking with strangers.

Staff

At the same time, this program not only helps international students become more confident, but also staff who don’t feel confident in supporting international students. Whenever I offer workshops to staff about understanding international students’ experiences, there is always a handful of staff who come and talk to me asking how they can help to support international students or anything that they can be helpful with, however, we did not have any programs or opportunities for them to help or engage with international students.

My Favorite Mistake: A Speaker Series on Mistakes, Success, and Shame Resilience

Kristin Kanthak (Faculty) Political Science; Michael Glass (Faculty) Urban Studies; Bryan Schultz (Dean) CBA; David Sanchez (Faculty) Engineering; Grace Mcgowan (Student) and Sophia Shapiro (Student)

The “My Favorite Mistake” series would invite luminaries from the Pittsburgh region to campus to speak about errors they have made or difficulties they have overcome. The goal of the speaker series is to normalize imperfection and increase shame resilience of undergraduate students and others in our broader Pitt community. The funds requested would supplement funds from other sources and would be used specifically for diversifying the pool of potential speakers.

Reentry Guide for Allegheny County

Cory Holding (Faculty) English Department

Of the 14,267 people released from Pennsylvania state prisons in 2021, about a thousand came home to Allegheny County. The difficulty of escaping incarceration is perhaps best suggested by rates of recidivism: of the 19,824 releases from PA DOC in 2016, for example, 47%—that’s 9,317 people—returned to the DOC either with re-arrest (34%) or parole violation (13%). Of that 9,317 people, 75% recidivated within the first 16 months of release. (Citing the PA DOC’s annual recidivism report.) Among those released to Allegheny County between 2013 and 2016, 69% recidivated, which is among the highest rates in the state. While countless systemic factors contribute to this problem, among the challenges for many is a lack of support network. Relationships may have ended. People may not know where to reach. This isolation is captured by returning citizen Tony C: “You keep [people] at an arm’s length because you know you could lose them. A lot of us watched family members die. Family members get sick. Family members move away. You’re watching the world go past you, and to keep that family interested in your life and to keep yourself interested in their life is really hard because you can’t experience that life with them.” Then, “When you come home, you’ve gotten so used to keeping people at a distance that you just continue to do it.” While support networks and organizations exist, the journey is difficult to imagine and to plan for currently-incarcerated individuals without internet access—especially for those without close family. This project aims to help bridge people approaching release to support resources and services through a handheld guide booklet to be distributed to individuals and prison libraries. This guide would be informed by system-impacted individuals and updated in response to new information and user feedback.

Pride and Community at Pitt

LaMonica Wiggins (Faculty) University Library System and Rebekah Franolich (Faculty) School of Medicine

The Pride and Community at Pitt project seeks to celebrate and advocate for the Pitt Queer community all year round not just during PRIDE. The project will emphasize healthy learning, professional development experiences, and cultivating pride. The project will offer Pitt LGBTQIA+ students, faculty, and staff educational and social, community-building workshops and events throughout the Year of Emotional Well-Being. Events in the series will take two formats: online and in-person educational speakers, panel discussions and research presentations or trainings and in-person social events and mixers.

Out of the Darkness Walk

Caroline Ronsivalle (Undergraduate Student) The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention at Pitt

The Out of the Darkness Walk is an event unique to The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. We will be bringing this walk to Pitt in order to spread awareness and fundraise for suicide prevention. We believe that the walk will create traction on campus and bring new awareness to mental health and suicide, and the way that it uniquely affects college students. As a club, we focus on Pitt students, however this walk will reach the entire Pittsburgh community, particularly those who have been affected by suicide. The Out of the Darkness Walk will be an excellent medium to show the strength and togetherness of the Pitt community, and will promote emotional well-being for all involved, as is the mission of the Year of Emotional Well-Being.

From Vacant Spaces to Healthy Places

Stephanie Dangel (Faculty) Hill District Community Engagement Center

How can universities support community-led, vacant lot development to improve the emotional well-being of members of the Pitt and Pittsburgh community? This Year of Emotional Well-Being proposal (YEWB) builds on “Wicked Problem Innovation,” a "comuniversity" course in which university and community members are working together to develop vacant lots and to produce research and policy proposals. These projects and papers are revealing a clear connection between vacant lot "greening" and improvements in emotional well-being, as first identified by University of Pennsylvania's research on the impact of "greening" publicly owned, vacant lots in Philadelphia. A YEWB grant would allow us to convene a public event featuring members of the Pitt, Pittsburgh, Penn and Philadelphia communities to explore how Pittsburgh can replicate or improve on Philadelphia’s emotional well-being improvements, by promoting educational opportunities related to greening vacant lots. The grant would be used to fund an event coordinator, travel and catering expenses, honoraria for speakers, and a stipend for community participants.

Blue Slide Park

Bethel Mesfin, (Undergraduate Student), Film & Media Studies

As young adults transition out of high school, they are urged to make big decisions about the trajectory of their future on the basis of their limited understanding about what it means to be an adult. These are vulnerable adolescent experiences, and this project, “Blue Slide Park” aims to explore the emotional journey of high school students in Pittsburgh during a historic tragedy. This funding request will support the creation of a short film about the mental well-being of high school students as they navigate family expectations, career decisions, and the loss of an inspirational figure. The short will connect with audiences as it explores coming-of-age themes including graduation, deciding to pursue higher education, career choices, family expectations, and hometown heroes in the vibrant communities of Pittsburgh will be new, and ultimately useful. This film aims to highlight the mental toll the effects of these expectations have on young people, and specify coping strategies they can employ--such as leaning on their support system and communicating honestly about stressors--as the effects of these expectations are often overlooked. The protagonists, Jacob and Arnav, escape the tumultuous reality of their familial expectations and career decisions to pursue a radio scavenger hunt to secure elusive tickets for their favorite artist, who unfortunately passed away towards the end of the short film. The project will weave through Pittsburgh lore, via coverage of the city’s transition from a steel-town to medical metropolis, Freedom House Ambulance service, hometown heroes in entertainment and sports, and odes to the various vibrant neighborhoods. This project addresses the need to display diverse, Pittsburgh-centric stories on-screen The emotional well-being of the characters will be honed in on in order to encourage audience reflection and ultimately prompt viewers to prioritize the balance between their mental health and their personal aspirations.

Know Your Status

Harmony Arugwa (Undergraduate Student) and Kayla Moitui (Undergraduate Student) Black Action Society

HIV testing event. “Know Your Status” aims to provide sexual health testing and informational sessions to promote increased sexual awareness among the University of Pittsburgh’s student population. In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded approximately 2.46 million cases of three sexually transmitted infections: chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis. Recorded cases of sexually transmitted infections skyrocketed to unprecedented levels, with chlamydia being the most prevalent at approximately 72%of the three major STIs reported in 2018 (Johnson 2019). Our goal with “Know Your Status” is to:

- Provide a confidential and convenient opportunity for students to support their sexual and overall health
- Reduce the stigmatization of sexual health testing and proper sexual health maintenance, particularly in minority communities
- Increase dialogue in the University of Pittsburgh community to promote healthy safe sex practices or abstinence, as the student sees fit
- Establish a long-term sexual health testing event to mitigate the spread of sexually transmitted infections on the University of Pittsburgh’s campus

Majors Mentors Program

Hoffman, R. Leigh (Staff), Elizabeth Tiedemann (Faculty), and Sydney Spino (Undergraduate Student) University of Pittsburgh, Greensburg

At the Greensburg campus, over half the students commute for their entire college career. Additionally, for some students, the Greensburg campus was not their first choice. For example, in the fall of 2022, over half of the first-year students were “optioned” to the Greensburg campus. These two factors combine to make student engagement a significant challenge. While this lack of engagement is a challenge for the faculty and staff, even more importantly this potential lack of engagement can have a number of negative consequences for the student, including weakened resilience when faced with academic challenges, reduced likelihood of persistence, and a one-dimensional college experience. Finally, while these factors were present prior to the pandemic, they have compounded since March of 2020.

Recognizing that the student’s academic program or major is often their primary connection to our campus, the Majors Mentor program is designed to capitalize on this connection and create intentional opportunities to build community with faculty and upper-class students within the first-year students’ academic interests and enhance a student’s experience. In many majors, these important connections often happen organically, but not until junior year, as the student moves into the upper-level classes and begins to have reoccurring encounters with other students and faculty in their major.

The Majors Mentor program is designed to jump start the formation of these connections through student mentors within the majors. Recognizing that many first-year students may be reluctant to reach out to faculty, the activities that the mentors plan are carefully designed to ensure that the mentors, their faculty partners, and the activities offered are low-stress and readily approachable.

Cartoneras and Alebrijes as a Tool for Our Well-Being

Luz Amanda Hank (Staff), Center for Latin American Studies

The Center for Latin American Studies' workshops on Alebrijes and Cartoneras provide a space for people to express themselves through the discovery of cultures of the Americas, offering a space where people can learn, share stories, and help each other. There is a need for spaces where people can come together no matter age, race, or beliefs. After the pandemic, there is a void in human interaction and our activities offer this space too.

Alebrijes are whimsical carvings depicting animals, people, objects, and imaginary creatures painted with intense colors and intricate patterns you learn the history of this magical world--COCO comes to mind.

Cartonera Publishing trend began in Buenos Aires in 2003 and was organized by writers and artists producing hand-made books at low-cost using recycled cardboard, (thus the name "cartonera"). Cartoneras also bring people together to share resources, ideas, and stories, by creating a space of collaboration, where the participant becomes the author, designer, and creator of their own book.

Both initiatives are invitations to represent our personality through art and culture. There is no better way to accomplish emotional well-being than recognizing yourself, identifying your characteristics and skills, conversing, and asking others about their favorite colors, hobbies, sports, and much more. While at the same time learning about different cultures. The Center for Latin American Studies is inviting the Pitt community to navigate a journey of self-recognition. Our projects address the issues of getting to know the "Other"--something that even in a small room, people don't speak to each other--our programs create that space for the participants to converse with each other, have fun and discovery hidden talents.

Maintaining a Healthy Body and Mind at Work: A Multi-departmental Sign-Up Program for Under Desk Exercise Equipment

Jessica Borgert (Staff), Pitt Bradford-Residence Life

Extensive research has found that a sedentary lifestyle can have negative impacts on physical and mental wellbeing. This issue is especially prevalent with university staff due to the sedentary nature of their work combined with the percentage of time spent in office. Therefore, as emotional and physical wellbeing are closely linked, this program hopes to begin to address the issues of sedentary work by establishing infrastructure for opportunities for more physical activity during office hours in multiple departments at the Bradford campus.

This multi-departmental sign-up program for under desk exercise equipment hopes to foster holistic wellbeing through promoting opportunities for movement during working hours. It will focus on promoting emotional well-being by improving physical wellbeing and working conditions. Additionally, it will work toward educating on the potential pitfalls of working at a desk for long hours. This program would be aimed at staff and faculty at the Bradford campus that have extensive hours sitting in offices. The expected outcomes of this program are improved sense of community as well as increased positive emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing for campus staff.