UPbeat

News for and about University of Portland faculty and staff.

Andrew Guest

Titles, Descriptions, and the Core of a UP Education

According to core curriculum director Andrew Guest, University faculty and staff are approaching that most magical of fall holidays: Deadline day for course title and description changes in the 2021-2022 University Bulletin (aka, November 6).

The best titles and descriptions are actually more than just titles and descriptions. They reflect the ideas students will engage, and offer coherence across a curriculum. This takes on some extra significance this year as UP starts the process of revitalizing the Core Curriculum. We’re hoping some Core course titles and descriptions can be updated to reflect the evolving underlying ideas and learning that happens in Core classes, and offer some thoughts at this link to the Core Matters portion of the Teaching & Learning Community Blog on the general endeavor of making titles and descriptions less “content-centered” and more “learning-centered.”

For more information contact Guest at x7348 or guesta@up.edu.

Core Revitalization Continues for Fall 2021

For several years the University has been engaged in a process to revitalize its core curriculum, and now a revitalized core is being readied for a phased implementation starting with new first-year students in the fall of 2021. Newly appointed core director Andrew Guest, psychological sciences, has posted an update on the revitalization process on the Teaching & Learning Community Blog under the Core Matters heading. This post includes an explanation of the logic for moving forward despite the unusual times we find ourselves in. There is also a new pilots.up.edu page for the Core Curriculum where key documents are available to UP saculty and staff looking for information about the core curriculum. Please also feel free to direct any core questions to Guest at guesta@up.edu, and look for more updates throughout the year.

New TLC Blog Entries: “Core Matters, Parts 3 & 4”

As part of an ongoing series of short essays on the Teaching & Learning Community Blog, two new pieces are ready to satisfy your core curriculum curiosity. Steve Mayer, chemistry, writes about the many ways chemistry classes contribute to the broader goals of a liberal arts education (while also fulfilling those pesky science requirements), and Heather Carpenter, environmental studies, writes about ways in which classes such as “Science of the Sustainable Gourmet” do the same.

If you have any questions about the series or want to make a contribution, feel free to contact Andrew Guest, psychological sciences, or Lars Larsen, English.

New UP Academic Network for Mental Health: All Welcome!

Are you a faculty member or other academic staff interested in improving your knowledge around student mental health to facilitate working with the diverse range of students in your classes and departments? A group of faculty and academic staff has been developing the UP Academic Network for Mental Health, which will begin work in the spring semester. Its goal is to provide an additional layer of resources and knowledge for faculty and academic staff who are concerned about student mental health.

The first event will be a suicide prevention training specifically for faculty and academic staff on Friday morning, January 11. Time and location is to be determined. A smaller group will convene in a facilitated session that same day to further discuss ways of best helping faculty and academic staff address student mental health concerns.

For further information about the new UP Academic Network for Mental Health, see a summary on this week’s Teaching and Learning Community Blog. If you are interested in joining the January 11 training, please contact Andrew Guest, psychological sciences, at guesta@up.edu.

 

New Proposed Projects for Teaching & Learning Community Blog

This week on the Teaching & Learning Community Blog, meet two new proposed blog projects for the coming academic year: “Core Matters” and “Mentally Healthy.”

The Core Matters project is introduced here, and offers an effort to progressively build a compendium of brief on-line essays about what actually happens in UP Core classes and how that contributes to UP’s identity as a comprehensive university with a strong liberal arts core. As proof of concept, a first post for the series talks about how PSY 101: General Psychology helps students confront the classic question of ‘who are you’ while also learning about more contemporary issues of diversity and difference.

The Mentally Healthy project is introduced here as an effort to progressively build an on-line handbook for faculty and academic staff concerned about student mental health. This project builds off TL blogging from last year, and starts with some quick links to resources that might be useful for anyone at UP who is thinking about how to attend to student well-being as part of a successful education.

For more information contact Andrew Guest, psychological sciences, at guesta@up.edu.

TLC From The TLC: Feeling the Stress?

How much of the stress students (and faculty and staff) feel during finals is rational? How much might it help our collective mental health to identify the points where our stress is irrational? The last in the year-long series on mental health on the Teaching & Learning Community Blog offers some ideas from the types of cognitive-behavioral techniques used in self-help programs to suggest ways we can all get a little perspective on the stress of final exams.

For more information contact Andrew Guest, psychological sciences, at guesta@up.edu.

TLC From The TLC: How Do We Stack Up?

When dealing with stressed out students at challenging points in the semester, have you ever wondered if UP students are any different in their psychological concerns than students at other universities? This week’s mental health blog post on the Teaching and Learning Community Blog has some data to address that question. How do our students compare to other US college students in relation to mental health, and what are the implications for faculty and academic staff working with those students? For more information contact Andrew Guest, psychological sciences, at guesta@up.edu.

TLC from the TLC: Diversity, Inclusion, Mental Health

In this week’s Teaching and Learning Collaborative “TLC from the TLC” story, psychology professor Andrew Guest posits: “Anyone paying attention to higher education in recent years is well aware of two pressing issues on regular repeat: changing perceptions of student mental health needs, and the need to better attend to diversity and inclusion. But how might those two issues intersect? How might an equity lens inform the way academics, and academic institutions, think about student mental health?” For thoughts on these questions drawing on a recent national framework for “Equity in Mental Health” see the latest installment in the mental health series for the Teaching and Learning Community blog.

TLC From The TLC: Mental Health Services for Students

As faculty and students return for the winter months of our “Spring” semester, the Teaching and Learning Collaborative hopes some might find it useful to get a primer (or, more optimistically, a reminder) about mental health services for students on campus. See the TLC blog for an overview of the who, what, where, when, and why of what faculty and academic staff might find relevant about counseling services for students at the UP Health and Counseling Center. Contact Andrew Guest for more information at guesta@up.edu.

 

TLC From The TLC: Student Mental Health Concerns?

As another entry in the ongoing Teaching and Learning Collaborative blog series on student mental health, this week’s post offers an update on a recent brownbag discussion with faculty, academic staff, and Eliot Altschul from the Health and Counseling Center. We talked about some basic updates on mental health services at UP, and also discussed hypothetical but familiar student scenarios: an underperforming student who shows up for office hours with something else on his mind, and a persistent student who may be testing boundaries. Read on if you’d like to think through what you can do when confronted with student mental health concerns.