So, I, well first of all I'm Lisa no I'm the, the director of the program for instructional excellence. And I would like to actually turn things over to the assistant director of the program for instructional excellence, Katie Kelly because she is the
one that really organized this workshop of these wonderful speakers today So Katie, would you like to take things over the course Thank you Dr. Listen.
Oh, hi everybody thank you so much for being here today for our workshop on students supports. Without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to our first speaker who is Magnolia hood from the FSU Counseling Center.
So you can go ahead and take it away.
All right. So good afternoon everyone.
And hopefully everybody is having a good day. If not, don't worry about it. It's almost over and Tomorrow is Friday, so you can really like, you know, just, let's let it just right let's get the rest of this and we can have our good day on tomorrow because
it'll be Friday.
I am going to share my screen with you and introduce myself a little bit My name is Magnolia.
And like Katie said, I am one of the staff counselors at the Counseling Center.
I am a Midwest girl at heart. I just moved here two years ago and I'm still trying to figure out why did I move here.
And I'm also having a great time being here.
I got my, my masters from Southern Illinois University and Southern Illinois. And so usually nobody knows what that is either so it's all good. It's okay.
But I am going to talk to you a little bit about stress.
If you have questions you can put those questions in the chat, or you can just, you know, really, you can just yell at your question that's okay. I know you can really do that in class but here you can if you like.
But I'm just going to go through some signs and symptoms of stress, and then we'll talk a little bit about how can you manage your stress because it's manageable.
It just depends on how you choose to do so. Okay.
I'm a cursor here.
So like I said I'm going to be giving you an overview of it so if you need any specific information. Like I said, feel free to ask.
And we will talk about what the stresses and bad stress, because those are things, and then we'll talk about how does your body respond to stress so if you are taking notes you might want to take notes of like how do I know if I'm stressed, and then we'll
talk about what that will look like. And then we'll talk about what do I do to manage it so managing stress can look very very different depending on your life your hobbies, and your goals for the future.
Okay.
So when we think about stress, in itself, basically stress is your reaction to an environmental challenge, or your reaction to overwhelming or overarching demands or your reaction to any type of pressures.
So, anytime. The challenge demand or pressure exceeds your ability to manage it. That is called stress and stress can be physical. We know that when we you know, pull the muscle out or, you know, have some kind of physical issue in our body that can be
stressed too but we can feel it physically, we can feel it, emotionally, we can fill it mentally, and then a lot of times the manifestation of stress comes out behaviorally and relational Lee.
Does that make sense to everybody. So again you can feel it in your physical body. You can feel it in your emotions. You can feel it mentally, and we'll talk about what that looks like, and then it manifests, we will know somebody else would know that
just stressed because of behavioral changes or relational changes.
And so, like I said before, there is a difference between good stress and bad stress, if you look at this figure here, it's basically giving you an understanding of how to know when you are in the middle of that stress or when you're having good stress.
So you stress is that shaded part in the middle. And that's when you know oh it's my birthday.
I'm ready to turn up, that's good stress or Oh I'm so excited because, you know, Christmas is coming. That's good stress or, oh my gosh I'm so excited that, you know, my family's coming to visit good stress, these are things that you know you might have
some similar reactions in your body in your mind, all that good stuff. But it's good stress, it's the stress that if we think about good stress also good stress is.
Oh my gosh, I have a test coming up. And so what do you do you study. So you were feeling stressed, but as a result of that stress you study that's good stress, no problem being bad stress, which we call the distress, is when, and that's on the outside
if you notice that when you have either too little or too much.
Where you shut down, because you feel too stressed or when you are not able to stay focused in a class or have good conversations, you know, you might have a conversation with somebody and you just like you here, but she was always everywhere else that
is also a sign or symptom of stress, but then also there's burnout burnout and shut down are not the same thing. So those are two separate things but burnout.
Um, and just struggling to deal, whether that's in relationship so like I said, it can come out in your relationships you might start to have some changes or some, you know, some more real relationships gets rearranged or behaviorally, it's hard to make
a decision, or you might not be making good decisions. So when we think about stress. Good stress is the stress that makes you focus good stress is the stress that causes you to have an action study, you know, protect yourself those kinds of stress or
the bad stress you know it's bad stress when it impacts, you being able to deal to study to do the things that you want to do the things that you would usually do so that's the difference between good stress and bad stress.
As I said before, good stress is positive, is is a you know a bigger writing. You might, you know, those of you that are, let it anytime like you know you get nervous or anxious when it's time to get out on the field or to do whatever your sport is, you
get a lot of confidence when you get out there and kill it, you have high self esteem, that's good stress, so we can we can deal with that.
But then the bad stress, the distress is again when it's, you know, your confidence is lower your self esteem is low or you might be critical of yourself, you might be, you know, just not feeling the way you used to do you realize that you know usually
you don't mind watching you know certain shows or certain movies but now like you crying and you don't even know why you crying or, you know, you're angry and you don't know why you're angry it's affecting your, you know relationships with your roommates,
or you're sitting in class and you're like, what is this what am I doing here, why don't I just leave, and that kind of thing that is the distress, or the bad stress.
And so when we think about we talked about before how there can be some physical signs of stress, physical signs in your body.
When you think about stress in your body.
It can come out and stomach cramps gastric problems over eating or under eating your immune system is impacted. A lot of times we don't realize how our bodies are synced with our emotions our bodies are synced with our environment that way.
You talk about hypertension, High Blood Pressure increased heart rate, high cholesterol, and then the move places the emotional spaces, we're talking about increasing, anger, increasing depression, irritability, you lose energy just kind of tired all
the time.
Another thing we talk about often is stress secretes a hormone called cortisol and cortisol is, basically, what if you have too much of it, it will begin to attack, different parts of your body so that's where a lot of these physical stress signals come
up because the cortisol is starting to impact that place to start to, you know, you start to notice that some of us, we may not have any of the, you know, we might have heartburn problems or things like that but we notice like, oh man, if I get stressed.
I just get these hit coals that just happens where I feel sluggish and I feel tired all the time. And that's because you're having an inability to fight some kind of illness.
Sometimes we noticed that we don't eat, or sometimes we notice we eat everything. And that is a gastric issue, a lot of times we think our emotional problems that just in our emotions, but a lot of our emotional problems go back to our gut, so good gut
health. A lot of times is good, emotional and mental health.
So when we think about stress, how it happens. And this this particular grad students, but take yourself out of grass do remote just be a student. Let's just be a student, any kind of student, you can be a student on scholarship or not on scholarship.
When we think about the stressors, these are a lot of the things that our students come in and tell us about, but if there are, if you, you know are looking at this diagram, what might be a stressor that's not on here.
Do you all notice that there's a stressor that you know of, that's not on here. Anybody know anybody got anything else to add to this.
Hi, um, one for me particularly is I have a lot of chronic health issues that make things difficult for me to get things done.
Yeah, yeah, health issues, definitely another stressor. Yeah. Anybody else family responsibilities. Yes, family, and I used to have that on here, I took it off.
Yeah, family like you might be at school but they come with you, even if they might not be here in person, they're here they're in your mind and your heart, you know you backed up your fridge already backed up your clothes and you picked up your people,
you brought them with you and someone
before, let somebody say, I send you open pandemics yes
or no right what I know. Yeah, like, it's not just what's happening to us, you know here but what's happening outside of us. Now, something that used to not even be our problem is not even in our backyard is sin and I live on right next to us on the couch,
like the things that have happened around the world have definitely impacted us have definitely impacted us and for some of our, you know students and a number of our students, whether they are distance learning students or their students on campus.
It brought up another surge of anxiety or stress.
When we have some issues in leadership right so some issues and leadership in our country. It put us all on high alert, we're all on high alert we're all trying to figure out what do we do, and that's from administration, even down to our programs and
our teachers and instructors right they were trying to figure out okay how do we move things around. That is not good stress, let me say that like, even though it pushed us into action.
That wasn't good stress that was bad stress. We were it was a stressor for all of us for the whole community when it came to the education system.
And so what do we do when we realize like if you're thinking about stress if you know that you feel stressed or you're having experiences that may seem like stress and you do that check is this, you stress.
The good stress or is this the distress Is this the bad stress, and we're going to talk about these things, and a systemic systemic way. And so number one is healthy living, you know, healthy living is, what is your lifestyle like some of us have lifestyles
that are conducive to having good stress management and some of us are.
It's not because there is something wrong with you, a lot of times we think oh, like, I must be you know a bad person I must not be smart enough or I must not be strong enough.
And that's why I get stressed out so easily and sometimes it's just because of our lifestyles if we make some changes or do some arrangements to some of our coping mechanisms, maybe, develop some if we don't have them or improve the ones we have, you
know, we can have a better stress management strategy. And so healthy living means not just eating, but being mindful of what you eat, and not just drinking, but making sure that you drink your water, like, drink it like a fish, and then limiting all
water drinks, whether that's alcohol or caffeine. I'm a lot of times we think, Oh man, I'm so stressed that I need a drink or teen, But this is the deal.
Alcohol is a depressant, so if you drink too much. You are basically trading issues you got to pick a struggle and you just traded struggles and so you may not be stressed anymore but now you are down.
Now you feel tired now you feel sluggish. And that's because you know you trade it up, and you put alcohol into the picture. So you want to you want to limit that, and also avoid drug use, avoid it, like, don't do it like don't do it at all.
Whether that's street drugs not prescribe drugs, a lot of times you know this is the college culture so I noticed that another why at this your students doing this because we are royal, we are here, legal, we don't do this kind of thing but some college
students not FSU college students, but some, they do they go to a lot of the stimulants to keep them up to people focus you know it's it's hard out here we gotta go to school online all these virtual classes so they might be buying Adderall pop exams
and stuff like that. Like I said, not us, because we don't do that.
But other schools do, but you want to avoid that, at all costs.
Because this is what happens like any drug and, including alcohol.
If the reward of our drug use, which is our reward sensors serotonin dopamine, all that good stuff quick biology lesson. Will we introduce those into our bodies, who are basically telling our bodies, our bodies don't have to make them.
And so, what'll happen is, after prolonging use our bodies will stop making it. Oh, you got it I'll need to make it, which is what causes the addiction or the dependence.
and the issues with drug use. So that's where it comes from our body say okay you got it I'll have to do it.
Then we need more of that substance and so I want to make sure that we're not introducing any of those harmful things into our bodies, because amazingly enough our bodies have the capability to cope on to heal on their own, making sure you sleep, making
sure you sleep.
I know it's college and again, not these college students not official costumes, but other college students will get into this like back and forth.
I'm going to college students and only got two hours of sleep, somebody up two hours only slept 30 minutes, 30 minutes, I am been asleep at all. All of it is bad.
Stop it immediately. You need to sleep. If you think about sleep.
And you think about exercise, sleep, is how our bodies re energize. Think about your computer if you turn your computer on, and you've never cut it off, it's going to start getting slow, it's going to start doing a lot of different things that it doesn't
do when you take care of it if it never gets a shutdown is not going to restart is not going to do any updates, it's not going to do any of it. And just like our computer, we've had this happen where your computer will say, guess what I'm shutting down
in 30 seconds, you got to save your work, and you don't have any control of it, it'll be a force shut down for shut down to our bodies is sickness is within our body, shut down the burnout.
It was in our body to shut down the burnout. So don't let your body shut you down, you give yourself the space to get a good night's sleep and exercise.
If we are struggling with motivation or struggling with fatigue or struggling with, you know, different stresses in our body exercise is a natural remedy.
It's natural when we exercise our heart rates go up that means we're getting the aerobic and anaerobic things that we need, and we get all of those happy hormones to get going.
And so we don't have to go to drug and alcohol use, we can get that from exercising.
And then, relax, belly breathing. Sometimes we minimize breathing, because it's automatically. We don't have to schedule breed breath for ourself by this just do it.
But if you do what we call relaxed belly breathing which is also called intentional breathing, then you are able to kind of train your body to relax on demand.
So you see this for seven, eight.
All that is and you can use any set of numbers you can use 4567. I mean, 456789, but the first number is how long it takes for you to breathe in the second number is how long you hold it.
And that last number is how long it takes for you to breathe out, so like I said you can do.
321, or you can do. You can do all three ways you can do whatever it is so again it's how long it takes you to breathe in which is here for. Hold it for seven and breathe out for eight.
That's relaxed belly breathing. It takes some getting used to it. It's kind of hard if it's not something that you do normally, but just that just breathing better and using that breathing exercise is a great way to lessen stress, or even to stop, anxiety,
because it's kind of a back way. It's kind of like the Jimmy regular brain to say, Hey, don't be stressed right now Bry or a. Don't be anxious, you got to breathe.
And that's how it kind of gives you that break.
And that's just telling you how it goes.
And then we think about.
We handle what we do in our bodies, then we handle what we do in our minds.
I'm healthy thinking is also a process. If this is not something that we are used to do and if this is something that's a part of our framework. If we noticed that we tend to be more pessimistic or we tend to not be positive at times, then it takes a
little more work for us to stop anxious thoughts to challenge, what we call stinking thinking on to prioritize tasks and responsibilities to change our crowd sometimes to change the people that we hang out with some of us, we, we do just fine by ourselves
but we tend to hang out with people that may be more negative or people that may be more critical. And so, you want to change your thinking to commiserate with what you want for yourself, and you want to surround yourself with those same people so letting
go of self criticism and comparison comparison is the thief of joy. So you don't want to compare yourself to anybody, including family members, a lot of times we say oh, that's our friends, but we often compare ourselves to family members, siblings, cousins,
you name it, because we feel like man why they get to do this and they don't struggle but I struggle enough. We come from the same place. I'm just kind of letting go a lot of that comparison.
In the event, though, that none of that works. Um, another way that you can address stress, and you can do a better job with managing stress is to come and say that's not the Counseling Center.
We are located in the Sq Student Life building. I always describe it as the building with the movie theater in it.
We're on the second floor so if you come through the movie theaters on the first floor with the cyber cafe and all that good stuff. If you come up on the second floor we have the whole second floor, so you don't just kind of rumbling mongers you can't
just be like oh I was just in the neighborhood. Now you came up here on purpose because on the second floor we take that whole second floor, and we will, we would be there, and ready to serve you.
If you don't have a clinician you don't already have somebody that you're working with. You will come in through our walk in system that's the way all students engage in services with us.
If you come in the door you will be seen that day, we usually call it walk ins because that's what it used to be, if you want to see somebody virtually, you will do the same thing.
The only difference will be you can come to our office, and you can see somebody virtually in one of our secure rooms, if you don't have like if you got roommates or you know you don't have a private space you can feel free to do that come in and you
can still meet with somebody, even virtually, or if you want to meet with someone face to face, we have started face to face sessions with with clients, if like i said if you come in you get saved so you don't make an appointment.
We see you that day, and that appointment that you get with us about 2025 minutes and it's a way for us to help you determine what you need. And so we've got a little bit of everything.
As you can see we've got a psychologist, mental health counselors like myself with that clinical social workers, we get art therapist, we've got interns, and we have our renew program, which is our peer educator program, and they do a non clinical things
you can schedule with them and they'll help with things like time management adjustments a college test taking skills that kind of thing. And you can find all of that on our website so all you have to do.
Give us a call, we will connect you virtually, or if you want to see someone face to face, come on back again we're in the Student Life building the same building with the movie theater, and we would love to support you.
We are open between eight and four, you come in between those times and like I said you get seen that very day.
Just a few more notes. Our services are free, and their confidential, not confidential like we won't tell anybody because it's rude confidential like we're not gonna tell nobody because it's still legal, so we are bound by confidentiality and it does
not matter who calls us, your dean your program chair, you name it, Mama daddy cousin grandma can call, and I have no idea what you're talking about ma'am or sir I cannot confirm or deny that.
Because it's illegal if you don't give us permission to disclose that we've ever seen your face. We will not disclose that because it is legally confidential and where be, we see you Monday to Friday, and we do a little bit of everything we have couples
individual and group, not a lot of people sometimes veer away from group. The group is super cool because it really helps you to kind of get, not just a reflection of yourself but it kind of helps you to kind of sit in the seat with others that have similar
experiences.
In the event that something happens, you get stressed, you have some anxiety, something happens after hours, usually like likes to happen like that much, you know nights, weekends, holidays, feel free to give us a call, we have after our services you
will call that same 644 top number. And after our staff will help you with whatever your need and your issue is, and then they'll let us know, and one of us will call you that next time we open and will follow up with you.
Any other questions or things that you might need, you would get that from our website, www. counseling, that fsu.edu.
That is the bulk of my, My presentation to you. Do you have any question.
Thank you so much for that Maggie we did have
a question. We are a little bit over time so I just want to go through this quickly so we can move to our next speaker, but there is a question asking, Is there a group counseling for graduate students.
Yes, we have groups for grabs, as well as undergrads. So all you would do is you would come in again to walk in, let us know what your needs are, and we will put you in a group, and that will be a great group, if you are a teaching grad, that's still
a possibility for you can still have your group sessions. Any of you and if you're not a teaching great so either one, it doesn't matter we have groups for grad and undergrad.
Awesome, thank you so much that was very interesting and very helpful to all of our students here.
We are going to move on to our representative from the Academic Center for Excellence, Nate Harris. So Nate, you can take it away.
Thank you, Katie. Good afternoon everyone that's here watching live and hello to everyone who might be watching this recording. So my name is Nate Harris, I'm a graduate assistant at the Academic Center for Excellence, which is the department and program
I'm going to be talking about today, what types of services and support that I think would be good to know about as far as being an instructor what can help students in times of stress.
I am a second year PhD student at Florida State, I'm in the sports psychology program here at Florida State, and I also a TA as well. So this is also kind of things that I think have helped me since I've been here, my you know going into my second year.
What's been helpful for me to know about as an instructor that I can let my students know about.
In times of stress. So let me go ahead and share my screen.
How I thought I do the presentation today is rather than a PowerPoint, I thought it'd be maybe more helpful to navigate through our website.
So you get to see kind of the different types of services we provide and things like that I'll be trying to check the chat. If you have any questions as I'm as I'm going through this, but here on Google, if you simply just type in FSU as so Academic Center
for Excellence. We are the first website that comes up, and I'm just going to go through I'm going to talk about some of the things that I think could be very helpful for students in times of stress.
So the biggest so this is our main page, and the kind of the the major resource that we provide we have several resources but one of the major ones that we have is tutoring.
And all of these services by the way that I'm going to talk about today are completely free for FSU students, obviously, so, you know, all the students that you know the university fees this obviously helps fund a case and so all of these services are
free for students. You might already be aware of some of these such as the tutoring that's typically it's mentioned in a lot of syllabi across Florida State, but I'll start with tutoring, because we offer different types of tutoring which is kind of nice.
The first one we'll talk about is we of course based tutoring which is kind of the traditional type of tutoring that you think of. And, as a note.
All the tutoring that's going on this semester is going is completely online so we're not actually doing any face to face tutoring with students obviously due to the pandemic.
But, students can schedule these appointments and they're through zoom, and so students though can still share their screens and so it's still very interactive.
Students can set a 30 minute tutoring appointment or a 60 minute tutoring appointment and the nice thing too is we actually don't have limits on how often students can schedule these appointments so for instance if a student wants to set up a tutoring
appointment kind of each week with a specific tutor for a class, they can do that.
So I'll show you core space tutoring and if you click on this, you can see, you know, we have our spring course offerings up by categories, we have the business and finance classes and when you click on these you can see the different classes that we
have tutoring for.
So as you can see, biology, chemistry, we also have computer programming which is pretty cool because there's not a lot of options as far as tutoring around Tallahassee around campus for these classes were one of the few areas that have tutoring for the
co op classes. We have foreign language tutors math and statistics. And then we have the other subjects which includes our history, economics, so on and so forth so it's all listed right here.
And as far as students making appointments, it's pretty easy. They simply just click on the zoom appointment students directions, a little screen pops up, ask for their student ID and their password as they typically log in with you know canvas and things
like that. And they select what course that they would like to drink for. And, and they select their day and time. And so for different classes we have different numbers of tutors but like for it.
So, for instance, there might be a class where we may only have one tutor for that specific course. But then, for instance like Mac 1105 College Algebra.
In the past we've had up to a dozen tutors for that class so there is kind of some limits on for certain classes maybe on what times are available, but this is one of the major resources that we have.
So going back to tutoring.
The other type of another type of tutoring that we have this group tutoring, and I will go ahead and say we don't have the spring schedule up just yet but I did get an email yesterday actually with the finalized schedule so I think it's actually supposed
to be put up by the end of the day tomorrow. The group tutoring sessions, it's, you know, the nice part about the group tutoring sessions is that students actually don't have to make an appointment for these, we have a weekly schedule set up.
It is a much smaller amount of classes so for the course based tutoring we have tutors for over 70 courses group tutoring it's typically been about a dozen classes, maybe, but it's it's a very consistent time each week for the, for the course of the semester.
So for instance like an example.
It ACG 2071 that's accounting. That is one of the classes that we have group tutoring for organic chemistry.
statistics, 2023, it is a little bit limited number like a set of classes, it's not quite as many as the core space tutoring but it's a different option for students.
So for students that maybe you know the one on one scenario isn't their ideal or their preference. But um, students simply can log on they, we put the zoom meeting IDs up and students can log in, in those respective times and it's just simply a tutor
tutoring a group of students so that you know maybe there's only a couple of their students. Maybe there's a dozen students but it's a different option for students.
As far as tutoring.
Now the last type of tutoring all I'll mention is study skills tutoring so maybe for your student for instance in the class maybe they're struggling not necessarily because of the course material, but maybe it's their study habits, so things like time
management organization skills, how to take better notes in class. These are important skills obviously for college students and. And it's because their skills, it's something that obviously can be improved upon.
So we do offer study skills tutoring as well and these are tutors that they assist students not on specific course material but on these various studies skills that I just mentioned, so maybe it's strengthening their time management skills, learning some
new study strategies, it's just a nice alternative, because like I said maybe it's not necessarily the material that the student is struggling with, but perhaps it's, it's, you know, one of these studies skills that can help them be more successful in
the class.
So these are the various types of tutoring and again it's free, students can schedule a 30 or 60 minute appointment. The student instructions are right here.
It's pretty straightforward as far as how to set up an appointment.
And, and all that and so yes for the study skills tutoring, you do have the students do have to make an appointment for that. But it's just a nice alternative type of tutoring.
The next resource, I was going to mention because I think this is especially helpful for students, especially in the remote format and I know and I know just from personal experience with my own classes, it can be a challenge trying to do homework and
watch zoom lectures from homes actually if you have, you know, families or, you know, roommates and it can be a distracting environment. I know one thing that that you know was helpful to me It's nice having that that designated kind of work area where
students can go in there, helps them get into a better, like a good zone.
And we have study rooms available so even though all our tutoring is going is completely online for this semester, we do have study rooms in person on campus.
And so for those that don't know where the Academic Center for Excellence is, it's in the William Johnston building on the ground floor. My, my go to landmark is we're the building right next to chick fil a on campus, off of the land is green.
Wrong the ground floor. We have a big computer lab in the area.
In as as well called the Learning Studio, which is actually open as well. We're open nine to five, Monday through Friday. We're also open on Sundays as well.
I believe two to five.
But, so we do have some in person options for your students that are you know on campus, they're in their dorms or may be there in Tallahassee, but they're just off campus and so we do have the Learning Studio and obviously we've made accommodations,
due to the pandemic so we've really limited the amount of computers we've obviously appropriately space them out we students have to wear a mask in the, in the building.
We provide hand sanitizer for students and things like that. We have the Learning Studio, but the one I really want to bring up was the study room that are available so we have 14 study rooms in the ground floor of William Johnston building as well.
And this could be a great place for maybe students, you know, to have a workspace on campus, maybe it can help them to getting out of a dorm their apartment wherever they may be having kind of that workplace that they can go to and have less distractions.
And we also have a couple different types of study rooms, so we have kind of the bare bones, study room with a whiteboard, just simply just a table with chairs and a whiteboard ball where with markers students can actually write on the whiteboard whiteboard
wall.
And then we have some study rooms that have some technology in it. So, for instance, once with interactive whiteboards or collaboration stations.
It has a couple of them have projectors in there or maybe students are working on a presentation or something like that.
And it's it's pretty easy as far as scheduling these Now we do have a limit on these students can schedule. These rooms for an hour or up to two hours.
And we also one of our one of our adjustments for Kobe was that, it's only one student. So in the past obviously students could have groups and you know students could come in and have a study room.
We've obviously had to limit that that or make that unavailable this semester so one student per study room, but students that are interested, you just simply click on the study room that you're interested in, and if you scroll down towards the bottom
you can see the book of study room now. And you click on it, students put in their ID password, and then they schedule their day and time that they would like to use the study room.
So, this is a, like I said it would be a really nice option for students that are just getting stressed because they're just can't seem to get things done at the dorm their apartment.
This can be a really nice option for students to have a workplace on campus.
Now, the last thing I'm going to kind of talk about I'm going to go a little extensively into this is the proactive referral and engagement program at Ace and this is actually one of my main responsibilities as a graduate assistant for a race is for this
program. It's also known as the early alert program. So what is the print so what is the pre program, the pre program helps students that are experiencing academic challenges.
So for instance, And I think this is one of the most probably maybe most important as it as a TA as an instructor to maybe know about. If there's a student in your class that you're concerned about maybe they're really struggling in there, in the class
they're really making you know not doing well on assignments maybe they're not turning in assignments or maybe you've had a student that has just completely disappeared on you, and you and you've reached out to them and you haven't heard back.
And you've reached out to them and you haven't heard back. So what the pre program is, is if you have a student that you're just genuinely concerned about, you know, you can submit a referral of that referral for that student to the pre program that early
alert program.
What we do is when we get referrals for students, we reach out to the student. And it's not to try to nag them or anything like that but it's really that first off to check in, how are they doing, how are things going for you, you know, are they having
any issues or challenges going on, whether it's academically or maybe they're experiencing some issues.
You know, outside of academics and what we do is we really tried to help connect the students with really with appropriate resources so maybe it's with, you know, for instance the counseling center maybe the student says you know I'm going through these
really these tough personal issues maybe some, some very personal, types of issues and we can let them know, Hey, you know, the counseling center would be is a great option for confidentiality confidential counseling and other types of counseling services
they mental health services that they provide. You know, maybe it's.
For instance, maybe they've experienced, like for instance a family emergency and that's why they've just disappeared from the class because they had a sick family member that they had to go back home to, and we can, you know, for instance, let them know
about case management services but it's really a way to help the students that you might be really concerned about.
And sometimes it's just letting them know about resources that the Academic Center for Excellence so on our end, we reach out to the students via email, and we actually if we don't hear back within a few days via email we actually make phone calls to
the students as well so we really try to connect just to make sure that they're doing okay because obviously their, their well being as our as our first concern.
Now, this is the pre program, you know as far as if you want to refer a student, you can click it down here there's also some frequently asked questions from the student perspective, the faculty perspective, but if you click on refer student, you know,
this is where you can fill out this information. There's some questions that ask, you know, why, why are you referring the student, for instance, maybe it's attendance.
Maybe it's for instance they've just been missing assignments and things like that.
And then you submit this.
This referral to us and then obviously we begin the outreach immediately. I want to show you one other way because, for instance, I think, can you know, ease of access is always important I know y'all as instructors and to yeas you know have a lot on
your plate so to make this as easy as possible. There's also another area where you can submit this and it's canvas. So actually I have one of, I'm a TA for SLS 1122 class but I'm going to pull up my, my Canvas page, because I want to show you all this.
This is a kind of the default Canvas page so I haven't really done any major tweaks to it but I wanted to show you all that you can actually submit a referral through Canvas as well, so maybe you're on canvas doing grading these assignments and, and then
you notice. Hey, there's this student I might be kind of concerned about how you can submit a referral on canvas is, is I'm going to show you right here.
If you scroll down on the left side, you can see settings.
You click on settings, and I'm sorry I'm pausing there's a
Nathaniel ask who actually checks in on the students throughout the semester.
To find out.
So that's a great question.
There's only two people it's actually me, and it's the proactive referral and engagement coordinator. Who's this, it's, we actually just hired a new coordinator our previous coordinator she is now in the institutional research department and, but we just
hired Samantha dr Samantha attack it, and she's actually joining.
She has moving from California, but she's coming in next week, we're the only two that reach out to students.
And so, and we let students know that you know this is, you know, so it's only us it's not getting sent to a bunch of different people.
We really try to respect the students privacy is obviously optional so if the student for instance we reach out the student is like, I'm not interested I don't, or they can refuse contact obviously and, you know, so.
So, and I'm just I'm sorry I was trying to see if there's any other questions.
While we talked about actively yeah so I'm the graduate assistant for the pre program, it's me and Dr. Samantha tactics so we're the pretty much the only two but like I said we let students know about, like maybe they've taught they tell us what's going
on. And we just say hey, this could be a really great resource that can help your situation. And so, um, and you know it's and it's it's really the whole purpose of the program is obviously the students that have these warning signs.
We just want to help them succeed, whenever that they're there, these issues may be a part of really the primary is trying to connect them or let them know about all these resources at Florida State because obviously we're a huge University there's so
many resources sometimes just, you know, I'm still learning about certain things on campus since my second year here and so it's time to inform students let them know but it's really to try to help them be successful.
Dawn says, I personally reach out to my students, that's great too and I do as well as a TA but you know I know too and I just in my past experience sometimes even though there's those students that just will not get back to you and so we can be.
But, you know, it's a nice alternative and you have to think to with certain with certainty as you may have instructor, you might be instructing 30 students 90 students, maybe 200 students.
We have a finite amount of time. And so this is just an option though for two days.
Because I do agree as a as an instructor you know you care about your students well being, I do as well. But um, there's sometimes there's a there's a lot on our plates and so this is a nice alternative This is a nice resource I think if you need some
help reaching out to this student.
So anyways, moving along. If you go down to settings and you go to navigation.
Here at the top you have these different sections of Canvas you know your module section your syllabus section, but down here you have all these different pages that are disabled.
If you scroll down to early alert, and you click the little, the little dots right here and you click Enable.
It is now up as you can see, but before you try to go away from the page you scroll back down and click Save. You save it.
And now as you can see on my left hand side the early alert little tab is there now. You click on this and it's going to ask you to activate.
And I'll show you what this looks like. So, just for privacy sake. I'm sorry. It should it'll ask you to activate based off your faculty, email, but um, it's very forward so once that opens up, it has all your students in the class, and you find the student
that you may be really concerned about you can't reach this student, and then you can just fill out for that student and just submit it. It's very straightforward just for privacy sake, you know, I'm not going to go through it, but for my students sake
but that is kind of all I have for the resources from a so I think the tutoring is a really important resource the study rooms and I think the early alert program are three sources that can really help students in times of stress.
So, I really appreciate your time and you know obviously I'll be around to answer any questions obviously at the end too So, thank you.
Sure. Thank you so much, Nate That was awesome. Ace is a phenomenal resource they saved me when it came to God math. So definitely check out what they have.
Alright so next we're going to move on to grace Wilson, who is our wonderful allies and safe stones representative, everyone. I'm going to also share my screen so bear with me for one second.
Okay.
So, like Katie mentioned I am the allies and safe zones coordinator My name is Grace Wilson IU she and her pronoun so when you speak about me after this presentation, you can say, hey that grace she was really great that's I use that right now we know
how to use pronouns in general, as far as she and he but the illustration is really there to say like hmm.
If I have a student who uses a pronouns, how do I use those in a sentence the correct way you use them just as if you are talking about a group of people.
So, if I was saying, Grayson Nathaniel we're going somewhere together, and they walked across campus together, right now, you could say the same thing, if I use the pronouns.
I saw grace walking across campus, they were headed to chick fil a. Right. That's how you use that. So, just to throw that in there because I love to introduce that way.
So before we get started talking about allies and safe zones.
I want y'all to engage with the chat for just a minute.
Because, as we've heard about the counseling center we've heard about as we see like these are pretty direct resources for our students and we know like exactly why and how we send our students that right.
that we send our students to in that way to get support for their queer identities. So, I want to know from you all. What do you think that specific queer identities might need right now in this in this global time of stress in this like national pandemic
kind of stress where we're online. What do you think that queer students may need from you, or from us, in general as University.
You can just drop in the chat.
Inclusion someone they can trust to talk to you.
Good, feeling like they belong recommendations for counselors and doctors, being more visible in course material I love that one.
Yeah, definitely. Someone said it may be difficult to live with individuals who may not be the most supportive. Absolutely.
So, these are all really really great reasons that we need to know how to be inclusive of queer identities. In general, for biology being more clear about sex and gender absolutely so all these are really great.
I'm going to close down the track so they're not close it down but I'm gonna minimize my screen so I can get back to the awkward part.
So all of these are going to be really great reasons that our students need us to be more queer friendly on campus. And so, I'm really here to tell you about the allies and safe zones program in general and hopes that you all may want to come and engage
with the program itself.
You may want to bring it into your classrooms, anything like that so that you and the students around you can just have a better taste of that.
Okay.
Okay, so first thing I want to mention is our website, so I haven't listed on the page before it's safe zone.fsu.edu, it's very very easy to remember.
Navigate to.
So there's a lot of different things that are on our website. So first off, there's information about all the sessions we offer.
We literally have a course of, like, eight different sessions. We have our ONE ON ONE ON ONE workshop that's just like our basic overview, in person that runs about three hours on zoom right now the third bullet point down mentioned some modules.
So before you take that one on one you complete four modules they take about an hour, all for together to complete. So the workshop can be about two hours on zoom, we don't know just people.
you can get to those, the pre workshop modules that I mentioned, you can also just go in and if you all want to do it just as a refresher just as some new learning.
You can go in and access all four of those modules to learn more about the licensing songs program to learn about some vocabulary, more about pronouns that I mentioned earlier as well.
And then there's some video perspectives because, as the coordinator. I'm a white sis woman and I don't hold all those perspectives. I do hold a queer identity but I don't hold all of the queer identities, and I want you to hear from people who do.
So we have those we have those videos there, and other things are on the website as well we have our handouts and learning tools different things that we would traditionally have paper copies of for you to take and have those resources in your office
space or wherever you are working from, if you were in person with us.
This is we don't have that option right now.
They are all always on the website, regardless of whether or not they're always there.
We also have links to different resources that people can use to access national and local unfortunately we don't really have a lot of local resources for your support allies and save someone's has actually become a really big Tallahassee resource, and
we have people that contact our program from the wider Tallahassee community and different places in Florida, even in South Georgia.
And people will come to our program from all these different places. We also have our map of campus allies which I will let you know is not totally updated right now because pandemic life.
And then we also have an agenda restroom map.
But currently we are in the process of working with our facilities team for the greater campus to actually.
If you have ever searched the FSU campus map and you've been directed to the interactive map that we have that you can click on different filters and things like that to see where things are located.
We're working on right now, assessing all buildings on campus to know where all the agenda restrooms are just on our whole campus, and then putting a layer on that map so that people can click on all generations and see all of them.
The map that is on the website right now is self reported so if a department says, Hey grace we just put an agenda restroom sign up on this bathroom.
Can you know website, absolutely, I would love to let people know about that but if people don't know that Allison Samsung's as a resource that we have this page that I'm just kind of tell me.
So we definitely want to make sure that people know about them. So we're working to make that better and make it more campus wide.
From there, what do we offer.
So I mentioned our scheduled workshops, and I don't have them scheduled for this semester yet, because I'm Fun fact, my job just moved from the Student Government Association student governance and advocacy office, and I'm now located in the center for
Leadership and social change, because we have just kind of formed a new Equity and Inclusion office for student work over there, which is really great because we haven't had one before now.
So we're building it from the ground floor up, and a lot of things are getting sorted out but in the meantime, obviously I'm still doing workshops like this request things like that so I can always be reached for requested information sessions is about
30 minutes in a, in a group in an office setting in the classroom, anything like that.
I do requested workshops for offices and student groups, meaning that I will take the prepackaged one on one material and bring it to you have everyone on your roster do those modules beforehand and then we all go through it as a bonded group, we love
doing those. The other thing that I can do as well as classroom presentations, so I do one pretty frequently on gender and sexuality. And as we talk about global perspectives and talking about like what is gender actually.
According to our social stereotypes according to biological sex all of those pieces.
So that's a pretty, pretty fun presentation that we've really honed in together. And then finally, I am a one on one resource. So, anytime that you have questions or concerns, or you want to know, how do I answer this question how do I talk about this
topic with someone.
It's never come up for me, I am absolutely the person that you can reach out to you and ask you.
Okay, so something else that I hear a lot is, I didn't really know that we were doing a lot of queer work on campus.
Where, where do I find all that or how is it happening.
Sometimes it's hard to find right so I wanted to just give you a brief overview of some of the other things that are going on on campus.
All of these things almost are things that I am fairly involved in. aside from maybe like the bottom couple.
So currently we have a gender pronouns and name committee through the registrar's office which is a big deal. So, the registrar's office being the hub for as students come into our university.
What are they greeted with right so when someone submits their application in the university. Does it have a place for them to tell you what their preferred name is because if their legal name is not the name that they use.
Do we have a way to acknowledge that are there diverse pronoun options there so that we know as a student comes into the university, who they are and how they want to be referred to.
So, we're broadening some of those options and you can see here, we have representatives from HR from our online learning group from Title Nine myself, lots of other places as well, to really talk about like even even like our FSU card center to talk
about where can we see certain names. Where can we see biological sex, as opposed to gender identity.
Because who needs to see biological sex necessarily there's not a lot of people on campus that do. And so we're really fine tuning that as we begin to put some of those things in place across campus.
Another one that we are working on right now is the Division of Student Affairs, which is the vision I'm under.
We just started our LGBT q plus Student Life task force that I'm sharing. And we have members across the DSA and then student representatives as well it's about half and half, which is really fun, because we hear about the student perspective and saying
like hey this is what we need you to do. And then as staff members were able to actually go and do that work.
We also have a lot of student community that's built through the Student Union, I advise the Student Union there a really great group of people.
They also have three affiliate organizations that work within them.
That you can think of more as like Nish identity groups so we have gender Odyssey that is for trans non binary and gender non conforming people. We have to talk which is queer trans intersex people of color, so anyone who identifies in the queer scope
and as person of color has a space there.
And then we also have LGBT theology, which is a really cool group of people who are coming together to talk about the intersections of religion and quickness and how there's always been just kind of a tension there and really being able to to broaden
the scope of what that might look like for them. They also have identity nights through pride. There are I believe six of them. Sometimes they shift and move around.
But those groups are really for niche populations of queer identities. So we have one called Griff I'm going to perfect, and that group is based on the ancient model of FSU.
And when we were a women's college, which is really awesome.
But that group is for women who may identify as lesbian as women who loved women as bisexual women.
Any of those groups people can be in that space and cutie pop and gender Odyssey also have an identity night that are associated with them.
We have a group for people who identify as disabled are differently abled or whatever word fits them the best, and as clear as well.
We have a group for people who may be here at FSU, and they're out to their friends and their colleagues and people that they are around but maybe, maybe at home, they're not out so we call that one Oh heck out of the house in the closet, oh ah IC.
one is particularly salient right now right because we have a lot of students who are not here on campus with us. And they're engaging in private spaces, but only behind a locked door of their bedroom because their parents don't know that they're clear.
So there's a lot of that happening to some other things that we have to offer Magnolia was talking about the great resources of the Counseling Center.
There's also some LGBT q plus center groups there.
I think we have a general queer group and then maybe a transgender group as well. And then there is a private liaison on their counseling stuff which is really really awesome because we we sang a communication so that I can refer people over to her when
when that's necessary. And we also have our gender and sexual orientation affirming non discrimination policy so if you didn't know about that is a really really cool thing that FSU has that a lot of places don't that when we think about title nine and
we think about on the basis of sex and that type of thing that has been really big in the news in the past few years right FSU has had for several years in the non discrimination policy very specifically that we do not tolerate discrimination based on
gender and sexual orientation.
Your Name your pronouns that type of stuff like we, it doesn't it doesn't fly through our HR here.
I'm seeing the chat later. let me grab that.
Wonderful.
So we have many other policies across campus, some of them are by department and things like that as well. And so this is definitely not an exhaustive list, but it gets us through a lot of what we have here.
There.
So Katie Do we have time for questions with this one or do we want to wait till the end. I think we'll go ahead and wait till the end for that, and I wanted to let everyone know that I will be with Grace's permission I will be linking this presentation
on our website along with the recording so you can look back over a lot of these resources. After the workshop, but they do so much grace, and we will make sure we leave some time for questions at the end.
Right now we're going to move on to our final speaker, Dr. Mitchell from the Office of accessibility services.
Hello everyone.
And I am super excited to be here for the sake of time I'm going to speed through the slides, Katie does have a copy of this presentation and so feel free to reach out to her.
To use this presentation and the resource, but I will kind of go through it really briefly so you all have time to ask any questions at the end.
I am Jennifer Mitchell I'm an assistant dean of students, and I'm the Director of the Office of accessibility services so I'll be talking more in detail about the department that I'm under as well as more about my office and what we do so the Department
of student support and transition supports connects and empowers all students to navigate through the academic and personal journey so we are direct support we provide direct support to students.
DSFT is comprised of six different offices we work together to support students and our families here at FSU case management is one of those office, really good resource to refer students to if they're having emotional challenges if they need any kind
of advocate the assistance with academic personal any type of immediate support case management is definitely the stop to refer students to because what they can do is refer out to other supports like the Counseling Center.
Always have their Ace tutoring service.
So I would definitely keep case management as one of those areas to know about OS is the Office of accessibility services and what we do is provide access for students with disabilities through accommodations testing support assistive technologies we
also have accessible transportation for students on campus. And so we have a pretty comprehensive center for our students with disabilities. We also have investigations and assessment.
And this is a new office that started, maybe a year or two ago and it.
And what they do in that often is provide investigative services for allegations of kind of misconduct concerning RS owes so similar to our Student Conduct office but a little different with, they do more of the org stuff.
I'm sure all of you have been a part of that you know that is the office that orient all of our new students and families to the university to learn all the wonderful things about FSU VIP is a really good office to know is, because that is one of the
the counseling center VIP are there really confidential. And so they provide free, confidential and compassionate assistance to victims of crime, violence or abuse so if you're working with students and they disclose something they then they experienced
something like this VIP is definitely a place to refer them to withdraw services is another area in our office, and that offers support students and families.
When students need to, you know, take a break and, and do something else.
And then, you know, help them come back OIOWS definitely helps with that and so if you're working with a student and you feel like are they say, I need to withdraw from the semester, we have an office that can help support that student dirt.
time. Again, case management, I do want to highlight this because these are some, this is the area that I really want you to know about.
So, these are some of the things that you know it's not limited to, but this is some of the things that case management can help out with death of a family member hospitalization we send out support letters to faculty members and students are hospitalized
so they, they know to work with the student.
During those times housing crisis we have homeless vouchers that we give students financial hardships.
We have some funds that we help students with family relationship difficulties, as well.
I'm a case manager are very knowledgeable about all the resources on campus right and so that's why I like to highlight that office is really a place to refer students to because they, they know about everything that we have on campus and how to get students
support and get the to those resources. We also have the food for thought pantry which is our food pantry.
For students who are experiencing food insecurity, students are asked to take only one bag of food per day, but they can come and visit it as much as possible.
It is open during this time we staff it with different staff within DSST, the pantry is located in a University Center, am fourth floor.
And we're always looking for a donation. So, if you know anybody want to donate food, feel free to do that.
VIP again is another area. I want it to highlight more.
So, as well.
We have a confidential advocate on call 24 hours a day to respond to any students that have been victimized students, faculty and staff, actually. And so we do have a 24 hour.
Call Center for that person on staff.
We also have different services with emotional support instructor notification so with VIP we also send out faculty notifications as well for students were frozen crisis intervention.
A lot of our, our victim advocates will help out in the conduct process any legal medical matters as well.
ows just making sure that you know that there is an office that can help with withdrawing students.
And we're looking to do a lot more with that office to not only withdraw student but how can we do more case management to get them back at the university when they're ready to get back at the university and making sure that they're supportive throughout
the time that they're here, a little bit more about OS.
Again, this is our, this is my office. I've been in this office for eight years, and you know we we provide accommodations.
And we serve as a resource, not only for faculty for students but faculty and staff as well and so if you have a student in your course that you're if you're teaching a course or Instructor of Record, and you get a faculty letter or an accommodation letter
from my office. We are a resource for you we can help you understand what those accommodations mean and how they can be implemented in your course. Okay.
This is just a little bit of data, just so you kind of understand the breakdown of how our students are registered, how they are categorized when they're registered with our office and you can see ADHD is top, and it's trending up.
Now that we're in the pandemic pre pandemic mental health was trending up it's kind of leveling off now.
But definitely, if you want to look at that.
That breakdown is pretty cool just to see.
I'm not going to go into detail about the legal part of what I do, or what my office does but just know that the ADA in the section 504 are the legal components of the work that we do right so Ada protects all students who are registered with my office
they have those protections and rights under the ADA in the Final Four.
So, what the laws mean is a qualified student with a disability is one that meets admissions and if so any student that's coming through the university has to meet admission standards so they're not a different admission standards for students with disabilities,
right.
So that makes that student qualify once they're qualified in the student can register without offers or services, a disability. This is how the ADA defines it so this is the legal definition it's an impairment that substantially limits one major life
activity and what that major life activity maybe it's reading it could be seeing concentrating with the ADHD, walking, and that that defines disability from an ADA perspective.
Accommodations are modifications that provide all students with disabilities, equal access to students with that are, that doesn't have accommodations, and it provides time and opportunity for the student who has the accommodations to demonstrate equal
mastery of whatever material it is.
There is an accommodation letter as I mentioned before, that if a student is register without office, they will request to have that letter sent to you all.
And it's a legal binding document between you and the student, it will contain a list of the accommodations, it'll have our contact information on every have questions about the accommodations you always reach out to us.
Okay. The thing about this letter is you don't want to provide any other accommodation that's not listed on the letter. So you only provide was listed on the letter.
If a student says, Well, I don't have this accommodation, but I do need this, I do think this will be helpful as an accommodation, what you can say as well why don't you go back to OS and do a review, they can do an accommodation review and see if you
qualify for that, that specific accommodation.
This was just a sample letter and what you would see this letter comes directly from, from the student request it. And if emailed out from my office to the instructor own record.
So just a little bit about responsibility as an instructor to inform students about our services and program there's a mandatory syllabus statement that Academic Affairs has we just updated it is really beautiful, very inclusive language.
We also have it listed under the faculty tab on our website.
So definitely look at that syllabus statement because it's mandatory to have.
I'm also collaborate with course components instructors are the, what I consider, you're the expert in your, your course and so we've leaned on instructors to let us know about the essential elements or the course component so we can understand.
It's an A combination is reasonable or not based on those components, making textbooks and syllabus early is so this is so important for a lot of our students especially if they have learning disabilities or some physical disabilities.
Again provide what's a combination that's on the letter. Ensure when we were on campus that accessibility in the classroom and offices there make appropriate referrals confidentiality is key and what we do as well.
And you always want to hold students accountable for their your academic standards.
Accommodation letters can be presented at any point throughout the semester so they're not just going to be throughout the first week because we have rolling admissions in our office and accommodations art retro active.
The syllabus statement you can look at that confidentiality. Again, you're not sharing any information with anyone else.
If a student issued a letter to you you can't go talk to your colleague about that students disability status.
That is a violation of their right because they have the right to issue that letter to any professor so they may issue it to you and not to your colleagues so you don't want to talk to anyone read about their disability status and we do have students
give us written permission to talk to faculty or anyone at FSU about accommodations, you can't ask the student if they have a disability but there are some questions that you can kind of ask, you know, the kind of read between the lines and that kind
of tells you where to refer students to, um, that's a picture of our accessible golf cart, I like to highlight it all the time because it's super cool and holds a wheelchair when we're on campus.
It was, you know, definitely transporting a lot of our students with temporary injuries as well as permanent conditions service animals in the class. I do want to talk about that because a service animal is defined as a dog or a miniature horse, right,
so that's the only service animal is not a cat. Um, but service animals.
animal one, is this a service animal to what task is the service animal trained to perform. Those are the two questions. Okay. And the person who has the animal should be able to answer those successfully.
Um,
yeah so like if you're in class and the animals being disrupted and his barking walking around the train service animal shouldn't be doing that you can ask the animal to leave the class.
I'm emotional support animals can be a cat right, any animal.
But the thing about emotional support animals they are not allowed in the classroom is only allowed in a dwelling so University Housing and so a student can have an ESA, they do have to register with an office but it's only in the residence hall.
Okay, food allergies is the another protected classes really brand new.
So you may hear from us to just make an announcement that food can't be brought in your class or something like that from us, we work with students on that.
In DSST we have Dino duty. So it's my is all the directors of the six offices we all share our Dean on duty week from Thursday to Thursday, so we respond to any kind of students and crisis.
So if you experience something you definitely want to contact our office if you if you get a concern, email, what you want to do is, report it to report that fsu.edu, we get those reports, and then we respond to it, whoever is the dino do they typically
respond to those reports. That's a really good place to do any kind of concerns student of concern reported there. Okay. There is a faculty and staff emergency guide that it's really good guide on how to assist students when they're in distress, as Magnolia
was talking about that not the good stress, right. So this is a really good guy for students as well.
This is.
We're in the Student Services Building. so that's our picture.
And then this is DFS t information. And that is my presentation all 35 slots and 15 minutes.
That was good.
Thank you so much Dr. Mitchell that was wonderful and thank you to all four of our fabulous presenters, we really appreciate your diversity of expertise and all these really really important topics.