Update on 3 Proposals from Last Year
Dean’s Dinner 2.22.17
Opening Christine Mitchell; starting by celebrating the accomplishments that HCSA has made with help from the administration and staff. Listed a good number of social events that have been held this past year, HCSA have held events around the elections, and a large town hall, they are continuing to meet around this political moment every Wednesday at 12:30pm in G2.Abhi’s proposal for SM2 funding, Junaid and Rahima worked with Academic Affairs and GHP with more course flexibility, second semester with 50% off T-Pass, Aviva launched the Healthy Meeting Guidelines, plant initiative, SAD lamps, Sounding Board re-launched.
Update on 3 proposals from last year:
Mental Health Support; in progress, Jacob Barrera, Stacey Herman, and Nancy Turnbull have been meeting with UHS to discuss the proposal.
Stacey: we may serve as a pilot program on bringing in new counselors.
Nancy: HUHS needs to start looking at Longwood in a different way to serve the students over here. Having strategy chats with HUHS on how to approach this. They have a contact from Medical and PH, but not Dental yet.
Stacey: some were simple solutions, they are competing for certain hours in office space and we were able to offer that on campus.
Faculty Training: in the works with Kim and Meredith, they have been going to meetings and working on it more and more. Aiming for something large like a faculty retreat
Portraits: Task force has been formed with a variety of offices and Howard Shen (architect), they have 5-6 proposals to go through. Goal is by May 4th to announce the plan during the Slavery Conference.
Mitchell: did a survey to the student body to get the topics they were interested in bringing to this setting. From there narrowed it down to 3-5 and then tackled the research and background. Aim for this, presenters talk on the proposal for 3-5 minutes and then open it for conversations.
Community Engagement:
Emily: based on the political climate, there is a clear need for HSPH to be involved with the community as public health professionals. How we can encourage and incentivize students to be involved?
Andrew: we heard a lot of feedback from students from all departments that they wanted more ways to be involved in the school and the broader community. It is hard for students that are here for just 1 year, coping with moving to a new city and taking classes, to also find the balance to do service work. Some schools implement service days that are emphasized with professors. Some schools also offer short term service projects. Can be student life focus but also academic. Certificates in community engagement, some schools offer this (not a degree program).
Emily: some professors already offer client based work and service, but we would love to expand this and promote this. Professors work each year with different community areas and it would be great to connect them.
*please refer to the short and long term goals presented in the proposal document*
Mitchell: Ra’Shaun, how can we best bolster the work you are doing, and if you had more staff we could integrate these new ideas?
Ra’Shaun: thank you for advocating for me and my office. Tried not to get defensive with this proposal as a way of critiquing my work. I have been tasked with looking at other SPHs to see what they are doing and what we can do. I just want to remind people where we are at compared to other schools. We are 18 months into our process. Students are you willing to do this ground work with me, knowing that you will not be here to benefit from it? I agree with you about time, and already see busy students and the interest in engagement falls once midterms kick in. Faculty will need assistance to bring this in, and I am not an expert on that. I ask you to remind faculty that community is an essential component to Public Health. As an administration, culture is hard to change and we currently don’t have a culture of community engagement, but we have leadership that is interested in this.
Paul Reeping: the culture goes beyond the administration; it’s also a fault of the students. There have been a lot of events and it’s hard to get attendance there. It is on us as students to make this culture ingrained in the school. Some schools offer community service credits, we already have an independent study so this would work.
Ra’Shaun: we need to find what sets us apart from the other schools in this area. It is quite competitive so we look to learn from their success and mistakes.
Hector: cross reg at MIT and approach courses in a practicum way that request you to find a cause and work to improve it.
Emmons: as a community based researcher I just want to applaud the proposal, and it will take a while to build upon it. MLK Day of Service/Not a Day Off, allowed employees to bring students/other employees to assist with volunteer.
Ra’Shaun: we often find it hard to be more appealing to students over global work. We would love to improve this relationship. I do encourage you to seek local practicum opportunities.
Nancy: the flip side, in years where we have spent a lot of time cultivating those opportunities, and student don’t sign up. We used to do service at Orientation and students wouldn’t show up. We can start with holding grades.
Mitchell: would it be possible to get Ra’Shaun more help. Like an EDI Fellow?
Williams: this proposal offers a lot. Not just increased staff, but integrating community engagement into everyday work for our students and school. An inventory on what students are interested in service learning now. Maybe we don’t need to add staff, maybe we just need to promote faculty to work more with engagement and integrate that together. It’s more complicated than just adding staff. Vanderbilt offers community engagement studio, which promotes sustainable community research.
Cross-Registration Enhancement:
Junaid: this has been an issue for quite some time for students. It is one of the reasons that students come to Harvard because of this feature. I was considering other schools, but wanted to come to Harvard because of this offer. This enriches the experience we have at Harvard. I have taken classes each semester at other Harvard schools to give me a broad idea of Public Health and to round out my skills. A good thing about this issue is that it can be dealt with easily. It is a problem of efficiency; some students don’t think they have the opportunity. I think the problem is in the way it is structured and if we can fix that then we could alleviate some concerns the students have.
*please refer to the short and long term goals presented in the proposal document*
Students don’t know when the deadlines are from other schools. We are good at sending out information from HSPH, but not from other Harvard schools. These deadlines are important to try and get in the limited spots in cross registration courses. Incorporation of these details in the new student guide, this would be a good marketing tool for the school. Course evaluations for different Harvard schools, we are not able to see what students have evaluated.
Abhinav: started presenting on the long-term policies*please refer to the short and long term goals presented in the proposal document*
Joann: All the points are valid points. I want to acknowledge cross registration has always been a complicated process with working across schools and calendars. With students this year we were also rolling out a new student information system. Thank you for your patience with that. Specifically with “closing the communication gap” aiming for next Fall to be able to move all of that information into my.harvard. Trying to find a way to put all that information front and center to assist students. How could those communication reminders go out, send pushes from my.harvard. For course evals, all schools have strict guidelines on who can see there evaluations and enforce them. Some schools have hard copy evals, some keep them limited.
Nancy: currently we are the only school that allows other Harvard schools to see our course evals.
Junaid: can we align them so that students can’t view their grades until they complete the eval.
Anna: how can we view the list of courses available to students for cross reg?
Joann: on the cross reg website, all of the schools put the courses that are available, some do not always offer some. Next year, sorry that some of you won’t be able to benefit. The cross reg portal from Harvard to Harvard will be gone and will be changed into my.harvard. The only reason you will need to use it is when you go external to Harvard schools.
Sohini: it’s not just the registrars’ job, my department has a list of courses that students have taken in the past and has helped me figure out my schedule.
Institutional Flexibility:
Jacob: with the new political regime, and with that has come executive orders that have negatively affected people across the globe. Focusing on the 7 countries impacted. With that ban some students have lost research opportunities, returning to the country to continue studies *please refer to the short and long term goals presented in the proposal document* Large mental health toll on our students and their families. We have had marches and rallys, but nothing has really been done. I know HIO has been working with students and have been doing there very best.
Abhi: we are looking for a safety net for the students. To have a plan of action to help the students that research is impacted, students that have been accepted but no longer wanting to come (allow deferment) partner with institutions internationally so that if students aren’t able to come here that they are able to take coursework at another school to make progress to their degree completion. Allowing students the ability to take their coursework digitally. *please refer to the short and long term goals presented in the proposal document*
Mitchell: the key to the proposal is, we know students have looked at student issues on a case by case basis. Harvard is in the process of creating short, mid, and long term ways of handling these new issues. The ask is to have something set in place so that they know there is a safety net for them at the school.
Herman: we currently do have deferrals for students for special cases, as far as guaranteeing the aid, it depends on where that funding is coming from. We offer a leave of absence option for students but are honest with them about what courses they could miss and how this might add to their time at the school.
Emmons: all the academic deans met last week and the provost of Harvard is working on new ways and strategies to bring all of this together. Aiming for it to not be a “tub” but an altogether event. IQSS is working on gathering data, lots of activity happening here and nationally.
Williams: We are using the platforms available.
Nancy: there are actually limits how many courses you can take online to count for a degree.
Junaid: how do we navigate the potential removal of federal funding?
Williams: are the risks outweighing the benefits? I watched the heads of the university look at what does a “sanctuary campus” mean. It is nice to have the name and the benefits, but did it without “painting a bullseye” on the campus. What can we do to provide this sanctuary campus without adding risk? You saw the automatic flip at Berkeley when it wasn’t approached properly. We are a federal research funded campus, and we have been talking about for years that we need to grow other revenue buckets for the school, but the execution for this has been hard.
Ra’Shaun: we have to be intentional on what we can do and how we approach it. Students are looking to secure other students, but keep in mind that you should be advocating for the most vulnerable group and if you can help them it will help you.
Williams: Student Unionization
Abhi: today was the first day of hearings on the Grad student Union, after the initial vote counts, they decided to go through a hearing process. First half of the day focused on revoking “sapeena” back and forth between both groups. Hearing continues into tomorrow. Union will be presenting cases from here and other universities. Should be about 3 week process for an outcome.