ResEdChat Ep 72: Integrating Wellness into a Residential Curriculum with Sean Watson

Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back everybody to Roompact’s Res Ed Chat podcast. If you’re new to the show, every other week, we feature a variety of topics of interest to hired professionals who work in and with university housing and Residence Life, residential education, whatever you might call it. Excited today to continue to examine the concept of residential curriculums, and more pointedly, apply it to a particular outcome, this one being wellness, because I think we’ve explored residential curriculums, what they are, why they should be used and all that. I think, moving forward, it will be exciting to be talking with folks who are utilizing them to achieve certain outcomes, certainly not just this one thing of wellness, it does have a variety of impact. Each time, we’ll just zero in here. Without further ado, we’ll start as we always do. Sean, if you want to briefly introduce yourself, your professional background, and how you got to be where you’re today.

Sean Watson:
Hello, my name is Sean Watson, and my pronouns are he or they. I’ve been working in Residence Life in a full-time capacity since 2012, worked the way from grad to hall director to complex coordinator, assistant director to associate director. I have been a res lifer through and through. In terms of my education, I have my master’s degree in higher education, got that in 2012, and then went back for a second master’s degree in human resource development, which will tie, in the future, towards some wellness work. I’m currently working on a Ph.D. in higher education at my current school while working full-time in Res Life. And then, my last little bit, in terms of employment or context, I serve as a chaplain for the Pagan community at my institution. That also gives me some different thoughts or context around what it looks like to be well.

Dustin Ramsdell:
That is a very fun fact, I think, just in terms of the professional intro. I was not aware that existed. I’m glad it does. That is awesome.

Sean Watson:
There are about two or three of us in the country.

Dustin Ramsdell:
That is good to know, the idea of like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know they existed.” It’s like, “Well, there’s not a lot of them, that’s why.” I think that idea of wellness, there’s obviously a lot of facets, so we’ll do our best to cover as many as we can here in our conversation. I’ll put that up front, that if it feels like we are missing something, we only have so much time, and maybe in the future, we’ll just have either Sean or someone else back to continue to explore everything. As I tend to like to do, we’ll start with the 30,000 feet view, and start to just zoom in. From your perspective, how do you see a residential curriculum impacting student wellness?

Sean Watson:
I flashback to my RA days about a million years ago, where our program model was the wellness wheel. As a student staff member, I was supposed to pick a financial wellness topic, an emotional wellness topic, a physical wellness topic, and as long as I hit each aspect of the wellness wheel over the course of the semester, my job was done. I was good. I certainly did some things that I think were helpful, but none of it was aligned, or thoughtful, or built on the student experience. As an activist, my foundations are in anti-tobacco industry activism, so I did some smoking cessation topics, because an area of expertise that I had, but I hadn’t thought if my students were smoking. None of it was built on the student experience. As I think about a residential curriculum, and being rooted in the institution through your archaeological dig, rooted in learning outcomes and thoughtfulness based on research for the student experience, for me, providing context or limitations around what we do with our students and how we do it with our students is really important.
As we think about the context and that limitations piece really highlighting, I think about a phrase that I have long talked about in my professional career, we are really good at being entrepreneurial, we are really bad at being editorial as a student affairs, as a Residence Life function. If we are constantly piling stuff on our students because we had a new idea from a conference, or are looking to engage in some other new way, then that really leads our students being overwhelmed, or having too many things to do, or being over optioned, which causes stress, in this case, counterbalanced to wellness. By saying, “We’re going to do X, Y, or Z with our students,” that gives us that space to do those things well, and to not push too far.
Other pieces I’ve been thinking about as I have talked about and taught my department around the 10 essential elements, I often end on the 11th element for me, this is relationship driven. We can do all of this great research driven learning outcome work, but if our students don’t feel this fabled sense of belonging, then they’re not going to want to engage, or they’re not going to feel like they are able to engage in this work.
By having a wellness driven approach, or by having a curricular approach that centers wellness, we’re able to work toward our students feeling like the relationships are there. When you have relationships, if you look at the work of social scientists nowadays, the idea of loneliness is a radical public health conversation right now, and there’s lots of work out there that if you don’t have social connections, your physical wellness is intricately tied to that. I think about that relationship building piece, or how we are engaging our students thoughtfully in their experience of the campus leading toward healthier, or wellness-oriented spaces.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I like the points that you’re making there, because one, like you said, the entrepreneurial versus editorial, and we’re recording this mid-April, just to put us in time and space here, that this is conference season. Yeah, people are going to go out and see some sort of bright, new shiny thing, and maybe we want to tinker with it on their campus. Yeah, that’s all well and good, but you would want to draw some sort of boundary, put the very explicit curricular outcomes, and things that you’re striving towards, or all that, and provide some focus, provide some opportunity for continuous improvement and, all those things. It’s either that tendency to just follow the bright, shiny new thing, or just say like, “Well, this is something I’m interested in, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
Again, all of that well and good, I think if it’s all thrown into the pots and mixed together, of certainly, sure. Maybe as part of a team, you might want to delegate accordingly. The other point that I like that you made, too, is that idea of, you do need to create a fertile ground to plant the seeds of wellness, I guess is the metaphor that I was thinking of. You can’t just force someone into this if there’s not a connection, there’s not a community, there’s not a sense of belonging, there’s not any of those things. You want to make sure that you’re certainly, throughout maybe an academic year, planning accordingly, even around that. There’s a lot of excitement and optimism and hope and possibility. At the start of this message, you might want to be like, “Let’s do stress management in week two.”
It’s just different things like that. “Okay, let’s make sure we get a nice, fertile ground, a good foundation, then we’re going to build upon that.” The message will fall unheard because we haven’t done the prior work to build the relationships first, to then impart the wisdom of wellness, whatever shape it might take. I think those are some of the things that, just to segue to my next question, if you want to expand upon some of those challenges, because I think again, the sense of belonging piece would definitely be a big one, so if you want to talk more about that, or anything else of, this is very complex work that we’re talking about here. What are some of the primary challenges that you see in doing this work?

Sean Watson:
Well, I think to bounce back to essential elements, again, element five, don’t quote me on that, it’s this idea that it’s more than programming. I think oftentimes, we as professionals do get stuck in this idea that, I have to program, or how I meet this need is by putting on a thing. We know that our environments, our educational environments are contextualized, and are really big, and can be structural in how we think about some of these pieces. I think one of the challenges is our getting rid of that mental paradigm that we have to put on a thing to do the thing. My curriculum that I work with and support in my job heavily relies on those RA conversations with their residents, because that is a small moment, and a moment that allows a student to more deeply engage in what their experience is, as I link these two questions a little bit.
I think some other challenges, as I’ve been considering this question, I think professional staff wellness is one that we have to think about, all the way from the great resignation really highlighting this idea that professional staff can’t go 90 hours a week with no breaks, that we need to think more critically about what professional staff and who we are as wellness persons are able to do. I think this obviously goes whack well before the great resignation, and some of the work at COVID, but I think this idea was certainly highlighted. I think about ACPA’s 21st century employment report. I know NASPA has done some work on this. There’s certainly lots of dialogue around what it looks like to create professional staff environments.
I think the idea of flex time is also challenging. As I think about the curricular approach, making us more thoughtful around our student experience, that muscle of being thoughtful is helpful to apply in this way. When I’m supporting my professional staff members, I’m not just saying, “Oh, you’re stressed right now? Take a day off,” but really deeply engaging with, what is the source of this stress? What are the things that are in the job that might be causing this stress? What are the things outside of the job that are causing this stress? Beginning to see professional staff as whole people is, I think, a really important tool for us to then have those people be supporting our students in wellness.
I think another challenge that I’ve been thinking about, going down, is the student staff wellness. We tried really hard, in lots of different ways through RA training, to create wellness spaces, to engage in more time off, trying to balance our spaces really thoughtfully, so that students have a chance to relax and be ready for our students to come back in August. Many students were, I think, expecting, or wanting to be exhausted. They’re like, “No, I am a driven human being. I need to go. I need to push.” Trying to get our students to slow down a little bit has been challenging, because that’s not the cultural milieu, or the zeitgeist of the time.
I will get on my soapbox and rant about neoliberalism a little bit, where this idea that we are here for career, we are here for a job, we are here to engage as economic engines really harms this idea of being in wellness, and just being a human being, not a human doing, to borrow from some mindfulness language, and some other philosophical orientations. Beginning to label the influences of neoliberalism, if I can get my PhD hat on, I think is important for us, because if we can’t label something, we can’t counteract something, we can’t push back against something, and that’s one that I will speak about. If there is another podcast about neoliberalism and higher education, count me in.
I think the other challenge that I have been sitting with, wellness can often be a colonized, White-centric, Eurocentric concept. Wellness for minoritized, marginalized student populations may not be what I’m thinking, or may not be the ways in which my cultural background leads me to think about wellness. If we have this orientation that wellness is sitting with mindfulness, wellness is going on vacation, wellness is these things that may require capital, financial or social otherwise, then we’re missing a huge chunk of what wellness looks like, and being able to meet those challenges with our students and all of that that they carry, and all the pieces that they bring with them. I think a curricular approach meets those challenges because there at the core of it is this foundational thoughtfulness of, who are we working with at our institutions directly?

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, it’s just an amazing perspective, because I think that acknowledgement of wellness looks different for everybody. That’s been, I think, a dialogue that a lot of folks have struggled with. there’s always the joke about, “Oh, self-care or whatever else, it’s just a bubble bath and a bottle of wine,” and it’s like, “Yeah, it can be,” and it can also be, like you were saying, from a professional perspective, a working person, and it’s just like, “If I could just take a day to catch up on things around the house, or know that I have that to book some appointments that I need to go to,” that’s awesome. Just getting stuff off your mental to-do list, or very visible to-do list that’s taunting you from your kitchen or something, where it’s just like, “I’ve got all these things that are just sitting there, and I just don’t feel like I have the time, or the energy.”
It can be very adaptive, very personal, very cultural, all those things that you mentioned, and certainly, organizations, from a professional staff member or student staff member, it’s like, “How do we make space for that, try to encourage it and all of that?” But then, just that point of trying to achieve that is important, because this is taxing, complex work to nurture and facilitate the wellness of others, take care of other people. You need to make sure that you are in a good enough place to do that, and never expect that things aren’t going to be hard, and stressful and all that, but for as much as you’re enduring that, you would hope to have a release valve at the other end. That’s the language I often use, where it’s just like, “Yeah, I’ve got some pressure building up.”
For me, it’s play some video games, take the pressure off a little bit, and then I’m good to be the more patient and empathetic and sympathetic person that I always strive to be. The big takeaway is that idea of, student staff and professional staff wellness should be just as important as just the resident wellness and everything, and that you need to keep a very open mind about the wellness that you are working to foster for other people, and certainly, just be open to suggestions and ideas, and certainly field a diverse body of people that are working on your student staff, working on your professional staff, that can really help certainly inform this, I imagine. I guess that builds upon that, if that’s something that you’ve seen to be effective, tips that you have for others looking to improve student wellness in the residence halls.

Sean Watson:
One of the things I value about a curricular approach, it lets us communicate what we are trying to do really clearly with campus partners. I think this piece fits into that paradigm pretty easily, that we shouldn’t work in isolation. Residence Life is not health promotion, Residence Life is not student wellness. We should be working with health promotions, or whatever the office is on your campus, to engage in that space, and that, under the umbrella, also counts in counseling services, or university health services. Wherever health and wellness sit at your institution, they should be active partners. I’m blessed that our health promotions office at my institution is fairly curricular. I’m not sure if they would’ve labeled it a curricular approach, but have gone through and thoughtfully put out, what is the aim? What are the learning outcomes? What are the strategies by which we are going to meet these pieces?
One of the strategies they offer is doing a wellness review for different programs by other departments at the institution. I asked them to review RA training in terms of wellness, and that was a really illustrative, really beautiful example of how we can partner with other campus offices to engage in this work, and have them feel invested in Residence Life while us investing in them. I think, start weaving it in. If you create a wellness strategy, and have it be a standalone strategy, you’re going to fall short. As I think about where we’ve been able to, and I’ve already talked about weaving in wellness to RA training, weaving in wellness to professional staff training, and being thoughtful how we’re using our time in those spaces, I previously mentioned the importance of RA one-on-one conversations beginning to weave into the guided connections, or intentional interactions, this idea of wellness.
Our RAs asking questions about this, and are asking not just, are you good? Are you feeling okay? But asking deep, meaningful questions that get to, what does it look like for you to be well? What does it look like for you to be well after college, when you’re engaging in your professional career, and in this work? I think having this be a context, or a piece of all the things we do is going to be really important, to have it to be fully integrated and not just a standalone, or, “Oh yeah, there’s that piece, I’ve done that.” Nope. You need to have it be part of this. The other theoretical box I would put around wellness, and there’s lots of dialogue, particularly in student affairs right now, around being trauma-informed, and this idea that our concept of trauma has changed. I think trauma used to be a singular, tragic event that someone might have post-traumatic stress disorder around, or there’s something that happened, when we now know that the box has cracked open on what trauma means.
One could have environmental trauma, one could have racialized trauma, one could have generational trauma. Our students are coming to us, and we are coming to the work with lots of these traumas packed in and shaping how we view the world in a lot of different ways. Actively integrating trauma work into this space allows us to think more critically. It’s not just a take time off, or a surface-level piece, but acknowledging the humanity with which we come to our work, and being able to package it in that way. There’s lots of resources out there around trauma-informed work, but that’s one piece that I have seen elevating in the discourse around student affairs for the past couple of years, and would want to use this platform to further that.

Dustin Ramsdell:
We’ll make sure to wrap up, if you want to give a tip of the hat, and shout out to any particular resources we can include, make sure we give some time and space for that at the end. You mentioned again, that one-on-one conversation piece, and I think that’s something that really is resonating. Back when I was an RA, and that was over 10 years ago, and I think a lot has even changed in that time, but there was so much of an emphasis around… from being an RA, supervising RAs, and just that few years after I got into the world, there was so much emphasis on programming events, and workshops, and this and that. Again, they have their place, but it certainly would be a lot to ask the student staff members to be putting on just a massive amount of programs at any given time.
That idea that the one-on-one conversations can be very a integral part of this student wellness piece when it comes to residential curriculum, because I think that’s oftentimes where a lot of magic happens. It’s just two people that do have a relationship, some sort of affinity, some sort of respect, and certainly, you’d imagine it as a near-peer, mentor kind of relationship that the RA would very much be able to speak the language, and understand what this resident student is going through. We’re not expecting them necessarily to be counselors or anything, and you did mention, you want to make sure that you’re doing this work in partnership with those organizations, and find those moments where it’s like, “I want you to get the best service possible. I think I’m getting a little bit out of my depth here. Let’s point you to the direction of the best resource.”
That’s kind of like mental health first aid, that ability to at least identify and triage, being like, “Oh, it really seems like you’re really just not being able to manage your time well. I could actually maybe give you some resources, see how that works, and then we’ll go from there.” But then, if it’s like, “You seem to be struggling with depression, or a variety of things,” that really should go to someone else, but that individual resident student who is struggling does not have to navigate the bureaucracy of a college campus. They can have, potentially, someone right there in front of them talking with them, and being very compassionate, and considerate, and supportive.
I think the idea that it’s not on Residence Life alone as a department to be solving this problem, really leverage those partners, and just really integrate that utility, and resource of your RAs to have those one-on-one conversations, and do that as a complimentary piece to the programming and all that, that might be going on elsewhere. I think now, we started at 30,000 feet, we’ve just dug deep, and we are at the gooey warm core of this conversation of, what makes this work so important? We’ve talked a lot about just all the nuances and complexity, and the ideas, the ways to confront it and everything. What, to you, makes this work so important?

Sean Watson:
I think, as you were summing up my last piece, one of the pieces that I think I don’t know that I fully clearly communicated, a lot of the times, wellness work is reactive. Wellness work should and needs to become proactive as well. I think there is this space that this work has felt important because we are unwell. This work is important before we are unwell as well, and being able to put forward that we should have, at the beginning, and this is an idea of universal design, if your space is trauma-informed, it is informed in that way for everybody, and being able to set up campus environments that are designed for wellness and healing, those two pieces being two sides of the same coin.
I also think this work is really important as we look culturally, that there is a wellness challenge broadly. I got into student affairs, I got into education because I wanted to be a resource, and a supportive person for my students, and I want to build a better world. Beyond higher ed, I am involved in nonprofit boards, I’m involved in my community in really strong ways. When I see people who have engaged in this work outside of higher ed, I’m like, “You didn’t get good education what it means to be well. You had this push through, push through, push through.”
As I look at higher education being an incubator of change for culture, or society writ large, we need to have this conversation, because it’s not just our years with a student. It has a lasting impact. I also think this work is important, and for me, this is that soft, gooey piece, it’s human. It acknowledges humanity. If I ever felt like I was a cog in the machine, or a piece of a broader sub-system that was just doing and performing, I would feel depleted. I want to feel alive, and holistic, and able to be my true self in this space. By having people be their true selves, you’re engaging in wellness work. That’s just really, really squishy, and qualitative, and human, but I want to sing Kumbaya. That is a dorky statement. Edit that out if you want to. I think that’s really important for us, to think that we can’t do this work perpetually. We can’t keep doing this work if we aren’t thinking about how we are building toward a broader, better culture.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I absolutely agree, and appreciate the earnestness, and just that whole vibe. I think you would hope that you can, at a space that feels safe, and a place where you’re meant to grow and learn, develop and all that, whether you’re a traditional aged or adult learner, that idea, embarking on an academic journey is that space where you, as an institution, hopefully could model the way of… you’re saying getting them into a place where you’re proactive around your own wellness, to an extent. There’s always going to be things that happen unexpectedly, and you have to react, and address those. I think that is, for me, something I’ve realized over many years in therapy and things like that. You go when things are good so that you can cope with things when they’re not. If you can help to instill things like that, just a good wellness lifestyle, and a good cycle to be in, even the idea of, you go to the gym to stay healthy, and avoid getting sick, or going to the hospital, just that mentality around our mental health, and mental wellness.
I think it’s really exciting to see that motivation that you have. I think that we’re getting towards a moment of not having to be so reactive, that moment we’re seeing, where we’re just overwhelming campus wellness services, because everybody’s sure stressed around the same time of the semester, or the same time of year. Here in mid-Atlantic, people get seasonal affective disorder. They’re probably all going to be trying to utilize resources at the same time, but if you can level that off, and get to a culture where people are just more consistently going as part of a wellness routine, I think that’s something where you can take up that opportunity as an institution to try to help foster that.
I just really appreciate all that you said, all the great perspectives, and experiences and everything, and like I said, I wanted to make sure I gave you, if you wanted to call out specific resources that you want share. Certainly, you don’t to do a whole reference sheet here, we can follow up afterwards to get things to include, but anything in particular, any certain resources that you want to make sure that you share out to folks on this topic?

Sean Watson:
I was joking with a friend recently that my love language is giving books, so this question feels very natural. Three books that I will articulate early on, I mentioned Trauma-Informed Approaches, Cultivating Trauma-Informed Practice in Student Affairs, the book that came out in October this past year, by Dr. Tricia Shalka, is certainly one that I think a lot of people are having conversation on. If I’ve been on a Zoom call recently, and I mentioned it with somebody at a different college, they pull the book from next to them, and show it, “Yes, I have this book right now.”
The other book that I will talk about is Full Catastrophe Living, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Jon Kabat-Zinn is one of the founders of American Mindfulness. Many people have also read his book Wherever You Are, There You Are, or in that frame. Jon Kabat-Zinn, full Catastrophe Living, is also very interesting, and a good, short read, very practice oriented. Another one that I picked up thinking I was going to get some self-help, but then, really got a transformative reading out of it, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, really allowed me to think about how I’m slowing down, and what is the economy, what is the culture doing to push me away from wellness and come back to, what am I really trying to do? What are my root intentions in the world?

Dustin Ramsdell:
A resource that I had an epiphany on when you were sharing yours, of just like, “Oh, books and everything,” I am not a very avid reader, so to say that I read a book that I thoroughly enjoyed, read all the way through, an actual book, most of my reading, I do stuff on social, news articles or whatever else, I’m a big podcast guy, and just love listening to those. This book came out a couple of years ago. It’s not as much tactical, I guess, of some of the resources that you’d mentioned, but I feel like would be somewhat complimentary, I guess. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, it’s about a therapist, her therapist, and just therapy in general. I think, just that idea of really examining deeply that idea of helping others, being helped, all of this being deeply human, just the way that we navigate the world, really interesting stuff. I’ll just leave that one there, and see if that resonates for folks as well.

Sean Watson:
I’m glad you mentioned that one. I was going to say, a resource, go to therapy. And then, speaking personal experience, I was really bad about student affairs-ing my therapist, of being like, “Oh, yeah, let me make the attention about you. Let me focus on your wellness.” I’m like, “Go to therapy, and actually let yourself be vulnerable, because I did not.” My personal warning.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, and I think that’s a tendency that people have with their personal relationships, where it’s just like, “I know too much. I have the burden and the curse of knowledge. I can’t help it. I’m sorry.” That is something, especially in a space like that. I remember, I think that’s somewhat of what the book acknowledges, is the idea that this therapist has a therapist, and just that journey that she goes on. I think that is a great resource, a great tip, a great piece of advice, go to therapy, then actually go to therapy. Put the emphasis on go. Like I said, this is, I think, one in a probably just ongoing series, many series that I feel like I’ve tried to identify, where it’s talking to people about the way they navigated their careers, or this, where it’s like, “Okay, residential curriculum, but focused on wellness primarily.”
It’d be hard, I think, for any one institution necessarily to be doing all the things all the time. I think, like you said, you want to go through maybe that discovery process around your students, and certainly, what your institution’s priorities are, and their culture and everything. For the folks out there that are interested in exploring this, and integrating it into their practice, just really appreciate you hanging out, talking about it, and giving all the resources, and advice, and support, encouragement to embark on that journey. I appreciate you hanging out, and sharing all that you did.

Sean Watson:
Yeah, I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.