Collaborating with Academic Staff to Improve Student Mental Wellbeing
It's not always easy for those working in mental wellbeing in universities to reach students in need. Many students who may be struggling with their mental health may not reach out to support teams within their institution. For those that do reach out, limited resources and time for mental health teams can act as a barrier to providing adequate support.
As the University Mental Health Charter notes, academic staff are the only guaranteed point of contact in the student lifecycle.
Clearly, then, academic staff occupy a frontline role when it comes to student experience. Their regular contact and communication with students provides them with opportunities that mental health teams lack, such as identifying early warning signs of poor or worsened mental health.
Despite this, joined up mental health initiatives that bring together academic and professional staff are not always present in wellbeing agendas.
In this blog article, we explore three examples of innovative practice that see academic and professional staff work together to improve student wellbeing. These initiatives form part of an institution-wide approach to mental health, which brings together intellectual life and personal development to enhance student experience and deliver an integrated wellbeing agenda.
1. Defining Roles and Responsibilities: University of Edinburgh
2. Integrating Mental Health and Research Agendas: UCL
3. Using Digital Tools and Data: University of East Anglia
Defining Roles and Responsibilities: University of Edinburgh
While academics are often the first port of call for students struggling with poor mental health, many report ambiguity about their role when it comes to offering pastoral guidance.
Research which informed the University Mental Health Charter found that creating a clear and consistent definition of an academic’s role when it comes to mental wellbeing can have a positive impact on providing support.
The University of Edinburgh’s Project for Enhancing Student Support (PESS) provides academics with clearly defined responsibilities and tools to help them undertake those duties when it comes to mental health. The project saw the development of a new Personal Tutor System and a Student Peer Support System. These were coupled with the delivery of renewed Academic and Pastoral Support Standards and Guiding Principles, as well as IT tools and briefing materials to help staff and students.
Some key takeaways from this initiative are:
The project provides a support network for senior tutors to share practice and discuss common issues.
It was supported by a clear schedule published online, which detailed feedback mechanisms, training events and the evidence base for change.
The project participants contributed to other interventions across the institution, such as the Student Experience Project, which aimed to better understand and enrich student experience through the institution.
One major pitfall staff cited was the lack of a reward system for participating staff, which may result in poor staff engagement in the long term.
Designed by support services and intended to help academics deliver pastoral support, PESS is a great example of how academic and professional collaboration can enhance student wellbeing and outcomes.
Integrating Mental Health and Research Agendas: UCL
Many HEIs are research-oriented. So, for a university-wide approach to wellbeing to be impactful, it must speak to the institution’s research agenda.
Encouraging and collaborating on research projects that take mental health as their focus is an effective way to do this.
UCL’s PsychUP for Wellbeing initiative is an ongoing research project that strives to improve the mental wellbeing of university students and staff. The project focuses on the following key areas:
Co-producing services with students, who are included on the Advisory Board.
Attempting to fill gaps in the evidence base on supporting mental health.
Developing new guidelines on student mental health in partnership with external organisations.
Developing a 'Steps Model’, which constitutes a single framework to unite and connect all channels of support, such as university and NHS services.
Designing peer support schemes and wellbeing workshops to support students undergoing difficulties.
Delivering ‘University Clinicals’, which sees clinical psychological departments and university counselling services to improve mental health care.
PsychUP for Wellbeing is accompanied by a blog platform, which details key insights from the research in the form of articles and podcasts. Users can navigate the blog by filtering posts relevant to a range of different roles, including practitioners, researchers, students and senior leaders. Evidence published on the blog, such as advice on adapting therapy for students, can then be appropriated by professionals.
This project is a holistic intervention that brings together professional staff, academics and students to design and deliver effective mental wellbeing interventions. It demonstrates how aligning research and mental wellbeing agendas can increase collaboration across academic and professional spheres.
Using Digital Tools and Data: University of East Anglia
As blended learning becomes the norm across the sector, more students engage with academic life through digital tools than ever before. Research has shown that providing a mixture of in-person and online teaching can improve outcomes for students, offer greater flexibility, contribute to widening participation and remove barriers for non-traditional learners.
Institutions also point to the close alignment of engagement and wellbeing, with providers citing poor mental health as a significant barrier to student engagement and success.
This is where the data that academics have access to via digital teaching and learning platforms can inform university mental health services.
UEA’s Student Academic Engagement Process (SAEP) exemplifies how academics and student services can use data collaboratively to improve mental wellbeing and engagement simultaneously. It included the follow elements:
Collaboration between student services, a data team and academics
Monitoring attendance using QR codes in both online and in-person sessions
Developing a ‘fitness-to-study’ procedure to identify students experiencing issues at an early stage
Through this project, the university were able to collect a wider range of data about engagement and identify and contact students with early warning signs of poor mental health. They also believe that the project contributed to the high retention rates of underrepresented students during the pandemic.
The project found that monitoring student engagement within a mental health agenda is best undertaken by an interdisciplinary team. So, collaboration between academic and professional staff is key to delivering effective wellbeing initiatives for students. You might also consider sharing data and information on engagement to design and initiate projects that support students early on in their mental health journey.
Support services and academic staff both play pivotal roles in improving student experience and outcomes. The examples of innovative practice in student wellbeing explored in this article highlight how institutions are galvanising this shared purpose to deliver impactful and meaningful mental health interventions.
Some key questions arising for practitioners hoping to work more closely with their academic colleagues on wellbeing agendas are:
How can we clearly define the pastoral responsibilities of academic staff and provide them with sufficient resources?
How can we integrate mental health agendas with the research objectives of the institution?
How can we celebrate the mental health support that academic staff provide?
How can we embed wellbeing into the curriculum?
How can we use data on engagement to identify at-risk students?
