Thinking of Reworking my Essays into a Proposal for PASSHE 2023 DEI Summit
July 11, 2023
Please Note: This is a long post - it has updates of my application process and response from the selection committee.
Good evening beautiful people,
Hope your Tuesday got to a lovely start.
Mine was busy - and among the many things I did today was joining an info session for people thinking about submitting proposals to PASSHE 2023 DEI Summit. (If you are here for the summit info minus my long stories, scroll all the way down until you see the PASSHE logo).
I took four classes this past Spring semester - I have mentioned two of the four classes: Counseling Strategies and Personality Theories in this post.
The other two classes are Psychology of Racism and Sociology of Mental Health. I will be discussing the fourth class in this post. As the class title suggests, we looked at mental health from a sociological lens. Though a wide topic, we honed in on these six key topics - Deaths of Despair (deaths from suicide, overdose and alcohol), Caregiving (its gendered and unpaid nature), Work and Burnout (causes and what work really means to us in today's society), Gun Violence (and how social class affects which incidents are reported and which groups get support), Social Media (and the 'happiness effect'), and HIV/AIDs (and the nature of pandemics).
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| Sociology of Mental Health Midterm Paper with Professor’s comments - blame the ashy hands on the winter weather which dries my skin real bad (Feb 2023) |
Beside reading through six books in 14 weeks alongside additional short articles, giving two paragraph long answers three times a week on the readings and participating in class discussions three times a week, we had to write a five page empirical paper for our midterms and two papers for our end of semester exams (I will do another post with the list of books we read through and give some commentaries/reviews - update: click here to read the post).
For the midterm paper, we were to write about a mental health issue that we think is affecting students, and for the end of term paper, we were to 1)write about a topic we think should have been added to the six topics we covered, and 2)write about an entity e.g government body, schools, places of workshop or an enabler e.g technology (that is what I wrote about) that we think can help in solving all the issues we covered provide.
For all the papers, we were to provide empirical data to support our claims, show that the issue is a public issue (and not a personal one), mention some historical and/or geographical examples that support our claim, then propose evidence-based solutions.
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| Additional Comments on the same paper (Feb 2023) |
For anyone who is not sure how psychology differs from sociology, here is a simplified explanation. Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior while sociology looks how society is structured.
In short, psychology focuses on the person - who are they, how they behave and how they can be helped through an issue. On the other hand, sociology focuses on society - what it is made up of, what are its issues - present and historical, and what public structures can be used to help solve those issues. You can get more details about psychology through APA (which I talked about here). ASA (read more about it here) has additional information about sociology (there are of course many other bodies across the globe and in different regions and countries).
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| At the school library editing my end of term paper - Exam week snacks ranging from healthy to 'I am not a candy person but I do not care at this point' (May 2023) |
There are definitely areas of overlap between the psychology and sociology...I got lost in the in-between at times. My midterm paper, which looked at the issues international students go through when they move to another country, is a product of an in-between.
I experienced some of the things that I wrote about but had to share empirical data on the toll on their social and mental well-being on international students - that warrant it to be a public as opposed to a private issue (I hinted on some of those things on this post).
The main audience for my paper was institutions of Higher Learning and my argument was that they should go beyond the weekend of welcome and visa processing to make sure international students are well taken of through the duration of their studies.
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| Despite the printer cartridge's misbehavior and the stapler dying in my arms, I turned in my work on time...In other news, remember when I mentioned APA Style/Format? This is an example of APA Style cover page for student writing (May 2023) |
At the time I did not know how to think sociologically so that paper, though a final proposal, it looked like more of a very first rough draft when compared to my midterm paper.
I thought about this paper when I heard about the theme for this year's PASSHE DEI Summit, and started toying with the idea of restructuring it into a presentation for the Higher Ed institutions that will be participating.
PASSHE stands for Pennsylvania (PA) State System of Higher Education. It is more like an association/governing body for all public universities in the State of Pennsylvania. This body determines how much fees students pay, how much employees including student workers get and among many other policy and administration things.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is one of PASSHE's current focus areas. Every year, the DEI side of PASSHE hosts a summit that brings together faculty, students, staff, parents and the communities around the PASSHE schools.
This year's summit is on Nov 8-10, 2023 at Shippensburg University and registration is open (and free for PASSHE faculty, students and staff). The call for proposals is open until Sept 7th, 2023 with info sessions for anyone thinking of submitting a proposal being hosted today and on Aug 24, 2-3pm EST (Register here).
Once you submit your proposal, it will be reviewed and scored by three people in the review committee and feedback given by the 1st week of October, leaving a month for preparation before the Summit. Participants have the option of either doing;
1) research/lit review type presentation for 1 hour,
2) hosting a panel discussion 1h 45 minutes,
3) showcasing best practices for 1 hour,
4) poster presentation
As someone who has always given non-academic talks, this will be a new experience. I will definitely do follow up posts if I decide to submit a proposal.
If you are in a PASSHE school, and are interested in the topic of building community and wellbeing, consider registering or even presenting at this summit.
Sending love and light,
Sitawa
Update: Sept 13th
Got a notification at around 10am this morning from the PASSHE DEI App (downloaded it when I thought I'd be submitting a proposal) saying that today is the Last Day to Submit Proposals. The original deadline was last week and I had a lot happening so I let this one go...I did not know the deadline had been extended so I jumped on it when I was the notification. Spent my mid-morning putting together a proposal for my first poster (literature review) presentation...took a slightly different angle - Looking at Health Disparities and Help Seeking Behavior but the solution and everything else is more or less from my essays. Now to wait for the beginning of October to know if I am on the program (as usual, will keep you updated).
Update: Sept 25th
Got an email informing me that my proposal has been approved (I am super excited about this)...as usual, will give you updates along the way.
Update: Oct 3 + Nov 8
Program went up at the beginning of October...but logistics made it impossible for me to present.
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