July 2, 2022

2022-23 Resilience & Compassion Seed Grants Awarded

^{7/2/2022 – In collaboration with the Campus Sustainability Fund (CSF)}

We’re excited to announce the awardees of the fifth annual Resilience and Compassion Seed Grant cycle! In partnership with the Campus Sustainability Fund (CSF), the Resilience Lab has selected seven projects that cultivate resilience, compassion, and sustainability at the UW. Read below to find out more about this upcoming year’s exciting projects.

Addressing Career Anxiety for School of Urban Studies Students
Dr. Lisa Hoffman, Professor
Candy Acosta, Program Coordinator
^{School of Urban Studies, Tacoma}

The School for Urban Studies has developed a 2-credit independent study for Urban Design majors that targets the increased anxiety of many exiting students, partnering with local design and architecture firms to provide mock interviews and detailed feedback sessions to help prepare students for the workforce. “Many of our students are first in their families to attend college,” write Hoffman and Acosta, “and while they come with many assets, some also have had limited past experience with resume development, professionalized cover letters, or assembling a professional portfolio.”

This project aims to not only bolster the confidence of graduating students through project-based learning, but to close the racialized gap for post-graduation success, providing opportunities for first generation students and students of color to become integrated in the design workforce before they graduate.

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Critical Conversations Collective (CCC) Ecosystem
Kaleb Germinaro, Doctoral Student
^{College of Education, Seattle}

The Critical Conversations Collective is an interdisciplinary group of Black and Brown doctoral candidates on campus, offering space for students of color to participate in peer-to-peer mentoring and community building. The CCC aims to support doctoral students finishing their dissertations through writing groups, speaker events, and community celebrations.

“We cultivated this space in response to not feeling like we had spaces on campus, within our departments and colleges, for the discussions we wanted to be having,” writes Germinaro,  “specifically those that involved justice and intersectional scholarship.”

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Embodying Abolition
Dr. Tahtzee Nico, Director
Val Schweigert, Associate Director
^{Q Center, Seattle}

This project, led by the Q Center, aims to create a learning experience for students to deconstruct the systems of knowledge that support carceral structures, and to facilitate discussion about the role of intersectional identities in this work. In the process, sessions will explore antidotes to incarceration, including mutual aid, community care, and self-concept/esteem.

“We hope to create an imaginative and planning space in hopes of manifesting new futures”, write Nico and Schweigert. In addition to facilitated discussions, the Embodying Abolition project will include workshops for student projects, community volunteering opportunities, and a nature-centered retreat for participants.

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Undergraduate Academic Affairs (UAA) Race-Based Staff Caucusing
Kathryn Grubbs, Director of EEP and UW Academy
^{Robinson Center for Young Scholars, Seattle}

AJ Burgin, Assistant Director of Learning Resources
^{Student Athlete Academic Services, Seattle}

As a predominately white institution, the University of Washington has an ongoing need to forefront anti-racism in the University’s programs and systems. In response, the staff in the Undergraduate Academic Affairs department facilitated race-based discussions, both to provide BIPOC staff an opportunity for healing and to create a space for white staff to share struggles and challenge each other in unlearning white supremacy culture.

“While the direct experience of caucusing is for staff,” write Burgin and Grubbs, “we see it benefitting our work with students and the larger community at UW as we take our individual learning and reflection into our direct engagement with others and how we guide our programs and policies.”

Advancing Equity through Embodied Pedagogies
Tikka Sears, Director of Theatre for Change
Penelope Moon, Director
^{Center for Teaching and Learning, Seattle}

This project marks a starting point for the Institute of Embodied Pedagogies, a tri-campus cohort of faculty, staff, and graduate students that explores a diverse range of techniques for conflict resolution, community building, critical reflection, resilience, belonging, empowerment, and institutional change. The program emphasizes didactic skills that utilize the movement of bodies to facilitate learning, which increases student retention and instructor self-efficacy.

“Educators have few opportunities to collectively generate strategies with peers to create more inclusive and just academic environments,” write Sears and Moon, “and they rarely get to practice what they do or say in difficult situations involving oppression and privilege.” The Institute, still in its beginning days, aims to remedy this gap in pedagogy.

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Future Teachers of Color Organization
Andrea Carreno Cortez, Doctoral Student
Jazmen Moore, Doctoral Student
^{College of Education, Seattle}

Research has long shown that teachers of color often face institutional barriers to well-being and community during their teaching careers and that teachers of color are more likely than their white counterparts to leave the teaching field at higher rates due to burnout. This project aims to organize undergraduate students of color and prepare them for entering white-dominated institutions, which have historically been unsupportive of culturally-sustaining and transformative frameworks.

Through peer mentorship and undergraduate-targeted programming, the Future Teachers of Color (FTOC) Organization seeks to “build a community and network of racial/social justice-oriented peers, to practice navigating deficit language and ideas about communities of color.”

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College-High School Resilience, Outreach, & Wellbeing (CROW): Connecting Bothell and Bellevue
Dr. Kosuke Niitsu, Assistant Professor 
Christina Lai, Undergraduate Student
^{School of Nursing & Health Studies, Bothell}

This six-week pilot project brings together college student mentors and high school mentees both online and in-person, discussing techniques for resilience and well-being. Creating a conduit for high school students preparing to enter college, UW students will be trained as effective mentors then matched with their mentees, working through a resilience-based curriculum so that all participants are able to navigate and manage stress.

“If students are struggling with mental health, they cannot learn well in school,” writes Niitsu and Lai. This program connects the experience of trained undergraduate mentors to the needs of high-school students. 

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Do you have an idea that could revolutionize the way we think about resilience, compassion, or sustainability at the UW?