Project Lead: Anthony Back, Professor — School of Medicine, Seattle

We will be offering a two-day Search Inside Yourself program, developed at Google, which provides training in mindful leadership and emotional intelligence. Since this program has been extensively developed and tested, we will be evaluating feasibility, interest in the UW community, and potential for sustainability in our project. So much of the motivation behind the pursuit of medical training is the opportunity to positively impact the lives of others. We want to help ensure that we are also taking care of ourselves and each other in a way that enhances our capacity to be good at what we love.

Project Lead: Jane Compson, Associate Professor, Politics — Philosophy and Public Affairs, School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Tacoma

I will be offering my CARE training, which gives people an introduction to self-care literacy and practice. CARE stands for Compassion, Awareness, Resilience and Empowerment.  In facilitated groups, we learn some helpful practices in the context of a supportive community, and have access to more information and resources about how to increase well-being and prevent burnout.  The Seed Grant will enable me to offer this training to staff and students at the Center for Equity and Inclusion at UW Tacoma. In general terms, I hope that the CARE training will help to develop UW Tacoma into an even more compassionate and supportive community, where emotional and academic intelligence are deeply valued and nurtured. Specifically for this project, I am hoping to offer support to the staff and students who work in the Center for Equity and Inclusion. They are immersed in providing support and advocacy for social justice on our campus. This work can be exhausting, and self-care is vitally important to sustain it.  I am hoping this project will be of service to this group and that feedback and perspective they provide might help to tweak the CARE training for the future to be of maximum effectiveness for people working in social justice fields.

Project Lead: Kelly Edwards, Associate Dean — Student and Postdoctoral Affairs in the Graduate School; Professor — Department of Bioethics and Humanities, School of Medicine, Seattle

We are inviting faculty to join with us, starting with two months of guided experience that will begin to shape our network and connections, and moving into a 1.5 day retreat where the next phase of our work together will become visible.  We draw upon emergent strategies, embodied wisdom, science of mindfulness-based stress response, and deep presence practice. Our hope is that our immediate practice community of 40+ faculty will form a network of change leaders, working from where everyone is uniquely standing. From there, we can live into the vision of what is possible for ourselves, for UW, for healthcare, for research environments and higher education. As a faculty member, I want to bring more awareness, more open-heartedness, more creativity into my leadership and social change work.  Let’s practice together!

Project Lead: Anil Coumar, Clinical Assistant Professor — Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, Seattle

We are offering 6-week training sessions that will provide a supportive space and structured guidance through which students will engage in mindfulness meditation and inquiry practice. The goal is to remove barriers to experiencing happiness by reducing anxiety, cultivating self-compassion, and questioning assumptions that feed negative thoughts. It is our hope that training sessions of mindfulness meditation and inquiry will prove to enhance students’ compassion and resilience.

Project Lead: Sujata Pradhan, Associate Professor — Rehabilitation Medicine, School of Medicine, Seattle

Our goal is to creating inclusive learning environments for all participants. To accomplish this we propose to partner with Theater for Change to actively engage our current students in an open dialogue about equity issues surrounding race, culture, socioeconomic status, gender and gender identity and disability. The Theater for Change (TfC) uses interactive and participatory theater to advance community dialogue and address issues related to classroom and institutional climate about race, equity, disability. The group will develop a new play with input from our students with a lived experience of equity issues that they may have faced in the learning environments. For example, one of our Native Alaskan students shared with us simple ways we could improve the experience for diverse students, and we would like to share this with other faculty and students as we build a culture of inclusion on campus. The new play created through this process will add to the TfC repertoire for use with other groups and departments on campus who may have students with similar experiences. With the interdisciplinary nature of health care, we believe that several disciplines (social work, nursing, pharmacy, physician/nursing assistant programs, speech and communication science etc.) may find our scenario insightful and relevant to their own group of students. By actively engaging in creating scenarios that are directly applicable to their practice as future clinicians, they will be able to experience the process of identifying the common humanity and diversity within the human experience in both the classroom and clinic.

Project Lead: Alyssa Taylor, Senior Lecturer — Bioengineering, College of Engineering and School of Medicine, Seattle

Our knitting circle activities will include producing toys and other objects for children in the hospital. Students will gain an appreciation for other people’s experiences and challenges. Giving back to the community is a reflection of our values as a University, and will help students gain a perspective on hardships they may be facing themselves. By meeting weekly, UW students, staff, and faculty will form a supportive bond uniquely cultivated through a creative and philanthropic outlet. Our hope is that this project will help foster connectedness, belonging and community. There can be a degree of isolation among students, faculty, and staff. An important part of a positive learning environment is to have a sense of community and support, as well as a creative and positive outlet to balance the demands of the curriculum. This can be created through the Knit for Nice, as members of the University, in all capacities, can join to work for a common good.

Project Lead: Beck Tench, Ph.D. Student — The Information School

We will be creating a map of restorative spaces on UW-Seattle’s campus. On one side of the map, icons will lead you to different types of restorative space (spots that are ideal for solitude, deep study, intimate conversation, access to nature, or being quiet together). On the other side of the map, descriptions of various contemplative practices will help you use those spaces to be compassionate to self and others. To create the map, we will 1) create a framework for restorative space on our campus, 2) select sites that qualify as restorative, 3) vet the sites, 4) design and distribute the map, and 5) evaluate it through surveys and interviews. One of my favorite quotes is by the writer, Annie Dillard. It goes, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” I hope a map of restorative space will be one tool in a growing collection that invites and enables the UW community to spend at least part of their days and hours being restful and contemplative, loved and loving. I hope this project will help UW be a “compassionate university” — a place where we regularly practice compassion and see others doing the same.

Project Lead: Marissa Jackson, Master of Public Health student — School of Public Health, Seattle

The prevalence of loss among college students has often gone unnoticed, leading to this population being named the “forgotten grievers”. The goal of the Resiliency Collective is to ensure that they are not forgotten by cultivating resources for bereaved students, engaging successes and hardships in one’s grieving journey as an opportunity to support others, fostering a sense of community among bereaved students and embracing the diversity within the student experience of grief and loss. It is my vision that the Resiliency Collective will be an avenue of social and emotional support for undergraduate and graduate students who experience loss. Additionally, I hope this project will serve as a starting point to strengthen the support systems that UW can offer to students who are grieving.

Project Lead: Michelle Lam, Resident Physician — School of Medicine, Seattle

We will be holding ‘wrap sessions’ for resident teams at the end of one of our most challenging inpatient rotations, one in which we care for patients who often face incredible socioeconomic and systemic barriers to good health. These sessions will be led by attending physicians and will be an opportunity to share positive feedback, to celebrate successes, and to find community and inspiration in the losses that we also suffer with our patients. Our hope or vision for the project is to bring a capacity for reflection, wisdom and compassion to how we work with each other and all those we could influence, both inside and outside UW.

Project Lead: Gregory Heller, Adviser, Senior Associate Director, MBA Career Management — Foster School of Business, Seattle

We are going to create a few episodes of a podcast that will focus both on sharing stories of resilience and self-compassion, as well as techniques and practices that students can use to cultivate a resilient mindset. We believe that these episodes, while targeted at our population of MBA students, will be helpful to all students on campus. I hope that students listen to these episodes and learn something they otherwise wouldn’t have learned, and that it helps them achieve their career goals.

Project Lead: Jen Balkus, Assistant Professor — Department of Epidemiology, School of Medicine, Seattle

Our team will be hosting two events to further promote resilience and compassion within our Department. The first event is a welcome event specifically for underrepresented minority (URM) epidemiology students during the School of Public Health’s and Department of Epidemiology orientation week. We believe hosting an event specifically for URM students will improve utilization of Department, School, and University services when/if students need future support and demonstrates just one of the ways that the Department is committed to the success of URM students. The second event will be a‘Back-to-School’ open house for students and key support individuals in the lives of Epidemiology students, faculty, and staff. The goals of the open house are to build bridges between the work, school and home communities that our students, faculty, and staff straddle and develop understanding and compassion between these two communities. The proposed events bring together all those in our Department to foster more connectedness within our epidemiology family. We hope that these events will allow for our faculty, staff, and students to feel more supported and connected as they move through their careers in our Department.

Project Lead: Alice Pederson, Lecturer — School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Bothell

We will be hosting a one-day retreat/workshop in Spring 2019 on the UWB campus for students, staff, and faculty, developed in collaboration with the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education. The theme of the retreat, “Self-Care is Revolutionary: A UWB Retreat for these Times,” addresses the need to create community and support for reflection and compassion, especially in difficult political and social times. On a campus that is as quickly growing, active, and diverse as UWB, we hope that this workshop will offer participants a day of clarity and reflection. We will have the opportunity to gather as a community, and to reflect on both our own positionalities and experiences, as well as our shared values and goals. As Project Leads, our overarching goal is that participants leave the retreat feeling inspired by the discussions and practices offered; connected with like-minded community; and supported in their on-going self-care and justice projects.

Project Lead: Brittany Bowhall, Student Advocate for Sexual Assault, Relationship Violence, Stalking, and Harassment — Health and Wellness, Division of Student Life, Seattle

In 2018-2019, we will be offering a trauma-Informed yoga class, a unique opportunity for survivors to heal in a way that feels accessible, and without ever having to share their story. The trauma informed yoga program uses empowerment-based language and works to integrate more choices in postures, breathing, lighting, room set-up, music, and props. There are no physical assists, and teachers are trained to support students through triggers as they arise by providing them with tools for self-regulation, processing, and coming back to the present. The hope/vision for Trauma Informed yoga is to create a first entry-point for survivors to seeking care. We hope that participants feel that their body is their own, a renewed strength, confidence, self-love, and a sense of empowerment.

Project Lead: Jennifer Best, Associate Professor — General Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, and Jennifer Zumsteg, Assistant Professor, General Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, Seattle

We will pilot an 8 week self-compassion curriculum for physicians-in-training and health sciences faculty that utilizes visual journaling and narrative. We will share participants’ journeys toward self-compassion in an artistic exhibit for the broader community.We hope to break down Health Sciences silos, foster vulnerability and combat isolation in clinical practice and education, cultivate peer communities and curate stories of self-compassion to sustain our community.

Project Lead: Lauren Updyke, Assistant Director — The Whole U, Bothell, Seattle and Tacoma

Raise the Bar empowers departments and teams across all UW campuses and medical centers to create a healthier community through five main focus areas: being active, eating well, managing stress, cultivating kindness and compassion, and building community. Our hope is that teams and departments create and maintain a supportive environment that leads to a healthier lifestyle while becoming even more connected with each other.