Addressing Students' Needs: Academically and Mentally

How does the higher education field stay relevant and future-focused to lead our organizations and students toward a brighter tomorrow? Higher education leaders in the field must strive to create an education system that seamlessly functions for all, transforming outdated and maladaptive systemic approaches to embrace the challenges students and faculty are facing, supporting the campus community in their current and future endeavors. 

Marcia Daszko, a catalyst for strategic innovation and leadership transformation with over 25 years of experience working with boards and leaders in numerous sectors, addressed higher education leaders and charges them to challenge and disrupt beliefs that are barriers to mentally healthy progress. In her keynote presentation at the recent Fierce Education Higher Education: Business and Leadership Summer Edition, Daszko challenged higher education leaders to transform the education system and thus the future for students. 

Educators must vigilantly evaluate the wide spectrum of data and input available to determine whether desired results are being achieved. Evaluation is then the inspiration for transformation and an opportunity to collaborate cross-functionally to enhance the education system for all involved. Traditionally, hierarchical education structures inhibit collaboration across departments and disciplines; therefore, leaders in the field must determine what parts need to work together to make the system beneficial for faculty and students alike. Therefore, needs for and barriers to support within the system must be identified and addressed, cycling through feedback and input to continue towards progress and transformation to better the campus community. 

According to Daszko, bridging the gap of access to mental health is vital in supporting students and faculty and thus ensure successful systemic functionality of the all moving parts within the organization. Leaders must ask: what is actively being done to support all within the system? Daszko highlights the pervasive decline of mental health of students in the past eight years, with a stark decrease in the past two years. Higher education leaders must begin looking at the whole student and determine where support can be provided, transforming the system to focus and prioritize the needs and wellbeing of students.

For instance, providing proper funding for the dissemination of mental health information, tackling stigma, and providing access to mental health services are ways in which higher education leaders can systematically transform the lives of students. Additionally, access to support and adequate training for faculty can alter the way student-facing staff interact with the campus community. 

Higher education leaders, according to Daszko, are responsible for creating interactive, meaningful, and creative experiences for all in the system. Leaders must create space for and encourage cross functional initiatives between students and faculty from various departments. When interdisciplinary teams come together, working towards a common goal, different perspectives are integrated in problem solving and true progress and transformation becomes obtainable. 

Daszko reinforces these ideas with the Strategic Compass, a tool developed for leaders to initiate transformation of their organization’s system. The Strategic Compass includes the following sentiments, which are cyclical and interactive:

  • Vision/Aim/Compelling Purpose: What are we trying to accomplish together?
  • Values: What do we stand for? What differentiates us? What makes us unique?
  • Methods/Strategies: By what methods will we achieve our aim? What resources will we need to support these methods?
  • Customers/members: Who are we serving - internal and external? What do they need and how do we know?
  • Measures of Progress/Success: How do we measure progress? How do we measure success? How is one system performing? 

Where the students and faculty define and provide feedback for the quality of the system, higher education leaders are directly responsible for the quality of the system. The role of leadership is creating an environment in which people are self motivated, and through strategic and continual improvement, innovation, effective and efficient communication, and prioritization of quality, leaders can move into system optimization.