{"id":1554,"date":"2010-08-23T08:30:46","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T12:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/higheredcareercoach.com\/?p=1554"},"modified":"2014-08-13T15:34:35","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T15:34:35","slug":"successful-staff-ask-for-help-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/higheredcareercoach.com\/staging\/2913\/successful-staff-ask-for-help-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Successful Staff Ask for Help, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Monday, I posted over on higheredlifecoach.com<\/span><\/a> about how successful students seek help.<\/strong> I suggested that students familiarize themselves with resources available to them on campus early so that they know where the appropriate offices are if they need them in the future. When I was working out some of the details about my post with Sean, he suggested that I might also give some ideas to higher ed staff and administrators about how we can help encourage help-seeking behaviors in our students.<\/p>\n

I don’t claim to be an expert on this subject, and I really would just like to start the discussion about setting the tone to encourage students (and perhaps even other faculty or staff) to ask for assistance when needed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I started my job as an academic advisor at a new institution two years ago.\u00a0When I was\u00a0interviewed, I remember being asked how comfortable I was asking questions of others.\u00a0As with most jobs or new institutions, there was a huge<\/strong> learning curve to overcome before I really felt confident meeting and talking about academic-related issues with students. I didn’t know where buildings are (I still have to refer to the campus map pretty frequently), I didn’t know the specifics of the curriculum, and I didn’t know what additional resources were available to our students. My office trained me on the curriculum throughout my first few months on the job, but much of the training about additional resources was left to me. I looked at every web site on our university’s “For Students” page. I attended brown-bag lunch presentations by a variety of people from across campus. Some of my colleagues and I set up appointments with various offices to get more information about the services they provided. It was a long (and ongoing)\u00a0process to gather information that I knew my students needed, but that I didn’t necessarily have.<\/p>\n

I am a full-time employee and I don’t have all of the information.<\/strong> I spend 40+ hours per week helping <\/em>students, and yet I don’t have anywhere near all the answers. So how or why do we expect our students to know where they should be finding appropriate resources? <\/em>At this point in my life, I have at least become comfortable with asking for help or for the answer to a question if I don’t know, but some of our students haven’t gotten there yet. For some, this is the first time that they may have encountered difficulty, either with their academics, personal life, or emotions. If they haven’t had to ask for help before, it can be a challenging thing to do, especially because first it means that they have to admit they don’t have it quite all together.<\/p>\n

Our campuses need to set the tone that it is okay, and actually encouraged, to ask for help. <\/strong>Perhaps that means launching a campus-wide\u00a0“Just Ask!” campaign, with posters highlighting campus resources, YouTube videos with plugs from the university president or high-profile student athletes, and a Twitter account to accept and respond to questions. A campaign of that size likely would take a lot of coordinating, but it could be really effective in the long-run. If\u00a0you are looking for ways of encouraging help-seeking behaviors in the shorter term, here are some of my ideas:<\/p>\n