Successful Staff Ask for Help, Too

Last Monday, I posted over on higheredlifecoach.com about how successful students seek help. 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.

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.

I started my job as an academic advisor at a new institution two years ago. When I was interviewed, I remember being asked how comfortable I was asking questions of others. As with most jobs or new institutions, there was a huge 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) process to gather information that I knew my students needed, but that I didn’t necessarily have.

I am a full-time employee and I don’t have all of the information. I spend 40+ hours per week helping 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? 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.

Our campuses need to set the tone that it is okay, and actually encouraged, to ask for help. Perhaps that means launching a campus-wide “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 you are looking for ways of encouraging help-seeking behaviors in the shorter term, here are some of my ideas:

• Encourage students to find at least one person (faculty, staff, administration) on campus who they feel comfortable talking to, even about difficult issues. That one person might not be able to answer all of the student’s questions or solve all of his/her problems, but would at least be likely to be able to provide referrals to others who can continue to help.
• Find out what resources are available to students on your campus. If possible, know the office hours and location, and perhaps even the name of someone in that office.
• Keep pamphlets or fliers of available resources easily accessible to students. If there isn’t space in the office or on your desk, at least have them handy so that you could give one to a student if necessary.
• If you don’t know the answer or the appropriate office to refer to, ask someone else. If students see that even faculty and staff are willing to ask others, they may gain some courage to do the same in the future.

What have others done to encourage help-seeking on your campus? Please share your ideas or programs!

As Stacy Oliver pointed out in her blog post last week on the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog, we are often afraid of asking for help because there might not be someone there to help. We all know that we work in higher education to support students and that if a student asks for help, we will be there. Now we just need to figure out how to make sure that the students all know that!

Sarah Howard is in her third year of academic advising at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She advises students with majors in natural sciences, mathematics, and pre-health fields. Sarah completed her bachelor’s degree at Ashland University in Ohio with a double major in English and mathematics and a religious studies minor; she also holds a Master of Arts degree from Bowling Green State University in college student personnel. Her favorite colors are blue and orange. She can be found online at @howardsj or her blog at http://undecidedlyadvising.blogspot.com