COS Distinguished Speaker: Graduate Student Mental Health
Graduate Student Mental Health: What Faculty, Friends, and Family Can Do
Dr. Julie Posselt
Associate Professor of Education
University of Southern California
Abstract:
Stories and statistics abound about the struggles of graduate education and the risks for wellbeing that it poses to students. In this talk, Professor Posselt will explore root causes of mental illness among today's generation of graduate students, the unique barriers experienced by members of minoritized communities, as well as the proactive steps that faculty, friends, and family can take to provide support and challenge toxic norms within academia. Posselt will present research completed through a National Academy of Education fellowship on graduate student mental health, sharing findings from two studies: 1) A large-scale national analysis of 20,000 students' views on competition, discrimination, and support in relation to depression and anxiety, and 2) A qualitative study of the ways that doctoral students of color within STEM conceptualize faculty support.
Speaker Bio:
Julie Posselt is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Southern California. Her research examines organizational behavior affecting access to and equity in selective sectors of higher education, especially graduate education, research universities, STEM fields, and the professoriate. She earned her PhD from the University of Michigan, and today is Associate Editor of the Journal of Higher Education,and a member of two current National Academies consensus studies. Posselt was honored with the Association for the Study of Higher Education’s Early Career/Promising Scholar award, and also received the American Educational Research Association’s Early Career Award. She is the author of Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping (Harvard University Press, 2016), an award-winning ethnographic comparative study of faculty decision-making in doctoral admissions.
All are welcome!
To request an interpreter, please visit https://myAccess.rit.edu
Event Snapshot
When and Where
Who
Open to the Public
Interpreter Requested?
No