December 2022/January 2023 ACPA Developments
Message from the Executive Director
I am beyond excited that this issue of ACPA’s Developments centers and amplifies case studies as tools for learning and practice. I am grateful to the many contributors who have shared their voices, perspectives, and experiences in bringing this issue together in such a powerful and practical way. Case studies offer each of us an opportunity to pause, to reflect, to imagine, to unlearn, and to learn new ways of approaching our views on both theory and practice. I hope that each of you will utilize these valuable resources in the new calendar year.
The time when we (hopefully) pause and reflect on the previous year, while setting our aspirations for the coming year is now upon us. I recently reviewed some scholarship on resilience that has left me continuing to reflect on my network of relationships that foster and support my own personal health and wellbeing. As we enter 2023, I ask you to join me in some self-evaluation on who within your networks or communities provides you with interactions that help you reset after setbacks. I understand the concept of resilience can be debated and/or troubling for some, but in sharing this resource my aim is to center the positive intention of recovery and healing for our mental and emotional wellbeing. When you read the questions below connected to the 8 top relational sources of resilience, who in your life comes to mind as being the person(s) who support you most (Cross, Dillon, & Greenberg, 2021)?:
- Empathy – Who provides you with empathic support so that you can release negative emotions?
- Humor – Who helps you laugh at yourself and situations?
- Perspective – Who helps you maintain perspective when setbacks occur?
- Politics – Who helps you make sense of the people or politics of a situation
- Purpose – Who reminds you of the purpose or meaning in your life and/or in your work?
- Pushback – Who helps you find the confidence to push back and self-advocate
- Vision – Who helps you imagine a path forward when it can be tough to find one
- Work surge – Who helps you shift work priorities or to manage surges?
The exercise of naming the people who serve these roles in your life is quite meaningful for you as well as to the other individual. According to Cross, Dillon, and Greenberg’s (2021) research, we need people in our lives who fill each of these categories. In this new year, in addition to refining our practice through reviewing the case studies provided in this issue, let us be intentional about how we create and communicate with these 8 important people in our network. Our work in higher education and student affairs is not getting any easier, so I hope we can be much more intentional about creating safe and caring spaces for us to focus on our own mental and emotional health.
Happy new year, ACPA!
Chris Moody, Ed.D.
ACPA Executive Director
Reference:
Cross, R., Dillon, K., & Greenberg, D. (2021, January 29). The Secret to Building Resilience. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2021/01/the-secret-to-building-resilience