Wellness

Introduction

Dear President Gutmann and Provost Pritchett, 

SCUE believes that student wellness is foundational to a successful collegiate experience at Penn. Through extensive surveys, focus group sessions, and conversations with our peers, it is clear that the undergraduate student body overwhelmingly agrees. As such, the body wants the Administration to consider adopting policies that promote student wellness both inside and outside of the classroom. Suggestions for such policies and practices comprise this section of the 2020 SCUE White Paper. The body believes that prioritizing wellness in the undergraduate community will enable students to have more fulfilling undergraduate years.

Creating and implementing such policies will involve considerable collaboration between faculty, administrators and students. The suggestions outlined herein seek to improve student wellness in a wide range of areas pertaining to student life, from more comprehensive advising to making academic resources more accessible. On behalf of the undergraduate student body, SCUE believes that moving towards these changes will create a stronger, more successful student body at the University.

Sincerely, 
Carson Eckhard, Wellness Chair
Class of 2021

Grading

Introduction

In a study conducted by the Task Force on Student Psychological Health and Welfare (an initiative of the President and Provost), the number one contributor to poor mental health on campus was found to be “stress caused by academics and drive for perfection.” According to Associate Director of Academic Advising and Assistant Dean for Advising Dr. Alice van Buren Kelley, some of this academic stress is a result of competitive curves–which students often experience for the first time as first years.

Status Quo

At Penn, certain classes are curved along a standard curve, where the number of students receiving a particular letter grade is set irrespective of the actual numerical score achieved on an assignment. Among the schools and departments, there are no published statistics on the number of curved classes or policies mandating a curve, though 34th Street magazine found that many of the introductory science, business, and math classes had curves in place.

In terms of defining its grading system, Penn lags when compared with our peer institutions. Since 2004, Princeton University had a cap on the number of A-grades each undergraduate class could award. However, due to student disapproval, Princeton abolished this cap in 2014; and at present, there are no plans to reintroduce it., With respect to this decision, Princeton’s Council on Teaching and Learning stated that “the best reasons to change Princeton’s grading policy have more to do with psychological factors and campus atmosphere than with any tangible effects it has on the prospects of our students.” This reasoning should be considered when examining the nature of Penn’s current grading system.

In an attempt to curb grade inflation, Yale University attempted to pass policy to deflate grades with standardized curves. This action, however, was met with significant student opposition in an effort to maintain wellness on campus. Yale subsequently decided to drop the proposal and maintain its system of grading.

Problem

Curves limit the number of high grades a given class can achieve. This means that a grade in a given class can be determined on a student’s rank among that class rather than their actual mastery of the course material. Nick Brown, a first year in Wharton said,“On a midterm in my Math 114 lecture, I scored a 95 percent on the test, yet the letter grade awarded to me was a B.” These curves are commonly cited as generating competition within the classroom, for students feel they need to beat out other students for a coveted “A”. Wharton professor Adam Grant wrote in a 2016 New York Times opinion article that he felt curves “[send] students the message that the world is a zero-sum game: Your success means my failure.” 

In addition, first-year students reported that they often “have no idea what the curve is [or] how it works. This can present an additional barrier to new students transitioning into college work and demands.

Solutions

In an effort to promote wellness and reduce competition on campus, Penn must reevaluate the place and role of standardized curves on campus. In light of the efforts of peer institutions, Penn should strive to ensure that the grading system employed by all schools is one that fosters collaboration, mental health, and a meaningful education. 

To accomplish this, SCUE advises the university encourages departments to:

1. Ensure all syllabi explicitly state how grades will be administered, whether it be through relative performance (e.g. the top 20-25% receive an A, the next 20% receive an A-, etc) or absolute performance (e.g. a 93+% is an A, a 90-92.99 is an A-, etc). While cut-offs are expected to change on a semesterly basis, providing historical curves can also improve transparency and ease stress. Additionally, the syllabi should state how flexible these policies are and if students can expect it to change.

2. Create policy that mandates professors release past curving distributions for the course and any exams on their syllabi so that they can be viewed during the add/drop period and offer students insights in the prior grading scales of the class.

3. Encourage departments which routinely grade along strict curves to institute a more flexible grading system in an effort to more accurately and objectively judge a students performance in relation to the subject material and not their class cohort.

4. Offer information to incoming first years on different types of grading systems. This could be facilitated through an online Thrive at Penn module required before New Student Orientation.

Looking forward to 2025

As the changes SCUE recommends are policy or initiative-based, the Body hopes to see action taken by the Provost’s Office to address curves by 2025. Institutional reviews on policies (such as those at Princeton) took less than five years to complete, and SCUE hopes this initiative can inspire the University.

Engagement With and Access to Mental Health Services

Status Quo

Penn has student groups that help address mental health issues. Penn Benjamins is a student-to-student counseling group trained by CAPS therapists and available to “share feelings and concerns.” Other groups attempting to address mental health at Penn include the Reach-A-Peer Helpline, Penn Reflect, and Project LETS (Let’s Erase the Stigma)., Additionally, there are specific initiatives for eating disorder recovery and for minority students such as Project HEAL: Help to Eat, Accept, and Live, and the Penn Initiative for Minority Mental Health (PIMMH).

However, many students rely on friends rather than professional Penn resources, either due to lack of availability or stress and stigma associated with seeking help. In addition, some students feel left behind by CAPS. Only 49 percent of students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I feel like all students have equal access to CAPS.” 23.5 percent either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement.

Problem

Even when available, this range of resources can be overwhelming. For example, often students’ identities intersect, making them unsure about which resource to utilize. Although Penn Wellness coordinates these student organizations, they may not be the most helpful tool in their current form. Princeton has taken a preventative approach, offering “Distress Awareness and Response Training” but also “Kognito At-Risk for Students,” a 30-minute online simulation that teaches students how to identify distressed individuals and aid them. However, many peer institutions (including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford) have similar initiatives to Penn that seem to have done little to improve overall wellness culture. This suggests that more action is needed. 

Access to mental health services remains limited. CAPS appointments are not readily available — sometimes, students have to make appointments three weeks in advance to secure a spot.  This increases the mental, social, and academic barriers of going to therapy.

Oftentimes, therapy also entails a mental barrier. Many students are unsure if they qualify to get help or do not want to engage in traditional therapy. Furthermore, many CAPS counselors are in training and their sessions are recorded for education purposes, which can increase student confidentiality concerns surrounding CAPS.

Recommendations

SCUE recommends the University to:

1. Create an online appointment scheduling system for CAPS. The system would allow students to better access treatment anonymously, potentially opening up more students to the help they need. By encouraging students to speak out, Penn’s culture around wellness could dramatically improve.

2. Formulate workshops on wellness and mental health for students. This will provide access to mental health resources to all students. To expand the scope of existing CAPS awareness training, a program like Princeton’s “Kognito At-Risk” should be implemented as a TAP module or a “Distress Awareness and Response Training” workshop should be a mandatory event during NSO. This would lead to more student awareness about mental health issues and about how to help others, how to facilitate discussion, and how to collaborate on wellness initiatives within the Penn community.

   1. These training sessions should be expanded to include faculty and teaching assistants. An awareness of mental health issues amongst faculty and teaching staff will further improve wellness culture and help professors understand the adverse effects academic pressure can have on students.

3. Hire more staff for CAPS to deal with the high demand for counseling. It may also be helpful to expand the CAPS opening hours as the 9am-5pm schedule interferes with classes, increasing academic barriers of seeking support.

4. Set clear guidelines around timelines for CAPS appointments. For example, Brown University guarantees an appointment within 24 hours, prioritizing the availability of therapy resources and helping students in distress. The body also recommends that Penn also adopt a policy of guaranteeing students appointments within 24 hours of contacting CAPS.

5. Increase CAPS’ long term capacity to ensure access to mental health resources for students who cannot afford off-campus options through direct CAPS expansion or partnership with outside providers.

Looking Forward to 2025

SCUE hopes to see reasonable steps taken in this direction, including allocating more spaces on campus for mental health support. Increasing student trust and utilization of mental health resources may also be a longer term goal, as this may involve deconstructing cultural stigmas for different student demographics. SCUE feels strongly, however, that this section is one that could be accomplished quickly, as long it has the support of University administration and financial support from the Trustees.

Wellness Spaces

Status Quo

Although Penn provides spaces for mental health treatment through Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and Student Health Service (SHS), most students agree these are inconvenient and not enough to meet student demand. Only 17.8 percent of students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I feel like Penn prioritizes the wellness of its students.” While improvements, such as permanently positioning a mental health clinician in Huntsman Hall, have been made, resources remain physically inaccessible.

Problems

Many students feel that while Penn attempts to promote privacy and confidentiality by moving CAPS and SHS off campus, this distance can discourage students from seeking help, especially in emergencies. Moreover, these spaces are not always available, restricting student ability to seek help in serious situations.

Recommendations

SCUE recommends the introduction of a centrally located, on-campus student wellness center open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, similar to what Duke University introduced as space for all students. As implemented by Duke, health-related campus services (such as student health, a pharmacy, CAPS, a meditation garden, and other services) all are under one roof accessible to all members of the university community. Other schools, such as Harvard University, introduced similar spaces in their fitness centers. Students in focus groups encouraged this, as it would make support more accessible. Such a center could also synthesize resources that already exist on campus, making them more accessible to students around the clock. An additional key goal is to open up the dialogue on mental health at this center, so students do not have to suffer alone.

Looking forward to 2025

SCUE hopes to see such a wellness center added, either as a standalone building on campus, or as a group of floors in a current building open for all students.

Green Study and Lounge Spaces

Status Quo

Green spaces on campus are increasingly scarce. These spaces, which can be used as substitutes for Group Study Rooms in warm weather, are scattered intermittently amongst campus walks, like College Green and High Rise Field.

Problem

The availability of these green study spaces is limited on campus, and decreases as new buildings are constructed. Green spaces offer a natural habitat for students to study and relax, integral to improving campus mental health.

In addition to on-campus green space, the Morris Arboretum is a very large, Penn-owned green space. However, because there is no simple or fast way to access it without a car, few students have ever been there.

Solutions

1. Considering College Green and High Rise Field are the main two concentrations of free green space, increasing the opportunities for utilizing the space would improve students’ experiences. Increasing the amount of benches, having an equipment center with yoga mats, hammocks, and picnic blankets would facilitate students taking advantage of the space.

2. SCUE recommends creating a shuttle to the Arboretum on weekends in the spring, summer, and fall to allow students easier access to this resource.

3. Moreover, there should be more productivity resources encouraging people to work outside, such as areas with outlets, strong Wifi, and sturdy tables.

Looking Forward to 2025

SCUE envisions that these changes will help to decrease the stress in finding study spaces on campus, while equalizing every student’s chance to book these spaces. The implementation of increased tools for utilizing outdoor spaces, as well as a shuttle for the Morris Arboretum will improve student wellness and enhance the experience of campus.

Printing on Campus

Status Quo

Students at many peer schools receive free printing quotas. After reviewing the printing policies of several universities, Penn was the only reviewed university that offers free printing to some undergraduates but not others based on their school of enrollment.

At present, Penn students receive the following printing credits: 

• Students in the College: must pay for their printing through PennCash. Students pay per page.

• Students in Wharton: receive $20 printing credit per semester for printers in Huntsman Hall.

• Students in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS): get free printing up to $20 for printers in the Towne or in Moore buildings.

• Students in Nursing: must pay to print per page.

The other universities we reviewed typically gave all students at least some free printing quotas. A notable exception was Stanford, which cut back on free printing in 2015. Of the schools reviewed, notable printing policies are below.

• Temple University: assigned printing credits based on a student’s credit hours, with nine or more hours equaling 300 sheets.

• Cornell University: now offers free printing after finding that four of eight Ivies do so. Beginning this fall (2019), undergraduates at Cornell received a two hundred page printing credit, equivalent to approximately $20 per student.

• St. Joseph’s University: offers students 200 free pages of printing.

• The University of Michigan: despite having a far higher enrollment than many of Penn’s peer schools, offers $24 of printing, and allows students to print from their personal electronic devices.

Problem

Students in the College and nursing raised this school-based inequity during focus groups.  Even with efforts to reduce paper usage and increase recycling, the need for some things to be printed remains (including classes which require assignments to be handed in on paper.) In addition, devices used as a substitute for printed materials (such as tablets and stylus-enabled laptops) can be expensive and extended reading from computer screens have been found to be detrimental to eyesight and reading comprehension.,

Solutions

SCUE recommends Penn give students in all schools equal access to printing credit and suggests $20 per student per semester for all schools. While Wharton and SEAS limit free printing to their buildings, SCUE hopes school-wide credit would allow for credit to be used on any printer on campus. While SCUE recognizes Penn’s goal to become more environmentally conscious via the Penn Climate and Sustainability Action Plan 3.0, the Body believes that printing credit is an essential tool which should be open to all.

Looking forward to 2025

Moving forward, SCUE believes that the implementation of equal printing capabilities and allocations will reduce the inequities between different schools and promote greater cross-school interactions.

Group Study Rooms

Status Quo

Group Study Rooms (or GSRs) are one of the hottest commodities at Penn, a beneficial meeting space for anyone doing group work. Throughout our focus groups in the spring of 2019 students outside of Wharton expressed concern over the lack of group study rooms. It appears that Penn is unique in restricting access to GSRs to students based on their undergraduate school. For example, Dartmouth College does not restrict access to study spaces based on the undergraduate school.

Problem

Given that Penn has a total undergraduate population of approximately 10,000 undergraduates, with Wharton students comprising only about 25% of that total, a supermajority of Penn undergraduates have significantly restricted access to group study spaces relative to their peers in Wharton. Huntsman Hall has 57 group study rooms, all of which can only be booked by students enrolled in the Wharton School. In total, Penn has 106 group study rooms that students can book online. Their locations are as follows:

In total, Penn has 106 bookable small group study spaces (including the booths in Weigle Commons). Of those, the majority are located in Huntsman, and are only available to Wharton students. Many non-Wharton students feel like they lack access to GSRs, which provide a convenient, quiet place to do group work. Students at Penn echoed this sentiment both in our focus groups and in feedback forms.

"My time at Penn is permeated by a consistent need for private, centrally-located, and technologically-equipped group study spaces. I am assigned numerous group projects for my classes, and I am often in charge of coordinating meeting spaces for my clubs. These responsibilities are typical for most non-Wharton Penn students, yet we find ourselves systematically and frequently encumbered by the discriminatory practice of Wharton-only GSR access. The group study spaces available to non-Wharton undergraduate students are both scarce and inferior. Compared to the study spaces gifted to Wharton students, those relegated to non-Wharton students are located significantly farther away from most student housing, are significantly smaller in size, often are not even private spaces, and lack the same caliber of technology. Allowing all students equal access to all bookable study spaces would augment the ability to coordinate, collaborate, and work effectively with other students. This, in turn, would significantly enhance my ability to meaningfully engage with my coursework and extracurriculars."

– Sarah Simon, Class of 2021

Solution

SCUE believes that increasing access to GSRs across all schools will promote student wellness by giving all Penn students convenient places to study. 

SCUE recommends:

1. Penn provides equal access to GSRs for students in all schools. Doing so would improve student wellness by improving access and equity. 

2. Penn adds GSRs that are accessible to all students to new buildings on campus or refurbish existing GSRs that lack the current caliber of technology seen in Huntsman Hall.

Looking forward to 2025

The body thinks that implementing these solutions will help to send a strong message that the University values the education of all undergraduates equally.

Syllabi

Status Quo

In 2017, SCUE wrote “Holistic Education: An Analysis of the Status Quo and Recommendations for the Future,” which devoted a section to the role of syllabi in students’ wellbeing and their understanding of the material. Not only are syllabi contracts of expectations, but they also serve as a communication mechanism between instructor and student.

Problems

Students note that there are often hidden monetary costs in courses that pop up without expectations. Additionally, syllabi can be unclear on makeup policies, the process of assigning letter grades, and time expectations. They often refer to Penn Course Review’s difficulty ratings to gauge time expectations and grading, but that figure is only on a 1-4 scale with no context, and course evaluations are completed before grades are seen, so the difficulty rating is not a proper substitute. Lastly, syllabi are often not available online during advanced registration, making it more difficult for students to understand the syllabus, and subsequently the course, before enrolling.

Solutions

SCUE recommends instructors include the following specific approaches in the syllabi and reiterate them on the first day of class and that syllabi have greater and earlier availability.

SCUE recommends that syllabi include:

1. Course costs
   Syllabi should delineate the expected costs for textbooks, lab fees, online access codes, field trips, attire, and more, so students register for courses understanding the expected costs without any unplanned surprises

2. Make-up test policies
   Students with important planned events (athletic competitions, weddings, and more) often look at syllabi to see when tests are, if they conflict with their plans, and what the make-up policy is. Certain courses have harder make-ups, do not allow make-ups and instead change the weights of other course assignments, or count a missed exam -- even for a University approved reason -- as their only “drop”. Students often look at these policies to see if their schedules permit, and knowing in advance of class would allow them to register for courses knowing the professor’s expectations. 

3. Time expectation
   Syllabi should include sections on the expected time commitment for the course, so they can carefully select courses which would adequately challenge them and that they have the time to excel in.

4. Grade expectation: As mentioned in the previous section, syllabi should include sections on how curved grading works in that class (i.e. grade distributions from past semesters).

5. Explicitly mention resources for stress management. CIS 121 offered in Fall 2019 does an extremely good job explicity discussing stress management in the syllabus. (See Appendix for reference)

1. Syllabi availability.
   The creation of a syllabi repository exists, like Wharton currently has, which allows students to see the syllabi of different professors and other courses. This allows students to see what else has been offered and if it better suits their interests, such as slight differences in course content between different professors teaching the same course or understanding the difference between different courses.
   Each undergraduate school aims to have either syllabi or course prospectuses available on PenninTouch by advanced registration in spring 2020 for fall 2021, a goal which the College is actively working toward. Moreover, SCUE recommends all syllabi be on Pennant NGSS by the time it is launched in Spring 2022.

2. Give earlier assessments.
   Professors should plan to give a formal assessment (test, paper, quiz, etc.) and have it returned with a grade before the drop deadline, so students understand their standing and performance. For courses with curves, giving estimated grade distributions at this point helps students understand their place in the class, even if only a small portion of the total course assessments have been completed.

Looking Forward to 2025 

Moving forward, SCUE hopes implementations of the aforementioned solutions are visible by 2025. Specifically, the Body hopes to see the planning and building of syllabi repositories for all schools in the upcoming years. Additionally, support from the Center for Teaching and Learning for instructors as they craft their syllabi is an implementable step in the next few years; i.e. a universal syllabi format for each department is a tangible solution that SCUE hopes to see by 2025.