Carolyn Jeffries and I are pleased to share with you the results that you have helped generate about the importance and success of a self-care program for faculty and staff. What follows is a brief summary of the findings. We hope to publish the data in a future article and will share this as well when it’s available.
In general, the outcomes are very positive! But first, let’s talk about how many took part in this experience. We had approximately 60 out of 136 full time COE faculty and staff participate in our self-care program. Of these participants, 51 completed the pre-survey and 37 completed the post-survey. So what did we discover from the 7 scaled questions asked on the surveys about self-care? All seven showed a positive increase in ratings and two questions showed a significant positive increase between the pre and post-surveys. Faculty and staff indicated that they enhanced their engagement in self-care activities and their sense of calm and well-being significantly by the end of the program. These results really support the engagement and benefits of self-care in our college.
The feedback from the open-ended questions was even more illuminating. Almost all of the faculty and staff who completed the survey would like the COE self-care activities to continue. Faculty and staff participants indicated that the most popular sessions were nutrition and mindfulness. However, those who attended yoga and exercise also found these sessions very helpful. And what were some of the benefits of attending a self-care session? Faculty and staff really liked the opportunity to gain helpful information about various benefits of self-care, and engage in these activities together within a supportive community. Participants also liked the short time frame of self-care sessions, the freedom to choose which sessions to attend, the ease in learning from these sessions, and how wonderful and well-prepared the leaders were. Suggestions for future self-care activities were few and included offering sessions at varying days and times, and including other colleges in our activities. The majority of respondents also preferred time and day for self-care activities to be on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday in the middle of the day.
And here is the really exciting part of our study! There seemed to be a real shift in culture and values in our College of Education faculty and staff participants around the importance of taking care of oneself. Over half of participants indicated that they were motivated to engage in other self-care activities beyond those offered in the College of Education this spring. These included exercising, eating better, getting a regular health check up, and engaging in other mindfulness and yoga activities. Our COE program also appeared to be a pipeline for faculty and staff to utilize other self-care activities on campus, like the 1.5 Alive walking program through the Kinesiology Department, nutrition counseling in the Klotz Student Health Center, and attendance at self-care sessions offered through Human Resources. A number of unexpected and delightful outcomes also were reported. A university-wide mindfulness affinity group emerged out of the mindfulness activities, a number of our leaders went on to do additional training in self-care areas, and a faculty working at the Northridge Academy will be working on a self-care curriculum for the students as an elective in the coming academic year!
Based on these wonderful findings, we plan to continue our self-care program with input from all of you. Thank you once again for valuing the importance of self-care and for taking part in this program. Please join us in our future activities and continue to check in on our website for self-care information!
May you all find wonderful ways to care for yourselves!
Shari