Resilience coaches provide identity-focused mentorship

Imagine a Carolina where students who feel alone or face a problem can readily find someone specially trained to help them.

That’s the long-term goal of the new Carolina Collaborative for Resilience, launched to care for and support students who are coping with issues of race, identity and belonging. The collaborative pairs students with resilience coaches — diverse faculty and staff who have learned how to help students and connect them to University resources and supports.

In fall 2021, CCR appointed its first cohort of 20 coaches for a one-year term. They completed six weeks of training and began working with students in January. Recruitment for next year begins mid-April, and a new group of coaches will train in summer 2022.

Many students have experienced race and identity-based stress that can worsen while they’re away from home. Research shows that such stress can affect a person’s health and well-being. That’s why CCR, housed in the University Office for Diversity and Inclusion, promotes coping, healing and resilience.

Jessica Ward, the collaborative’s director, said that students overwhelmingly want a trusted mentor and safe space.

Jessica Ward (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Ward’s experiences as a Carolina student inspired her to create the collaborative. She was a first-generation, low-income student from Robeson County in fall 1999. In a short span, her grandfather died, her single-parent father with three other daughters at home lost his job and hurricanes damaged their house. She constantly worried about her family and worked to provide for herself, while also figuring out how to succeed as a college student. “At times it felt isolating and overwhelming,” she said.

A Pogue Scholar and member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, Ward didn’t know where to find support. “The American Indian Center, as identity-based support, did not exist,” she said.

Ward talked about her experiences and answered The Well’s questions about CCR.

What else about your experience helped in developing the collaborative?

When I was 18, I realized that I needed support, but I didn’t know how to navigate UNC to find it. I wanted to know that I could talk openly about my identity and experiences and that the person receiving that information would validate my experiences without judgment. I did not want the additional mental burden of figuring out what parts of myself to share when asking for help. I wanted to be my authentic self and to be affirmed.

For the past 15 years, I’ve worked with Carolina students to validate their stories along their individual paths to success. As I reflected on their stories and my own, I recognized that the themes were similar — we were all young people who wanted to know who to trust and how to find them. Students often share difficulties related to their identities that impact their well-being, mental health and academic success. In return, I share with them some of my own story and help them connect to the many resources at UNC.

How do you define who the collaborative serves?

Representation matters. We know that some students may be less likely to engage with formalized supports for many reasons — fear, stigma, distrust and lack of representation. Our goal is to build intentional relationships based on shared identities and experiences. Once the relationships are established, we facilitate connection between the students and campus supports. CCR support is available to any UNC student. It’s not limited to diverse racial identities but includes gender identity, socioeconomic status, ability, immigration status, sexual orientation or whatever identity is most important to the student.

What does research on the effects of trauma show?

A significant amount of research confirms that race-based and identity-based trauma — also known as historical trauma, multigenerational trauma — are real. It refers to the mental and emotional injury caused by encountering racial incidents, bias-motivated incidents, discrimination, racism and, on extreme levels, hate crimes. A recent Department of Justice report shows the increase in racialized incidents and identity-motivated bias in the last several years. These events happen with increasing prevalence in our country and in our world, and they affect our students.

All students, developmentally, are navigating many stressors as they transition to college. These students are emerging into adulthood. They are managing personal and academic stressors and now find themselves living through a pandemic. In addition to these stressors, students with marginalized identities may also be dealing with their own experiences with race- or bias-related incidents. This is then compounded by the secondary trauma of witnessing the intense suffering of other people in the news, social media and in our communities.

What prompted you to propose the collaboration?

In the summer of 2020, our society was navigating multiple pandemics — COVID, mental health and racism. I realized that we had support spaces and protocols in place to address these things, but how do we make it safe for students to share their stories and engage? I reflected on my own experiences in envisioning a space where we can freely talk about race, poverty and mental health. It was also important to me to design support that does not make students “more resilient” but instead helps students recognize, celebrate and harness the resilience they already possess.

How are resilience coaches selected?

We are fortunate that many faculty and staff were eager to get involved. The application and selection process prioritized faculty and staff who have been employed at UNC for at least two years and who have proactively engaged in training opportunities around campus that address special populations and mental health. We look for community members who are diverse in every sense of the word, not just racially and ethnically, but also in their jobs and their locations around campus. The idea is that everyone has a part in building a culture of care, whether you’re a renowned professor or an administrative assistant or dining hall cashier. The collaborative’s advisory committee reviews applications before sharing finalist nominations with our leadership team.

What kind of training do resilience coaches undergo?

Our training program includes a mixture of in-person and virtual activities designed to deepen participants’ understanding of race and identity-based trauma and its impacts on health, mental health, well-being and academic success. Our training program highlights the expertise and care at UNC.

We partnered with colleagues from many campus support units — for example, Equal Opportunity and Compliance, Student Wellness, Accessibility Resources and Service — to provide content related to appropriate incident reporting procedures, mental health and identity-based trauma, disability and so much more. We also partnered with colleagues from the UNC Peer Support Core to provide peer support training to reduce risk of secondary trauma among our coaches.

What are you hearing from the coaches and the students so far?

Our students said that they’re coming out of the past couple of years with an overwhelming sense of loneliness and disconnection. They’re thankful for an opportunity to connect with coaches and want a trusted mentor who they can lean on throughout their academic journey.

Our coaches have answered the call, completed all training activities and are excited to create meaningful connections with students. It’s truly a full-circle moment for many coaches who feel they now can leverage their unique identities and experiences in service to students.

Students and coaches know that this investment will have long term benefits for campus, the state of North Carolina and the world. Carolina can be a home away from home, where we take care of each other in our community.

Know a student who would like to connect with a resilience coach? Tell them to submit a student intake form and to expect a response in 1-2 business days.