and Guest bloggers Annie Blackledge & Lisa Clark
Annie Blackledge is a Casey Family Programs Senior Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education. Lisa Clarke is a Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education. The opinions expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Education, the United States government, Casey Family Programs or the Center for Creative Leadership.

When disasters like Sandy Hook occur, we cannot help but reconnect individually and as a nation with other similar events that have devastated us and, in some instances, continue to devastate us.  Hurricane Katrina, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy come to mind immediately.  These are what psychologists call “Large T- traumas.”

In addition to these well-known, Larger T media-covered events, here’s an oft-unrecognized and unaddressed reality: there are personal ongoing tragedies and traumas that many people have and continue to encounter.  For our most vulnerable students, such events are not one-time events; they are daily occurrences – living in poverty, experiencing hunger, witnessing or experiencing drug and alcohol abuse, separation from family members, lacking parental support and role modeling, and sleeping in shelters or on streets.   Psychologists call these “Small t-traumas,” although the word “Small” does not reference the enormity of the impact but the frequency and aggregation of ongoing trauma.

All of these types of personal traumas are dredged up by the Sandy Hook event, even if we try to keep them deeply cabined away.

What this means is that while the direct survivors of the Sandy Hook tragedy are experiencing trauma as are the first responders, so too are we.   We are experiencing what can be termed vicarious trauma — the result of witnessing (either directly or through the media) other people’s suffering and need.

One set of issues triggered by this tragedy is how we can help those in Newtown heal and how we can heal ourselves and our communities, even as the media coverage quiets down.  Another set of issues revolves around how we can prevent similar incidents moving forward.  While these two topics appear distinct, they are actually intertwined: one avenue for fostering healing of a current tragedy is to consider ways to prevent future tragedies.  By channeling energies into preventative measures, present pain is somewhat ameliorated.

Two primary prevention approaches have emerged across the nation: calls for improved gun control including assault weapon bans and/or improved mental health evaluation and treatment. As President Obama said in his State of the Union this February, we need to come together as a nation to protect our children; we cannot permit more lost birthday and graduation ceremonies.

To be sure, although debated feverishly, fewer assault weapons and better identification of and assistance for the mentally ill should help curb prospective school shootings.  But, these measures will not eliminate all school-based violence and trauma – from kindergarten through college.  That is why we need to focus on a third prevention approach that has not received sufficient attention to date in our view: a concerted effort to recognize and teach individuals and communities how to be resilient.

Stated most simply, resiliency is defined as the capacity to bounce back from or withstand the impact of untoward events and return, if possible, to the emotional state one was in before these occurrences.  Often viewed as a process rather than a trait, resiliency education involves strengthening the individual who is or may become traumatized and fostering a supportive environment that recognizes the impact of trauma and strategies for its amelioration.  For some, the current meaning of the word “resiliency” needs to be expanded to capture fully the nuances of trauma, including the fact that some traumas are so severe that the recuperation is never complete and that for others, return to the status quo ante is an impossibility.

The calls for ex ante resiliency education have already been heard and implemented in other contexts. The National Academies Press just published a report titled Disaster Resilience:  A National Imperative, focusing on the role local, state and federal agencies can play in preparing for disaster situations.

The US Military has increasingly employed resiliency training to better prepare deploying soldiers for the devastations of war.   And, there are growing initiatives within some schools – with a set of emerging promising practices – to develop trauma sensitive environments and resiliency among our most vulnerable students.  And, there is new thinking on an expanded framework for reflecting on what it truly means to be resilient.

Moving forward, we can and should debate how best to build and assess the effectiveness of resiliency education. But what is crucial now is to recognize the value of — and our capacity to teach – resiliency.  This will benefit not only those who experienced one-time traumas; it will help ameliorate repeated traumas many of America’s children experience day-in and day-out.

So, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy, we can begin to heal ourselves and our communities – post facto and ex ante – by developing resiliency.  And, as the memorials disappear in Newtown and as the noise around this tragedy starts to quiet, we cannot stop our efforts to prepare our nation and its children for life’s exigencies – for both Large T and Small t traumas.  If not now, when?

This decision was not a surprise, although we had held out hope that sound reasoning and good judgment would prevail. It was – is – a great disappointment, however. We know the quality and value of our nursing programs and firmly believe NLNAC did not follow its own rules and review procedures, and it violated common law due process and other legal standards.

The College has already begun working on our appeal, which we will file following NLNAC’s protocols.  Also, we are planning to file a lawsuit against NLNAC and the drafting of that complaint is underway.

In statements I issued to our campus community and to the media after receiving the letter, I was emphatic the nursing education programs at SVC are not in jeopardy as a result of NLNAC’s flawed decision. The College’s nursing programs are approved by the Vermont State Board of Nursing and – most importantly – the state board recently approved a new four-year Bachelor of Science in nursing program. This speaks to the quality and importance of the College’s nursing education.

SVC’s NLNAC accreditation continues through the appeals process.  It is not required for the College to have NLNAC’s accreditation and is something we have sought voluntarily.

I want all in the SVC community to know I believe in our nursing students and faculty and will fight NLNAC with full force to reverse its decision and begin anew a fair accreditation review process that reflects the facts and is respectful of all here who are so deeply committed to this vital area of study.

~~~

March 18, 2013

In a few short months, more than 60 students will receive either a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing or an Associate Degree in Nursing from Southern Vermont College. They are, like the hundreds before them and the hundreds who will follow, highly employable. They will begin their careers in a wide range of health care settings across our nation, with a degree from a fully accredited and financially sound institution.

Southern Vermont College and its various programs are accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission (NLNAC) and the Joint Review Committee on Education in Radiologic Technology. Our nursing programs have been approved by the Vermont State Board of Nursing through 2016, and I am excited to report that we recently received its approval to launch a new four-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree program.

Every graduate from our nursing program, past and future, is empowered with a degree that is recognized and valued by hospitals, nursing homes, medical centers, physicians and clinics. We’re proud our nurses are caring for patients at many of the best medical facilities in our region and far beyond, including Southwestern Vermont Health Center, North Adams Regional Hospital, Berkshire Medical Center, Fletcher Allen Health Care, Albany Medical Center, Lincoln Medical & Mental Health Center as well as hospitals in California, Arizona, South Carolina and the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.

The Process of Continuing Accreditation and SVC

You may be aware that, over the last several months, the College and the NLNAC have disagreed about whether the SVC nursing programs meet the NLNAC requirements for continuing accreditation when the current programmatic accreditation expires.

To that end, in December 2012, the College filed a response to the NLNAC site visit report based on an NLNAC visit to our campus in October 2012. We identified 40 factual errors in that site team’s report – 34 of which were ignored and still remain uncorrected. These were not simple errors of judgment or opinion, but errors of fact that went to the heart of the site visit’s validity and integrity. College personnel then traveled to Atlanta, GA, in January 2013, expecting to be heard by the Evaluation Review Panel, but we were not permitted to speak before that group voted. The Peer Evaluation Reviewers could not, in our view, make a fair, unbiased judgment based on an uncorrected site visit report and no opportunity to hear the College’s explanation of the uncorrected factual deficiencies.

As we await a decision from the NLNAC that will come from its March 2013 meeting, we remain concerned that the Commission will be basing its judgment on a flawed report and, consequently, a deeply flawed process. Our digging a little deeper into the NLNAC standards, rules and procedures – including as they were applied to Southern Vermont College – reveals that it is their process, not our program, which is flawed.

You may be familiar with the quote often attributed to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  Facts matter.

And most disturbing of all was the cavalier and dismissive attitude some NLNAC site team members demonstrated toward our students. Site team members repeatedly said when they were on campus that “we needed to get better students.” Imagine that. Imagine how that makes faculty, staff and students feel. And their premise is not correct; we do not need better students.

We are proud of all of our students. Many are the first in their families to earn a college education. Many are Pell-eligible. We admit students who may not have graduated from elite prep schools or elite high schools, but that has no relevance to their desire and capacity to become amazing nurses. Our students are improving their overall performance on the national nursing licensing exam. And our students now score higher than the national average among those taking the standardized HESI maternity assessment.

This is what SVC does: We take students committed to learning and help to turn them into amazing professionals, capable of meeting and exceeding the standards and national licensing requirements. At a time when quality and affordable health care is foremost in our minds, Southern Vermont College is helping to educate the next generation of nursing professionals.

It’s time for the NLNAC to return to our campus and begin the review process anew, a remedy we offered and which we hope the Commission will accept.  We would graciously welcome their return. The key is that the accreditation process to date has been defective, and the NLNAC should live by its own rules, by common law due process and the standards of the nursing profession. To do otherwise is to fail SVC, our healthcare system and the Commission’s responsibility as an accrediting agency.

While we hope for a new visit from the NLNAC, if that does not occur, we will continue our fight for a fair accreditation process, including filing an appeal and legal action, if necessary.

Respect for our students, our faculty, our program, our institution and the entire accreditation process demands nothing less.

This is the first in a series of blogs on lessons I learned from the year I spent as a Senior Policy Advisor to the US Department of Education.  Some of the lessons were profound; some were poignant; some were “political,” defined as lessons emanating directly from the ways our government and our Democracy function (not “political” as in Democrat or Republican).

My hope is twofold: I hope these blogs enable me to share effectively the experiences I had and my reflections of them – post DC and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight; I also hope these blogs will encourage others to reflect on the experiences they are having – whether on campus or in the workplace or at home – and to sort through the lessons learned.  If this experience in DC taught me nothing else, it reinforced for me that learning is a continuous process and one can always learn, regardless of one’s age and stage in life.

When I arrived at the Department of Education (the Department or ED) in January of 2012, there was no shortage of things to learn, not the least of which were acronyms. Across government – indeed across DC — acronyms are ubiquitous. The Department has a daunting number commonly used acronyms; new staff receive a list of them and other lists are provided as appendices to government issued documents.

Several days after I started work, I provided the following answer to my husband when he asked about my day: “I was at PCP with OVAE to discuss AEFLA and Perkins IV.”  In short, I was speaking a new language. He looked at me as if I had landed from a different planet…. and he was not wrong.

Now, the good news is that I had quickly assimilated some capacity to speak in acronyms.  I instantly created my own acronym for what had just happened to me: QUAK (Quick Uptake of Acronym Knowledge).  In short, I was quaking, my word for speaking in acronyms.

To be sure, being a good quaker helps when one is communicating within ED and across the government.  The acronyms I uttered to my husband address the important work of the Office of Vocational and Adult Education and its programs, which further the President’s goal of increasing the workforce readiness of Americans.

But, here’s the problem: acronyms are often not understood by those outside of government.  That makes it hard for “outsiders” to engage with “insiders.”

Acronym-speak is not unique to government. There is lawyer-speak and doctor-speak. Within our colleges and universities, there is professor-speak.  These “languages” all serve a similar function and have a similar effect: They ease communication among insiders, and they alienate, whether by design or otherwise, outsiders.

Importantly, we are in a time when we want our Government to be more transparent, and this idea has been embraced by this Administration.  This is key to enabling us to be a Government of the people, by the people, for the people — a goal emphasized in the President’s 2013 Inaugural Address where he kept repeating, “We, the people…”

If we want to engage non-governmental folks in the issues confronting our nation, acronyms do not help.  Lesson learned.  Now that I am outside the Beltway, I plan to do my part by quaking less.  And, if you catch me quaking, ask me to stop (politely of course) and remind me that speaking like alphabet soup does not encourage learning and understanding.

This is because, in my absence, the college continued to move forward, under able leadership across the campus. So, as I drove North from my Southern D.C. perch, I was welcomed by snow on the ground, cold temperatures and a strong wind.  That felt like home.  But, I kept seeing things that were unfamiliar as I progressed North — new stores, shops and restaurants that were no longer in business and new roadways (and bypasses).  These served as reminders that time did not stand still this past year, and I look forward to seeing SVC with fresh eyes and to meeting our newer community members.

For the record, one thing has not changed: my belief in SVC’s capacity to contribute meaningfully to the higher educational landscape and graduate students who will pursue careers in areas of workforce need and who will be leaders in their communities.

I will see you January 22, 2013…..unless we meet before then in the supermarket or in downtown Bennington or at the Elm Street Market or at the movie theater.  I look forward to that.

At SVC, we are addressing one of the largest challenges facing our nation: how to get more and more Americans to and through college.  Other developed countries are surpassing the USA in the number of college graduates, and the workforce of the future and the stability of our economy require that we find ways to educate the next generation successfully.

Over the past five years, SVC has undertaken a series of innovative approaches designed to foster student success, creating promising practices that can be replicated and scaled at other colleges. These include our Anatomy & Physiology stretch course, our Pipelines into Partnership initiative, our Campus Community Dinner Series, our Roving Professor appointments, our first year project based learning effort which includes a DNA course, our Entrepreneurship program with iPad and Kindle learning, and our Student Philanthropy course.

These programs all evidence our commitment to and investment in student success.

Importantly, our efforts have not gone unnoticed.  We have presented at conferences, given speeches and written articles, sharing our efforts with a growing local, regional and national audience.  We still have work to do and much to learn but we are making meaningful strides.

The U.S. Department of Education learned of our efforts too, and we were the collegiate launch site for President Obama’s 2020 initiative, designed to encourage more college graduates by the year 2020.  Undersecretary Martha Kanter spoke to SVC incoming students in August 2010, and that same year, Secretary Arne Duncan congratulated the SVC community for its commitment to improving higher education.

These activities and this recognition led to a call from Washington this past summer when I was asked to join the US Department of Education. It was, as they say in the trade, an offer I could not refuse.

During my 12-month appointment, I will work with a remarkable and wide-ranging team of educators, government officials and policy makers to develop strategies that will enable more and more Americans to progress to and through college. Access to college, affordability of college, and retention in college are all issues I will be addressing.  These are the very topics that undergird the important work we do at SVC.

While I have many goals as I approach this opportunity in D.C., let me share two of them.  First, I hope to showcase the importance of education as a number one priority for our nation.  We need to dedicate our time, our resources and our talents to thinking innovatively about how to educate the next generation.  It is not too trite to say that our future depends on it, something we have recognized across the SVC campus.

Second, in addition to contributing to the national conversation about education, I fully expect to learn a great deal that I can bring back to campus in 2013.  Through meeting and engaging with other experts in higher education, I can see some of the best practices and research from across the nation and return to SVC with ways we can better serve our current and future students and enhance the educational experiences we provide.

Despite my move, SVC will be with me.  Technically, I am the person heading off to DC.  But, it is really SVC that is heading to Washington.  The vision and approaches engendered, nurtured and growing at SVC are the very reason I was selected to serve, and I look forward to sharing – and will proudly share — our SVC story in the nation’s Capital and to bringing back to SVC the experiences I garner while away.

The College will be in very good hands in my absence, under the leadership of Acting President Jim Beckwith and the Senior Team, all with the support of SVC Board of Trustees.  I have confidence in this Team; because of our work together and our shared vision for SVC, we can continue the College’s ongoing educational efforts without losing a beat.  I know our faculty and staff will continue their remarkable efforts to help our students succeed.  And, I know our students will work to continue their education and their service to the community.  I will be watching with pride.

The dissatisfaction with the word “jolly” has lead a host of folks to create their own expressions that follow the lead-in “’tis the season.”  There’s a new album titled, “’Tis the Season to be Fearless” – (there’s something appealing about that to me as an educator who believes learning requires considerable risk-taking.)

Financial guru Jim Cramer (of CNBC’s Mad Money) explains “’tis the season for retail,” and the just completed Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales are testament to the power of discounted shopping.  There’s the expression “’tis the season for shoplifting,” with identification of the items most shoplifted.

Then, consider other phrases used of late: ‘tis the season to be out of work and ‘tis the season to be frugal and ‘tis the season to catch norovirus.

I get the ironic and clever turns of phrase.  But, perhaps we can find words other than “jolly” to describe the holiday season — imparting a positive feeling without negative connotations.   I might suggest a near perfect substitution from the iconic American author Washington Irving (redacted and edited a bit):  …‘Tis the season to kindle the fire of hospitality … the genial fire of charity in the heart.”

Seems spot on to me.

So, to the entire SVC community, I wish you a safe, healthy and happy holiday season.  ‘Tis the season to ….!

Long story short, we should be encouraging more family dinners.

These research findings reinforce the importance of the Campus Community Dinner Series (CCDS), an initiative started at Southern Vermont College in Spring 2011 that will continue throughout academic year, 2011 – 2012.  CCDS brings local Bennington, VT families with high school aged children to the SVC campus to eat in the campus dining hall with college students who have been trained as dinner conversationalists by the Public Conversations Project. 

Supported by Sodexo, CCDS aims to accomplish several goals including:  (1) encouraging healthier eating; (2) fostering quality conversation over meals for the participating families; (3) providing greater links between the community and the college, including promoting the value of education; and (4) developing skills in the SVC students that will further their academic progress and promote their workplace success.  A quadruple win!

In this year’s CCDS program, lead by Charlotte Kelton, fifteen SVC students will participate alongside seven local families.  SVC hopes that a version of the program will continue in the summer of 2012 and involve even more families.

This initiative has also started a bigger conversation on the SVC campus about how the SVC dining hall experience can be enhanced to foster student success and the conversation over meals.  On December 5 –6, Professor Janet Flammang, the author of The Taste for Civilization, a leading book on the role of food in developing civic engagement, will be participating in the Campus Community Dinner Series and providing a lecture to the larger SVC community.

Follow the CCDS program on our website and consider the importance of eating together – on and off campus.  The initiative gives new meaning to a hackneyed phrase: Bon Appetit!

Our Mountaineer Scholars — the students in our Pipeline initiative – are off to a wonderful start to the academic year, and we look forward to helping them progress through college and develop into leaders within their workplaces and communities.

For me, while these portraits focused on those who had died, I kept thinking about those who survived – the children, spouses, partners, parents and friends of those killed.  As I noted in the article, I worried about the survivors – the women and children especially.  I worried that whatever money they received to recompense them for their losses – whether from the government, insurance or employers — it would not enough to fill the void death created. 

So, it came as something of a shock when I opened today’s New York Times and saw a host of portraits of those living with loss – the very people I had been concerned about a decade ago.  What these new Portraits of Loss demonstrate, and I read each one of them, was a sense of courage, a willingness to continue life in the face of death.  The survivors had found ways to move forward, while remembering their lost loved ones.  No small feat.

Importantly, courage can be demonstrated in lots of ways, both big and small.  Courage can be saving lives in battle or during a natural disaster.  And, courage can also be demonstrated by simply finding a way to live in the face of overwhelming odds or sadness.

We can learn about courage from the Portraits of Loss, the counterpoint to the now decade old Portraits of Grief about which I had written. Courage is what the survivors demonstrated over the past decade and will no doubt continue to demonstrate as they move forward in the coming decades.   

In so doing, perhaps they will help the rest of us summon courage, as and when we need it.

There is excitement in the air – and the usual mix of trepidation and inquisitiveness.  Understandably, everyone wants the launch of the new academic year to be a success; the quality of the beginning of the year tends to set the tone for the year to come.

Yet, in several positive ways, the academic year 2011 – 2012 is different.  Here’s why:

SVC is welcoming a record number of new students — both first year and transfer students.  We have the largest Nursing I class in the history of the institution, led by a wonderful new head of the nursing program, Dr. Karen Clement-O’Brien.  Our dorms are over-capacity, leading us to get creative in our housing plans for a small number of juniors and seniors.

Our growth has led to several key changes, all designed to create more space, more options and more opportunities for students.  We have created a soon-to-be-opened food court in the lower level of Hunter Hall, offering food choices in the evenings. The library has been renovated to create more congregating and study space for students during the day and evening, including three new study rooms.  A designated room in the dining hall will provide an added place where students can just hang out in the evening.   We have opened new sections of popular courses.

Our ‘little gem of a school’ has reached new heights in popularity. How exciting is that! A wonderful academic year awaits us.