Community Council Update

On Monday Nov. 12, Community Council met with Administrative Programs Coordinator Ellen McKay and Mark Stefani, assistant professor of psychology, about stress on campus. Both McKay and Stefani spearheaded the Stress Committee.

Since its 2007 creation, the committee has focused on examining causes of student, faculty and staff stress, as well as possible solutions for a seemingly rapid increase in stress levels.

“From the beginning, the goals of the committee were to try to come to some understanding of what was driving student perception of very high levels of stress,” said Stefani. “And perception is reality in this case, because our students are very stressed, and we wanted to look at what was causing that.”

During the 2010 and 2011 academic years, the committee received funding from the Sloan Foundation to sponsor programs designed to help members of the community gain a better sense of work-life balance. Last year the committee merged with the Optimal Health Committee on campus, which was established for faculty and staff, and now shares a budget with them to put on activities, workshops and sponsor speakers on stress management.

On the agenda this year is to continue to sponsor yoga and meditation classes. The committee is also interested in bringing in Cal Newport, a computer science professor from Georgetown University, who would speak on how to get the most out of your time while still operating at a high performance level.

These activities aside, the Stress Committee faces a difficult task, because identifying the exact cause of student stress has proven difficult and finding solutions can be even more challenging. The committee took on the task of looking at academic syllabi from the past 20 years in search of the answer to what exactly is causing stress.

“We have found it very, very difficult to get reliable data that confirms or disconfirms the causes of stress,” said Stefani. “Is it that workload has increased or are syllabi more challenging? The general consensus was that workload had not increased dramatically over the past 20 years, but student involvement in extracurriculars has increased significantly.”

Doug Adams, associate dean of students, confirmed that extracurricular involvement among students is at an all-time high.

“How do you do more while actually doing less?” asked Adams. “And the willingness to say ‘no’ to certain activities and opportunities is a hard life choice to start making.”

Members at the meeting also discussed the idea that stress can be beneficial when managed correctly and that the College should not discourage hard work or extracurricular involvement. However, they said, there is a limit to both of those things.

Professor of Film and Media Culture Leger Grindon cited the nature of students at a school like Middlebury as part of the problem.

“You’re caught in a tough dilemma,” said Grindon. “Because anyone who is ambitious, which most of our students are, experience a lot of stress. And stress can be positive and create high levels of performance, but I think it is about stress management.”

Student Co-Chair of Community Council Barrett Smith ’13 agreed with Grindon’s sentiment.

“Middlebury in the last 20 years has been at the forefront of small liberal arts colleges,” said Smith. “As a result of that, a lot of our students come from the top 10 percent of their high schools and want to assume that position right away when the get here. And isn’t that process an inherent part of being an elite institution?”

The Stress Committee seemed somewhat at a loss for what had changed in student culture and work habits that caused such high levels of stress. Though the Stress Committee claims course syllabi are not significantly more demanding than they were 20 years ago, some members of the community have discussed the possibility that students are being asked to do unreasonable amounts of work.

“In a meeting a few years ago, my colleagues and I in the film and media studies department had a conversation about what is a reasonable amount of work to ask from students,” said Grindon. “Multiple members in the meeting felt that they should assign more than what they thought was reasonable for students to complete so some very diligent students would approach this expectation and the rest would fall on a curve downwards, but it would create an ambitious environment. I don’t think there is a standard among our faculty about the reading that should be required.”

The consensus of the committee seemed to be that stress could be mainly attributed to increases in extracurricular involvement, as well as student culture that facilitates an environment of academic excellence.

Dean of the College Shirley Collado thought that the work students have to do in order to get to a prestigious college helps to explain how those habits continue once they arrive at Middlebury.

“Our students come here after being developmentally on a treadmill for years and we are asking them to un-do the coaching and molding that has taken place for years in life,” said Collado. “Some kids have been coached for years to get to the ‘Middleburys’ of the world and now we ask them to try new classes and new things. And I think developmentally that is very hard to undo.”

The Stress Committee will continue to examine stress on campus and offer mediations, which will be reviewed by Community Council.

In meetings on Nov. 12 and Nov. 26, Community Council also began to finalize its prioritized agenda. At the top of the list of issues to address are sexual assault on campus, communication and the social house review process. The council has already met with members from KDR, Xenia and Tavern in an effort to get to know the philosophies of the respective houses before the review process begins.