An Interview with Sislena Ledbetter

Building a Welcoming Community

To help address the "Creating Welcoming Spaces" theme of this year's Innovative Teaching Showcase at Western Washington University, we interviewed Dr. Sislena Ledbetter, Vice Provost for Student Affairs (formerly, Associate Vice President of Counseling, Health and Wellbeing). Dr. Ledbetter's experience in her many roles teaching and leading in higher education in psychology, counseling, health promotion, and wellbeing gives us a unique perspective on how meaningful and essential it is to do the work—to help our students connect and find a place at Western—because their success is our success.

Question: Why is it important to build a community that genuinely welcomes students?

Dr Ledbetter: I have had roles from faculty–I was a psychology faculty, loads of fun–to overseeing campus well-being. And in those roles, from soup to nuts all throughout, the importance of well-being just resonates. And so, you know, I see it as foundational to all the work that we do and without it, it's really rough. It’s really rough for students who have a tough time navigating, because it's their first year. Having a welcoming campus–with welcoming spaces and places and faculty and administrators who all believe it's their job to make me feel like I belong in that space–is super critical because we don't have those touchpoints at home to help us figure out how to navigate. So well-being is just the foundation of all of the work that we do in this college space because it is truly a village, a community, away from home. So, uber important.

We are building spaces for every single student. We are super intentional about those students for whom living on the fringes, living on the margins, has been a reality. Navigating systems has been a tough reality for them. And so, we're intentional about making sure that all of our students, when they get to Western, feel like they belong here. When we think about engaging with well-being services, what we know is that students that engage with those services tend to graduate. They're retained. We also know it's not just about those services; it's about all services. So we know that engagement and some of the high impact practices are: that we need to figure out where students find community.

But the important part of why that's super critical, starts at the very foundational level with understanding that well-being is just a launching pad. And it is the absolute foundation for retention; it is the foundation for academic performance; and it is the foundation for academic success, broadly. And so, when I think about mental health, that is one little small piece. Because, across all of our indicators, when I think about mental health, including the psychiatric care and behavioral health care in the student health center, we might see, I don't know, 15% of our students in terms of actual services, direct services. That includes groups and one on one. But 100% of our students need support.

Burnout, not just for students; because students are burned out, but also staff are burned out. Faculty are burnt out. How can we think about the systems and settings that we all live, love, work, and thrive in so that these are sustainable systems. Not for who we were, but who we are as humans right now, working in this ecosystem to support people, students, who are at the most transitional time in their lives other than maybe ages 12 to 14. This is the next big deal. So it's been an evolution for me and the way I think about well-being for students and for our entire community.

Question: Many students are attracted to Western for the beautiful location, but what makes them stay?

Dr Ledbetter: Students are attracted to Western because of our location. That doesn't mean that our faculty and our support services are not amazing: because they are. They are amazing. However, we are so fortunate to be in this ecosystem. What I tell family on the East Coast is that I feel like I live in a postcard. Because, we're living among these mountain ranges. We live where we can look out at water. We often talk about, even in our land acknowledgment that the Coast Salish people have taken care of these waterways for time immemorial, and the Nooksack and the Lummi people have shown so much pride in this area. I am so grateful for their care of this place that we call Bellingham, and that we as Western Washington University people get to live here and work here and play here. And so when students come, I think that's what they're coming for.

And the bonus, like the side-by-side bonus, is they also get to be on a campus that cares for them, that cares about their academic success–because we know that's why they come–but also cares about the experience that they have when they're here. But I think they stay because they have found their community. They have found a community to which they can connect. So when I'm walking around campus, when I see students that look as though they are in search of something, I look at that curious look and then I ask, is there something that I can help you with? How can I support you to your next connection? Because I have actually seen students that are struggling with sleeping, eating, and movement.

I've seen students stay because a faculty member in a class of 125 people remembered their name. And I've seen students leave because they couldn't find a study group to which they felt connected. And so it is also a very fragile time. Maybe more than ever, as we think about Vivek Murthy, our former surgeon general who wrote this beautiful piece about the loneliness epidemic in America. Those are our students. Like, we are no exception. And so coming here for the beauty, but staying here for the connection. And it is our pleasure, it is our role to find ways to make sure that students find a place here to be connected and know that we take it very seriously that they belong in this place.

Welcoming Practices

Question: What essential role do faculty play in this work?

Dr Ledbetter: Faculty are critically important to student success. And I know that feels like an overstatement, and every faculty's like: “yes, and?!” And, what we know is that the research suggests that faculty are the gatekeepers of student success. But what we know is that if students come here they want to succeed, they want to get the degree. So they have to be in front of our faculty 14- to some 18-20 hours, if they have labs, per week. That's not an optional undertaking. You are here to do that. And so learning and being curious. Because you are clearly curious if you are a faculty member, and you are sitting in front of curious souls. And so, matching curiosity and being able to co-create and think about lectures and experiential learning opportunities inside and outside of the classroom: What better place than somewhere like Western to engage in that? And we have faculty that are here for it. I feel like they know, they are curious, they are constantly engaging with students in bold ways. And so, it's just exciting to support and work with a group of folks who understand their role in cultivating the richness of the lives of these young people which we are charged with supporting.

Question: What are some small and creative ways professors can be more welcoming to make a big difference for students?

Dr Ledbetter: All of the things that faculty do are really significant to students. There are no small things. So, faculty are so critically important. I’ll give you an example: We have a faculty member, Professor Borowski, who does amazing work. What I understand is at the beginning of class, she uses [name] tents for students. We all know that there are faculty members that do that, but she has gone the extra mile. And the way Professor Borowski uses tents, is that she uses them as a tool to communicate with students. I can imagine in her classroom when she's teaching math, that she is using it for students who get stuck or who have questions or who want to communicate with her.

And the way I used it in my classroom (very similarly, but not exactly the same) is I would invite students to create on their tents. And it communicated things; like the students didn't realize that they were communicating with me about things that were, maybe marginally, but certainly important to them. The reason why I think that the way Professor Borowski uses tents is so meaningful is that she's going the extra mile to say, “not only am I going to look at that as a way to communicate with you, but I'm also going to honor how you have chosen to integrate that into your learning experience.” So, I just really wanted to kind of give a shout out to Professor Borowski for doing that work.

There is another professor: Professor Jill Davishahl does amazing work in a place that I think we need her. Engineering is so intimidating for so many students. It is a major that often has been seen as male dominated, exclusive, and extremely rigorous. So “weed out” culture is part of the norm there. And when I think about the work, it is such important work for marginalized students to feel like they have a place. For us to create a curriculum that is inclusive and socially relevant to them, to come up with examples in her curriculum (which I understand that she does) that feels engaging for students from marginalized backgrounds.That is intentional engagement. And for curricula, where students don't often see themselves, that seemingly small (but it’s huge!) gesture can be the reason why a student decides that, “You know what? I'm going to hang in there.” And maybe, “I took this course because I was curious to see if I could absorb this information, but it sounds like she makes it fun and engaging and relevant to students across all types of backgrounds.”

Professor John McLaughlin does amazing work. And I'm just going to hang on to this ten-day field experience, because I think experiential learning is where it is. I think it's what's happening! Get out of the classroom and learn, have real experiences out there in the world. It's like a living lab. A living, learning lab, when you can get your students out and co-create experiences out in the world. I think that it requires some vulnerability; it requires creativity; it requires openness to learning and allowing students to show up in spaces and really co-create the experience with you. And so, Professor McLaughlin sounds like the kind of professor who has a bold curiosity and wants to do things differently, and students love that. Students love when you are inviting them to do things that are just beyond their comfort zone.

The idea that we could come together and create these experiential learning opportunities that John McLaughlin has clearly mastered, I think is one of the ways that easily can set Western apart. Because we are in a beautiful place; being able to partake in that but also having permission to play in that, is centering play but also centering learning. And in my book, it’s kind of the same thing, right? You can learn hard, you can work hard, but you can also play hard. And there is no incongruence in that work.

So I am really excited and proud about the professors that we are featuring this year, because they are showing us what true leadership in the classroom is like. And they are also responding very boldly to the idea that professors are gatekeepers of students' well-being, because they are instilling a sense of well-being in the work that they're doing. And they may not even be thinking about it as that, but they are literally doing that work. And for that, I am grateful.

Belonging in Balance

Question: If you could imagine a welcoming campus community, what would it be like?

Dr Ledbetter: I imagine a place where students are co-creators of this work. I imagine a place where every student that walks on Western's campus immediately finds community. They find a sense of connection. They find caring adults who have walked paths, who have cleared paths, for them to feel as though they belong right here. I imagine everybody feels like they own that assignment. Like, without exception. I imagine a campus where students are speaking to each other. And not just fully immersed in the idea of community being on some type of digital device, but that they are really hungry for real connection and that we can help create that for them. I imagine when students are walking in hallways that they are met with smiles, they are greeted by other students that are excited to see them. I imagine a ready and rested student body that is met with a ready, rested, connected, and engaged workforce of colleagues that are also nurtured and taken care of.

Because I believe—as I think about this work of health promotion—that it is all of our jobs to think about this ecosystem as our place. And as we conceptualize what it means to be healthy colleagues working to serve the young adults whose parents have sent them here—for those who are traditional age; and also nontraditional students, because we've got upwards of 900 graduate students who come here every year as well, and we want to increase that number—but as we conceptualize what it means to be healthy colleagues working to serve these people, I imagine a campus that is ready to meet them absolutely where they are. That we see thousands of students, but they feel like touch points of one. That they really feel connected and plugged in, that they find a sense of community; small community, but also big community. So I imagine that. And I imagine it in a place that, regardless of resources, we can show up. And that we show up brilliant and resilient.

This is a dream, and it's a vision, and it's possible. This is absolutely an achievable vision. And as people think about connecting with the vision, I think being able to craft something where people see themselves, being able to plug into it, is critically important. And that is the desire of dream casters: that we can create a vision that people can see themselves in. And that is my hope for Western.

Question: In creating welcoming spaces, what would you say is difficult to balance?

Dr Ledbetter: There is this thinking that rigor and empathy, compassion, and care in the classroom, are incongruent; and they are not. They are essential, especially now. They are essential for growth. They are central for academic achievement. They are essential for flourishing, lots of studying and flourishing. And they are essential for thriving. The way we conceive of thriving, you must have empathy and compassion. That is groundwork for rigor. That is absolutely groundwork for rigor. And to the extent that we can link them and make them seem as equally compatible parts of our work, then we're all winning.