Exploring Faculty Responsibilities Toward Students in Distress

“Faculty are often faced with difficult decisions in terms of when and how to best intervene with students who are experiencing mental health or other personal problems,” said Dr. Adam L. Fried, Assistant Director of the Center for Ethics Education and the event’s organizer.

Last year, the American Psychological Association addressed this issue, explaining that university counseling centers are examining how best to serve the growing number of students seeking their services.

All Fordham faculty and teaching fellows are invited to an open discussion exploring instructor responsibilities toward students in distress.  This lunch discussion will include an interdisciplinary dialogue on:

• What are faculty responsibilities when they suspect a student is in distress
• Concerns about intervening (or not intervening) with students in distress
• Acting in helpful ways that do not violate student-faculty boundaries
• Decisions to address distress communicated in papers and other writing
• Recommendations for new faculty and graduate students about best practices

“We hope this open interdisciplinary dialogue will touch on some of the struggles faculty experience when deciding whether and how to intervene with a student they believe to be experiencing distress,” Fried continued.

“Some examples include responding to students who report mental health concerns in their writing assignments or class discussions or students who disclose personal, family, health, economic or other types of stressors that affect their school work.  We also hope that we can develop some recommendations that might be helpful to new faculty and graduate instructors to provide guidance on how to address these difficult situations.”

All Faculty and Graduate Teaching Instructors are invited.
Please RSVP to ethics@fordham.edu | 718-817-0926

Sponsored by the Center for Ethics Education and the Institutional Equity and Compliance Office.

Written By Fordham University Center for Ethics Education

Exploring Faculty Responsibilities Toward Students in Distress was originally published @ Ethics and Society and has been syndicated with permission.