noteworthy
At Suffolk, we think a lot about how we can help our students succeed.
That commitment to student success is embedded in our mission. Put simply, Suffolk is here to transform lives. Because we understand that access to higher education is just the beginning, we work hard to provide our students with resources—including scholarships, faculty mentoring, academic coaching, and career guidance—that will enable them to seize this opportunity and make the very most of it.
Of course, at the most fundamental level, our students’ success depends first on their health and well-being. And it’s clear to us that their emotional well-being, and that of young people everywhere, is being tested by unprecedented societal forces.
For several years, the US Surgeon General has been sounding the alarm about America’s escalating “epidemic of loneliness and isolation,” as well as rising rates of anxiety and depression. Many of us have been touched by this epidemic, but young people—who’ve come of age during a global pandemic, in the midst of climate change and political upheaval, while navigating the pressures of 24-7 social media as well as larger forces like economic inequality, racial injustice, and food and housing insecurity—are particularly vulnerable.
As Stephanie Kendall, director of Suffolk’s Counseling, Health & Wellness Center, puts it in our cover story, many of the struggles our students face today are generational. That’s why Suffolk is developing a campus-wide approach to help students manage the challenges they face, empowering them to seek the help and support they need. In “A Culture of Caring,” you can read about programs we’re creating to foster a stronger sense of belonging among our students. You’ll also learn about research our faculty are doing to understand factors that are driving the youth mental health crisis and the remedies their studies suggest.
Our focus on our students’ fundamental well-being is matched by our commitment to providing them with access to life-changing experiences, including the opportunity to study abroad. Yet many students have commitments—jobs, family responsibilities, financial constraints—that put traditional semester-long study abroad programs out of reach. So we’re investing in more short-term travel programs, like the spring-break trip that a dozen undergraduates took to Rwanda this March (“Diving Deep”).
They went there to study the economics of water with their professor, Jonathan Haughton, who created a jam-packed itinerary that had students meeting with government ministers, visiting bottling plants, and hauling nets with fishermen on Rwanda’s Lake Kivu, one of the great lakes of East Africa. But their itinerary also included a half-day visit to the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where students learned firsthand about the slaughter that unfolded there just 30 years ago this spring. That visit brought home the tremendous strides that the people of Rwanda have made to rebuild not only their economy, but the very fabric of their civil society.
After their eight days in Rwanda, those 12 Suffolk students will never see the world quite the same way again—because their understanding of the world just got much bigger. So did their respect for a country and a people they might previously have known only as a series of headlines. When I think about student success, this is the kind of transformational experience I wish for all our graduates.
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spring 2024
Pelix Bicen (center)
Marisa J. Kelly, President
After their eight days in Rwanda, 12 Suffolk students will never see the world quite the same way again—because their understanding of the world just got much bigger. Photograph by Ben Hall