 HBCU digest radio welcome back to our presidential series the distinguished guest today a Triumvirate of greatness from America's HBCU Paul Quinn College We are happy to be joined by a vice president of institutional programs dr. Kizwanda Grant Paul Quinn's program coordinator of mental health services dr. Stacey Alexander and the president of Paul Quinn College dr. Michael Sorrell So this is a this is a treat for me because we're talking about something that's Critical to the nation's Well-being, but we're having an HBCU to pioneer an innovative way of looking at this and this is Paul Quinn's mental health assessment program which launched In full about three years ago But it's really capturing attention now in its third year For introducing first-year students and students at large to opportunities to speak with a counselor to receive mental health Assessment and treatment opportunities on campus in partnership with the nearby University of Texas Southwestern Medical School So dr. Grant first congratulations on the evolution of such an incredible program for and particularly for the presidents who are listening and Who will forward this to their staff to set this up? How does something like this take shape in partnership with another institution? On your campus specifically for your student profile Well, there's a lot of moving pieces to where we are today But I do believe it started with an initial relationship between President Sorrell and a Staff member at UT Southwestern who was willing to assist I believe that Paul Quinn College uniquely does not mind asking for assistance when our students have an issue There's a problem that needs to be solved We we don't mind asking for help and so by asking for help We were brought to someone at UT Southwestern who was willing to really go out on the limb and say I believe that we can assist Paul Quinn and they came and spoke to staff and students and provided a diagnosis of students were most likely suffering from PTSD and that conversation rolled into UT Southwestern Assigning a resident to come to campus once a week to meet with students to do to provide counseling To provide medication prescriptions if needed And then from there we wanted to expand and grow it was very difficult to Tell students kind of out of the blue you should go see dr. Moore who is psychiatrist And the students immediate reaction would be well, I'm not crazy. I don't need to talk to her And there was a lot of hesitation to do such a thing so we have to build in Various layers of services so that the students would not be apprehensive to mental health counseling But so and so that they would see it on campus more than just once once a week And so fast forward to now summer of 2019 We have a mental health clinic on campus that is staffed by dr. Alexander and miss Belton who are here full-time and UT Southwestern still comes one day a week for about five hours a day on a Thursday but Our and our goal is to bring students in To Paul Quinn College during the summer bridge program And they are immediately introduced to the idea of mental health and wellness as part of our new student orientation And introducing them to the institution a week after that mental health orientation We began our initial screenings which is what you refer to they sit with a trained professional for about 45 minutes to an hour And answer questions about their upbringing upbringing their past things that they've been through How they feel about things how they interpret things around them And that information is used to inform both the clinic and UT Southwestern staff, but also institutional programs for the college On an institutional level We plan programs that address the things that come up in the screenings Could be stressed dealing with lots of a loved one could be relationship and communication issues But we also use the information to identify students who need a specific follow-up From a professional whether that's a licensed counselor like dr. Alexander or miss Belton or it could be a follow-up from a psychiatrist and Those screenings are happening right now with our current summer bridge class and our goal is to assess every one of them It's about a hundred and fifty this summer and anyone who is not assessed this summer We'll circle back to in the fall to ensure that every new student on campus has had the opportunity for the screening Man, I it's just so important and I can't recall Shame on me that y'all are three years into this and we're just now having kind of a national conversation about it But dr. Alexander, what has it been like from over the last three years in the culture at Paul Quinn? for students being hesitant perhaps about Mental health support To be embracing it as a campus as individuals how it how has the school Played a role in their individual evolution to start to embrace this kind of service Okay, yeah, so what we've done and I joined the campus last summer So I've done my full year and one of the things that we've done and Prefs has embraced is really normalizing counseling So anytime we're able to get in front of the students whether they're basketball court volleyball court It does not matter. We intend to change the dialogue for mental illness to mental health So we explained to them that they're using it as a preventive measure Not for them So that they can take away the stigma that you only go to counseling when something is wrong So this summer we did a full day of orientation Which was about three and a half hours and patterns exercise patterns relationship coping styles communication styles We help them to see that all of those contributed to how mint mentally healthy you are are you're not One of the things I did in the orientation was give them myself a number new phone sessions We can do virtual most casual will do walk-ins when we schedule their appointments if they don't show up We'll text them and remind them or call them We'll go to the cafeteria provide programming with group of programming like we had a comedy show It's like every other year y'all are doing something Game-changing not just for the campus before the sector at large And this is almost an extension of things that you've done years past providing eyeglasses to the students Getting students involved in social justice not only for the campus before the community. So there's You know not developing but there is a culture of you know student You know holistic health wealth, I mean in health and This is part of a sound retention strategy. This is part of a sound recruitment strategy was that the plan for Developing something like this to to extend those things or was it that you saw a need and here's how we what we can do to help it You know for us Jared we literally start with What is it that the students are telling us or showing us that they need? How do we how can we become the best caretakers and stewards of their trust and their families trust and so So much of I mean this is really this is how you wind up Having an institutional goal of eradicating intergenerational poverty, which is which is what we are now committed to doing and It's because so much of the problems that we are having to address their birth place is scarcity and You know when you really look back at the things we've had to address so we implemented a dress code Because we wanted our students to always be able to present themselves in a way Which said I feel good about who I am and I look as if I belong and you know We got some criticism for that right where people tried to say oh You know you're engaging in respectability politics and nothing to do respectability politics and everything to do with the sense of one self-worth All right, and so you know we addressed that issue then we had the food desert Well, well, let me say this so we realize that many people don't have the clothes they need because they don't have the money They need to get the clothes so Let's have a clothes closet where people can get what they need for free then we look up and we're in a food desert and People can't afford healthy produce and we don't have access to a grocery store so we address that issue then we look up and we've got an environmental justice issue and But that's because people don't have the respect on the resource communities to Show them how much they care by not exposing them to harmful environmental Decision You know then we look around and you know we had the eyeglasses issue. We had the pork Issue where we had to teach students and the communities how you don't have to eat food that is Detrimental to your survival that how are you going to perform in class if you can't see the board? right Then we looked up and realized students couldn't afford To go to school if they were buying too much money That they weren't prepared when they finished because they didn't have access to Internships that they were shut out from meaningful career opportunities They had gone to school had been led to believe that they were competitive But they weren't competitive because they didn't have all the tools everyone else had to compete but all of these problems the genesis of them is poverty and You know the trauma of poverty We you know We for several years dr. Grant and the rest of the staff and I would sit around and wonder why our students who are succeeding here sabotaging themselves midway through their junior year I Mean students who are performing well academically and and you know from a selfish perspective for us everyone always wanted to give us a hard time about our graduation rate and We're like well look we're doing good things But how do you explain to someone that you have a student with a 3-5? We just starts flunking courses stops coming to class wants to drop out and But doesn't want to leave and So we started having conversations with students and finally one student said to us This is the best my life has ever been People love me here. They see me. They tell me I matter there's no guarantee I'm gonna have this experience when I leave and Then we started noticing how students were depressed and what they were using for coping skills and You know, we went through the when we recruited the students from Chicago and they were coming from backgrounds that were just Devastated by violence and living under the shadow of violence in the first year we recruited there Every just about every high school. We visited someone had been shot that school year and Students who come from those experiences who's come from the trauma that poverty causes There's no wonder that they're going to struggle with mental health That is normal. The difference is no one's ever told them that it was normal They've been made to feel as if they were less than Because they were just going through a difficult period and what we what in my far less Technical language that Dr. Alexander uses so beautifully the way I explain it to people is You do not have to stay in the dark All have periods where we struggle But if you get the help you need it is a short-term period and Then you move on you get back and you're stronger and you know, and I tell the students my story I tell them what it was like to Deal with sudden cardiac death to die and have to be brought back to life and to deal with the post-traumatic stress of that experience And when you have these conversations and you have them out loud and you have them in a way where you're not embarrassed You know it changes the sense of How the students see themselves and what they feel is safe and we want them to know they're safe They are loved and we can have these conversations and we will stand right next to you having them It's such a beautiful thing, but you know, I'm a journalist. So I got it. Those salt on everything Part of part of what makes this so wonderful is because Paul Quinn intentionally recruits and Grows Deliberately right so it's not that Paul Quinn is trying to we won a class of 1500 students So it's it's something where you can reach out and touch all the students You can reach out and give them all yourself on number and this question is for all three of you In the in the college's strategic plan to grow How do you how do you scale up these wonderful things that you do for your student body and do for your community as you expand As you open a new campus in Plano as you break enrollment records as you get more, you know athletic teams on campus as You implement an urban work program Um as you grow, how do you how do you still say still say community focus and make sure that they'll service is a high level well here, let me say from the Design perspective, right? And then Dr. Grant and Dr. Alexander will explain how they actually make all the stuff that I come up with actually happen The reality of it is this what we are scaling is the small college experience We we think each of the campuses that we replicate at the largest point should be about 1500 students Which allows us to maintain that intimate focus, but this is foundational to who we are just as We will offer Academic programs like all our campuses will have a major in fundraising and philanthropy all our campuses are going to have this same intentional focus on mental health This is just who we are going to be we are committed to it. We will continue to raise money for it But it is just part we don't see it as optional We see it as foundational to the urban work college experience. This is who we are. This is what we do. We intend to keep doing it Dr. Grant, I guess you guys I would add to that As enrollment grows the logistics of doing things like the mental health screenings for example Has to grow we probably were able to do the screenings over two or three days three years ago Today the screenings are happening with about 20 to 25 residents from UT Southwestern who come to campus Who need a private room a room with a door in two chairs? And so That member literally will get an email from me that says I need your office space for These Tuesdays and Thursdays in the month of July so that these assessments can happen They're using my office this afternoon and so it's it's it's planning and trying to still have that one-on-one feel Because this assessment can be done paper pencil But what we've learned is the students don't always describe their experiences in the same language That is used by professionals We asked students on a survey are you a victim of trauma, which is one of our We now have a grant from the state of Texas, which is specifically for victims of crime Our victims who have been traumatized in the past and we use that language and ask the student Are you a victim of trauma? They'll say no. Are you a victim of a crime and they'll say no But when we look at the specific story of that student We know that that is not true But they're self-reporting almost as a defense mechanism and when you point out to the student that they Are they said that their older brother had been killed in a car accident or their family? had food stability issues and they moved around a lot and We you know have to show them these are Traumas that you have dealt with in the past that don't necessarily make you a victim But it means that you have needs for services that the college is going to provide to you and We have to be flexible and how we go about these things. We have to use the language that the students are comfortable with Continuing the one-on-one assessments is very important because it takes away Some of the the barriers to mental health and accessing services because they can just check something on the box and not Really have to talk and explain their experiences and also having a representation of people of color on campus From a diverse background that can relate to the students. It's built and it's Fluent in Spanish and she's comfortable Counting students in Spanish that's been part of our growth plan as well as having interns who come into the clinic who There's a young African-American male who comes in and volunteers as he's Completing his hours under the life state license requirements. And so our expansion is still meant to Have a hands-on approach with the students and with 550 students it does feel a lot different when we have to push staff members out of their offices for the initial assessments But from the students perspective They've had someone's undivided attention for almost an hour to talk about themselves with the goal of getting assistance and It's so far has worked very well in the students remember I talked to this person for an hour and they asked me a lot of questions And now of sometimes the next day or maybe the next week That student might be tapped on the shoulder to say hey come on over and talk more in detail With someone in the in the clinic so the high touch feel is still there even as we grow and the grant helps us to continue that and We hope to go into two more years under this grant from the state of Texas through the governor's office and Continue to expand into more services for students not just counseling but counseling is a primary component of the state grant And that's one of the things that we'll do in the counseling office Even if we do not have the funding to actually hire full-time licensed professional counselors We can still in the community because I'm a supervisor as a licensed professional counselor So I can also supervise clinicians that are like Dr. Graham mentioned that are needing to get their council We're also working on programming to bring in your nontraditional students who may not come to the campus during the evening We're reaching out to be on telephonically to bring them into the closing view to mental health services and reach Not be foreign to you when you graduate from college. You would have been exposed Praise I'll let you have the last word man. Um, if that somebody is is is working to Establish a culture like you guys have um yours happens to be around addressing poverty What's the single biggest thing that a leader can do that students can buy into that faculty can support that? alumni can support What is the what is the spark that that helps that culture to set in for something as important like mental health or like? Addressing poverty or like building wealth for African Americans. What is what is the spark for it? Well, I think the most important thing the leader can do is to listen Right. I mean because these weren't None of what we do Was part of a playbook that I had coming in All right, I mean these were things that our students either said they needed or Demonstrated they needed that our community needed or demonstrated that it needed and What we have said is we're going to be an institution that addresses the needs of the day We we we're not going to have conversations about are we relevant because we're going to demonstrate to you Why you cannot live without us We're going to be what you need us to be and and I think if if you do that and And then if you do it Authentically and if you do it honestly and you do it in broad daylight where You know when you hire amazing people and they do extraordinary things You tell people you hired amazing people and you tell people they've done extraordinary thing and you give them the ability to be recognized and praised for Doing great work, and then you get out of the way and let them do that I Think then it takes hold Right because these programs have to live on After all of us are gone I mean we're serving the needs of people who have generational suffering So we're not going to fix this in the next five years We're not going to fix this in the next 10 years But the only way it really gets fixed if all of us buy into it and our institutional goals Become industry goals, which is why you know, we've come to try and transform all of higher education Because we think that's what our students need