The Data Behind Belonging:
Peer Support & Student Success

00:39Thank you for joining me today for another episode of Data Stakes, where I have conversations with professionals who work directly in the institutional research or effectiveness field, or are data adjacent in their role in higher education. Today's conversation will focus on strategies that promote student mental health as a primary support for student success. Let's face it, teens are stressed. And it's well documented that by the time they reach college age, they're concerned about the costs of college and the benefits of college education. The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that school connectedness has lasting effects on health and well-being, and that the key is to create environments where students feel they're cared for, are supported, and belong. And I'm pleased to say I have two guests with me today. The first is Peyton Snively, Director of Student Life at Cowley College, a community college located in South Central Kansas. And joining her is Eric Burr, retired Chief of Police in Arkansas City, Kansas, and now serving the Arkansas City Public Schools as the Hope Squad Advisor for middle and high school students. And the focus of our conversation today will be Hope Squad. Hope Squad is a national peer-to-peer suicide prevention program. And we're going to talk about how my guests are working together to create a comprehensive program to support student mental health and success in school. So Eric, Peyton, thank you so much for joining me as guests today. The work you're doing to support students in our community is so vital and I wanted you to know how much I admire you both for it. So let's start by making our listeners more aware of what Hope Squad is. and how peer-to-peer support is essential to students' mental health. So Eric, you were involved during your career as the Chief of Police. Can you tell us why you came involved with Hope Squad and how it all began in the small town of Arkansas City, Kansas?

02:46Yes, first thank you, Debbie, for having me on to speak about this very important program. During the time that I was a police officer, I had the chance to be the police chief toward the latter part of my career. And we saw just a uptick in youth suicides in Cowley County. You know, I kind of went out and I talked to some of the stakeholders in our community to see what we could do to try to affect that issue. And we were looking at school based programs and Hope Squad was one of those programs that really came to the forefront. And the more research we did, the more that we liked the program, especially since it is student focused and student led. And so we just just kind of moved in that direction. I spoke to USD 470 school board at the time and they were 100 % behind moving forward with the high school program and we later added the middle school program as well.

03:45That is great. And then the work expanded to the Cowley College campus. So Peyton, tell us more about how staff, faculty, and students are leading an important mental health strategy through Hope Squad.

04:00Yeah, thank you for having me, Debbie. So Eric came to me after he had found this program. And at the time, we didn't have anything like this on the college campus that was peer to peer focused or even just mental health focused. So when he came to me, I was excited about it on board and trying to figure out how we could implement it at the college. We did have a counselor at the time, but we didn't have a program like this. And we learned a lot with college students and even younger students that a lot of the times they don't go to our support staff first, you know, that their peers, their friends are the ones that can figure out that they're struggling or that things aren't going well for them. First, they talk to their peers. So we have joined our hoop squad is made up of mixed faculty and staff on campus. We focus on training the students on the warning signs of risk factors of suicide. And we've tried to expand the training on our campus. So two of our advisors are QPR trained and certified. That's question, persuade and refer. So they have done some training on our campus for faculty and staff. We have done some training at professional development days. We are working to train our resident assistant and door managers because sometimes they're the first ones that see students in their most vulnerable state of where they live. and then just trying to expand that to as many people as we can on our campus.

05:21Yeah, so Student Life Services at Cowley does include a wonderful mental health counselor and you even have Alwyn, the on-campus therapy dog. Now I know that you and Rebecca, the mental health counselor, you work together to regularly survey the student body each fall to determine their sense of belonging and overall mental health. Do you mind sharing with us what you've learned over the past few years?

05:45Yes, so we do have Rebecca and Alwyn. Alwyn is a Bernadoodle, so our students love to come visit her. We've learned that students are stressed. They're overwhelmed. With our two-year school, we have students that may be non-traditional students. They may have full-time jobs, kids, college athletes. We have a high population of international students. So along with just their class schedule, they have all these other challenges to face along with going to school. So... I think that we have learned that students are stressed and it affects their class performance and attendance each year on our campus. For a short time we didn't have a counselor. We do have a counselor again and we've learned through our results from our survey that the performance gap has gotten smaller each year with the help of our counseling services. Rebecca is available to the students whenever she's here. She has late evening hours so students know that they can go see her. We have a lot of students that are just overwhelmed from schoolwork or they're missing home. So all one helps with that as well. Maybe they haven't seen their pet the whole time they've been here or been able to be home. And obviously with colleges, you know, there's different times that these may come. So we try to survey in the fall because when students first get here in August, they're kind of on a high of all the events and activities happening. They've just got here. They're excited about their new adventure, but when it sets in that they're kind of getting homesick or their classes start to get more difficult, that's when we try to send out the survey to see like, know, okay, this is who is struggling and how can we help them?

07:17Yeah, and that is so important. Now you mentioned Alwyn, but I'm going to have to ask, let's talk a little bit about the policies that allow students to bring a comfort companion with them. Can you talk about that?

07:33Yes. Yeah, we do have a policy for students to be able to bring their therapy dog. So they just have to go through Dawn on our campus and she does our accessibility services. So they would just go through her. There is some paperwork they have to fill out, but we do have several animals on campus that students have in the dorms for them. I also want to talk a little bit about our BIT team, which is our behavioral intervention team. So this is a team on campus, a group of faculty and staff members that work to help recognize abnormal behaviors in students. Maybe faculty have seen it in the classroom or staff has seen some different things that are happening with students and they work to intervene and try to connect with a student before a mental health crisis happens.

08:15Yeah, and I want to circle back and say it's so vital and important, the training that you're doing with the dorm managers and the RAs, because sometimes it is an RA that maybe realizes a student hasn't come out of their room to eat, or they, no one has really seen them. And that is a critical moment when you need to take action and you need to be able to take it quickly.

08:22Yeah. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yes, we try to stress that with the students too. You know, you're seeing your peers all the time and you know, your sweetmate or someone that lives across the hall, you know, I may not see them every day to know, but you may have seen them and known that they are wearing the same outfit that they've been wearing for a week or they're not coming out of their room and socializing like they usually do. So that's where it's really important for the people in the dorms to step up.

09:02Okay, let's go back to your survey for a moment. Can we talk a little bit about the specific questions that you ask students about? Share a few examples.

09:12So we ask students how stress and mental health issues affect their physical performance each day. We ask them how many days in a row is their mood affected by mental health. We ask them how often are they missing classes? Are the class attendance affected by their mental health and mood? It's kind of like more of a how are you feeling survey. So how are things going for you?

09:36Okay, so Eric, now you're retired, but you never really left Hope Squad. So what are the significant stresses that you're seeing for middle school and high school students? And what are you doing with them to support mental health?

09:51Yeah, so. You know, I started it while I was at the police department, was involved as much as I could. Once I hit that retirement, moving over to the district, now I can focus more on Hope Squad, both of the middle school and high school. And I'm a huge fan of what Peyton and the team has done over there at Cowley College with this program. I would really say that at each level of Hope Squad, I think they encounter stressors and different, you know, issues. So for Peyton, you know, you have students coming from all over the country and the world and they do miss home. For middle school and high school, we don't necessarily have that component. So what I see at the different levels, especially when we start talking about middle school, a lot of peer pressure, just trying to find where they belong. along in the student body and where they fit in in the community. But as they progress and we do our lessons, so there is a curriculum that we teach that's age appropriate. So we do have a middle school curriculum and then we do have a high school curriculum that we also teach. But some of those stressors really involve academics and athletics, not only peer pressure, but family issues, substance. abuse becomes very prevalent, especially at the high school levels. Social issues, you know, as they get a little bit older, kind of working through some relationship problems that they may have. So it seems like each level from middle school to high school and then even to college, it's a little bit different because I think that students are just dealing with different issues. And I feel very confident that Hope Squad stays on top of always reviewing their curriculum and being relevant to what's going on and what's facing our kids today.

11:38Remember middle school. Remember middle school, Peyton? Wow. And now that I have grandchildren, middle school is kind of that milestone where I start to worry about mental health issues for them. There's so much pressure to grow up, so much pressure to leave that carefree childhood behind if they had that.

11:40Yeah. Bye.

12:00So Eric, I once shared with you a personal story of how a family member's suicide impacted my first fall semester in college. And I can still remember how when I returned to campus, it was so much to deal with. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone. Just leave me alone so that I could pretend that nothing had ever changed. So here's a question for both of you. What about the students who may be facing a crisis but they don't want to talk about it with anyone? How do you reach those students?

12:34Peyton, I'll jump in first. The beauty of this program and why this program really came to the forefront is that it empowers our members who are nominated by the student body to basically educate them to some of the warning signs of crisis. And we do have conversations on how those students can have a conversation with another student who may be going through a crisis. But at the end of the day, we really stress for them being the Hope Squad members to reach out to us as advisors or trusted adults and do a referral. So that way we can get the resources dispatched or deployed wherever we need them. So we can do those targeted check-ins. One of the things that we always start our lesson time, our curriculum time with a check-in. So the students actually practice checking in with each other and just being present and listening. you know, doing active listening. And the more that they practice that, the more that they can be present for their friends and their peer groups and their family moving forward. So that's really just empowering the, not only the Hope Squad students, but the student body as a whole to step forward and say, I'm concerned about my friend or my roommate or someone I have in class. And at that point, we can look to get some resources to that individual.

14:00Great. Peyton?

14:02I would say we're a college campus, but we're a small enough college campus. So like Eric said, that's what our students are trained to do. So if the students are not comfortable coming to us or they haven't left their room or they're not sharing these issues that they're having, that's what the peers and the students are here for. And even if they're maybe not in Hope Squad, I think our students do enough of a good job to. to see that their peers or someone near them is struggling and noticing these signs of the abnormal behaviors. And then just encouraging their peers to be consistent and continuously check in with them and try to refer them to us and refer them to get help.

14:38So it sounds like... students who participate in Hope Squad as peer-to-peer support actually have great opportunities to learn important leadership skills that they will carry throughout their whole life. The ability to listen, the ability to engage people in conversations, and probably most importantly, the development of empathy for others. So I'm going to toss in a question that I hadn't prepared you for, but can we take a few minutes to talk about the impact of social media? So how do you see social media impacting mental health for the students that you work closely with? Peyton, you want to start first?

15:15Sure. I think social media has a complete and total impact of our students' mental health. I mean, even for our students that are international, a way to stay connected with what's happening back at home is through social media. one look or scroll of things that are happening. You can sometimes just see it in someone's face that it completely just changes their mood, creates panic or worry. A big thing that's happening at the college campus right now is they have a website that is an app that's completely anonymous. So you don't know who's saying these things, but they talk about everything that's happening on campus. They talk about specific people. So I've seen that firsthand. and since I've worked at Cowley that our students get on this app, they see what people are saying, but they don't know who is saying this, know, someone's hiding behind a keyboard. And it starts so many problems on our campus with our students. And I know that a lot of them have seeked help or mental health because of this app.

16:12So this is a third party app that unfortunately the college really can do nothing about other than encouraging students don't get involved in this.

16:18Right. Yeah, don't even be on it. Yes.

16:23Just back away, you know. And I think that we're all as adults really familiar with platforms like Reddit, like the Arc, Citi, Ask and Answer. You know, sometimes those things can become a little ugly.

16:30Mm-hmm. Yeah.

16:42And so I know that you're working to discourage students from participating on that app. So Eric, what is your take about social media, especially when we talk about younger children, middle school age, and even younger anymore?

16:48I'm still in.

16:57Yeah, and I would just echo Peyton's view that it does directly affect mental health, both in a positive and negative way. You know, I work throughout my district, so I work in the elementary schools as well. We don't have a structured Hope Squad program for elementary, which I would love to entertain that because there is an elementary program for that. I find myself usually asking by a show of hands how many students have cell phones and how many have, you know, one, two, three, four, five different social medias. And it's really eye-opening when I do that, that the younger kids in elementary even have cell phones and may have one or two social medias that they participate in. And it really just boils down to the parents being involved and educating the students and parents as much as we can about the dangers that are out there on social media. So we just have to do our best to get out and educate both students and parents about some of those dangers. know, one of the conversations that we have in Hope Squad, especially at our high school level, is that when they themselves are in places on social media and they happen to see concerning posts from class members to make sure that they report those to us. So that way we can get help to them. so that's really kind of where we're at. It's a never ending battle as far as getting out and having those conversations and just trying to expand everyone's awareness and knowledge about social media and the dangers that are in there.

18:37So it sounds like what you're saying is listening is effective, advocating for others is effective, and developing empathy is vital. So let's have a last question for both of you. Leadership means implementing the guidance that you offer to others. What are you both doing to support your own mental health? Peyton?

18:45Yeah. I just try to prioritize going for walks, getting fresh air. I think we're all guilty of being on social media often and sometimes I will be on Pinterest or TikTok or something for too long and that completely affects my mood. So just giving a break from social media and doing the activities that you enjoy and just talking to someone about things when they're bothering you so they don't build up.

19:21Eric, how about you?

19:22Yeah, and I would I would say that since especially since I left policing that my outlook has has has looked up considerably a lot less stress, but I like to exercise. I like to get out and Walker jog. I've tried to read more, so I put tried to be more intentional about less screen time, more reading, but my favorite thing is spending time with family, getting out in the yard and throwing a football with my son, or just finding ways to spend time with family is really one of the best ways that I can reduce my stress.

19:55I agree. And hey, for me, let's not forget those pets, right?

20:00Right.

20:01Less screen time for me, more book reading time, and more cuddling with those cats. So that's the end of our conversation for today. Peyton and Eric, thank you again for joining me to talk about this important topic and the need to create intentional support for students. And hey, listeners, if you'd like to know more about Hope Squad, you can visit the national website at www.hopesquad.com.

20:07Thank

20:26More about the good work to support student mental health at Cowley College, you can contact Peyton through email at Peyton.SnyvelyatCali.edu. And of course, Eric is also available if you have questions by looking him up on LinkedIn. So thank you for joining me for another episode of Data Stakes. Hey, what do you want to talk about? You could be my next guest just by reaching out to me at dfelps at Datatelligent.com. .ai

20:56Thank you, Debbie, for having us.