Research on student wellbeing is on the rise due to growing recognition of its importance in student academic success (Kaya & Erdem, 2021). Academic institutions and teachers play a central role in fostering learning environments that support student well-being (Baik et al., 2019; Schmitz, 2024). In an effort to increase student resilience on campus, Michael Pease MS, MPPA, CPT, CHC, CYT, MHC, the UMass/BHI Health Promotion Specialist on campus implemented The Positivity and Relaxation Training (PART) course. PART is designed to help students develop a self-care routine to better manage stress, improve their outlook and enhance their quality of life.
While student well-being has always been important to Pease, recent personal experiences and emerging research led him to act. First, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pease felt a strong responsibility to support students, recognizing the challenges they faced in learning during the crisis. Second, the results of the 2020 Healthy Minds Survey revealed a significant rise in stress-related issues among college students, further reinforcing the need for increased support. He envisioned the PART program as an opportunity to help students become mentally and physically well.
“Students are generally so much more resilient than they imagine; they just need some skills training, support and practice. It has taken a while, but I think skills training has become the preferred method to respond to what is commonly referred to as the ‘college mental health crisis.'” – Michael Pease.
What is the positivity and relaxation training (PART) program?
The PART program was developed at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine. It is a 9-session course offered by certified instructors for one credit to undergraduate and graduate students on the UMass Amherst campus. The purpose is to support UMass students in being more resilient by improving self-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-regulation. At UMass Amherst, the program is currently housed in Student Affairs and Campus Life. By the end of the Fall 2024 semester, roughly 1,500 UMass Amherst students will have completed the program. Currently, the course capacity is about 380 students per semester.
The course focuses on three primary domains of health: the relaxation response, positive expectancies and lifestyle behaviors. Students are introduced to practices in each of these categories session by session throughout the course. The purpose is to allow them to identify practices that work for them and ultimately build their own self-care routine based on the practices that work best for them.
A sample Benson-Henry Video that is among the one’s Pease and the team use is above: "Desk Yoga".
How was the program designed and implemented?
A goal of the PART program at UMass is to create an immersive learning environment, from the moment students begin reviewing materials in Canvas prior to the start of the course and beyond the end of the course with the PART alumni group. The PART program, as it is offered by the Benson-Henry Institute, is a paperback, manualized program that meets once a week. To modernize the course and make it more accessible, Pease took the following approaches:
What is the impact of PART on student well-being?
A five-semester program evaluation was completed by the UMass Center for Program Evaluation. Results from that evaluation of the PART curriculum across all five semesters provided strong evidence that student mental health and emotional well-being measures improved significantly among students enrolled in the course. Analyses stratified by student characteristics suggested that students from multiple identity groups experienced similar levels of improvement. Pease pointed to a particular finding, indicating that students with lower initial mental health scores experienced greater positive change compared to those who started with higher functioning. “The remarkable growth in student resilience is exactly what we are aiming for,” Pease said.
Lessons Learned from PART
Building students’ resilience and well-being is essential for their personal and professional growth, and academic institutions play a key role in supporting this. Pease and the PART team exemplify how focused efforts in this area can significantly enhance student resilience
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