Kelly Rossetto, an associate professor in the Department of Communication and Media and faculty director of Gradwell, and Eric Martin, an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Director of the Center for Physical Activity and Sport, recently published an article in Communication Education. The article, “It’s always about challenging and supporting”: Communicative processes of resilience in higher education, investigated how campus student-support leaders cultivated resilience in college students.
In the study, Rossetto and Martin found that participants discussed interactions with students and programming that aligned with five communicative processes established in previous literature: Crafting normalcy, affirming identity anchors, maintaining and using social networks, finding alternative logics, and legitimizing negative feelings while foregrounding productive action. Further, they created a framework where several of these communicative processes worked together to support student resilience. These additional categories included mattering and belonging, mentorship, reframing and reorientation, and reflection and finding strengths.
Rossetto and Martin will use this collaborative research project and its findings to further develop programs to support resilience in student and individuals across the Treasure Valley.