The Student Health Services Team – Committing to Congruence

In preparation for end-of-year reporting to the Division of Student Affairs, the coordinators of Student Health Services bystander intervention programs to confront sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other forms of gender-based discrimination, are asked to run a report on the proportion of faculty and staff at the institution who have completed trainings and report on the ratios of trained faculty and staff for each unit. The coordinators realize that their own unit, Student Health Services, has among the lowest number of faculty and staff who have completed trainings.

The coordinators share the results of their analysis at the unit team meeting and discuss what led to the result, as well as the implications of the team’s low training numbers relative to the unit’s explicit commitment to eliminating gender-based discrimination. The team is surprised, concerned and embarrassed that their participation does not reflect their espoused values.

The group readily agrees that their unit must be a leader and exemplar for the work. An action team is assembled to orchestrate and facilitate trainings for practitioners as quickly as possible. The team sets a deadline to accomplish a 100% completion rate by the end of the academic year.

Key Take-Aways
  • The Issue: Student Health Services realizes that its own team is among the lowest performing units in the university for completing the gender-based discrimination training that it owns and facilitates.
  • The Deliberation: The team works through feelings of embarrassment and acknowledges a responsibility to model and lead on the issue and commits to training 100% percent of their staff on an accelerated timeline.
  • The Growth: The team is able to leverage difficult feedback to motivate its own growth to emerge as a leader in the institution.