Journal Update #1 - 8/29/19
On August 22, I emailed Melanie Brandt, the director of McBride, about my interest in conducting an independent study regarding the mental health climate at the Colorado School of Mines. I told her that " I have recently been involved in learning about pedagogy in mental health [and] I am hoping that there is an opportunity to independently study the implications of mental health in a collegiate context." A day later on August 23, she replied that she was interested in my "timely topic," and she wanted to schedule a meeting for me. On that day, we met and discussed the option of conducting a formal, independent study at Mines and the responsibilities associated with it. I was hesitant at continuing the project as Melanie told me about the heavy workload and meeting time requirement associated with an independent study, but I figured that I should persevere. She also recommended that I formalized an independent study research proposal to give to her, Toni Lefton, and potential research supervisors.
Starting this research proposal was daunting as I had no experience with drafting formal plans/brainstorming. I used an online proposal outline to create my draft, and I had my sister check my grammar and punctuation--the proposal had to be flawless and professional. During the writing process, I formulated three essential questions that would be the core of my paper:
What are the past, current, and future agendas that Mines has implemented to address beneficial mental health, and how does the progression of these actions reflect on the school’s resource prioritization?
Using a deliberate and formal experiment, how do students view the effectiveness of the current mental health program/events (i.e. National Suicide Prevention Week or Send Silence Packing)
Using available resources, what could the school include to enhance its mental health initiative? Compare the success of this idea with other events through faux implementation on a group-scale.
These questions considered various areas of mental health advocacy at mines including policy, evaluation/surveying, programming, and resource prioritization. I hoped that I would eventually be able to answer each question at the conclusion of my independent study.
In the morning of August 26, the paper was ready to send to Melanie and Toni:
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