This Focus Session is presented by IAMSE partner, AACOM. To learn more about AACOM, click here!

This quick, tool-in-hand workshop-style session is designed to change the psychological air your institution breathes. Using case studies, participants will actively rewrite the micro-messages—emails, announcements, feedback lines, syllabus language, and assessment framing—that shape students’ daily experience of belonging, purpose, and possibility. Drawing on national College of Osteopathic Medicine data showing that students’ well-being is associated with the signals they receive from their learning environment, the session equips faculty and staff to intentionally shift the atmosphere of their programs: from environments that drain resilience to ones that broadcast and support Growth mindset, Purpose and relevance, and Sense of belonging. Attendees will leave with two deployable artifacts and a short-cycle plan to measure how these changes begin to clear the air across their institution.

Learning Objectives

1. Interpret the strongest associations in the data: how Growth mindset, Purpose & relevance, and Sense of belonging relate to higher flourishing/resilience and lower burnout/psychological symptoms among students and faculty.
2. Differentiate student beliefs from instructor signals: summarize why students’ perception of instructor growth mindset (PIGM) shows stronger associations with lower burnout and fewer psychological symptoms than students’ own beliefs, shifting the locus of change to pedagogy and climate.
3. Design effective interventions: produce one student-facing message or one in-course teaching move that embed Growth mindset, Purpose & relevance, and Sense of belonging cues and are especially protective for historically marginalized learners.
4. Define success metrics and iterate: select one improvement cycle (e.g., brief belonging and emotional-exhaustion pulses) and a 30-day plan to pilot, measure, and refine the artifact.