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On November 18, Russell Sage College students in Professor Tracy Gilbert’s Expressive Arts in Grief and Healing class presented their final projects, proposals to help strengthen grief-informed practices within higher education.
Throughout their presentations, the students emphasized that grief takes many forms beyond the familiar five-stage model and can arise from any kind of loss or transition. Each group focused on a specific college population:
- Grief and Students Experiencing Seasonal Depression offered strategies for navigating overlapping grief and seasonal mental health challenges, including accessible ideas like studying near a sunny window and making an effort to spend some time outdoors.
- Grief and Commuter Students and Grief and Residence Life teams highlighted transitional grief and emphasized the value of building community in a new environment.
- Grief for the Thrive Community referenced the Thriving at Sage general education course required for Russell Sage College first-year students, and how instructors can recognize and respond to the range of grief experiences students may bring with them.
- Grief in the Art + Design Community proposed ways to make Russell Sage’s art and design community more accommodating when grief is present, including pooling resources to make snacks and other simple comforts available in the Art + Design Building.
Faculty, staff, and administrators from across Sage attended the presentations and left with ideas they can bring into their work with students, as well as information about on- and off-campus resources.
Expressive Arts in Grief and Healing is one of the core courses in Sage’s Expressive Arts in Mental Health major; experiential opportunities are integral to the course and the program as a whole. In October, the same class hosted Grief-Informed Practice: Building Confidence Across Disciplines, a conference that attracted professionals from the arts, mental health, and education.