Connie Horton, vice president for student affairs at Seaver College, decided to change the narrative about mental health on campus. She developed Resilience-Informed Skills Education (RISE) in 2019 based on six dimensions of health to help students develop resilience.
In response to the spring 2019 Student Health Survey, students reported 65% felt overwhelming anxiety.
Director of RISE Stacey Lee Gobir is working with Horton in this effort to help students.
The program is designed to help students in all five schools, both graduate and undergraduate, become equipped with resilience — the ability to overcome and bounce back from adversity, Lee Gobir said.
“There’s a survey that a lot of colleges participate in called the National College Health Association Survey,” Lee Gobir said. “It surveys students from different universities across America about things like depression, anxiety, hopelessness — what we have seen in the past is that Pepperdine is pretty much on par with the national averages that continue to rise and rise.”
The program is continuing to develop and create partnerships. Lee Gobir said a pivotal part of RISE over the past couple of years was giving students the necessary tools to be resilient.
The development of RISE followed the Woolsey Fire and Borderline shooting and is equally relevant now.
RISE aims to develop six data-driven dimensions of resilience in students. These dimensions include physical, social, cognitive, spiritual, service and life skills, Lee Gobir said. The purpose of the program is to help empower, educate and encourage students to build in these practices for themselves so they can thrive.
“I think there’s a misconception sometimes that students at Pepperdine don’t struggle, that they’re overachievers, that they should be happy all the time because they live by the beach,” Lee Gobir said.
Rise Programming
RISE takes a holistic approach to health through a variety of campus events and partnerships. The organization currently partners with Seaver Chapel to provide first-year students with four weeks of RISE curriculum in the fall and the spring, Lee Gobir said. Chapel — which is now run by the Dean’s Office — was called Seaver 200 and Convocation and coordinated by the Hub for Spiritual Life.
Infographic by Kylie Kowalski
Some programs coordinated by the group include the RISE Housing Interest Community in Seaside Hall, a partnership with Campus Recreation to put on events such as weekly yoga and 1-on-1 coaching sessions to develop SMART goals for resilience, Lee Gobir said.
Larger-scale events include the RISE Summit. Each summit conference focuses on a unique aspect of one of the six dimensions of RISE. The Summit has panelists who tell stories about resilience. about one of the six dimensions, Lopez said. Additionally, RISE hosts a biannual Yoga Wellness Retreat.
RISE Marketing Intern Daniela Lopez said she has not missed a larger scale RISE event since her first-year. Lopez joined the RISE community through the RISE Summit.
In spring 2023, the Summit focused on physical health. Lopez said the theme for the conference was “Every Body Has a Story,” focusing on how unique stories have benefitted from resilience.
Lopez encourages students to attend a smaller-scale event put on by RISE called Breakfast Crafts, where students join together weekly to do crafts like knitting.
“It’s a time to chill and learn how to knit or color, and it’s a time to de-stress from college life,” Lopez said. “I wish more students would go.”
There are a variety of other events hosted by RISE that can be most easily found through the organization’s Instagram, Lee Gobir said.
Lopez and two other interns run the RISE Instagram account and create merch, she said. Their main goal is to collaborate to get people to attend RISE events.
“I knew that RISE would be a perfect place for me because of their models and values,” Lopez said.
Junior RISE attendee Sabrina Krebs said she learned about RISE through their required first-year programming, which was Seaver 200 at the time.
“I remember each week we learned about a different aspect of health,” Krebs said. “I still remember it to this day, so I think it was pretty impactful.”
After Krebs finished her required sessions of RISE, she sought out more of the organization’s programming. Krebs said she found community at Rise & Rest Yoga and likes the RISE values.
The organization works to combat the myth that taking care of oneself looks the same for everyone, Lee Gobir said. RISE helps students find what works best for them and how to individually build skills that benefit their health.
RISE aims to be proactive with students in developing skills to deal with the adversity that comes with life, Lee Gobir said.
“Dr. Connie Horton just saw that it was a timely opportunity to introduce a program like the RISE program, and all of it is around proactive skills-based education,” Lee Gobir said.
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Contact Kylie Kowalski via email: kylie.kowalski@pepperdine.edu
