Courses are open to all students, staff, faculty, executive leaders, alumni, retirees, and family members. If you are interested in completing a course that has already happened, contact spartanresilience@msu.edu and request access to recordings for off-line learning.
Begin to build your own personal framework for resilience to help you navigate your unique collection of life and work challenges.
Participants in the course will have the opportunity to:
The live webinar series has already been completed. Please email spartanresilience@msu.edu to gain access to the recorded webinar for on-demand learning.
Many of us are experiencing intermittent burnout and the effects of chronic stress. This session is designed to help participants recognize when they are experiencing burnout and become more skilled at metabolizing their stress using practical grounding skills to help reduce the strain on their body, mind, and spirit.
Participants will gain:
The live webinar series has already been completed. Please email spartanresilience@msu.edu to gain access to the recorded webinar for on-demand learning.
Give yourself the opportunity to understand the emotion of shame and build solid shame resilience skills. This discussion may change the course of your life - it really is that important.
Shame is a universal human emotion. Everyone has it, but as a culture we don't talk about it very much. People try to hide their shame. We tend to think we are the only one who has it, and we think there is somehow something wrong with us - that we are broken or defective. When we hide our shame it grows. On the other hand, when we learn how to recognize when we are having a "shame flash" and we develop skills to help ourselves process that experience in new ways we can get rid of the reservoir of shame that we have been carrying around for years. We can also learn to identify and deflect the shaming messages in our culture, families, workplaces, and community-based organizations. We may even decide to use our voice and try to make our communities more shame resilient as well. Based on the research and writing of Dr. Brené Brown, drawing from her books I Thought it was Just Me and The Gifts of Imperfection.
The live webinar series has already been completed. Please email spartanresilience@msu.edu to gain access to the recorded webinar for on-demand learning.
Learn informal mindfulness skills to help you find a sense of balance in your life.
When we think of mindfulness practice we tend to picture the more formal practices like meditation, guided imagery, or yoga. Many people feel too busy to participate in regular, formal mindfulness practice. This class will teach you some basic, informal mindfulness skills that can help you center and find a sense of balance while you move through your busy days.
Even if you do have a formal mindfulness practice you can add to it by learning new practical and portable ways to connect with the present moment and free yourself from the confines of your personal thinking as you move through your day.
The live webinar series has already been completed. Please email spartanresilience@msu.edu to gain access to the recorded webinar for on-demand learning.
Start a new relationship with your emotions.
Newborn babies have a very healthy, untarnished relationship with their human emotions. Things happen, they feel feelings, they express feelings in natural ways, the feelings pass, they move on with their day. Socialization, in most cultures, gets in the way of healthy emotional processing. How we learn to be in relationship with our human emotions is very dependent on social identity characteristics such as gender, gender identity, race, class and other human differences. We are systematically disadvantaged from these dominant cultural narratives and some of us become emotionally challenged by the rules we are given to operate within.
Participants will have the opportunity to:
The live webinar series has already been completed. Please email spartanresilience@msu.edu to gain access to the recorded webinar for on-demand learning.
Learn six core skills that will help you be more flexible, more effective, with less stress and upset.
We often hear about the importance of increasing your physical flexibility as you age, yet most people have never heard about the importance of increasing their psychological flexibility. Seldom are we taught that increasing your psychological flexibility is a major key to success in both your personal and professional life.
This course will help you assess your current level of psychological flexibility and explore the six core skills of Acceptance and Commitment Theory (ACT).
Learn how to be present in the moment, open and relaxed, and able to do what matters most.
The live webinar series has already been completed. Please email spartanresilience@msu.edu to gain access to the recorded webinar for on-demand learning.
4 weeks – Tuesdays: April 1, 8, 15, 22
When we are trying to move forward after a traumatic event, or significant loss, it is vital that we show up for ourselves in kind and loving ways. This is no time for our well-developed inner critics to be in control of our recovery.
What does high quality self-care look like in times like these?
How can self-compassion (aka loving accountability) help our healing process?
What do we need from the people around us?
How we, and our co-workers, show up for us when we are having this kind of a hard time can make the all the difference in our attempt to balance the challenge of early recovery with the need to meet our basic work life obligations to the best of our ability.
In 2024, with so much on-going war, genocide, firearm violence, racial violence and other systemic oppression layered on top of illness, loss, accidents, caregiving strain, and political unrest – it is likely that one or more of our co-workers is having a hard time and would benefit from a demonstration of empathy and caring from us. This session will also give you some tips for how you can show up for your team members with empathy and love.
Lisa Laughman, LMSW, Coordinator, Spartan Resilience Education
4 weeks – Wednesdays: May 14, 21, 28 and June 4
Boundaries are essential for healthy relationships both at home and at work. Without the capacity to establish and maintain clear and effective boundaries we are at risk being manipulated, taken advantage of, and have difficulty keeping ourselves and others safe. Yet few of us are taught the basics of when and how to set boundaries.
Join us as we explore:
How to know when we need to set a boundary
Different types of boundaries we may need to set
Barriers to setting boundaries
How to navigate the unpleasant emotions that come up when we set boundaries (vulnerability, fear, guilt, shame, insecurity, doubt, etc)
Setting boundaries when there are power differentials in the relationships
Boundaries as an essential skill for allyship with people in marginalized or targeted social identity groups.
Lisa Laughman, LMSW, Coordinator, Spartan Resilience Education
Sessions are held via zoom on Tuesdays 4:00 - 5:30 pm
Register HereOnce you register you will be sent an email with information for accessing the sessions.
When we experience the loss of someone we love, it can be very difficult to process and make meaning out of what has happened.
The emotional, psychological, and physical strain of grieving can temporarily make it hard to navigate our personal and professional responsibilities.
While the journey is different for everyone, some skills and strategies can help you move through the process with more ease, self-compassion, resilience, and effectiveness.
Being part of a community of grievers can provide invaluable support and allow you to learn from the experience of others who are also on a journey of healing and transformation following a significant, life-changing loss.
Joining our trauma-informed, healing-centered community will give you the opportunity to:
Sessions are drop in and free of charge, come when you need to.
Sessions facilitated by Licensed Grief Counselors
For more information contact Spartan Resilience Education
The community meets in a zoom meeting space, the second and fourth Thursdays of each month, from 12:30-1:30.
Register HereSessions are facilitated by Lisa Laughman, Coordinator of Spartan Resilience Education
Lisa offers music, somatic grounding practices, timely topics, new skill building concepts, and often shares her most recent personal insights about emotional wellness and psychological flexibility in the context of social justice education.
Lisa also facilitates community discussions using the zoom chat function and verbal sharing from participants.
The Spartan Resilience Education Certificate Series is designed to help ALL Spartans build skills and develop a basic framework for responding to all kinds of life challenges with resilience and value guided action. The course content can help develop critical awareness of the impact systems of power and privilege have on our individual and collective health and wellbeing.
If you are a student, faculty, staff, alumni, retiree, or family member and wish to attend ALL the classes offered as part of the series, within a 2-year period, you will receive the Spartan Resilience Education Certificate.
This certificate can enhance your resume and convey to others that you have invested time and resources in developing solid skills for navigating work and life effectively. The series can also be used as a professional development training, be incorporated into your official plans of work, or serve as a unique lifelong learning opportunity.
The Spartan Resilience Education Certificate demonstrates your commitment to developing a wide range of skills to support wise, value guided action in your personal and professional life. To enroll in the certificate program, register here.
Once you are enrolled in the Spartan Resilience Certificate program you will still need to sign up for each course individually:
Sessions are offered live over the noon hour and will also be recorded to allow participants to review materials if you aren't able to attend live sessions, or to complete the course on your own time.
Once you have attended/watched all sessions in a given course you will need to complete the participant survey for that course which will prompt you to send an email to Spartanresilience@msu.edu, indicating you have completed the course.
The Snippet Project brings resilience education directly to the learning and working spaces Spartans are already engaged in.
The series of 15 brief videos and the companion user guide are intended to be shared with groups of students, faculty, staff, and leaders. Groups will be led by peer facilitators including student organization leaders, classroom instructors, administrative assistants, academic advisors, coaches, team leaders, etc.
The videos series covers topics such as: how to increase your psychological flexibility; learn healthy emotional expression, develop grounding practices; interrupt unhelpful thought habits that get in the way of happiness, wellbeing, and success.
| Fall Semester 2024 | Pilot the Snippet Project with 2 undergraduate courses and 1 student organization within the MSU Honors College. |
| Spring Semester 2025 | Continue piloting the Snippet Project material with 4 different types of learning environments including: a support staff teams; students in required courses, Graduate students; and one group of learners specifically representing a marginalized community. |
| Summer Semester 2025 |
Review data collected to date and write summary report. Develop partnership for more wide scale dissemination of the Snippet Project materials across the university community. |
| Fall Semester 2025 | On-going utilization of the snippet project with continued efforts to measure the impact of the program. |
Mindful STATE is an emerging university-wide, collaborative initiative to help Spartans learn the benefits of mindfulness and access resources to develop or strengthen their mindfulness practices.
Introductory mindfulness courses
Check for upcoming mindfulness courses here (link to Spartan Resilience courses)
Spartans Voices
Recorded meditations offered by fellow Spartans can be accessed on MSU Media Space in the Mindful STATE channel
Coming Soon!
Community healing-centered meditation events
Spartans gathering to create healing-centered spaces for meditation, reflection, and somatic healing practices.
Spartans teaching Spartans
Recorded demonstrations of breath work and grounding practices –
Mindful STATE Map
Visit beautiful spaces in and around the MSU Campus and listen to recorded messages and meditations from fellow Spartans by utilizing a QR code
Our mission is to provide opportunities for any Spartan, anywhere to develop or strengthen the skills needed to effectively respond to their unique collection of challenges. Like other institutions of higher education, the demand for counseling services at MSU is greater than our current capacity to meet that demand. The level of stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, trauma, and secondary trauma being experienced by our community can be seen and felt across the University. This is true across all populations: undergraduate, graduate, faculty, staff, and leaders.
Unfortunately, because of stigma, toxic positivity, emotional avoidance, and cultural conditioning, most people who are emotionally and psychologically struggling will not engage in counseling.
This leads us to a curious question:
What if we take the resilience training out of the counseling offices and bring skill-building opportunities directly into the learning, working, and social environments Spartans already engage in?
Through a variety of media and teaching formats, we seek to ensure that resilience education is accessible, inclusive, and ever-present as part of the "Spartan Experience."
Like most Big 10 university brand strategies, MSU has powerful images and messages about the excellence of our students, faculty, and staff. Who will solve real world problems? We will, of course, because of our Spartan Will.
We are expected to have "Uncommon Will" as if our students are magically different from other students, like the ones at the school down the road who are busy "hailing to the Victors." These messages inadvertently increase the performance pressure our students feel and can have unintended outcomes of increased stress, fear of failure, self-criticism, and imposter syndrome.
Spartan Resilience seeks to balance these messages by providing the skills building required to live at the intersection of healthy and high performing. We believe that "Uncommon Will" requires uncommon skills, and every Spartan deserves to have access to resilience training to help them meet the demands placed upon them.
Our goal is to infuse Spartan branding with wellness concepts, incorporating mindfulness and other grounding practices into the very fabric of how teaching, learning, and business happens at Michigan State University. Integrating resilience training into every aspect of life at Michigan State will best prepare Spartans to provide leadership for the common good in their personal and professional lives.
Spartan Resilience Education Program Priorities
Scale resilience education to reach large numbers of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and leaders.
Engage campus partners in creating healing-centered gatherings designed to increase social connection and healthy relationships between Spartans.
In partnership with often marginalized communities, create healing-centered programming to increase social connection and combat the negative impact of discrimination and all forms of oppression.
Build a critical mass of Spartans best prepared to navigate the emotional, psychological, and physiological strain of naming and dismantling systems of institutional and cultural oppression.
Enhance culture change efforts related to DEI-B and RVSM, and develop a "culture of care" at MSU by actively supporting students, faculty, and staff engaged in these change efforts.
Support the development of wise, daring leaders by incorporating resilience skill building into leadership development training at all levels of the organization. What Makes us Different- Change at Four Levels
What makes our model different from most resilience training programs is we don't just focus on the personal and interpersonal levels of change. We emphasize the importance of each person developing critical awareness of the impact systems of power, and privilege has on both our individual health and our collective health and wellbeing.
Spartan Resilience is dedicated to building a critical mass of Spartans who can serve as sustainable agents of institutional and cultural change, allowing us to build a culture that truly upholds our values and supports all our people.
Photo: Based on the work of Visions Incorporated
The Spartan Resilience Education Training Model introduces basic principles of healthy human functioning and incorporates skill-building from several well established clinical theories, including:
Survey data from participants of our programming indicate that combining skills and concepts from this collection of theories and packaging the skill building in community-based training courses leads to significant improvement in the following areas:
Further testing of the impact of the Spartan Resilience Education Model is a current focus of our efforts.
Consultation available for new programming in the following areas:
Department-Based Retreats/Workshops
Creating partnership programs to support people with one or more often marginalized identities
Spartan Resilience is interested in connecting resilience training with efforts to advance ket strategic plan goals such as:
If you have an idea for programming contact Spartanresilience@msu.edu
