157 156 Chapter Eight: Faculty and Staff Testimonials Chapter Eight: Faculty and Staff Testimonials “ Emotional health and academic success are centrally important for our students, and emotional health for obvious reasons has profound impact on life contentment. Among the more than half dozen cases I experienced in past years, I found that emotional distresses or internal struggling often stem from traumatic love or tense family relationships, or sometimes both. Hence, it is vital to teach our students how to manage one’s relationships as one of the building blocks for mental well-being education. We need to nurture emotional intelligence as well as analytical intelligence. We can never speak enough of the importance of a well-connected network including faculty, administrative staff, student peers, and counsellors when it comes to a critical situation related to a student’s mental distress. Students prepared with strong awareness can recognize signs or symptoms of mental distress that their peers might be experiencing through class-/cohort-based social media groups; a faculty who is sensitive to students’ behaviors may help identify some instances and call for timely intervention; the concerned Critical Incident Coordinator of the School, adhering to confidentiality protocols, can liaise and reach out to the student with expert advices from colleagues of the Counselling and Wellness Center. I am in particular grateful for our colleagues of Counselling and Wellbeing Center, such as Vava, Silver, and April who have been so approachable and resourceful when I turned to them for advices regarding how to build empathic connections with students concerned. Whatever differences we have made to better student’s lives is due to the caring connections between the HKUST community members. ” Dr Lian Bai Manager, International and Mainland Programs, School of Humanities and Social Science “ In HKUST, perhaps because of our know-how in Engineering and Science disciplines, we have a tendency to understand the symptoms of psychological issues our students exhibit in a solely rational scientific manner. After taking up the position of UG coordinator for all first-year engineering students in 2011, I’ve worked very hard trying to help students to analyse and breakdown academic issues based on common sense, rules and regulations without realizing that sometimes this is a big mistake to start with. At a conference dinner a few months ago, a young gentleman that I did not recognize came and talked to me. He graduated in 2017 and we met only once during his study in HKUST when he failed MATH1013 twice in his freshman year. According to the student, he was in distress at that time and he was so grateful that I helped him out. Then I asked “what did I do?” without worrying how rude it was. “Nothing, you just sit and listen… but it helps.” The words “mental health” are often overused but not addressed enough, especially in the setting of a research oriented university. We’ve been focusing a lot on helping students to solve problems by referring them to financial and academic support units. It is, however, more substantial to respond to their emotional state with care and empathy. They don’t need a two-hour lecture on university rules and regulations, and they don’t need a guideline on how to obtain financial support. All they need is to have someone share their intense feelings before becoming unbearable. Without someone to step in and care about their feelings, students can easily find themselves in an ignorant territory and fall into deep depression. ” Prof Ben Chan Director, Center for Engineering Education Innovation Associate Professor of Engineering Education, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Associate Director, Academy for Bright Future Young Engineers
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