Resilience is skill to be learned and cultivated
Life, inevitably, has its ups and downs. But with resilience, a person can strategically move forward in the face of adversity and maintain a sense of belonging and achievement.
The essential habits, attitudes and skills associated with resilience can be learned and developed through life experiences and situational perspective.
Krista Casale, a success coach in the Tulane Academic Success Center in Newcomb-Tulane College at Tulane University, says that resilience can be fostered in college students with effective programming and by shifting the perception that failure must be avoided in order to be successful.
“Today’s students encounter unprecedented challenges in their lives and work.”
Resilience Consortium
That’s why Casale is pleased that Tulane is now a contributing member of the Resilience Consortium, an association of higher education faculty, learning services and counseling services interested in understanding and promoting student resilience.
“Having the opportunity to network with participating universities that have similar vested interests is invaluable as it relates to growing our program and creating meaningful delivery methods for students,” Casale says.
According to the consortium website, “today’s students encounter unprecedented challenges in their lives and work.”
Resilience can be understood in many ways, “in terms of one’s capacities for persistence, creativity, emotional intelligence, grit, cognitive flexibility, risk-taking, agency, adapting to change, delaying gratification, learning from failure and questioning success.”
Tulane, as a contributing member of the consortium, “has an opportunity to learn from other universities as well as share our unique programming and the impact it is having,” says Casale.
She envisions the Resilience Cooperative of the Tulane Academic Success Center forming partnerships with other departments on campus to develop programs highlighting resilience from different perspectives “such as learning differences, rebranding failure, choosing a career path and other trending topics among our student population.”
