Why do we need a compassionate campus? And how do we get there?

For students and staff to thrive at university and beyond, we need a campus culture where everyone feels they belong. This is about how we teach as much as what we teach. Bridgette Bewick explores how her conversations with students and staff are helping the University of Leeds become a compassionate campus.

A university experience based on compassion and collaboration will give today’s students a fighting chance of solving tomorrow’s challenges, she argues – and help us all move to a more inclusive, diverse and equitable future.

Research that changes lives.

Four simple words, inspiring researchers at the University

of Leeds to reshape the world.

I am professor Simone Buitendijk, since arriving at the University

in 2020 as Vice-Chancellor.

I've been amazed by the passion, creativity and ingenuity of the

research community to make a difference.

Having the opportunity to exercise choice is really key to palliative care

and that individualised care that supports the person in the last few months of life.

To learn from the mistakes that we've made and we

need to learn from the instances where prevention atrocities work.

I think the COVID-19 pandemic actually forced us to become a

little bit more digitally literate.

Although I do think we still have some room to kind of, continue growing.

One of my priorities has been to learn more about the sheer

range of research carried out by early career researchers at Leeds.

They are the new generation of world changers people working tirelessly

with communities and academics around the world on finding solutions to

seemingly intractable problems.

Over the course of this podcast series, I will be in conversation

with those researchers.

Join me as our World Changers described new discoveries and

approaches that will make the world a better and more equitable place

to live.

It's about research that changes lives.

Hello and welcome to this latest podcast.

I'm Professor Simone Buitendijk the Vice Chancellor.

And joining me in conversation is Dr.

Bridgette Bewick.

Our topic is the Compassionate Curriculum.

Bridgette developing a curriculum at Leeds, that has student’s

wellbeing at its heart.

The project was launched two years ago following concerns that many students were

experiencing anxiety linked to the pressures of being at university.

She believes the Compassionate Curriculum will reduce those feelings of anxiety

and increase student motivation, sense of belonging and fulfilment.

And the benefits extend much further in compassionate curriculum, argues

Bridgette, is one that meets the needs of a diverse student body.

And so it reduces inequalities.

It also fosters empathy amongst students and staff.

Bridgette is a psychologist and an Associate Professor in the School of Medicine.

Welcome to the podcast. So welcome, Bridgette.

And thanks for spending time with me.

Thanks for inviting me, Simon.

Sure, sure.

Are you looking forward to this conversation?

So we'll discuss the details of course, through this podcast.

But can you start by maybe giving us, me and the listeners

a brief description of what's a compassionate curriculum is exactly.

So for me, I guess

a compassionate curriculum is one that's that's fair.

That's not more difficult than it need to be.

That's quite often how students talk about it.

It's one where students are respected the same.

They are valued with a space for them to have that curious city.

And the space for life events to happen, I guess, as well is is part of this.

That's that sounds wonderful.

And it sounds very much

like what we're trying to achieve more broadly at the University of Leeds.

So you're a psychologist who's been researching questions around

student mental health for many years.

So how did you come up with the idea of crafting a compassionate curriculum?

I guess I started around 15, 16,

17 years ago and we were very much

trying to understand what's going on with student mental health.

Students were reporting higher levels of psychological distress.

We knew that we needed some specialist services because traditional services

didn't seem to be meeting the needs of university students.

And we really noticed that there was this ebb and flow

in terms of particularly anxiety across the academic year.

And we've done some great work at Leeds and across the sector

I think, and really investing in those services and getting those services,

we've still got more to do,

but getting those services to really meet the needs of students.

We're beginning to meet the needs of students

But I was really struck that things I was writing in 2004

were still holding up today that despite all of this stuff,

all of the stuff that we were doing at its core, students were still finding

university distressing and psychologically difficult to cope with.

So I thought, could we do it differently?

Is there a different way of doing this that as well as all the things

that we've got around the edges in terms of counselling specialist treatment,

signposting to NHS, all of that, what is it that we are doing as part of

everyday core business at the University that could help address this?

And I think putting compassion into the curriculum and into our campuses

is the way that we can really make a difference

for the entire student population.

So what were the problems that you were identifying in the student population?

So there's that felt sense of anxiety I guess, and that felt sense

of being unable to cope or feeling overwhelmed.

For some students there's a sense of isolation and loneliness,

particularly for students who perhaps for

the first time are away from their support structures.

We also have students

who are trying to cope with transitions

at a time where they're also trying to cope with overly packed

curriculum, overly packed sense of making the most of

absolutely everything, you know, doing absolutely everything.

So I think there are some students as well

who are suffering or are challenged by

or have as part of who they are and high levels of mental distress anyway.

They may have a clinical diagnosis.

They may not.

And for those students being at university

exacerbates that because of these extra pressures in coping.

So I think it's both for people who in medical terms,

we would talk about people

who are nonclinical in terms of their levels of distress,

what are the pressures on them

and how are those kind of coming to the forefront.

But then there's also for people who do have a clinical diagnosis,

what is it that university is doing that makes it just way more difficult

and makes it more difficult for them to succeed?

Than it should be?

So there's a number of different things, I think, going on for different people.

Yeah, that's what I find fascinating about your work, that you're also looking

at the very process of education and learning

and and that you're identifying elements of that that actually make things worse

by the students has a clinical diagnosis, are not.

I think we should find ways to not raise those stress levels

beyond what they are when they come into university.

So can you talk a little bit about that?

Which are we doing in the way we deliver education that clearly makes things worse.

I think part of it

and Paul Campbell from Leicester talks about this.

Part of it is when students come in, we think about what do we need

students to know and understand

in order that they can cope with the university experience.

And perhaps we should turn that around a little bit and think

about designing the early parts of our programmes

to fit the needs of the students who are coming through the door.

Yeah.

I think as well there is been

the curriculum has been having more and more things added to it

and we have this idea that we need to teach everything

and all these skills and and we sort of forget.

I think along the way that part of being at university

is learning how to learn so we don't need to learn it.

All right. Now

so we cram everything in.

We also and I say this as someone

who's now worked in universities for quite a long time,

I think we forget that universities are quite a strange place to be.

They have their own rules, their own processes

and all of that hidden processes, all of those hidden curriculum

means that students don't know how they should even be behaving.

And so they're negotiating an environment where they don't even know the rules,

a lot of people.

And then we add to that

the complexity and the challenges of each discipline as well.

So when you bring all of these things together in a packed timetable,

there's no space.

And I think that students struggle sometimes

to see the compassion and the university experience.

And I think staff struggle to think about things in a compassionate way

because they're also very caught up in the system.

So when we create space to breathe and to kind of think about fairness.

Quite often people say to me,

Oh, Bridgette, but are you talking about making things easier?

And when I talk to students, they do not want that.

They work really hard at university.

They want their degrees to be worth something, to mean something.

So they don't want it to be easy.

They just want it to be not more difficult than it needs to be.

Not needlessly stressful.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I know you think some of these problems are rooted in the way that higher

education is sold to students by schools or universities or parents.

Can you say a bit more about that?

Really interesting.

When you talk to students, they describe the way that university

is kind of portrayed when they come on open days and prospectuses on television.

You know, for students who are first in family,

their first initiations to universities in films and on television

and because we're all competing for honours for the students

and we want them all to come along, we tend to sell the best of what it might be.

And we sometimes talk about these will be the best years of our lives

and you're going to make the best friends and look at these people.

They found their lifelong partner and they've just got married and it's

all been perfect.

And what

students say is actually “we'd like a more realistic view of what it's like”.

“We'd like to know

of all the great things you know, there's brilliant facilities on campuses.

There are amazing opportunities but can you give us a heads up

that it's going to be difficult sometimes that actually lots of us fail

at something at some point throughout the degree and that that's OK.”

“Can you make it known that if you don't make your best friends

in the first two weeks, that's absolutely OK?”

That idea of every opportunity,

you know, we talk about making the most of every opportunity.

Well, actually, it's every opportunity that's right for you right now

where you are and what you can put into it in terms of time.

So I think we aren't very honest about what university looks like.

It's not that we're dishonest we're not selling

something that isn't there, but we're only showing one side of the coin.

And I think one of the things

that students talk about is it's actually those conversations they have

with the student ambassadors, which are more around.

It's tough, but this university supports you in this way.

When it gets tough, this university understands

that you can't do everything all of the time.

And those things are a strength.

But I think as a sector, we don't see those as strengths.

We see them as weaknesses.

But students really value it when they have an honest, authentic

perspective.

Of what the university's going to be like so they can prepare for that.

Yeah, it's almost like real life, isn't it?

Exactly.

I guess part of the drive for a more compassionate curriculum

is to support students better when they make that transition.

And then what do you think universities can improve on in that space?

I think we can most definitely be more honest

about some of the challenges that people are going to face.

I think we can

think more and I

know Leeds is doing a lot of work around this, around

not telling everything, everything they need to know the first second

they walk through the door and expecting everyone to retain it.

I think we can really value the relationships

that we have, both in terms of student to student and also student staff.

When you ask students about the points

where they think that they have experience, that sense

of belonging, that sense of compassion, that sense of inclusion,

that almost always includes a person.

And I think sometimes we forget about the importance

of people in all of our processes.

Yeah

Other people may disagree.

But I think it's unrealistic to think that all of our policies which are written

in legalise are going to be entire compassionate.

I think where we can do it is the translation of those,

and it's people who do those translations and implementations.

I think we can free up our curriculum a bit.

And I know Leeds is embarking on a series of events

and programmes through Curriculum Redefined, which will allow us to do that.

And I think that freeing up space will allow us to see the opportunities.

I think we can really value all of those little interaction

that we have and we can also think about kindness,

that we have and we can also think about kindness,

kindness in terms of our feedback, our interactions, and that goes both ways though.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah.

We need that partnership, it's a vulnerable place to be creating

a more compassionate and kinder way of being at university

and we need to trust that in our relationships with students,

with staff and amongst everyone, that that compassion will be reciprocated.

with staff and amongst everyone, that that compassion will be reciprocated.

Because it takes effort and vulnerability to do this work, I think.

Thank you for listening to this World Changers

podcast from the University of Leeds.

I am Professor Simone Buitendijk and I am in conversation with Dr.

Bridgette Bewick to hear about her research into Compassionate Curriculum

So Bridgette, can you explain to me how a compassionate curriculum

can improve equality or even equity maybe how just how does that work?

It's a great question, and it covers so many facets

of what the compassionate curriculum is

all about.

So if we can get compassionate curriculum right,

we know that that is in part around increasing belonging.

And we know belonging is directly related to educational outcomes,

particularly in groups that are marginalised and minoritised.

So for groups that haven't traditionally been

marginalised, it has very little effect for them,

in some ways, their grades don't go down.

They're still succeeding, they're still doing great.

But a compassionate curriculum is particularly of benefit for those students

who were not best served

by the old way that we were doing things at university.

So as a result, it becomes an environment

where the playing field is slightly more even

and it means that students feel like they're included,

they are included, they feel they belong,

they can see themselves in that curriculum.

It also gives staff an opportunity

to really bring their own authentic self

to what they're teaching, whatever that means for that particular staff.

So that's just one little tweak that we can make in terms

of increasing belonging, which then has all of these knock on effects.

And ultimately,

my hope and my aim is that that will happen

not only in terms of the transit from first year undergraduate

to second year to graduating, but that we can also keep that going

because we know that there are certain groups of individual who who just don't

don't transition to masters, they don't transition to PhDs

or the grades that they're getting because of the awarding gap means that

there's certain things that just aren't available or open to them.

Yeah, that's brilliant so it's great

for everybody, but particularly for under represented and minoritised students.

Exactly.

It doesn't disadvantage particular groups.

It's about helping those that have traditionally been disadvantaged so

to gain the advantage that everybody else already has.

Yep, no that’s a really great way of explaining it.

And I yeah, I'm very hopeful was Curriculum

Redefined that you just mentioned that was actually going to create a space

to do exactly that because you're as aware as I am

that it's a major programme and one of the major elements of it

is to move away from the teacher being far away from students

lecturing at them to work much more in interaction,

which hopefully will create an opportunity for students and,

and teachers to see each other as people

and to bring their lived experiences into the classroom.

And to really interact in a more human way,

which will hopefully then also create that sense of belonging.

So can you tell me a little bit more what your senses of the ability

for the University of Leeds to create a more compassionate curriculum

in this this whole big strategic programme

the implementing to redefine it?

I'm really optimistic actually, and I think I'm optimistic

for a number of reasons.

I think in part because I know there are

a lot of staff and students

who think that ethically and morally this is this is what we should do.

And because of that, we already have a whole range of champions

and ambassadors who are already beginning to embed this into their work.

And that Curriculum Redefined

shines a spotlight on that, and it allows people

to really be recognised for those efforts, which I don't think has always happened

before.

So for me, I was more optimistic than I ever have

been that we can really have a whole systems change in this

and we can really put compassion at the heart of what we're doing.

Do you have a sense of what this would mean for the teachers?

Because there's also quite a bit of evidence, especially from North America,

where interactive teaching has been practised

in some major universities for about a decade now.

It's so much more rewarding for the teachers as well.

It's not just good for the students, but it's also really good for the teachers.

What is your sense about that?

When I've spoken and I did some interviews with staff

and some survey kind of insight work

for a lot of staff, the frustrations are coming from

where they can see these roadblocks and where they don't have the agency.

I guess to put themselves into that

teaching and to really reflect the world as they know it.

And it's really hard.

And I can say this personally as a member of staff,

when you see something that you don't think it's fair,

but it's what you have to implement because you know, that's

the way the university works and the way it does it

and I think more and more we are seeing the ability

to challenge those things and to no longer

have to do the work arounds that so many of us have been doing.

But instead we can make it our core business.

And I,

it can only be but more rewarding when you're given time

and space to kind of develop this type of curriculum, because we

all see students who are falling down at different parts of the year,

and it's not nice to feel that somehow you've contributed to that through

a timetabling

issue or a way that assistance been implemented or whatever it was.

You feel somehow responsible for that, even if you're not.

And I know sometimes people are afraid that if we focus on these kinds of skills

and attributes and creating work and passion in the way we educate,

and that the requirements of professional and regulatory

bodies will not be met, and I don't think you and I share that concern.

But can you say a little bit more about that?

Yeah, it's something that was raised quite a lot when I first started doing

this work, actually.

But what does this mean for our accreditation?

I think what it means for your accreditation is that it will be stronger.

And these two things aren't at odds because Compassionate

And these two things aren't at odds because Compassionate

Curriculum is not about stripping out bits

of the curriculum that are necessary.

It would be the opposite of compassionate.

I work in the School of Medicine and it would be completely not compassionate

I work in the School of Medicine and it would be completely not compassionate

to be sending our students into the NHS without the skills that they need.

Compassionate Curriculum is about preparing people for what comes

next, and part of that is content adherence to regulatory bodies

this actually strengthens it.

If I'm if I'm honest, if you look at most of the accreditations,

inclusion, diversity, compassion, these values are all there,

I think where the challenge comes is how do we do that

within the content that we have to deliver in the ways that we have to.

So we need to sometimes think a little bit outside the box,

a little bit more imaginatively about how we're going to

to do these things in the context of our own professional accreditation.

Because it is not about a dumbing down of our curriculum.

It has to be that we prepare our students for the professional bodies

in which they're going to be working within and with

for their entirety of the career that they decide to stay in that discipline.

So we have to prepare them for that.

And that's part of having a Compassionate Curriculum in my perspective.

Yeah.

So what you're basically saying

is it's not an add on and it's certainly not in competition.

It's it's basically central to everything we're trying to achieve.

It's also creating these global citizens of tomorrow.

And you're one of Leeds World Changers, so thank you.

Yeah.

You would agree with me that this the Compassionate Curriculum

is a great way actually changing the world through our students?

I think it's necessary.

I think if we don't have a compassionate curriculum,

then we're teaching students and we're showing students

that the way we've always done things, the ways

that have the systemic things that we do and the processes we have

which have kept inequalities, how they are, that that's OK.

And I would not want to be part of a system

which is teaching people this is OK.

We can just leave it as it is.

I think we owe it to ourselves, to society, and to our students to make sure

that we're equipping them with the tools to reduce those inequalities.

And hopefully one day we might even get to equity.

It might be that we can get to equitable outcomes for everyone.

And I think a Compassionate Curriculum is part of that journey.

Yeah, that's that's really great.

Really great.

So so when do you think, well, we'll see this across the Faculty

of Medicine and Health and hopefully across the university.

Where are we in the process from your perspective?

I think we're already seeing some of this,

and I think it's beginning to to filter down.

At least we have the Compassionate Curriculum conversations that happen

once a month.

Leeds has been a university for an awful long time,

and so it's not going to be done overnight putting compassion into the curriculum.

But I think there's so many amazing examples and I've I've purposely

not named people because to do so would be to miss somebody out.

But there's there's so much work going on both within staff and students.

Actually, students are really leading a lot of this work.

So I know within the School of Medicine, we've got the

I belong at School of Medicine events.

We recently had one around Ramadan we've got a series on

where the black doctors, both of those are student led.

You know, students are already doing a lot of this work at Leeds.

Yeah. Thank you.

And that's why I think a strategy is so important

to bring all those people together who are already working on these issues.

I take narrative isolation and I really please

also giving you an opportunity to to shine and lead.

So thank you for doing all this work and thank you for playing such a central role

on this very important scene and how you parting mission, if I may use that word,

creating a more compassionate university, I think not just the curriculum.

So thank you, Bridgette, for being one of our real changers.

And thank you for speaking to me today.

And I'm looking forward to many, many more conversations.

Thanks tonight. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to this podcast from the University of Leeds, to find out

more about the work of our early career researchers and to read essays written by

World Changer researchers, please go to the World Changers page on the University

website, details can be found in the information that accompanies this podcast.