student success

Pictured (left to right): left to right: Greta Erlingis, Shelby Smith, Taelor McDonald, Gator, Serena Padda and Miya Valdehuesa

HESA benefits students across campus

Becoming involved in a student organization helps enrich a student’s experience at San Francisco State University. One such example is the Health Education Student Association (HESA), which offers a way for faculty, alumni and students to connect and create a community. HESA is affiliated with SF State’s Department of Public Health and serves all the students on campus to promote student health, wellness, and overall well-being.

Taelor McDonald is the president of HESA, with Greta Erlingis serving as vice president. McDonald and Erlingis are both Public Health majors and Women’s Health minors. McDonald sees the mission of HESA as “bringing a little light back to students' lives when they are feeling overwhelmed.”

In the wake of remote learning necessitated by the COVID pandemic, McDonald believes making meaningful relationships inside and outside of a student’s cohort has become more difficult. Erlingis feels that connecting with other students during the events HESA organizes gives a sense of community, that everyone is in the college experience together, and helps prevent burnout.

Making personal connections helps academics by creating healthy social behaviors that were lost during COVID. HESA was an important factor for Erlingis to find a place within the cohort, “It is comforting to know that people want to study this and people are passionate about helping others.”

McDonald built a community with her peers by being involved in HESA. Creating study groups, having familiar faces in class and having people asking questions about HESA — not necessarily people involved in the organization — helped McDonald hone her love for leadership. She is now sure that she wants a career in leadership. SF State is a commuter school where students have to try a little harder to find their community. Having HESA creates a community for students, which means a lot to McDonald, “A big part of what public health is, is helping communities and bringing people together in order to improve a common issue.”

Spreading positivity during the transition to campus is something Erlingis feels has been vital to campus relations. HESA uses affirmation boards and focuses on mental health to better the lives of students on campus. Events are always meant to be uplifting for the campus community.

McDonald feels that participating in activities as a group, especially affirmation boards, has improved her mental health. Students in HESA believe that taking care of your mental health is paramount to having a successful college experience. These activities are ways that HESA takes care of the mental health of students in the Department of Public Health.

During events, connecting with students helps prevent those in their cohort from dropping out. The way they see it, everyone uplifts each other and knows that when someone is going through a hard time there is someone they can talk to. The mentality of “We are all in this together” reassures the cohort and reminds them they are not alone.

The senior members of HESA are all graduating at the end of this semester. HESA does not require any prerequisites for application. Elections happen at the end of every semester, anyone interested can send HESA a direct message on Instagram for more information, or email Taelor McDonald at tmcdonald@mail.sfsu.edu or Greta Erlingis at gerlingis@mail.sfsu.edu.

A Recreation, Parks & Tourism major finds an exciting career with professor’s support

Lei Asato

Asato had worked for 10 years in the culinary field with an associate’s degree in Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management before deciding to go back to school. Recreation, Parks & Tourism appealed to her because she saw where some of the skills she already had could be an asset.

“Once I found that degree path, I was enthralled. I learned a lot about outdoor recreation, inclusivity in the outdoors and ecotourism,” Asato said. “I think when I first signed up, I thought it was going to be really heavy in administration, but there was a much broader depth of history and context.”

The in-person engagement and overall energy that professors put into the courses is a big part of what made Asato’s experience at SF State so impactful. “Professors really tried hard to make the classes feel experiential and make it feel like it was applying to real life,” she said.

Every lesson was applicable to the broader concept of a Recreation, Parks & Tourism degree. Asato felt professors made sure that lessons had follow-through, so students could reflect on the meaning of the lesson with questions such as, “What value did the activity bring to your education?” Asato still uses these questions in her career as an events manager, showing that the lessons at SF State truly transcend the classroom.

The major offers an emphasis on learning how to teach about Recreation, Parks & Tourism, as well as getting outdoors and being able to facilitate and participate in activities. The small student-to-teacher ratio in the major allows students to build relationships with professors. In Asato’s experience, professors were always willing to take the time out of their days to talk with students about career paths and classes. She is still in contact with Professor Pavlina Látková, whose support throughout her time at SF State made a big impact on her professional and personal growth. 

Látková has connections at the San Francisco Travel Association, which is where Asato was able to do her internship. Látková was an integral part of helping Asato find and secure an internship that fit her specific interests. From that internship, she was hired on as a senior associate at the San Francisco Travel Association, where she worked in visitor experience.

She went on to work at Olivia Travel, where she was a program manager in charge of building experiences for the charters. She currently works as an event team lead at Maritz Events.

Asato said, “If you’re thinking about joining Recreation, Parks & Tourism but you’re worried that there is not a trajectory after, that’s absolutely not true. A piece of advice if you are already a major, is get as much out of it as possible with the professors. The professors are an incredible resource and are well-connected in the city.”

Makayla Wai-Lan Scott (center) with classmates Kenya Salgado (left) and Citlalli Aguilar Velazquez (right) in front of Terra Nova High School, where they gave a presentation to high school students

A student finds personal meaning after finding the right major

Makayla Wai-Lan Scott is a senior who switched her course of study from Pre-Nursing to Public Health. She had some anxiety about getting into the Nursing major when she was completing her prerequisites. To quell her anxiety, she looked at other majors in case she did not get into Nursing, and she found herself drawn to Public Health. Scott said of her decision to switch majors, “A Public Health alumna shared with me what she studied, and I thought this feels more aligned with me and what I wanted to do working as a nurse.”

The social justice aspect of public health appealed to Scott. As a nurse, she wanted to help with health equity for all patients. In public health, students get to look at problems through an intersectional lens in an effort to reach health equity. Adding more diversity in the public health field will result in better patient care for coming years. In this major, students learn to see problems as a whole — they look at all aspects of care in order to see how they intersect.

“It’s public health and we are going through a public health crisis,” Scott said. Starting the public health program during the pandemic was a unique experience. Public health was a driving factor of the pandemic and Scott felt that throughout her time at SF State. Scott feels the professors understand the work-life-health balance that has become so important these past few years. The projects that professors chose felt personal for her because of the pandemic and she found it easy to relate to the courses when the subject matter impacts everyday life.

Scott has had a positive experience since switching from Pre-Nursing to Public Health. She appreciates how professors make it clear that they care about the subjects they are teaching and make courses interactive. All of the professors in the Public Health major coordinate with each other to make each semester easier for their students; large assignments for different courses very rarely overlap. Professors, when possible, will communicate with each other to ensure major projects do not overlap and overwhelm students. The courses use a scaffolding structure for large assignments, where assignments are broken down for students to work on throughout the semester.

The internship SF State helped Scott get has helped prepare her for graduation. She has been working as an Alcohol and Drug intern at the Daly City Youth Health Center. Medical, mental, and support services are provided for teens and young adults at the Daly City Youth Health Center. Scott was a part of creating a curriculum for middle and high school students about vaping. This internship has been personal for her, “I saw a lot of my friends turn to vaping to cope despite knowing about the effects”. Scott feels like she is ready to enter the career field thanks to the support that her advisor and professors have given her.

Scott said, “I am grateful I went to SF State. I feel like I am actually cared about at SF State. That came from making the connections that I did in SOAR and with my advisors and people in the Public Health cohort.”

Makayla Wai-Lan Scott

“Every student has a profound capacity to give their gift and the world really needs their gifts,” said Adam Burke, a Holistic Health Studies professor in the Department of Recreation, Parks & Tourism. “One of our core gifts as humans is that we are problem solvers.”

Burke teaches “Holistic Health 200: Holistic Approaches to Academic Success,” a course focused on giving students the tools needed to succeed in college. Holistic Health Studies brings together strategies to help students thrive in college despite the new pressures they face.

Burke said that when we experience problems, it’s because we lack information, knowledge and understanding. The course uses a comprehensive problem-solving model to help students apply the skills they are learning to problems that are affecting their everyday success in school or life — by defining the problem, determining the goal, choosing a solution, implementing an action plan, evaluating and redesigning as needed.

Students choose a topic that they want to work on throughout the course. The most popular topics are emotional literacy and mental health, time management and organization, and wellness and health practices. Each person looks at their own personally-defined challenge and does background research to find the root cause of why they struggle. Known as the Kaizen model, this approach helps students find the most important cause of their problem. Every person who procrastinates can have a different reason for that procrastination. There is no one fix for procrastination — and that’s why background research is so important. According to Burke, the background research brings an “aha moment,” when students really start to make a personal connection with the course. Students leave the class with a toolkit of ways to succeed.

Burke published a study about his research on students’ success in the course, titled, “Learning problem solving to manage school-life challenges: The impact on student success in college.” He found that seniors, Pell-eligible students and first-generation students were all more likely to stay in school and graduate than students that did not take the course. The study showed there was a 10 percent higher retention rate for seniors, Pell-eligible and first-generation students when compared to their peers.

“Throughout the course there are a lot of strategies taught — stress management, time management, social skills, decision making, behavior change and study skills,” Burke said. “So people are getting a lot of tools that they have not been exposed to before.”

Holistic Health 200 also teaches important skills, such as working with a schedule and using a calendar. People are assumed to know those skills, but that’s not necessarily the case. Knowing these skills is part of the problem-solving model — and this course puts them into practice.

Burke believes that taking charge of educational success starts with realizing one’s potential. He said, “All of us have more potential to be and to do than we realize and a class like this seeks to help awaken people to their core capability to do more. To be more. To be who they were born to be.”

Adam Burke

“We can be a first point of contact and direct students based on what their questions are, what needs are happening,” Kerwin says. “There are so many different things that can happen to a student over a given semester that it is not really possible to have just a quick list to go to. Your advisor can be your quick list. That’s what we’re trained in.”

Being an advisor is more than just helping students choose classes that meet their degree requirements. Advisors are essential to helping students find their footing on campus and feel like they belong. Students can find a sense of community on campus through classes and student organizations.

Parra has a similar view on her role as an advisor. “When students come in and see me, it’s not just me giving information, it’s me teaching them to understand the policy, to navigate higher education, to navigate the resources. So my role as an advisor is to enrich students with knowledge and give them tools so that they can also navigate higher education themselves and be independent after they see me.”

Advisors are students’ first point of contact when they need access to resources. SF State has wide-ranging resources to help with many different aspects of students’ lives, but students aren’t always aware of what’s available. Advisors act as conduits for all the resources the University has to offer.

The two advisors concur that not knowing the resources available seems to be the biggest hurdle shared by students. When presented with the appropriate resources and action plan, students succeed far beyond what they imagine when coming into the University.

Students in the SOAR TRIO program are among those who frequently surpass their own expectations. The program provides support services and resources to low-income, first generation college students in health-science-related fields. SOAR TRIO gives students the opportunity to create personal relationships with their advisors by meeting at least four times a semester. The program has been fundamental to the improving graduation rates for such students. In fact, SOAR TRIO students have one of the highest graduation rates at SF State.

Kerwin and Parra agree that all students, regardless of whether they are in a program like SOAR TRIO, should speak with an advisor at least once a semester to receive help on what classes they need to stay on track for their degree. Students do not have to navigate the University alone. Advisors are always there to help provide resources and a road to success — students only need to go meet with them to find out.

*Update: Advising for CHSS students is now offered through SF State’s Undergraduate Advising Center. For more information about advising, visit the Undergraduate Advising Center website.

Jennifer Kerwin

June Parra

Colleges and universities have implemented a broad range of initiatives to support student success, including classroom-based approaches. Given the important role of teaching at SF State a novel general education academic success course was developed and tested. The course integrated a comprehensive problem-solving model into lectures and assignments. Students were taught the model along with relevant academic skills content. They then applied the model to a personal challenge affecting their success in school and life.

Using a matched cohort design, 826 course participants were compared with a campus-wide sample matched on key variables. Results showed that students who successfully completed the course achieved higher cumulative GPAs overall compared with matched peers. Highest GPAs for students who took the course as freshmen suggested a transfer of knowledge over time. Results also showed that the course significantly benefited students from historically at-risk populations. Lower SES, first generation, and underrepresented minority course participants earned more units, were more likely to remain in school or graduate, and graduate sooner. For example, first generation students earned more units (3 courses), were 10% more likely to still be in school, or 12% more likely to have graduated, and 16% more likely to have graduated sooner. Course participants also showed positive changes in academic self-efficacy and use of effective learning strategies.

The study shows that a well designed problem-solving course can help students, especially those who struggle academically, to more effectively meet the challenges of college and daily life.