The Latest from Dr. Elias!
Recently featured for faculty excellence, Dr. Maurice Elias of the SECD Lab talks to Chalkbeat about the mental strain students are under, how teachers can help and the power of arts education in this Q&A. Click to read the full story!
Highlights on SECD’s latest webinar titled “Unwind Webinar: De-stress Not Distress”
Unwind Webinar poster created by John Khalil (RU ‘21).
Above is the poster for our recent webinar, titled "Unwind Webinar: De-Stress, Not Distress” aimed to ease the stress of finals. The webinar took place on Tuesday 5/4 from 6:30-7:30 pm EST and was hosted by John Khalil (RU ‘21) and Kriti Jain (RU ‘21).
SECD Lab’s Mallika Verghese (RU’22) ran an activity to increase Self-Awareness by allowing attendees to examine their own forms of privilege. Click here to access the privilege worksheet that was used.
Got Mindfulness?
Lead by SECD lab’s Sofia Madrid (RU '21), the webinar also featured a 5 minute guided meditation to showcase the SEL skill of Self-Management!
Stay Updated with Members of the SECD Lab
Above are some highlights of Samuel Nayman’s dissertation defense titled “Beyond-the-Self Purpose in Early Adolescents From Low-Income, Racial and Ethnic Minority Backgrounds: The Role of Emotions.” Sam is a Ph.D student in the Rutgers University Clinical Psychology program, currently at the Yale School of Medicine for his clinical internship, and the former Students Taking Action Together (STAT) Project Director in the SECD Lab.
Featured in our recent “Unwind Webinar”, the above activity (Created by Charles Gravina RU‘22) aimed to teach the 5 core competencies of SEL through scenes in movies!
How to Combat Racism
Our webinar also highlighted forms of microaggressions and implicit biases, as well as how to have educational conversations about them in an empathetic manner, by using key SEL skills Social Awareness and Relationship Skills.
Click here for some anti-racism and mental health resources that were shared during the webinar!
GUEST SPEAKER
HENRY ZHANG
Henry Zhang, GSAPP school psychology doctoral student and professional self-defense trainer, was featured as a guest speaker on our Unwind Webinar to educate others on how to practice Responsible Decision Making to preemptively avoid violent situations; he also gave a brief demonstration of self-defense techniques to defend against potential attacks and threats.
Above is a screenshot from The School of Arts and Sciences Interdisciplinary Conference presentation featuring Saidy Cedano (RU ‘22), Simon Daniel (RU ‘22), Julia Sanowska, and Jonathan Vargese’s (RU ‘21) presentation titled “Building the STAT Curriculum: Promoting More Civic Engagement and Social Change through SEL Skills”. Their project examined the status of social justice discussions in the online/hybrid classroom, and aimed to design guidelines for STAT modules to facilitate discussion.
Also featured at the conference was Yenny Tavarez’s (RU ‘21) senior Honors Thesis titled "Classroom Instructional Studies: The Influence of Social and Emotional Learning”. Click here to learn more about the interdisciplinary honors thesis program, and here to learn about the Interdisciplinary Research Teams.