I had the most amazing video call Wednesday
morning with a professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts. I had met her at
the ISSOTL (International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning)
conference in Atlanta after her presentation on teaching empathy. Term
responsibilities meant we have not had a chance to reconnect until this week. I
wanted to talk to her in more detail about how she approached teaching empathy.
What I learned was incredible! Some of you might have heard that in 2015
Amherst college students staged a protest focusing on the fact that the science
and pre-med curriculum did not represent who them are as people and as students
of the college. It did not represent the multiple social characteristics they
embody including gender, race, sexuality and sociology-economic group. Some of
the faculty encouraged the students to join a sit-in where they were asked to
share their stories of who they are as people beyond what they were studying, and
the faculty members were asked to do the same. The result was the emergence of
a series of courses and workshops focusing on the idea of ‘Being Human in STEM
(science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). The courses have been
running in some form since 2015 and big Ivy League schools such as Yale and
Harvard are following Amherst’s example. The faculty and students at Amherst
College have found the storytelling and sharing approach has made them more
empathetic towards to each as humans. It is incredible to think of the impact
this will have on these young students once they graduate and enter the
profession of their choice taking with them the empathetic approaches learned.
This conversation with Amherst and being
made aware of the striving for change within the STEM disciplines could not
have been better timed for me. Earlier this week I had two medical appointments
with two female physicians. Both are highly qualified and great at their job.
My visits with them both were efficient and to the point. I left the second and
burst into tears. It was nothing she said but rather the clinical means of
delivering the narrative. In times past, I would have burrowed myself into an
emotional hole, but I’ve learned. I called one of my soul sisters cried a bit,
and then we got to discussing how medical practitioners really need training in
empathetic communication. You can understand why my video call with Amherst was
so powerful in its timing. We really are incredible as a species in how we
learn and adapt. All be it at a snail’s pace, but there is progress. In the
future young women (and men of course) will not be unintentionally made to feel
unsafe or shame by medical practitioners. The hope is that people will feel
like their emotional reactions matter and that they are people and not just
patients. The change in education and a strive of empathy and compassion as
core to how we teach I learned about this week, is why I’m involved in the
profession and celebrate what we can do to contribute to a better future. I
would add that in the social sciences we need to really emphasize empathy and
compassion as part of our courses and teaching approaches as I sense that we
take it for granted as if they just happen because we are social scientists. But
social scientists are just as capable as scientists of ignoring the impact of a
person’s individual experience in life and their positionality in the world.
I actually want to use this post to
acknowledge a medical practitioner I know who was and is incredibly empathetic,
compassionate and holistic in her work. Ellen Coburn helped my mother bring me
into the world, she has been a friend to my family for many years and in recent
years she has been my doctor through very difficult times. She took the time
with each of her patients, often meaning appointments ran well over the
designated 15 minutes, she listened to their concerns with immense compassion, and
with her terminal patients she was with them and their family until the end. I
know all of this from my own experience but also from translating for Syrian
refugees she offered to help, from other patients of hers whom I have met over
the years, and from listening to her talk about her work. Ellen is an
incredibly spiritual person in her life outside work and she brings this into
her practice making patients feel so at ease and cared for. All this and I know
how difficult it was for her to challenge some of the patriarchal systems of
education when she was beginning her career. My father has told me that Jo was
nervous about finding a doctor when she found out she was pregnant with me, but
the moment she walked into Ellen’s office she felt at ease. I can relate to that
sentiment and Ellen’s empathetic energy with which she filled her medical
office with. Ellen retired two months ago and I want to celebrate the
incredible contribution I realize she made in my life and many others. Being a
medical doctor cannot be easy as illness is when a person is at their
weakest/worst, but Ellen did it with ease and respect.
I restate my sentiment that we are an
incredibly adaptable species with so much opportunity, innovation and
creativity at our disposal, and so I hope the strategies in education to be
more empathy and compassion into the STEM disciplines will be nurtured and
allowed to grow beyond the confines of the academy.
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