SPAR - Positive Intervention Application Plan for Ashoka University

Ashoka University is a distinguished liberal arts university that is the intellectual home to over 900 undergraduate and graduate students in Sonepat, India. We present here a program to enhance well-being based on the fundamentals of positive psychology. The program can start with a pilot and then be scaled using either trained professionals or trained peer counselors. The components of the program include strengths, positive relationships, attention and resilience thus forming the acronym SPAR. We have designed the program to take place in four 90-minute sessions ideal for the Young India Fellowship Fellows schedule of five-week semesters. It is equally applicable to undergraduates and could also be rolled out for faculty and staff if desired. We include a slide deck that is ready to use for the first session. SPARAPPLICATION PLAN FOR ASHOKA UNIVERSITY 2 Introduction to SPAR Application Plan for Ashoka University With 1.3 billion inhabitants and nine million students at 1500 colleges and universities, India is in desperate need of high-quality higher education. Although there are many small private universities, many of these are inadequate. A main part of the problem is that higher education in India has long been overly focused on job security rather than on cultivation of the mind for its own sake. A need was seen for a university of a different caliber in India—one focused on a Liberal Arts education that would encompass the humanities and both social and natural sciences, offering undergraduate and graduate programs in all areas of liberal studies. Thus, Ashoka University, a private, non-profit university was founded by a diverse group of entrepreneurs and professionals, the result of an unprecedented, collective philanthropic effort. Having benefitted from their own educational experiences at premier institutions around the world, the founders of Ashoka partnered with some of the most prestigious universities in the world to bring an innovative model of higher education to India in order to develop thinkers and leaders of the future. The decision to bend Ashoka toward liberal arts was based both on industry need as well as the need to change the mindsets of Indian students and parents to see education as an end in itself. Indeed, a need for a shift in mindset is becoming increasingly apparent—as more students than ever before are enrolling in institutions of higher education, the competition is growing stiffer, and the level of depression and anxiety is rising among college-age students. Thus, Ashoka University is partnering with the Master of Applied Positive Psychology Program at the University of Pennsylvania in order to build well-being and provide a preventative, proactive, and pro-social solution. The objective is to build resilience skills among Ashoka students and prevent a buffer from the stress and anxiety that so commonly afflicts leaners today. SPARAPPLICATION PLAN FOR ASHOKA UNIVERSITY 3 The Environment and Organization India is the world’s seventh largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the largest democracy. India's higher education system is the third largest in terms of student enrollment, after China and the United States (Gupta & Gupta, 2012). Although the Indian education system is on a journey of growth, it has its set of challenges and needs. As India is largely a collectivist culture, parents have strong influence in deciding the career path for their children (Gore, 2015). Most parents, across all income groups, are reluctant to allow their children to do anything other than engineering or similarly conventional courses (Puri, 2015). Awareness about new subjects or a broader curriculum may exist, but acceptance of these programs is still largely missing. There has been a significant increase in occurrence of mental disorders among college students, which can be explained in part by the constant pressures of scoring well, focus on mainstream subjects, meeting deadlines, managing increasing workload, coupled with the pursuit of excellence, dealing with competition, and coping with alienation from family and friends. In a study with Indian students (mean age of students was 19.3 years), depressive symptoms were present in 18.5% of the population, anxiety in 24.4%, and stress in 20%. Clinical depression was present in 12.1% and generalized anxiety disorder in 19.0% (Sahoo & Khess, 2010). It is also alarming that suicide has become the second leading cause of death in India among those in the age group of 18-29 (WHO, 2016). The stigma toward, and discrimination against, people with mental disorders is an important barrier to mental health in the country (Shidhaye & Kermode, 2013). It contributes to delays in seeking care, impedes timely diagnosis and treatment for mental disorders, serves as an impediment to recovery and rehabilitation, and ultimately reduces the opportunity for fuller participation in life (Shidhaye & Kermode, 2013). SPARAPPLICATION PLAN FOR ASHOKA UNIVERSITY 4 There is an urgent need, therefore, to make mental health more accessible and more organized, as well as to shift focus toward the well-being of all students. Addressing depression, anxiety, and stress-related symptoms in this population requires a critical preventive strategy to avoid damage to the learning and development process, and to increase the general well-being of the students. Ashoka University, with the recent development of its Centre for Well-Being, is certainly moving proactively toward this preventive approach instead of focusing on measures to combat or treat mental health disorders (A. Singh, personal communication, July, 2016). Ashoka University, Sonepat, India Founded in 2014, Ashoka University is India’s first non-profit liberal arts university in the Delhi capital region. Its goal is to become a top-tier, world-class liberal arts institution in both its graduate and undergraduate programs and to transform higher education in India. It has some 7000 applicants for 550 seats and an enrollment of 925 with more than 50 world-class professors (Ashoka University, personal communication, April 2017). The University is the result of India’s largest collective philanthropic effort, with some 87 Founders investing in India’s future. Their generosity has enabled Ashoka to eventually build over 700,000 square feet of an ideal learning and living environment, which is being constructed at a cost of $100 million (Ashoka University, personal communication, April 2017). Ashoka’s intent is to help students become well-rounded ethical leaders – the very kind envisioned by Emperor Ashoka over two thousand years ago (Ashoka University, n.d.). Our cohort’s focus this semester was to develop an innovative peerto-peer support program to help University students and/or faculty to increase well-being through improving self-awareness, bolstering self-efficacy beliefs, and implementing various positive