SSU Palliative Care Faculty Learning Community

Are you passionate about supporting SSU students, faculty, and staff around the experience of caring for loved ones suffering from serious or chronic illness, or end of life journeys?

Applications are due by May 17, 2024 and should be submitted electronically via a Google Form.

• Are you a SSU faculty member whose teaching, scholarship or service  is related in any way to palliative care, serious illness, end of life care, health care or the changing economics of health care?
• Would you like to collaborate across disciplines within our SSU community to enhance or integrate your curriculum to serve diverse student needs, related to any aspect of palliative care?
• Are you interested in helping California develop a more qualified and compassionate workforce by educating future professionals in healthcare, nursing, social work, public health and other allied professions?

Palliative care improves quality of life for patients and families facing serious or chronic illness, whatever the diagnosis or prognosis. For individuals dealing with serious and chronic conditions, palliative care helps to prevent and relieve suffering by addressing pain as well as the physically, emotionally, psycho-socially and spiritually associated conditions. The need for palliative care is growing, as is the need for everyone in society to understand both the importance of palliative care and how to respond to the challenges of caring about and caring for the growing population suffering from serious and chronic illnesses.

The CSU Shiley Haynes Institute for Palliative Care is charged to create a model for educating current and future health professionals, family members, friends, and members of the community about palliative care. This model should be replicable at other CSU campuses across the state, and potentially at campuses in other states.
Our mission as the Sonoma State Campus Partner to the CSU Shiley Haynes Institute for Palliative Care is to  develop resources, programs, and education for students, staff, faculty and communities within our service area that promote and enhance awareness of palliative care across all disciplines, and to develop skills and capacity to support these processes across campus.
To accomplish this mission, we need the help of faculty to create a model for integrating information about palliative care and the related issues and opportunities across the SSU curricula.

The Sonoma State Palliative Care Faculty Learning Community (PCFLC) in Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 will be comprised of faculty interested in exploring strategies for integrating palliative care and related information relevant to their subject area into their courses, research, pedagogical strategies and service activities, as well as infusing a focus on palliative care across the SSU and surrounding communities through curriculum and programming.

Some potential activities for the Palliative Care Faculty Learning Community include:

• To develop and offer faculty workshops to help develop skills and confidence to support students, staff, and colleagues (our SSU community) in dealing with grief, loss, and palliative care situations.
• As part of the monthly meeting, to engage in topic-focused education  in order to  share/learn best practices in pedagogy, scholarship, and service related to palliative care.
• To help to promote discussion and awareness of palliative and interdisciplinary care across the campus community.
• To present at a pre-conference (CSU Teaching Conference hosted at SSU in February 2025) session on Student Wellbeing and Mental Health.

Any faculty member who articulates a clear commitment to integrating topics related to palliative and interdisciplinary care in their academic discipline through their teaching,  research, or service. Faculty members should also be willing to be an active participant in the full range of group activities. We are especially interested in including a diverse range of departments, programs, and disciplines to promote interdisciplinary sharing of expertise and knowledge.

SSU PCFLC members will:

• Contribute to ongoing processes as defined by the Faculty Learning Community, set up during the first meeting.
• Attend monthly 2hr meetings (Fridays, timing TBD) throughout Fall 2024 and Spring 2025, including a half-day fall retreat. The retreat will be in person, with remaining sessions in a Hybrid-Flexible space; in person presence invited but not required.
  • Participate in related workshops and campus events.
  • Collaborate and communicate with PCFLC Co-Directors and members.
• The schedule of meetings will be based on the availability of the PCFLC participants, but we ask that you do have some flexibility in meeting times (a number of meetings and events do occur on Fridays, so some available Fridays are very likely necessary). The dates for the fall retreat will be scheduled based on the availability of PCFLC participants in coordination with facilitators, guest speakers, and other campus partners. Participants will be allowed one excused absence.

Each participant will develop a Proposal for a program/event/activity/curricular project.

• The Proposal must be actionable, feasible and in alignment with Palliative Care-related topics. Some possible topics include:
  • Student wellbeing/mental health
  • Anything related to grief/loss
  • Student/Faculty/Community programming around support for caregivers of those with serious/chronic illness
  • End of life issues of any kind
  • Curricular collaborations around death/dying topics
• A Progress Report is due at the end of semester
• An Implementation Report is due at the end of the PCFLC term
• Proposals may be done individually or in collaboration with other PCFLC members

Faculty who complete the Palliative Care Learning Community requirements will be awarded a stipend of  $1,000.00 in two semester installments ($500.00 each semester). The second payment will be distributed at the completion of required activities.

Successful Completion Milestones:

• Proposal for project that includes implementation, submitted either individually or in collaboration with other FLC member(s).
• Progress Report to CSU Shiley Haynes Institute for Palliative Care submitted at end of each semester
• Implementation Report presentation to campus in Spring 2025
• Participation in the Annual Campus Event for the What Gives Your Life Meaning campaign (WGYLM).