We toured WPI and love so many things about it. However, the mental health challenges of students in the program gives us pause. I’d love to hear from someone with recent first-hand experience about whether the new support from the administration is effective, and if faculty have more broadly developed a deeper understanding of how they can provide instruction in ways that are cognizant of the stress levels of students in their fast-paced quarter system? For context, last year’s NYTimes article here https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/22/magazine/worcester-polytechnic-institute-suicides.html
Hi - my son is a current junior at WPI. He basically got there the year immediately after they had the most serious mental health challenges. We’ve been really pleased with the school response. I think a number of schools had problems coming out of the pandemic, there was so much anxiety and stress and just mental health challenges for those students that were launching during the pandemic. As seen by the NYT article, WPI was willing to acknowledge the issue and address it head on.
Concrete things that they have implemented - there is a center for mental health that is robustly staffed with professionals for students to talk with, and there are programs offered with some regularity, as well as drop in de-stress type activities. They have regular and recurring “mental health” days when there are no classes, clubs or meetings and no assignments are due or expected to be worked on. Students and professors seem to be cognizant of mental health challenges and talk about them with each other and it’s ok to be having a hard time - there’s no shame with struggling. Students and professors are quick to recommend resources for academic help or social-emotional needs.
That’s not to say there is no stress. Seven week quarters means that classes move very quickly. For my ADHD kid, this has actually been a benefit. He only has to focus on three classes at a time so it’s easier to prioritize and triage work, and at finals time, there’s only three tests/projects to balance. Because they have to get through the same amount of material, faster, the classes meet more often, it seems to help my son stay on task. That said, there are always parents in the parents facebook page who note that their child is struggling to keep up. Like all engineering/stem programs, the classes are hard, and the content is challenging and some people have a harder time than others adapting to that. We’ve found the professors to be very willing to be helpful - my son really takes advantage of office hours, going in - often - to ask questions. He’s found the professors are very willing and eager to assist him.
So, to sum up, I’d say there are definitely challenges there, but I don’t think those challenges are specific or unique to WPI, I think they’ve simply been more public about it. Regardless of that, I do think that the administration and professors are taking mental health seriously, and have made a number of improvements and continue to keep an eye out to see if things are going awry or if there are additional improvements that can be made.
I hope that rather long soliloquy is helpful!
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hugely helpful. Thanks so so much.
this is a few days late, but thank you for that long note! my 25 just got in to WPI and I think it is in the running (with RIT) now…it will be a very hard choice I think
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