College of Business Professor to Present on "Gratitude Challenge" at Academic Resilience Conference

An initiative launched last year by Idaho State University’s Honors Program, in collaboration with the College of Business, Alumni Association and ISU Athletics, will be featured in the upcoming Academic Resilience Consortium (ARC) conference at Florida State University later this month.

The Honors Program initiative, titled “The Gratitude Challenge,” was used to reconnect and promote the well-being of students who had not been able to take as many in-person classes in the previous year due to the pandemic. The goal of the Gratitude Challenge was for students, faculty, staff and local community members to write 400 letters of gratitude during the month of September. The Honors Program received a total of 520 letters, greatly exceeding their goal.

Alex Bolinger, ICCU Endowed Professor of Management and the acting director of the ISU Honors Program in 2021-2022, will be presenting about the Gratitude Challenge on behalf of the Honors Program at the ARC conference. According to their website, the Academic Resilience Consortium is “a collaborative community dedicated to promoting academic resilience in higher education,” with the goal of facilitating better mental health, resilience, and overall well-being of college students. The ARC conference will feature presenters from over 20 universities throughout North America, including the University of Virginia, Duke University, the University of Washington, Indiana University, the University of Western Ontario and more.

“I am grateful to work at a university where faculty, staff and administrators put such a high priority on the well-being of our students,” said Bolinger. “The pandemic was really hard for most of us, but it was especially challenging for incoming students who lost out on opportunities in high school and early in their college careers to experience many of the academic, social and extracurricular opportunities that have such a formative influence at this stage of their lives.”

“There is a growing body of research that suggests that expressing gratitude to others is an effective (and low-cost) method for increasing one’s sense of well-being,” Bolinger said. “In light of the very real losses associated with the pandemic, our goal in launching the Gratitude Challenge was to also bring attention to the many things that we have to be grateful for.”

In keeping with the theme of the initiative, Bolinger wished to express his thanks to those who helped make the Gratitude Challenge possible. 

“Any undertaking of this magnitude requires the support and collaboration of many people. I want to thank the Idaho State University Honors Program and Dawn Brooks, Miriam Dance, Lori Tapanila, Shannon Kobs Nawotniak, Cindy Hill and the entire team in the ISU Student Success Center for their support of this project.”

“I also want to thank Shane Hunt and the ISU College of Business for their continuous encouragement and support,” Bolinger continued. “Thanks to Ryan Sargent, Patty Bolinger and everyone involved with the ISU Alumni Association; Pauline Thiros, Steve Schaack and ISU Athletics; our generous contacts at Grace Lutheran School and School District 25; Melissa Hartman with Bannock County Veterans Services; and so many other ISU administrators, faculty, staff, and local community members who contributed to the Gratitude Challenge. Finally, special thanks to the remarkable group of Honors students that we have here at ISU. It was their drive and leadership that made the Gratitude Challenge such a success.”

The ARC conference will be held October 25-26 in Tallahassee, Florida. A virtual live-streamed option will be available for those who wish to attend the training sessions online. If interested, please visit the ARC’s website here.