The Role of “Failure” in Student Success

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: the importance of normalizing failure in college, the emotional work involved with coming back from a failure, the role institutions have in resilience work, and the power of reflection for student success.

Our guest is: Dr. Anna Sharpe, Associate Dean for Student Success at Berry College. Dr. Sharpe has spent the last six years reimagining academic success and support programming at Berry College. She has the privilege of leading an incredible team of five professional staff and over a hundred student employees working in the areas of academic success, first-year experience, accessibility, and retention. Holding a PhD in Geography from University of Kentucky, Dr. Sharpe also researches the interplay of race, politics, law, and land use, focusing on the southeastern coast, where she was born and raised. When she is not on Berry’s beautiful campus, you can find her with her husband and son--cooking, hiking, and making frequent trips to the coast

Our host is: Dr. Dana M. Malone, the co-producer of the Academic Life podcasts. She is a higher education scholar and practitioner. Dana met Anna at the University of Kentucky, where they worked together with students in academic jeopardy and assisted them in reimagining and refocusing their college trajectories.

Listeners to this episode might be interested in:

• The Stanford Resilience Project: Stanford Resilience Project videos
• Carol Dweck’s work: Carol Dweck’s TED Talk on the Power of Believing You Can Improve
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
• From the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, Promoting Belonging, Growth Mindset, and Resilience to Foster Student Success (Baldwin, A., et al.)
• NBN Podcasts with Lisa Nunn on College Belonging
• NBN Podcast with Lisa Nunn on Teaching First-Year and First-Generation Students:

Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.

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