Building Resilience During Challenging Times

Posted March 31, 2020

Since December 2015, Georgia Tech’s Resilience Employee Resource Group (ERG) has led the charge of helping students, faculty, and staff build skills to effectively manage the impact of adversity.

Working with partners across the Institute, Resilience – one of six ERG’s offered to campus staffers by Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’s Staff Diversity, Inclusion, and Engagement unit – has provided experiences to help participants increase resilience and strength, and proactively mitigate the impact of routine stress, crisis, and change. Program activities have included workshops, leadership panels, educational experiences, facilitated dialogues, mentoring, and peer support.

“Today, this work is more important than ever,” said Sonia Alvarez-Robinson, executive director of Georgia Tech Strategic Consulting and principal empowerment officer of the Resilience ERG. And that is why Resilience, together with the University System of Georgia Employee Assistance Program (EAP) partner KEPRO, is hosting a webinar called Building Resiliency and Coping with Change.

This online workshop will be offered to Georgia Tech students, faculty, and staff on three dates: April 20, 28, and May 1, from 1 to 2 p.m. Interested participants can register for one of the sessions here.

In other efforts to increase resilience awareness across the Tech community, the first Building Personal and Organizational Resilience “mini-mester” course – 1 credit hour, five-week class introducing students to nontraditional classroom material – was delivered to Georgia Tech students earlier this spring. The course will be offered again in early and late Summer semester and during all three Fall mini-mester terms. 

The class is designed to help students build skills to survive and thrive through chronic stresses and acute crises, and offers a variety of techniques for students to build resilience. Registration is now open and available on OSCAR.

To learn more about the Resilience ERG, workshop presentations, videos, resources, and information, visit sdie.gatech.edu/resilience-employee-resource-group.