The Roles of Social and Emotional Skills on the Beliefs and Behaviors of Diverse College Students

Abstract

In the United States, college students of color are disproportionately impacted by mental health problems, the COVID-19 pandemic, and sociopolitical stressors. This growing disparity calls for culturally responsive and accessible interventions to educate, equip, and empower students for socioemotional skills and mental health. An experiential social emotional learning (SEL) intervention was created at the University of California-Irvine to help undergraduates in all majors and class standing build skills, attitude, and strategies for academic and career readiness. Students in the intervention showed significantly greater improvement in emotional intelligence, adaptive beliefs, and healthy coping behaviors toward mental health. The intervention showed promising efficacy during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite moving from in-person to online delivery. The author shares insights on how to design, implement, and scale culturally responsive SEL academic interventions for diverse college students.