Chapter 18: Faculty Health and Well Being: Programs and the Faculty Health and Well Being Committee
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Description
In this chapter, Dr. Holleman returns to the topic of the Program’s offerings, then focuses on the Faculty Health and Well Being Committee, which he chairs. Formed in 2010, this committee is designed to “multiply the effect” of the Program by bringing together faculty who are interested in providing additional programs to faculty and to conducting research on topics related to health and well-being. He talks about the activities of several committee members. He then talks about the areas that he and the committee would like to see expanded, notably social events for young faculty and for young faculty and spouses/families. He tells stories to demonstrate how successful and needed social events have been in the past.
Next, Dr. Holleman notes that the Committee has recently included a new dimension in its mission: supporting the Faculty Senate and the Shared Governance System. He explains that such processes can address the problem of faculty health from the institutional level. He explains that the Committee wants to work more closely with Faculty Senate and that the Faculty Health and Well Being Program in general needs to develop its role in advocating for the faculty to leadership.
Finally, he talks about the current environment of change, created when Dr. DePinho tendered his resignation. He observes that interim leaders are focusing on “what the institution’s calling is really about.”
Identifier
HollemanWL_03_20170427_C18
Publication Date
4-27-2017
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Warren L. Holleman, PhD, Oral History Interview, April 27, 2017
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Building the Institution; Working Environment; Building the Institution; Institutional Politics; Growth and/or Change; Critical Perspectives on MD Anderson; MD Anderson Culture; Critical Perspectives; Understanding the Institution; Funny Stories; On the Nature of Institutions; Leadership; On Leadership
Transcript
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, I'm glad we talked about that. I mean, it adds more to the conversation we had last time about changes in the institution. But I didn't want to lose the train of thought; you were kind of talking about programs that you had set up. So you were talking about some of the more traditional ones. What are some of the kind of more innovative things that are program offerings in Faculty Health?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Well, we offer various mind-body classes. We have a meditation class, or mind fitness class, some people might call it. We have a tai chi class. We used to have a yoga class, but there are so many yoga classes taught here now. We were obsolete. There wasn't a need for us to offer that. But the mind-body fitness stuff that we do offer, the meditation and the tai chi are kind of unique.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
How well supported do you feel the program is by the executive leadership, by division heads? Do you feel that people view it as being important?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Well, that's a good question. I do. I think they value what we do. Sometimes when I'm in my low moments, I wonder about that, because they have a lot of priorities on their plate, and we're not on the top if their priority list, which is very understandable. But when I to talk with them about what we do, they express strong support. I think they appreciate that we do—I think they appreciate what we do, yes.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
How do you see, or how would you like to see, the program evolve? I know you're going to be retiring soon, but what do you foresee as being something that's important, and healthy for the institution?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
So I think—let me talk about what we are now, and then I'll say how I'd like us to evolve. So if I could, I'll drop back and summarize those things we do now.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Mm-hmm. Sure.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
So we do traditional presentations, from grand rounds to panel discussions, things like bullying and incivility. We do a lot of panel discussions on work-life balance topics. We just did one on the challenges of parenting a child with autism. We have a lot of parents who are struggling with that.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Wow.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And then we do other traditional academic stuff like research and writing, dissemination of information. The formal academic studies, editorials, commentaries, blogs, things like that. Then we do the non-traditional stuff that I mentioned, such as the meditation and the tai chi, retreats. Then I do individual counseling, consultations, coaching—that kind of thing, one-on-one. Then we have our social engagement activities, such as faculty happy hours, we have a parent support group. We have social events for junior faculty. We have social events for faculty spouses and partners. So there's that social support focus. Then the final area—and this is what I'd like to expand on for the future—is what I call our committee activities. Our committee members are kind of our multipliers. Many of them do things that expand our influence dramatically. One of them helped found what's called a Meaning in Medicine group, where doctors and med students get together and talk about what gives their work meaning, which is a very empowering experience. Another one does research and writes papers on surgeon burnout. Another gives workshops around the country on burnout for primarily, I think for women and minority faculty.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, I'm having a hard time kind of seeing—so is this just a—this is a group of people who are interested in areas that are under the umbrella of Faculty Health and Wellness, and they're deciding to do some additional focus on this? Is that how the committee's constituted, or—?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Oh, so what I'm trying to do is to explain how our committee functions.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What's the name of the committee?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
It's called the Faculty Health and Well-being Committee. And I'm trying to make the point that what Katrina and I do, and the faculty help the program, isn't the whole story, that many of our committee members do other activities that we support—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay, got you.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
—that multiple our effectiveness. So our committee is an attempt to bring together faculty and administration, but mostly faculty, who are fellow travelers on this journey, who do the types of things that are within our mission. So what I was wanting to do was to give you some examples of what they do, to multi—and that we support them, or I work with them in doing. And then that would feed into answering your question about where to go in the future. So our committee consists of about 15 people. And most of those people have some type of focus that they—focused activity that they do. The focused activity that they do, they feel sort of an individual calling to do, that multiplies our effectiveness. So I was listing Henry Kuerer as a surgeon, who's done some lead—very influential research on surgeon burnout and surgeon job satisfaction. Ken Safire is an anesthesiologist, who's taught workshops literally all over the world on stress reduction and meditation and work-life balance. He also helped organize what's called a Meaning in Medicine group, of physicians and med students and residents, who talk about factors that give their work—they encourage each other in maintaining a sense of their calling and meaning in medicine. Shine Chang teaches workshops through the AAMC on burnout, and she goes all over the country doing that. Dr. Georgia Thomas teaches workshops through the Texas Medical Association on burnout and other related topics. Several of our younger faculty on our committee, particularly Susan Schembre, Rachel Lynn and Laura Pageon organized something that eventually became known as the Focus on Junior Faculty, which has done a great job of helping our younger faculty learn—become assimilated into MD Anderson and learn career skills that helped them get promoted and enjoy their careers. And Focus on Junior Faculty recently became an official institutional committee, so we sort of feel like we're the stepparent of that.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And we're very excited about that. I'm sure I'm leaving out—one of our committee members, Susan Chon, developed a little card that you put in you ID badge, that gives you the numbers to call if you need help in various areas of mental health and support. And—oh, Dr. Akhila Reddy organized a support group for parents with children who have special needs. The prevailing special need is autism, but there are children with various disabilities and developmental disorders. That's turned out to be just an amazing process. The parents, we meet twice a month, and we sort of describe it as an information-sharing group, because there's so many—when your child is diagnosed, there's just so many questions and it's so complicated, knowing where to get help. So they help each other out. Invariably, there's emotional support that goes with it as well.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Sure.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And there's about 15 parents, mostly faculty, involved with that. In fact, it's gotten so popular, there are others who want to join, and it's too big. So we're going to work with work-life wellness division, and they're going to start a second group, primarily for staff.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, wow. That's amazing.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And so these are some examples. I'm sure I'm leaving out some good ones. So we've had these—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I was going to ask, are there certain other need areas that you see among the faculty that you hope, oh, I wish a committee member would join and take this on?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Mm-hmm.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What are the areas like that?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. A couple of things. Well, Focus on Junior Faculty started with a concern about the social needs of junior faculty. It kind of evolved into focusing more on the career needs. It's done a great job on the career needs, but it hasn't done as much on the social needs. So I'm hoping in the future there will be—some of the young faculty leaders will take that on. I mean, they do some things. They’ve had this great event at Saint Arnold's each year, have a good turnout. But they've tried to do breakfasts and lunches once a month, once every other week, and it's just so hard for anybody to commit to anything because of their busy schedule, particularly clinicians.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And those on the south campus are a mile away. So it's hard to do those things, but I'm hoping they'll keep experimenting with that. Another need is to expand the social activities, particularly for young faculty and their spouses or partners. There's a group called the Faculty Family Organization that does those things, and we've always partnered with them. And we really like what they do. But we could do more. And I'm hoping that maybe the Junior Faculty Organization, if it develops this social activities mission, a second mission maybe would work more closely with the Faculty Families Organization, because that's an external organization to MD Anderson; it's sort of the spouses and partners. And if there's a way to connect them more closely to MD Anderson, that would be good.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
It's a big institution.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
You know, and you combine that with just how busy everyone is, it's so difficult to make connections and find support.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. I mean, I think about—see, the way organizations work, and the Faculty Families Organization is a great example—that was started probably 30 years ago, maybe. And the people who started that are still active and they do great things. But they're all my age, or older.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Right.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Or older. And so they have a need to evolve more activities for the younger faculty. And the things they've done have been wildly successful. They had something I thought was crazy; it was a video game night to try to reach out to the children of faculty. I said, "Nobody's going to come to that." It was on a Sunday night, the first Sunday night in September, people have school the next day. Two hundred and twenty people came, I think.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, my gosh!
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. We had a movie night, and we really messed up. The person who picked the movie picked a totally inappropriate movie, and—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What was the movie?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Some movie about—some action movie about going into outer space and killing a lot of people.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
It was a popular—I don't remember. It was a popular movie among teenagers. But we were trying to appeal to elementary age, and we just needed a little cartoon, or—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Right.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
You know. Yeah, it was very inappropriate. Very violent, and even sexual at times. But anyway, we still got, like, 125 people came.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Wow.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And the parents who didn't approve of the movie just took their kids off and did something else, you know, there were other activities. So we've done a couple of movie nights. I'd like to see us do a lot more of that.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And maybe we need to recruit members to our committee who would help us make that happen.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So there's obviously a huge need and desire for that.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Well, if you think about MD Anderson faculty and fellows, the vast majority of our fellows are from other countries. And I would bet that a high percentage of our faculty are from other countries, especially new faculty. And so, they certainly are—even if they're not from another country, they're from another city or state. So they're new to MD Anderson, they're new to Houston. If they're young, they don't have the money that the senior faculty have.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Right.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And so when you provide a free movie night for families, and on top of that you get to socialize with other colleagues, that's a perfect activity.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. Yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. And that's why I think it was so successful.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, and it kind of goes back to those old company picnic things, that really got people together. It does solidify friendships. So many people that I interview who talk about coming to Houston, maybe in the early '70s, or even in the late '60s in some cases, and they talk about starting up something entirely new, and inevitably part of the conversation is about how they would get together with their families. All the families of people involved in this project would get together, and they all became friends. And there was a social extension outside of the work. That was possible, because everybody knew each other. But now it's so much more difficult. But that's a natural thing, and a really helpful thing.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Right. So that's what I hear also from the senior faculty. MD Anderson used to be one building.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Right. Right, sure.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And if a doctor was seeing a patient for a certain type of cancer and the patient also was having, say, a problem with digestion, they could walk down the hall and there'd be a gastroenterologist, and they could say, "Could you help me here?"
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Mm-hmm.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Now you send emails and you wait a week for a response. We've become so big that it's harder to make connections. We've closed the faculty dining hall about five, six years ago, the things that used to hold us together. We're miles apart, literally. The South Campus, where a lot of the researchers are, is about a mile from here. So it's just harder to get together. Even from a work perspective, I'd say the genius at MD Anderson was the cross-fertilization of these scientists and physicians, and people could just stop in the hallway, and say, I keep seeing this problem clinically. I'm wondering how we could design a clinical trial to see if this solution works better than that solution. But things have gotten so big and so bureaucratic, it's a little harder to just do that stuff. So anyway, I've kind of gotten far afield, but...
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
No, no, I thought it was very relevant. I was curious if there were other areas that you hoped would be developed through this committee.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. So I've mentioned a few, but I haven't mentioned the big thing. One thing we've done in the last couple of years is, we've realized that the Faculty Senate and the shared governance process are really the voice of the faculty now. We're not the voice, of course, but they are. And they've been given an institutional imprimatur to do that, it's their job. So we've realized that while our focus has been primarily assisting the individual in building resilience and health, we're addressing half of the equation. The other half is, what can the institution do to improve—make our work culture more positive and healthy and productive and all that. So the Faculty Senate is the group that's taken the lead there, and has helped establish the shared governance process. So with that in mind, we've placed a couple of Faculty Senate leaders and liaisons onto our committee, and they give us regular reports on what the Senate is doing, and many of our members are also members of the Senate. So actually, there's a lot of cross-fertilization. So we've changed our job description to include supporting the work of the Senate. We support our Senate leaders personally, you know, just stopping and asking, "How are you doing," because the work they do is very hard. They go to tons of committee meetings on top of their regular faculty jobs. They're involved in highly conflictual situations which would be demoralizing to most of us, and we want them to feel that we appreciate what they do. So we try to support them sort of on a personal level. And we try to provide input. We try to be sort of a focus group for them. They come to us and say, "Do you think the morale has improved after this change, or has it gotten worse? What's your sense of the faculty needs right now? What would be the best way to approach this?" They'll sort of seek our input. And we offer them that—we're sort of their ears.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Sure.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
We're a committee of 15 people who share their values and their priorities, and—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And also, through your connections, have a finger on a pretty wide spectrum of pulses within the institution, to kind of test or see what's going on.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Exactly.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Their other group, of course, is the executive committee of the Faculty Senate. That's their real institutionally—in terms of the design of their organization, that's their official leadership group. But I would say we're kind of an unofficial second sort of focus group and support group for them.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, interesting.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
So as we look toward the future, I think I would say our program and our committee have done a pretty good job of providing programs and services for individual faculty who are working very difficult, challenging jobs. But we need to do better in terms of advocating for faculty to institutional leadership. So the way that we've decided to do that is to support the Faculty Senate and its leaders, and the shared governance process. So going forward, I would hope our committee links more and more with the Faculty Senate. I don't know, whoever comes after me in terms of leading the program will decide how to do that. Right now it's an informal process, it's not written down on any organizational chart. They may want to formalize it more, that's up to the future leaders. But I think that's our growing edge, is, we've done everything we can to support individuals in very difficult circumstances. But we have not done everything we can to change the culture and structure and leadership of the institution. So individual, institution.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. Yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
That's sort of the simple two-part focus.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. Yeah, very interesting. Well, I'm really glad you sketched that out.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
In some ways, it might be a really opportune time. I mean, obviously you've seen that—
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Oh, yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
—with Chancellor McRaven coming in. And it could be a very fertile time to bring out some of these changes.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
You're probably not expecting to hear this, but from right field, I guess, one book that has influenced me in my whole life, it's way in the background, I read it decades ago, it's The Prince by Machiavelli. And of course, that book has some political implications that are not good. But the book also has a lot of wisdom in terms of how to get things done for leaders. And I think about that a lot. As you mentioned, sometimes a crisis can create an opportunity for change, and I think that's exactly what's happened here. I think Dr. DePinho's approach was to be—oh, there's a popular term for it now, where you try to change things—disruptive.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Mmm.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
There are leaders who kind of proud of being, quote, "disrupters." And I think he was kind of a disrupter. And I think he really did stir up some things. And I think that the benefit of all that is that it's helped us to refocus on what MD Anderson is all about now and in the future, and that some really good leaders have risen up from the ranks. And I think right now, we have Marshall Hicks, and Steve Hahn in the executive leadership in the interim process, and those are excellent faculty leaders who represent the best of MD Anderson. There are a lot of others out there, too. And people like that were just sort of in the shadows the last few years, and not being fully utilized. Then faculty leaders that were not department chairs or division heads, like Julie Izzo from the Faculty Senate and Ann Killary and others, have stepped up and also helped us figure out who we are and where we want to be, and helped direct us toward the shared governance process, and toward getting back to the things we do well in the part of our core identity. So this has been a crisis, and we still have a bit of a financial crisis. But in the long run, I think we're going to do very well, because it's helped us to rediscover who we are and who we want to be.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, thanks for that evaluation. That's very thoughtful, yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Feeling optimistic.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, good. That's a good thing to feel! (laughter) I hope it lasts.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. Yeah.
Recommended Citation
Holleman, Warren L. PhD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 18: Faculty Health and Well Being: Programs and the Faculty Health and Well Being Committee" (2017). Interview Chapters. 1092.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1092
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