Conclusion

Abstract

This chapter summarizes insights into the experiences and challenges graduate students and faculty face in maintaining their wellbeing within academia in times of stability and times of crisis. It highlights the importance of a global and transdisciplinary perspective on graduate student and faculty wellbeing within increasingly diversifying, internationalizing, and decolonizing universities. The chapter authors give an overview of common and distinct strategies for wellbeing shared by the monograph authors, including self-care, communal care, and intercultural mentorship, as well as self-regulation, skilled helper support, returning to nature, Indigenous cultural tools, and the arts. This chapter reiterates that wellbeing is a holistic, nested, non-hierarchical concept and process, individual and communal, a journey rather than a destination. The authors conclude with a call for proactive mental health and wellbeing policies and a true culture of self-care within higher education supported by all the levels of programming, including accreditation standards, institutional policies and practices, educational programs, classroom instruction, internships, and mentorship. The critical role of the monograph in conceptualizing and sustaining graduate student and faculty wellbeing, in COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 contexts, is highlighted.