ABOUT US
A Message from the ARC Steering Committee Chair and Vice Chair
Welcome!
The Academic Resilience Consortium (ARC) is a collaborative community dedicated to promoting academic resilience in higher education, to help college students learn, grow, and reach their goals. The faculty, staff, and students of the ARC represent the wide range of campus functions in higher education, including learning services, counseling services, advising programs, academic departments, campus life, and bridge programs, among others.
The ARC itself is a learning community. We are all in this work together: improving higher education, advancing our respective fields, and promoting college student success. As your ARC Chair and Vice Chair, we welcome your participation, questions, and feedback, and look forward to working and learning with you.
Karen Oehme, J.D., Steering Committee Chair
Karen, an FSU Distinguished University Scholar, received her BA in Communication from Florida Atlantic University and her J.D. from Florida State University. She is the director of the Institute for Family Violence Studies at the FSU College of Social Work, where she also oversees the FSU Student Resilience Project. Karen’s team designs and creates large-scale web-based trainings for professionals in many fields. Her work with the Student Resilience Project was shaped by a diverse group of students who wanted authentic, evidence-based resources shaped for a population that grew up on the internet. Her work emphasizes the needs of the end-user, and is therefore constantly being reshaped and refined in ongoing iterations. She admires the fearlessness of students in their gleeful use of new technologies, as well as the welcoming acceptance of people across life’s spectrums that defines and elevates Gen Z.
Laura Johnson, Ph.D., Steering Committee Vice Chair
Laura currently serves as the Assistant Provost for Undergraduate Affairs at Boston University. She earned her BA in American Civilization from Brown University and her PhD in American Studies from Boston University. She also holds a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she focused her studies on student development. Laura began her career teaching at Harvard University in the programs on History & Literature and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. While teaching, she became increasingly interested in how students’ diverse identities and lived experiences impact their academic lives and their ability to thrive outside the classroom. She then moved into a series of academic affairs and student affairs positions that have enabled her to promote academic persistence and student wellbeing at both the individual and the institutional level. She has special expertise developing innovative cocurricular programming that fosters reflection on identity, belonging, and purpose.