To Help with Student Wellbeing, BU Names Carrie Landa to New Position

Photo of Carrie Landa, director of Behavioral Medicine and associate director of Student Health Services, is BU’s new executive director of student wellbeing. She wears a black blazer and crimson blouse and leans against a beige, brick wall.

Carrie Landa, director of Behavioral Medicine and associate director of Student Health Services, is BU’s new executive director of student wellbeing. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi

New Appointment

To Help with Student Wellbeing, BU Names Carrie Landa to New Position

Her mission as executive director of student wellbeing: promote social belonging and connectedness and help students develop the tools to succeed and thrive

November 2, 2021
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With concern increasing about the emotional and social wellbeing of college students amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Boston University announced a move this week that it hopes will provide added relief. Jean Morrison, University provost and chief academic officer, announced on Monday the promotion of Carrie Landa, director of Behavioral Medicine and associate director of Student Health Services, to executive director of student wellbeing.

Landa will lead collaborative University-wide efforts to support student wellbeing across all dimensions—emotional, social, physical, professional—by bringing together existing resources and developing new programs and curriculum. Her mission is to help students develop the tools they need to thrive and succeed as engaged members of the campus community. 

“The pandemic’s lingering effects and the challenges it has posed for many to reconnect with campus life have only reinforced how essential these services are to promoting wellness and supporting student success at BU,” Morrison’s announcement says.

Landa will report directly to Patricia O’Brien, vice president and associate provost for budgeting and planning. BU Today talked with Landa about her mission to support student wellbeing, how the pandemic and social media, among other factors, has exacerbated student loneliness, and the importance of belonging and community. 

Q&A

With Carrie Landa

BU Today: Can you talk about your new position and what some of your goals are?

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BU Today: Have students changed? Have their problems changed?

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BU Today: Can you talk more about what particular skills you think can be strengthened?

Carrie Landa: Communication skills are really important—how to have discourse and conversation when there’s a difference of opinion. How to have self-compassion, and a little bit more self-kindness, which is so hard when we’re living in this world of comparing yourself to everybody else on social media. 

The hope is that we’re going to work with the schools and colleges, both undergraduate and graduate, to integrate some of these things into the academic curriculum. For an engineering student who knows how to do computational science or math, it’s just as important to be able to navigate interactions with other people that are going to be challenging, or to navigate failures and setbacks. It’s about how to have a growth mindset. 

BU Today: What is a growth mindset?

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BU Today: What about loneliness? We keep hearing that students are struggling with loneliness—more so now because of the pandemic and the isolation that comes with social distancing.

Carrie Landa: I think social media exacerbates that feeling. Having a million friends and followers isn’t the same as having really close people in your life. The pandemic has blown that open in a different way. Because now we are not only emotionally disconnected from people, we’re also physically disconnected. And now that we’re back, we have masks on that don’t allow you to see that kind smile of the person you might sit next to in class.

BU Today: What are some ways students can feel connected? 

Carrie Landa: I think the University offers great opportunities to engage, but I think it’s overwhelming and intimidating to step out because we’ve all been so sequestered for the past year. We’re kind of out of practice. Finding one thing to get yourself out there—whether it’s talking with someone in class, finding someone to go to the dining hall or study hours with, joining a club, or reaching out to your resident advisor or to someone in your student affairs department to find out how to engage—is a really good first step.

BU Today: Did this new position and emphasis on wellbeing come out of the pandemic? 

Carrie Landa: No. But I think the pandemic highlighted the need for it. Some of this is about self-care and about having things in life that you’re passionate about and that fuel you, because you can’t do the things that are hard if you’re not feeling fueled on the other side. How do we encourage students to find those spaces on campus and in their community?

I think part of it is that students don’t necessarily think, “Oh, volunteering to do a cleanup on the Charles this weekend, this is promoting my wellbeing.” But we want to help them understand how that does promote wellbeing.

BU Today: What are some of the things that contribute to your own sense of wellbeing?

Carrie Landa: Being around people who I love and feeling connected to friends and family is really important. Traveling and seeing other places really inspires me. I love cooking and I love doing things that I’m passionate about. That’s why this is so exciting for me. As a psychologist, I care about how people feel. Yes, what job people get out of college is really important. But you can get a great job and still be unhappy. That’s not winning.

I feel like, as a clinician, this idea that everything has become about mental health, and that everyone needs clinical intervention is misguided, because I think there’s so much more that can contribute to how well a person can feel. Community is one of the most important parts, having a sense of belonging is one of the most important parts.

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To Help with Student Wellbeing, BU Names Carrie Landa to New Position

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  • Sara Rimer

    Senior Contributing Editor

    Sara Rimer

    Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald, Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times, where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

    She can be reached at srimer@bu.edu.

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There are 4 comments on To Help with Student Wellbeing, BU Names Carrie Landa to New Position

  1. BU keeps promoting people in the upper administration. New titles, raises, perks, etc. The staff on the ground just get more work, as they are actually trying to help students directly and have been since day one of the pandemic. How about BU invest in more clinicians (particularly BIPOC clinicians), better access to after-hour crisis intervention, and more clinical help in the dorms.

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    2. Dear Frustrated,

      Two things can happen at one time. The University can promote Carrie Landa to an important position as outlined in the University’s strategic plan AND she can help students (and you) at the same time. This promotion isn’t in place of additional staffing “on the ground.” Her position doesn’t take away the creation of important student-facing roles in the schools and colleges; these things are independent of one another.

      Carrie is one of many staff members who has gone above and beyond during the pandemic; her promotion is very-well deserved. Let’s not snub her hard work because you feel (and possibly are) under-resourced and unsupported in your own unit. Perhaps you could say congratulations to someone on their well-deserved promotion.

      I’ll add — your statement implies that Carrie hasn’t been trying to help students or that she hasn’t been working just as hard as you during the pandemic. I find that to be incredibly insensitive given that she is on the front lines (often serving as the on-call psychologist for student emergencies and mental health crises) and she’s been quietly leading much of BU’s COVID response. To assume that she isn’t here to directly impact our student body is, well, frankly, absurd.

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  2. I thought this was a very insightful article and it in no way contradicts the feelings expressed by “Frustrated”. What seems to be missing is a parallel effort for faculty and staff who may feel disconnected from the administration. Although students tend to view faculty as people in positions of authority, in reality there is considerably less infrastructure for community building among faculty. We do not have exclusive dining halls or other places where collegiality is fostered; these efforts are considered to be an individual responsibility, but perhaps we can do better.

    If anything, the pandemic has widened the possibilities for students to reach out to faculty, and for faculty to reach out to colleagues out of necessity, but there does not seem to be a set of emerging “best practices” that we are building upon.

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