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This article discusses the impact of collective trauma on faculty with a focus on creating a more trauma-informed learning and working environment. In addition to discussing social justice self-care, six categories of macro-level strategies and reflection questions are shared to encourage a more trauma-informed approach to faculty development.
Introduction
HE SUBSTANCE ABUSE and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) defines trauma as an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual's functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual wellbeing. This event does not have to be violent and is often understood through an individual's subjective lens while also being experienced collectively. It is critically important to note that trauma, and the impact of trauma, are not distributed equally. Lynch (2022) calls for an acknowledgement in which trauma-informed leaders "... account for the ways that stakeholders from marginalized backgrounds disproportionately experience complex trauma within the campus community" (para. 1). The foundations of trauma-informed care include five cornerstones of safety, trustworthiness and transparency, peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment, voice and choice (SAMSHA, 2014).
Learning environments that utilize a traumainformed approach to support students and faculty who have experienced trauma can only be successful if they are led by trauma-informed leaders. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has led to a collective experience of traumatized faculty making this particularly challenging, as faculty have navigated their own losses, illnesses, and individual and collective grief. In order for trauma-informed classrooms to function, traumatized faculty must receive institutional and structural support. Addressing traumatized faculty in practice is much deeper than simply encouraging self-care. While the World Health Organization's (2014) recognition ofthe need for self-care as a process of promoting and maintaining health, professional self-care, is designed to enhance wellbeing and involves purposeful and continuous efforts that are undertaken to ensure that all dimensions of the self receives the attention that is needed to make the person fit to assist others (Moore et al., 2019). However, it is common among faculty to experience self-care fatigue, in which self-care messages are consistently communicated without changing any structures and workload demands and service obligations remain high, and at times unreasonable. These expectations can...