Washington Foundation Donates $9.4 Million to UM

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Washington Foundation has donated $9.4 million to establish the ‘Institute for Positive Education’ at UM’s Phyllis J. Washington College of Education.

I spoke with Professor of Counseling at UM John Sommers-Flanagan on Wednesday about the gift and its purpose.

Washington Foundation Funds Institute for Positive Education at UM

“This particular gift will help support the creation of an institute for positive education in the Phyllis J Washington College of Education at the University of Montana,” began Sommers-Flanagan. “That particular institute will really help shift the focus, even if it's just a little bit, away from looking at what's wrong with students and what's wrong with teachers and toward their skills and their strengths and their resources and their virtues.”

Sommers Flanagan said switching the focus upward instead of downward can make a great deal of difference in education.

“There's really nothing wrong with identifying what's going wrong with people, but we think by growing strengths, by growing the sense of skills and the resources that students have, they will have the ability to deal with the challenges and the problems that they're experiencing,” he said. “It's a little bit different emphasis, and as you say, than the generally deficit-focused way of thinking about teaching and learning.”

Sommers-Flanagan Addressed the Effect of Social Media on Students

Sommers-Flanagan acknowledged my concerns about the effects that social media are having on students.

“I think young people are learning on TikTok and other social media platforms about anxiety disorders and depressive disorders and various mental health and behavioral health problems,” he said. And then, like everyone, when you learn about those things, you begin to identify them in ourselves.”

Sommers Flanagan said one course is already seeing positive results with educators.

The Course Involving Educators is Already Bearing Fruit at UM

“We have recently developed a course that we're already offering,” he said. “It's a course that is specifically for educators in Montana. We've had 177 educators complete it before they take the course. About 32 percent of them report significant clinical depression symptoms, and then after the course is complete, only 12 percent of the educators report clinical depression symptoms, and so we feel like these are very strongly research-based approaches.”

The college will begin accepting scholar applications this spring for the first cohort of teachers and counselors beginning in fall 2025.