The JayPod! Season 2 Trailer

08/07/23 • 2 min

Check out the trailer for Season 2 of The JayPod: A High Library Production, featuring Etown College English professor Erica Dolson, student Nicole Pinnella, and Director of Prestigious Scholarships and Public Heritage Studies, Jean-Paul Benowitz.

Previous Episode

Studying the Health Benefits of Mindfulness Training for Undergraduate Students with Drs. Elizabeth Dalton and Tomás Estrada

How can mindfulness training and meditation practice benefit our mental health and well-being? In today's world of constant distractions, it seems harder than ever to live in the present moment with sustained focus while managing the stress of daily life. In a recent study, Etown College's Assistant Professor of Psychology, Dr. Elizabeth Dalton and Associate Professor of Engineering and Physics, Dr. Tomás Estrada collaborated to explore the impact of formal mindfulness training on the well-being of 48 undergraduate engineering students.
In this episode, we discuss the concept of mindfulness and its usefulness both in the classroom as well as in one's personal life to manage stress and improve one's overall quality of life. Estrada and Dalton also provide some background information on how they developed an interest in this area of research and what conclusions they reached through their study, "Implementation and Feasibility of a Group Mindfulness Intervention for Undergraduate Engineering Students" which they published in a recent issue of Advances in Engineering Education.
Some books on mindfulness training that we discuss in this episode and which might be of interest to listeners include Jon Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness and Bob Stahl and Elisha Goldstein's A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook.

Next Episode

Writing Creative Non-Fiction with Erica Dolson

This episode features a conversation with Erica Dolson, a professor in Elizabethtown College's English department who serves as the director of our creative writing program. Erica writes creative non-fiction (which she has also taught at the college) and she has published work in Full-Stop, Critical Read, and borrowed solace among other publications. She also regularly teaches first-year writing and professional writing.

Today we’ll be discussing the topic of creative non-fiction, her writing process, as well as some of the challenges and pleasures of writing on personal topics. She will read from and discuss a couple of her essays: “Chance of Showers,” published this past December in Bright Flash Literary Review, and “How I Renewed My Enthusiasm for Writing,” published in Hippocampus Magazine in late 2020.