Sarah Cavanagh, author of Mind Over Monsters: Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge, will visit campus on Wednesday, September 17, 2025. A wide variety of events will be planned, inviting students, faculty, and staff to engage with Prof. Cavanagh and the concept of “compassionate challenge” in the college classroom.
Prepare for her Visit
Please join your fellow students, faculty, and staff in reading Mind Over Monsters during Summer 2025! Copies of the book are available through:
- the Tran Library (print and e-book options available)
- the CAS Dean's office (email Jeane Cannon to request a copy)
- your preferred county library or online retailer
The PacU Libraries' “Summer Reading Bingo” will feature this book as a suggested read, and it can use it for one of several squares on the Bingo card!
For a taste of Sarah Cavanagh’s work, you may consider listening to her Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode about the book: Mind Over Monsters, or one of her many other podcasts and profiles listed here.
The Planning Team
A small workgroup of cross-campus faculty and staff are supporting the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office in preparing for this author visit. If you have ideas about impactful programming, an existing event that could align with her visit, or any other ideas/requests, please reach out any time to Morgan Knapp.
About the Book
Mind Over Monsters: Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge is “an investigation into the mental health crisis affecting young adults today, and an impassioned argument for creating learning environments characterized both by compassion and challenge”. Alarming statistics in recent years indicate that mental health problems like depression and anxiety have been skyrocketing among young adults. While major stakeholders argue over whether we need greater compassion or whether so-called “coddling” might in fact be driving up rates of mental health problems and we should instead introduce more challenge, psychologist and professor Sarah Rose Cavanagh presents extensive evidence to argue that this is a false duality. Instead, she proposes that first we need to create learning and living environments characterized by compassion, and then we need to guide our youth into practices that encourage challenge. Learn more.
About the Author
Sarah Rose Cavanagh is the Senior Associate Director for Teaching and Learning in the Center for Faculty Excellence at Simmons University, where she also teaches in the Psychology Department as an Associate Professor of Practice. Before joining Simmons, she was a tenured Associate Professor of psychology and neuroscience at Assumption University, where she also served in the D'Amour Center for Teaching Excellence as Associate Director for Grants and Research. Sarah's research considers the interplay of emotions, motivation, learning, and quality of life. Her most recent research project, funded by the National Science Foundation, convenes a network of scholars to develop teaching practices aimed at greater effectiveness and equity in undergraduate biology education. She is author of four books, including The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion(2016) and Mind Over Monsters: Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge(2023). She gives keynote addresses and workshops at a variety of colleges and regional conferences, blogs for PsychologyToday, and writes essays for venues like Literary Hub and The Chronicle of Higher Education.She’s also on BlueSky too much, at @SaRoseCav.