Belonging and Be The Match with Dr. Julianne Grose

Dr. Julianne Grose: Belonging and Be the Match

Honoring her brother-in-law’s dying wish, Dr. Grose advocates for Be The Match bone marrow transplant nonprofit. She guides listeners through the simple process of becoming a “match” and outlines its lifesaving implications. Additionally, Dr. Grose discusses what it means to truly belong and how we can cultivate that kind of environment on BYU’s campus.

Bio

Dr. Julianne Grose is a microbiology and molecular biology professor of 15 years at BYU. She obtained her BS in Chemistry with a math minor as well as a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Utah where she studied the central metabolic pathways of Salmonella. Dr. Grose began BYU Be the Match on Campus in 2017, a student group to recruit potential bone marrow donors for patients with blood disorders such as lymphoma and leukemia. Together,  students have registered over 5,000 potential donors and 48 of our students have donated and saved a life! In 2022 Be the Match honored BYU by presenting Dr. Grose with the “Lives Award.”

Join the registry here and you might just save someone’s life.

Recorded, Edited & Produced by Paige Sherwood, Isabella Loosle, and Tanya Gale

Transcript

Cougar: [00:00:00] Dr. Julian Gross, welcome to the Y Health Podcast.  

Julianne: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for the invite.  

Cougar: Well, I'm honored to have you here. I think, you know, we, we put out this wish list of who we could talk to and didn't expect some of some of the guests to respond. And you are so accomplished. You've received the highest teaching and the highest research awards here at the university. 

Cougar: You are an all-star in every phase of the game. You really are.  

Julianne: I should come here all the time.  

Cougar: Well, we're honored to have you, and maybe we should start with an introduction. Your, your educational background and of course your career here at BYU. Do you mind giving us a brief intro?  

Julianne: Sure. I come from a science background, so I, I am a first generation college graduate and I started at the U of U, studying chemistry and math. And so that, that is what my undergraduate is in. But then I had a fabulous professor, like I had no clue what graduate school was or a PhD. I had never even thought about going to [00:01:00] graduate school. And I met him my senior year of college and he totally convinced me to apply to a PhD program and get my PhD. 

Cougar: Cool.  

Julianne: And so I did. And I, I have my PhD in biology and he was pretty tricky cuz he, he was like, ‘need to get your PhD.’ And my response was, ‘I think I'll just get a master's because I don't know about this graduate school thing.’ And he said, ‘well, you just applied to the PhD program and then if you change your mind, you just get a Master's.’ 

Julianne: So just apply to the PhD and you'll, you'll get your master's. And I was like, okay. . He knew what he was doing. . Cause I was hooked once when I was in the program.  

 Cougar: I love it.  

Julianne: I've had so many good mentors. So I got my PhD in biology and then I worked actually for a pharmaceutical company for a couple years and then applied to BYU because I missed teaching. 

Julianne: I missed working with students. I missed being at a university [00:02:00] and that was the biggest decision I made. I think most of us at BYU have felt a call to come here. And that's kind of what happened to me. Like I was right in the middle of working at the pharmaceutical company and, and just things just fell in place and I knew I was supposed to come here. 

Cougar: Isn't that interesting? That is the story for so many of us. 

Julianne: It really is. It's very cool. Something I had never thought about doing and boom.  

Cougar: I love it. And you're a Ute. I'm a Ute as well.  

Julianne: Are you really? 

Cougar: I have two degrees from the U. 

Julianne: Me too!  

Cougar: Good stuff. Were you raised in Utah? Are you local? 

Julianne: Yeah, I was raised in Layton. . Very cool. You can probably hear my latent accent come out every once in a while. 

Cougar: I wouldn't be able to identify that. I haven't been here long enough, I don't think for that, but really Cool. So tell us what tell us about your department here at BYU and just a and just a little bit about your research interests and then we're gonna get into the real reason we're having you on today. 

Julianne: Sounds great. So I joined BYU in 2008, and I'm in the [00:03:00] Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology, so I've been teaching here for 15 years. Wow. Which has been amazing. I just love the students. That's really why I'm here. They inspire me every day, and I teach a class called Phage Hunters. I am big on experiential learning. I now only teach experiential learning classes. No other type of traditional class. 

Cougar: Cool. So for our listeners, how do you define experiential learning?  

Julianne: Yeah, like that versus a traditional, that is hard actually, because it, it can be, it can come in many forms, but for me in biology, that's hands-on learning. That's performing experiments, conducting experiments, hands on, and then learning and applying the biology principles as you do that. Very cool. So bringing them really to life. 

Cougar: Yeah. And involved in that is a study abroad program in India. Yeah.  

Julianne: Yeah.  

Cougar: I'm, I'm throwing a lot at you, but you do a lot of things at the university. 

Julianne: Yeah, I've run actually [00:04:00] two different study abroads, one to India called emerging diseases, which is really fun. Yeah. Where we look for antibiotic resistant bacteria and viruses in the environment. And then we also run a Women in Science study, which is really fun. And that one's in Europe and they kind of alternate every other year. 

Cougar: You just must have more hours in your day, or you are a superstar.  

Julianne: [laughs] Yeah. It's fun.  

Cougar: But it really is every, there's a theme that goes through everything that you do, and that is, it's student-centered, which has been our charge at the university and, and I, I don't know if it makes us entirely unique, but it is, it is something that BYU has really led out on, which is, you are here for students, you need to be an excellent researcher,  but the students come first and you've been able to really mesh these things together where you have so many undergrads and graduate students in your lab and you're, you're giving them practical, real life, hands-on application. So amazing.  

Julianne: Yeah, that's what I came here [00:05:00] for. That's what I love is working with the students. But it's, it definitely took time to develop these programs. and figure out what worked and, and didn't work.  

 Cougar: It's been a busy 15 years. 

Julianne: That’s right.  

Cougar: You’re remarkable. So you have been on the BYU website. So every morning I come in and I, I log onto the website and there's always a feature story. 

Cougar: You have been the feature a couple times in the last six months and the first is going back to November and you received the Lives Award. Did I say that right?  

Julianne: Lives  

Cougar: The lives. I'm so sorry.  

Julianne: That's okay.  

Cougar: The Lives Award from Be the Match.org. I've done a little bit of reading on that and I'm really hoping to direct our listeners to be the match.org. But will you give us an overview of what Be the Match is? How you were instrumental in getting that here on campus as a campus club and registering I think over 5,000 students at this point?  

Julianne: That's right.  

Cougar: Yeah, so, so take that and run with it cuz this may be the first time that the [00:06:00] majority of our listeners have even heard of Be the Match. 

Julianne: I bet it is. Most people have not heard  about Be the Match before. And if they, once they hear about it, then they want to get involved. Yeah. So this is a great opportunity and I thank you so much for recognizing that. Be The Match is a program to save people's lives who have blood diseases. So that's mostly leukemia and Lymphoma. Most of the time. But it can be anyone with a life-threatening blood disease. And the goal is to get people who are willing to donate to a complete stranger. So if you get diagnosed with a disease of blood disease and your only chance is a stem cell transplant, a blood stem cell transplant, then you need a donor and your chance of someone in your family matching you is only 30%. 

Cougar: Oh, wow.  

Julianne: So that means 70% of the time you need a stranger to donate to [00:07:00] you and they never do a stem cells transplant unless that's the only option. Okay. So this is for people who will otherwise die and they're completely dependent on a stranger, which is a pretty amazing situation to be in. This really ties two people together in unimaginable ways.  

Cougar: I have a, I have a couple questions. In fact, in my class last night, the topic was altruism, which is this selfless service, you know? Showing love, expecting nothing in return. And we, we talked about kidney donation and in fact watched a little Ted talk about these 2000 people that were involved in this study at NIH, and they, and they really wanted to know you donated a kidney to a complete stranger. Like who are you? Who exactly, who does that? And it, it is fascinating because, to a T, all of all of these participants said, ‘I'm happy [00:08:00] to sit down and do an interview with you, but there's nothing special about me like I am.

Cougar: I'm not remarkable in any way. I just thought, no, I, I can save a life. I should. Now that that's removing a kidney from your body, tell me this is far less skin in the game. Yes, far,  

Julianne: far  

Cougar: less, far less easier to do, and yet if there's someone out there who's my age and thinks what, what it was like to do a bone marrow transplant. 

Cougar: When I was a kid, we had someone in the Lord who did that, and I remember he was in bed for a month because they drilled into the bones in his lower back. It was a horrific experience. Have things changed or is that changed? That's still how we do, yeah. Okay. So  

Julianne: dramatically. Dramatically.  

Cougar: So bring us up to speed here in the 21st century as far as how  

Julianne: this actually works. 

Julianne: Yeah. So if you are interested in donating, then you register, you get a swab taken from your. and they do your HLA or immune system typing because you have to be a tissue type [00:09:00] match in order to donate. The crazy thing is you don't have to be a blood match. Oh, so a blood type match. So I have a friend who, who got a stem cell transplant and was Type A and now he's type Oh. 

Julianne: Isn't that crazy? That is. I still think it would make a really good murder, mystery novel, , you know, because your blood is now the persons who donated to you. Yes. Because what you're actually donating is your entire immune system and your blood, so your, your bone marrow stem cells make your blood. 

Julianne: which means they make your platelets. Yeah. Right. And they also make your immune cells, your white blood cells, so that person gets your blood type and your immune system all at once, which is pretty amazing. Very cool. And the immune system has to be a good match. And so that's why it's so rare to find a match. 

Julianne: You know? It's a, it's a big deal. An immune system match so often that's a one in a million match, you know? Yeah. Literally. It's difficult to find, [00:10:00] so we are really interested in growing that be the match registry. I personally got involved because my brother-in-law passed away in 2003 of lymphoma. . Yeah. 

Julianne: Yeah. Which was really hard. My sister and him had four small children at the time, and his type of lymphoma was highly curable with a stem cell transplant. Oh. But we were unable. No one in the family matched. We were unable to find a donor, and I just didn't want that to happen to anyone else. And neither did my family. 

Julianne: Right. Or my brother-in-law. That was like his dying wish that you guys will keep doing these drives, keep letting people. know about this. And so my family did. Ever since he passed away, they kept running drives. And when I came to byu, I ran some here and there. But five years ago, be the match approached me with. 

Julianne: The initiative be the match on campus of starting an actual club and doing these drives and registrations [00:11:00] more regularly and actually tracking who we register and tracking who donated. And that has really taken off. So it's just been amazing. Like with, with their help from Be the Match. Last year we registered 3000 people in one week. 

Julianne: Wow. Which was incredible. And. , you know, your chance of donating your lifetime chances for most people is like one in a hundred to one in 200. Okay? So that means sometime in the future you might be called and someone might need your, your stem cells and they'll call you. But that's only like one in a hundred to one in 200 chance. 

Julianne: Normally, our students have been donating at a rate of about one in 50. . Oh, really? Yeah. And we think that's because like when someone needs a transplant and they search the registry, sometimes they find there's, there's tens of millions of people in the registry now sometimes they find one or two matches, you know? 

Julianne: And then they always choose the BYU student. Why you, you can probably answer me. Why? Because you know, they're not drinking. Right. [00:12:00] They're not taking drugs. They're, they're healthy. Yeah. And they're excited to do it right too. Like, our students are great. It's so. easy to register people on campus and that's why be the Match loves us. 

Julianne: And really, that's why I got The Lives Award. It's not about me, it's about our campus. Yeah. And how easy it is to register students here, which is just incredible. So  

Cougar: it takes about three minutes to register. Yeah. I'm thinking  

Julianne: like you just fill out the paperwork, you swab your cheek, a ten second cheek swab, you're. 

Julianne: Wow. Yeah. And then what happens in the future is just amazing because this happened to me actually. So I registered in 2003 on the off chance that I was a match for my brother-in-law. , right. But I stayed in the registry. Yeah. And you do, you stay until, until you're 61. Unless you pull yourself from it, which you can at any time. 

Julianne: Okay. So I stayed in the registry and in 2013 I got a phone call. So this is what your phone call might be like. It was [00:13:00] like, hey, this is be the match and we have someone that needs a don. , you know, and in my case it was a little girl with leukemia and I was her only match. So they'll tell you a little bit because it's a blind, it's a blind donation. 

Julianne: Yeah. But they tell you a little bit, like pretty much is what I got told. You know, a little bit about this situation. Yeah. So I was her only match in the system because I have a really rare HLA immune. , which I didn't know about until then. Yeah. But mine is like extraordinarily rare. And so that might be what the phone call's like. 

Julianne: And then after that, you actually go in for a physical at the doctor. They, they take your blood and test because their primary concern is that this isn't going to do you any harm . . They won't do it if they suspect it will hurt the donor. Okay. At all. Okay. And then if you donate, the most common way now is called P B S C or peripheral blood stem cell donation. 

Julianne: Okay? [00:14:00] And that's like donating plasma. It's really pretty cool. So they give you a medication that let's the stem cells migrate from your bone marrow into your blood, which they normally do anyway. to make your blood, but this just makes the migration at a higher rate. Okay. And then they harvest those stem cells like they do plasma. 

Julianne: So at your blood goes out one arm, they filter out the stem cells and then it goes back in the other arm. Wow. So it's really cool And that that occurs most of the time. Occasionally they see. Still need to do a surgery, which is now a very minor surgery. It's an in and out okay procedure where they go into your hip with a very small gauge needle, and that occurs a small percentage of the time. 

Julianne: Usually, like if a very small person is donating to a bigger person and they need more. Okay. But usually it's the pbsc, which is pretty easy. Just a few hours of, of donating your blood basically. . Okay. And it saves somebody's [00:15:00] life. I mean, incredible. You don't need donate a kidney. No. Certainly you can Yeah. 

Julianne: Yeah. Donating a kidney is great , but,  

Cougar: but this is, this is much closer to giving blood.  

Julianne: Yeah. It is. It is remarkable. And it literally is someone's only chance at life. Yeah. You saved their life. I mean, it's, it's incredible.  

Cougar: So, takes just a couple minutes to get register. and then you're in, you're in the registry until you're 61. 

Cougar: Yeah. And you have maybe a one in a hundred chance, who knows, right? Of yeah. Getting a phone call. If you get a phone call, it's gonna be a couple hours of your day to essentially give blood. Let them harvest those stem cells that will save a  

Julianne: life. It, yeah. It's incredible. . Wow. Incredible. And there's so much support from Be the Match throughout that donation process, like education and support. 

Julianne: If you need help, if you're gonna miss school or work, they help out, you know? Yeah. They're just incredible.  

Cougar: Oh, so cool. [00:16:00] Be the match.org. That's right. I opened it up before we talked, and I, I just need three or four minutes, I think, to complete the, the questions. And do they send me a kit to swab my cheek or do we need need to go to a location? 

Julianne: They do. They send it to you in the mail and you just mail it back. If you're on B BYU campus, we are doing events all the time. Our big one this year is April 3rd through April 6th. Cool that week, four days will be all over campus, outside and in the WIL building.  

Cougar: So Love. Yeah. And I think I saw you in the fall as well. 

Cougar: I, I think there  

Julianne: was a tent right outside. We always do. Yeah. In the fall as well. Yeah. Very cool.  

Cougar: Oh, this is amazing. . So you were all over the website in November for receiving that award. Yeah. And congratulations.  

Julianne: And really it should have been the students, like, it's really embarrassing. You know, we, no, I should, I should say we've had like 50 students donate now. 

Julianne: Yeah. That's so cool. Our count in the fall was 44, but then I've had like five students since then contact me and tell me they've [00:17:00] donated  

Cougar: what an what an  

Julianne: experience to save a life. Yeah. 50. Sorry, I interrupted. I just have to say that. Oh no, not at all. Because that's not at all, you know, there's all these heroes just coming up to me in the hall. 

Julianne: Yeah. Like, I just donated. Well, I just saved somebody's life. No big deal. You're the  

Cougar: facilitator. , and, and, and to be able to share and, and thank you for sharing the family experience that you have. Tragic and devastating. But I think from that has, has come a lot of good because of, of your willingness. , take that dying wish and say, no, I'm, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna drop this. 

Cougar: We're gonna keep moving this forward. And Yeah, absolutely.  

Julianne: Amazing. I, I think mostly it's just letting people know about it. Most people don't know about it. Yeah.  

Cougar: An awareness, right? Yeah. Well, it wasn't too long after that, that. again, you're on the website and kind of a big deal to receive an appointment as an associate Vice President over belonging. 

Cougar: So a new office on campus, the Office of Belonging, [00:18:00] and a lot of work to do. I think BYU is a wonderful community. We have incredible students and that's not to say though, that we don't have a lot of work to do as far as making sure every student feels like they belong here and they're. A part of this community. 

Cougar: So that had to be a bit of a surprise for you to suddenly say, okay. I'm shifting gears a little bit. What's that been like? And I know we're only a short period of time into this assignment, but tell us about the Office of Belonging and, and what we're doing at byu.  

Julianne: Yeah, so this is really exciting work that the Office of Belonging is doing, and I was really surprised to be approached about this because, and, and people ask me all the time, like, you don't really. 

Julianne: A diversity inclusion equity background. Like, why, why are you doing this? You know, what, what's going on here? But the, the big thing is that we're trying to do something really different. We are trying to use the gospel centered principles [00:19:00] to approach what we're doing rather than doing something and like linking it back. 

Julianne: a gospel centered principle, right? So our focus is on the savior. And you know, the savior was all about serving and all about belonging, all about reaching out to the one lost sheep, right? Right. And bringing them back to the fold, right? That that was his mission and that is who he served, exactly, who he served and who he reached out to. 

Julianne: And so that is also our goal. , that means the Office of belonging is for everyone, right? So yeah, we have people on campus from a variety of different backgrounds who don't feel belonging, and we want that to change. We want everyone to feel belonging here to create that Zion community where our hearts are knit together. 

Julianne: And so this, this is not saying that, you know, we don't recognize [00:20:00] the some of the hardships people. encounter in their lives. We're not saying that at all, so, right. I, I often compare this to an AND situation, so we're not approaching belonging from, you know, a d EI standpoint or a non d e I standpoint. 

Julianne: It's an situation where we're approaching belonging from something completely different. Yeah. You know, this. Gospel-centered approach, but learning how to do that has been, you know, challenging. Yeah. How, how do we reach every single person on campus? I love it. It's, it's a huge challenge. I really  

Cougar: appreciate you talking about this or versus an, and that it's a, it's a core principle in public health. 

Cougar: In public health, we so often just want to find, you know, just, well, here's the solution. Let's go with option A, and then, we'll, there's a lot of infighting. Well, I think we should do option B because resources are [00:21:00] limited and I think B will produce, you know, more results and so, so very rarely is the answer A or B. 

Cougar: It's often A and B. and, and C and d  

Julianne: and E and so yeah, a completely different approach.  

Cougar: Yeah. Yeah. To really come at this with a broad perspective I, I would say you really do bring an incredible perspective, Julianne, I think you've just described. And, and if someone wants to get on the website and look at your, your Vita and see all the things that you've done, in my eyes, you are a pioneer. 

Cougar: In research at BYU as as a female scientist. Now we, we've hired a tremendous number of amazing female faculty in the Department of Public Health. But when I was a student here, it was entirely a male faculty. , and that was in the mid nineties. Yeah. And so we've come a long way, but in my eyes, you are still a pioneer as far as a female scientist on campus. 

Cougar: And I think that perspective will be incredibly [00:22:00] important in the Office of Belonging. And you may. , you may disagree, but I, I, I think it's  

Julianne: amazing. I think that's part of it, you know, that, like I was saying, there's lots of ways that someone might not feel Yeah. Belonging and for sure. I only ever had male professors. 

Julianne: I never had a female science professor. All the time I was in school and it was a, it was a male professor that was my mentor. Yeah. That reached out to me, saw my potential, encouraged me, you know, now I'm doing something I never even thought about doing, let alone dreamed of doing it. Never entered my thought. 

Julianne: Right. So like, we need to reach out, you know, to people from different backgrounds and, and still, I'm one of only a couple. Women in my department still to this day. Right. So,  

Cougar: so the opportunities to mentor female undergraduate students in microbiology in molecular biology and, and, and to like give them just [00:23:00] a vision of what's possible. 

Cougar: Sometimes that's the thing that holds us back, is just, I didn't even think about that. .  

Julianne: Exactly. Yeah. That the research shows that, that one of the most powerful things is being able to envision yourself. Right. Doing something. Yeah. Because you see a mentor or someone that you can relate to in that situation. 

Julianne: Yeah. And before that, you just don't think about it as you said. Yeah. You know, you don't envision that. And so that, that's super, super important. Yeah. In this. So hopefully, you know, that's what we're doing is allowing people to see themselves Yeah. As part of the BYU community. Yeah, for sure. That they belong here, you know, that there's not only just room for them, that's like totally the wrong way to put it. 

Julianne: Right. Because we need them, right? Yeah. We need every single person. What we often like describe our role as is the scriptures where it [00:24:00] talks about, you know, the eye is not greater. . The hand or the foot. Yeah. We need every single person to really make B Y U the best it can. Those diverse life experiences. 

Julianne: The diverse ideas. The diverse relationships. It's all about relationships. Yeah. And if we make every relationship like a Zion relationship, right? One that is positive, uplifting, encourages us to do better. , then we'll be at Zion, right? We'll be, we'll be there. So isn't it cool? Yeah. So cool. So cool. 

Julianne: Yeah. And yeah, and this is so important today because there's so much polarization. That was a key thing we're concerned about in the Office of Belonging. Yeah. Is avoiding like the polarization terms, and really just getting at that common ground. And the common ground we. as children of our Heavenly Father. 

Julianne: Right. [00:25:00]  

Cougar: As you're talking, I'm thinking about a conference talk from October, 2022. Elder Kristopher and the Doctrine of Belonging. He ins well, the, the whole talk's amazing. So for listeners, if they haven't re-listened to that one, it really is the vision of what we're doing at BYU is that every one of us. 

Cougar: belong. We, we were worth, as elder Christofferson said, we were worth our savior's atoning sacrifice. We're all valuable in his eyes. We all have a place. And so I just, anyway, and I have to say, my experience at byu, and I've been here 15 years as well, Julianne, and it's, it's been, it's been wonderful and I love this campus, but there are things, there are, there are challenges that students have brought to me. 

Cougar: That was completely oblivious too. Oh, me too. I've had, me too, I've had students who approach me and say, I don't feel like I fit in here because my mission experience was cut short. [00:26:00] I don't feel like I fit in here because I didn't serve a mission. I don't feel like I fit in here because I'm a convert and I don't have this, this pioneer ancestry and I, there's still things in classes. 

Cougar: I'm like, oh, I didn't know that about the book of. Or I didn't know that about, about church history or I've had adult students, what we might call non-traditional students the vast majority of which were female and came back after raising. Their children are now in their fifties, and they come and they say, I, I'm a little lost. 

Cougar: I, I thought I was ready for this, but. The students are talking about this technology and that technology and how they're connecting, and I, I just don't have a framework for that and I, I mean, we could go on and on about all of the different reasons why people feel like they just are little, a little bit on the outside looking  

Julianne: in. 

Julianne: Exactly. Haven't we all felt like that at one time in our life with something? Right. [00:27:00] We felt like the. .  

Cougar: Yeah. And so I'm, I'm talking to a, a pioneer of a female scientist and, and I think I was one of the only male students in all of my education classes. And at one point I went to a professor and I said, so did I choose the wrong major? 

Cougar: There are no other males in my classes. And I remember what he told me. He said, we need you here. We need good male teacher. . Our female teachers are amazing, but there are gonna be boys in your class at the high school who need a male role model. Who need a male teacher. Exactly. And that was so important for me to hear cuz I was seriously second guessing like there's a. 

Cougar: there's a problem here. Maybe, maybe this is indicative that I will not be able to provide for my family as a, as an educator, and to have that encouragement and say, no, we need you. So interesting that you're the female scientist and I'm the male educator. Yeah. And, and we both probably looked [00:28:00] around in our undergraduate classes and thought, okay, do I belong? 

Cougar: What, what am I doing here? It's not like the other .  

Julianne: That's exactly right. Yeah. That's exactly right. And, and so there's so many, you know, and, and I. . I'm not trying to minimize anyone's struggles, right? No, not at all. So the, there's a lot of differences in the way that we struggle as a BYU community and individuals of that community, and we're definitely not trying to minimize that at all. 

Julianne: No. But we believe that like, coming through, you know, the, the love of Christ and building the relationships on that. Will get us farther than, than anything else. And I, I really believe in this work. So, yeah. And, and I think, you know, for a long time I wasn't sure what I was bringing to it, but I think you hit it on the head, is that students are always coming into us, talking to us about how they're feeling. 

Julianne: And so I've got 15 years. Of that experience. Yeah. And that [00:29:00] is so helpful in beginning to understand, you know, yeah. What some of the experiences and feelings that students might be having. It  

Cougar: really is, and there oftentimes there are just really, I won't say little things, but, but maybe minor tweaks in our teaching, in our approach to dealing with students that make enormous differences. 

Cougar: And when we can do those things, we must, you know, we must just make sure that everyone feels like they're here, they belong, they're important to us. and the things that they're gonna do in the future moving forward are, are life changing. So, yeah. Oh, okay. I've taken too much of your time. You're very, very busy. 

Julianne: As we now know, . Oh, it was a pleasure. I've, it's an honor to be here and I'm so excited to get the word out about Be the Match. Yes. No, April 3rd through sixth. Come join the registry on campus or just go to be the. and register and about belonging. Come visit us in the Belonging Office. Yeah. Come help us [00:30:00] create this Zion community. 

Julianne: Build relationships. Absolutely. It's what it's  

Cougar: all about. So for students on campus, I want to direct them to both be the Match and the Office of Belonging. For alumni, or for anyone else who's listening, please visit those websites. Please learn what we're doing with Be the Match, and also trying to increase belonging on campus. 

Cougar: So thank you Julian. Before I let you go, I always ask our guests, what are you reading right now? What are you listening? What are you doing right now to. continue to be a lifelong learner. What's getting you excited and motivated? What's going on in your, you know,  

Julianne: in your life right now? This is so fun. 

Julianne: Like as if I didn't have enough going on . Right. I I actually recently started getting my koru mindfulness training to become a quorum mindfulness teacher. Wow. Which is really exciting. I got interested in mindfulness a couple years ago. And BYU provide the opportunity for me to finish this training. 

Julianne: So I've been reading lots of mindfulness books and [00:31:00] just really enjoying them.  

Cougar: Amazing. Okay. Well, we could talk for two hours on mindfulness probably as well. Is there a resource that you would direct our listeners to as far as mindfulness? Is there, is there an app? Is there a meditation on YouTube that,  

Julianne: oh, there's so many. 

Julianne: There's so many. Okay there. And there's lots of good ones there's lots of good free mindfulness apps too. But for the college students, I would say the Mindful 20 something is an easy to read book. You'll read it really quickly, and it's a excellent intro to mindfulness. Perfect.  

Cougar: It's one of those things we just need to start. 

Cougar: Yeah. Start your mindfulness practice. You might not be an expert in two weeks. , but continue to focus on that and start that practice. Ah, you're amazing. I hope we can get you back, . Oh. Or you and I need to go to lunch cuz I could talk to you for  

Julianne: hours and hours. We're talking about my favorite thing. So belonging and be the match. 

Julianne: I mean, [00:32:00] doesn't get better than that. Yeah.  

Cougar: Well, Dr. Gillian Gross, thank you for being a, a guest here on the Y Health Podcast.  

Julianne: Thank you so much. It was an honor.