Assoc. Prof. Marija Jakubauskienė / MF archive
“What students appreciate most is when you teach presenting your personal experience, create personal professional connections, and provide them with an opportunity to experience learning and academic growth themselves. For example, while they write a research protocol, you can consult with them, advise them and then interpret data together. This is an extremely time-consuming process, but this kind of experiential learning seems to me to be the most meaningful. That is why I try to create an experience for my students, whatever their profession, through which I can share my experience, knowledge, and insights,” explained Assoc. Prof. Marija Jakubauskienė, who has been awarded the Best Lecturer accolade for 2023. We talked with the professor about what it means to be a good lecturer, what competences are required, why it is important to educate students about public and mental health, about her entrepreneurship experience, her participation in various programmes, and much more
What was your path to teaching? How did you become interested in the field of public and mental health?
I never thought that my career dream was to be a teacher. That I became one, is more of a coincidence than any conscious decision. My academic career began with teaching bioethics at the university. To a large extent, my choice was influenced by outstanding personalities, both scientists and others. The first such personality was Prof. Eugenijus Gefenas. One might say that he “discovered” me. He invited me to take part in the World Congress of Bioethics (I was in my 4th year of studies then). While at the congress, I made a presentation based on research I had done with the professor on the ethical dilemmas surrounding the influenza vaccination. I didn’t quite realise how brave I was back then. After the presentation, scientists from all over the world started giving me their business cards and asking me to share the slides of the presentation with them. After this “test”, the professor invited me to join the team of lecturers. This was the first time I started teaching interdisciplinary courses to students.
Later on, when I was already working in the field of public health, I met Prof. Dainius Pūras. He introduced me to the field of public mental health, in which I continue to work. We started with international collaborations with what was then the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London (now the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience), and the University of Queensland in Australia. Back in 2004, we started researching and evaluating mental health policy and the population’s mental health in Central Eastern Europe. Subsequent professional and research activities have been mainly international, ranging from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Dutch Research Institute, to my current position as President of Public Mental Health at the European Public Health Association. It is an ongoing professional path full of challenges and opportunities, which requires me to stay alert and monitor the international pulse of public health.
Assoc. Prof. Marija Jakubauskienė / MF archive
Your dissertation is about the integration of people with mental disabilities in Lithuania. Can you tell us more about your research?
In my dissertation, I applied complex quantitative and qualitative research methods, covering the field of social epidemiology, and developed new research instruments for the assessment of mental health stigma and social integration, which at the time reflected an innovative approach. The public mental health paradigm is based on the theory that mental health difficulties in people arise specifically from the interaction of psychosocial environmental factors with the individual. To this day, mental health stigma remains a powerful social determinant of public health, and leads to health inequalities in the population. My dissertation was therefore an encouragement to further explore the biopsychosocial determinants of mental health, their effects and to seek effective interventions to protect and enhance public mental health. During my research, I gained knowledge and experience, which I shared with the students of the Faculty of Medicine at Vilnius University teaching a course on public mental health at the invitation of Prof. Pūras. This was one of the first courses in Europe which, together with the most recent scientific findings, was a response to what was happening in the world. Back in 2000, the World Health Organisation recognised the mental health of the population as the most important public health challenge. Two decades later, we see that scientific predictions have come true, and that the scale and complexity of the mental health needs of the public makes them difficult to meet. So the course on public mental health at the Faculty of Medicine, initiated by Prof. Pūras, has evolved, but today, this innovation allows us to be leaders and partners in international initiatives.
Mental health is definitely a very open and significant topic in Lithuania today. What do you think has been achieved and what is still lacking?
A lot of good things have already been done in the field of mental health in Lithuania. Public literacy in mental health has increased, and access to help has improved. However, I would say that interdisciplinary and inter-professional fragmentation in the field of public mental health still remains. There is a need for closer cooperation, trust between the fields of science and practice, greater interdisciplinary cooperation, and the ability to rely on each other’s knowledge and experience without competing, but creating synergies. It is no longer necessary to argue that there is no health without mental health and that mental health is important. The world knows what interventions, services and models are effective, so the next step is to just do it. This must be done with patience, respect for human rights, collaboration and an evaluation of the impact of our interventions. That needs to be the approach of public health professionals.
Let’s return to teaching. Do you think there are differences between the different generations of teachers?
Certainly, there are. First of all, today we have very different opportunities to acquire knowledge. When I was studying, the main sources of information were books and lecturers; now it is an endless wealth of electronic, printed and experiential information that spans the globe. So the role of the lecturer is quite different. And I understand my role as a lecturer in a completely different way: I am not necessarily the ultimate source of truth and the ultimate source of knowledge. But I can help students to sort out the information, to understand what is important, what to put emphasis on. Today, the lecturer is more of a facilitator. As generations change, so do teaching methods and conditions. In the courses that I teach, we aim not just to teach theories, but to explore reality, so our experiential learning “laboratory” is a real society with problems, acting as a social “simulator”. I try to create real-life learning conditions for my students. I collaborate with the institutions, asking them for problems that I can hand over to the students to solve. These are real tasks with practical significance and meaning.
Assoc. Prof. Marija Jakubauskienė / MF archive
This year you were voted the Best Lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine. In your opinion, what personal qualities and competences are the most important for a lecturer? What qualities and competences do you rely on?
First, professional knowledge is, of course, very important. Empathy, communication skills, strategic-managerial thinking and creativity are also important. Knowledge of digital technologies and the ability to adapt them is also very important for the modern teacher but is also a challenge. The lecturer has many tools at their disposal: they can make the learning process a positive, cognitive experience through the world of knowledge or, for example, make it rather torturous with excessive, sometimes less relevant information, and a disproportionate workload. My aim is to facilitate this academic experiential learning journey, to try to look at young people with as much empathy as possible. Communication is very important here: people absorb knowledge directly, learning is more effective when there is active learning. My main approach to teaching is to offer an active learning experience. For example, when preparing an empirical project, students can choose the topics for their research. In large groups, students work more on their own, with me providing guidance only, and in smaller groups or individual projects, there is more interactive academic work with me. This kind of teaching is very time-consuming, but produces the best results and the most sustainable professional competences.
Last year and this year, you and other researchers at the Faculty of Medicine participated in the health innovation and Deep Tech incubation and acceleration programmes. How was this experience for you?
In both the Health Tech accelerator and the Baltic Sandbox incubator programmes, we have developed research-based innovations for prevention and better health. In the Health Tech Accelerator, I was part of and led a team of my students, working together to find innovative and creative solutions. Later on, both the idea and the team transformed and now the developed services are successfully developing as the Art for Health start-up, led by Lina Jankauskaitė, an alumna of the Faculty of Medicine and an art therapist. All this is a process that requires a lot of creativity and thinking outside the box we have a specific task that needs to be solved in a different way than before. The problem you choose to solve is someone else’s “headache”, so this creative solution has to be focused on the ones with the headache – the end user – a customer, a patient, a member of society. In other words, you can create a lot of things, but it is essential to know what those specific people need and to respond to their needs. And so, being part of the Health Tech accelerator was also part of my students’ experiential learning, allowing them to develop their creativity, their ability to look on classic problems from unconventional perspectives, and finally, to understand that all interventions and activities in the health sector have to be designed to satisfy unmet end user’s needs. In the Baltic Sandbox incubator, we worked on deep tech with the interdisciplinary research team Optogene, with the aim of commercialising research results and turning them into tangible products.
Assoc. Prof. Marija Jakubauskienė / MF archive
You graduated from the Business Administration and Entrepreneurship (MBA) study programme at VU Business School in 2019. How do you draw on your entrepreneurial competences in your work as a lecturer?
I started my entrepreneurial and innovation studies driven by the need for new knowledge. This study programme is international, and we studied in English. We were taught by lecturers with global experience. Innovations are entering the healthcare system, in the field of health promotion and prevention. Mostly these are digital innovations, based on AI and deep tech. It is important for me to understand what modern health innovations are, how they are created; what their risks and benefits are. My goal, is to learn how my research and professional experience can be translated into innovations for services or products that address public health problems. This programme changed the way I think and my view of creativity and leadership as trainable skills. When working in a team, true leadership is about taking responsibility, not showing power. I try to apply the knowledge I have gained in my MBA studies to my academic work with students. I encourage students to look for creative and innovative solutions, and slowly they become inspired to think and perform tasks in a way they have never done before, rather than inertly repeating the same solutions. Experiential learning really changes students – their knowledge, thinking, attitudes, and their solutions to health problems. I try to lead students down the path that I have walked myself and create a kind of safety for them through experiential learning. My students, like me, seem to like this kind of learning approach.
Which book would you recommend reading and why?
I read a lot, so there are a lot of great books. Since we are talking about teaching and university, I would say the book that made a great impression on me was Joseph Frank’s Memoirs of Vilnius in the 19th Century. I really like historical books. After all, during the period of Tsarist Russia in Lithuania, Frank, together with his father, initiated the reorganisation of the Faculty of Medicine. The book tells how they lived in Vilnius for a few years, how they created the health system, how various departments were established, and also describes academic relationships. Certain things, compared to those described by Frank, have not changed that much. I also like books about inspiring women who changed the world. One such book was A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, by Sonia Purnell. It tells the life story of Virginia Hall, an American spy working for British Intelligence who helped win WWII. I would also like to mention Cristina Lamb’s book, Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: War Through the Lives of Women, which is about the violence suffered by women. It is a deeply shocking book, and it really changes the way one thinks about the world. That is the aim of experiential learning that I am in favour of – that after a lecture, a seminar or an entire course, the student comes out a little bit changed, just like me after reading a good book.