Beyond Transactions: Building Resilient STEM Students Through Human Connection

STEM education demands much of our students. It is not just intellectually rigorous—it requires resilience, persistence, and the ability to stay motivated when the work becomes inconvenient, repetitive, or outright difficult. Success in these fields cannot be reduced to exam scores or GPA alone; it depends on students developing the grit to continue showing up, the flexibility to adjust when strategies fail, and the capacity to keep going even when the path feels overwhelming.

Yet, in watching my anatomy and physiology students work, I’ve realized something important: resilience doesn’t emerge in isolation. It grows in the context of relationships.

Showing Up for Each Other

In my courses, I use team-based learning. Students are placed in small, consistent groups where they work through challenging cases, defend their reasoning, and depend on one another for success. What’s remarkable is this: students keep showing up—not only for themselves, but for each other.

Even when grades aren’t stellar, students return because they don’t want to let their teammates down.
Even when confident, high-performing students could “go it alone,” they continue to support peers who are still finding their footing.
Over time, the focus shifts from “How am I doing?” to “How are we doing?”

That shift—from individual to collective resilience—is powerful. It highlights a fundamental truth: when we feel connected, we persist.

Why Humanity Matters in Difficult Learning

AI offers incredible tools for learning. It can summarize, explain, quiz, and extend knowledge in ways that are efficient and precise. But AI, by nature, is transactional: it exchanges inputs for outputs. Human learning, however, thrives in relationship. It’s messy, emotional, and social. It requires trust, vulnerability, risk and encouragement—the kinds of exchanges that don’t happen in transactions, but in communities.

When students are part of a learning team, they don’t just acquire knowledge—they practice showing up for one another. They learn to celebrate progress, encourage persistence, and carry each other through setbacks. That kind of humanity cannot be outsourced or automated.

In this environment, failure is not a permanent condition—it’s a signal for growth. Students learn to analyze mistakes without shame, turn setbacks into strategy, and support each other in trying again. They begin to see challenges not as proof of inadequacy, but as steppingstones toward mastery, resilience, and lifelong learning.

Toward Relationship-Oriented Learning

If we want more students to thrive in difficult STEM fields, we must invest not only in their academic preparation but also in their human connections. That means designing courses that value:

• Collaboration over isolation.

• Process over perfection.

• Community over transaction.

When we exchange transactional relationships for relationship-oriented ones, students not only master difficult content but also build the resilience to persist long after the class ends.