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UConn students have been given opportunities to be active in evaluating practices in mental health and wellness services as well as making suggestions for changes.
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Creating an institutional focus on mental health and wellness has been a challenging goal for many institutions, and getting total campus buy-in is one specific hurdle.
The University of Connecticut has established student well-being as an institutional focus, which has meant increasing fees to add personnel and expand services while keeping the student experience and perspective at the forefront.
“This is a joint partnership and a joint investment, honestly, between the student body and the administration, which I think amplified the fact that this was on everybody’s radar,” says Kristina Stevens, director of mental health for the Student Health and Wellness department (SHaW). “This wasn’t one group pulling another group as much as everybody really swimming in the same direction.”
Top-down review: In March 2020, then president Thomas Katsouleas established the President’s Task Force on Mental Health and Wellness, bringing together faculty, staff and students from across the institution to evaluate current and possible future practices.
The task force, in its initial 2020 report, offered the institution three recommendations:
- Integrate health and well-being into the mission, values and operations of the university
- Create marketing and two-way communication channels to increase awareness of resources, build community and create space for discussion and learning
- Promote holistic personal development among students
Since launching the task force, UConn has increased the number of clinicians on staff as well as added multicultural clinical specialists. In the upcoming year, UConn leaders will hire four more counselors and three more caseworkers.
SHaW staff have also reorganized workflow, expediting student access to services and to a clinician, rather than jumping through hoops to get appointments.
Funding wellness: To fund additional personnel, UConn increased student fees $50 a year to $686 for student health and wellness for the 2023–24 academic year.
The fee was approved by the Board of Trustees, undergraduate and graduate student government and endorsed by the Student Activity and Service Fee Advisory Committee.
Health and wellness used to be covered in the general university fee but was made stand-alone this budget year as services expanded. Beyond mental health and counseling, students have access to nutritional services, wellness and preventative care, women’s health resources, and primary care.
Student leaders: Beyond partnering at the administrative level to provide their peers with support, student leaders have been active partners with SHaW as it evaluates services and processes.
“The needs of students 10 years ago look different than they do today, and they’re going to look different five years from now and 10 years from now,” Stevens says. “It’s really incumbent on all of us that we are in an ongoing conversation about what’s working, what can we do better.”
The Undergraduate Student Government representatives and Active Minds club members are “our go-to organizations—we work really closely with them,” Stevens explains.
Sometimes student clubs provide brief feedback on their experiences with mental health or what they’re hearing on campus, but other times they participate in more formal focus groups.
Students have vetted new wellness applications before they were introduced to the general campus community and helped update the SHaW voice mail message to make the system more intuitive and accessible.
“I’m never gonna get 30,000 student views,” Stevens says. “But the more views I can get, the better it is. We have such a diverse student body that it’s so important for us that we hear as many voices as we can to inform that process.”
A campus pulse: Beyond listening to student leaders, SHaW and UConn staff regularly collect student data to understand where they need more support or lower barriers to entry.
The university participates in the National College Health Assessment survey biannually and the Healthy Minds Survey through the Jed Foundation, in addition to patient satisfaction surveys and departmental metrics.
“We have a number of internal systems that we look at our own utilization data: how were students presenting, what do they need the most of,” Stevens says.
SHaW also leans on student leader voices and other university partners like faculty and staff members to understand who’s not utilizing its services and perform marketing and outreach.
The office has expanded resources and services to fight stigma or fears around a clinical setting, including hosting Let’s Talk informal drop-in counseling and building out online resources. “We want to make sure that they have a range of entry points in which they can come to learn more about what is going to be most helpful to them,” Stevens says.
How has your institution has gotten buy-in from students on service offerings and fees? Submit here.
