Administrators who deal with wellness issues have begun meeting with each other on a regular basis.
Representatives from the Athletic Department, the Counseling Center, Health Services, Student Life, Alcohol and Health Education, Services for Students with Disabilities and the Academic Resource Center meet twice a semester.
"We found...we weren't necessarily all finding time to work together," Director of Health Services Michelle Bowdler said. "We started asking, 'How can we work together better? Collaborate? Use resources to make sure that we know about each other's events? Be strategic about what we offer to students?'"
Bowdler is the chair of the group, called the Wellness Council.
The group, formed last year, addresses issues that affect students and "national trends in higher education related to health and fitness," Dean of Student Services Paul Stanton said.
The group also makes recommendations to Dean for Undergraduate Education Jim Glaser on the necessity of resources for training programs, discussion groups, events or new staff, Stanton said.
"We have found that putting committees together for short periods of time has an immediate positive impact because very busy people who all have similar missions in their work often find there's an advantage to knowing that once or twice a semester they're all going to be able to talk about areas of concern for them," Bowdler said.
"There isn't necessarily a predetermined agenda, but there's value in just knowing that you have some time set aside to meet and develop your priorities," she said.
While the representatives have participated in discussions, the biggest challenge is translating the coordination into tangible benefits for students. "We're still in the very beginning stages of figuring out how the committee can be useful to students," Bowdler said.
"In order to be successful on a college campus you really have to work with students, partner with students on how to stay healthy - on the issues they care about," she said.
The Wellness Council was created as part of a restructuring process carried out last year by various deans. "This is an area that has been identified as an area of interest to the deans in their restructuring," Bowdler said. "The deans examined existing committees within the division and wanted to put committees in place that would be very meaningful and bring the right configurations of people together."
The Wellness Council was not created in response to a specific event, Bowdler said. "It's not a committee that was created because there was a problem," she said. "It's a committee that was created to illustrate the importance of this work at the University."
She mentioned research at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, the President's Marathon Challenge and the Personalized Performance Program. "We're really poised to make health a priority for our students," she said.
The Wellness Council's first project is an overall evaluation of wellness efforts on the campus. It is currently "looking at how these efforts can be coordinated," Bowdler said. "How do our efforts on health education compare to similar sized campuses - are there more services we can provide for students?"
Another project on the Wellness Council's agenda is a survey of the student body to identify the health and wellness issues that students would most like to see addressed.
"The more we're able to hear from students the issues of concern for them, the better able we are as a group to respond and to provide programming and education that will actually be useful to them," Bowdler said. "We want to make sure that we're not missing an area that students would really like to hear more about"
The Wellness Council also expects students to participate. "I think all of us believe that student involvement is critical to our eventual success," Bowdler said.
