Mental and Behavioral Health
This week, representatives from 118 universities, including Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard, gathered at the University of Pennsylvania to discuss wellness and academic resilience. Penn hosted the inaugural Symposium on Academic Resilience in Higher Education, as part of the larger Resilience Consortium, an association of faculty, professionals, and students in higher education that brings together practitioners including counselors, learning centers, student life professionals, and researchers to share ideas and initiatives on academic resilience.
A group of Northwestern University students created a mental health initiative, #BeWellNU, in response to student dissatisfaction with the University’s mental health services. Allison Zanolli founded the initiative out of frustration at the school’s response to one of her sorority sister’s death by suicide and student mental health concerns in general. The four-member group is currently gathering data from a student survey, which they plan to present to administrators. Zanolli said she and other students believe Northwestern needs to be more transparent about student deaths and mental health services at the University. She also called for more funding to Counseling and Psychological Services to meet the need for student support. Northwestern was named the fifth most stressful university in the nation by College Degree Research, a college search website aimed toward high school students.
Purdue Counseling and Psychological Services recently introduced an online application called WellTrack that helps students manage their stress, anxiety and depression. Any student on campus can download the app, which includes a mood tracker, meditation sessions and online courses. CAPS brought the software to campus to reach more students in today’s technologically-driven world. Susan Prieto-Welch, the director of CAPS, said, “One of the important things is the awareness that students live in technology and to provide something that is focused on mental health and technology that is available to someone anytime, anyplace seemed to me that it would be helpful,” Prieto-Welch said.
Penn State University students pitched ideas for innovative mobile health applications for the school’s mHealth Challenge. The challenge is a cross-college initiative in which student teams develop a mobile application prototype that addresses a societal health need associated with a specific target audience. The idea presented by the second-place team was My Mental Health, an app that serves as a resource for students who have been diagnosed with clinical depression and are transitioning to college. The app acts as a continuation of care by allowing the user to communicate with his or her trusted mental health professional who may be practicing in a different location. Meghan Field, one of the team members, explained, “More than one-third of college students suffer from depression. But they often hide it or don’t realize it, which has adverse effects on how the students perform in their classes, what they do in extracurricular activities, and how they interact with friends.”
As the mental-health needs on campus outpace the growth of college counseling centers, professors are feeling pressure to address the topic both in and outside of the classroom. They’re seen as another resource in preventing suicide, the second-leading cause of death for college students. But not all faculty members want to take on the responsibility. As Philly.com reports, many already feel overextended and fear that they are unprepared to handle such issues. Others are reluctant to intrude in students’ lives or worry that opening the conversation will lead students to use mental illness as an excuse to delay assignments. According to Janine Mariscotti, chair of the social work department at La Salle University, even professors who go the extra mile to help students academically will often feel different when it comes to emotional and mental support.
Diversity and Inclusion
Earlier this month, an anonymous Twitter account accused two students at Davidson College of posting racist messages sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi party. Now the North Carolina college says those students are “no longer enrolled,” though it remains unclear if they were expelled or chose to leave. “These events have prompted conversations in and outside of classrooms, discussions amongst teams and in and between student groups, calls for institutional action, and reflection on our values and mission,” the college’s president, Carol E. Quillen, wrote in an email to the campus. “Many at Davidson – students, faculty, staff, alumni, and trustees – are already engaged in this urgent, crucial community-building work. Please join us so that we can build the campus community we want and deserve.”
Sexual Assault and Title IX
Will Rainford, Catholic University‘s dean of social service has quit his leadership post, the school announced, nearly two months after he posted controversial tweets about women who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault and misconduct during the Supreme Court nomination hearing. Rainford tweeted skepticism about allegations against the nominee. He made the tweets from the account, @NCSSSDean, that indicated he was the dean of the National Catholic School of Social Service. Rainford will remain a tenured associate professor at the university and plans to return to those duties after taking a sabbatical in the spring semester. The account has been deleted.
Lou Anna K. Simon, the former president of Michigan State University, was charged with lying to police officers in the state attorney general’s investigation into how the university responded to accusations against Larry Nassar, the former sports doctor who abused hundreds of women and girls. Nassar is now serving a 60-year sentence for his crimes, but faces decades more in prison on other charges. Simon was charged with two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts, and, if convicted, could be sentenced to as many as four years in prison. Simon said that she knew a sports-medicine doctor was at the center of a Title IX investigation in 2014, when she was questioned by state police officers. The attorney general’s office says she knew Nassar was the subject of the investigation. In a statement, a university spokeswoman wrote that Simon is now taking a leave of absence from the institution, where she had returned to the faculty after stepping down as president in January. “We are aware of the charges brought today against former President Simon,” the spokeswoman wrote. “She is taking an immediate leave of absence, without pay, to focus on her legal situation.”
Physical Health and Wellness
Years after many of them banned traditional tobacco smoking, college and university administrators find themselves in the middle of a national debate among smoking-cessation experts and tobacco-control advocates in deciding whether e-cigarettes have a place on college campuses. In April, Duke University’s president, Vincent Price, announced that it would not include e-cigarettes and other vaping devices in its ban on combustible tobacco products. But some advocates are pushing for policies like Duke’s to remain rare.
Following a campus meningitis outbreak earlier in the semester, San Diego State University is considering mandating that all students receive the Meningitis-B vaccineby the fall 2019 semester. There have been three reported cases of meningococcal meningitis since June 2018, and there were another three reported cases during the 2017-18 school year. A student died of the disease in 2014.
Gun Violence
Gun violence is a growing concern for college and university administrators, and as a result, many have changed the way they engage their students on the topic of campus safety. The number of campus shooting incidents doubled from the 2011-12 academic year to the 2015-16 academic year when 101 incidents were recorded. The figure is up 153% from the 2001-02 to 2005-06 period. Northwestern University recently created a realistic video that instructs students how to behave in an active shooter situation. The University of Nevada Las Vegas is spending $16.5 million to upgrade its campus security infrastructure, which will include emergency call stations. The move to invest more in security came months after a gunman killed 58 people and wounded hundreds from his room in a hotel overlooking a concert venue on the Las Vegas Strip near campus.
