Chair/Lead: Jeanie Owens

Members: Marcus Moad, Mike Strand, Shelbie Pleskonko

The Problem

Mental health issues are common on college campuses. These are issues addressed by the Counseling Center, Wellness Center, Dean of Students Office, etc. LITS, however, is in a position to support these offices through our collections, facilities, and circulation services. The Student Wellness group looks at student wellness from a holistic health approach where we need to be supportive of students in the following health aspects: physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual.  Those of us who work with students want to help and while we can listen to a student’s concerns, we are often not  qualified to meet their needs.  We have created the following  list of campus resources that have qualified staff that we can direct students to for help and guidance:

• Wellness Center – Andrea M. Marshall, Assistant Director of Wellness and Health Promotions
• Counseling Center – Steve O’Neill, Director
• Health Services – Sharon Momanyi, Director of Health Services and Nurse Practitioner
• Dean of Students – Rosalyn Eaton, Dean of Students
• Center for Advising and Academic Support, Kathy Glampy – Director
• Taylor Center for Equity and Inclusion, Martin Olague – Director
• College Ministry – Matthew Marohl, College Pastor
• Public Safety – Derek Kruse, Director of Public Safety
• EMT group of students on Campus, Contact through Dispatch office. 

We in LITS can help create lists of books and materials for displays.  We can supply these lists of materials for the campus offices for their own collections. 

Databases that may be useful:

• Education Collection.
• ProQuest Research Library
• Academic Search Premier
• CINAHL Plus 

Goals

We aim to partner with these offices to help support the campus wellness initiatives as appropriate. For example, in 2019 the Access Services staff requested and received permission to purchase light therapy lamps to check out to students affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Actions Taken

1. We will continue to expand our collections as appropriate to support courses exploring mental health and wellness issues, as well as to provide general support to the community. 

2. We will provide our circulation services to the Counseling Center and Wellness Center for items they wish to make available to students. By doing so, we hope to help support student wellness.

Accomplishments so Far

1. We added the light therapy lamps in 2019 and thus far, they have been borrowed 201 times, almost exclusively by students. 

2. We were contacted by a member of the COVID contact tracing team about loaning these lamps to students in quarantine. We were able to loan out a lamp to such a student in mid-March to assist them while they were unable to get outside.

3. Wellness flyers with information regarding different health/safety issues have been created by the wellness center and distributed into each bathroom, and each stall, once a month.