Cabinet Mental Health & Wellness Commitments
Colorado College is committed to raising our focus on mental health on campus to the highest level. Only when all our students, staff, and faculty can learn, work, and live in an environment that fosters mental wellness can we provide students with outstanding liberal arts education experiences and the skills and habits to live healthy lives. Based on consolidated review of feedback from students, faculty, staff, and parents, CC developed a plan of action.
Our mental health and wellness work is divided into four areas:
- working with external expertise to help guide the college;
- new and existing resources for students, faculty, and staff;
- addressing stressors unique to the Block Plan, and;
- creating greater clarity and accessibility to resources in our communications and on our website.
ACTIONS | DESCRIPTION | OWNER | DEADLINE | UPDATE |
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External expertise to help guide the college |
Leveraging expertise to improve our approach to mental health and wellness resources available to campus |
Cabinet |
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Mental Health & Wellness Task Force
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Colorado College’s Task Force on Mental Health and Wellness is made up of faculty, staff, students, parents and alumni. The Task Force will take a holistic approach to mental health and wellness on campus.
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Manya Whitaker |
End of Block 8 |
Task force members have been invited to sign up for one of seven working groups as identified below, each with a charge to be completed by the end of the academic year. These working groups will begin meeting the first week of March. |
External Review of our Mental Health Services |
CC will be working with Rankin Climate who uses qualitative and quantitative data to assess, recommend and often help institute environmental changes in higher education. |
Manya Whitaker |
End of Block 7 |
Phase 1 started November; External reviewers will be on campus in February; Presentations of final recommendations in Block 7 |
Denison & other college reviews of best practices |
Cabinet members and others will visit colleges recognized for their mental health as well as local colleges to learn new ways for managing mental health and wellness on campus |
Pedro de Araujo & Todd Woodward |
Block 4, 2022 |
Denison trip to be rescheduled |
Healthy Minds Designation
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To earn the Healthy Minds designation, a school must include mental health services information on syllabi and student IDs, offer prevention programs focused on improving mental health, hold at least one awareness event per year, and provide access to online mental health support or connect students to community resources |
Rochelle Dickey |
Block 5, 2023 |
Checklist almost completed, then we can submit application; still working on: ensure all course syllabi and student IDs list mental health resources. Waiting on college Wellness website to link to via QR code on IDs |
Suicide Prevention Collaborative of El Paso |
The Collaborative is an alliance of organizations and community leaders that have a collective purpose to design, organize, resource, and coordinate the implementation and maintenance of a unified strategy using the Colorado-National Collaborative (CNC) framework. The goal is to reduce suicide deaths in El Paso County by 20% by the year 2024. |
Rochelle Dickey |
Done |
Colorado College is officially a member with representatives on Education & Awareness Committee |
New and existing resources for students, faculty & staff |
Through our Task Force and Rankin Climate will be identifying, testing and investing in new and varied resources to meet our student's needs. |
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ongoing |
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Hiring a new AVP for Wellness |
The Associate Vice President for Wellness will be responsible for the vision, strategy, execution, and management of Colorado College’s holistic wellness commitment |
Manya Whitaker and Pedro de Araujo |
Block 6, 2023 |
Our search for the new AVP is well underway and we hope to invite finalists to campus in late February, during which the campus community will have opportunities to engage directly with each of the finalists. |
Peer-to-peer resources |
Working directly with student facilitators so that multiple new and existing peer support services will be available |
Rochelle Dickey |
Block 5, 2023 |
Students have been working with Wellness Resource Center to leverage existing resources and plan for new ones. |
Additions to counseling staff
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We understand that we have limited hours available and are working toward increasing our counselors' hours and adding new services like 24-hour telehealth |
Rochelle Dickey |
End of year |
We have identified a provider (VCG health) and ITS is working on integration, Finance is with the contract to be signed (2-year commitment). We have also just signed a contract with ThrivingCampus, which connects students with curated external mental health providers for in-person or telehealth services |
Children’s Hospital partnership with NCAA Athletics |
New pilot survey program allowing identification of group/team mental health indictors to guide intentional programming decisions in partnership with Ch Hospital. Post pilot program, goal is to roll out to larger student community. |
Lesley Irvine |
Surveys block 4, 2022. Evaluation of pilot program, end of academic year |
Survey was shared with all student-athletes week of Nov 28th We are close to completing the mental health questionnaires for all our student athletes. Once we have the required data, Children’s Hospital’s clinical psychologists will evaluate the data and come back to CC with recommendations for improved mental health resources for the athletic department. |
Mental health & suicide prevention training for faculty & staff |
Through our Task Force and Rankin Climate will be identifying, testing and investing in new and varied resources to meet our student's needs. |
Rochelle Dickey |
Training completed by end of Block 5 |
We have signed a contract and will be requiring all faculty and staff to take an online QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) suicide prevention training by end of Block 6 |
More & varied staff for sexual assault response and counseling |
We recognize we need to increase our focus, support and service as well as a variety of counselors |
Rochelle Dickey |
Recommendations by Block 6 |
To be a focus of our Task Force |
Assess Employee Assistance Program (EAP) |
Assess current EAP access, quality, and services to ensure we have the required resources to meet staff and faculty mental health needs. |
Ryan Simmons |
Block 4, 2022 |
We are currently assessing our program for access, quality, and services to ensure we have the required resources to meet staff and faculty mental health needs. We have discovered is this:
Our next steps are to review potential for employee access to the telehealth service available to students, and other potential models such as a peer-support model. |
Stress due to Block Plan
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We recognize the BP can create different stressors than semester schools |
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New absence guidelines for mental health issues |
We recognize the Block Plan can create stress on our students and our faculty. Our Task Force will examine these stressors and will examine student and faculty needs as well as recommend new ideas. |
Emily Chan |
End of academic year |
The Faculty Executive Committee, Curriculum Executive Committee, and department chairs have discussed the revision of existing guideline and policies. Policy drafting in progress for attendance and absences. All syllabi will have mental health resources information. See sample syllabi statement. |
Anonymous reporting tool for students |
We will be educating students that the course evaluation they fill out in Banner is completely anonymous and gives all students the opportunity to not just rate the class but to share concerns about unsafe learning climate or practices. |
Emily Chan
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Done and already in place
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The course evaluation that all students complete in Banner is 100% anonymous. Anonymous comments are seen not only by the instructor, but also the department chair and the dean of the faculty. The course evaluation data file contains no student information, code, identifiers at all. Therefore, they are fully anonymous and is an effective vehicle for students to share anonymous comments about courses. Speak Up Colorado College was launched in Block 5. Colorado College believes that a fundamental ingredient of organizational success and well-being is that all community members conduct themselves with basic honesty and integrity and in accordance with college policy and the law. To enhance communication and empower community members to promote ethical behavior, community members may use this system to report concerns or ask questions about ethical conduct, policy violations, or illegal behavior. Once your concern or question is received, it will be reviewed and processed by the Office of the President or the Office of Civil Rights. |
Faculty induced constraints on students' time |
Announcing we can make sure students can truly have a break from class, class assignments, emails, and notifications. |
Emily Chan |
Done |
Norm setting discussions with all faculty—at the college-wide level, executive committee levels, and at departmental level about learning and instructional practices. Dean of the Faculty guidance on learning and instructional policies and practices that address time, scheduling, amount of work, learning objectives, and other instructional practices. |
Communications
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Focus on more clear, transparent, and easier to access communications |
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Internal Communications Manager begins March 1, and will begin creating a strategy for deploying information |
Health and Wellness website review |
Review content on all our resource websites for ease of access and clarity |
Todd Woodward |
Block 1, 2023 |
Assessment will begin in January 2023 but implementation will wait until the new AVP arrives |
New ways for the president and the cabinet to listen and engage with campus |
Block-by-block opportunities for students, staff and faculty to discuss issues facing campus |
Todd Woodward, Ryan Simmons |
Block 8, 2023 |
Assessment of existing engagement opportunities in January 23 |
Cascading, human communications vs. digital |
We are too reliant on digital vs human communications especially in times of crises – we will develop a more timely and human process, arming campus to have human conversations and support |
Todd Woodward, Ryan Simmons |
Block 6, 2023 |
Working with HR to develop and implement plan by Block 6 |