Maroon News

Issue date: 9/13/07 Section: News

HEALTH AND SAFETY ON A ROLL: At Tuesday's Safety Fair sponsored by Campus Safety and the Wellness Initiative, students donned vision-impairment goggles and took a golf cart for a spin to experience DWI.

The Green Bikes Program, BACCHUS games nights, Student Self-Care Guides distributed to first-year students, the Leadership Institute, Bring Back the Date and the AlcoholEdu program serve functions with seemingly little in common. However, one finds that each is a component of the "wellness" of the Colgate student body. Each of these programs has received funding from the Wellness Initiative, which according to the Initiative's mission statement is a "campus-wide commitment to provide education and opportunities for the development of personal wellness."

The Wellness Initiative was initially conceived by former Dean of the College Adam Weinberg in the summer of 2004 and was facilitated in 2006 by a generous $1 million endowed gift by Jay and Debi Shaw '76. Currently the program is run by a six-member steering committee, co-chaired by Director of Counseling and Psychological Services Mark Thompson and Adjunct Professor of the Health Sciences and Director of Student Health Services Dr. Merrill Miller.

"[The Initiative is] broader in scope than either the Health Center or Counseling Services," Thompson said.

The 2007-2008 school year already holds ambitious plans for the fledgling initiative. A new website accompanying the Colgate portal page is expected to debut in November or December. The Wellness portal page will be customized for students depending on their class year, and will provide information and advice regarding topics such as stress, sleep, alcohol, healthy relationships and body image. Since parents are one of the three most common sources of health advice for college students, the Wellness website, which will be publicly available, will help parents better advise their children at Colgate.

Regarding the development of the website, Thompson said that the Wellness Initiative committee was in the process of recruiting students to advise them on what information to display on each class's portal page.

The Wellness Initiative will also sponsor speakers throughout the year. Last year Denise Grady, writer for the New York Times Health and Medicine Division, among others, were sponsored to speak about health and wellness issues on campus.

Continued...

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