The Mental Health Task Force created new resources to enhance the Illinois experience. The initiative implemented a comprehensive wellness website and a pilot of the Faculty and Staff Mental Health Ambassador Program. The committee also secured grant funding for wellness spaces, dedicated work to creating mental health statements for syllabi and contributed to the system-wide Mental Health Symposium.
Mental Health and Wellness website
The Mental Health and Wellness website was developed to centralize campus wellness resources for students, faculty and staff. Mental health, wellness, access and accommodation resources are complex, can overlap, and can be addressed on the individual, social and institutional levels. This site aims to be both specific and flexible enough to connect individuals to the right resources for their concerns.
Faculty and staff ambassador program
The Faculty and Staff Mental Health Ambassador Program aims to help University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty and staff understand and address student mental health. The program was originally developed by three Computer Science students and an Information Sciences student working on the Computer Science Mental Health Committee.
The program offers implementable mental health resources to help create a culture of care and support. It is also intended to help faculty and staff members attend to self-care by offering guidance on the roles that faculty, staff and students play in addressing student mental health. Importantly, the program emphasizes that faculty and staff are not in a formal counseling role.
Over 150 faculty and staff participated in 2021-2022 and another 100 will participate Fall 2022.
Wellness Spaces
The Student Mental Health and Wellness subcommittee of the Mental Health Task Force collaborated on a proposal to enhance and increase wellness spaces around campus. By providing mental health and wellness resources to spaces students already think of when they think of wellness, the intended outcome is to promote and demonstrate the importance of mental health and wellness in accessible spaces.