Health and wellness, Town Gown Advisory Board subject of report to Binghamton University Council

Binghamton University Council heard reports from the Division of Student Affairs at its first meeting of the 2018-19 academic year Friday, Sept. 21. The focus was two-fold: health and wellness initiatives and town-gown initiatives.

The meeting began with the introduction of two new council members – Maureen Wilson, principal broker and president of Pyramid Brokerage Company Binghamton, Corning and Ithaca offices, and Jennifer Lesko, CEO/president of the Broome County Urban League – and the new student representative to council – Harry Bittker, a senior majoring in political science.

Following reports from Binghamton University President Harvey Stenger and Bittker about summer activities and the opening of the fall semester, Vice President for Student Affairs Brian Rose put a spotlight on the Healthy Campus Initiative (HCI) and Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs and Interim Dean of Students Randall M-J Edouard updated the council on Town Gown Advisory Board activities.

“When students are healthy, they tend to succeed and perform better,” Rose said, as he explained how his division had reorganized and started tracking student health and well-being. “The HCI is something we began in 2012, and broadly, the goal was for Binghamton University to have an identity nationally for health and wellness. It is a campus-wide initiative, the breadth of it is not limited to student affairs.”

Rose referenced the Health and Wellness Reimbursement Program targeted to faculty and staff who use the fitness facility at the East Gym, as well as the tobacco-free policy as initiatives that came out of the HCI. “And a couple of years ago, we opened Old Digman Hall with a theme around health and wellness. There’s actually a class taught only to residents of that building and they have a yoga studio, bicycle desks and other enhancements that all speak to the wellness theme.”

Exercise is Medicine, a national program not limited to higher education, was also piloted at Binghamton. If a patient at a primary care facility is being assessed, and in the clinician’s judgment that patient would benefit from exercise, that becomes part of the patient’s prescription, Rose said, and the individual can meet with a trainer on campus. “Of 42 such referrals for students, 26 actually participated and did training sessions,” Rose said.

Other visible reminders on campus tied to HCI include signage that notes the health benefits of using stairs and mileage markers around campus. “Our theme for this year is about grit and resiliency and there will be several programs throughout the year, with the first one at Family Weekend with a national speaker, Jessica Lahey, who wrote The Gift of Failure book,” Rose said.

Rose also spoke of the CARE Team, housed in the Dean of Students Office, with five professional staff who work with students who are encountering difficulties. “Students have a clear and easily identifiable point of contact,” Rose said. The team handled 2,310 cases at all levels in the last academic year. “Our Students of Concern Committee has developed intervention plans for those students who are facing significant challenges, and at the highest level, we have our Threat Management Team that deals with about eight to 10 cases a year.”

Rose cited creation of the Health Promotion and Prevention Services (HPPS) office that now includes seven full-time staff and 10 graduate students. “A part of health has to be not waiting until someone is sick, but helping them develop healthy lifestyles so they don’t get sick in the first place,” he said.

With alcohol and drug use and abuse a national problem, HPPS is also the home of the five-year OASAS grant that Binghamton University received to help reduce accessibility and use of alcohol and other drugs. “Our strategy is a community-based one to reduce the availability of drug and alcohol on campus and in the community. We’ve already created a campus-community coalition that is working on strategies to achieve that.”

Rose also touched on programs to train students in sexual assault prevention and bystander prevention, and noted that a mental health outreach coordinator is on board to help evaluate different initiatives we have to help students manage their own mental health and train them to be good bystanders.

The University Counseling Center’s challenge, Rose said, is simply to expand capacity. The University is participating in a SUNY pilot program in tele-counseling and tele-psychiatry; three new counselors have been hired, including one to work with athletes; the psychiatry residency program has been expanded; and partnerships with the Crime Victim Assistance Center and others are all part of the effort to expand capacity. “And for the first time this year, we did outreach to incoming students and asked if they were engaged in ongoing counseling and would like a referral to local providers,” Rose said. “Seventy students responded that we referred to community providers.”

Rose also addressed diversity through the lens of disabilities. “We’ve launched a partnership to serve students on the autism spectrum with internships to help them develop more confidence and employee-readiness skills,” Rose said. “And, thanks to one of our students, Kevin Erickson, we’ve created an SA-chartered adaptive sports program.”

Finally, Rose spoke of community engagement and the Center for Civic Engagement as the locus for most such activities that also speak to the kind of graduates we want. In addition to filling 667 requests from local organizations for student volunteer assistance during the past year, voter registration efforts have been so successful that Binghamton is a national model, just as the partnership with the Community Schools project within the College of Community and Public Affairs (CCPA) is a model for county-wide/university-wide programs to improve K-12 student attendance.

Edouard took the podium to provide an update on the Town Gown Advisory Board (TGAB) that was formed last year, with 32 representatives from across the area. He explained that due to the board’s success, he had been asked, on the spur of the moment, to present about the board at an international conference.

“After the presentation, there was a crowd of people asking how we did it,” he said. “We put a board together from the ground up and here’s what we are doing.” The board also received Level One Certification from the International Town and Gown Association.

The TGAB’s executive committee serves as its decision-making body, and its steering committee is comprised of the co-chairs of five subcommittees. In its first year, the full board met three times, and the subcommittees met numerous times to draft proposals to present for funding consideration.

The subcommittees all met and talked and were very productive, Edouard said. “They all had to provide at least one full proposal to be reviewed.”

Of seven proposals presented, Edouard said the executive committee approved five for funding. (see sidebar)