Rebecca Gilbert – Indiana University: Bloomington

The O’Neill Resilience and Wellbeing Initiative at Indiana University Bloomington is an exciting partnership between the Student Health Center and the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. The O’Neill School identified wellbeing as a core value; in 2020, they approached the Student Health Center to create a program which promotes student resilience development. 

The current program consists of four components:

an 8-week, 1 credit hour undergraduate course,

a series of graduate student seminars, sponsored health-coaching sessions and licensed counselors with offices in the O’Neill building.

The undergraduate class is a unique feature of this project. Resilience and Wellbeing for Public Leaders is a research-based, psychoeducational course that integrates key concepts from health coaching, cognitive behavioral approaches and positive psychology to create a dynamic, experiential learning opportunity for personal growth and development. Students support and learn from each other through structured peer-mentorship workgroups. They learn how to apply skills learned in class and how to set and achieve meaningful goals. 

After completing the class, students are welcome to take advantage of further health coaching to maintain their progress.

Alex Bolinger - Idaho State

The COVID-19 pandemic has been very challenging for our university community and especially for incoming and early-career students who missed out on many academic, extracurricular, and social opportunities in high school and their first semesters of college. We launched the Idaho State University Honors Program's Gratitude Challenge in the fall of 2021 to combat the profound sense of isolation, emotional exhaustion, and other challenges to our students' mental health and overall well-being. The Gratitude Challenge is grounded in a growing body of research on the benefits of writing letters of gratitude to rebuild a shared sense of community and to increase the well-being of both students and the people around them (Adair et al., 2020; Kumar & Epley, 2018).

We are looking forward to sharing how one numerically small program on campus used the Gratitude Challenge to reach out to the entire campus community and generate participation that benefited hundreds of students, faculty/staff, and alumni.