The Health and Wellbeing Initiative is ahead of schedule in its design and planning stages, including the implementation of several developed ideas. Through retreats with a large number of cross-university constituents, we developed five themed areas for implementation during this initial phase: built environment (BuildWell), mental health (MindWell), movement (MoveWell), nutrition (EatWell), and financial wellness (SpendWell). Focused efforts have been on our student population. With the aid of additional external funding, we have two proposed future themes, including concepts related to community, purpose, and social relationships as well as safety and security. Each theme is co-led by one member of the faculty and staff who have expertise and passion around concepts the theme addresses. Overall, each theme facilitates the collaboration of programming and related activity across departments and divisions. Theme leaders have created a comprehensive catalog of current programming, activity, and research expertise that will help empower university leaders to make decisions optimizing the effectiveness of their work. Through these collaborative efforts, several of the themes have piloted new programming to fill gaps in student development opportunities.
Current work is focused on encouraging student engagement in health and wellbeing growth through unified messaging. One direction will be a co-curricular transcript that will allow students to accumulate credit in a centralized database as they participate in health and wellbeing activities. In addition, the initiative will continue talking with academic leadership about strategies to better incorporate wellbeing concepts into the curriculum as a powerful mechanism for engaging students. For example, through an ad hoc committee of faculty and staff, we have been exploring ways in which individual faculty members can connect more intentionally with a community of faculty that are developing health and wellbeing awareness in the classroom. In these ways, we can collectively build and support intentions across divisions that highlight one of the strengths at Texas Woman’s, our expertise and leadership in health and wellbeing.
Piloting with a select groups of students and faculty is planned for fall 2019.
For more information, contact initiative champions Christopher Johnson or Michelle Kelly-Reeves.
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Written by the Strategic Plan Design Team