In recent weeks, EMU’s social media handles have featured five faculty and staff sharing mental health support tips. Geared towards students, the posts have also been shared widely among faculty, staff and EMU friends.

From something as simple as getting your rest and staying hydrated to learning to say no and spending time with those who energize you, the tips are resonating with many in the campus community this fall. The campaign kicked off in the last week of October, continued through Election Week and will finish up next week, as students conclude their final days on campus and head home for winter break.

A summary of the ten tips is at the end of this article.

Here’s a bit more on this communications campaign, how it got started, and its goals with EMU’s social media manager Rebekah Budnikas.

Why this focus?

We know this semester has been particularly difficult for our students, whose lives have been upended in particularly dramatic ways by the pandemic, political and social divisions in our country, and the chaos of our recent political election.

We heard this firsthand in our Transitions classes for first-year students. Students were really encouraged in those classes to name what they were feeling and to be transparent as much as they were comfortable, to be honest about the challenges of this semester. They talked about this and our Transitions instructors relayed this.

From the first weeks of the semester, Student Life, Residence Life and Health Services have been very focused on supporting students in different ways, from quaranteams to the “fall pause day,” various activities planned by Campus Activities Council, and different student-led worship opportunities. 

An example of that extra focus is simply the huge effort put into care for our students around Election Week. There were 11 different spaces, in different formats — our Dean of Students Shannon Dycus calls them “brave spaces”  — for students to process what was happening on campus and in the country with support from faculty and staff from around campus.

Why social media?

Keeping our students, and all of us at EMU safe this semester, has been a real community effort. We have some amazing student leaders who have helped, but I think all of our students have really modeled care and concern for each other. That collective effort is evident by our low number of cases, healthy student population, and all of the precautions we’ve taken within the campus community. 

I think some of the success of our effort is the way we communicate with each other. Social media has been a really important way to relay information but also to show and build both support and supportive networks. 

We wanted to use social media to talk openly about the importance of mental and emotional health this semester as part of broader communication efforts to help students who are overwhelmed, depressed, anxious, or just simply struggling with what is going on. 

Allison Collazo, our director of counseling, shared with me in conversations around this social media campaign that it was important for students to hear from others recognition of both what they were feeling and how difficult it was for them.

 We want our students to know that we are all here for them and we’re all supportive of what they’re going through. You’d expect our director of counseling to talk about mental health but it was also important for us to hear from others, too, across campus. So in addition to Allison and Shannon, our other speakers were Campus Pastor Brian Martin Burkholder, Head Baseball Coach Adam Posey, and Professor Laura Yoder, from our nursing department.

They were great on camera, and spoke from the heart. I think one of the reasons that the posts are being shared is their authenticity. Their care for students really shines through.

The tips! 

1. Be kind to yourself

2. Set boundaries

3. Take a break and limit exposure to stressors 

4. Name what you are feeling 

5. Stay hydrated and eat well 

6. learn when to say no 

7. Take time to rest (relax, nap, get 8 hours of sleep) 

8. Spend time with those who energize you 

9. You don’t have to answer the phone 

10. Participate in grounding activities 

With thanks to Allison Collazo, Director of Counseling

˛ÝÝ®ÉçÇř’s new director of counseling services knows the university and its students well. Allison Collazo, a Pennsylvania native, graduated from EMU with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in counseling. She also volunteered part-time in the EMU counseling for several months while working full-time as a counselor in the community..

It was the experience of working with college students at EMU that shaped her next career steps. Collazo was formerly director of counseling services at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Va., where she worked for three years.

The move to EMU feels like a good fit, she said. “I really loved being part of this community. This is my alma mater, and I’ve always felt very familiar and integrated with EMU, and it’s where I truly started to grow and discover who I might be in the world.” At the same time, though, she knows the challenges of transitioning to EMU as both an undergraduate and graduate student.

“Allison’s balance of skill, compassion and professionalism are exciting additions to the student life team,”said Shannon Dycus, dean of students. “Because mental wellbeing is foundational to student success, the strength of counseling services is vital.  As she leads us in mental health support to the EMU community, we continue forward to helping all students live into success.”   

Expanded services continue

Collazo will supervise the center’s staff and programming, which includes individual and group counseling, depression and anxiety screenings, and university outreach on topics such as anxiety, suicide prevention or sexual assault awareness. She’ll also support a new team of collaborators who work to provide proactive and coordinated support for students in distress. The CARE Team, which stands for Concern, Assessment, Response and Evaluation, responds to concerns about student behavior, academic progress and personal issues, including mental health concerns. 

Collazo will also continue the expanded services offered by a collaborative program between counseling services and the master’s in counseling program that started in 2017 under previous director Tempest Anderson. 

Selected MAC students who have met stringent requirements provide some of the center’s counseling services. The students, each of whom have completed 30 hours of graduate counseling coursework and a 100-hour clinical practicum, and have been approved for internship by MAC faculty, are supervised by counseling faculty.

The program is “genius,” Collazo said. “I appreciate as mental health needs and services are increasing everywhere in colleges and universities, there is a need for more resources and people to respond to that need. It makes a lot of sense to team up with the MAC program, especially because those students need those hours and can provide clinical services. I’m excited to be a part of that and see how I can help facilitate that process, and even look for other ways to potentially provide more clinical services to our students.”

In the EMU community

Collazo’s immediate goals are to introduce herself to the EMU community through outreach at general campus events and special events focused on mental health awareness, such as on March 28. She also plans to add a few new group counseling sessions to the center’s offerings.

In the fall, she’ll be a part of orientation and first-year seminars as well. “I want to have a presence on campus,” Collazo said. “It’s easy for counseling services to be seen as intimidating, so I want to chip away at that stigma by making my presence known. Students may feel more comfortable visiting these services if they view counselors as people in their campus community.”

A high school psychology class – and “a great capacity to listen” to people and their stories – drew Collazo towards the field, but it was Jeanne Horst, her work-study supervisor at EMU, who honed in on her potential for counseling and mentored her towards that career. “She had a vision and she fostered that in me. We had a few conversations about that and by the time I was a junior, I realized that was what I wanted to do.”

During her studies at EMU, Collazo participated in Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resiliency (STAR) training, completed a suicide intervention skills training, presented research at the Virginia Pyschological Association Conference, and was president and co-founder of the university’s Psychology Club. She also wrote a successful grant proposal to design and organize a three-part seminar for students on “internal peace and wellbeing.”

Now back at EMU, her work continues with similar goals, and much more experience and wisdom to guide her.