Student Wellness Tip: First-Year Workshops Promote Health and Wellness

For many students, balancing academics and other responsibilities is their top stressor and what they believe to be the driver of the collegiate mental health crisis, according to a recent Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and the Generation Lab.

To ease student anxieties and stressors in the transition to college, Champlain College in Vermont developed a first-year program that facilitates peer connection, successful habit building and proactive resource connection.

Champ 101, first launched in fall 2022, has proven successful in promoting healthy living and wellness among students, prompting campus leaders to integrate the program as part of a required wellness curriculum.

What’s the need: Two-thirds of college students report being lonely, and an additional three in 10 students experience severe psychological distress, according to May data from TimelyCare and Active Minds. While there is no one cause for the increase in mental health concerns, isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns and heightened political tensions have impacted how learners engage with one another.

Leaders at Champlain recognized the difficulties first-year students were facing integrating into campus life and “saw this as an opportunity to redefine student support and meet these changing student needs,” says Danelle Berube, vice president for student affairs and institutional emergency management coordinator.

How it works: Champ 101 is a required 10-week program for first-year students to help them adjust to their new lives on campus and set them up to thrive.

Each week, students participate in one or two workshops, co-led by a student and a staff or faculty facilitator, meeting regularly with the same small group (20 students or so) throughout the duration of the program.

“This dynamic helps new students build early friendships within their group and creates trust between the students and facilitators,” Berube explains. “It makes it ‘OK not to be OK’ within a peer group that gives students an intrinsic level of comfort and encourages openness.”

Workshop content varies from academic, well-being and social topics such as identity development in the college years, managing homesickness and how to prepare for advising appointments. Students don’t complete assignments or homework as part of the initiative but instead are graded on attendance.

The curriculum was developed by the director of student success and advising and the coordinator of first-year transitions and well-being initiatives, with input from campus stakeholders.

The peer facilitator is also crucial to the program’s success, adding a near peer who can empathize with students’ experiences moving away from home. Student peers are paid for their work.

Faculty and staff facilitators represent various disciplines, academic divisions and departments. Facilitators help mold content through feedback and insights, ensuring the program is relevant and responsive to student needs.

The impact: The program was piloted in fall 2022 and last year became a requirement for all incoming students.

A wide majority of students participated in the program regularly this past fall (92 percent) and achieved a satisfactory completion rate (99.8 percent). A 2023 post-survey found:

• Eighty-six percent of students said the program made them feel knowledgeable about campus resources,
• Sixty-seven percent said the program helped them set personal, social and academic goals,
• Sixty percent increased their focus on their own personal health and well-being, and
• Ninety-one percent felt welcomed and included by their peer facilitator.

“Student resources are only helpful if the students needing support understand that they are available and know how to access them, and Champ 101 was extremely successful at creating awareness,” Berube says.

Fall-to-spring retention for the 2023 cohort was 94 percent, compared to the fall 2022 cohort, which had an 88 percent retention rate.

“While not directly tied to Champ 101, this six-percentage-point increase from 2022 to 2023 corresponds with the shift to making Champ 101 a required part of the curriculum in the fall of 2023,” Berube says.

A bigger picture: Champ 101 is now the first step to students’ meeting a larger graduation requirement focused on wellness and life skills, InSight. The program teaches students career competencies, personal finances and, more recently, wellness.

Each year, students are assigned a list of milestones to complete outside of the classroom in person or online, tracked through the college’s LMS, Canvas. As they work through InSight, students are paired with peer coaches who provide mentorship, encouragement and advice, further developing connections from the learner to the institution.

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This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Danelle Berube's name.