You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
Seattle Central College’s counseling center provides academic and career support as well as personal and crisis counseling.
Seattle Central College
A 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed, conducted by Generation Lab, found that students’ top stressor wasn’t anything happening in the classroom or directly related to the college experience, but rather the pressures of balancing school with other priorities. Almost half of respondents (48 percent) say managing responsibilities such as work or family is a top stressor, and adult learners and students at two-year institutions are even more likely to say that is true (60 percent and 54 percent, respectively).
In seeking to support students’ mental health, holistic systems at the college level can address all of students’ lived experiences and how they intersect.
At Seattle Central College, an open-access institution that’s part of Seattle Colleges, students can visit the counseling center to discuss mental health issues, academic stressors or their career goals because of the office’s centralized counseling offerings.
Counselors in the office are trained to provide clinical, academic, career or crisis counseling to students, depending on their needs, and students benefit from a one-stop shop for support.
Seattle Central, which has about 10,000 students, half of them full-time, and six counselors, has operated from this model for years, says Kao Lezheo, vice president of student services, part of the college’s mission to serve the whole student.
How it works: The college highlights four kinds of services in the counseling center:
- Personal counseling to address interpersonal or emotional concerns such as stress, grief, anxiety, depression, self-esteem, relationships or other life concerns.
- Academic counseling focused on coursework challenges, adapting to college, time management, test anxiety, impostor syndrome or campus involvement.
- Career counseling to help students explore their major, professional development, career interests and skills.
- Crisis intervention for extremely challenging situations such as abuse, harassment, mental illness or substance issue.
What’s different: There is no formal distinction between the various tracks of counseling, because they’re not siloed but instead take a blended approach, Lezheo says. During meetings, one session may emphasize one focus area more, but students have multifaceted experiences, so their mental health care is similar.
At intake, students complete a form on which they can request a type of service, but sometimes it is the counselor’s decision to guide sessions toward one specific focus. Seattle Central doesn’t have a limit of the number of sessions a student can attend, so counselor availability depends on student demand for that term.
Other departments offer coaching and guidance for students in their academics and career paths, but the counseling center’s expertise is the psychological aspects. Counselors help students dig into the why to understand themselves better using cognitive behavioral therapy, Lezheo explains.
Sometimes, students may be referred out, including those with deeper concerns or those who have a multicultural identity that is not represented in the counseling center—also part of the office’s mission to create student-focused experience, Lezheo says.
Students who are on academic probation (grade point average falling below a 2.0) meet with counseling staff to establish a success plan and work to improve their academic skills. The counseling center also serves as the referral point for any student who shares mental health concerns with staff or faculty members.
What works: Seattle Central isn’t the only higher education institution that offers different types of counseling, but the model, the people, the culture and how those affect students are what makes it special, Lezheo shares.
Through this system, staff at Seattle Central are able to create an environment of care that allows students to address all elements of their lives, as well as their cultural identities, to understand who they are and how they relate to the institution.
“It starts with the students and the culture that we’re trying to build,” Lezheo says, and the counseling center seeks to be a safe, settled space for students to be human and connect with their whole self.
In the future, Lezheo’s hope is to deepen this idea with more culturally responsive practices, such as restorative circles, that can help connect practices from other identities and ethnicities.
We bet your colleague would like this article, too. Send them this link to subscribe to our weekday newsletter on Student Success.
