Health and Wellness
The concept of wellness is not at all new.ย A healthy campus community values the well-being of students and understands that it is critical to student success, degree completion, and producing successful alumni. ย As demonstrated by several institution ย of higher education collegiate recreation is well positioned to significantly impact those students struggling with health and behavior challenges by leading an integrated approach to embedding health and well-being as core pillars of university culture.
Many wellness models exist; while they share the same premises but often have differing numbers of dimensions with a varied array of labels. ย Simply, wellness is an expansion of the idea of health.ย Just because one is absent of any illness symptoms does not make one โwell.โย Fahey, Insel, and Roth (2001) suggest that โWellness is the ability to live life fully with vitality and meaning.โย This approach requires that we are proactive, intentional, and committed to our development responsibilities. ย Additionally, no one wellness dimension stands alone. ย Dimensions of wellness interact with each other and all must be attended to in order for us to move toward and enhanced state of well-being in our campus community.
Members of the division of Student Affairs as well as other campus and community partners use this model as a guide for our work. We seek to offer programs and services that assist students in their holistic development.