BY ABIGAIL HILL ’12

The Well­ness Cen­ter at Wes­ley is new and improved in 2010. Its pur­pose has always been to pro­vide free, qual­ity health­care ser­vices on cam­pus so stu­dents don’t have to out­source their med­ical needs. Now how­ever, hav­ing recently relo­cated to the base­ment of Car­pen­ter Hall, the Cen­ter is much bet­ter equipped to meet the demands of a grow­ing stu­dent pop­u­la­tion. In addi­tion, well­ness at Wes­ley now means both phys­i­cal and men­tal well-being in one con­ve­nient location.

Before the move, the Col­lege nurse’s office was located on the first floor of Car­pen­ter Hall and needed a key­card for entry. Since the move, health ser­vices have become key­card free, mean­ing no IDs are nec­es­sary. Con­ve­nience in terms of ser­vices offered is the most sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage, as both the coun­sel­ing ser­vices and health­care are now in the same loca­tion for the first time in Wesley’s recent his­tory. The cen­tral loca­tion in Car­pen­ter Hall is still ben­e­fi­cial for all stu­dents, since it is in close prox­im­ity for com­muters com­ing to and from class­rooms and is sur­rounded by res­i­dence halls so it is eas­ily acces­si­ble for on-campus students.

But loca­tion isn’t every­thing. Jill Maser, direc­tor of health ser­vices, appre­ci­ates all the square footage they have gained with the move to the ground floor. “We love the space. It’s nice because we now have a triage room, a treat­ment room, a check-in area, and client inter-office space,” Maser said. The addi­tional space has been a much needed improve­ment and will allow for increased func­tion­al­ity of the Well­ness Cen­ter. It now offers six sep­a­rate rooms for eval­u­a­tion, com­pared to the four dis­persed dorm rooms that were pre­vi­ously used. Each of the new eval­u­a­tion rooms is also larger in size and can more com­fort­ably accom­mo­date patients.

Direc­tor of Coun­sel­ing Ser­vices Ann Rogge, Direc­tor of Health Ser­vices Jill Maser and Nurs­ing stu­dent Bran­don Hoskins in the new Well­ness Center.

The move also has cre­ated added ben­e­fits for patient con­fi­den­tial­ity and prac­ti­cal­ity. With the space to now serve dual pur­poses for med­ical and men­tal health­care, hav­ing stu­dents in one gen­eral wait­ing room pro­vides anonymity of their await­ing ser­vices among fel­low patients. Ann Rogge, direc­tor of coun­sel­ing ser­vices, explained, “The increase in con­fi­den­tial­ity has been a really pos­i­tive thing. The move has been ter­rific in reserv­ing that con­fi­den­tial­ity.” The coun­sel­ing office was pre­vi­ously located in the Office of Stu­dent Life, a very pub­lic envi­ron­ment near the main lobby area in the Col­lege Cen­ter. Rogge feels her clients appre­ci­ate the change of scenery and improved sense of pri­vacy. Com­bin­ing the resources of the coun­sel­ing cen­ter and the health cen­ter also makes good sense for treat­ment pur­poses, since often times, stu­dents with cer­tain med­ical con­di­tions are strug­gling with stress and anx­i­ety sur­round­ing that. Now they can seek coun­sel­ing at the same time and in the same location.

Aside from the new Well­ness Cen­ter area being a more com­fort­able and con­ve­nient envi­ron­ment for stu­dents, the improve­ments also have changed the way stu­dents at Wes­ley are think­ing about well­ness as part of their lifestyle. “It is mov­ing stu­dents away from just going to see the nurse or the doc­tor, or the coun­selor. They are really start­ing to think about what they are doing to keep them­selves healthy, because it is a mul­ti­di­men­sional thing,” stated Mary-Alice Oze­choski, dean of stu­dents. “So, to us this feels like an oppor­tu­nity to say to stu­dents that as you grad­u­ate from col­lege and you think about adult­hood, and as you get older, well­ness becomes more and more important.”

The Well­ness Cen­ter has intro­duced new pro­gram­ming and well­ness lifestyle ses­sions to go hand in hand with the new out­look among stu­dents. One new pro­gram is a weight loss sup­port group, in which indi­vid­u­als are com­ing together once a week to talk about what is work­ing for them in terms of diet­ing and fit­ness. They are get­ting more reg­u­lar exer­cise, weigh­ing in, and gain­ing valu­able nutri­tional infor­ma­tion as a result. “These are the types of pro­grams that we think this Cen­ter will allow us to con­tinue to do,” Oze­choski explained. The Well­ness Cen­ter staff hopes its expanded ser­vices will engage more stu­dents and help them to develop and main­tain a healthy lifestyle one step at a time.

For more infor­ma­tion on the Well­ness Cen­ter, click here for Coun­sel­ing and here for Health Ser­vices.