About Student Wellbeing Initiative
Student wellbeing is a key focus area of the University of Minnesota’s Elevate Extraordinary 2030 strategic plan. The Student Wellbeing Initiative (SWI) brings stakeholders from all five campuses together to address structures, systems, and services to improve student wellbeing.
As the University of Minnesota moves towards becoming a health-promoting University, the SWI will focus on three areas necessary to achieve academic success: mental health, caring relationships and meaning and purpose.
The SWI will address the following key opportunities to improve student wellbeing:
- Increasing access to mental health services.
- Implementing curricular and systemwide improvements.
- Increasing the availability of low- and no- cost food options to reduce hunger.
- Modernizing system data collection to support expansion of effective, innovative services.
- The University of Minnesota has prioritized student well-being for decades - this work is not new, and builds upon the efforts of past leaders, experts, and members of the University community.
About Us
The SWI aims to address student wellbeing with a focus on two key issue areas facing our University of Minnesota students – mental health and food insecurity. This focus is intentional and based on recent population-level health data.
- 1 in 4 University of Minnesota students reported frequent mental distress in the past 30 days (College Student Health Survey, 2024)
- 58% of students have received a mental health diagnosis in their lifetime, with 27% diagnosed in the past 12 months (College Student Health Survey, 2024), indicating recent distress for one quarter of university students.
- 1 in 4 students across the system experience food insecurity, an estimated 15,000 students across all campuses (College Student Health Survey, 2024)
- Lack of food impacts students’ ability to learn and is associated with increased prevalence of mental health concerns ( Martinez et al, 2020; Meza et al, 2019; UMN SERU & Grad SERU 2021)
The Student Wellbeing Initiative is led by Colleen McDonald, Associate Vice President for Health & Wellbeing at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and Robert Dunbar, Associate Professor of the Center for Learning Innovation at the University of Minnesota Rochester.
Campus Coordination Group Chairs:
- T. Dale Scully, University of Minnesota Crookston
- Kay Robinson, University of Minnesota Duluth
- Sandy Olson-Loy, University of Minnesota Morris
- Heidi Anderson-Isaacson, University of Minnesota Rochester
- Michelle Trumpy, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Contact
To be connected with the work on your campus, please contact [email protected].
Contact
To be connected with the work on your campus, please contact [email protected]. Please fill out this form to receive quarterly updates on the work of the Student Wellbeing Initiative.