This fall and winter, approximately twenty students have been the first to participate in two new programs — Thriving@Dartmouth and Thriving Together — that have been offered by the College’s office of health promotion and student wellness for the first time this year. Building on feedback, the office plans to continue at least one of the programs, Thriving@Dartmouth, in the spring.
Over the past year, the office has talked with its current peer advisors, including Eating Disorder Peer Advisors, Sexual Assault Peer Advisors, Drug and Alcohol Peer Advisors and Sexperts, interim co-director Amanda Childress said, and found that while students have reported that they like the program, they are concerned about how providing support for other students has been emotionally and logistically tolling. Many student advisors were not fully engaged with the office, Childress said, and those who were engaged in their work frequently noted that by the time students reached them, those students were in need of professional help.
Facing these challenges, Childress said, the office decided to focus on “preventative” ways to connect with students, creating two new programs with a holistic wellness focus. The first of these programs, Thriving@Dartmouth, was piloted this fall.
Maria Sperduto ’14, a wellness fellow at the College, said that Thriving@Dartmouth excelled in its first term, receiving positive reviews from students. The program, which offers students P.E. credit for an interactive and experiential learning course focused on self-care and wellness, is running again this term with 15 participants.
An eight-week long program, Thriving@Dartmouth is meeting during the 3B time slot this quarter. Its focus, according to program materials, is on exploring the seven “roots” of wellness: intellectual, physical, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental and financial wellness.
“The idea of the program is that it is necessary to take care of all these different parts of yourself in order to really be well and optimize what you can do in any area,” Sperduto said. “The idea is that when you leave class you feel restored in some way.”
Based on feedback from its pilot term, the next iteration of Thriving@Dartmouth will include a more specific journaling procedure and more active engagement with lecture themes, Sperduto said.
The second of the office’s new programs, Thriving Together, is targeted at students who were originally interested in joining EDPA and DAPA as advisors and want to support their peers on wellness issues, Childress said. Thriving Together’s pilot program, which was launched this quarter, has seven participants.
Of the participants this winter, some were inspired to enter the program after participating in Thriving@Dartmouth, some were interested in motivational interviewing and others signed up based on an interest in becoming an EDPA or DAPA but bringing a new, holistic perspective, interim co-director of student health promotion and wellness Caitlin Barthelmes said.
“This is a training that helps students who are interested in having intentional conversations about wellness,” Barthelmes said.
In addition to a training in motivational interviewing — a conversation style that focuses on increasing a person’s motivation and commitment to making positive changes — the program will also encourage its participants to undergo wellness challenges each week, choosing from a menu of options that allow them to focus on specific areas of their lives they would like to improve.
At the end of the term, students will select a specialization topic on which to do deeper research, developing an interactive mode to share that idea with peers, Barthelmes said.
Barthelmes also said that participants will invite someone from their social circle to join them in their wellness challenges, helping them each to become a “positive change agent” in their communities. The program will hopefully be a second step to Thriving@Dartmouth for people who want to advise their peers, Sperduto said.
EDPAs and DAPAs will still be available to students, Barthelmes said, noting that the growth in the new programs was not intended to replace existing resources but instead to incorporate the feedback of student advisors and provide more opportunities for them to help students in a more holistic way.
Two former EDPA and DAPA program participants did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
