Wellness Center has new home
Jennifer McDonald (Gary Gold photo)
A new student-staffed Wellness Center opens this Thursday, Oct. 29, in Case Center 308. All are welcome at the opening event, from noon to 3 p.m., for cookies and milk, informational handouts, and a chance to win a gift certificate to Plum Dandy, the cookie-centric eatery in downtown Saratoga.
The Wellness Center is an expanded incarnation of the Center for Sex and Gender Relations, which began in 2001. Skidmore’s Health Promotion Office, which helped train and oversee the CSGR’s peer advisors, has also been training cadres of peer health educators. “Now we’re consolidating that training and expanding the scope of the center,” says Jennifer McDonald, director of health promotions. Michelle Murray, assistant director, adds, “The more all-encompassing name might also reduce any stigma for students stopping in.”
The new center still has its sexuality lending library and sells condoms, pregnancy tests, and other supplies; now it will also offer books and items related to nutrition, sleep, alcohol and drugs, stress, fitness, and other wellness issues. It is staffed by a peer health educator during the hours posted on the door each semester.
Abby Woodhouse ’16, head peer health educator, with
Daymis Vargas ’16 and Jonathan Ogunleye ’17 in the
new Wellness Center, opening Thursday.
(Sue Rosenberg photo)
McDonald’s office enlists and trains new PHEs each semester to keep a cadre of approximately 40 each year. The training is a 3-credit course that covers a wide range of wellness subjects as well as communication and counseling skills. Along with staffing the Wellness Center, the PHEs conduct campuswide outreach or intervention programs, some serve in residence halls—“they can choose so many ways to stay involved,” McDonald says.
This fall also marks the start of a new partnership with Wellspring, Saratoga’s relationship-abuse and rape-crisis center: three days a week, a Wellspring staff member will be available in the Wellness Center to help students, faculty, or staff.