The Well-being Collective has reached the next milestone in the University of Michigan’s commitment to become a health-promoting campus.
On Nov. 12, campus health and wellness leaders and advocates gathered for a summit that officially launched action teams charged with enacting the university’s Common Agenda for Well-being.
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The agenda, created in 2024, includes four action areas: integration, navigation, policy, and analytics and communications. Each of these areas now has an associated action team made up of a cross-section of university community members who will review and propel forward recommendations for change.
Membership on the action teams spans the Ann Arbor campus, including representatives from MHealthy, the Office of the Provost, Michigan Recreation, Information and Technology Services, Michigan Dining, and many others.
With an established record of advancing several critical system and policy changes, such as the extended semester break in the academic calendar, a flexible holiday for faculty and staff, and a course for faculty to support student well-being, the Well-being Collective’s next phase empowers the newly-formed action teams to advance even more health promoting practices throughout the institution.
“Five years ago this month, our world was in a very different place,” said Robert Ernst, chief health officer and associate vice president for health and wellness in Student Life, citing November 2020 stay-in-place orders, mandatory testing, and increasing hospitalizations in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Even in those very uncertain times, our leadership recognized the imperative connection between the ability to fulfill our mission as an institution and the well-being of our community.”
Out of this time period came the Student Mental Health Innovative Approaches Review Committee. The committee developed the recommendation that U-M adopt the Okanagan Charter in 2021, which is an international agreement to embed health and wellness into all aspects of campus culture. The adoption allowed for the establishment of the Well-being Collective in 2022.
The summit featured remarks from university leadership including Laurie McCauley, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, and Vice President for Student Life Martino Harmon, as well as three keynote speakers from nationally recognized campuses in health promotion work.
“We’re all about being interdisciplinary,” Harmon said. “But we don’t do this for show. We do this because it works.”
“Academic rigor and student well-being are not competing priorities. They are interdependent,” McCauley said. “Well-being creates the conditions in which rigorous learning becomes possible.
Rebecca Kennedy, University of Alabama, Birmingham’s assistant vice president for student health & well-being, spoke at the summit. U-M was one of the first institutions to adopt the charter. The first American institution to adopt it was UAB.
Other speakers included Kelly Gorman, director of health promotion at the University of Albany, and Vice Provost for Student Affairs Sislena Ledbetter from Western Washington University.
“Now we are shifting our language from ‘adoption’ to ‘action,’” said Ledbetter, noting over 45 institutions across the country have adopted the charter.
The action teams will meet throughout the academic year and potentially into the summer. Updates on progress and recommendations will be widely and routinely shared with the community.
Robert LaRoe
I think this is great. The extra floating holiday is also great. That said, I feel sometimes the focus is on providing tools and ways of coping. No doubt this is critical and helpful.
As I’ve worked here for almost 15 years, I think sometimes we forget to just be kind to one another. Give others the benefit of the doubt. Consider if something is truly timely or if that’s simply a preference. And so on. I think we all get the idea but can forget. Myself included.