Attending to the mental health of students is essential, as rates of anxiety, depression, and other issues have increased in this population and because of the impact on retention. At a branch campus, that can be even more challenging to provide adequate resources.

The Ohio State University’s (OSU) Wooster campus is home to about 500 undergraduate students and about 100 graduate students, most of whom are international. In the early 2020s, we identified that our mental health services were not strong enough to support our students. Staff met with undergraduates, but 24/7 service was not possible. The graduate students lacked culturally competent services that were informed by the particular stressors for graduate students.

By partnering with Counseling and Consultation Services (CCS), we were able to bring all those services to our branch campus. Funding was provided by entities representing both undergraduate and graduate students. This position was not the first embedded mental health counselor at OSU, but it was the first located outside of the Columbus campus and integrated with the larger CCS providing additional support and resources.

Our counselor has become a vital part of campus and greatly strengthened our partnership with CCS as well as bringing more professional and accessible services.

In this workshop, we will discuss and brainstorm with attendees the best practices for building awareness of mental health needs, creating a culture that defines roles of different individuals, and creating an interdisciplinary safety net and care team, identifying different needs among undergraduate and graduate students, and taking a larger campus model to fit a smaller campus and community. We will also discuss family of origin pressures and crisis response. Attendees will be asked to share ideas from their campuses and colleagues and will have the opportunity to outline a Care Team roles and functions for their institution.