Don’t Wait: Student Health Center host annual “Meet & Greet.”

According to Dr. ValaRay Irving, Licensed Psychologist and Executive Director of the counseling center, “The annual meet and greet is a time for returning students and freshmen to meet the counseling center staff in a less formal setting. There are a lot of community partners and campus partners that we worked with. It is time for the counseling center to welcome students to the Intramural Sports Complex for their Annual Meet and greet. Throughout the event, there were counselors there to give students information about on-campus counseling, various community partners, and campus partners. It is the time for students to collect information that they can have on hand just in case they need that information for later”
Many organizations came to support this event including the Butterfly Effect, Career Services, the Health Center, United Healthcare, and Louisiana Healthcare Connection. In all, over a dozen booths with information to help students reach more stability as they journey their academic careers.
Bridge Center for Hope, one of the event’s biggest collaborators, is a Meet and Greet
Azation facility that students can go to if they need to be monitored instead of going to a mental health hospital, which can be a traumatizing experience. The Butterfly Effect is another resource available on campus that was recently housed in Higgins Hall. According to graduate assistant, Maxina Warner “Butterfly Society helps anyone who is going through domestic violence or knows someone who is going through it. If anyone has questions on how to reach out to someone who is going through domestic violence that is what we’re here for.” With students dealing with personal struggles at home with family or in relationships that escalate into harmful unsafe situations, this is a unique tool students can use to get additional support.
With no trials that can come from the transition into college and throughout a college experience, students have high expectations for the Counseling Center. From wanting them to have appointments readily available for students, to mental health days on campus, the counseling center plans to make themselves known on campus so that students can feel comfortable while knowing what is available. “There needs to be multiple ways for students to reach out whether it’s men or women, just giving them multiple opportunities to come out and speak and just creating safe spaces for everybody,” expressed Zarion Martin, a Junior who is a part of the Mental Milestones association.
In all, according to the Executive Director, the Counseling Center is fully staffed with five full-time counselors. While there is a counselor on duty every day for walk-in appointments, they ask students to complete their intake packet, to be assigned to a permanent counselor. Some general advice to students who are experiencing mental health setbacks stated by Dr. Irvine is “Address them as soon as possible. Don’t wait. If you or a friend see a difference in how you are presenting, you need to say something.” Students can learn to support each other while utilizing the support the university has supplied around campus.