For Jade Tollis, a Rutgers University–New Brunswick student majoring in ecology and natural resource management, “wellness” means building community through birding.
To staff members attending peer support training sessions last month, wellness means balancing demands of work and student needs with personal self-care.
And to Margaret “Peggy” Swarbrick, director of ScarletWell, an initiative dedicated to bolstering the health and wellness of the Rutgers–New Brunswick community, wellness is what you make it. ScarletWell was launched two years ago, but was expanded recently to include an activities calendar, grants for students and faculty, and peer support for staff.
“You can’t just tell people to meditate and do yoga,” said Swarbrick, a professor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology (GSAPP), who became the inaugural director of ScarletWell in July. “I love those things, but they’re not for everyone. Wellness strategies must be individualized, and our concept of wellness offers a framework to align with the unique and diverse experiences of our community.”
As the world careens from crisis to crisis, rates of anxiety, stress and depression are rising sharply, especially among young adults, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Amid clashes over politics, ideology, faith and difference, university administrators nationwide are looking to introduce programs and support systems to address these trends.
Rutgers is going a step further: The university is creating a program that it hopes becomes a national model for other universities looking to prioritize the health and wellbeing of students, faculty and staff. In the process, it’s redefining how wellness is understood, practiced and shared on a community level.
As New Jersey was emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2022, a Rutgers–New Brunswick task force was convened to address behavioral and mental health concerns of students.
Doing so for tens of thousands of students, staff and faculty was no easy task. A committee of 15 university leaders was convened by Rutgers–New Brunswick Chancellor Francine Conway to assess Rutgers’ historic approach to well-being, catalog institutional wellness at peer institutions, and recommend ways for Rutgers to become a center of excellence in behavioral health.
The outcome of those conversations is ScarletWell, a mental health and wellness program for Rutgers students, faculty and staff. Following the task force’s recommendations, which were finalized last year, ScarletWell began its programming this semester.
With an online presence – and a physical one in the works – ScarletWell offers self-care resources, guides and a Wellness Inventory page, which features a 54-question self-assessment created by Swarbrick to help people take ownership of their wellness habits and goals.
“These efforts are part of our broader effort to remind students, faculty and staff of the need to examine our own mental and physical well-being and take advantage of the wellness resources available on campus,” said Conway. “Through ScarletWell, we are reviewing these resources and working to establish Rutgers–New Brunswick’s reputation as a center of excellence in this area.”
Among ScarletWell’s first initiatives, disclosed this month, is a cross-campus calendar of wellness-related activities – from art classes in Newark to Pilates in New Brunswick. Students, faculty and staff can submit their events for inclusion.
Joshua Langberg, chief wellness officer at Rutgers–New Brunswick, said he hopes the calendar becomes a source of bottom-up community building.
“A lot of times at Rutgers, the most impactful wellness activities are the ones bubbling up from students, staff, and faculty,” said Langberg, a licensed clinical psychologist, professor of psychology and director of the GSAPP Center for Youth Social Emotional Wellness. “Unless you empower people to be that grassroots connection, you're not going to get much dissemination of anything.”
ScarletWell also is homing in on wellness for staff, a community that is often overlooked on college campuses, Langberg said.
A newly created employee grant program in partnership with the Center for Faculty Success will award about $20,000 to support workplace-centered wellness activities that include faculty and staff participating together. In addition, a peer support program is helping staff develop a sense of community, belonging and collaboration at Rutgers.
“Working with students, particularly post-pandemic, can be emotionally challenging for us as higher-ed professionals,” one Rutgers employee noted in their application to become a peer support leader. “We can’t pour from empty cups, and I’d like to use my background and time at Rutgers to help fill the cups of my colleagues.”
ScarletWell is also supporting student activities through their own small grants. The first wave of recipients, with an average award of $1,200, was announced this month. Activities include karaoke nights, basketball, dance workshops, therapeutic horticulture sessions and the renovation of a bird feeding station on Livingston Campus.
“Birds are one of our most accessible forms of wildlife and serve as a gateway to enjoying the outdoors to many communities,” Tollis, the ecology major, wrote in her winning grant application. “The aim of our project is to build an accessible and enduring gateway to the magic of bird watching, right on campus, and to foster a stronger connection between our Rutgers community and our local wildlife.”
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