We present our experience in encouraging student communities and merging them with support and advisory staff activities, focusing on easy access to help thanks to its immediate proximity and normalized presence.
EFYE2024 – Copenhagen, Parallel session 4Poster | Personal mental health/well-being | Social integration/belonging | Academic integration/belonging
| We present our experience in encouraging student communities and merging them with support and advisory staff activities, focusing on easy access to help thanks to its immediate proximity and normalized presence. These initiatives form a direct reply to concerns that arose from within our student community that the path towards support and counseling services is not always that straightforward both in terms of pure discoverability of the wide range of services offered, as well as being hampered by a lingering stigma around help seeking. The discoverability aspect is particularly relevant for first year students and incoming international students that start their first year at KU Leuven. At the core of our approach lies our learning center: a building where students can study, organize themselves for group work, meet peers, pursue creative endeavors such as recording podcasts and renting video equipment, or simply hang out and play ping pong or VR games. This learning center is kept running mainly by student workers themselves and represents the main meeting place for community building, staying open until midnight. The student staff here has intimate knowledge of what is going on within the student population and they represent a first line of help when questions or problems arise, being maximally approachable as community peers. In particular, they can refer students to the student services that are co-located within this learning center for study or disability counseling or help with housing, financial difficulties or mental health. Students can stop by with any question or make an appointment. The location of these student services within the building is specifically chosen such that students walk by them each time, making their presence obvious and normal. Barriers are further reduced by actively interacting with the student community, often through playful means such as organized coffee breaks as instruments for casual checkups on how it’s going, spirited messages and reminders at key moments along the student timeline and podcasts discussing various aspects of study and student life. The goal here is to anchor our services within the student community and foster a shared sense of ‘us’ by blurring the line between student and staff communities. The learning center thus becomes a natural place to both study and tackle difficulties all in one. An accompanying podcast episode is created by the student and staff community at the learning center and can be enjoyed while strolling through the conference venue’s park. |
What do participants experience or learn?