2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Lessons Learned from Offering in-Department Wellness Programs

Presented at Community Engagement Division 5 - Nurturing Well-Being and Promoting Awareness

During the pandemic, many reports from academic-focused sources emphasized the importance of providing services that address student well-being. A need to help students in the area of mental health and wellness within an undergraduate only department of engineering was recognized. Wellness Wednesday programming for students, faculty, and staff was started at a mid-size liberal arts focused university in the mid-Atlantic region of the east coast to address this need. The bi-weekly programming during the AY2021-22 addressed the eight dimensions of wellness which include: physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, environmental, financial, occupational, and social. An asynchronous approach to the programming was used to accommodate students’ differing schedules. The Wellness Wednesday programming impacted 28% of the engineering student population and 41% of the engineering faculty and staff population through thirteen sessions. Following the success of the program, the idea was shared nationally at the Engineering Deans Institute, which resulted in adoption in an undergraduate only school of engineering at a private liberal arts university on the East coast. This paper presents the framework for offering asynchronous wellness programing within a department or school, as well as best practices and lessons learned.

Authors

Dr. Jacquelyn Kay Nagel James Madison University [biography]

Dr. Jacquelyn K. Nagel is an engineer, academic, and consultant. At James Madison University she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering. She earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University, and her M.S. and B.S. in Manufacturing Engineering and Electrical Engineering, respectively, from Missouri University of Science & Technology. As a multidiscipline engineer her diverse areas of expertise are bio-inspired design (BID), mechatronic systems, and manufacturing automation. As a student, she worked at Kimberly-Clark, Motoman, and Intel and gained experience in the areas of industrial automation, manufacturing, and sensors. As a professor she has grown an international reputation for BID process and pedagogy research and has given invited talks/webinars/lectures to SWE, INCOSE, NASA, and at universities in Canada, France, and USA. As a consultant, she leads practicing engineers and organizations through the process of taking inspiration from nature to solve problems.
Dr. Jenna P. Carpenter Campbell University [biography]

Dr. Carpenter is Founding Dean of Engineering at Campbell University. She is the 2022-23 President of ASEE and one of the recipients of the 2022 NAE Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Engineering Technology Education. Her areas of expertise are innovative STEM curricula and DEI issues in STEM education.

Download paper (10.4 MB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session