Less than two months after the start of school, a first-year student – far away from home and the support system he grew up with– stops attending class. He spends all day in a dorm room. He stops handing in assignments too. A month goes by. When a staff member goes and knocks on the student’s dorm room door, he finally gets the help he needs to bounce back.
But such a scenario is less than ideal, say UBC health professionals. Too much time has gone by. The student has lost his semester and his initial university experience will never be the same.
“We know that student wellbeing is strongly tied to student success,” says Cheryl Washburn, the director of Counselling Services and project lead for implementing Early Alert.
Student mental health is fundamental to learning and UBC has made it a goal to create a campus community that promotes wellbeing. To help achieve this goal, UBC has launched a new program called Early Alert, which will provide better support for students through early identification of issues, appropriate referral, and timely intervention.
Using the new program, professors and staff members identify troubling changes in a student’s habits. Trained advisors review the confidential information and if it looks as though a student might need assistance, an advisor will get in touch with him or her to discuss the concerns.
With more than 45,000 students on campus, UBC is a large community. It can be difficult to know if issues like decreased attendance, a few bad marks or a change in mood is a temporary behaviour or a sign of a broader academic, financial or mental health problem.
Early Alert is part of a broader initiative to enhance student experience and wellbeing by improving how the university supports students across a range of services. This could mean helping students prevent problems from occurring, or offering timely and coordinated services to prevent problems from becoming overwhelming.
A number of other universities use programs similar to Early Alert and Washburn says that these universities have experienced increased capacity to support student success.