Marquette’s Wellness Center, a multipurpose space that caters to various student health needs, has served campus under this name for one year now.
The center, located on the first floor of the 707 Building, solely provided medical services until spring 2014. Now, it approaches wellness more holistically with services such as yoga classes, stress management, counseling and alcohol and drug prevention programs.
Students can also visit the Wellness Center to see doctors for general health needs on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1-4:30 p.m.
“The goal is to make students more well, healthy and happy,” said Sara Johnson, director for Alcohol and Other Drugs Prevention.
Johnson called the center a central hub for health on campus.
Jenny Wysocky, the center’s graduate assistant for Prevention and Education Programs, and Johnson oversee the center’s in-house services and on-campus programs.
The educators serve as a liaison to an assigned residence hall by bringing in programs such as bystander intervention training, self-defense classes, nutrition classes and body image education.
“I love that I am able to collaborate with like-minded students who are passionate about helping the campus grow in their wellness and health,” said Sarah Sheard, a senior in the College of Health Sciences and a wellness peer.
Last week, O’Donnell Hall residents participated in “bro yoga” or “bro-ga” as part of the Wellness Center’s residence hall programming.
Sheard said Friday’s late-night Glow Yoga event in the Alumni Memorial Union is the biggest event the wellness team planned this year.
Because the center only operated as the Wellness Center for a year, both Wysocky and Johnson said they’d like to see more students use its services.
“Our connection with the residence halls is a big touch point for us,” Wysocky said about promoting the center’s offerings.
This fall the center will participate in orientation for the first time to educate freshmen about its services.
The center also focuses heavily on its social media presence to increase student traffic. It posts health tips on Twitter for “Wellness Wednesdays,” post photos from events on Instagram and write weekly blog posts about health-related topics.
Free yoga classes, one of the center’s more popular services, are offered on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. It usually attracts 30 students per session. Wysocky said they once fit 50 students into the space for yoga but there was very little room.
To solve issues like over-crowding and making the center more accessible to all students, Johnson said the Wellness Center would benefit from Marquette Student Government’s recent initiatives to create a multifaceted wellness facility.
“We are very on board and have been part of the conversation around (the initiative),” Johnson said.
In addition to the positive wellness programs the center offers, it also handles student conduct violations. If a student violates residence hall conduct, he or she can be called into the center for a meeting to discuss the incident and its consequences.
Johnson said she loves when a student with a conduct violation comes back to the center for yoga or another positive service.
