BY GWENDOLYN DUNGY
Executive Director, NASPA
The sun shone so brightly that we needed sunglasses. The sky was a beautiful blue, and the crisp smell of salt in the
air signaled that we were not far from the ocean. It was February 2004, and Richard Stegman, then senior student
affairs officer (SSAO) at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, was hosting 30 colleagues—the initial brain-
storming and planning group for NASPA’s first national conference on the mental health of college students.
Throughout the year prior to our planning meeting, I heard
repeatedly during visits to NASPA regional conferences that
more students needed psychological services and that overwhelmed counseling centers were unable to keep up with
demand. Colleagues were surprised by the numbers and intensity of presenting problems and shocked by the percentage of
students who were arriving on campus already using prescribed
medications to address existing mental health symptoms. In
addition to requiring more staff resources, colleagues needed
models for broad-based collaborative interventions.
I quickly contacted Jane Fried at Central Connecticut
State University to ask if she’d heard of a looming mental
health crisis. Her colleague, Kathy Hotelling at Northern
Illinois University, shared anecdotes and examples that indicated NASPA should consider addressing the professional
development needs of members in this area. The National
Survey of Counseling Center Directors further confirmed
what I had heard. The results referenced Sherry Benton’s
Kansas State University study validating the increasing use of
counseling services.
In addition to all of these indicators, I queried my PULSE
group, a random stratified sample of NASPA members, to
elicit feedback. The PULSE respondents confirmed that they
needed more staff, more money, and more collaboration.
Stephanie Gordon, senior director of educational programs
at NASPA, worked with me to garner partners to respond
to this obvious need. With tremendous cooperation from
the Center for College Health and Safety, the Suicide
Prevention Center, the American College Health Association,
the Association for University and College Counseling
Center Directors (AUCCCD), and the American College
Counseling Association, we convened our planning meeting at Roger Williams University and laid the groundwork
for the January 2005 conference in Rhode Island titled,
“Effective Interventions for Student Mental Health on
Campus: Collaboration and Community.”
A smaller planning team, consisting of Maggie Olona, Beth
DeRicco, Michelle Lepore, Penny Rue, and Richard Stegman,
worked with us to develop this groundbreaking conference.
With more than 450 participants and sponsorship support
from Salve Regina University, Sodexo, and the Chickering
Group, the first NASPA Mental Health Conference focused
discussions on student mental health for counseling professionals, faculty, SSAOs, other educators, and students.
In the meantime, I received a call from Fred Preston, then
SSAO at SUNY Stony Brook, alerting me that NASPA
needed to consider additional implications of this mental
health phenomenon. I then contacted other vice presidents,
including Michael Jackson, Larry Roper, Pat Askew, and
NASPA past presidents Peg Blake and Karen Pennington, who
concurred there was a need for broader discussion, particularly
about the personal and professional liabilities related to
students with mental health problems. They identified a need
to talk about the limits of liability for student affairs professionals and for institutions when a tragedy resulted from
students with mental health problems.
The Dialogue Must Continue
Four years later, the need remains for ongoing professional
development opportunities and dialogue about the challenges
posed by the growing number of students with mental health
problems. NASPA has responded to this need with its annual
mental health conference, planned for January 22–25, 2009,
in Boston, Mass.; we published a book on mental health,
College Student Mental Health (2006), edited by Sherry and
Stephen Benton; this year’s NASPA/Stetson Student Affairs
Law and Policy Conference is set for December 7–9; and we
have increased the number of professional development offerings in this area at the NASPA Annual Conference.
We urge each region to convene its own SSAO roundtable
to discuss the limits of a “duty to care” and a “duty to act”
when individuals and colleges are held liable for the actions of
students with mental health considerations. These discussions
reflect current concerns and equip SSAOs to better communicate with presidents about expectations and liabilities. We are
pleased to work with our colleagues at AUCCCD to bring
many of these important points to the forefront in this issue of
Leadership Exchange. LE
