Wellbeing and Resilience:
Promoting a Culture of Care
The recognition of the importance of wellbeing and resilience for our community is not new to the University of Utah. We recognize and celebrate the excellence occurring on both the Health Sciences side of our university, with their Oscher Center for Integrative Health, and within Student Affairs’ Center for Campus Wellness. Building upon this expertise and experience, at the direction of President Taylor Randall, the senior leadership of the institution seeks to create a OneU focus on Wellbeing and Resilience in the hope of developing and implementing a comprehensive, inclusive initiative that supports all faculty, staff, and students across the university. The purpose of this effort is to promote a thriving campus culture characterized by care and wellbeing as foundations for academic success.
Project Purpose
Objective:
- To develop and implement a comprehensive wellbeing and resilience initiative that supports faculty, staff, and students across all levels of the university. This will promote a thriving campus culture characterized by care, well-being and academic success.
- NOTE: This process is in its early stages, and it will be a campus-wide conversation. Aligning expertise with a shared North Star will require time and space, and the team is dedicated to establishing a co-created solution.
Importance:
- There has been a cascade of change, crises and traumas over the past decade.
- Periods of significant turbulence and uncertainty lead to doubt and a perceived lack of control.
- This can lead to stress and anxiety, which can have dire health and performance impacts, including depression, substance abuse, burnout and more.
- Misinformation or lack of information only exacerbates these negative consequences.
- There is a business case and a moral imperative to collectively heal and foster recovery and growth, which is difficult in the face of ongoing turbulence.
- We want to help our campus community move forward together through crises and change.
Focus:
- The Wellbeing and Resilience Task Force is tasked with addressing the broad and evolving challenges related to the wellbeing of the U community.
- The committee’s role is to: define the core issues affecting wellbeing in the employees (faculty and staff) within Academic Affairs; articulate guiding principles for a sustainable, comprehensive and inclusive approach, and set concrete goals to guide the development of subsequent strategic and implementation plans for the initiative.
- In parallel, the staff assigned to the Wellbeing and Resilience Task Force are charged with executing an awareness campaign through the Spring 2025 semester.