Health and Healing

WUmester theme looks at all aspects of bettering each other and community

From The Ichabod - Winter 2023
By Jeremy Wangler

The words health and healing come from the word "hale," meaning to be whole, sound or well. The Washburn community will study the theme of health and healing from a wide range of disciplines during this year’s WUmester.

WUmester occurs each spring semester to create a cross-disciplinary learning experience on timely subjects and help students see the connections between what they study in the classroom and real-world debates and problems. Public events with speakers and panelists will discuss the theme, and faculty are encouraged to explore the theme in their classes.

Lindsey Ibañez, assistant professor, sociology, will incorporate the theme in the Sociology of Mental Health class she’s teaching this semester. The course explores the social construction of mental illness and how it changes culturally and historically over time. She said one in five adults suffer from mental health issues and the amount is higher for adolescents. The class looks further at those numbers, considering age, gender, race and more.

“What we argue as sociologists is whatever is going on physiologically in mental illness is reflected through a lens of society,” she said. “Cultural assumptions go into what kind of behavior we expect from people. If a student is performing well in school, we don't necessarily notice if they have something like anxiety, depression or ADHD. It's often when students are struggling with grades that their parents and teachers become aware there might be a problem.”

Shifting models in elementary and secondary education now identify and treat mental illness instead of punishing a child’s behavior, Ibañez said. Universities are also changing how they help students navigate mental health.

“There wasn't a conversation about any of this when I was in college,” she said. “Now, it's encouraging to see students talk openly about it and be aware of resources out there for them.”

Chloe Chaffin, a junior studying English education and political science, is the health and wellness director on the executive staff of Washburn Student Government Association. She works to improve and increase the resources available for all aspects of student health and wellness. Examples include supplying Washburn bathrooms with free menstruation products, supporting the Bods Feeding Bods food pantry for anyone on campus experiencing food insecurities and promoting resources available from Counseling Services.

“We’re working to get the word out to students about those initiatives either with our own planning or by supporting existing campus partners,” Chaffin said. “It’s perfect the theme for WUmester is health and healing in the first year of this cabinet position."

WUmester will explore subtopics like mental health, the health and healing of national discourse, financial health and healing amidst an epidemic of student loan debt and environmental health and healing.

“I hope students get a chance to think big, think broadly, connect larger issues to their own lives and see areas where they might make an impact,” Ibañez said.