Well-being in policy & academic settings
Academic departments and faculties strongly influence students’ experiences at university and provide a core setting for enhancing student well-being.
Policy has a profound ability to impact student well-being. A policy may cause undue stress, anxiety, or confusion or it can facilitate access to resources, services, and supports.
To learn how to embed well-being through policy download the following guide:
For more background on this award-winning initiative, please read Background on SFU’s Healthy Campus Community initiative.
Current Partnerships with Academic Units
Faculty of Applied Sciences:
Since 2019, the SFU Health Promotion team and the Faculty of Applied Sciences (including the Dean and Associate Deans, faculty and student affairs representatives) have been working in partnership to enhance student well-being.
Key outcomes so far
- Reduced undue stress through policy by increasing clarity and awareness of the academic appeal process, reserving course seats in mandatory classes for late admissions, and worked with students to amplify enrollment policy key messages
- Piloted a co-curricular approved Canvas online training to increase Teaching Assistant capacity for responding to mental health and promoting well-being
- Increased mental health awareness by creating the FAS Wellness Resource Page and delivered workshops to undergraduate and graduate students
“The Health Promotion team at Health and Counselling is supportive, kind, and models a commitment to health promotion in everything that they do from email communication to the way that they hold meetings. It continues to be a pleasure to work with the team. Our vision to promote the health and wellness of our students has been translated into tangible strategies including a student wellness survey and wellness curriculum. We are excited to work with Health and Counselling as well as faculty, staff, students to support student health and wellness. I’m looking forward to being able to work with Health and Counselling and staff, faculty, and students to develop and share innovative resources and supports for student health and wellness.”
- David Le, former Student Affairs Coordinator, Health and Wellness, Faculty of Applied Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences:
Since 2015, Health Promotion has partnered with Paola Ardiles in the Faculty of Health Sciences to offer an experiential learning course through which Masters of Public Health students work in groups using an equity centered design framework to develop solutions to enhance student well-being at SFU. Many of these solutions have since been implemented, including the development of a graduate student lounge in Health Sciences that was designed with well-being in mind.