CCSU’s Wellness Coaching program surpassed its goal of 100 signups by March 2024, setting the program on the path toward expansion for Fall 2024.
Rec Central’s program has taken a peer mentoring approach to mind-body wellness where students can sign up with a coach and work on their fitness goals without the more serious nature of working with a trainer.
Delia McGuire, a senior at CCSU and one of the program’s founders, said that while other campuses have wellness coaching programs, Central’s is different because it is centered around physical exercises like weight training and yoga.
“Physical exercise and movement has just been shown as a really effective way to combat, like, mental struggles,” McGuire said. “All different types of mental struggles like burnout, anxiety, depression, like, the list goes on. And so we were sort of thinking, like, how we could encourage people to start going into the gym and using exercise and physical movement as a way to just make themselves feel better as a way to just promote wellness for themselves?”
McGuire said that because of the program’s success, they can hire more coaches next semester and ultimately serve more students through Wellness Coaching.
Mikaela Andarowski, area supervisor of marketing and communications at Rec Central, sees between four and five clients per week, making her the busiest of the six wellness coaches in the program.
“At the end of the day, their end goal is to get into the gym and get comfortable,” she said. “So that’s like, the great thing about it is that every single person that we see is different. But we help them achieve all their goals, no matter how big or small it is.”
Some students are referred to Wellness Coaching through counselors on campus, but coaches don’t counsel students. McGuire said they’ve set the boundary of not giving advice but will always listen to their clients, who often open up during their workout sessions.
“I’ll work with somebody, and you know, they might be really shy their first session,” McGuire said. “And they’ll come back in a few sessions and be like, ‘you know, I’m really glad you met with me, like this thing happened to me a couple weeks ago, and it was really hard.’ and this and that. And then it’s just one of those things where sometimes they just want someone to listen to them who’s not like sitting down in a counseling center.”
As the end of the semester approaches, Andarowski said that Wellness Coaching can be a useful resource for students who are fighting burnout and feeling rundown.
“This is the time of the semester that it benefits the most,” she said. “I’ve had a few people that I worked with this week, just talking about their week. It’s basically the same thing, like, ‘I’m not feeling school,’ or like ‘I’m done, I’m ready to get it over with.’ And I just kind of take that as a perspective of while you’re here right now, we don’t have to worry about school, we have an hour to ourselves.”
Andarowski said that anyone who is a part of the campus community, including graduate students and faculty, can sign up for Wellness Coaching through the Rec Central website.
