Major Initiatives

A key initiative this year was the continuation of telehealth provided services to students. Telehealth delivery ensured access to all eligible students seeking mental health support during the 2020-2021 academic year. 90 percent of students indicated agree or strongly agree to this question. 94 percent of students responded that they agreed or strongly agreed that it was easy to get connected with telemental health.

When asked if telemental health was comparable to in-person, 64 percent of students agreed or strongly agreed. The frequencies show an interesting grouping of responses for whether students would prefer telemental health to in-person. 40 percent of students indicated that they would prefer in-person, 31 percent indicated that they were in the middle, and 29 percent of students agreed or strongly agreed that they prefer telehealth services.

The Counseling Center staff participated in a range of learning opportunities to enhance our commitment to our diversity equity and inclusion goals and mission. The Counseling Center partnered with OIED to bring in trainings on recognizing and interrupting Unconscious Bias and Microaggressions. Additionally, our staff participated in monthly focused conversations in affinity groups for BIPOC staff and accountability groups for white identified staff.

Our Community Engagement Committee worked diligently to maintain a sense of community with all staff as we worked to meet the needs of NC State Students during COVID. The Community Engagement Committee hosted a Fall and Winter retreat as well as several other opportunities to come together and engage socially. We celebrated our staff who were recognized as Pride of the Wolfpack recipients and additionally celebrated our front office team and temporary staff for their hard work and dedication.

The Counseling Center built upon our workshop offerings as a creative way to meet demand. We expanded to a total of 5 different workshop series that ran multiple times throughout each semester. In total, the Counseling Center offered 300 group workshop sessions providing 558 student contacts. Our group program was well utilized this year and provided beneficial therapeutic spaces as well as opportunities for students to feel connected to others. We offered 28 different groups each semester that connected 588 students with 3,724 contacts.

The Training Program at the Counseling Center expanded to provide quality services while minimizing expense, and to sustain the professions it represents. Our cohorts of clinicians involved with training include: 3 Doctoral Psychology Interns, 6 Post-Masters Fellows, 7 Psychiatry Residents and Fellows, as well as continued training at the Masters level with 6 Masters Interns and 3 Practicum Trainees. In total, trainees provided services to 1775 students through 6,518 individual and group appointments to students under supervision of Senior Staff. The Training Program provides valuable experience to graduate students from the Counselor Education Program and Social Work Department at NC State and from graduate programs around the country as well as psychiatry residents coming from UNC-Chapel Hill’s medical school.