Start off the Spring 2024 semester by focusing on your personal well-being at UNC Greensboro with the Be Well, Stay Well event on January 22 from noon to 2 p.m. in the Elliott University Center’s Cone Ballroom.
The event will focus on connecting students, faculty, and staff with the eight dimensions of wellness: physical, emotional, social, environmental, cultural, financial, career, and intellectual. These eight dimensions of wellness help individuals live a holistic, healthy lifestyle by highlighting areas where they can achieve high returns for wellness as well as areas that may be overlooked.
MEASURING WELLNESS
The Be Well, Stay Well event seeks to inform students, faculty, and staff about how to be well in each of the eight dimensions, and promotes on-campus resources which help them maintain optimal wellness in all dimensions.
“Being a well human is multidimensional, and it is important that we are paying attention to all of our different dimensions because if we’re not, we might not get where we want to go or it might be a lot harder,” says Jennifer Whitney, Ph.D., director of Mental Health & Wellbeing in Student Health Services.
When individuals leave the event, they will walk away with the ability to identify at least one campus resource that can help them be well and stay well in 2024; understand which dimensions they are strong in versus which areas they need to amplify; and make connections with at least one staff person that can support them in improving their wellness in each dimension. At the event, there will be a “wellness wheel” where participants can score themselves on the different dimensions.
“That is going to be the entry point that folks have in their hands to be able to say ‘Yeah, this wheel is really off balance; I am not at all paying attention to my cultural well-being, but I’m way ahead in social well-being as a college student,” says Whitney.
HOLISTIC WELLNESS
The eight dimensions of wellness are part of Spartans Thrive, a unique initiative designed to nurture not just student’s academic prowess, but overall well-being. This five-year program is integral to the University’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), embodying UNCG’s pledge to “Student Transformation for Health & Wellness.”
“We want folks to be thinking holistically about what wellness means,” says Whitney. “That’s one of the silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic: we’re talking and thinking more about all the dimensions of wellness and how they impact us holistically.”
This is the first Be Well, Stay Well event that also includes faculty and staff, so Healthy UNCG can point them to resources too.
“No matter which dimension someone might be struggling with or need support for, there is a person or an office at UNCG to help,” says Whitney. “Nobody needs to struggle or attempt to grow alone. We are a very resource-rich community, and we want students to know that.
Story by Avery Craine Powell, University Communications
Photography by Sean Norona, University Communications
