YOU@CSU has landed yet another award, this time from the Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.
The latest honor comes a few months after YOU@CSU received a “WOW award” from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education’s Cooperative for Educational Technologies. Now the student well-being initiative has been recognized as the Grand Bronze Medal Honoree and Gold Category Honoree for “Student Health, Wellness and Counseling” in the Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education Excellence Awards.
The awards recognize the contributions of members that are transforming higher education through outstanding programs, innovative services and effective administration. According to a press release from the organization, “Celebrating our successes inspires evolution across the field that benefits students, improves institutions and sustains our profession.” YOU@CSU officials will present the program as a poster session during the organization’s annual conference, which will take place in Los Angeles March 10-13.
Developed with Grit Digital Health and launched in spring 2016, YOU@CSU was created to provide a scalable, personalized tool available any time to increase grit, resilience, coping strategies and mental health literacy to promote academic success. The objectives were to increase student self-awareness and provide early intervention and connection to campus resources related to students’ academic, physical and mental health.
The portal was designed to have resources that span three domains: Succeed – academic and career success; Thrive – physical and mental well-being; and Matter – campus involvement and connections. The portal uses personalization to cater specific content to each student and includes engaging screening tools that keep students on track with respect to their academics, health and campus involvement.
“I very much appreciate the partnership between Colorado State and Grit Digital Health that resulted in the innovative and engaging YOU@CSU,” said Jody Donovan, CSU dean of students.
“Students access the portal at all times of the day and night, seeking accessible resources and information to help them make good decisions related to their health and well-being. This proactive tool supports students on their own terms, utilizing familiar technology, and adds to the amazing breadth of services for student success.”
While personalized, the portal maintains student confidentiality and anonymity, while allowing administrators the ability to view aggregate user metrics for proactive resource planning. These metrics can furthermore be filtered by time of year, as well as by specific demographic variables. The YOU@CSU site has seen its traffic triple over the past year, going from 1,600 sessions in January 2018 to more than 4,800 sessions last month. As a scalable intervention, the portal has been customized and launched at more than 20 other campuses of varying institutional types, including large state universities, small private liberal arts schools, community colleges and professional schools.
“It’s incredibly gratifying to see students actively using and benefiting from the YOU@CSU portal,” said Nathaan Demers, vice president and director of clinical programs at YOU at College. “When we collaborated with the CSU team to create the portal, we knew that student engagement would be the key to success. We wanted to create something that felt completely natural for students to use and would provide confidentiality to explore sensitive topics. This award is an honor, given our organizations’ shared mission to support the student experience.”
For more information on YOU@CSU, visit health.colostate.edu/youcsu.
