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Construction of the new Student Wellness Center has been indefinitely postponed due to lack of funding for the $40 million project.
Originally scheduled for completion by the 2011-12 academic year, the center is meant to consolidate the wellness cluster ‘mdash; an interdisciplinary group of student services that includes Counseling and Psychological Services, Student Health Services, the Sexual Assault Resource Center and the Campus Recreation Center ‘mdash; into one all-encompassing facility.
According to Assistant Vice Chancellor of Student Wellness Karen Calfas, the center hopes to finance construction with private donations.
‘Until we have a substantial amount of funding, we can’t even start construction,’ Calfas said. ‘Since the economy is really struggling, that process is not going along at the rate we had anticipated. That will get better.’
Calfas and Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Penny Rue said that given the unpredictability of funding, there is no way to set a completion date for the project.
‘We’re working with folks in the Development Office and trying to develop relationships with donors,’ Calfas said. ‘They identify people who might have an interest in establishing a relationship with the university and with health and wellness issues. [We] meet with them and talk about the possibities of what we might be able to develop and how they can participate in that.’
According to Calfas, services provided the center could be funded by either a student-fee referendum, current budgetary allocations, the implementation of a fee-for-service system or as part of the student health-insurance plan.
Currently, student registration fees provide approximately $5.7 million for services and programs in the wellness cluster.
Rue said that while the university waits to secure funding from individual private donors, the Student Affairs Office must now focus on planning for the center’s future.
‘I would love to be optimistic and say we can get this going quickly, but people are already overburdened,’ Calfas said. ‘In one sense, this is when students need it the most, but on the other hand, I don’t want this to be a new burden for students as well. I know these bad economic times do go away. We’re not going to just stop our planning. We want to be ready to move forward when things improve and donations are a little more avilalable.’
Calfas said the Student Wellness Center, in addition to providing room for old services to expand, will offer space for the development of new services based on student interest.
‘We want to actually create new services for students and provide them in a more integrated way,’ Calfas said. ‘Once we have funding in place, I’m really confident that UCSD will be a leader in this area of student wellness and that we will have programs that are novel and cutting-edge.’
Once complete, the four-story facility is expected to encompass 50,000 to 60,000 square feet of space north of Main Gymnasium near the Student Center.
‘What we think is unique about the center is that the integration of services provides a more holistic, whole-person approach to health and well-being,’ Student Wellness Director Jerry Phelphs said.
Phelps said he wants the Wellness Center to be a place where experts in all areas of health can find the appropriate resources to col
laborate and refer students to the best set of available services.
Student Affairs is seeking feedback from students to determine which services most interest them. This has included the development of focus groups and consultations with student advisory boards. They have also monitored a group of students for two consecutive years to measure their knowledge and attitudes about health and to track their use of campus wellness programs.
‘We’re measuring different programs and health behaviors in general to figure out where to best direct our activity,’ Phelps said. ‘We’re trying to be cost effective.’
According to Phelps, the surveyed students said they most value meditation classes, online tools designed to help students manage stress and recreation voucher programs.
Associate Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Ed Spriggs said that when the Wellness Center is constructed and operating, it will still be overseen by Calfas and operated as part of the wellness cluster.
‘We have not yet determined what the Wellness Center’s actual operating budget will be,’ he said.
Additional reporting by Yelena Akopian.
Readers can contact Kelly Pleskot at [email protected].