The Center for Well Being had a grand opening Feb. 12 with tours, a ribbon cutting and speeches from administration and student government.
The center, located on 35 South Finn in the former Child Development Center building, is a new “integrated health care model” combining three different departments together.
“The idea is that health isn’t segmented off by emotional or physical health,” Center for Well Being executive director Madonna McDermott said.
Counseling and Psychological Services and Health Promotion, Resilience and Violence Prevention (formerly the Wellness Center) and Health Services are all housed in the renovated center.
According to McDermott, now that all the health related departments are in one building, it makes it easier for the departments to refer students to each other.
“It’s kind of a one stop shop,” McDermott said. “It’s also that when you have a talented number of different professionals that are trained in different disciplines, you have this synergy about how to best provide care to an individual.”
McDermott, University President Julie Sullivan, Vice President of Student Affairs Karen Lange and Student Body President Logan Monahan spoke at the grand opening event.
“I’ve kind of been with this throughout the whole process of finding the space and developing the space,” Monahan said. “Now that it’s all done, and I see people in this space, it’s really exciting to see that this is actually something that our campus is going to benefit from so much.”
“It is an amazing facility, which now matches the level of care provided here at St. Thomas,” McDermott said.
Justin Amaker can be reached at justin.amaker@stthomas.edu.
Abby Sliva contributed to this report.