Creating a campus culture of wellness requires Minnesota State Mankato to develop an institutional-wide plan that will result in an all-encompassing wellness program for all members of our campus community. Positive health and wellness are conducive to effective teaching and learning. MSU recognizes the relationship between physical, mental, social, intellectual, and spiritual well being and the vital role health, mental health, recreation and other programs and services play in assisting members of our campus community in achieving optimal wellness.
For students, optimal wellness will increase retention, decreases absenteeism, and positively impact academic and personal success. For faculty and staff maintaining optimal health and wellness reduces illness and optimizes personal and professional performance. Given the important and well documented linkages between health and success, MSU seeks to identify deliberate ways to assist the University community in optimizing health and wellness in an effort to enhance intellectual proficiency, job performance, and overall individual well being.
To identify the health and wellness needs of the MSU campus.
To recommend evidence based programs and services that assist faculty, staff and students to optimize their wellness and enhance personal and professional productivity.
To work as a university community to make recommendations that optimally address health/wellness issues that impact absenteeism, workers' compensation and other cost of care issues for MSU.
To work with the professional development task force to identify faculty/staff professional development education initiatives that address major health concerns on our campus leading to workers' compensation claims.
To make recommendations that incorporate wellness initiatives into campus professional development and to suggest strategies to include wellness issues and information into the curriculum.
To review support services for health and wellness initiatives and make recommendations for any needed infrastructure.
To utilize campus student health/wellness data and employee health insurance claims data to recommend programmatic initiatives that align with the Healthy Campus 2010 National Objectives and Healthy People 2010 National Standards.
To develop a resource needs analysis and funding plan for all recommendations.
To present a preliminary proposal to the President for campus consideration May, 2006.
The Vice President for Student Affairs will have oversight for the work of this Task Force. Membership on the task force will consist of following:
Co-Chairs: Mary Visser and Christine Connolly
Administrative appointments:
The Task Force is encouraged to form subgroups and invite other University faculty, staff, and students to participate in subcommittees and provide information and assistance to the Task Force.
