The Push To Do Better: Residence Life to Train RA’s Alongside MC’s Counseling Center

Julia Ciampa Staff Writer

The Entrepreneurship CeResidence Life has teamed up with the Manhattan College Counseling Center in efforts to embed the wellness initiative into their training of Resident Advisors (RA’s), so they can be more proactive towards students’ wellbeing.

The decision to include the Counseling Center in RA training is part of MC’s wellbeing initiative in order to create more resources for mental health on campus and increase accessibility. The collaborative training will begin for RA’s starting in the fall 2023 semester.

Matthew Lewis, the director of Residence Life, addressed how the training with the counseling center will be approached. The majority of RA training is centered around workshops and training sessions. The Counseling Center will be involved in some of these training sessions to promote strategies for student wellbeing.

“RA training focuses a lot on community building and development, emergency re- sponse and on-call preparation (commonly referred to as duty), and administration,” Lewis said. “This includes both informative workshops and training sessions, coupled with actual hands-on scenario based training where student staff can put their training into action.”

One rising RA for the fall semester, Elaina Batista, agrees that prioritizing the wellness of other residents should be at the forefront of all RA’s minds.

“I believe wellness and mental health is a super important thing that needs as much focus as possible, especially in college,” Batista said. “I think that college students have so much to balance, and if they know they have someone like an RA to simply just help them out I feel as if it could relieve some stress and pressure.”

Megan McCarthy, a rising junior, will be an RA in the fall as well. She hopes that the wellness training will continue to make an impact on the incoming students.

“Wellness is one of my top priorities,” McCarthy said. “I know what it is like to struggle with health habits, so I want to be able to help those who are struggling as well. I believe that with the education of wellness,

I will be best equipped with the skills to provide support for those in my residence hall who are struggling with their mental health and creating healthy habits.”

Additionally, Lewis emphasizes that the RA’s shouldn’t feel as if they are being expected to serve in a counseling capacity. He explains that the idea for counseling training is mainly to provide extra information for staff to better address students’ needs in the future.

“We do not want them to act in the place of trained, licensed professionals,” Lewis said. “We work with the Counseling Center, as well as with the Multicultural Center and Student Engagement to help provide our staff with insight into the experiences of students at Manhattan College from a variety of backgrounds. This also provides our staff with the knowledge of what services are available, and ways in which they can help other students access those resources.’’

Residence Life will continue to work to find additional resources to promote inclusion and aims to create a safe space for all. The next set of RA’s share the sentiment that the Manhattan College community will only flourish from this decision from Residence Life and continue to promote healthy living.

Residence Life will continue to work to find additional resources to promote inclusion and aims to create a safe space for all. MANHATTAN.EDU/COURTESY