750 sign petition to save Hop’s Woodworking shop

BY Chaeyoon Ok The Dartmouth Staff

This article was originally published on Jan. 19, 2023.

More than 750 Dartmouth students, faculty and alumni signed a petition to keep the Woodworking Workshop open and accessible during the ongoing renovation of the Hopkins Center. The petition seeks to minimize the closure time of the Workshop, provide necessary power tools and fnd a larger space for the interim location, according to Thayer School of Engineering Ph.D candidate Mimi Lan, who co-wrote the petition and coordinated outreach eforts.

The petition was originally started in the fall by Lan and Chris Magoon ’13, Th’14, who now runs the Engineering and Computer Science Center Makerspace. Lan said that their main motivation for creating the petition was the concern that students would be left without a woodshop for an indefnite period.

Magoon and Lan said that they designed the petition so that signees could have two ways of expressing support for the woodshop: one option to simply sign the petition to raise awareness of the inadequacies of the proposed woodshop, and another to write a personalized letter or email to the Hopkins Center trustees to share past experiences in a fully-functional woodshop.

The College’s original plan would have relocated the Woodworking shop to a 960-square-foot modular trailer during the two-year renovation, and reduced the number of power tools available to users. The petition calls on the College to rethink the current plan, calling its previous 6,000-square-foot space a “creative sanctuary on campus.”

Throughout negotiations with the Hopkins Center administration, petitioners managed to secure access to more power tools and minimize the amount of time students would have to go without a shop, according to Lan. She added that the campaign had to concede to space limitations for the interim shop in order to reduce the time without access to any shop.

“In the end [the Hopkins Center] said that if we want the Woodshop to open soon… we have to go with this modular unit,” Lan said, adding that the amount of time it would take to retroft a larger space could take years. “I think one compromise is that, you know, we don’t want students to miss the wood shop,” she said.

Hopkins Center director of external afairs Michael Bodel wrote in an email statement that the Center will be able to meet the petitioners’ requests for special equipment, including multiple saws, a dust collector, a planer and a blower.

“We are fortunate that many of our technical requests around power and dust-collection were able to be met and approved, which will allow students to use a full complement of power tools as we had hoped,” Bodel wrote.

Bodel added that the modular trailer unit will be situated in the Mafei Arts Plaza, between the Hopkins Center and the Black Family Visual Arts Center, and said that the “reduction in the number of students served” would be in keeping with the reduction in the size of the facility.

According to Bodel, the woodworking instructors and staf will be setting up in the interim facility in late February, with the goal of reopening by the spring.

Lan said that the petition’s testimonies laid out many reasons for supporting the Woodworking shop. Sixty-six direct letters asked the Hopkins Center trustees to preserve the Woodworking shop and described the workshop as a space that fostered their “mental wellbeing, education and sense of community,” Lan said.

Engineering professor Harold Frost, who wrote a letter to the Hopkins Center’s board of trustees, said that the Woodworking shop is a unique space for hands-on learning.

“What sets Dartmouth apart is well typifed by the fact Dartmouth had these shops,” Frost said. “Dartmouth had an environment… where there’s less intellectual isolation, and more connection to the real world.”

Fourth-year Thayer Ph.D candidate Arthur Pétusseau said the Woodshop symbolized the very best of self-directed education. Pétusseau said he achieved self-sufciency in working in the shop, and appreciated that the instructors could take a hands-of approach, allowing students to “lead” when they felt up for the task.

“Working as a student full-time is stressful,” Pétusseau said. “Working with the wood is mesmerizing, and you use your instincts, so it’s always nice, therapeutic and relaxing to forget about the stress while you’re there, working.”

BY Jackie Wright

The Dartmouth Staff

This article was originally published on Jan. 17, 2023.

The Counseling Center and the Student Wellness Center will again collaborate to facilitate the Student Support Network program, which was frst implemented in 2017. Applications are currently open to undergraduate and graduate students for the spring session.

According to S tefanie Jordão, a counselor and co-facilitator for SSN, the four-week program’s curriculum combines practicing conversations a student might have with a peer in crisis with didactic sessions. Jordão added that the Centers try to ofer the program at least twice each year, as they did last year.

“What we go over with them during the training is an opportunity to be able to identify the warning signs of a friend who might be in crisis, stress [or] struggling in some way with their mental health,” Jordão said.

Jordão added that training sessions will cover empathy and support, as well as efective communication skills for these conversations.

According to SWC wellbeing program coordinator and SSN cofacilitator Sid Babla, the program will have an increased focus on mindfulness during the spring session.

“Something that we’ll start doing in spring term onwards is introduc[ing] certain micro-practices of mindfulness [and] body-mind techniques of how one can be centered while listening to another person,” he said. “That sense of presence of being there for another person starts with your own sense of being present.”

Also new this spring will be SSN’s return to in-person sessions. Trainings were previously ofered last spring over Zoom. Babla says this switch back to the in-person program will help participants practice with real non-verbal cues and build a stronger community among the support network.

“The fact that [participants will] get together on a routine basis — they have a meal together at the end of each training and they sort of share time getting to know one another as well — also makes them feel that ‘Hey, I’m not the only one who cares about other students. There’s so many of us,’” Babla said. “I think that sense of belonging and connectedness is fostered best in person.”

In addition to the benefits of operating the program in-person, SSN sessions are part of the response to mental health challenges raised by the pandemic, according to SWC director Caitlin Barthelmes.

“Coming of the pandemic … it is another moment in history in which wellbeing and mental health can take a forefront in the conversations, and so I anticipate that to be continued here at Dartmouth and beyond,” she said.

According to Barthelmes, part of what makes SSN unique to other mental wellness programs ofered across campus is its focus on peer-to-peer support.

“We know from national and local data that students often will turn to their friends and peers,” Barthelmes said. “Because students are often on the frontlines of responding to the emotional and mental health concerns of other students, we were excited about providing an evidence-based program that helps give them the skills of efective support and how to make referrals when appropriate.”

Jordão and Babla, who co-facilitate the program along with Dick’s House counselor Isabella Schiro, said that they balance training for this kind of oneon-one support with information on when students can refer peers to other resources on campus.

“One of the things that we emphasize is that we don’t expect participants to provide therapy,” Jordão said. “What we hope is that they can serve as that point of support and kind of a warm handof — someone that can come and have a compassionate space to be there, [be] present with them and to support them in getting connected.”

SSN originated as a collaborative efort between the Counseling Center and the SWC to expand the Counseling Center’s Dartmouth Cares initiative, which aims to target suicide prevention and crisis intervention on campus.

According to Barthelmes, Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s counseling center originally developed the model used by SSN. The model is listed in the Suicide Prevention Resource Center’s best practice registry and aligns with the JED Foundation’s Campus Model recommendations, including promoting social connectedness, developing life skills, identifying students at risk and increasing help-seeking behavior. According to Barthelmes, demand has recently increased for programs like SSN that provide training in crisis prevention.

“Even over the course of the last few years, at Dartmouth and nationally, the importance of addressing mental health concerns and promoting positive supportive behaviors both internally and interpersonally has become more and more of an interest and priority,” she said.

Before SSN was launched, the Counseling Center ofered the Campus Connect Suicide Prevention Training program, which they continue to teach as one-time sessions available to students, staf and faculty, according to Jordão. Similar to SSN, Campus Connect aims to train students to support their peers in times of mental health crises. According to Jordão, these sessions intend to cover warning signs that someone may be considering suicide, what language to use, how to support someone through a time of crisis and how to properly refer them to get access to the appropriate mental health resources.

“We are all part of this community. We each play such an important and signifcant role in helping one another and supporting one another and each other’s mental health and wellness,” Jordão said. “I like to look at it as if we’re all like a piece of the puzzle. To be able to come together and be united — we all have such an important part.”

This spring, SSN sessions will be held on Wednesdays from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on April 12, April 19, April 26 and May 3. Upcoming Campus Connect sessions for students include Jan. 26 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and Feb. 22 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. For staf and faculty there will be sessions on Jan. 19 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and Feb. 8 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The registration form for these sessions is accessible through the Dartmouth Cares website.

Students interested in counseling can schedule appointments either on the phone at 603-6469442, at the counseling ofce at 7 Rope Ferry Road, Dick’s House 2nd foor or through their health service portal. In the case of an immediate crisis, students can call the Uhelp Crisis Line at 833-646-1526, the New Hampshire Rapid Response Access Point at 833-710-6477 or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.