Fort Hays State University

TIGER COMMUNITY’S PATHWAY TO HELP, HOPE AND SUCCESS Fort Hays State University’s (FHSU) TIGER COMMUNITY’S PATHWAY TO HELP, HOPE AND SUCCESS will ensure our students, faculty, and staff have adequate information, resources, and access to services which allow them to maintain overall wellness in their lives. This will positively impact our students’ mental health, and therefore increase our students’ retention, persistence, and success during their university career and beyond. With 15,100 total students served by approximately 1,000 faculty and staff, the FHSU community is extremely diverse, especially in comparison to our peer institutions. This project targets all FHSU students, faculty and staff. The most recent available demographic data indicates that 60.4% of FHSU students are female and 39.5% are male with the average age being 27.1. 51% of the undergraduate student residence is in-state, and 48% is out-of-state. The percent of American Indian students is less than 1% with other categories as follows: Asian 26%, Black or African American 4%, Hispanic/Latino 7%, White 59%, two or more races 2%, and racial/ethnicity unknown 1%. FHSU has seen a 77.7% increase in its Hispanic student enrollment over the past five years. There are currently 134 Chinese students on the FHSU campus. According to Collegeportraits.org, 28% of FHSU undergraduates are low-income with 378 students receiving veteran benefits.

Goals:

1. Increase coordination of services on campus and the collaboration between FHSU and its community partners to enhance identification, treatment and management of students experiencing mental health distress or crisis.

2. Increase the FHSU campus community’s ability to recognize, manage and prevent suicide and create a campus environment that promotes good mental health and substance abuse practices.

3. Expand FHSU’s current suicide prevention activities to reach a larger number of students.

4. Increase the commitment to the emotional well-being of FHSU students.

Brief Objectives: FHSU will begin building a campus and community network through the signing of memorandums of understandings with campus and community resources. We will hire a case manager to assist with student needs. FHSU will implement online as well as face to face gatekeeper suicide prevention and substance abuse trainings for university and community constituents. Kelly Center (Counseling Center) data indicates the top 5 reasons students seek services are: depression; anxiety; relationships; stress; and substance abuse. The Kelly Center currently reaches approximately 3000 students a year. Implementation of grant objectives will allow us to increase this number to 4,000-5,000 using online and face to face training outreach.