Samantha Swart’s “Fulfilling Kindness” Drawing Wins Award

Samantha Swart won 2nd Place in the Middle School category of the Make Kindness Go Viral! contest on January 27 with her pencil-on-paper tonal drawing, “Fulfilling Kindness.” The award was announced at the 2022 United in Kindness symposium on bullying prevention sponsored by the Tompkins County Bullying Prevention Task Force.

Samantha’s artwork is full of examples of kindness, such as offering support, helping someone up, or even just a friendly wave. The DeWitt Middle School student explains that the steps in her drawing represent obstacles to overcome. And the hearts represent kindness being shared.

Samantha believes that by sharing kindness we can all overcome our obstacles and reach our goals.

One of the judges was extremely impressed by the specificity the artist gives to the experience of kindness—presenting kindness through activity and moving it beyond the conceptual. Another judge commented, “I really like how there are so many levels of different people doing different things that help humanity!”

Contestants were invited to submit an original poster or social media graphic, created in any art medium, illustrating kindness.

Contest awardees receive gift cards from Michael’s art supply store and heart symbols donated by Be Kind Ithaca.

The symposium and contest were made possible in part through grants from the Tompkins County Youth Services Department and The Sophie Fund.

Susanne Guimbretiere’s Global Kindness Artwork Wins Award

Susanne Guimbretiere won 1st Place in the Middle School category of the Make Kindness Go Viral! contest on January 27 with her “Be Kind” artwork expressing global solidarity in spreading kindness. The award was announced at the 2022 United in Kindness symposium on bullying prevention sponsored by the Tompkins County Bullying Prevention Task Force.

Susanne, a student at DeWitt Middle School, says that in creating the brightly colored globe she sought to show how people all over the world—different races, abilities, and backgrounds—are working together to spread kindness.

One judge commented that Susanne’s globe is a bold statement that leaves no doubt in the viewer’s mind as to the intent and the importance of kindness. Another judge said she loved Susanne’s saturation of colors.

Contestants were invited to submit an original poster or social media graphic, created in any art medium, illustrating kindness.

Contest awardees receive gift cards from Michael’s art supply store and heart symbols donated by Be Kind Ithaca.

The symposium and contest were made possible in part through grants from the Tompkins County Youth Services Department and The Sophie Fund.

Ms. K’s Cool Cat Crew’s Collage Wins Kindness Award

Ms. K’s Cool Cat Crew at Turning Point Elementary School TST BOCES won 1st Place in the Elementary School category of the Make Kindness Go Viral! contest on January 27. The award was announced at the 2022 United in Kindness symposium on bullying prevention sponsored by the Tompkins County Bullying Prevention Task Force.

The title of the awarded artwork is “Kindness Is Cool.” Contestants were invited to submit an original poster or social media graphic, created in any art medium, illustrating kindness.

Ms. K’s mission is to build a classroom community where all kids can grow and learn together in a safe and caring environment. The students created a colorful collage spelling out the word “KIND” for their entry into the Kindness contest.

To make the collage, the students poured over magazines and clipped out images that represented kindness in different ways.

One of the judges commented that creating a collage as a class project is a wonderful way to immerse students in the thought process of what represents kindness. The judge noted that the collage’s variety of images reminds us that being kind includes everyone in society.

Contest awardees receive gift cards from Michael’s art supply store and heart symbols donated by Be Kind Ithaca.

The symposium and contest were made possible in part through grants from the Tompkins County Youth Services Department and The Sophie Fund.

Ithaca College Partners with JED for Improved Student Mental Health

The Covid-19 pandemic has hit college students hard. Even before the disease forced campus closures, studies showed alarming and rising rates of depression and anxiety among undergraduates. Subsequent research found that pandemic conditions caused a further spike in stressors. For example, Active Minds conducted a nationwide survey of 2,086 college students at the beginning of the pandemic. It showed that 80 percent felt Covid-19 had “negatively impacted” their mental health, and 20 percent said their mental health had “significantly worsened.”

Ithaca College, prior to the pandemic, began exploring new ways to support student mental health with the appointment in 2019 of Brian Petersen as the new head of the Center for Counseling and Psychiatric Services. The effort gained traction in 2020 when the school inked a four-year partnership with The Jed Foundation, a national nonprofit devoted to supporting mental health in young adults.

According to the foundation, the JED Campus program is a strategic partnership that guides colleges through a collaborative process of program and policy development to enhance existing work and foster systemic improvement.

Ithaca College’s participation in the JED Campus program began with a self-assessment of student mental health support based on a JED questionnaire to identify areas in need of attention.

Twelve hundred of Ithaca College’s 5,000 students then participated in the Health Minds Study, a survey examining mental health status, campus climate, utilization of support services, and related issues to inform institutional policies and practices. The survey, which has been conducted at 400 colleges and universities since 2007, is operated by the Healthy Minds Network for Research on Adolescent and Young Adult Mental Health based at the University of Michigan and Boston University.

“In addition to helping you identify specific improvements to make, the JED program forces you to create a structure around the whole process,” Petersen said. As head of the college’s JED Campus task force, Petersen will submit annual reports to JED about the progress being made. Another measurement will take place toward the end of the JED partnership when a follow-up Health Minds survey is conducted.

The initial Healthy Minds survey highlighted symptoms of depression and anxiety among Ithaca College students at a higher rate than the national average, Petersen said. At the same time, he added, the survey indicated that the school’s students are less affected by stigma and more open to receiving mental health services than many peers across the country.

For example, among the Ithaca College students participating in the survey, 47 percent identified with overall depression and 25 with major depression, compared to 39 percent and 21 percent nationally. Forty-one percent of Ithaca College respondents identified with anxiety disorder compared to 34 percent nationally. Only 2 percent of Ithaca College students said they “would think less of someone who has received mental health treatment,” compared to 6 percent nationally.

Petersen said that the results of the self-assessment and the Healthy Minds Study have already prompted new initiatives to improve services.

He said that the school is exploring new models for responding to after-hours mental health crises, which are currently handled by the campus Office of Public Safety and a third-party psychological counseling service.

Another goal is tightening up support relationships and lines of communication with community providers like the Cayuga Medical Center, and launching new ones such as potentially with MindWell Center LLC, an Ithaca mental health counseling service, Petersen said. Part of this, he added, entails establishing close referral relationships with community providers who are better equipped to deal with specialized conditions such as eating disorders, sexual assault trauma, and substance use addiction.

Petersen said that another possible initiative aims for a more systemic approach to campus mental health education, through regular programming that highlights issues like depression and suicide, centralized hubs for communicating mental health information, operationalizing broad campus support for student mental health, and mental health gatekeeper training for faculty, staff, and students.

“We have to have a systemic and a community wide approach,” Petersen said.

The partnership with JED came together quickly soon after Petersen’s arrival from Pace University, where the Pace Counseling Center had worked with JED to identify and implement a gatekeeper program to train faculty, staff, and students in bystander intervention and suicide prevention protocols. Senior Ithaca College administrators including then-President Shirley M. Collado favored the initiative after meeting JED representatives at a student mental health conference. A financial hurdle was overcome when the parents of a current student stepped forward to pay a JED onboarding fee.

Student Mental Health Awareness Week

Cornell Health International (CHI) is a student organization at Cornell University that raises awareness about global health issues through service efforts on a local scale.

This has included volunteering at Bridges Cornell Heights, a local assisted living facility, where CHI members came up with activity ideas and arts and crafts that would brighten the days of residents. During the Covid-19 pandemic, our members volunteered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness Finger Lakes (NAMI-FL) to help facilitate monthly online Family Forums.

CHI has also facilitated Zoom discussions about mental health with local Ithaca community leaders, and moderated panel discussions with special guests. CHI members recently took part in the Cancer Resource Center of the Finger Lakes 2021 Walkathon, and are currently conducting weekly virtual visits with residents of the Beechtree Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing.

We sponsored Student Mental Health Awareness Week in November to engage the Cornell community on a topic of great importance to students. The program included a panel discussion featuring Sharon McMullen, Cornell’s assistant vice president of Student & Campus Life for Health and Wellbeing. She reviewed efforts being made by the Executive Accountability Committee to push forward recommendations from the university’s Mental Health Review in 2020. McMullen was joined on the panel by Catherine Thrasher-Carroll,  Mental Health Promotion Program Director at the Skorton Center for Health Initiatives.

In conjunction with Student Mental Health Awareness Week, CHI joined forces with The Sophie Fund to raise money for The Learning Web, an Ithaca nonprofit organization offering experiential learning, youth employment, and independent living programs to youth and young adults. We spread the word about the fundraiser through social media accounts, and created online bingo boards for individuals to play as they donated.

To cap off our awareness week program, CHI members created cards with motivational messages and left them around campus to provide encouragement to students as fall semester finals began.

To learn more about CHI, follow us on Instagram and Facebook (@chealthinternational) or email us at chealthinternational@gmail.com.

—By Jackie Cho, Jenny Long, and Anna Szombathy

Jackie Cho, a Health Care Policy major at Cornell University, is co-president of Cornell Health International

Jenny Long, a Human Biology, Health, and Society major at Cornell University, is service leader of Cornell Health International

Anna Szombathy, a Biological Sciences major at Cornell University, is co-president of Cornell Health International