Tuesday Newsday
It’s Tuesday Newsday, so I am bringing a variety of news items from campus and beyond. Here goes:
Several hundred students still have not either enrolled in our health insurance program or completed a waiver form showing they are adequately covered with health insurance. This morning, we sent a message to families of students in this situation; please check your email (including spam/junk) for the subject line “Your WF student’s health insurance requirement – action required” and take action if this applies to your family. If you take no action to enroll or waive, you will be charged for insurance.
For international students who needed to get an FDA-authorized COVID vaccine (or any students who need a second dose), we had one clinic today, and a second one will be held on the 27th. These clinics offer the Pfizer vaccine only. Read the message that went to students who have not provided proof of vaccination (and were not granted an exemption).
We’ve had a couple of questions from students about what to do if they have a COVID exposure. This page has information on what to do in that case (which I hope will be rare!) It also has a section on who to notify if you are feeling sick (COVID or otherwise). As a reminder, if a student tests positive for COVID at an off-campus location, they are required to notify WFU by the process on the aforementioned page.
In other health and wellbeing news, did you know we offer students free Wellbeing Coaching? Wellbeing Coaching is an evidence-based practice designed to help people reach their personal health and wellbeing goals. Certified coaches meet one-on-one with students to provide support and accountability to reach their health and wellbeing goals by meeting for an initial session, and then bi-weekly for the next ten weeks, for a total of 5-7 sessions. Enrollment for the fall semester is open. Students can sign up or learn more at go.wfu.edu/wellbeingcoaching.
Wake Forest in the News is out for August 16-22, and there are lots of news stories here, everything from Afghanistan to arthritis to the reopening of the Lam Museum of Anthropology and more. Our own Lucy D’Agostino McGowan, assistant professor of statistics, has an article in the Winston-Salem Journal about how to understand the stats related to COVID breakthrough cases. I’m not a natural math person, but she puts the stats in context that even I can understand: “Think about the extreme example when 100% of people are vaccinated; even if only one person is hospitalized, 100% of hospitalized people will have been vaccinated.” How stats are generated and reported does matter.
College Values Online has listed Wake Forest in a group of thirty schools with strong cybersecurity systems and innovations: “Best Colleges considers Wake Forest University to be the most technologically advanced college in America.” You can see the other 29 schools – some great peers, by the way – here.
This Wall Street Journal article is getting a lot of attention among my counterparts at other schools. It is entitled Quit Tracking Your Kids’ Phones When They Head Off to College. Here is an excerpt:
Mental-health experts say that all this tracking can hamper young adults’ ability to mature and that it signals to kids that the world is unsafe. “It’s letting fear drive the bus,” says Vanessa Elias, a certified parenting coach and mental-health advocate who endorses free-range parenting.
“Telling kids that we’re watching them, and that we want to know where they are in order to keep them safe, fuels fear in both kids and parents,” she said. “There is already an epidemic of anxiety among college students.”
Reasonable people can disagree about the premise of the article. What I would add is that it is probably worth a conversation with your college student on your – and their – expectations of privacy and independence, so you can find what best fits your student’s growth and development.
The other higher ed topic that is getting a lot of buzz in my social media feed is the new Netflix series, The Chair, which is a fictional portrayal of the chair of the English department at a small, not quite an Ivy league college (but close). Are you watching it?