Helping Students Thrive: Meeting Basic Needs

College students have faced significant challenges in recent years, including COVID-19, reductions in funding for student services, stress-inducing executive orders from the White House, and rising costs for housing and food. Many students struggle to balance their basic needs for food, housing, family, health, and work obligations while pursuing academic success. Even with training in counseling, social work, and other supportive approaches to helping, college staff would benefit from access to detailed, easy-to-follow resource guides to help students progress in their academic journey.

This certification course is offered to college staff, counseling staff, BIT/CARE members, and faculty interested in assisting students in achieving their college goals. Dr. Brian Van Brunt will review core intervention, support, and advocacy skills drawn from social work, counseling, life coaching, academic success, disability accommodation, tutoring, and career services. He will address challenges and offer practical strategies to address housing and food insecurity, academic readiness, mental illness, safety planning, study skills development, time management, mental wellness, social support, navigating community services, critical thinking and problem-solving, fiscal management, emotional regulation, and improving self-advocacy. There will be opportunities for case review and discussion to demonstrate the application of these skills.

We will start with a review of students' core areas of need. We will discuss the importance of assessing local, state, and federal resources and how basic-needs staff, case managers, counselors, social workers, and other support staff can better educate students to access these resources. We will then provide a collection of 20+ resource sheets describing various approaches to helping, along with worksheets for students to practice these skills. Learn more.