Otterbein showed its continued effort to support students during the board of trustees meeting last Friday, Sept. 20.
During the meeting, a major topic was using two grants Otterbein received this year to provide resources for marginalized students in STEM and to improve accommodations for students with mental health issues.
After the meeting, President John Comerford went on to elaborate on how Otterbein plans to utilize the awarded money for the benefit of its students.
Increasing Equity and Inclusion in STEM Fields
The first grant is from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), a non-profit biomedical research organization with philanthropic ideals. The grant provides $1.7 million in funding as part of the institute’s initiative to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in science education.
“It’s a grant that we got to help support underrepresented students in the sciences. It’s scholarships to help them attend, it’s money to put on support service programs and all that sort of stuff [for] supporting under-served populations,” Comerford said.
In recent years, the HHMI has awarded over $60 million to advance this initiative. Other grant recipients include the University of California, Davis and the College of Wooster.
Despite an increase in the representation of people of color and women in STEM fields, the racial, ethnic and gender gaps remain wide. Black and Hispanic workers are still underrepresented, and women are still a small population within the mathematical and computer sciences. These fields impact the daily lives of all American citizens and can make changes worldwide. Creating technologies that affect the globe requires a broader worldview, something that can only be gained from a diverse work environment.
Continuing to open up these spaces for women and people of color allows for new, creative perspectives to participate in the work of organizations that can influence society as a whole. Studies have shown that a diverse team of innovators is more likely to perform better in a work environment. A group of people from different backgrounds can produce more nuanced, unique solutions to problems in the workforce. To this end, alleviating racial and gender disparities is the responsibility of higher education institutions.
Using the grant money from the HHMI, Otterbein can make a stronger effort to have STEM be more accessible to marginalized students.
Improving Mental Health Resources on Campus
The second grant awarded to Otterbein was from the state of Ohio to support campaigns that assist students with their mental health needs.
During his State of the State Address in 2022, Gov. Mike DeWine emphasized the importance of student mental health in a post-pandemic environment. He stressed the need to fund and grow the workforce in behavioral health-related fields, and have better crisis response services for students in need. In that vein, DeWine signed $175 million in mental health expenditures into law. Much of the money was awarded as grants to higher education institutions to support their students. Otterbein was one of them.
"We’re applying that [grant] to renovate the old health center into a new counseling center … and the part of it that’s currently the psychology lab will turn into a new headquarters for OPD," Comerford said.
Comerford believes that having law enforcement and mental health services would be to build a stronger connection between the two departments for students’ benefit.
“That’s exactly the idea,” Comerford said. “When law enforcement goes badly, it’s often because of a mental health crisis that is not well-handled, so we think having them share a space would be an innovative thing.”
Higher education institutions searching for ways to reform their mental health response procedures is not at all new. After widespread calls for reform and criticism of campus police, universities across the nation elected to pair their law enforcement with mental health counselors. In doing so, the risks of mishandling students in their moment of fragility can be mitigated on a national scale. Now that mental health is a priority on the state level, more reform is being implemented at universities, and Otterbein is rightfully following suit.
As student mental health worsens, building a stronger connection between campus police and mental health services is a step in the right direction. It could result in the creation of more effective response teams when someone faces a mental health crisis. As students encounter increasing amounts of emotional challenges, the demand for quality mental health care continues to climb, and it’s imperative that institutions like Otterbein keep up.
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