The Learning Café is now accepting student registrations for a new five-week program called SCoRE (Student Curriculum on Resilience Education), starting Monday. This program was created by LEAD Pittsburgh (Leading Education and Awareness for Depression) specifically for post-secondary students.
With support from the Alberta Advanced Education Post-Secondary Student Mental Health Grant, SCoRE was introduced to Lethbridge College students for the first time in late September and has received positive endorsements by students who participated in the first weeks of the program.
“Very good opportunity to help manage stress and to get to know yourself better,” wrote one participant. “Would recommend to any student!”
Karma Black, coordinator of Accessibility Services, says the program is in response to the growing number of students registering for support for psychiatric disabilities. SCoRE takes a proactive approach to giving students strategies to cope, adapt and recover from stress and other challenges.
“SCoRE helps build the reservoir so they can handle some of those things that lead to chronic stress and challenges with anxiety and depression,” she says.
The program is being facilitated by two University of Calgary practicum students, Baylee Chilton and Kim Kozak, and is held in the new Solarium space, a quiet, coulee-view area at the back of the Learning Café.
“SCoRE looks specifically at our social connections, our self-care mechanisms, our thought patterns and how we set goals,” says Chilton. “We do activities in each of those categories in order to see what people are already doing that’s working for them, and giving them a few techniques they can implement into their life. You get an individual report. . . everybody is getting their own personal learning out of it.”
Kozak says she’s found the strategies helpful in her own life as a university student.
“I find myself using them all the time now,” she says. “These techniques really can be used by anyone. I’m really grateful I have some of these techniques in my back pocket.”
The sessions are offered on Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays for five weeks and participating students must commit to all five weekly sessions in order to receive a certificate of completion. It’s free to all Lethbridge College students who can sign up at the Learning Café to be part of these small group sessions.
“They’ll get a certificate they can use on a resume,” Kozak says. “Employers typically are looking for the person who have learned how to take care of themselves, they’ve learned how to be adaptable and they’ve shown the initiative that they’re willing to take additional training.”
Black says the program will undergo formal evaluation to measure how effective SCoRE has been for students and whether this is something Lethbridge College should continue to offer.
Initial anecdotal feedback has been quite positive, she says, not only from the participating students.
“Whether it’s a parent or a tutor or a strategist or an instructor who knows their student in this class, they’re noticing some improvement,” Black says.
Learn more about the program in this two-minute video.