Building a Campuswide Community of Care

Faculty and staff interact with students every day, putting them in a unique position to notice when a student may be struggling or to hear firsthand about challenges affecting their well-being.

The Student Well-Being Champion Badge, a new program from the office of Campus Recreation and Well-Being, is designed to help them know what to do next.

The program equips faculty and staff to recognize signs of distress, have supportive conversations, and connect students with appropriate campus and community resources. Two levels of learning are available, culminating in a microcredential and digital badge.

This approach reflects a broader shift in how colleges and universities think about student well-being: Mental health is an important part of well-being, but it’s not the whole picture.

“Students are struggling with their mental health, but well-being is multifaceted and has a lot of different factors that influence it,” says Justin Stoeckle, assistant director of well-being promotion. “There is a movement across colleges and universities to view well-being in a way that encompasses those different acute stressors, because not all student concerns will be solved through therapeutic interventions.”

A student’s well-being can be affected by factors such as financial insecurity, access to basic needs, and a sense of community. At DU, Stoeckle says, supporting a student’s well-being might mean connecting them with a food pantry, free transportation, or emergency funds—not necessarily only referring them to counseling.

“Overall, our approach is holistic—understanding student well-being as a whole and that well-being is impacted not only by mental health but also by social determinants of health.”

Putting a holistic approach into practice

The Student Well-Being Champion Badge program grew out of that holistic view, as well as requests from faculty and staff who wanted more tools for supporting students.

“Developing a student’s sense of well-being can’t be done in isolation,” Stoeckle says. “It takes a community approach, where students are interacting with peers, faculty, and staff who have the skills and knowledge to help them on that journey.”

Campus Recreation and Well-Being already had much of the material needed to help faculty and staff develop those skills. The team packaged it into a structured learning experience that allows participants to earn a badge and microcredential.

Level 1 provides foundational training, with participants completing Mental Health First Aid training followed by workshops on understanding student well-being and navigating campus resources. They then complete a written reflection to earn the Level 1 badge and microcredential.

Participants who complete Level 1 can continue to Level 2, which includes 8-10 additional hours of workshops addressing more specific situations and student needs. Topics include responding to suicidal ideation and ongoing crisis, substance use conversations, bystander intervention, and supporting survivors of interpersonal violence.

“Level 1 covers the basics of supporting student well-being, which is rooted in mental health first aid,” Stoeckle says. “For Level 2, we tried to make it more localized to DU. It goes a little bit deeper into understanding different populations and different specific circumstances that a student here might experience and how to support them through those things.”

You don’t have to be an expert

The goal isn't to replace counseling, Stoeckle says, but rather to help faculty and staff feel more confident in recognizing when a student may be struggling and responding appropriately.

“We want them to be able to notice the signs of distress in a student and how to approach conversations with that student about how they’re doing without necessarily needing to be an expert in mental health or wellness,” he says. “We want them to approach student well-being from a place of curiosity, a place of nonjudgment, and a place of supporting students with whatever they need in a particular moment.”

That might mean listening empathetically, affirming what a student is experiencing, and connecting them with someone who can provide more specialized support. In some cases, faculty and staff may notice changes before students seek help themselves—such as changes in appearance or engagement, missed assignments, or absences from meetings.

The program was launched last spring, and about 55 faculty and staff have signed up, with 15 already earning their badges. Stoeckle says the early response suggests a strong interest in building these skills across campus.

He encourages departments and teams to participate together, creating opportunities to consider collectively how they can best support students.

The long-term goal, however, extends beyond individual participants or teams of participants. When DU signed on to the Okanagan Charter in 2025, Stoeckle says, it signaled its commitment to making well-being part of the DU culture. 

The badge program is one way that the development of student well-being is expanding to the entire campus community, Stoeckle says. “Ultimately, we want our campus to be a place that, wherever a student turns, they encounter someone with the skills, knowledge, and awareness to support them with whatever it is that they need.”

Learn more and sign up to earn your Student Well-Being Champion Badge.