By Truett Jackson
Staff Reporter
The student body at CNM, having powered through a busy fall semester with the holiday season afoot, is familiar with being stressed. To help tackle this tension, there is a new resource for those who may need a hand in establishing a sustainable balance between school, work, and life.
Wellness CNM, currently located at CNM’s Main Campus, aims to provide connections to resources that can ease the workload of those who may be feeling overwhelmed, and the center is prepping to mark one year since opening their doors.
“At that time, it was just me, and it was really getting in students who were struggling, who wanted access to counseling, or might be facing barriers like their car broke down or they couldn’t afford gas, or they didn’t know about our food pantries,” said Mia Mendoza, director of Wellness CNM.
Over the last year, the number of students coming into the wellness center has increased by 800%, indicating to her that the need is there. “Coming next year, I think this program’s still so new that it’s going to look a lot different than it does right now, so I would say definitely stay tuned for bigger things that are happening.”
Elaborating on who the center is intended for, Mendoza said, “our target audience is any CNM student, whether you are online, in-person, hybrid, on any campus; whether you are full-time, part-time, just started, returning, it doesn’t matter. Absolutely any CNM student has access to these services completely free of charge.”
Mendoza cautions that while she and her staff of interns can provide access to resources that assist with things such as food insecurity, childcare, transportation, and mental health issues like depression and anxiety, the staff at the center are not nurses or therapists.
“We’re not addressing everything in-house, but we know how to get people in the right direction.” She said that in addition to mental health issues, the center also aims to assist with basic needs.
“We all have these things that we need to not only survive, but be successful, right? We need access to food, we need a safe place to live… if you’re a parenting student, you need access to affordable childcare, you might need to drive to campus and need transportation. So, we help students with those quote unquote basic needs.”
According to Mendoza, a large part of the work they do is to help when students come to them dealing with struggles such as eviction or homelessness, when they’ve lost childcare, health insurance or transportation, or they may just be wrestling with making ends meet and paying bills on time.
Mendoza said that while they don’t have a magic wand and cannot always remedy every problem, they can very often connect students to what they know works, and often those are resources within the college that students don’t already know about, such as the RUST Scholarship and the CNM Food Pantry.
Given that CNM’s website acknowledges having the largest student body in the state, she wants people to understand that Wellness CNM is still a small group. While they don’t currently have the capacity or funding to provide every student with the immediate resources they may need, they are working to triage and allocate aid to students as quickly as possible.
Mendoza also wants them to be informed that she and her team are working to create a ‘culture of care’. She says that this means understanding that mental health and basic needs impact everyone, and Wellness CNM wants to help everyone at the college develop an attitude of caring for themselves, and for their fellow learners.
Part of this holistic approach means that students should look out for one another. “If you see something, say something.” She said that she’d like to underscore to students that if they know that a fellow student may be struggling, they can contact the center and make an anonymous report. “We are not here to get students in trouble, right, so the information students share with us does not leave our office. It doesn’t go to your faculty members, it doesn’t go to any other students,” she said, emphasizing that any information disclosed at the center is kept strictly confidential.
She recommends that students check out the Wellness CNM website, which contains info on the center, as well as tools for success, such as the ‘Eight Dimensions of Wellness’, the Active Minds organization, links to resources, and details about upcoming events.
“Mental health matters. Physical health matters. You matter,” said Mendoza, “so using these resources, connecting with us, knowing that you’re not so isolated helps students succeed. We know that this program helps students stay in school, we know that it helps get them through the challenges they’re experiencing, and I think we all need that support sometimes.”
To contact Wellness CNM, you can visit http://www.cnm.edu/mentalhealth, email wellness@cnm.edu, or call (505)224-3000.