As you navigate the college experience, UofL has your back. You’re never alone in the Cardinal Community. Whether your needs are related to academic success, personal wellness, general well-being or recreational activities, there are resources available to enhance your overall student experience and to ensure a thriving future. Check out these 10 helpful campus websites:

1. ��–��UofL hosts over 400 student organizations that cover a wide variety of student interests. These groups provide a wonderful opportunity to become involved in campus life and to connect with other students on campus who enjoy some of the same things you do. Find the list of contacts on the��.��
2. –The Student Recreation Center (SRC) offers the latest fitness facilities and equipment, complete with basketball and racquetball courts. Campus Recreation also offers activities ranging from group fitness classes to competitive intramural sports to sport clubs.
3. ��–��The Cultural Center supports and offers programs that acknowledge and reflect the experiences of underrepresented populations. It also provides educational opportunities for all members of the campus community to examine their individual and group experiences within a culturally diverse society.
4. ��–��The counseling center offers services such as individual or group counseling, workshops, couples therapy, urgent consultations and psychiatric referrals. Some of the services are covered by student fees and do not require additional payment. The website also provides a list of��
5. ��–��The Cardinal Station and Health Sciences Center (HSC) Campus Health Services (CHS) offices provide basic primary care including physical exams, immunizations, allergy shots, travel medicine, flu and COVID-19 shots, sexual health and contraception and more. CHS has an insurance advocate who assists students enrolled in the UofL student health insurance program.
6. ��–�����Ǵڳ�’s����provides community-building socials with other first-gen students, workshops and individual coaching. Participants can earn completion grants toward their UofL bill.����matches first-generation, first-year students with faculty and staff for individual mentoring in the��.��
7. ��–��The University Writing Center offers one-on-one or group consultations to both undergraduate and graduate students with a trained writing consultant. The center also provides a range of online resources.
8. ��–��This is where many students can find out about outside-the-classroom learning opportunities, whether they are work-related (internships, co-ops) or research-focused. The Center for Engaged Learning (CEL) is an on-campus resource for UofL, the community and industry partners that helps Cardinals better prepare for academic and success.
9. ��–��What’s going on today? You’ll find happenings from Belknap to HSC listed on the official UofL Event Calendar.
10. ��–��The ITS HelpDesk provides technology support to the Cardinal community. The ITS website features a Knowledge Base, Service Catalog and FAQ section with answers to questions like “What software is free for enrolled students?” and “What digital storage options are available?”

Several of these resources are sanctioned by UofL’s or the . The Office of Student Involvement is a hub for cultural, social and recreational programs, while the Student Success Center provides resources related to advising, academics, financial well-being and belonging.

According to the UofL Student Success Center, whether a student is in need of a laptop, exploring a new major, facing a financial barrier or simply looking for a peer who’s been there before, the SSC is the place to turn.

We urge you to explore the wide array of programs and activities at UofL. We’ll be here every step of the way!

Maymie Owens will graduate in December with a bachelor of science in public health. She’s working 28 to 30 hours each week providing information to close contacts of COVID-19 positive status students, faculty and staff.

“It gives me the chance to be part of something that can improve the health of the community, as well as gain background knowledge for my future career,” Owens said.��

It’s a big job that can help stop the spread of COVID-19, says Craig Blakely, dean of the School of Public Health and Information Sciences.

“In the absence of a vaccine, contact tracing is paramount. If we can stop the spread of the virus at points of contact, then everyone else is more free to move about while practicing physical distancing and wearing masks. ��

“Our students are gaining incredible experience for their future public health careers.��This work is a resume builder for the students, some of whom earn practicum or capstone experience credit. More importantly, it is crucial to helping our community fight COVID-19,”��he said.

It is Owens’ second time working as a contact tracer. She was one of 40 UofL public health, biomedical science and medical students, along with medical residents who volunteered the past few months with the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health & Wellness’ (LMPHW) contact tracing team.

“We would make sure residents of Jefferson County who tested positive were staying isolated and quarantined, while ensuring they had someone who could bring them groceries and toiletry items. If not, we would connect them with resources to try and help meet their needs,” she said.

Lydia Tanque is working to complete a bachelor of arts in public health and says she welcomed the chance to work with environmental health professionals on a health issue affecting the lives of so many. ��

“One of the most valuable things that I’ve learned is being able to observe how different systems work together. Some days we’ll receive an influx of new cases from our testing facilities on campus. Other days we receive no new cases for hours. We must maintain daily contact with Campus Health Services and provide daily data reports,” Tanque said.

Student workers central to UofL’s fight against COVID-19

The student workers have greatly expanded the bandwidth of Campus Health Services, says Cheri Hildreth, director of the Department of Environmental Health and Safety.

Campus Health makes initial calls to members of the UofL community who test positive for COVID-19, and then Hildreth’s team makes phone calls to positive cases and close contacts, providing education and information on up-to-date isolation safety measures and guidelines.

It is a robust operation performed by a full-time DEHS employee and 11 public health student workers. Utilizing her knowledge as a contact tracer with LMPHW, environmental health doctoral candidate Sivarchana Mareedu has helped develop training courses, a contact tracer script, an eight-step workflow and shadowing opportunities for UofL’s contact tracing workforce.

“Sivarchana had the necessary insight to create a plan that has helped the program run smoothly from start to finish. She is our contact tracing team supervisor and a phenomenal asset,” Hildreth said. “All the students working with us are proactive, have great communication skills and are detail oriented – we couldn’t do it without them.”

For Owens, the experience has provided the hours needed for her capstone experience, a requirement of graduation.

“I’ve exceeded those hours but I am not stopping because the help is still needed,” she said. ��

Like Owens, Tanque says she is grateful to be part of something meaningful.

“After feeling like life was essentially on pause these past few months, I’m glad to be back on campus with the rest of my classmates. It feels like I’m a part of the fight for all of us to one day get past this,” she said.

The program, called QPR, which stands for “Question, Persuade, Refer” trains people to react to warnings of suicide with the same kind of step-by-step, quick-action, life-saving procedure as CPR.

“This helps a person know how to react when someone they know is exhibiting signs of suicide,” said Tracie Meyer, Coordinator of , UofL’s suicide prevention program.

Cards Speak offered the training in collaboration with The Louisville Health Advisory Board (LHAB) Behavioral Health Committee and the Kentucky State Zero Suicide Grant program.

“The LHAB has set a Bold Goal of providing QPR training to 10,000 Jefferson County residents during, which is September 9-15,” Meyer said. “We are in the beginning stages of planning these events, and this was one of them. We have QPR trainers traveling throughout Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Tennessee to help us reach our goal.”

The training encourages people to listen and watch for suicide warning signs. It provides dialogue to help ascertain if a person needs professional assistance and if so, guide them to it.

Sara Choate, interim program manager at Health Promotion, a division of Campus Health Services, said the training is important now more than ever, as a ��released this summer by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that suicide rates rose in all but one state between 1999 and 2016, with increases seen across age, gender, race and ethnicity.

, nearly 45,000 suicides occurred in the U.S. in 2016 — more than twice the number of homicides — making it the 10th-leading cause of death.

Of particular concern Choate said, is that suicide��is the second-leading cause of death for��ages 15 to 34, which is the typical age range of UofL’s student population.

“Our mission at health promotion at UofL is to offer services, resources and programs for students that address how they can embolden their well-being and resilience in their personal and academic lives,” she said. “Our students are in this high risk age group. So, it’s our responsibility in the health promotion field, especially on campus, to talk about creating opportunities to improve social connectedness, which is one of the main protective factors.” ��

Meyer said that there are a number of others on campus who have already received QPR Training, especially in Campus Housing and in the Dean of Students Office. All first-year medical students undergo the training, too.

There will be additional free, 90-minute QPR Suicide Prevention Training sessions offered throughout Louisville Sept 9-15. .

for ways to help if you know someone who is exhibiting signs of suicide.

Did you know that alcohol misuse is the fifth leading risk factor for premature death and disability globally and among people between the ages of 15 and 49, it is the first? For those 20 to 39 years old, approximately 25 percent of the total deaths are alcohol attributable.

A group at UofL is working to ensure our students don’t fall victim to these statistics. The Building Resiliency in Campus Community (BRICC) Coalition, a Campus Health Services partnership, was created in 2007 in an effort to advance policies, programs and resources that increase resiliency and reduce high risk drinking on campus and in the community.

In 2010, Heather Parrino came on board as program manager. BRICC has since secured major gifts from Beam Suntory and Brown-Forman to support staff, programming, and infrastructure. They have developed additional resources, including the Voice of Reason manual and other initiatives that Parrino says have yielded tremendous success.

“We’ve been very successful because we have so many committed volunteers (about 200), we work with community and campus partners and we have external funding. I think we’re also serving as leaders in this area because we meet students where they are,” Parrino said.

That means, for example, hosting meetings in the basement of a fraternity house or sharing relevant information on residence hall bulletin boards.

Parrino specifically measures success through three metrics:

1. UofL’s AlcoholEdu (alcohol prevention) and Haven (sexual violence prevention) programs, funded by the president, provost, and Campus Health Services. (AlcoholEdu is mandated for every first time freshmen and transfer student under 21 and Haven is required for every student. AlcoholEdu educates students about the impact of alcohol and how to prevent high-risk situations where alcohol is present. Haven addresses critical issues of sexual assault, relationship violence, stalking, and sexual harassment.

2. A state law ()��passed in 2013 to provide immunity from prosecution for students who choose to call for help in an emergency.

“We support students that choose to drink and students that choose not to drink. We want to make sure all of our students stay safe,” she said.

3. UofL developed the Voice of Reason manual about three years ago so that students could have tangible takeaways from their prevention training programs. The manual was created after an in-depth needs assessment, in partnership with Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, was completed in 2010, which included a focus groups of students and staff throughout campus.

“We rode in police cars, we came to campus at night, we went into apartment complexes. We would talk to anyone who would talk to us. In our needs assessment, we realized there is a lot of misinformation out there about alcohol use and that much of the communication is ineffective and disingenuous,” Parrino said. “This was our base for the Voice of Reason manual.”

Much of BRICC’s current strategic plan also came out of the needs assessment. The main objective is to “build resilience.”

“Alcohol isn’t the number one issue, resilience is,” Parrino said. “There are two main reasons people drink – to celebrate and to deal with stress. If we can teach students how to celebrate differently – going to dinner with their friends, going on a hike, etc. – then we can teach them life skills development to avoid major issues. We can teach them resilience. At the end of the day, the stress and the reason for celebrating are still there.”

BRICC has been using the Voice of Reason manual for three years. It has been so effective, Parrino said, the University of Kentucky is piloting it this year.

BRICC also features a number of other programs, including:

• TIPs Training. TIPs stands for Training for Intervention Procedures. TIPs University certification is beneficial for students who are in charge of planning events, serving as RAs, risk management chairs and in other leadership positions. TIPs University “recognizes that students are in the best position to address drinking behaviors among their peers,” or, as Parrino explains, “meeting students where they are.”

BRICC offers monthly TIPs University certifications to students and campus/community partners that serve students. The classes last four hours. In BRICC’s fall semester training, 68 RAs were certified prior to campus move-in day.

“My favorite part as a TIPs trainer is watching people arrive thinking they are going to listen to a boring lecture about alcohol information. Our participants become very engaged as they realize they are the experts and we are going to work together to facilitate conversations to address issues that are specific to them and their friends,” Parrino said.

• BRICC Wall. The engages students with community members, businesses and city officials to “make changes in their communities and remove roadblocks to their academic success.” The exhibit challenges assumptions and encourages healthy decisions. It is made up of messages from students sharing their own stories about alcohol and substance abuse. The messages are written on “bricks” displayed as part of the exhibit.��

• Greeks Advocating Matuer Management of Alcohol (GAMMA). BRICC provides funding, resources, and a staff advisor for Greeks Advocating Mature Management of Alcohol, a UofL RSO. In the fall, GAMMA members lead the Voice of Reason initiative, a strategy to help both drinkers and nondrinkers make safer decisions in social settings. VOR includes five one-hour sessions that cover basic alcohol knowledge, awareness of risks, effective messaging and implementing strategies.

• This semester, BRICC will also launch a new RSO called “Advocates for Recovery.” The first meeting is March 9. The organization will offer broad-based support to students in recovery, and will also include friends and allies of students in recovery. Programming will focus on increasing resilience, academic achievement, health and overall wellbeing.

Though the organization is still in the planning phase, Parrino said more than 150 students have expressed interest.

“As with everything we’ve done, we need to start from the ground and we need to find allies,” Parrino said. “I look at what we’re doing as more macro than programming. Our students need more than programming. We are constantly looking at how we can take care of them.”

More information about the BRICC Coalition is .��