Stephanie Aitken, Sustainability Scholar, UBC Wellbeing Initiative
If you ask Stephanie Aitken what wellbeing means to her, she’ll tell you it’s like a garden. “It’s never finished. A garden is always growing and it’s always changing, and you’re never going to be like, ‘Okay, I’m done. I’m well now and I don’t need to take care of it anymore.’”
Aitken, a grad student in Landscape Architecture and Sustainability Scholar at the UBC Wellbeing Initiative, has had plenty of experience working on wellbeing initiatives at UBC. She created the Health & Wellness rep position on her program’s student council after struggling with health issues. “I got quite ill in my first year in Landscape Architecture,” said Aitken. “I felt like there wasn’t really a lot of support for students who were maybe having a bit of a tough time.”
“I’m constantly learning how different groups of people on campus are impacted or will be impacted by a university trying to promote wellbeing.”
So Aitken created and ran for the Health & Wellness rep position. She organized events and activities, like yoga classes, Wednesday afternoon walks, and wellness days (with tea, healthy snacks, and pet visits). In spite of these successes, she felt there needed to be more University-wide policies directly targeting wellbeing.
This inspired her to apply to be a Sustainability Scholar at the Wellbeing Initiative, where she worked with a colleague to create a strategy to engage more staff, faculty, residents, and community members in conservations about wellbeing. Aitken focused on students, and found that they were eager to engage with the Wellbeing Initiative. Through her work, she found that while UBC does provide plenty of resources for support, students felt it hard to both access and navigate those resources.
Through early conversations with students, she found that grad students felt especially under-supported and under-acknowledged, mostly because programs and resources tend to be aimed at undergrad students. Grad students are typically at a different stage in their lives than undergrads, and therefore need resources specifically targeting them.
Aitken’s term as Sustainability Scholar will be finishing at the end of July. When asked what she is most proud of, she says it’s setting the groundwork for grad students. “Just because of my own personal experience, I felt very strongly that this was an important group to identify and make sure they’re part of the conversation.”
“I’m constantly learning how different groups of people on campus are impacted or will be impacted by a university trying to promote wellbeing,” she added.
Moving forward, Aitken hopes UBC will listen to students when they create wellbeing policies and practices, and shift the focus away from grades and towards the importance of becoming an active and engaged citizen.
Aitken is currently working on her thesis, which examines the relationship between human beings and their natural environment.
Post by: Kaavya Lakshmanan, Communications Assistant