Pat Walker renovations bring new and improved resources to campus
By Coleman Bonner
The Razorback Reporter
Completed renovations at the Pat Walker Health Center have officials excited about the easier access to services related to sexual assault, mental health and other important services.
The renovation included a 20,000-square-foot addition that offers a new home to several services as well as improved space for services already offered. The expanding health center added three classrooms, student study areas, a new home for the Women’s Center and larger space for Wellness & Health Promotion and Administrative Services.
A major development of the finished renovations is a resource center for sexual assault victims and services. The Garland center, across the street from Pat Walker, was rented for extra space for the wellness center during the renovations and has since been transformed into the full-time home for the sexual assault services, with the wellness services being relocated back to the Pat Walker center.
While 18-24-year-old college-age women are three times as likely to experience sexual assault as all other women, according to a study by the National Crime Victimization Survey, only 20% of female student victims report the incidents to authorities. RESPECT, or Rape Education by Peers Encouraging Conscious Thought, and STAR, or Support, Training, Advocacy and Resources, provide the university with services aimed at helping victims of assault as well as providing information on statistics and advocacy throughout campus.
“They are there for victims of sexual assault but also for preventing it. Anybody who is impacted by it we hope to have the support that they need,” said Mary Alice Serafini, associate vice chancellor of Student Affairs and executive director of Pat Walker.
“We also hope to help talk about things that impact the occurrence of sexual assault and one of those things is alcohol.”
To prevent assaults, an NCAA CHOICES grant was used to create an RSO, Razorbacks Offering Accountability Resources. ROAR pairs multiple organizations throughout campus, including services offered through Pat Walker, and aims at offering options for students wishing to avoid drug and alcohol peer pressure. The goal of ROAR is to “create student-led initiatives, including, public service announcements, bystander intervention, alcohol awareness week and sober spring break,” among healthful activities that reduce alcohol misuse and abuse behaviors among a variety of student populations. The program is a campus-wide effort to help UA students make better decisions regarding alcohol usage.
Another development is the expanded counselor-in-residence services. Two counselors live and have offices in Reid and Gibson halls, which offer direct access to counseling services for students living on campus.
“A counselor-in-residence is a doctoral student in the counselor education program with advanced training in counseling, helping skills and crisis situations. Some of the issues a counselor-in-residence can help with are adjusting to college, anger, stress, grief, relationships, roommate problems, and time management, to name a few,” according to the UA website.
Within the last five years the Health Center has expanded its hours to offer evening availability, part of Pat Walker’s constant mission to improve accessibility to students, Serafini said.
“We constantly look at patient flow and patient access and we want it to be as easy as possible for people to access any of our services and if were getting into overload for one aspect then we look how we can balance that out,” Serafini said.
The counseling center was also transformed with group therapy rooms, a multi-purpose classroom, new office space and a larger waiting area.
“That’s why I love my job, nothing remains the same and things change all the time,” said Serafini,
Another motivation behind the center’s renovation was to have services available to help students with whatever they may need, medical or not.
“We’ve always felt that we were educators in addition to technicians and so if you see a provider here, real often you’ll get some education not only about perhaps a medical condition but how to navigate taking care of your good health,” Serafini said.
With studies done on the health centers impact on student retention and graduation rate, Serafini said one of the main goals of Pat Walker moving forward is to have an impact on student’s lives post-graduation.
“We want to have an impact that goes well beyond earning your degree,” Serafini said. “We really want to help people build themselves to be strong and known how to access resources as they need them so that’s part of the lifetime thing I’m always focused on.”