New Wellness Coordinator to Help Students Learn Healthy Living Now, Later

SUNY Plattsburgh’s new coordinator for wellness and health promotion wants to take a wholistic approach to student, faculty and staff wellbeing.

Sarah Erno, who joined the staff in the Student Engagement and Leadership at the university in August, said her role is to take a comprehensive approach to wellness and health that focuses on the Eight Dimensions of Wellness — a framework for understanding and pursuing wellness developed in the 1990s by Dr. Peggy Swarbrick.

Swarbrick, associate director of the Center of Alcohol and Substance Use Studies at Rutgers University, created a list of areas that affect wellness:

• Physical
• Intellectual
• Emotional
• Social
• Spiritual
• Occupational
• Financial
• Environmental

“What I love, and think my long term goal is, is to support students and show them how to live a healthy life in college and after as well, absorbing and practicing what they learn while they’re in college so when they leave, it will be part of their daily lives,” Erno said.

As a new face on campus, Erno said her immediate goal is “Just trying to show people who I am through programming we’ve done and are doing,” she said. That programming includes events that work on mindfulness and relaxation sessions “to help students take a break, introducing them to who I am and how I can help them further down the road.”

To do that, she’s been working closely with students to help spread how they can live healthy while at SUNY Plattsburgh.

Anyone Can Benefit

“The Eight Dimensions of Wellness ‘wheel’ breaks it down so that anyone can benefit from the components,” Erno said. “Health and wellness should absolutely be a top priority in all facets of life regardless of what stage you’re at. I’m trying to help shed the stigma of talking about mental health, of talking about not being OK.”

Erno said she wants the campus community to feel seen and heard and “to know we are here to support you,” she said. “And then, once they understand the areas of wellness, we want them to ask how themselves how they can cope with their issues and live their best life.”

She recognizes that reducing stigma associated with mental health “is an uphill battle, but this is one way to do that. Having a wellness coordinator can help. I want to really just help students recognize which part of their lives needs nourishment and then figure out how to implement it.”

Erno said she’s looking forward to working with departments, faculty and organizations on campus to get the word out on what she will be doing, welcoming the opportunity to integrate wellness throughout students’ lives.

New EAP Coordinator

In addition. Erno has also been trained as the campus Employee Assistance Program coordinator where she will act as a resource for employees who may need help with a variety of issues. Although the EAP coordinator is not a counselor, they can meet with employees during office hours to help evaluate employee needs and give them resources on where to find help or answers.

“I don’t keep notes or files; whatever is discussed is 100 percent confidential,” she said. “A large part of the job is listening with follow-up questions and then offering a referral. I want them to know they are heard and seen.”

Erno comes to SUNY Plattsburgh after serving as a New York state COVID Project Helpline staff member, speaking to people about more than just their symptoms from her home in Elmira, N.Y.

“They talked about their loneliness, their isolation,” she said. “We were crisis counselors, not therapists. It was very similar to the EAP role.”

Psychology to Wellness

She had earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology at SUNY Potsdam and enjoyed the clinical aspects of the career, saying she found the COVID helpline spoke to that, but the idea of a career in higher education began to appeal to her.

Erno decided she wanted to return to school to earn a master’s in student affairs and looked at SUNY Plattsburgh’s program. A soccer player from the age of five, Erno had connected with Whitney Frary, Cardinal women’s soccer coach. She found herself in the master’s program here with a grad assistantship with the Global Education Office, was still working the COVID helpline and was offered a position as assistant women’s soccer coach. It was a whirlwind.

"(Frary) called me when I was still living in Elmira but making my plans to come up to Plattsburgh. I told her I couldn't coach that fall because I was going to be a full time grad student, 20 hour a week graduate assistant and 20 hour a week worker for the helpline," she said. "After that fall season, she called me again and asked if I was still interested, which I was, and didn't want to pass up the opportunity to coach at a collegiate level. We've been together since spring 2023. I just finished my third season with the team."

She sees the wellness coordinator position as "a natural segue to come back into wellness,” she said. “It feels very full circle to me. I’m looking forward to this new chapter.”

— Story, Photo by Associate Director of Communications Gerianne Downs