Maintain your

Well-Being

Dr. Mari Ross always dreamt of working in administration at Charlotte. Finally, after working at Tennessee State and NC Central University she was given the opportunity (in the middle of a pandemic) to be Charlotte's newest Vice Chancellor of Health and Well-being. She embarked on this new role in August of 2021. With a year of experience under her belt, Dr. Ross offers an insightful perspective on the responsibilities of the Center for Psychological services and other campus resources.

Q: How has your experience as AVC of Student Affairs at UNCC compared to other institutions? 

A: Oh, great question. Those other institutions were what I define as high touch schools, meaning that I had lots of contact with students, lots of contact with faculty and staff. And here is a little bit more diffused. It's not as high contact, as high touch. So that's a difference. We have a much larger campus. I came from Central, which had 8,100 students to 30 thousand so epically different. But you know, it's a different experience, but still, it's a good one.

Q: Do you have a plan as to how students can navigate or utilize CAPS resources and make them more accessible?

A: We have a social media campaign that's launching around how to best engage with caps, but we're also removing caps beyond the four walls of the building and doing a lot more outreach, a lot more groups and workshops in other spaces on campus so that those folks who had never walk onto the edge of campus where we're located now could still get some care. And then that virtual space that we all learned about in the pandemic, we're exploring or not exploring but I guess we're expanding that services, those services so that you don't have to leave your own room sometimes if you need to get some care.

Q: How effective do you think that CAPS has been at supporting the wellbeing of students as it is?

A: I'm biased because CAPS is one of my departments. However, I really do think CAPS has done a great job of supporting students. Now, that doesn't mean we've always done it the best way or the most efficient way, but actually, being accessible and available, they have definitely gone above and beyond and now it's time to refine what we're doing.So now we're getting better at understanding exactly what our students need.