Shelbe Rodriguez:
Welcome to the LU Moment. I’m Shelbe Rodriguez, social media and digital marketing manager here at Lamar University and you guessed it: I am back to host this week’s episode of the LU moment where we showcase all the great events, activities, programs and people that make LU such an amazing place.
(0:17)
Now listen, just last week we hosted our very first LU Red Day. If you remember, Red Day is Lamar University’s inaugural 24-hour celebration of giving that showcases the generosity of the LU community. Faculty, staff, students, alumni, community members and Cardinal fans across the globe, you guys all came together to make this special event happen and final numbers are in. Get ready for this: 475 donors total, 582 gifts and a total of $124,000 raised to support our university, our students, our academic programs. This was an amazing event and you made it happen! We want to take a moment to thank Daniel Cruz. He’s an LU alum and owner of local business: Cruz Events. Daniel, you guys did an awesome job at decorating our Red Day command center. It was so beautiful and Classic Forms and Products, that’s also a local business, you guys created our Red Day t-shirts. That came out fantastic. We want to thank our Red Day volunteers, Juan Zabala who was the VP of the university advancement and Aron Arceneaux for organizing this amazing event, the entire advancement team for their hard work. Also, guys, if you were unable to submit your gift for event, you still have time. You can visit lamar.edu/give and remember, your generosity will provide real-world learning experiences, resources for urgent scholarships and emergency support and also new opportunities for areas of LU that we love, so again, you can still submit your gift any time of the year, any time of the day, guys. That’s lamar.edu/give.
(1:53)
We have some exciting events coming up. Cardinal Boo is back! It is a spooktacular open house and we invite all of our high school seniors to come out. That date is October 30th. Future Cardinals, you guys can come on out and get an inside view of what life is like at LU. You’ll have a chance to interact with current students, meet representatives from our five academic colleges. You can also take a campus tour, see our residence halls. It’s just a great way to kind of picture yourself here at LU. We want to invite you guys out. Again, that is Cardinal Boo, a spooktacular open house on October 30th from 9am-13:20pm. You can visit lamar.edu/visit to register for that event. We hope to see you there, guys.
(2:36)
Another exciting event that we have is homecoming! Homecoming is back in person, baby and it’s better than ever so that date is November 13th. We want to see all of our alumni come out, students, faculty, staff, community members. If you haven’t visited LU in a while, now is the perfect time, come on back home, come on back to the nest. That date is November 13th, homecoming. Buy your red early, get your Cardinal gear, guys. We have a car show planned out, we have our classic parade that’s going to be happening, so many events, we have Cardinal tailgate. It is going to be amazing, so November 13th, be sure to come on out. It’s going to be a Cardinal palooza!
(3:12)
Alright, so we have some news coming up here for LU, some exciting things. LU just ranked among most diverse universities in Texas. U.S. news and world report has ranked Lamar university as the 5th highest on the diverse index among public universities in Texas. That’s big news and we’re in the top 14% among other ranked national institutions. That’s something that we already knew here, but it feels good for it to be put out there into the world. We are ranked 5th highest on the diverse index so that’s exciting there.
(3:43)
Now, guys, listen: we are into the fall semester pretty heavy now and LU is remaining vigilant in tackling and reporting COVID-19 and its variants just to make sure we’re keeping our campus community safe, our learning conditions safe. We always encourage our faculty, staff and students to get your COVID-19 vaccines if you can which are offered free of charge through the Student Health Center. Today, I have with me Shawn Gray. She is the director of the Student Health Center and so Shawn’s going to talk a little about how we plan to continue to keep our cardinal Nation healthy. Shawn, thank you so much for joining me today.
Shawn Gray: (4:20)
Thank you so much! I appreciate the invitation.
Shelbe Rodriguez:
Yes! So, can you tell me: what is your role at the Student Health Center?
Shawn Gray: (4:26)
As the director of the Student Health Center, my role is to be a medical liaison to exec staff and down through, students, faculty, and other staff. We get lots of questions and we want to make sure that safety is our first priority and sometimes you need a medical opinion and that’s where I come in.
Shelbe Rodriguez: (4:49)
That’s you! I love that! I want to ask you for our listeners who may be curious, where is the LU Student Health Center located on campus?
Shawn Gray:
We are located behind the tennis courts behind the tennis courts off of Jimmy Simmons Blvd and right next to the dining hall.
Shelbe Rodriguez:
Alright, pretty quick and easy.
Shawn Gray: (5:11)
Yeah, kind of! We’re behind the library, so we’re a short, flat building, but we’ve got lots of signage up so you can find us.
Shelbe Rodriguez:
That’s right and what about hours of operation?
Shawn Gray: (5:24)
Well, we operate like a medical facility, so Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm. We have medical staff, we have mental health counselors there and we also have health education, so call anytime, usual business hours.
Shelbe Rodriguez:
Now, I have to ask you, we offer services to LIT students, right?
Shawn Gray: (5:47)
Yes, we do. We have three areas like I just talked about. The medical clinic, we operate like a physician’s office, coughs, cold, sniffles, flus, laboratory testing. We have a class D Pharmacy. We have licensed providers, medical physicians, nurse practitioners. I myself am a nurse practitioner as well and nurses for an office staff, so we operate like an everyday physician’s office, so come in. We do physicals, we do immunizations, we have all kinds of stuff. We also do testing for COVID-19, but our services are strictly for students. Now, because of COVID-19, we’ve actually expanded some of the immunizations that we carry specifically the COVID-19 vaccines. We’ve expanded that to faculty and staff for both LU and LIT. We’re really trying to make a concerted effort so that we can keep the community safe.
Shelbe Rodriguez: (6:49)
And those vaccines are free of charge?
Shawn Gray:
Yes, they are, for everyone.
Shelbe Rodriguez:
I love that and they just have to show an ID?
Shawn Gray: (6:57)
Yes, that’s all they need.
Shelbe Rodriguez:
Now, I want to ask you: speaking of COVID-19, we are going into our second year in the pandemic, right?
Shawn Gray:
Isn’t that crazy?
Shelbe Rodriguez: (7:05)
That is insane! When the pandemic initially started, how difficult was it for you and your team to jump in there and adjust and make sure you’ve got what you need to keep us safe?
Shawn Gray: (7:16)
Well, getting the actual vaccines took a little bit because we had to communicate with the state and then there was federal mandates that we were having to juggle and adjust to. I’ve been saying this all along, the medical side, the medical community abroad, we’ve been talking about vaccines and washing your hands and keeping your hands out of your face. We’ve been doing that for years. Specifically, when it came to viral spread like influenza and common cold and things like that, so it wasn’t that big of an adjustment for us. It was just the mask thing was an added piece to it. Man, we singling our same old song, same old dance, wanting to keep everyone safe with following directions, social distancing and washing hands. Once, we got the vaccines in, all of that was just setting up procedures, it wasn’t terrible. One of the hardest things I think we experienced when COVID-19 was when the students left. It was like, how can we can our hands on the students and faculty and staff? Because we want to communicate!
(8:30)
Nurses have been communicators and educators since Florence Nightingale. That’s been our history: we want to educate, we want to empower, we want to make sure that students and people in general can care for themselves so when everybody left, we had to switch to a virtual platform just like everybody else did. Faculty was used to doing that on Blackboard. We just had to make a few adjustments. With that, we set up telehealth and telemedicine appointments. Students could call in and see a provider face to face and we were able to get just a few of them in and tell them what to do and how to do it, here’s some prescriptions and that type of stuff. Mental health, we also set that up which was the telehealth part.
(9:20)
The students were eager to try that. It was a smooth process, it just took a little longer than what we hoped. You know but that’s okay. The whole country was moving a little slower than what they wanted to. We needed it to just flip a switch and be ready to go and it took a little longer than that. Right now, we’ve been operating in this extra safety mode for probably a year and it’s so nice seeing students back on campus because the traffic through the Student Health Center has gone up exponentially. We are really busy and the students are happy to come in. They are excited and so are faculty and staff. We’ve gotten a lot of kudos and thank yous for having the vaccines available and lots of questions.
Shelbe Rodriguez: (10:12)
Yes. Now I want to talk a little bit about mental health you mentioned. You guys were offering counseling before the pandemic, right?
Shawn Gray:
Yes, we do!
Shelbe Rodriguez:
And you still offer that now?
Shawn Gray: (10:21)
We do. We actually expanded our staff with counseling. We’ve added another hourly counselor. We have four. They’re licensed professional counselors and then we have two licensed clinical social workers. They do the same thing, but they are booked solid.
Shelbe Rodriguez:
I can imagine.
Shawn Gray: (10:40)
They have to take care of the pandemic on top of the rise that we have seen in the recent past of mental health issues. It’s been difficult. Mental health is one of those things where as it gets worse lots of times you want to seclude yourself and just throw your covers over your head and stay in bed. Well when you’re told to do that, it just kind of compounds the problem. Getting those students, making a connection, reaching out to them, making it very personal for them through telehealth appointments was a little difficult. Now that they’re able to come and sit with a counselor face to face in a private, confidential setting, man we’re rocking and rolling.
Shelbe Rodriguez: (11:25)
I love that, rocking and rolling! I wanted to talk a little bit more about that because like you said, when we’re told to stay inside and you’re being secluded, I think for a while. You know, when they said social distancing. I think people kind of thought about isolation, you know? I think it’s important to talk about that mental health piece. I want to ask you: how can our campus community continue to stay safe? How can we continue to make sure we’re protecting ourselves?
Shawn Gray: (11:53)
I do believe that the waxing and waning of some of the numbers with the COVID-19 illness. It’ll peak and it’ll go back down. I think that’s directly related to the fall semester starting and large groups of people getting back together. Being outside is certainly better and easier with social distancing, but using a mask when you’re not able to completely social distance if you’re going to large events, a mask is recommended. It’s not mandated, it’s recommended. It’s good to protect yourself and it’s our responsibility to protect me. I need to make sure that I’ve made the choice that satisfies my core belief as well as immunizations, wearing a mask, but I think everybody can do their part as far as washing their hands, sanitizing surfaces when you walk into your office in the morning being cognizant that housekeeping staff is doing everything they possibly can and have been working extra hours in overtime and they’ve made some adjustment and we appreciate what they’ve done, but it’s also our responsibility to make sure that we mask if you want and if you don’t, you know, be educated about the decision you’re making.
Shelbe Rodriguez: (13:19)
Right. If you need a little more information on how we’re keeping our campus community safe guys, you can visit lamar.edu/strongertogether. If you have not already gotten your COVID-19 vaccine, our health center is offering those vaccines each week. What days?
Shawn Gray: (13:34)
Each week. What we want you to do is go to the Student Health Center website and click on a link it will take you to a form to fill out and my staff will contact you and make an appointment with you. They’re usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays just because of the way we have to mix the vaccines and make them available, but we will work with you, we’ll work around your schedule. You come in, you’ll be at the Health Center maybe for 20 or 30 minutes at the most. We’ll give you a card and tell you when to come back for your second vaccine and you’re in and out and made safe.
Shelbe Rodriguez: (14:11)
To make your vaccine appointment or to schedule a counseling appointment, we have all types of resources on the student health center, so that website is lamar.edu/healthcenter. Thank you so much, Shawn for joining me and talking about campus health.
Shawn Gray:
You’re welcome!
Shelbe Rodriguez: (14:28)
You can catch some of our past LU Moment episodes on Spotify. You already know the username, just search Lamar University and also be sure to follow us on social media so you can keep up with how we’re keeping our campus community safe. We’ll be kind of pushing those COVID-19 mitigation tips on our social media sites as well, so just search Lamar University and we’ll be right there for you guys. Again, this is Shelbe Rodriguez, social media and digital marketing manager here at Lamar University, the pride of southeast Texas.