If you have a planned absence this semester, don’t cancel class! Instead, invite the Student Health and Wellness Center (SHAW) to present a wellness program to your students!
“Don’t Cancel Class” is a new initiative that helps faculty and instructional staff to support student well-being, right in the classroom. Instead of canceling a class due to a planned absence or as part of your course design, you can schedule a wellness-focused session led by the Student Health and Wellness Center’s Health Promotion and Advocacy Team.
This team of public health professionals, a trained victim advocate, Peer Health Educators, and graduate Program Assistants offers a diverse menu of workshops, discussions, and trainings. Topics include stress management, sleep, nutrition and body image, healthy relationships, and overall wellness, each designed to equip students with tools to thrive both personally and academically.
Why Don’t Cancel Class?
Why participate? Because student well-being matters. According to the 2024 UWM National College Health Assessment, nearly half (49.10%) of students surveyed did not feel their health and well-being were a priority at their university. By choosing “Don’t Cancel Class” and engaging in the nation-wide best practice, you’re sending a powerful message: that your students’ health is just as important as their academic success.
When students feel supported and well, they’re more engaged, focused, and successful. Let’s turn every planned missed class into an opportunity to foster resilience, connection, and achievement.
Available Programs
SHAW offers a variety of wellness programs that help you develop healthy habits for personal well-being and skills for contributing to a healthier campus community. Click on the topic areas below to find a program that suits your needs.
De-stress, not Distress
🕐 50 Minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Student/Professional Staff
Description: Let’s take a break! As busy college students, experiencing stress is common. The impact of ongoing or unresolved stress can lead to feelings of anxiety, depression, irritability, poor concentration, physical illness, fatigue, and sleep difficulties. In this workshop, we will discuss the stressors in our lives, reflect on the tools and strategies we currently use to cope and take care of ourselves, and explore new ways to proactively manage stress.
Managing Anxiety
🕐 50 Minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Professional Staff/Graduate Student Staff
Description: Learn skills to manage your anxiety so that you can feel better quickly! We will teach box breathing, mindfulness, meditation, grounding techniques, and progressive muscle relaxation to help you get control of your body and mind when anxiety has a hold of you! Also, learn about the latest neuropsychology on how the brain works when you are anxious and ways to pull it out of fight or flight mode to regain control of your life.
Unhooking from Imposter Syndrome
🕐 50 Minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Professional Staff/Graduate Student Staff
Description: Do you feel like a fake or phony? Do you have a hard time taking credit for your successes, or do you constantly worry you won’t live up to expectations? Are you an overachiever, or do you sabotage your own success? If any of these apply to you, you may be experiencing what’s known as the impostor phenomenon. Learn more about how this sneaky self-doubt hooks you, reels you in, and beats you up, and how you can unhook from it in order to put your time and energy into doing what really matters to you.
You Can Help! Prevent Suicide
🕐 75-90 Minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Professional Staff/Graduate Student Staff
Description: You Can Help!: Prevent Suicide is a bystander intervention program that enables students to help fellow students in emotional distress. Through this program, students will:
- become familiar with some basic facts related to college student mental health,
- understand the warning signs of emotional distress and suicide,
- be prepared to support someone in emotional distress in crisis,
- learn how to refer fellow students to the appropriate resources, and
- understand strategies for increasing resiliency and engaging in self-care
Sleep on It
🕐 50 minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Professional Staff
Difficulty sleeping? Daytime sleepiness? As a college student, getting quality sleep can be tough. Sleep is essential to academic performance, physical, and emotional health. In this workshop, you can expect to learn about ‘sleep hygiene’ — daily behaviors that can improve the quality of sleep. You’ll complete a brief survey to assess your current sleep hygiene, identify your sleep goals, and create a tailor-made plan for things you can start doing right away to help yourself sleep better. You’ll be on your way to maximizing all the benefits of a good night’s sleep!
Eating On a Time Crunch
🕐 40 minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Student Staff
Description: Finding time to cook and eat nutritious foods as a busy college student is hard! In this workshop, we’ll discuss tips for sneaking in nutritious foods during a busy schedule, tips for meal prepping, and packing lunches. By the end of it, you’ll also have made your own recipe book!
You Can Help! Stop Overdose
🕐 50-90 minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Professional Staff
To learn more about how to help in an overdose situation, participate in You Can Help! Prevent Overdose, a bystander intervention training that encourages students to help others in unsafe alcohol- or other drug-related situations. Participants learn important information and process realistic situations to enhance the skills, confidence and empathy necessary to respond quickly and effectively when someone may be overdosing.
Boundaries: Building the Foundation
🕐 50 minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Student Staff
Clearly communicated boundaries is an important component of any relationship. Learn about how you can clearly and concisely set boundaries and practice communicating them in this low-stakes environment.
Boundaries: Revising the Blueprint
🕐 50 Minutes
Facilitator: Professional Staff
Audience: Students
Description: This presentation builds upon the skills learned in Boundaries: Building a Foundation. We will dive deep and expand understanding of boundaries. By the end, participants will have a deeper understanding of the different types of boundaries, common barriers to boundaries, how to make a boundary most effective, and steps to take if you see a boundary being violated. This workshop will help participants feel confident saying yes, no, and everything in between.
Consent: Sweet as Candy
🕐 50 Minutes
Facilitator: Professional Staff
Audience: Students
This workshop emphasizes the importance of communication in consensual situations. Through interactive demonstrations, we will highlight the impact that open, direct, and consistent communication can have when seeking or giving consent. Participants will leave this program with increased confidence in understanding consent, and something to satisfy their sweet tooth!
Swipe Safely
🕐 50 minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Student Staff
Description: In this program, we’ll explore safety features and tips to keep yourself safe on dating apps, and we’ll practice “swiping” on fake dating profiles.
You Can Help!: Prevent Sexual and Relationship Violence
🕐 75-90 minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Professional Staff
With this You Can Help! bystander intervention training, participants will learn the important role they can play as active bystanders in preventing sexual and relationship violence by learning safe and effective ways to intervene. Participants will learn how to identify potentially harmful situations, understand behaviors and attitudes that contribute to a culture of violence, and practice new intervention techniques.
SMART Goals and Vision Boards
🕐 1 hour
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Student Staff
Description: Are you in a period of transition? Are you working toward a particular goal? Maybe you have big dreams, but you don’t know where to start. In this program, we will walk you through how to set SMART goals, how to break down big dreams into more manageable and attainable goals, and create a vision board as a reminder of where you are headed!
How to Help a Friend
🕐 30 minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Professional Staff
How to Help a Friend is a brief training about how you can respond to a friend who discloses they experienced sexual violence and what you can do to help them. This training is great for students who want some tips in case of a disclosure from a friend, family member, acquaintance, or colleague.
What is Victim Advocacy?
🕐 30-45 minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Professional Staff
This Victim Advocacy training explores the different types of victim advocates who serve survivors of domestic and relationship violence, stalking, and human trafficking and explains the role of the Survivor Support and Victim Advocate on campus. A great presentation for students learning about advocacy and professional staff interested in how advocacy services can help students.
Short Overview
🕐 20-25 minutes
Audience: Students
Facilitator: Professional Staff
The Student Health and Wellness Center’s short overviews are great options for student groups and new student seminar classes. These overviews encompass all that SHAW offers, including medical, mental health, advocacy and health promotion services; personnel; and eligibility.