Leadership Action Project

By: Aaron Parker, Emily McLeod, Jack Dowless, & Zack Thorpe
What was done?
◦ This was a project with two main objectives
◦ To give awareness to those who struggle with
mental illness and personal issues
◦ To give thanks to those within the Counseling
and Phycological services for all the hard work
they do
◦ Why look to these things?
◦ Recognize that everyone struggles with various things in
life, whether it be physical, emotional, or mental. Taking
time to tell people there are those who can help them
with anything they might be going through
◦ To recognize and give thanks to those who give their
time to everyone on campus who needs them.
◦ The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention lists
suicide as the leading cause of death in college students.
How did we come up with the idea?

◦ We talked about a few different ideas at first.

◦ The mental health idea came about due to events on campus the previous
week
◦ We decided that mental health issues and awareness that CAPS is on campus
to help is important.
The Event Itself
◦ The Setup
◦ We set up a table out in the UC lawn with 8 thank
you cards and asked people to sign them and tell
them about who they were for
◦ The main phrase said was (if they said yes to signing
a card), "CAPS, the Counseling and Phycological
services that are located here on campus in the
Bird Building. They've done so much for us with the
current events of this semester and we just want to
say "thank you" for all that they've done."
◦ The Response
◦ Many who came to sign cards was not aware of the
CAPS services that are on campus. However, after
being told, many were very empathetic and some
asked if there was more they could do.
◦ Some knew who they were and some of those
people used the CAPS services and were very
thankful for it. I (Aaron) even had one person stick
around and tell others about what great people
they have working in CAPS.
◦ Overall, the response was great!
What did we learn from this project?
Aaron – I had a replay of a lesson that I learned in
previous years. The first is that you must always
live with a life of gratitude as a happy and satisfied
life is a life of gratitude. Like one guy who stopped
by the table, he was very thankful for all that CAPs
has done and wanted others who need help to
experience that same help.
Emily – I was surprised to learn that there were
students who didn't know that CAPS existed on
campus. My biggest takeaway from all of our group
projects is that group work is not as scary as I
always thought!
◦ Jack – I was excited to hear people talk about
CAPS and get behind this.The minute we
mentioned CAPS some students jumped at the
opportunity to sign and some took the time to
sign every card. It was nice to see that CAPS has
changed people lives for the better.
◦ Zack - My biggest take away from this project
was seeing how many people already knew what
CAPS was. We even had one girl that once we
told her what we were doing she stopped and
said "oh I need to say thank you then for all they
help they have given me" and she had her friends
sign too.
Social Change Model
◦ Consciousness of self – we were all very aware of the mental health problems and stress that college
students deal with daily. Mental Health is something that we were all very passionate about in talking
about our project.
◦ Collaboration – Our group worked very well in planning and keeping the other members excited about
the project. Not everyone could be there at the same time, but we worked out a schedule and each
contributed in some way!
◦ Commitment- We all committed to the times that we were assigned we stuck to them. Emily went out
and bought the cards and brought the pens and the rest of us set up the table and went out for 3 hours
and took shifts.

◦ Common Purpose- We all shared a vision to bring CAPS into conversations with students. We all talked
to people that day and explained what CAPS was and how they can help them with their mental health.
We all just wanted to let students know that someone was on their side ready to listen.
The Outcome

◦ Many students learned that Counseling and Psychological Services is available

on campus.
◦ Aaron took the signed cards to CAPS and told them thank you for their
services and that the cards were from students on campus who wanted to
thank them as well. It brought out a very emotional response from the
counselors.
◦ Overall, we think that we increased awareness on some level, even if just one
person learned CAPS is available and uses their services, we've helped
someone.
Next Steps
◦ We would change the time and location of the event. The UC lawn was good but the cafeteria around
lunchtime would be even better.
◦ We would spend more time making signage with statistics on college students and mental health to
bring awareness.
◦ We could also schedule a counselor from CAPS to attend the event so they could have a presence.
◦ We probably should have had a huge poster that stated what exactly we were doing.