Universities and colleges across the United States are finding that an ever-increasing number of students on their campuses are dealing with a variety of mental health issues, ranging from anxiety and depression to thoughts of suicide.

Recent studies and surveys indicate that nearly 45 percent of college students nationally report symptoms of depression, while almost 40 percent report experiencing anxiety.

Perhaps most concerning – up to 15 percent of college students have contemplated suicide. U.S. campuses report that approximately 1,100 students take their own lives each year, making suicide the second-leading cause of death among that demographic.

Western Carolina University is not immune from this growing mental health crisis. Thanks to a significant financial contribution from a WCU alumna, the university’s Counseling and Psychology Services Center now will be able to increase its evaluation and treatment of students struggling with depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions.

Rebecca Schlosser, a 1973 graduate of WCU and former member of the university’s Board of Trustees, recently made a transformative gift to WCU that will enable the center to greatly enhance its services by expanding access, increasing outreach and strengthening its ability to support student well-being.

“For me personally, mental health awareness came to the forefront when my son began struggling with mental health issues in 2007 and 2008 during his junior and senior year in college,” said Schlosser, a resident of Greensboro.

That son, David Edmond Wesley Schlosser, died unexpectedly at the age of 25, just nine days after graduating from Elon University.

“Students need to feel comfortable receiving mental health services,” Schlosser said. “College campuses should prioritize destigmatizing mental health, offering accessible resources and creating a supportive environment. Many times, mental health issues begin in early adulthood, which falls right during the college years. Dealing with the demands of college can add increased anxiety.”

She and her late husband, Greensboro attorney and former Guilford County District Attorney Michael A. Schlosser, made gifts in 2016 to create the David E. W. Schlosser Endowed Scholarship Fund in their son’s memory to provide support for students with demonstrated financial need in WCU’s Brinson Honors College.

They also agreed that they wanted to do something more to provide much-needed resources to WCU to help the university in its efforts to provide services to students struggling with mental health issues, in part to help parents and other family members avoid the heartache that they endured with the loss of their son.

The Schlossers later updated their financial plans to include a commitment to create an endowment to support the work of WCU’s Counseling and Psychological Services Center, a commitment that was fulfilled earlier this year.

In recognition of the gift establishing a program endowment for the center often referred to as CAPS, the university’s Board of Trustees has approved the facility’s renaming to the Schlosser Family Center for Counseling and Psychological Services.

The Schlosser Family Center for Counseling and Psychological Services has a mission of empowering students to engage in and be successful in a range of academic, social and cultural endeavors through fostering psychological wellness. The center provides individual and group counseling to students on a short-term basis at no cost as well as emergency services when a student is experiencing a mental health crisis. It is located in Suite 225 in the Bird Building and reaches beyond its physical office by offering tele-mental health services and appointments at WCU’s Biltmore Park off-campus instructional site.

Over the past few years, the center has consistently offered more than 7,000 appointments to an average of approximately 1,100 individual students annually, said Kim Gorman, associate vice chancellor for health and wellness.

Despite those numbers, the center has not experienced a significant increase in student usage of its services, which is most likely related to a limit in the ability to serve a larger number of students given current staffing restraints, said Caroline Engler, CAPS director. But the center has seen significant increases over the last three years in the severity and complexity of mental health issues presented by student clients, Engler said.

“Our data is consistent with Center for Collegiate Mental Health data in that we continue to see a rise in reported experiences of history of trauma. Additionally, according to CCMH data, WCU students report more frequent and intense experiences with depression, anxiety, eating concerns and suicidal ideation as compared to the national average,” she said.

“Although our students report higher levels of acuity than the national average, our data also indicates that, with treatment, they report more significant declines in experiences of suicidal ideation and overall distress than the CCMH national averages,” Engler said.

An official naming ceremony for the Schlosser Family Center for Counseling and Psychological Services is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 4. Fittingly, September is National Suicide Prevention Month.

“Renaming CAPS is more than just changing the name,” Rebecca Schlosser said. “I speak also on behalf of my late husband. It was our goal to provide this endowed funding to support WCU’s Counseling and Psychological Services and to help to destigmatize the challenges surrounding mental health. Our family wishes to help shine a bright light of hope along this very difficult pathway,” Rebecca Schlosser said.

“To the students at WCU, if you feel you need mental health support, I encourage you to seek services at the Schlosser Family Center for Counseling and Psychological Services,” she said. “You are not alone.”

The Schlosser contribution will enable the center to greatly increase the level of counseling and other psychological services it offers and improve and expand its training program so that additional providers will be able to more adequately address the growing need for mental health services at WCU.

Numerous factors are playing a role in the rise of mental health issues in the United States in recent years, said Engler.

“There is a trend that individuals who seek treatment at university counseling centers have been engaged in treatment prior to coming to college. This tells us that their distress levels are affecting individuals in middle and high schools,” she said.

The global COVID-19 pandemic is frequently cited as one primary source of the increase in mental health issues among young people, causing uncertainty and fear of the unknown, disrupting social connections and interrupting academic schedules, Engler said.

“However, the pandemic simply intersected with other ongoing social factors including the divisiveness we are seeing in our communities – and in our families. This is having an impact on our sense of community and belongingness, both factors that are essential for good mental health,” she said. “Furthermore, research shows the impact of social media has been problematic and contributing to mental health symptoms. Finally, there is much evidence of the impact of sleep disruption, often caused by excessive cell phone use and gaming, on mental health symptoms for teens.”

The additional services made possible by the Schlosser gift will help a larger number of students receive the mental health services they need to be able to stay enrolled in school and on track to graduate, said Gorman.

A 2023 research project conducted by Gorman and WCU colleague Kathleen Brennan, professor of sociology, found that students who seek help for their mental health issues are more likely to persist in their educational journey.

“We know that our services are helpful for retention of students as demonstrated by our recent study. The results indicate a higher number of counseling sessions was helpful in retention efforts for all students at the university,” Gorman said. “So, this gift is an investment in our students.”

Gorman and Brennan published the results of their study in a paper titled “More Sessions Make a Difference: University Counseling Centers and Student Retention” in the June 2023 edition of the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice.

“We just feel immense gratitude,” Gorman said. “This gift is an incredible acknowledgement of the importance of mental health services at WCU.”

Rebecca Schlosser earned her bachelor’s degree in education. While a student at WCU, she was a member of Delta Zeta sorority, spent four years as a majorette with the marching band, and was a member of both Kappa Delta Pi and Alpha Phi Sigma honor societies. The WCU chapter of Phi Delta Kappa named her Most Outstanding Female Student at WCU her senior year.

After completing her undergraduate studies, she taught at a private all-girls school in New York before returning to school at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, earning her master’s degree in education there in 1983. During her time at UNCG, she met her future husband and helped him start his law firm.

Mike Schlosser was a graduate of Virginia Military Institute and Wake Forest University School of Law. He died in February 2024, 10 years after he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and amyloidosis as a result of his exposure to Agent Orange as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Paratrooper Corps serving a tour in South Vietnam.

Rebecca Schlosser served on the WCU Board of Trustees from 2017 until 2023 and formerly served on the university’s Foundation Board of Directors and Board of Visitors. A member of the Madison Legacy and Cullowhee giving societies, she served on the steering committee for WCU’s previous “Lead the Way” comprehensive fundraising campaign. She is an involved member of the Triad alumni chapter and frequently hosts Triad-area events at her Greensboro home. The Schlossers have been annual donors to WCU since 1990.

The naming of the Schlosser Family Center for Counseling and Psychological Services comes as WCU is in the midst of the public phase of its “Fill the Western Sky” comprehensive fundraising campaign, an effort to raise a minimum of $100 million in philanthropic support for the university’s academic, student engagement and athletics programs.

For more information about the “Fill the Western Sky” campaign or to make a contribution, visit WesternSky.wcu.edu, call 828-227-7124 or email advancement@wcu.edu. 

New scholarship to support students with interest in exploration and travel

A recently established scholarship at Western Carolina University is designed to celebrate the life of a late professor of business law by supporting students who share her passion for travel, teaching, research and helping others.

Stephen Wohlrab, retired associate professor of music at WCU, created the $10,000 Jayne Zanglein Travel Scholarship Fund in September in memory of his wife, who died Feb. 22, 2022, after a six-month battle with brain cancer. The fund will provide $1,000 in annual support to students in good academic standing who have an interest in exploration and travel.

Zanglein taught mediation and law at WCU for 15 years and, as a professor emeritus in the College of Business, wrote “The Girl Explorers: The Untold Story of the Globetrotting Women Who Trekked, Flew and Fought Their Way Around the World.”

“The Girl Explorers” describes the founding of the Society of Women Geographers, an organization of adventurous female world explorers. It examines how members of the society served as early advocates for human rights, paving the way for future women scientists by scaling mountains, sailing the high seas, flying across oceans and recording the world through film, art and literature.

“The women featured in the book proved that women were as capable explorers as men,” Zanglein said of her work. “They broke a barrier so women today can travel and explore without discrimination.”

Jayne Zanglein interacts with students in the classroom.

Establishing the scholarship fund in Zanglein’s memory is designed to enable worthy students to travel as part of their studies at WCU, said Wohlrab, associate professor of music at WCU from 2005 until 2017.

“While Jayne often traveled for research on the book, many times she would travel just to walk in the footsteps of the great women explorers that she was writing about. Sometimes the purpose was just to get a feel for the location, culture and challenges that they had to face,” he said. “Students are welcome to travel for that purpose also, even if there is not a specific research or academic goal.”

Zanglein served as a mediator for more than 30 years and taught mediation at all levels, from community mediation through law school. She founded the North Carolina Agricultural Mediation Program and FARM-VA, Virginia’s state mediation program. Zanglein served as president of Mountain Mediation Services for three years and was on the board of directors for an additional three years.

Recipient of WCU’s University Scholar Award in 2009, she previously served as provost of the National Labor College and as the J. Hadley Edgar Professor of Law at Texas Tech University. Before joining academia, Zanglein headed the employee benefits department at a New York City law firm, where she successfully represented union plans and employees. She had an international reputation on pension plan investments and was recognized as a national expert on employee benefits issues.

Zanglein served on various task forces including New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s Task Force on Pension Fund Investments and the American Bar Association Employee Benefits Committee Task Force on Health Care Reform. She also developed a national trustee education program on behalf of the Center for Working Capital, and worked with South African trustees and the government of Ontario on pension reform. Zanglein was appointed to the N.C. Dispute Resolution Commission as a certified district court mediator on Oct. 1, 2020, a term that was set to expire on Sept. 30, 2023.

She received her bachelor’s degree in music from Berklee College of Music and her law degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She was awarded membership in the Society of Women Geographers on the merits of her book.

Wohlrab, who now lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, previously taught at Lehigh University, Mercer Community College in New Jersey, the College of New Jersey, South Plains College and Texas Tech University. A professional guitarist for more than 30 years, he has performed with national artists such as Sister Sledge, Peaches and Herb, Clay Aiken and Jaco Pastorius.

Wohlrab is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music with a master’s degree in music from the University of Miami. He and Zanglein were married for 41 years and raised two sons.

Potential recipients of the Jayne Zanglein Travel Scholarship will be identified by WCU’s Office of International Programs, subject to the review of the University Scholarship Committee, and must write an essay detailing how they exemplify her legacy of seeking to break barriers to travel and exploration.

To contribute to the fund, contact the WCU Division of Advancement at 828-227-7124 or advancement@wcu.edu, or visit the website give.wcu.edu/zanglein.