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. 

School of Nursing receives $2.1 million boost to launch Conway Scholars initiative

By Bill Studenc

The Western Carolina University School of Nursing is the recipient of a $2 million contribution from the Bedford Falls Foundation-DAF (“Bedford Falls”) that will provide scholarship support to undergraduate nursing students and enable the hiring of additional faculty to guide them in their clinical experiences.

Bedford Falls, a donor-advised fund that supports a wide range of charitable and educational causes in the eastern U.S., also made an additional $100,000 contribution to WCU’s School of Nursing in memory of philanthropist Joanne Conway, who established Bedford Falls along with husband William “Bill” Conway.

She died Jan. 8, just two weeks after the signing of the gift agreement establishing the Joanne and William Conway Nursing Scholarship at WCU. Scholarship recipients will be known as Conway Scholars.

The $2.1 million total contribution from Bedford Falls represents the single largest donation in the history of WCU’s College of Health and Human Sciences and its School of Nursing, said Lori Anderson, dean of the college. “Western Carolina University is honored to be a recipient of this support and greatly appreciates the philanthropic gift that the Conways have provided,” Anderson said.

“This gift marks a milestone in our commitment to advancing health care education and underscores the generous support of our community partners. This generous gift is transformative and will have a profound impact on our students by significantly reducing financial barriers and allowing them to focus more intently on their studies and clinical training. The scholarship support made possible by this gift will alleviate the burden of educational expenses, promoting more equitable access to nursing education.”

Anderson called the contribution not just an investment in WCU’s School of Nursing, but also an investment in the health and well-being of people across the Western North Carolina region.

“This generous gift will affect students, their families and the patients they will someday serve. It represents a forward-thinking approach to health care education and a commitment to addressing some of the most-pressing challenges in our health care system,” she said. “We are immensely grateful for this support and excited about the positive changes it will bring to our students, the college and the broader region.”

The Bedford Falls contributions to WCU are part of an ongoing effort to help provide more access to nursing education and solve a shortage of qualified nurses, Bill Conway said.

“Joanne was passionate about helping people improve their own lives and their communities,” he said. “We were first attracted to WCU because of its reputation for providing high-quality nursing education to the WNC region, which, like many areas of the country, is facing a critical nursing shortage. However, it was hearing the stories of students struggling to balance work and school that deeply moved Joanne and inspired us to action to help.”

The contribution from Bedford Falls will help WCU combat the economic challenges and educational barriers that limit the nursing pipeline of local individuals from communities throughout WNC and reduce workforce diversity and the availability of culturally competent care, said Terri Durbin, director of the School of Nursing.

“Culturally sensitive care is critical to fostering trust and improving health outcomes, yet the need for nurses from or familiar with these communities hinders effective communication and trust-building,” Durbin said. “Addressing the nursing shortage in Appalachian and Indigenous communities requires targeted interventions, including investments in nursing education, support for nursing students from these backgrounds and enhancements to health care infrastructure.”

The gifts have already begun providing financial support to students in both traditional and accelerated bachelor’s degree programs in nursing and will do so through 2027. The average annual award to Conway Scholars is $2,000 for students in WCU’s traditional bachelor’s degree program and $1,250 for those in the accelerated track who have bachelor’s degrees from regionally accredited colleges or universities and are looking to pursue a career in nursing.

More than 15 percent of students in the WCU School of Nursing receive federal Pell Grant support, which is one indicator of financial need but does not reflect all students who have financial need.

With the Bedford Falls gift, the School of Nursing can more than quadruple the number of scholarships awarded and has already more than doubled the total amount of scholarship support for students in the first semester of awards. Every WCU student who is trying to become a nurse is receiving financial support.

Among the inaugural Conway Scholars is Jennifer Chung, a junior from Arden who entered the accelerated nursing tract last year and who called the scholarship “a true godsend.”

“I was a CPA but decided to go back to school to study nursing so I can make a tangible difference in people’s lives,” Chung said. “This donation allows me to focus on training to be a competent nurse and not worry about whether I can make my next tuition payment.”

Asheville resident Cameron Klemmons is another second-year nursing student at WCU who is changing her career path through the accelerated program as a Conway Scholar.

“I received my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work and worked as a social worker for about seven years prior to starting in the ABSN program,” Klemmons said. “The scholarship was greatly appreciated as it helped to take some of the financial burden in regard to the cost of tuition off of my family.”

The Bedford Falls contributions also will provide additional resources to hire part-time and adjunct clinical faculty for continued expansion of enrollment both in Cullowhee and at WCU’s off-campus instructional site at Biltmore Park in Asheville. The gifts come at a critical time for the nursing program at WCU and the profession in general, said Durbin.

“Expanding our faculty is crucial for maintaining high-quality education and mentorship, enabling us to accommodate more students and enhance our program offerings,” she said. “The nursing shortage is a pressing issue both regionally and nationally.”

Recent studies reveal that the country is facing a significant shortfall of registered nurses and forecast that tens of thousands of nursing positions will still need to be filled in the coming years. Adding to the nursing shortage is a growing population of aging adults who require more health care services.

“Our initiative aims to mitigate this shortage by preparing more qualified nurses to enter the workforce. The nursing shortage in the United States significantly hampers health care delivery, with pronounced effects in Appalachian and Indigenous communities in Western North Carolina,” Durbin said. “These regions face substantial barriers to accessing health care services due to the limited availability of facilities and professionals, further aggravated by the nursing shortage.”

Because of the nursing shortage, patients are experiencing fewer health care services, longer wait times and potentially lower quality of care, reducing positive health outcomes and increasing disparities in these underserved populations, she said.

Bill Conway is co-founder of the Carlyle Group, a multinational private equity, alternative asset management and financial services corporation. Joanne Conway was CEO/owner of the Golden Door, a renowned health and wellness resort. She was initially inspired to support nursing students after a waitress at one of her favorite restaurants described the difficulties of being able to afford to go to nursing school.

The Conways, individually and through Bedford Falls and other philanthropic vehicles, have given or committed nearly $400 million to charitable organizations in the mid-Atlantic region, including 15 schools of nursing.

“I know that our School of Nursing in our College of Health and Human Sciences will embody Joanne’s mission to empower individuals with skills and opportunities that lead to fulfilling employment,” WCU Chancellor Kelli R. Brown said. “We share her passion for and belief in the ability of education to transform lives. I feel buoyed by the knowledge that we will play some small part in helping carry out Joanne’s work and legacy.”

WCU established nursing education in 1969 to help meet a regional need for professional nurses, with the first bachelor’s degrees in nursing presented in 1973. Enrollment in the program remains strong, with a competitive applicant pool greater than the number of available seats for admission. First-time nursing licensure pass rates are at or near 100%, making WCU graduates highly employable, Anderson said.

The Bedford Falls gift comes as part of WCU’s “Fill the Western Sky” comprehensive fundraising campaign, an effort to raise $75 million for the university’s academic, student engagement and athletics programs. For more information or to make a contribution to the campaign, visit WesternSky.wcu.edu, call 828-227-7124 or email advancement@wcu.edu.