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.

Social science degrees lead alumni to business success, planned gifts for ‘Fill the Western Sky’ campaign

By Bill Studenc

For Western Carolina University alumni Robert and Suzanne Thomas, the seeds for two successful careers in international business were planted in the late 1960s and early 1970s during their time as students majoring in social science.

Those blooms that emerged from those seeds would later cross-pollinate into a love for global travel, a passion that is behind the couple’s recent planned gift of $125,000 in support of the Suzanne and Bob Thomas Study Abroad Endowment.

The Thomases also have made a second planned gift of $125,000 in support of Catamount athletics. That gift will be split evenly between athletics facilities improvements, the football program and the men’s golf team.

The planned gifts are part of the recently announced comprehensive “Fill the Western Sky” campaign, an effort to raise $75 million for the university’s academic, student engagement and athletics programs. The university has designated WCU athletics as a major campaign priority and is seeking to secure at least $30 million to help fund athletics facilities upgrades.

Both Thomases, who graduated from WCU with degrees in social science in 1970, point to their time as WCU classmates as critical to setting them on their road to successful business careers – and to their marriage 51 years after graduation.

Before entering the workforce, Bob Thomas fulfilled his military obligation by serving in U.S. Army Military Intelligence as a prisoner-of-war interrogator and translator during the Vietnam era. “This was my first exposure to a culture beyond Western North Carolina and the U.S. It was a life-changing experience,” he said.

After serving in the military for three years, he joined Scott Paper Co., working for more than two decades including an assignment leading the company’s Asian markets. He lived in Hong Kong for four years, and he traveled frequently to the 11 Pacific countries for which he had responsibility.

In a career spanning more than 40 years in business-to-business sales and corporate leadership, he has been president of three companies with responsibility for businesses throughout the U.S. and across Europe and South Africa, giving him exposure to even more cultures. He retired in December 2017.

“I was fortunate to have a career that took me all over the world, and I believe that this type of experience gives an individual a better perspective on their own country – particularly an appreciation for the amazing opportunities we have here,” he said. “If you have ambition, capability and a strong work ethic, you can go far beyond what you may have imagined.”

Like her husband, Suzanne Thomas began working in the business world, including smaller business and corporate environments. She became an entrepreneur, developing a business in the international coffee and tea industries, which included marketing strategies, communications, international speaking engagements, writing and publishing.

“Projects led me to client travel in Europe, South and Central America, Southwest Asia and the Middle East. Collaborative research projects with the U.N. International Trade Center and the Beverage Marketing Corp. provided an opportunity to work with professionals throughout the world,” she said. She later obtained her master’s degree in international business from another institution.

“When I decided to major in social science, I had no idea I was planting a seed that would mature into a tree with limbs growing in many directions. All I knew was I enjoyed the curriculum offered within the social science coursework,” she said. “It wasn’t until much later that social science was identified with five branches of study – anthropology, economics, political science, psychology and sociology. Over the years, I have utilized every branch that makes up the study of social science.”

Those combined experiences in international businesses led to their decision to make a planned gift to help future WCU students follow in their globe-trotting footsteps.

“WCU provided me with an educational foundation on which to build my career,” said Bob Thomas, a member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at WCU. “My world was small when I was at WCU, but I think that the military opened doors for me to think bigger and experience the world. So, if a current student thinks that a global career would be fulfilling or if they want an experience far different from Cullowhee for a semester or two, doing so will change their view of the world in so many ways and create an educational experience that will benefit them for whatever they pursue.”

Active with the Sigma Kappa alumnae group at WCU, Suzanne Thomas also credits her marriage to husband Bob as another major factor in her life’s journey and decision to give to the university’s campaign.

“Bob sat across the aisle from me in many of my social science classes. We finally exchanged glances and started dating our senior year. As fate would have it, Bob was drafted into the Army and I started my first job in Atlanta with the Trust Company of Georgia (now Truist). Bob and I went our separate ways and life happened. It still does,” she said.

“Call it destiny or kismet that Bob and I reunited and married two years ago. Our journey together has brought us back to WCU, serving on the steering committee for ‘Fill the Western Sky.’ As a couple, we wanted to provide students with an opportunity to support their academic and life experiences,” she said.

In addition to enabling student travel-abroad opportunities, the Thomases are providing financial assistance to Catamount athletics.

“We believe that WCU athletics provides wonderful opportunities for talented student-athletes pursuing a quality education while competing at the collegiate level. WCU should be pursuing championships in every sport in which we compete in the Southern Conference. That requires WCU, as well as alumni and friends, to all do our best in providing quality facilities,” Bob Thomas said.

“We live in a very competitive world with our peer group in the Southern Conference and other collegiate competitors in the Southeast. When we benchmark our facilities and resources against that peer group, we have many areas of need,” he said. “The quality and availability of facilities and resources are key inputs into the decision-making process of young potential athletes when choosing where they will chase their dreams.”

Many alumni are unaware that, unlike some other states or WCU’s Southern Conference competitors, North Carolina traditionally has not provided state funding for collegiate athletic departments within the University of North Carolina System, the Thomases said.

“We realize a good athletics program is key to attracting key talent. To help make that happen, we made a commitment to help finance many of the much-needed new facilities,” Suzanne Thomas said. “We want to support students to plant their own seeds and watch them flourish into branches of worlds to be discovered.”

Contributions toward WCU’s men’s golf program stem from Bob Thomas’ interest in the sport. “I’m a golfer – not a very good one – and I would love to see us attract the highest quality players to attend WCU. We need better facilities and resources to do that,” he said. “The success of a talented alumnus like J.T. Poston, now enjoying success on the PGA Tour, demonstrates what is possible.” A 2015 graduate of WCU, Poston is ranked among the top 50 golfers on the Tour.

For both Thomases, the decision to make planned gifts to their alma mater provides an opportunity to give back to the university where they got their starts as business executives and philanthropists.

“Western was a school where it was possible to continue your education without accumulating personal debt, if you were willing to work and contribute to your expenses. I’m afraid that may be out of reach today at most schools, and students with limited resources must seek scholarship aid to pursue their degree,” said Bob Thomas, a first-generation college graduate whose father died when he was 9 years old, resulting in financial challenges for the family.

“Looking back, graduating from school without a debt burden is a valuable gift. I was fortunate to provide that gift to my three children as they attained their undergraduate degrees. I would like to contribute that gift for others.”

He and his first wife – Pam, who died in 2020 – previously established the Bob and Pam Thomas Endowed Scholarship Fund to provide aid to Brinson Honors College students pursuing degrees in business or engineering.

“Suzanne and I are both very proud, humble and fortunate to be able to make gifts to WCU. We realize all alumni may not have the same priority we do to give to WCU. We just hope and encourage alumni and friends to consider making WCU a philanthropic priority at some level because we all want to see our school thrive,” he said.

“Over the last 25 years or so, the landscape for taxpayer support for schools in the UNC System has changed dramatically. Public universities like WCU depend upon more philanthropy from all alumni because of the need to stay competitive academically and athletically,” he said.

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