By Lynn Lipinski
“I’m Dr. Kelly Greco. Congratulations on starting this personal and professional journey at Annenberg and USC.” At USC Annenberg, students’ mental health is on the agenda from day one — literally — with their embedded counselor welcoming the school’s newest members during orientation.
Studies show that students’ sense of belonging helps advance their success and well-being in college. According to a recent report, meaningful engagement with mental health services staff is among the most effective ways higher-ed institutions can help foster that belonging in and out the classroom.
By embedding a dedicated mental health counselor within its community, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism has taken such proactive steps to create and sustain an environment where its students can thrive as individuals and together.
Dr. Kelly Greco, a member of USC Student Health‘s clinical counseling and mental health team, joined USC Annenberg in fall 2022 to bring her expertise and compassionate perspective to daily campus life, whether it’s through one-on-one sessions with students or leading a workshop with faculty and staff.
Integrating Mental Health and Academics at USC Annenberg
At USC Annenberg, however, Greco’s work goes beyond the clinical. In addition to orientation, she speaks to parents during Trojan Family Weekend and leads sessions for faculty to help them manage times of high stress in their classrooms. The school also regularly features Greco in their communications, including emails, newsletters and a social media video series aimed at relieving student stress during finals.
“We recognize how important it is for us to prioritize students’ mental health and emotional well-being,” USC Annenberg Dean Willow Bay said. “Our decision to have Dr. Greco on-site has been instrumental in elevating mental health as a regular part of our discussions and the way we approach everything that we do.”
Having an on-site mental health professional at USC Annenberg and other schools and centers aligns with efforts championed within the USC Well-being Collective. With four strategic goals — equity and inclusion, resilience and thriving, consent and healthy relationships, and disrupting alcohol and other substance misuse — the common agenda of the Collective is to strengthen a positive and holistic campus culture at individual and policy levels.
The embedded counselor model at USC began a few years ago, based on data from the 2020 Student Index Survey (SWIS), which identified students at the highest risk and lowest utilization of services. Initially, the embedded counselor program focused efforts on population-specific student populations, such as Asian Pacific, Black/African American, First Generation, Latinx, and LGBTQ+. It has since expanded as a model in the academic schools, like USC Annenberg.
The schools have formal partnerships with USC Student Health, with the schools providing space and tech support while USC Student Health provides a dedicated therapist — a Counseling and Mental Health professional who is also on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences in the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
“Through the ups and downs, I’m here to help foster a culture that intertwines academic life and mental health principles,” Greco said. ‘There’s a saying I really like: Life is full of setbacks, and success is determined by how you handle those setbacks.’”
Greco emphasizes the continuous learning process: “Every day we know as Trojans we have to learn to fight on. But fighting on is something we learn on a daily basis, understanding how we react to stress and what we can do to control it.”
A Replicable Model
For other USC schools and units considering the embedded counselor model, the USC Well-being Collective advises starting with identifying the community’s unique needs and challenges. Collaboration among various stakeholders to create a more supportive and well-rounded learning environment for students is also key.
“From promoting mental health check-ins with students to encouraging faculty to participate in mental health training, Dr. Greco’s contributions play a pivotal role in nurturing a supportive and thriving academic environment,” Bay said. “We’re committed to equipping our students, faculty, and staff with the tools to take action, build resilience, and enact meaningful transformation.”
A guide on how to have a successful embedded counselor is available from USC Student Health. [INCLUDE LINK TO GUIDE]