What brought you to Oberlin?

My dad’s an alum, so we came to Oberlin back in ’67. So we were here as little tikes. We lived across the street from Wilder Hall. And then I left and then I came back, and then I left and then I came back.

Where did you go?

I lived in Boston for awhile, I lived in Penn for awhile, I lived in other parts of Ohio for a while, lived in Maine — very transient — but I’ve been here 15 years now. But it doesn’t mean I won’t leave and come back.

What made you stay at Oberlin?

I love the small-town, for the most part, and the College. I think Oberlin College’s founding mission is a match for how I would like to live my life and raise my children: tolerance, diversity, compassion and exploration.

How do you see that manifested in work?

One of the things that I’m attracted to about working in college health education is honoring the whole student, the mind/body/spirit, seeing the student as more than what happens in the classroom.

What have you found most rewarding about your work?

First of all, the relationships that I’ve had with students — I’ve learned as much from them as they have from me. Yeah, the students, they’re fantastic — especially the students who are interested in what I’m interested in — whether it is the AIDS crisis, global health, how to stay emotionally well in a stressful environment or how to sit with our mistakes and get up and try again.

How would you differentiate your work from that of Student Health?
Student Health provides care for sick students. The Wellness Center is a lot about what students need, and driven by student need, and [it’s] supporting, and it’s new, it’s an infant, this is only our fifth year.

How has the Wellness Center changed during your tenure?

We’re still trying to define ourselves, but our focus is a little bit more narrow now, for the time being, for important topics — sexual violence prevention. The number one crime on college campuses is sexual assault. Yeah, we’re stressed, we’re tired, we’re partying too hard, but we have some important work to focus on right now, and that being decreasing sexual violence and providing real support.
Like, for example, there are Nord Rape Crisis Center counselors sitting there every Tuesday from 11 to 3 in room 314 Wilder. … I think that’s a huge bonus that local, non-profit professionals are now available on campus for students who need that support. It broadens their choices of support. It’s just another option for people.

Has this focus on sexual assault limited your ability to work on other issues?

Yes, but there are a lot of both professional staff, faculty and students who are working on some of these other areas. We have a campus nutritionist, we have a counseling staff, we have Bill Stackman doing leadership stuff. There’s SIC.

Was this what you imagined your job to be? How did you end up in health education?

Health education in K through 12 is often sorely lacking. I think even as a high school student I thought, how could I make decisions if I don’t have all the information? I started in rape prevention and then women’s health education. In sexuality education, there seems to be American cultural resistance. It’s just denial, denial, denial. I’m just a firm believer in people needing all the information to make good decisions. And what’s fascinating is even if you have the information, we still don’t make decisions that are healthy and good for us all the time.

Why do you think that is?

It’s a lot of different psychological social dynamics. For me, we have to learn to slow down and sit with the real feelings that come up with less than ideal personal choices, and that’s really difficult. Here’s my motto — this is at my dentist’s office. It says, “When the pain of staying stuck becomes greater than the pain of change, then change will happen.”

What bums you out?

What bums me out sometimes is the lack of resources available in my field at Oberlin to do real meaningful work. It was hard this semester — I lost my assistant.

Interview conducted by News Editor John Byrne.