What's Happening in the Lab

This winter, three sections of the lab are implementing a total of eight Leadership Lab team-based projects, all addressing our Big Questions, topics ranging from promoting sustainable environmental behavior to fostering wellbeing and Resilience. Several teams have plans to address concerns directly related to the pandemic and are focusing their efforts on projects that help students make remote connections, increase wellbeing on campus, and provide vaccine information to marginalized communities. The achievements and of each participant in the lab are significant and a testament to the acts of leadership playing out on campus and throughout the world. Each team just completed stakeholder interviews and presented their project for peer feedback. Here are their midpoint abstracts, 

Tech and Mental Health Initiative
Team: Adam Erbes, Christian Kassab, Jared Androsiglio, Kavya Chandra, Sarah Salino
The goal of the project is to develop partnerships between the university and wellbeing resources to improve student wellbeing. Their plans are to establish a new partnership with Headspace, expand the existing partnership with Calm, and create a health/wellness roadmap.

Clothing Sustainability
Team: Paul Jokisch, Anna Russo, Alejandra Gallegos-Ordaz, Tatum Kreindler, Mas Razak
The goal of the project is to reduce clothing waste and redistribute clothes that are being circulated around campus to students in need. They hope to partner with student orgs for clothing donations and the Maize and Blue Cupboard for a collection site.

Wellness Incentivization (UMich Integrative Long Term Mental Wellness Solution)
Team: Augustine Vanlianuk, Sukh Sidhu, Abbi Mancuso
The goal of the project is to help students find frameworks to understand the processes they can take to manage their mental health and wellbeing on campus. They would like to create a multichannel distribution for all the mental health resources and content they gather.

Arts + Wellness Toolkits
Team: David Lee, John Slonieski, Josie Graham, Lauren Sharp, Sarah Chung
This group focuses on the arts to help increase wellbeing on campus and with youth through a partnership with the Youth Arts Alliance and building a website that offers resources and activities. The group is applying for grants to donate $1500 to Youth Arts Alliance (YAA) which will help to purchase art supplies for youth artists to participate in their programming. The team will also receive 50 zine toolkits to give out to undergraduates during finals week. The toolkits will include YAA information, resources on art exercises, wellness practices, and art resources/opportunities across campus.

Michigan Pre-Campus Connector
Team: Caitlyn Jacobs, Julia Maloney, Ananya Mangla, Ola Grudzien
The goals of this project are to provide freshmen with their first friendships group, study groups, and roommate, based on their majors, hobbies, interests, and lifestyle. `

wellnesswolverines
Team: Blair Fields, Gemma Price, Rachel Glickman, Drue Daley
This team is interested in addressing student anxiety and mental health in light of the pandemic by providing well-rounded resources to address these topics. They will create an easy-to-follow Instagram account that includes relevant information that can guide people to resources available such as campus resources, daily activities, tips, and anonymous posts from students sharing their coping mechanisms.

Vaccine Outreach Project
Team: Delasi Denoo, Tara Petersen, Esau Delgado, Gurish Sharma, Amanda Putti
The goal of the project is to provide an avenue for marginalized communities in Detroit to access COVID-19 vaccine information including, how the vaccine works, eligibility and how to get an appointment, what to expect after being fully vaccinated.

Foodies Team: Reducing Food Waste
Team: Saniya Shahid, Megan Shen, Lydia Miller
The team's goal is to reduce the amount of food waste that is produced by restaurants in Ann Arbor. They plan to do so by bringing the app “Too Good To Go” to Ann Arbor. Too Good To Go works with restaurants to sell perishable food to people for half off at the end of the day.