Washtenaw Community College is one of just three community colleges in the nation recognized with gold-level status in the Exercise is Medicine On Campus initiative in 2023 for efforts made to create a culture of wellness on campus
One of the top priorities in WCC’s strategic plan is organizational health, which includes the physical and mental well-being of all students, faculty and staff. The college joined EIM-OC to support that priority and earned silver-level status from 2019-22 from the American College of Sports Medicine.
“This is the culmination of many years of individuals across the campus developing and honing activity programs to promote health and wellness,” said Dr. Marvin Boluyt, who developed the Exercise Science program at WCC and is a long-time member of the ACSM. “WCC’s commitment to health and wellness predates our involvement in the recognition program by decades. Achieving the gold-level recognition, however, required that we ‘up our game’ and ask people to take their excellent programs and make them outstanding. This award testifies that those responsible at WCC met that challenge.”
Exercise is Medicine On Campus calls upon colleges and universities to promote physical activity as a vital sign of health. EIM-OC encourages faculty, staff, and students to work together toward improving the health and well-being of the campus community by:
- Making movement a part of the daily campus culture
- Assessing physical activity at every student health visit
- Providing students with the tools necessary to strengthen healthy physical activity habits that can last a lifetime
WCC: TO THE MOON!
A new, major health initiative, WCC: TO THE MOON, helped WCC reach gold-level EIM-OC status. The program is intended to incentivize every WCC student, faculty, and staff member to up their game by increasing either the quantity or the quality of their current exercise habits.
Participants are encouraged to report their exercise activity, not just walking, but all forms of physical activity, on our TO THE MOON web page, and participants will be eligible to compete for the chance to win prizes. One set of prizes is reserved for top performers, so let the competition begin!
A second tier of prizes is reserved for a random drawing in which each participant, regardless of the number of miles or minutes of exercise contributed, will be eligible. The contributions of all participants will be totaled and our progress toward the moon will be reported on the web page. The more individuals that participate in this campus-wide, semester-long event, the more successful it will be.
We’ll celebrate when we reach the moon, where jumping with glee will result in a six-fold increase in our ability to project ourselves skyward!
