About Us
May 30, 2024
Author: Lisa Lopez Snyder
In January 2024, The Ohio State University School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (HRS) opened the HRS Student Resource Center, which provides free, nonperishable items to students who experience financial challenges in purchasing food and personal care items important to their well-being and success in school.
Shelves are filled with items as canned food, dry pasta and beans and rice, and hygiene products. The offerings can lift a huge weight off the shoulders of students for whom the financial stresses and other life challenges create a barrier to their education,” says Marcia Nahikian-Nelms, PhD, RDN, LD, director of Academic Affairs and clinical professor in the school.
“Increased student food insecurity is a significant concern, so the HRS Student Resource Center has been a much-used resource since it opened,” she says.
The resource center has been a welcome relief particularly among students who received SNAP benefits, which have been cut. In fact, many students who had been on SNAP reported they would have been able to afford only one meal a day if it wasn’t for the resource center, she says.
“There are other resources on campus like the Buckeye Food Alliance, and we have information in the HRS Student Resource Center about the other places students can go to,” she says, “but we wanted something that was easily accessible to our students within our building, particularly since we are on the edge of the medical campus.”
The HRS Student Resource Center is located on the south end of the second floor of Atwell and operates on a drop-in basis Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. – 4 p.m.
A gift of $10,000 from a generous alumni couple allowed the school to purchase nonperishable food.
“From my perspective, the resource center is one of our great additions to student support in HRS,” says HRS Director Amy Darragh, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA.
“When we were able to generate support from our donors and champions and found the space for it, we moved forward really quickly with opening it,” she says. “I’m incredibly proud of all our faculty and staff for creating a space for our students to access these kinds of supplies and which will support their academic success and health and well-being.”
Students who are forced to make choices between food, medication, transportation or buying books are experiencing on barriers to academic success, Darragh says. “That’s why we feel we had to look holistically and try and support them across these many challenges.”
The Student Resource Center is a derivative of HRS CARES (Compassion, Attitude, Rest, Embrace, Self-Kindness), an initiative that provides programming and resources to support faculty, students and staff.
Future plans include having student groups involved in operating the resource center and offering expanded office supplies, developing an inventory system and creating a career closet to support students who are interviewing for jobs.
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