Michele Skinner, EdD, the Director of Mental Health and Affordability Initiatives at the Texas A&M University System, started her career as an educator. Before joining the A&M system, she worked in elementary education, at a juvenile detention center, and at a junior college.

Her transition to higher education happened largely because of a grant that was focused on principal preparation, an area she knew well. That grant turned into a 16-year career for Dr. Skinner, 13 of which were spent working across the system’s 11 colleges of education and other various initiatives with the last three focusing on mental health and suicide prevention.

The question that guided her work: “What is good practice and how do we get it in front of the people who need it?”

Since transitioning to this new role, Dr. Skinner has found that the question remains the same, but the focus is entirely different. Student mental health, unlike education, is a much broader area of practice, and one that touches every department on campus.

Being an integral part of system-wide change

The A&M System Board of Regents, the Chancellor, and the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs all agreed that the system needed a strategy for addressing and supporting student mental health. Most importantly, they needed someone at the system level who had the expertise to lead the initiative – and Dr. Skinner proved to be the person for the role.

“Mental health wasn’t my world when I was teaching, but I knew it well because of teaching,” said Dr. Skinner, who says she’s “learned more about mental health in the last three years than in the 33 years before it.”

For so long, she was focused on one area of higher ed, but student mental health touches every part of campus, and therefore, every member needs to be informed and educated about student mental health issues.

“A culture of care means everyone on campus is aware, paying attention to what they’re seeing and hearing, and knows how to report a concern. On campuses this size, that’s a lot of people,” Dr. Skinner admits. Preparing everyone to act — from student affairs directors to residential advisors to cafeteria workers — is one of the many challenges she’s focused on solving.

Implementing The Jed Foundation framework

Having spent more than a decade convening multiple colleges of education around the same shared practice, Dr. Skinner knew a system of this size needed the same kind of shared structure for student mental health, but one built around a single caveat: mental health isn’t just a counseling concern.

The Jed Foundation’s four-year strategic framework reflects this same idea – and it’s why multiple institutions within the System have begun to adopt it. Six of the institutions will begin their fourth year of adoption this spring.

The multi-year process of becoming an official JED campus is extensive, but ultimately supports a stronger cross-campus structure of care. To achieve this, each participating institution has designated co-leads from both counseling and academic affairs, plus created a broader task force that includes faculty, staff, veteran affairs, embedded counseling services, and students.

Adopting the framework is one challenge, but making sure it lasts and works effectively is another. Acting as the system liaison, Dr. Skinner shares information between the institutions, holding each one accountable to the model, and providing support as needed.

On her routine campus visits, she’s able to sit in with full committees and subcommittees. “Part of the reason is practical,” she says. “Building rapport is always easier in person,” but part of the reason is to keep these task forces aligned with the framework as a System initiative and not a program that’s run independent of the rest.

Her most valuable contribution, she believes, is sharing solutions between institutions.

“It helps knowing which campus has already solved the problem that another campus is about to start working on,” she says. “Instead of recreating a solution, it’s critical to bring the right people into the room and find the connection.”

Acting proactively to promote student mental wellness

One of Dr. Skinner’s priorities is understanding the real-time student experience, including what’s happening with students who never walk through the counseling center doors. This is why she’s begun implementing student experience surveys, which expand beyond counseling to include residential housing, advising, orientation, and other areas of student services. Collecting information quickly enables her to act.

“We don’t want an end-of-semester change. We want to make changes right now,” says Dr. Skinner.

This sense of urgency extends to the broader goal of shifting from a reactive to a proactive strategy. It’s why she’s asking herself and those around her, “What can campuses do to support wellness before a crisis occurs?”

Many faculty and staff members have asked for more training, more information, and more clarity on what to do with what they’re seeing – something she’s working with her team to solve. But this isn’t the hardest part of the job, nor are the limited staffing or resources.

“It’s the sheer breadth of the work,” says Dr. Skinner.

If she could make one thing happen, it would be to create and give a single tool of support to every student, faculty member, and staff member on day one, which they can use at any time during their campus journey, to address their mental health.

Resources are shared during orientation. Students are repeatedly told about existing mental health tools. But hearing isn’t the same as retaining, and six weeks later, when something is genuinely wrong, students often forget about those resources.

“Some students don’t want to go to counseling, either, or are afraid of it. The window for reaching someone is before they ever need the support,” says Dr. Skinner. “That’s the real challenge.”

Looking ahead, Dr. Skinner is working with the System to prepare a request for proposal that would expand mental health support even further to include virtual psychiatry, medical services, and student success coaching.

Staying motivated and mission-driven

Dr. Skinner recently finished her doctorate in higher education leadership, which she credits with sharpening how she works strategically with institutions. She notes, with some amusement, that she took this role at a point when she could have been thinking about retirement.

“I’ve got work to do,” she says, happy for the challenge. “I’m accomplishing a lot more than I was before, but there’s still so much to do.”

She protects herself the way she’d tell a student to: taking time off, knowing when to put work aside to focus on herself and her family. She could work 24 hours a day, she says, and still not finish the work she needs to finish.

But she’s not alone and she knows it. So many people across the System are working on the same mission and staying connected with them has helped keep her centered in the work.

“Ultimately, I’m here to be an advocate,” says Dr. Skinner. “I’m just a regular person who wants to help students and I know I have the passion and the ability to make a difference.”