“Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.”
— Bill Clinton
There are many things that make Ohlone College a special place for students to connect, learn, and succeed: A unique setting. Bountiful infrastructure. Gifted faculty members and staff. But perhaps what really sets Ohlone apart is its commitment to its most precious resource: YOU.
At STEP Up Ohlone (and the Student Health Center), we believe that if you, a member of Ohlone’s diverse and talented student body, feel supported, valued, and socially connected, you will be far more likely to succeed — not only in your classes, but in your life!
Since 2012, the STEP Up Ohlone program has been promoting student mental health, working diligently to prevent suicide, and to reduce the stigma and discrimination around these very human issues. We’ve organized campus walks, promoted health screenings, developed protocols around crisis intervention (that the college has adopted), identified and celebrated caring and compassionate faculty/staff partners, and shared with you valuable resources such as Kognito, and Text, Talk, Act. And it has been our honor to do so. We firmly believe that we are a community, that vulnerability is actually a strength, and that there is no shame whatsoever in asking for help when you need it. It’s called being a human being.
Within these web pages, we hope you will find vital resources, links for services, interesting information, helpful articles, and the very latest on campus events you need to know about. We have created this site to bolster the campus’ social connectedness and to further establish the caring community which already exists here at Ohlone.
In a nutshell, we hope this site demonstrates that…
We’ve got your back,
The STEP Up Ohlone Team
Left to right: Janet Quijas, Rosemary O’Neill, Catherine Hayes, Jessica Lopez, Sang Leng Trieu
