Making space for wellbeing

“Maintaining wellness and balance is central to my own professional and personal lifestyle, and it is clear this community is invested in wellbeing,” says Roman Isler. “Thrive is a grass-roots initiative, and there are already wonderful ideas bubbling up from our students.”

For example, senior business major Jake Teitelbaum wants to make fresh food more easily accessable to faculty, staff and students. He launched the Fresh Food Network where Wake Foresters can place orders for local, organic food and have it delivered to campus for pickup.

“Students are already developing partnerships with our office, and in 2015, we plan to launch a wellbeing ambassadors program to extend the network of people thinking and talking about how to improve wellbeing.”

Though physical fitness is an important aspect of wellbeing, it is only one of the eight dimensions of health to explore with Thrive — others are intellectual, environmental, emotional, spiritual, occupational, social and financial.

“Wake Forest wants to help people think beyond physicality to how all these dimensions can work together to help us live meaningful and purposeful lives,” Roman Isler says.

To learn more, check out the stories below to see how Wake Forest has made wellbeing a priority in 2014 and what’s ahead for 2015.