Trinity Launches Four-Year JED Campus Journey to Strengthen Student Well-being

Yesterday, faculty and staff gathered in the Fiesta Room for the semester’s Student Success Conversation to kick off Trinity’s new, campus-wide partnership with The Jed Foundation (JED). Over pizza and conversation, Academic Affairs and Student Affairs introduced JED Campus as the first in a series of touchpoints that will guide Trinity’s work to elevate mental health, help-seeking, policy, training, and student support over the next four years. The session featured guest speaker Jen Jacobsen, executive director of Macalester College’s Laurie Hamre Center for Health and Wellness, which completed the JED Campus program in 2023.

The JED Campus initiative aligns directly with our Ready. Set. Rise. strategic plan, particularly through its priorities to strengthen student-focused education and reimagine spaces that promote connectedness, wellness, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging. The plan also calls for a coordinated vision for student health and wellness, work that JED helps structure and accelerate. 

Why JED and why now

JED Campus is a structured, four-year collaboration that helps colleges assess and strengthen systems for mental health promotion, substance misuse prevention, and suicide prevention across the entire institution. JED provides assessment tools, expert guidance, and customized technical assistance; success depends on a shared understanding that student well-being is everyone’s responsibility. This collaborative, whole-campus approach reflects Trinity’s commitment to student success and advances the priorities of Ready. Set. Rise. to reimagine spaces, foster connection, and center student well-being.

What the next four years include

Guided by JED and led on campus by Marcy Youngdahl, director of Integrated Counseling, Health, and Wellness Services, and Kyle Gillette, associate provost for student success, Trinity’s work will follow JED’s four-year roadmap: assessment and planning (Year 1); implementation and learning community (Years 2–3); and evaluation and sustainability (Year 4). 

Key elements launching this year:

Baseline Assessment. A cross-campus team will complete JED’s comprehensive baseline tool—~300 questions organized around JED’s domains (from life-skills education and social connectedness to crisis management and means safety). Findings will drive Trinity’s action plan. 

Healthy Minds Study (HMS). Trinity will participate in the nation’s largest survey of student mental health to understand needs, identify barriers to help-seeking, and set measurable goals we will revisit at the end of the four-year cycle. 

JED Campus site visit. JED advisors will meet with campus stakeholders, review early data, and help us prioritize actionable, high-impact steps. 

How the campus community will engage

The Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 Student Success Conversations will center on “knowing all we can” and “doing all we can” as the JED work unfolds. These semesterly gatherings, co-hosted by Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, draw attention to students’ complex lived experiences, elevate resources faculty and staff can use to support students, and surface new collaborations that advance student success. 

Leadership and partnership

Trinity’s JED Campus team is co-led by Marcy Youngdahl and Kyle Gillette and advised by JED’s Gustavo Molinar. Their charge: coordinate a broad campus coalition to translate data into practical steps that make it easier for students to connect, ask for help, and thrive.

What success will look like

By Year 4, Trinity will reassess its systems and outcomes, measuring progress against baseline and HMS results. We expect to see clearer pathways for students to get care, more education around life skills and reaching out for help, stronger support during and after crises, safer campus environments, and a more connected student community.

If you attended yesterday’s session, thank you for helping launch this work. If you couldn’t make it, watch for follow-up materials and ways to engage as the baseline assessment and Healthy Minds Study begin.