Everything Nac

The Counseling Clinic at Stephen F. Austin State University will be hosting a free weekly tension, stress management and relaxation group starting at 3 p.m. July 1 via Zoom.

All are welcome to join the one-hour, open discussions and learn new relaxation techniques to better manage stress.

Research has shown that prolonged stress can cause or exacerbate many serious health problems, including:

mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety and personality disorders
cardiovascular disease, including heart disease, high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms, heart attacks and stroke
obesity and other eating disorders
sexual dysfunction, such as impotence and premature ejaculation in men and loss of sexual desire in both men and women
skin and hair problems, such as acne, psoriasis, eczema and permanent hair loss
and gastrointestinal problems, such as gastroesophageal reflux disease, gastritis, ulcerative colitis and irritable colon.

Two counselors in training, Mai Lee Eskelund and Breuna Timmons, will facilitate the Zoom sessions. They designed the stress management group to teach participants skills for reducing and managing stress and creating opportunities that enhance self-care.

In addition to the free group, the clinic continues to accept new clients and waive fees during the pandemic.

Though in-person appointments aren’t possible because of COVID-19 concerns, the clinic is helping clients via Zoom from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays. Appointments on Fridays can be made by calling (936) 468-1041.

Once the pandemic is over, the clinic will return to its usual fee system. Costs for community members are determined using a variable fee scale based on gross family income and family size ($5 minimum to $20 maximum per service). SFA students pay $5 per service.

The Counseling Clinic is part of the Department of Human Services and Educational Leadership in the James I. Perkins College of Education at SFA. It assists SFA students and community members while training graduate students who are in the practicum and internship portion of their education. These graduate students provide counseling services to clients under the supervision of licensed counselor education faculty members.

For more information or to sign up for the stress management group, contact the clinic at (936) 468-1041 or sfacounselingclinic@sfasu.edu.

By Jo Gilmore, marketing communications specialist at Stephen F. Austin State University.

Like all universities and public and private school systems across the globe, Stephen F. Austin State University found itself in mid-March suddenly shifting from delivering all in-person classroom instruction to online.

Some courses adapt to remote instruction easier than others. Scott Shattuck, associate dean of the SFA College of Fine Arts, was especially curious to learn how faculty members in the schools of art, music and theatre would teach performance skills and studio art technique courses through remote delivery.

“I heard a couple of especially interesting accounts from students and colleagues who had unexpectedly found themselves in this experimental mode,” Shattuck said, “and it made me think: ‘I’ll bet others would be just as fascinated as I am to learn about the creativity our faculty employed to meet these challenges.”‘

Shattuck, along with media specialist Michael Tubbs, initiated a series of videos, “The Creative Challenge,” that features fine arts instructors who have developed some unique virtual teaching strategies to try and ensure that students continue to learn and pursue their work as artists. These can be viewed at finearts.sfasu.edu/creative.

In addition to making these creative teaching ideas available for other educators to incorporate in their virtual classrooms, Shattuck hopes the podcast shows students, prospective students and their families “just how brilliant our College of Fine Arts teachers really are,” he said.

“And, if members of our alumni who are now teaching art, music or theatre, or other faculty members around the country, can take advantage of some of the wonderful ideas described in the podcast interviews, that’s an additional benefit to emerging artists everywhere,” he added. “I hope these interviews make it vividly clear that there’s no stopping creativity. Teaching, learning, and creating art were practically uninterrupted when the pandemic turned our world upside down.”

On social media platforms, the College of Fine Arts has been using the hashtag #ArtsKeepUsGoing, “because everyone has been sustained over the past few months by the songs, movies, books and other creative expressions that keep us connected in such important ways even when we’re physically distanced from one another,” Shattuck said. “We’ve also asserted that #ArtsWillLeadUsBack, because it’s creativity that will fuel the research, the economic revival and the community spirit we’ll need to restore the health and vitality of our society.”

As an educator, Shattuck said he is both humbled and inspired by the resourcefulness and resilience that he’s been fortunate to witness in SFA fine arts faculty.

“The only course I was teaching in the spring was already online and, honestly, I don’t know what I’d have done to keep the teaching, learning and creating going if I’d been teaching a face-to-face technique class,” he said. “These colleagues have given me ideas but, more importantly, they’ve given me hope.”