New on-campus counseling center will offer PFW students enhanced support

Purdue University Fort Wayne is entering into the final stages of preparation to open a new Center for Student Counseling in time for the start of the fall semester. The operation will be housed on the ground floor of Kettler Hall at the end of the corridor between the Department of Anthropology and Einstein Bros. Bagels.

The center replaces and expands on the vendor services PFW has offered for several years with university-operated mental health counseling. The change started a year ago with collaboration between the Division of Enrollment Management and the Student Experience team, the Office of Academic Affairs, and the Department of Counseling and Graduate Education program.

The counselor education faculty have been considering taking over student counseling at PFW for years. Brett Wilkinson, director of the counselor education graduate program and the PFW Institute for Counseling Research, developed a functional proposal for Carl Drummond, vice chancellor for academic affairs, and Krissy Surface, vice chancellor for enrollment management and the student experience.

“From there, we had the full support from the chancellor and the cabinet and began putting the pieces in place to make it a reality to provide the best service to students as we possibly can,” Surface said.

Surface believes the new system will allow the school to be nimble and proactive in reacting to mental health needs on campus, providing outreach, training, and intervention, while allowing counselors to build relationships with students inside and outside the center. 

The new location also allows a training laboratory for master’s degree candidates who need clinically supervised hours and support.

“There are few things as critical as supporting the mental health of our students,” Surface said. “As we work to continue to advance the holistic wellness of our students across curricular and co-curricular activities, ensuring that they are mentally and physically well helps them be the best version of themselves during their time in college. Moving to self-operating our mental health counseling fits perfectly with all the dimensions of wellness.”

According to Kerrie Fineran, interim associate vice chancellor for student wellness and associate professor in the Department of Counseling Education program, PFW already offers the only free counseling available in northeast Indiana to anyone in the community who needs services at the PFW Community Counseling Center, housed at Dolnick Learning Center on the university’s north campus, across St. Joe Road.

“We’ve been saying the counseling program can do this because we have students who are training, and all of our licensed faculty oversee their clinical work,” Fineran said. “Let us do this because we can offer more services than are currently being provided via outside contracts.”

Fineran said the new center should expand the previous counseling sessions that were offered. The center will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesdays, and 9 a.m. to noon on Fridays. Appointments will be available in person or via telehealth.

Gia Casaburo, who received her master’s degree from PFW, will be the center’s director. Drake Turner, a PFW alumnus who remained on campus to seek a master’s degree, will serve as a graduate assistant. Tim Hill, another PFW counselor education graduate, will be a full-time clinician beginning in the fall. 

In the spirit of retaining home-grown talent, the center also allows PFW counseling graduate students to work as part of internships and practicums.

“We wanted people we trained because we have a very unique clinical training protocol,” Fineran said. “Our counseling program is second-to-none. The way we train students, having them see clients live for a full year in our counseling center under live faculty supervision before beginning internships in the community, that’s doctoral-level training. Our students are exceptionally well prepared to work with people.”

Eventually, Fineran said, graduate interns from the PFW program will be working in the Center for Student Counseling as well. The program has recently doubled in size, accepting 24–32 counseling students each year, and it is continuing to expand, including a student affairs track that will train college counselors and student affairs professionals in particular.

“I imagine that once people recognize that we have services available and they can get in relatively quickly that it’s going to get busy quickly,” Fineran said. “I think it might take a little bit of time to start, but then it’s going to be big.

“What we want to do is focus on what we call high-level wellness, social, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. We’re not trying to solve every problem or take away all the struggles—we’re trying to help people learn to manage and cope. We have a long-term rollout planned that we are going to be helping students with their mental health, but also supporting their higher-level wellness. We want our students to be holistically well and ready to take on the world.”

After developing the initial program over the first academic year, Fineran has a three-year plan to expand services to promote wellness across the campus community. That may include training staff and faculty to recognize potential student issues and care for their own mental health.

Beginning in August, students can call the Center for Student Counseling for appointments at 260-481-6200.

The PFW Community Counseling Center number is 260-481-5405 for anyone who may need an appointment.