Wellness at Penn and Penn Wellness Student Coalition cohosted a week of events focused on student health and wellbeing.
Wellness Week, which took place from April 14-18, included events such as a movie screening, resource fair, keynote speakers, and more. The programming marked the groups’ second formal year hosting Wellness Week since the COVID-19 pandemic.
College sophomore and PWSC Events Chair Mayokun Omitogun said that PWSC’s main goal was “to foster an environment on campus where students can engage in different events, whether it’s social activity, panels, and things hosted by other clubs as well.”
Omitogun — who is a former staffer for The Daily Pennsylvanian — added that PWSC wanted to “offer something throughout the week that students can rely on prior to finals week coming up.”
Wellness Week was initially developed through the collaboration of several institutions, including Wellness at Penn, PWSC, and other clubs on campus. College junior and PWSC Co-Chair Elizabeth Wang explained that Wellness Week was meant to facilitate, celebrate, and recognize the importance of wellness.
“Wellness is completely student-driven — Penn Wellness Student Coalition is effectively an umbrella organization for all of the wellness-related student groups on campus,” Executive Director of Student Health and Wellbeing Ashlee Halbritter said.
Omitogun described the process of planning Wellness Weeks as “slow and momentous.” She said that PWSC needed to coordinate with many other on-campus entities to plan this week, including “clubs, dorms, professors, outside help, movie screenings, and contacting other schools and other departments.”
“Having things that were attractive and new to students could be really fun,” she said. “We had financial wellness, we had physical wellness, we had mental health, we had yoga, we had coloring and journaling — everything that you could probably attribute to wellness, some club or organization contributed.”
Popular events from Wellness Week included the tote bag screen printings and movie screenings, according to Omitogun.
Wang noted that the group’s “main events happen outside.” She said that as people walked by, PWSC could attract students by tabling and setting up in these areas.
“You want an environment that’s conducive to your mental health, your mental well-being, and a place where you can feel safe to discuss these topics,” Omitogun said. “I would hope that students can take away that this is a conversation that we can have and start to have.”
In the Fall 2025 semester, PWSC plans to host a Wellness Summit in coordination with Wellness at Penn. In addition, Wang said that during the fall term, PWSC also does “a poster sale on campus.”
For next year’s Wellness Week, Omitogun hopes to add a new event featuring 60-second interviews with faculty members about their “engagement with wellness or mental health.”
“Hopefully we will be able to hear more from our professors and their perspective,” Omitogun said. “It’s good to humanize them, but also to see how they understand college in relation to us.”
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