Douglass Students Extern at Scarlet Well
Through an externship collaboration with Rutgers ScarletWell, Douglass is making a significant impact in New Brunswick by providing meaningful hands-on work experiences for students while supporting an essential mental health and wellness resource at Rutgers.
ScarletWell is the Rutgers-NB Chancellor’s Initiative that aims to address the needs of students, staff, and faculty by coordinating preventative wellness measures to help combat mental health crises before they begin.
Through connections and wellness-at-work grants, peer support programs, and the wellness leadership council, our goal is to listen and bring innovative grassroots ideas for wellness programs and policy change to university leadership to reduce stigma around mental health and wellness and give the community a voice,” said Dr. Peggy Swarbrick.
“ScarletWell focuses on bridging the gap in awareness that Rutgers students have of the services being offered here on campus,” said Sanjana Iyer DRC’29, who completed her Reilly BOLD Externship with Scarlet Well with a focus on publicity for the initiative.
“We gave her everything we did last year, asked her to take a close look at our LinkedIn presence, alerted her to the fact that our Instagram presence is limited, and asked her, if we were your client, what would you tell us about our presence?” said Dr. Amy Spagnolo, Senior Program Coordinator for Scarlet Well.
Sanjana immediately identified Instagram as a primary platform to focus on, offering solutions involving video content and strategies for brand identity. Throughout her externship, she developed content to increase the visibility of ScarletWell’s annual Wellness Week, which features a jam-packed schedule of mindfulness activities across the University. Sanjana's focus on increasing ScarletWell's visibility to her classmates is a prime example of how Douglass combines pathways for practical, real-world experience with meaningful community engagement work.
Many universities, including Rutgers, provide direct mental health services for those in crisis through Counseling, Alcohol, and Psychological Services. ScarletWell works in tandem with these services to sponsor programming that mitigates common factors that contribute to mental health challenges for college students, such as loneliness, low self-esteem, social stress, and homesickness.
“All of the existing services are so critical—student counseling, substance abuse services, violence prevention—all of the things that need to be within the system of a university of this size are critically important,” said Dr. Amy Spagnolo, Senior Program Coordinator for Scarlet Well. “ScarletWell's public health prevention focus aims to relieve some of the load on those services by bolstering the overall wellness of our community. Rather than focusing on people's crisis needs or when the mental health condition has become unmanageable, our work creates touch points for connection that can go a long way in keeping people feeling a sense of belonging and reducing isolation.”
One way the initiative approaches this mission is by awarding grants to units across Rutgers that are already doing this work, as well as to student leaders running their own wellness initiatives, strategically placing the money in the hands of those who know best how to serve students, staff, and faculty.
“The things that folks do with grant money we provide are remarkable. It goes a long way and reaches a lot of people,” Dr. Spagnolo said. “There may never be enough counseling in any system, but what there can be is yoga at the art museum, clay-making and crafts, horticulture going on at the greenhouses—opportunities that are intentional and deliberate to support a prevention model at Rutgers.”
“I’m at a phase in my life where I’m looking to explore all the opportunities that are available to me, which is what is so cool about these externships,” said Sanjana, who is majoring in genetics but also has a talent for and interest in marketing. Now, she can add community-based outreach to her resume.
Engaging in community, be it at Rutgers or beyond, is an integral component of all Douglass programs. By pairing students like Sanjana, who are eager for real-world work experience, with a pivotal Rutgers initiative such as ScarletWell, our students use their talents not only to further their own goals but also to make their communities better places to live, work, and study.
You can learn more about Sanjana’s experience at ScarletWell in the video above, created by 2026 Faculty Fellows student Anjali Darji DRC’27!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p74Wb9wX958&feature=youtu.be
