College campuses are reckoning with a mental-health crisis. According to an annual survey by the Healthy Minds Network, which examines collected data regarding mental health, service utilization, and related issues among undergraduate and graduate students from 373 campuses nationwide, more than 60 percent of students met criteria for one or more mental-health problems in 2020–21, nearly 50 per-cent more than 2013. Students are not only grappling with daily challenges like coursework and relationships, they are also confronting the issues of our time, including social injustice, mass violence, and the aftermath of the pandemic. The tolls are individual and collective, psychological and physical. The administrators of Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, believes this requires holistic treatment, leading them to create a new center that brings together clinical care, counseling, and recreation under one roof in support of physical and mental well-being.

The university selected designLAB architects, a Boston-based firm with experience in civic, cultural, and educational work, to design the new 55,000-square-foot Health and Wellness Center as a home for campus health services, a space for a newly initiated healthy-living program to support cooking, nutrition, and lifestyle education, and a recreation-focused addition.