 We are here at the research symposium and I am here with my friend Michael talking about something very important students mental health. So Michael tell us a little bit about your project. Yeah so my project looked at Fairfield University students mental health and their perceptions of it. So I essentially just created a survey that I sent out to students, freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors just asking them how they feel about mental illness and kind of their perceptions on it. I got a pretty good sample size I had 112 people that filled out my survey only 87 completed entirely but this is a really important issue and I was glad to just get you know 87 participants to to answer it. Yeah absolutely after the few couple years that we've all had collectively it's really tough I'm sure for students on their mental health. So what inspired you to want to dive into this was it a personal experience or just something you were feeling as a student in general? Yeah so I'm actually I'm a public health major and throughout my four years here we've always talked about mental illness and how it's affected in so many different ways. I'm actually going to grad school at UConn to become a licensed clinical social worker so mental illness is something I've always been really really into and inspired by and obviously with the pandemic striking at such a tough time in our lives you know I felt that this project would be really important especially now. Absolutely so bringing it here today to the symposium how has it been talking to your classmates and presenting these ideas have you had a good response so far? Absolutely yeah I've had a couple people come up to me and you know I think mental illness is something that a lot of people don't necessarily like to talk to or talk about it's a it's a very touchy subject but you know just having a few students come up to me has been awesome you know just opening up the conversation about mental illness is something that's so important and having them ask questions about the project you know I feel as though I'm able to speak about it confidently and comfortably and so making other students feel comfortable about it is is awesome. That's wonderful good for you Michael so just to wrap it all up what's next for you what do you hope for the project do you hope to take your learnings and implement them here at Fairfield what's next? So I'm hoping to submit this to either the wellness center or the counseling and psychological services you know open up the conversation even more you know I think having good research like this and having the response that I've gotten will be really beneficial and you know hopefully we can have students talk about it more and maybe have some mental illness or mental health classes implemented more and in other majors like the Dolan School of Business stuff like that because you know in in the nursing school we're always talking about mental illness but I don't think that's the case in other majors so opening up the conversation I think is really important and continuing to have good research like this. So impressive congratulations on all your hard work and good luck for the rest of the day today. Thank you very much I appreciate it.