 The wellness environment is currently a residential environment for first year students at the University of Vermont. We focus on four main pillars of health and well-being, fitness, nutrition, mindfulness and mentorship. We've developed a course, Healthy Brain's Healthy Body, Surviving and Thriving in College which shows a student the impact of doing mindfulness, yoga, fitness, tai chi, taking a run, eating in a certain way, getting a good night's sleep, how that affects your genome, how that affects your brain and how it affects the outcome of your life. Students then can take those ideas that are learned in class and implement it in the wellness environment where we have the resources right there, right in front of you. For fitness we have a whole team of exercise movement science majors who are there to be personal trainers, same for nutrition. For mindfulness we have daily offerings with all the yoga instructors and mindfulness instructors that come in from the Burlington community to help teach students how to engage in mindfulness. We wanted to do that in an environment free of the distraction of alcohol and drugs. This wasn't about drugs and alcohol, we just didn't want it in the dorm. One of my favorite things about living in Wee is like the sense of community. Everyone on my floor has been really tight. It is not just another high school level class where they just say, don't do this, don't do that, you know, they're there to provide you with evidence-based research and we actually look at a lot of brain scans, you know, both of our professors are both neurosciences. We have a saying, we don't judge, we just provide gorgeous neuroscience to young people aged 17 to 22 and let them decide. When you make the decision to become a part of the wellness environment you're making a decision to be part of a really engaged and vibrant community that has at the heart of it a person, Jim Hajak, who is the most inspiring mentor you could ever have. One of the central ideas of our work is if you train your brain, your body will follow. Most people know if you do weight lifting, increase the size of the weight and dumbbell in your hand, your biceps will get bigger. The same is true for your brain. That's what I think is a forte of the wellness environment is that it's an environment where those choices don't have to be off the beaten path. Kids are having fun, they're learning, they're partying but they're doing it in ways that are also good for themselves. The community of the Wellness Center is really amazing, people are always there to encourage you and help you do better at what your goal is and what you want to achieve. It puts a new spin on the way that you look at what you're doing during your college career. If you're someone who's interested in leading a healthy lifestyle, fitness, nutrition, mindfulness, mentorship, wellness environment, great program for you, you should definitely come check it out.