A pilot program focusing on wellness that started in Purdue’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering is now available to all students, faculty, and staff within the College of Engineering. The partnership with TaskHuman is another option for support, along with the wellness programs already available through Purdue.

TaskHuman empowers students, faculty, and staff to be their “well-thiest” selves, on and off campus, by connecting them 1-on-1 via video call, audio call, or chat sessions with curated wellness professionals globally. The College of Engineering community will be able to receive instant support on hundreds of areas of wellness and self-care, including physical fitness, mental well-being, emotional and spiritual wellness, academic support, professional development, financial wellness, and more – at the time and place that works best for them.

“As we all are in a challenging situation together, we will work hard to ensure the well-being of our students, faculty and staff,” said Mung Chiang, the John A. Edwardson Dean of the College of Engineering and Roscoe H. George Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “This initiative by the School of ECE is an innovative step along this important direction.”

During the ECE pilot program in Fall 2020, nearly 400 people from the ECE community made over 600 calls to TaskHuman coaches. Those users accessed live wellness coaches in more than 60 categories, including yoga, home-based workouts, clean eating, and better sleep.

“TaskHuman is thrilled to expand our partnership with Purdue’s College of Engineering due to the success of our pilot program with Purdue ECE,” said TaskHuman Co-Founder & CEO Ravi Swaminathan. “We are committed to making wellness coaching from live human professionals accessible to more than 17000 students, faculty and staff, especially during these unprecedented times.”

Dimitrios (Dimitri) Peroulis, the Michael and Katherine Birck Head of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and special advisor to the dean of engineering for online learning, says student health and wellness is always the top priority.

“At this particularly challenging time for all of us, we are very excited to offer this unique opportunity not only to our students, but also to our entire community,” he says. “I am very thankful to our colleagues and collaborators that have enabled us to roll out this program so quickly.”

ECE Senior Lecturer Brooke Parks says she is very encouraged by the way her students used the TaskHuman.

“I’m amazed by how much progress they made in so many different areas of their lives during this very difficult semester,” she says. “From clean eating to anxiety management to new workout habits, it was an honor to watch them grow with TaskHuman.”

Parks says making the first call is often the biggest hurdle. She encourages students, faculty, and staff to see the first call as a kind of practice run, just to check out what the app has to offer.

“I know it’s nerve-wracking. It was for me, too,” she says. “But once I did it one time, I was like ‘Oh, okay. I’m hooked on this.”
Parks has also piloted using TaskHuman for office hours. She says it was a great experience for her and her students and she hopes to help other faculty and staff to make use of this unique functionality.

ECE graduate student Tridib Saha used TaskHuman to get healthier after slipping into bad eating habits and not exercising during quarantine.

“I knew over the quarantine, I’d gained a lot of weight and had been unproductive, so I wanted to get things in order. [This resource] motivated me,” he says. “That was the reason I made the first call. And once I made the first call, it was amazing. I got things started, and the rest of the calls followed from that.”

The pilot program with the College started at the beginning of the Spring semester. An email with information about how to download the TaskHuman app for free has already been sent to students, faculty, and staff. Students should contact their academic advisors for more information. Don’t see a topic you want or have other questions? Contact Brooke Parks, Senior Lecturer in ECE, at brookeparks@purdue.edu.

For more information and an FAQ, visit College of Engineering's TaskHuman web page 

Source: College partners with TaskHuman for more wellness resources