It is vital that graduate students are healthy and well. The Graduate School launched the Graduate Student Wellness Initiative in Fall 2020. Wellness champions are in place to work with departments across the university to support students with their academic and career goals, wellness, mentoring, and access to basic needs.

Feel free to watch the wellbeing introduction video created by the Graduate Student Wellness Club.

Wellness Champion Program

A $500 fellowship is available for graduate student wellness champions who will advocate and organize well-being events in their departments. This fellowship is to support the student for organizational work during the academic year. For more information, please read the position description (PDF). Applications are currently closed for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Announcements

compassion

Friday, October 6th • 2-4pm • Jabs 103
Thursday, November 16th • 3-5pm • Wilson 1131
Friday, December 1st • 10am-12pm • SUB 235

The MSU Graduate School and Compassion Project are offering three, 2-hour workshops to support graduate student well-being through art, mindfulness, and community-building.

Workshops are led by trained Compassion Project volunteers that are also in the Graduate Mental Health Counseling Program. As fellow students juggling work, school, families, and their broader lives, they understand the challenges graduate students face and are excited to connect with their fellow Bobcats.

Compassion is a skill and practice that increases resilience, boosts well-being, helps us navigate conflict, and strengthens relationships. Guests can expect to be led in a group mindfulness practice, creative art activity, and small-group discussion.

We hope guests take away strategies for filling their compassion bucket, connection with others in similar circumstances, and a deepened commitment to resourcing themselves and others in sustainable ways to enact long-term positive change. All graduate students are welcome - we hope you join us! Sign up here.

 

Support for Basic Needs

Basic needs such as food, shelter, and childcare are necessary for graduate student wellbeing.

Graduate Finances

Solid Finances webinar series: This series is designed to provide adults with an unbiased resources for enhancing their personal finance skills.

GradSense: Council of Graduate Schools' financial and career planning.

Health Care Options

The Graduate School provides this list of healthcare options to help you decide which is the right choice for you. View the Healthcare Options webpage or download the PDF of the Healthcare Options chart (PDF).

Bounty of the Bridgers Food Pantry

The Bounty of the Bridgers Campus Food Pantry is a student-driven initiative to combat food waste and food insecurity on the MSU campus for students, faculty, and staff. Supplemental and emergency food assistance is offered to to any student, faculty, or staff in need!

Gallatin Valley Food Bank

The Gallatin Valley Food Bank provides food support for local families.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)

SNAP provides a monthly supplement for purchasing nutritious food. SNAP recipients use EBT cards, like debit cards, to purchase food in authorized stores.

Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

WIC offers healthy food, breastfeeding support, nutrition tips, and connection to community resources for parents and caregivers.

Food Scholarship

The Graduate School supports the Bounty of the Bridger's Food Scholarship, designed to provide money towards on-campus dining. For more information on Food Scholarships or Bounty of the Bridgers, please contact [email protected].

Family & Graduate Housing

Family & Graduate Housing provides affordable housing options conducive to academic and social success.

Affordable Housing

The Off-Campus Housing Marketplace is a free to use tool and is designed to help students find housing off-campus.

Off-Campus Life has many resources.

HRDC Bozeman

HRDC can help with a wide range of needs such as housing assistance, unemployment, utility costs, and childcare.

VOICE Center

The VOICE Center provides information and support to anyone impacted by sexual assault, harassment, relationship violence, stalking and interpersonal violence. It also provides free walk-in counseling hours available to anyone impacted by interpersonal violence.

Family and Childcare Resources

Graduate assistants who need to have flexible working hours should contact their supervisor

Physical & Mental Wellbeing

Encourage positive behavior: eat, sleep, recreational interests

Recreational Sports & Fitness

Recreational Sports & Fitness includes the Marga Hosaeus Fitness Center, group exercise, personal fitness, massage, and club sports.

ASMSU Outdoor Recreation Program

The ASMSU Outdoor Recreation Program uses the outdoors to engage with future leaders. It hosts trips, clinics, and courses as well as a climbing wall and rental shop.

Student Health Partners

Student Health Partners provides health services to students, regardless of insurance, if they have paid the student health fee. They can provide primary health care (including walk-in acute care, x-ray, clinical laboratory, and pharmacy services) and dental services as well as specialized services to students, including services related to nutrition, sexual health, drug/alcohol concerns.

Office of Health Advancement

Office of Health Advancement promotes generalized well-being by educating on topics such as sexual health, nutrition, physical activity, stress management, as well as the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs.

Counseling & Psychological Services

Counseling & Psychological Services (CPS) provides free and confidential counseling services to students who may be struggling with a range of concerns, from those who are in distress and struggling to those who wish to gain support and prevent concerns from developing into more serious problems.

Qualifying for CPS Services

If you are a graduate student taking 7 or more credits:

  • You automatically pay the health fee
  • You have access to ALL SHP services including CPS and Medical Services

If you are a graduate student taking LESS than 7 credits AND are enrolled in a graduate program seeking a degree:

  • You do not automatically pay the health fee
  • You have access to CPS services WITHOUT paying the health fee
  • You do not have access to Medical Services unless you pay the health fee

**Note: this arrangement is reviewed annually.

If you are a graduate student taking less than 7 credits of graduate coursework but are NOT enrolled in a degree program:

  • You do not automatically pay the health fee
  • You can CHOOSE to pay the health fee to have access to CPS and Medical Services

Online Mental Health Screening Tool

Take an anonymous mental health screening today and receive suggestions on next possible steps.

WellTrack App

Register for WellTrack App interactive self-help therapy.

You@MSU

You@MSU is an app with helpful well-being tips, such as mindfulness, time offline, rest, and sleep habits, along with goal setting.

Human Development Clinic

The Human Development Clinic is staffed by faculty and graduate students of the counseling program within the Department of Health and Human Development at Montana State University. Low cost to no cost counseling available. The clinic offers the following services:

  • Individual counseling
  • Couple, child, and family counseling
  • Career counseling
  • Parenting Through Divorce workshops
  • Consultation and referrals

1501 S. 3rd Ave.
Bozeman, MT 59715
406.994.4113

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

To reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, call 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255.

Community & Mentoring

Information on academic, career, and psychosocial support. Encourage, build, and train - mentoring networks within departments. Include faculty, staff and students.

Community Groups

Cultural communities on campus

Graduate student organizations at MSU

Office of Student Engagement (OSE) provides student engagement activities, programs, services, and events.

Mentoring Training: Optimizing the Practice of Mentoring 102: For Research Mentors of Undergraduate Students: is a series of online, self-paced modules designed to help graduate students become effective research mentors of undergraduates.

Students who identify as one of the ethnic identities that is not well represented at our university can experience extra challenges; including feelings of being one of just a few students at a predominantly white university, feelings of being somewhat different, etc.  In addition to the challenges of starting as a graduate student.

The Graduate School offers incoming, underrepresented students a peer connection/mentor that they can talk with before they arrive and as the semester starts. If you are interested in obtaining such a mentor or serving as a mentor, please contact [email protected].

The Graduate School and the Center for Faculty Excellence has partnered with the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) to help improve and support research mentoring relationships at MSU. Training will begin in the next academic year 20-21.

Career Fulfillment

Grad Cat 360 Career DevelopmentGradCat 360's Career Development & Exploration section has Events, Resources, and Partners to help you push your career and professional development further and find fulfillment in what you do.