Graduate Wellness Day brought students together to explore resources, build community and prioritize well-being.
For graduate students, the demands of academic life can extend far beyond the classroom. On Aug. 6, 91亚色 graduate students came together to make space for something that can easily be overlooked: their well-being.
Graduate Wellness Day brought students together for a morning of walking, workshops, conversation and community-building, with activities designed around the realities of graduate student life.
Photo of Tareq Al Khalaf, Charity Mwebaze, and Khandker Ahmedul Haque
The student-led initiative was proposed by Tareq Al Khalaf, a PhD student in Health, whose project received funding through the Graduate Student Wellness Initiative Fund for Winter 2026 from the Faculty of Graduate Studies. Alongside fellow graduate students Khandker Ahmedul Haque and Charity Mwebaze, Al Khalaf worked with Student Counselling, Health & Well-being (SCHW) and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) to organize the event.
Photo of Prof. Larkin Lamarche
The morning began with a campus walk led by the LA&PS team from 91亚色 Station, introducing incoming and current master's and doctoral students to locations, services and resources relevant to their studies.
Marco Sestito, Student Engagement Coordinator, said the event reflected the student engagement initiatives led by the LA&PS Graduate Experience Team at New College.
鈥淕raduate Wellness Day is a great representation of the types of student engagement initiatives that the LA&PS Graduate Experience Team at New College is responsible for. Working alongside current graduate students, we were able to introduce new LA&PS graduate students to the Keele campus and to key health and wellness resources that will aid them throughout their studies.鈥
The walk was followed by wellness sessions that began with opening remarks from Professor Elicia Clements, interim head of New College, and a health promotion workshop led by SCHW's Holly Stacey. Students reflected on the realities of stress in graduate school, shared experiences and explored practical strategies for navigating academic pressures.
Professor Larkin Lamarche of Kinesiology & Health Science then invited students to consider mental health from an uncolonized perspective. The interactive session encouraged participants to reflect, connect with nature and exchange ideas with peers while examining how systems built around productivity, perfection and individualism can disconnect people from themselves, one another, their communities and the land.
For Mwebaze, a PhD student in Social Work and member of the organizing committee, the sessions sparked meaningful conversations as students openly shared experiences from their studies.
The day also connected participants with campus and community resources, including Riipen, Ontario Shores, Student Accessibility Services, SCHW, public health nurses and Athletics & Recreation.
A highlight was the launch of the Graduate Wellness Toolkit, a collaborative project involving counsellors, graduate students and work-study student Ishita Deep, who designed the resource. The toolkit was distributed to attendees and will be available through SCHW.
Photo of Graduate Wellness Day participants and organizers
Student feedback included calls for additional wellness programming throughout the academic year, reflecting interest in continued initiatives that support student well-being.
Files from Tareq Khalaf