BY YINGJIA WANG

In print | September 20, 2007

Swarthmore students seeking professional support now have two resources available to them. While Counseling and Psychological Services has long offered psychological counseling and psychotherapy, the Dean’s Office has recently begun offering life coaching to students in need. Aiming to help individuals pinpoint and achieve their goals, life coaching is designed to work both independently of and in tandem with psychological services.

Life coaching will be offered by Assistant Director of Student Life and Head Field Hockey Coach Kelly Wilcox ‘97, who introduced the practice to the Dean’s Office after seeing its success with the athletes whom she coaches. Wilcox described life coaching as “coaching to the gap of where you are and where you want to be. We all have dreams, and they can seem insurmountable, and a life coach breaks them down to achievable goals and action plans.”

Wilcox, who is a certified life coach, was introduced to the practice while completing her master’s degree in psychological services at the University of Pennsylvania. “It was described by a supplemental speaker in one of my classes at Penn. I was coaching part-time at Swarthmore at the time, and the approach outlined by this woman struck me as something that would really resonate with my students,” Wilcox said. “What I like is that it assumes that the individual has the answers and the potential within them, and the life coach partners with them to shift or open up perspective. I think it resonates well with Swarthmore students who are action-oriented, who are very intelligent and capable, but sometimes need help shifting perspectives or shifting course when necessary.”

Wilcox also stressed that life coaching can be utilized both alone or along with CAPS counseling. While students are always welcome to approach her first, she may refer them to CAPS. Wilcox said that students must be prepared for life coaching, and if the preparation is not there, they may need to work with CAPS first. "Students are the drivers, and I see myself as the passenger and navigator. Sometimes before they are ready, they need to look in the rearview mirror before can put their foot on

the pedal," Wilcox said. "Other times

they are ready to hit the road. Everyone is different."

To expose the residential assistants to life coaching, Wilcox conducted an informational session at RA training this year. Since RAs are often put in situations where they are asked to be a life coach, Wilcox wanted to introduce them to the fundamentals of life coaching. To do so, she focused on active listening and powerful questions. Wilcox defined powerful questions as those that cannot be answered by yes or no.

Part of the session focused on how life coaching can help people concentrate on the positive aspects of their life, and how they can use that positive energy to help them achieve their goals. “saying how often times people will focus on what they aren’t doing, focusing more on the negative than the positive. What life coaching teaches is to focus on the positives. Everything has some bad, and life coaching showed how to focus on the good. It seems good for helping approach life’s challenges,” Marissa Davis ’08 said.

Davis also appreciated the session, stating that it gave her a wider range of resources to refer to when acting as an RA. “It’s always good to know different perspectives on how to handle situations and to know to some extent that we can be informal support for students,” Davis said.

According to Wilcox, she is currently not as available for life coaching as she would like to be due to her dual responsibilities as an assistant dean and head field hockey coach. However, she plans to be more accessible once the field hockey season is over.

“I would just love to have my office full with students all day. But the senior dean staff wants to make sure that I survive through the hockey season, and hopes to make me a greater resource in November or December. However, I’m happy to serve as a resource anytime, even if I can’t commit a lot of time right now. My door is always open,” Wilcox said.

Wilcox has also been working with Office of News and Information Associate Director Alisa Giardinelli to craft an essay for the Swarthmore homepage. Giardinelli and Wilcox say that that the essay could be one way to inform Swarthmore students about life coaching and its place in the dean’s office and on the college campus, as currently few students are aware that life coaching is offered at the college. Giardinelli, who edits the feature stories on the homepage, approached Wilcox about writing the essay. “Given Kelly’s new role on campus and given her expertise in life coaching, it seemed like a perfect fit,” Giardinelli said.

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