the Informer

[caption id="attachment_2157" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Courtesy of Web.ncju.edu"][/caption] A change in the university’s AlcoholEdu program hopes to gather better information in regards to students’ prior drinking habits in order to build a greater awareness of underage drinking on campus. “AlcoholEdu is a national alcohol prevention program geared towards first year students to assess high-risk behaviors involved with alcohol,” said Patricia McKenna-Grant, the director of the Connections Health Education and Wellness Center. AlcoholEdu is a program that gages students’ experience with alcohol and teaches them about alcohol-related issues, such as how it affects the body and issues such as vandalism, violence and sexual assault. The current program has been in effect on campus for seven years and has been a requirement for freshmen students after they arrive on campus. As part of post-matriculation, “Students, in the past, would take part one and 30 days after classes start they would take part two,” McKenna-Grant said. Now students will take the test as a part of pre-matriculation. “They will take part one over the summer before classes start and part two two weeks after classes start,” said McKenna-Grant. The change in the way the program is conducted is meant to give the Connections Health Education and Wellness Center better data on students’ behavior related to alcohol. Unable to gauge students’ prior alcohol habits in the past with habits gained once they are on campus, McKenna-Grant hopes that the change will allow them to learn about student drinking frequency rates and how old they were when they started drinking. “The data will be specific as to whether being on campus has affected their substance abuse behavior or not,” she said. The test is conducted online and will be offered starting in July. “We find that students respond better to something when it’s online, and we get results quicker,” McKenna-Grant said. Students who do not complete the first part of the AlcoholEdu program before arriving for the fall semester will face a penalty from the university. “It will be some sort of a housing component but we’re not sure what right now,” she said. Results form the current AlcoholEdu program show that University of Hartford students are moving along the same trends as the national data. “We know that students engage in high-risk binge drinking and that they’re drinking in their residential setting,” McKenna said. “We try to target behaviors like binge drinking games and how fast people drink. They are very dangerous behaviors,” she said. The AlcoholEdu program was started in 1999 by Brandon Busteed the founder of Outside the Classroom, as a way to promote alcohol prevention. According to its Web site, the program is now used by more than 500 campuses and has reached more than 2 million college-age students. Understanding that students will drink once they are on campus, the Connections Health and Wellness Center tries to promote the wellness of the whole student. “We focus on the betterment of the mind, body and spirt…not in terms of a religious perspective but in terms of your own spiritual sense, to recognize behaviors that are not good health habits such as binge drinking and drinking games,” McKenna-Grant said. The Connections Health and Wellness Center tries to provide students with as much information as they can on moderation and ways that they can take care of themselves and their friends if they are into a bad situation. “It is all about prevention and care so they can have the tools they need to make good choices,” she said. For more information about the AlcoholEdu program students and faculty can go to the Connections Health & Wellness Center Web site at uhaweb.hartford.edu/wellness/ or call 860-768-4077.