ASLMU has launched a new virtual reality (VR) program in collaboration with the FitWell Center to provide space for students to immerse themselves in a digital world to reduce stress and anxiety. The new program begins this week, allowing students to sign up for 15-minute sessions, during which students can use a VR headset and choose from several apps and videos that will fully immerse them in a digital world. Students interested in this program are encouraged to sign-up for a time slot here.
The new program will allow students to utilize programs like First Touch, which is an app that allows participants to use various paint brushes or even a spray can to paint a digital version of the Mona Lisa. Other applications that the program will introduce in the future are Innerworld, which is a virtual world immersion application, and Hoame, which is a mediation app.
Bailey Woinarowicz ’24, ASLMU vice president of student wellness, spent this past summer interning for Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) in the Medical Intelligence, Information, Investigation, and Innovation Institute. The internship allowed her to shadow physicians and learn about medical innovations emerging in health care.
During an XR Play Day event, an expo-like experience, she explored different types of augmented and virtual reality experiences. One recent study showed how VR technology could help nurses with their personal wellness and burnout. A CHOC Nursing Research and Innovation study in collaboration with Maestro Games SPC found that nursing staff participants reported “a significant” decrease in burnout after three sessions of the immersive classical music VR experience; for almost four minutes while wearing a VR headset, scores of CHOC nurses and other health care workers experienced this idyllic world voluntarily while on their breaks as participants in a novel study.
“After witnessing how effective VR technology was and how much of a positive impact on NICU nurses, I thought it would be a great option to help support student mental health and wellness on campus,” said Woinarowicz. “ASLMU had the funds to support a program like this, and so the next piece was finding somewhere the program could be housed, which brought me to FitWell inside the Burns Recreation Center. FitWell offers great programming, so this collaboration is a great fit and will also help students become more familiar with where FitWell is located on campus.”
As a student-athlete on the swim team, Woinarowicz has led bringing this wellness program to LMU and has been on her own personal journey with wellness by trying to find more ways she can make it a priority for herself. In this past year as the VP for student wellness, a lot of her work has centered around helping students understand what resources are available to them, as well as trying to help find options for students to focus on their wellness, like this new VR program.
“Wellness is important to me because I had a close family member who struggled with mental health,” said Woinarowicz. “During my first year at LMU, I got involved in student government as the NCAA and varsity athletics senator, then I became the speaker of the Senate last year, and all of the work I was writing resolutions on during that time pertained to student wellness. One of my main objectives was to work around trying to increase awareness about mental health and wellness resources available to students on campus.”
