-: My name's Laurie Fritsch,
and I am the Assistant Director in Hokie Wellness
under student health education,
so my primary roles are to supervise peer educators,
both the Health Education and Awareness Team program
and also the Body Project facilitators.
I do a lot of program creation,
implementation, and assessment.
I teach a lot of health education workshops and classes,
and then, of course,
you have the final supervision administrative processes
that go along with every job.
So a lot of my work is throughout the mentorship
of the Health Education and Awareness Team program.
These are a group of 30 students who I train
along with the other co-advisor of the program.
We teach and train them on nutrition, STIs, contraception,
tobacco, body image.
These are really high-touch subjects.
Students like to learn about sex from other students.
Students like to learn about body image
from other students
because they're living that experience as well.
And just to give students the opportunity to learn
how to teach health is an awesome role to be in
because they're going to take these skills
and then use it with they're a doctor,
or use it when they're a nurse, a dietician,
or even when they're an engineer.
You're always going to need teaching skills
and be able to speak to someone else in a relatable manner.
Our program really intertwines
our student peer education group with everything that we do,
so it could be that I'm going out to teach this information
to academic classes
or to other Division of Student Affairs departments,
or it could be that I'm training our peer educators
and then they're teaching it for collaborative efforts
that we have with academic programs,
so students receive credit
for coming to our peer education programs.
Right now, I would say my week consists
of developing programs and new initiatives,
trying to figure out places for larger outreach,
kind of like the shorter outreach, teaching in classes,
and then really coordinating the peer education program
that I work with and training those students
because we have a very high-touch mentorship program.
I'm watching students
and critiquing their presentation skills,
so it's really a lot of teaching teachers as well.