Four Arcadia Students Complete Reflect Summer Fellowship Program

A new opportunity for students has landed at Arcadia this summer: The Reflect Summer Fellowship program! Reflect is a nationwide collegiate initiative centered on mental wellness that empowers selected students to serve as local leaders and launch their own mental health awareness campaigns on their college campuses. Participating student leaders complete a seven-week summer training program to prepare to promote mental wellness on their campuses during the following academic year. Reflect offered Arcadia a place in the program beginning in June 2026, and the Civic Engagement team was delighted to add the program to its slate of experiential learning opportunities for students.

Bringing the Reflect Summer Fellowship to Arcadia also took intentional outreach to identify students who would embrace the opportunity and bring its mission back to campus. Jaisy Omollo, assistant director of Civic Engagement, and Lucas Miller, AmeriCorps Next Steps Team Lead, worked together over just three days to connect with students who had already demonstrated a commitment to leadership, service, and excellence both on and off campus.

Reflect selected four Arcadia students as "Reflect Campus Fellows": Micah Deane '27, Serenity Woodards '29, Roo Ahmad '29, and Rayana Abrams '29. These students were already deeply engaged with the Arcadia community through the Civic Engagement Department, and exemplified the values at the heart of the Reflect Fellowship.

Earlier this summer, the fellows attended a launch event where they learned about the program's structure and how they would begin bringing more mental health awareness to their home campuses. They also met fellows from different campuses (colleges included in this year's chapter are Arcadia University, Lehigh University, Northampton Community College, and The University of Pennsylvania) and learned about the seven core principles that Reflect is built around over the course of the seven-week program. Reflect, as it turns out, is an acronym - and each of the letters would correspond to a week's worth of learning that the fellows would receive during the Summer. The weeks were set up as "Reflect & Connect" sessions, where selected fellows were trained to facilitate a discussion for the rest of the cohort. The facilitators rotated each week until each fellow was trained to run a Reflect & Connect session.

Week One: Reflection

• Fellows primarily engaged in internal reflection, thinking about themselves and their stories, while also completing training on mental wellness. "I was lucky enough to be one of the first peer-facilitators during our Reflect and Connect sessions," writes Abrams. She continues that, as a facilitator, she "was able to lead a semi-formal conversation on the importance of self-reflection." Describing herself as passionate about the subject, Abrams continued that the experience made her "feel like a stronger leader," and she plans "on facilitating more small group discussions here at Arcadia."

Week Two: Ecosystem

• Fellows explored how local environments can impact mental health and how to use their local communities to improve mental wellness through civic engagement.

Week Three: Facilitation

• Fellows engaged in suicide prevention training and learned how to run a successful initiative through program development and evaluation strategies.

Week Four: Leadership

• Fellows learned about different leadership styles and met featured leaders from various industries. The fellows also learned how to be self-leaders and to market themselves as leaders through self-marketing strategies.

Week Five: Empathy

• Fellows studied empathy and the impact empathetic connections can have when employed thoughtfully and properly. When the group discussed challenges they face and how they approach those challenges, fellow Roo remarked that she was inspired by "how differently everyone responds to [their individual] challenges, and how much having a supportive space to talk and lean on others can make a difference," furthering her devotion to the program and its mission.

Week Six: Care

• Fellows focused on self-care and were introduced to concepts of "social determinants of health," and how these can be used to promote thriving communities.

Week Seven: Transition

• Fellows prepared for their next steps. This included toolkits for navigating major life changes, such as moving or starting a new job, as well as a review of the impact so far this summer.

Now, as the summer portion of Reflect ends, our campus Fellows have to bring their mental wellness initiatives to Arcadia's campus so the entire Arcadia community can appreciate what has been learned. "Reflect has been such a meaningful experience to me," says Ahmad. Anticipating a summer program of learning and education, Ahmad remarks that "I ended up gaining so much more than just that. I've built genuine friendships, connected with inspiring people from different backgrounds, and gained a deeper understanding of what Mental Wellness really is… not just for myself but for all of the communities around me."

Ahmad, along with the other Fellows, hopes to conduct "Connect and Reflect" sessions this upcoming school year to target specific populations at Arcadia who could use improved access to mental wellness resources. Ahmad is partnering with both Wellness Services and Commuter Life here at Arcadia, with the goal of focusing on commuter students at first.

We are incredibly grateful for all our students have learned from Reflect, and we can't wait to see what they contribute from here! "We feel honored to be a part of this program, and even more proud of the work our Reflect Fellows have accomplished, and soon will," states Miller, who has been checking in with Arcadia Fellows all summer. "The Fellows are now bringing their knowledge back to Arcadia to share with our community, and with their continued care and leadership, I know Reflect is going to last a long time on this campus." As these Fellows eventually age out and graduate from Arcadia, new Fellows will rise to take on new initiatives and keep the legacy going.

If you are interested in being an Arcadia Reflect Fellow, the first step is to get involved with the Civic & Global Engagement house! Come by for Tea Tuesdays weekly from 2-3:30 p.m., meet with a staff member, or get involved with campus and the community as a whole. Proving you care about and are committed to Arcadia's campus, community, and students is one of the best ways to receive a Reflect Fellowship Application in the Spring. We can't wait to see how this program grows in the future!