Being a college student can be overwhelming. 

Many students are away from home for the first time, learning how to be independent and manage their time. The new responsibility can be stressful. And some students don’t have great ways to cope, said Natalie Rawlings, a UA junior who is trying to tackle that issue.

“I work a lot with Campus Health and CAPS, and I noticed a lot of students dealing with loneliness and not really having a place on campus to relax and recharge,” she said. 

Last year, Rawlings began creating the “recharge room,” a project designed to give students the space they deserve and need using evidence-based solutions.

The recharge room, located in the College of Medicine Student Lounge, will feature a massage chair, VR headset, ambient lighting, acoustic wood paneling to cancel outside noise and other tools students can use to relax and unwind, she said. 

“One of the items I’m most excited about is the Dyson Solar Cycle Lamp. It’s super evidence based,” Rawlings said. “You can connect it to the outdoor weather conditions based on your location. For students who don’t go outside if they are studying all day, they can regulate their nervous system by being around this lamp.”

Rawlings was inspired to create the room after encountering something similar at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. 

That room uses sounds of nature, ambient lighting and other features to promote overall health and wellness. 

“There are other recharge rooms on campus, but they’ll have a couch and some pillows. It doesn’t exactly give students the space they might need,” Rawlings said. “Wellness is something that is so important and should be integrated into someone’s daily routine.”

She has been working with CAPS to make this project come to life. 

“We had just created a wellness space at both CAPS Main and CAPS North within the past two years,” said Cassandra Hirdes, assistant director of CAPS and Rawlings’s mentor. 

“We know it has been helpful at CAPS and we’re excited to see how it goes and hopefully we can help Natalie expand,” Hirdes said. 

The recharge room will feature mental health resources from CAPS, as well as VR technology that will have a travel simulator and a mindfulness based cognitive therapy app, something not featured in the CAPS recharge rooms. 

Rawlings’s recharge room is still coming together. Through grants from the Honors College and Startup Wildcats, Rawlings has started constructing the space in the College of Medicine Student Lounge. 

“We connected her to our partners there in the College of Medicine and they loved the idea,” said Dr. Altaf Engineer, an associate professor at the College of Architecture and one of Rawling’s mentors. 

“We supported Natalie’s grant for the honors project, wrote a letter of support, and then she won the grant,” he said. 

Rawlings will be observing and collecting data from the medical students who use the room to further her project and differentiate her recharge room from others on campus, he said. 

“We will take surveys and measurements of evidence once it’s fully constructed  …  the objective measurements along with the psychological subjective data as well will make for a really solid recharge room project,” Engineer said. 

The room is a prototype that allows the researchers to study what works to help students relax, Rawlings added. And they are tailoring the space to the needs of medical students based on  surveys. 

“Medicine and health sciences students are busy. The survey told us that while there is a biological need to be outside in nature, it is more about what they want to do. They don’t want interruptions. They acknowledge they need it but claim it is a distraction,” said Dr. Sandra Bernal, a lecturer of the College of Architecture and another one of Rawlings’s CAPLA mentors. 

Their survey found that there was a connection between wellness and nature, leading them to prioritize tools that substitute for sunlight, wind and other natural elements.

Rawlings hopes the room will be finished by early next fall, when it will be available to medicine and health sciences students 24/7. 

But while she has had much success with the construction of the room, there have been challenges along the way. 

“One of the hardest parts was finding the space for the room,” she said. “I had reached out to the Main Library and the Honors College, but rooms there are a hot commodity and it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to give one up.” 

They also struggled with funding.

“Originally, I was given $5000 in funding. But, with a sizable room, $5000 isn’t enough to do everything,” she said.

Help from a $2,950 grant from Startup Wildcats will help her finish the room.

Eventually, Rawlings said, she has plans to expand the recharge room to give all students access to a space like this one. 

Arizona Sonoran News is a news service of the University of Arizona School of Journalism.