A Roadmap to Healthy Living
It's the tenth week of the Fall Semester, with Halloween also on this week's schedule. How do these two things fit together? Simply, the question is about your social life and campus activities – what role are these playing in your life? Whether you are a full-time student or part-time, traditional age or older, or whatever your background, to what extent are you taking advantage of all that…
This is Alcohol Awareness Week. It’s a time when many college campuses offer a variety of events and discussions to bring heightened awareness to alcohol. Mason is no exception, and a variety of events are offered this week. It’s an opportunity to take advantage of some of these, but also to do some additional reflection about alcohol and its role in your life and that of others around…
When you think of a COMPASS, what comes to mind? It’s probably that device that helps you determine your direction, or helps point the way. That’s a helpful picture, yet for us with COMPASS: A Roadmap to Healthy Living, the compass is something inside of you.
Dr. Anderson combines scholarly research with applications at the local, state and national level. As Director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Health [www.caph.gmu.edu], he directs numerous research and community service projects. His research emphasizes college students, school and community leaders, youth, program planners, and policy makers.
Dr. Anderson co-authors national surveys on drug/alcohol prevention efforts, at the college, community college and secondary school level. He is co-director of the Understanding Teen Drinking Cultures in America project, a research initiative involving quantitative and qualitative strategies [see http://teenalcoholcultures.gmu.edu]. He co-authors the College Alcohol Survey, the nation's longitudinal survey of four-year college efforts addressing alcohol, drug, tobacco and violence (1979 - 2014). He co-directed the Promising Practices: Campus Alcohol Strategies project which includes a family of resources (Sourcebook, Task Force Planner, and Action Planner) [see www.promprac.gmu.edu]. His award-winning project Healthy Expectations, with COMPASS: A Roadmap to Healthy Living, emphasizes life health planning and healthy transitions to college; this has resulted in a resource guide [COMPASS Roadmap: Destination Health] helpful for organizations seeking to replicate the initiative [see www.compass.gmu.edu]. He recently publlished Best of CHOICES: Alcohol Education 1998-2008 with the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Prior to arriving at Mason in 1987, he served as a student affairs administrator at Ohio University, Radford University, and The Ohio State University.