How Be Well @ Dal came to be

A conversation about standards

It started with a question: what does it actually mean to support mental health and well-being at a university? In 2020, a small group at Dalhousie began reviewing the Mental Health Standard for Post-Secondary Students, developed by the Mental Health Commission of Canada and the Canadian Standards Association — the first national strategy of its kind for post-secondary student mental health, shaped with input from experts across the country, including voices from Dal.

As the group worked through the standard, it became clear that well-being could not be considered for students alone. The Psychological Health and Safety Standard for the Workplace — developed by the same bodies — offered a complementary lens for faculty and staff. The conclusion felt natural: a healthy university means supporting everyone in the community.

The Steering Group is formed

In June 2021, the BeWell@Dal Steering Group was officially formed, bringing together colleagues from student health and wellness and organizational health. The group set out to do something ambitious: not just review the standards in isolation, but build the kind of campus-wide momentum needed to actually act on them.

A campus-wide conversation begins

In March 2022, President Saini sent a message to the Dalhousie community affirming that "a foundation of well-being is essential for us to support, inspire and educate, and to creating a healthy, inclusive, and sustainable future for Dalhousie." With that signal of institutional support, the Steering Group began presenting at Dean's Council and meeting with faculty groupings across campus — not just to share the standards, but to listen.

Over the following months, 20 consultations were held across the university, with over 800 members of the Dalhousie community taking part. Alongside these conversations, a recent series of university self-studies had surfaced important recommendations related to mental health and well-being. Together, the consultations, the self-studies, and the two national standards produced a rich repository of ideas and action items — the foundation of what would eventually become this Bag of Ideas.

August 2022 marked another milestone: President Saini signed the Okanagan Charter on behalf of Dalhousie, committing the university to embedding health into all aspects of campus culture and leading health promotion locally and globally.

Ideas take shape

In May 2023, Be Well @ Dal established a web presence to bring the initiative into the open. A month later, in June 2023, over 80 members of the Dalhousie community — faculty, staff, and students — gathered for a half-day Be Well Summit to review the 180+ ideas and recommendations that had been collected. From those, the group prioritized the top 10 well-being ideas for Dalhousie, including a commitment to developing a "bag" of actionable well-being ideas that any academic or non-academic unit could draw from. This site is the realization of that idea.

Well-Being Action Groups get to work

In March 2024, six Well-Being Action Groups were formed, each with membership drawn from across the Dalhousie community — faculty, staff, and students working together, supported by a liaison from the Steering Group. Each group developed operational plans to advance specific well-being priorities and to align with complementary efforts already underway at Dal.

The Well-Being Action Groups made real progress throughout 2024. Ideas were advanced, initiatives were implemented, and a genuinely passionate community of people committed to making Dal a healthier place continued to grow.

In November 2024, a gathering of all Well-Being Action Groups highlighted progress of the work completed and explored actionable next steps for the university community.

Refining ideas, building the collection

The Well-Being Action Groups continued to meet in 2025, refining their ideas and developing more detailed plans for implementation. Alongside this work, the Bag of Ideas Well-Being Action Group took on the task of reviewing, organizing, and categorizing the full collection of ideas gathered over the years — shaping them into the searchable, domain-organized resource you are exploring today.