This year Amherst College has expanded its Case Management Team, a division of the Office of Student Affairs that provides care to students who require support for non-academic matters.

Last year Associate Dean of Students Scott Howard was Amherst’s sole case manager. This year, Howard will be joined on the Case Management team by former Director of Residential Life Torin Moore and former Residential Life Area Coordinator Andy Tew.

“We work really hard in those situations to consult and work closely with class deans to help keep our arms around our students by helping them build support networks, developing relationships with people on campus,” Howard said. “And also to navigate challenges that might come up – whether that’s medical, emotional, personal, financial or social adjustment issues.”

The Case Management Team works with students by focusing on the well-being of the student as a whole – beyond just academics.

“We are really trying to do our best to make sure that we attend to the whole person,” Moore said.

Besides providing counseling and support, the Case Management Team also works to streamline the leave and readmission process, a logistical process of which Moore is now in charge.

In promoting and offering this case-by-case care, the team has already worked personally with many Amherst students. Saul Grullon ’15 is one student who said he has benefited from Howard’s case management work.

“The relationship I have with Scott has a lot of depth,” Grullon said. “We don’t always have that opportunity with class deans because they’re so busy, and for that reason, I feel that the case manager position is ideal.”

Grullon added that he appreciated the Case Management Team’s focus on “the small things.”

“It’s good to have someone like Scott around who asks the little big questions,” he said.

Although the Case Management Team is prepared to help students in desperate situations, much of its work focuses on helping students with the smaller problems and worries that are a normal part of the college experience.

Bonnie Drake ’17 said she appreciated the team’s willingness to deal with less urgent issues.

“I’m always reassured by them,” Drake said. “They are willing to do what needs to be done while respecting students’ wishes on matters.”

Drake said that she has never used the team’s resources in a formal capacity, but she has appreciated the opportunity to come to Howard with questions about college life.

In speaking about the Case Management Team, both Drake and members of the Office of Student Affairs emphasized the team’s versatility.

“It’s a source that can be very informal, I think, and extremely helpful,” Drake said. Many students have already been making consistent use of the Case Management team: the Counseling Center and the class deans both routinely refer students to the team. However, some students who were interviewed said they believed that many of their peers were unaware of the team’s existence.

“What I hope is that we will be providing even more information as we move along and folks will know more about what we are doing,” Moore said about the team’s plans for the upcoming year. “I think students will be hearing a lot more about us. It’s a new structure and it’s a new way of doing things. So we want to make sure students are aware of who we are and what we do.”