On April 11 at 7:30 p.m., students in the course Advertising & Integrated Marketing Communication will host an online tutorial for high school counselors interested in My Vibe Check, an emotional wellness tool. The students developed My Vibe Check to help prevent targeted violence in high schools by assisting counselors in better understanding the wellbeing of their students.
The team of students created My Vibe Check through participation in EdVenture Partners’ Invent2Prevent program. Invent2Prevent has been adopted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships to prevent targeted violence and terrorism while building social awareness, responsibility, and connectivity.
According to Leslie Kendrick, senior lecturer in the Center for Leadership Education and the instructor for the course, the Invent2Prevent program “provides our students with the opportunity to develop and implement both a tool and an integrated campaign in an effort to mitigate this issue and bolster protective factors. Through this client-based project experience, students gain leadership experience running in-class agency departments while building their resumes.”
My Vibe Check provides a secure questionnaire that asks students to report their daily feelings. Counselors then receive easily digestible graphics that consolidate and present their students’ responses, allowing them to see trends and make more informed decisions on their outreach and resource allocation.
In addition to the wellness tool, the student team has developed a marketing agency called Homewood Strategies to spread awareness about the tool. The team is incorporating blog posts, social media campaigns, and live events to promote My Vibe Check and familiarize counselors with the wellness tool.
Castalia Vidaurri (KSAS ’23), who is helping to lead the project as the co-CEO of Homewood Strategies, is hopeful that her team’s project “raises awareness about the complicated nature of tragedies such as school shootings and that we all take a moment to ponder how we can extend a hand to someone who could use a pick-me-up.”
Team member and Computer Science major Shaina Marie-Zeinab Gabala (’23) believes that Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communication allowed her to merge her two interests, engineering and marketing. “Engineering and Marketing are often more alike than we think in terms of problem-solving. I’m able to be both creative, and technical, and grow my portfolio of projects while learning to take on different perspectives in the design process,” Gabala says.
At the end of the semester, the team will present data on the effectiveness of their media campaign to judges for the Invent2Prevent program. The top three finalists will be invited to present their project in Washington, D.C.