University of Auckland Business School addresses stress

The University of Auckland Business School is launching a free health and well-being initiative this month to alleviate stress levels among students.

The school’s director of student development, Brendon Potter, said he had seen an increase in stress levels in recent years and wanted this to change.

“Our primary obligation, greater than getting [students] a degree, is their health and well-being.”

BizFit will be open to all students of the school and will be centred around fitness and nutrition.

Brendon Potter is set to launch the new BizFit programme across the business school. Photo: Laura Tupou

The introduction of this comes off the success of two Māori and Pacific student programmes.

Last year’s top participant, 19-year-old Dalton Valisi, said he saw many changes including improved health and well-being.

“I was struggling a bit and then having to get organised and come to training sort of made me realise that I’ve got to start making some time for everything.

“I just felt like I had a bit more energy than I did because I was eating better. I was less stressed as well, which helped a lot.”

The first programme was developed and introduced last year by Steve Papps, former student support adviser for Māori and Pacific students in the business school.

Mr Papps said he saw the need to “help decrease obesity and . . . educate [students] on how to live a healthier lifestyle”.

“Students kept coming up and asking me what exercises [they] should do... I would see a lot of students eating crap while they were studying. You could see a huge difference [in weight] from the start of the semester to the end of the semester.

“I thought if I could have [a programme] on campus and make it free and make it within a group setting it would potentially encourage involvement.”

The Commerce Association for Pacific and Māori students (CAPM) 6 Week Challenge had 32 Māori and Pacific students take part.

The programme included three weekly half-hour fitness sessions with nutritional advice at the end and via email.

This year the school teamed up with the university’s recreation centre, Vodafone and Deloitte to offer the CAPM 8 Week Challenge.

The current programme is open to all Māori and Pacific students and staff across the whole campus and has 75 participants.

The overall successes of students such as Mr Valasi have driven Mr Potter to roll the programme out to the rest of the business school.

BizFit will be advertised to all University of Auckland Business School students and will start later this month.