By Philip Sean Curran
MIDDLETOWN – Monmouth County will continue to provide one of its social workers to Brookdale Community College during the upcoming academic year, an arrangement that began in 2018 as a way to connect students at the school’s Lincroft campus with services they need.
Both sides have welcomed the partnership, one that involved veteran social worker Sylvina Mendez coming to campus two days a week.
Freeholder Susan M. Kiley said the arrangement grew out of a broader examination of the human services needs of county residents a few years ago. Brookdale was part of that conversation with the county. County officials learned that some students at the college were struggling to meet their basic needs, like food and shelter, and even sleeping in their cars.
“I think there’s a lot of financial struggle with the students,” Kiley said. “They want to go to school, but they don’t have a lot of money to provide for themselves when it comes to housing and that kind of stuff.”
Mendez arrived at Brookdale in September 2018. Sending her there began as an experiment, Kiley said, “to see if we could have an impact on students.”
Right away, Mendez realized teachers sometimes struggled to direct students who expressed problems related to hunger, medical needs, housing and childcare to an appropriate resource.
“Me being on campus has kind of alleviated that pressure on teachers,” Mendez said. Having had years of experience working for the county, she knows where students can find resources. She also thinks her role makes a difference by “just having somebody there, to kind of empathize with them, guide them in the right direction,” she said.
Initially, when she started at Brookdale, Mendez was there only half days. “But the need turned into full days,” said Christine Aumack, social work administrator for Monmouth County.
According to the college, Mendez served about 50 Brookdale students.
“For the most part, students are referred by either faculty members, staff or administrators who see that the individual may be in need of assistance,” said David Stout, Brookdale president. “So she keeps track of their needs and they fall into four broad categories: housing issues, child care issues, food and mental health.”
Stout recalled that a few years ago, when he first became president, he felt it was time to update Brookdale’s academic master plan to guide where the college had to go, academically, in the future. That work involved doing research and having focus groups at the school.
“And it was really interesting what emerged from that was we needed to address student basic needs at a level that we were really unaware of prior to that,” he said. “So we needed to provide services for students that are food insecure, housing insecure.”
He said nationwide, colleges are finding that students have trouble doing well in the classroom “if their basic needs aren’t being attended to.”
The county has said Mendez has more than 30 years’ experience in social work.
“She knows all the resources that are available,” Kiley said. “A student can talk to her about anything, whether it’s homelessness or whether it’s programs they want to take advantage of. She’s even dealt with things like domestic violence.”
Kiley said there are no plans to extend Mendez’s presence at Brookdale beyond the two days, Mondays and Thursdays, that she was on campus during the past academic year.
“If it looks like something we need to expand, we might talk to them about that,” Kiley said.
Stout said he expected to see her caseload increase. He said the amount of time she spends with students has grown during her time at the college.
In a recent survey, students revealed they feel anxious about “all sorts of things,” some of it related to basic needs and some related to academic confidence.
“So we know that there’s a need here,” Stout said.
