Erin Neumann, Interim Executive Campus Dean, DMACC Boone Campus and Michael Borst, Mental Health Counselor, DMACC Boone Campus, September 21, 2026

On our program today we're going to talk about Des Moines Area Community College and once again we're going to have back again Aaron Newman, DMACC Executive Dean, okay? Yes. Boone Campus. Yes, thank you. And you have company with you today. You brought, I guess I'd say a new position but he's been here for a while. Yes, I'm so excited. So Michael Borscht is joining us. He's the mental health counselor at the Boone Campus. And actually among the many things you do, you do some podcasts on campus. I actually do podcasts over there on campus. Okay. Yeah. What do you podcast about? Mental health stuff. Okay. Yeah, so one of the things I do is workshops and so outside of my workshops I connected for a different conversation with students. So it's me and some students that do this. Okay. You get them involved? Get them involved, yeah. In fact, Friday I've got three students and we're going to talk about, and they're freshmen and we're talking about changing uncertainty. So it's a fitting for freshmen who are coming in for the first year and how they're navigating their independence and their autonomy. And for the podcast part, do we, do you get it out there again, really for students? For students but also employees and the community broadly can access that on the Banner News website. Oh, okay. All right. So first of all, getting a mental health counselor and I know we've had seen some changes in the kinds of services that DMACC has been doing and on the Boone campus. We started several years ago with a campus nurse, again, just regular health. But then now within the last year, mental health, mental health counseling. What attracted you to this? Well, let me back up a little bit and just introduce myself as Michael Bors and a little bit about myself. Right 37 years have two adult children who are doing very well. I'm grandpa to two little girls who are two and I think six months ish. And I do run a private practice in the evenings. And so when I leave DMACC, I go down to Des Moines. It's Southside Des Moines and I see patients Monday through Wednesday. And so what attracted me to DMACC was the mental health piece and always wanting to work in higher education as a counselor. And so when the opportunity came up and this job in Boone arose, I took advantage of it. And luckily I was hired. I have a great supervisor in Josh and he said, you're exactly what we need. So it's worked out great. Plus, the other piece to it was growing up. I was an athlete, both my children were athletes and so we have athletes on campus. And so just being in front of them and doing workshops with them has been awesome. I bet. And again, it's one of those things where a lot of people don't think about it, but it is a very stressful time, even I'm sorry, at the community college level. It is very stressful for a lot. It is. It is. This team called Shaw, it's student health and wellness, Aaron's part of that. And one of the things that I like to call myself the chief mental health officer at DMACC Boone, I just came up with that. Just responsible for the mental and emotional health of students. And part of that is just making sure that students have a place to go if they're struggling in some of the areas that we often talk about in sessions is depression, anxiety, stress, sometimes relationships, but even loneliness. And so we want to be able to talk about that and provide those things for our students so that they feel connected and that they're engaged with other people. This is. Yeah, and other people include students and then faculty and staff and all of them. Because it is a neighborhood. It is. And we know, oh, I go back to some of the, doing the 22 pushups that Sean did. So I mean, he did a lot of things in that area. And we have had those incidents on campus where we've had, again, suicide and things like that. Yeah. And that puts a lot of, I mean, that all of a sudden, and all of a sudden you got others that are like, oh, you know, what's happening? One of the things that I'm incorporating, and that starts, even this Friday, is just doing some of these micro-sessions with Erin, but our faculty and staff at our Friday forums once a month. And what I believe, and I go back to Dr. Wee's message, she was the interim president before Dr. Wory got here, is that we're better together. And so I want all of our faculty and staff to recognize what a healthy student looks like, what an unhealthy student looks like, and how do we tackle that? How do we approach it from sitting and talking with students to making those referrals? And so that's been one great thing that's just opened up. And I thank Erin for allowing me to be able to do that once a month. Again, I've done a lot of different programs on mental health, first aid type thing. You know, that first response, who is involved, who takes a look at that, and who steps up, and how do you get people involved with more service? That's, having it right there has got to be just really helpful for students and staff. And staff, yeah, absolutely, certainly for students. And staff, oftentimes, colleagues will come and ask great questions. They notice things about students. I've noticed the student has stopped or started doing this. And so, you know, most people, everybody wants to help students. But sometimes when you're talking about mental health, people feel extra, maybe uncomfortable or nervous, or I'm going to mess this up, right? And so, yeah, Michael's just a wonderful resource and support for colleagues, like you're saying too, in addition to the students, to kind of coach our colleagues along with how do we, how do we support and help a student move forward? I love giving faculty and staff, other adults who are student facing, I love giving them permission just to sit and talk with students, sit and cry with students. I would say a lot of our adults are just surrogate parents for these students who come to college for the first time, and maybe they live hundreds of miles away. Maybe they just live in town in Boone, but just giving them opportunities to just sit with and talk with and get to know them, understand what their needs are, and then refer if they need to. Because I don't want to be the only one on campus that does that. And a big part of it is they are the ones with the contact that will recognize that they're different than they were a week ago, or doing things differently than a week ago, two weeks ago. Are you having a problem with something? Yeah. One of the things I'm doing, Jim, is I get the opportunity to teach a class in its SDV 108, which is the college experience. And one of the things that I do immediately when class starts is they do a wellness tracker. And each week they're filling out five questions about their mental health, about connecting with others, about their academics, and so on. It gives me an opportunity out of the 23 students that I teach to just really see what needs are. And so that's been really good. And then I can follow up with them and talk to them about things that they need, or get them to resources that we have on campus. I know that one of the things watching like in the, well, in the K-12 programs and things like that, over the last several years, you know, when the legislators say, what do you need more of? What do you need? Obviously, they're going money. But mental health has always, and it's gone to the top. We see that, I think, the hospital in their survey, the community needs assessment. They did mental health services, again, one of the top levels, one of the higher things that constantly now is drawing attention. This gets it on campus where, really, we had people that were probably willing to help before. This is just taking it to the next step, the level. Because when you're in high school, you do have those counselors. You have those people available. Yeah. And we're really proud of the student health and wellness model that we have that really, like you're talking about, really seeks to support the whole student. I mean, of course, we're there for academics, right? Students are there to be, academics are first, and perhaps they're competing in athletics or those sorts of things. But Boone Campus is unique. We're really proud of our ability to focus on that whole person wellness piece. And we work well together with faculty and other staff. So we've got a full-time mental health counselor. We've got Lori, who's our full-time nurse and wellness coordinator piece, right? Because those things aren't exclusive. They go hand-in-hand, mental and physical, emotional health, but kind of the student and community resource pieces of students aren't alone in figuring out what DMACC service can support me, or maybe in Boone County, what's something that can support me. There's people who can help with those things. And coaches. And coaches, yeah. One of the things that we're really talking about. And doing more of is getting, partnering with coaches. Because they're not mental health counselors. They're coaches. And we want to make sure that all athletes are being treated right and making sure their mental health is right. Because as we know, athletes, they have to juggle a lot. And so they're on the courts. They're in the classrooms. They're trying to, you know, have a social life. Things like that. And so we want to make sure that they're doing okay. Yeah. Gotta keep working on them all. While this, we're going to talk a little bit more about this, but Erin, here we are. Fall semester. Here we are. Almost done. Almost done. Jumping ahead of a few weeks there. Yeah. Things got off pretty well. Yeah. Things are off to a great start. Boone's enrollment is up a little bit. Our credits are up a little bit, which is always nice to see. It's a very vibrant campus, as you know. A lot of us have noticed in our work with students lately, a lot of people are seeing that students are always engaged at the Boone campus, but there seems to be a higher level of engagement earlier on in the semester. So students are coming and saying they want to start different kinds of clubs and organizations in addition to the ones we have now, and they want to be involved in student activities. And they're out and about, you know, talking with faculty and staff, and that's exciting to see. Today, we actually just are wrapping up here. We had our dive into DMACC event, so that was a time for students to see all the things that they can get involved in, and the services that can support them on campus. So those sorts of events are happening frequently, but today just happened to be a major day for that, for students to get connected with, learning about study abroad, or learning about academic support, or anything like that. And there's so much. There's so much to do, and so much, like, I mean. I mean, a lot of people don't realize all the opportunities. Just right here off the Boone campus, I mean, there's just a load of different things that students and or return students if they want, want to go back for it. Absolutely. Have a chance to do. Yeah, there's honor societies, and studying abroad, and Belize, and England, there's all sorts of things that really come along with sometimes what we think about that kind of that traditional college experience, right, that's, that's happening in Boone as well. Goes all over. It does. Yeah. Another one that I like to keep asking about is work jobs, job related programming, and you guys heavily involved with that as well. Yeah. So DMACC's workforce training and academy program is a long standing one, and I always appreciate that you ask about it, because I think it's one of the many great things about DMACC. So that's one of our, one of DMACC's. It's one that people can overlook. They can. And there's so many opportunities. In businesses. Yes. It can also be part of it. Yeah. So if someone's looking for a short term training for themselves to maybe be retrained or to move up in their career, both at the Boone campus, but across DMACC, there's lots of short term trainings like nurse aid, things like that, where if people qualify, the workforce training can pay for their tuition and their books and their testing and all those things that are required to move up and along in that field. And then you're exactly right. Our continuing education department who works with that program is also a great resource for businesses. So if a business says, we really need this particular kind of skill development for our employees, those sorts of things, they can, continuing it can often work with them to tailor a training for that business. So really benefiting the workforce and then the employers who are hiring and working with the workforce. One of the opportunities of community college, the flexibility that's built in. Yes. There's so much flexibility with the length of the degree, the times you're taking classes, all those things. Yeah. We have quite engineering technology. I remember when the idea first came up, it said, wow, we can put this together in DOT. We need these people and now it's, well, now it's hard to get them to show up on campus because they're working all the time. They have lots of, yeah, lots of possibilities, but yeah, the DOT is, as a frequent, you know, the Boone campus is a training place for many DOT courses. So we do see a lot of those people in that field on campus for recertifications and things too. And materials. I got to go through all of that too. So, yeah. Otherwise, as far as the activities going on, I think, what was it that noticed that some of the fall sports were getting rain delayed? Yeah. I think there's been some impact to some of the teams for sure. Yeah. But we've got, I mean, many of the teams are up in action and going. So volleyball plays tonight. They're away today. They're in Northwest Iowa and Sheldon. Yeah. Sheldon. We're back at home next Wednesday. So if anyone's looking to come out to a home volleyball game, they play Western Iowa Tech next Wednesday at six. So that's a great time to come out and pack the gym. It's a great energy. We've had great crowds so far and they just keep getting bigger, I think. So that's exciting. That's what we want. More people showing up. Yeah. And if you're a senior like me, you can get a pass. You can get a pass and get on in there. Yeah, absolutely. I think our baseball coaches have been a little disappointed last couple of Wednesdays and today too. Yeah. Canceled games. Yeah. It gets grand view. Yeah. Well, you know, people forget there is the fall season that they get to use and same with softball. Of course, softball plays a lot of Division I teams here at this time of the year. So yeah. Well, that's okay. They usually hold their own with them. That's the big thing. They do. Yeah, they do. And golf is in action right now too. Golf is, golf has some like a tournament, I think, this weekend and Saturday. Yeah. And I've seen a few cross-country runners go, I mean, they use the whole town. They do. The whole town is their training area. Yeah. So if you're wondering, it might be a high school group that's running, but a lot of times it's DMACC runners that are out there. Both men and women. Men's and women's. Yep, you got it. So yeah, busy, busy place. All right. Cafe, tell me about it. How busy is it? It's, I think it's, it's really hot. Always busy. Especially on Wednesdays when it's two dollar pizza slices. Two dollar pizza days and they're big, large pieces. Yeah. And I just, I know we talk about that a lot, but we've got a lot of community. Members who come out there, which we love. So they might be doing like a, an official kind of a group get together. A lot of times people just come and say, I'll meet you for breakfast or meet you for pizza. So yeah, the cafe is up and going typically Monday through Friday from seven 30 to one roughly. And they, yeah, they always have specials going and then a standing menu that you can order from too. I think we always see the, there's like a floating coffee crowd that I think they come swinging through. Yes. Yeah. We love to see the community out there. Jim, let me throw this out too. I'm in the quarter center every morning and you're, you're exactly right. I love the fact that the community comes in a group of ladies, a group of men, uh, every morning, just about every morning to get their coffee, their breakfast and you just hear the buzz. Uh, and then you hear, do you see the, uh, students coming through, uh, Alice over there in the cafe is really, really busy. You hear her yelling names out, breakfast is done, uh, things like that. So really exciting to see, uh, and one of the other things we even talked about today in one of our meetings was, uh, how we're noticing faculty and staff and students eating together, spending time together in the quarter center. And that's really exciting to see too. You like to see that, that community relationships. Absolutely. Yes. Uh, so are some of the other things that are coming up for you? We, I did want to mention, we do have a nursing visit day coming up on October 9th. And that is an 830 to 1230 day. And that's a great one of someone is maybe they've applied to DMACC for nursing or they're thinking about our nursing program. That's a great day to kind of get several pieces of information at once. So you can get your application for admission done. You can tour campus, check out the nursing program. You can complete a nursing information session, which is a requirement to get into the nursing program. So you can check that off your list. And we have Iowa state and Iowa representatives there because they both have DMACC has our Entebius and partnerships with them as well. So really in the course of that morning, um, you can get a lot, you can get admitted. You can get a lot of information. You can meet with advisors and learn more about nursing. Yeah. And again, having the, that exchange going into the four year, you can get the four year degree. Yes. Some want to pursue that. Uh, those that want to immediately get into the workforce, uh, DMACC's two year degree has proven to be very successful. It's very successful. Yes. So we're excited about that. I did also want to mention, um, Sean Taylor would want us to mention too. We have our 22 pushup challenge coming up October 28th. So that's also in the quarter center. Um, and Sean may have spoken before about the 22 pushup challenge, but that's an annual event coming up here in October. And that honors the, the statistic was that 22 veterans a day died by suicide. So, And he gets a lot of students to buy into that, doesn't he? He does. The whole quarter. It fills the quarter center. It does. It does. And, uh, of course, um, uh, trying to beat the women's softball team is not easy to do. We have a lot of strong, yes. Yes. Strong folks out there. They, uh, they do a pretty good job. And the free t-shirts. Oh, yeah. Don't forget free. Yes. That's, uh, and now again, this mostly for the students, uh, doing this that come out, but if people want to come out and see it, it's, it's pretty amazing. It is amazing. And you can definitely participate fully if you want to. You could do one pushup. You could do like me and cheer people on from the sidelines. Yeah. Yeah. But it is really, like Michael said, they fill up the quarter center and it's a very, um, a very, uh, active sort of thing and there's a lot of good energy. It's also very meaningful when you look at what, what it is that it's honoring or marking. Yep. And again, Michael, for you, for you, again, this is the kind of thing too it draws attention to this, but it is always a concern and always something that, again, on the, I go back to that, uh, mental health, first aid opportunity, people need to be able to look at other people and say, are you doing okay? Uh, yeah. Thanks Jim for bringing that up because that, that's an important part of, uh, Boone campus is just making sure that we're all noticing our eyes are up and that we're saying hello, good morning. And then we're just noticing some little changes that are going on. Um, this 22 pushup, it's just a reminder that everybody's important. And one of the things that we want to do is just make sure that our students are, are doing well and if they're not, that they know that they can ask for help. Yeah. And, uh, I'm guessing, well, from the students you get, I mean, you have such a wide range at the community college level, everybody from, uh, coming out of high school to maybe returning vets. That's correct. Yeah. We have a wide range. And so, um, from, from those 18 year olds that are leaving home and coming to college for the first time, uh, some of our older adults that are, that are coming in, um, who are raising families, trying to take classes, getting back into the college experience, uh, can be challenging as well. So, uh, we're, we're 18, that 18 to 24, but even older as well, uh, that we're seeing that, that wants to take part in this experience. And so we're looking out for everybody. Aaron, I know one of the things I did want to ask is because we are into the, okay, fall time of the year and stuff like this, for high school, would this be the time when parents might be starting to take a look at, all right, where are you going to go if you're a junior or senior? What are you thinking? Where do you, would you like to go? What would you like to do? Are you looking at different career opportunities? Cause I know that, uh, you can, they can build career paths at the high school level and just carry them right through, uh, into community college. Yeah. Fall is a great time to start. I'm, I'm sure people are having those conversations and fall is a great time to, you know, reach out, visit the campus. If you want to have a tour of the campus, um, many people who might be listening to this might have children or grandchildren who are currently getting DMAT credits in high school, right? Um, already. There's a lot. It was wonderful. Um, but oftentimes it's helpful for students to still visit campus, talk to an advisor to understand how those DMAT credits work into maybe the pathway or the program that they're looking at and just getting on campus, I think is really, is really helpful for people to take a look. You'll have a chance to meet instructors, meet other people who would be your peers in classes. And, and this is also a good time to start talking about, uh, the application process, the financial aid process and doing it early, uh, make sure that you are, you know, catching things like the DMAT foundation scholarship application, things like that that you can be, you can start doing earlier, you know, then there are opportunities to take some of the burden off. Yeah, absolutely. And there's people here to help you through any part of the process, like we say. Okay. Michael, thanks for coming and visiting with us. I appreciate meeting with you. It's a great opportunity and, uh, and Aaron, till next time. Thank you.