St. Joe’s Counseling and Psychological Services is moving to Sister Thea Bowman Hall in the fall 2025 semester, bringing the CAPS space to a more centralized location on the Hawk Hill campus compared to its current location in Merion Gardens.
The new CAPS center will be about double the size of the Merion Gardens space, with 17 rooms and an expanded capacity to help students, said Scott Sokoloski, Ph.D., director of CAPS.
“My greatest priorities were to create a space which would be welcoming to students and one that would provide opportunities that we don’t currently have,” Sokoloski wrote in an email to The Hawk.
In fall 2022, Sokoloski, then-newly appointed director of CAPS, was presented with the unique opportunity to give input on the design for the new CAPS center. He said he advised the architects on how to lay out the center’s rooms and made suggestions for “the color scheme, furniture types and sizes, soundproofing, and lighting, all of which can affect how warm and welcoming the space will be for students.”
Some of the opportunities provided by the new center will include a group space that will host group therapy meetings, a wellness room for patients to perform wellness activities in isolation and a conference room.
“In our current CAPS space, we are largely unable to accommodate these crucial mental health and wellness activities, which will supplement the important work that we do to support students through our therapeutic services,” Sokoloski said.
Alongside creating new opportunities for students, Sokoloski emphasized the accessibility of the new center, especially compared to the current Merion Gardens location, which will be closing at the end of the spring 2025 semester.
“We have received frequent feedback that Merion Gardens is too far away from their classes or residence halls, which makes it more difficult to attend sessions in person, even though the SJU shuttle stops at Merion Gardens,” Sokoloski said. “I believe that by making it easier for students to come see us, we will be able to better help students who might otherwise have decided it was too difficult or time consuming.”
Sokoloski also said the new location will allow CAPS to take a more active role in campus events and activities.
The center will also feature a mural, the design of which will be revealed when the center opens in the fall. Created by Becky McIntyre ’17, the mural will depict imagery that is a union between St. Joe’s culture and mental health.
McIntyre, a sociology and Spanish major during her time as a Hawk, has previously worked with St. Joe’s and 10 other Philadelphia Catholic colleges and universities as the resident artist for the Synodality in Catholic Higher Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia initiative, which represents students participating in the Synod on Synodality, an initiative started by Pope Francis to build a more united and active church.
McIntyre emphasized the importance of creating a welcoming environment in places that align with her personal values.
“When I say ‘yes’ to projects, I make sure that they’re aligned with my values of supporting pieces of art that promote education, that promote justice, that promote conversation and dialogue and creating safe spaces,” McIntyre said.
As part of her creative process for making the mural, McIntyre asked for input from the St. Joe’s community.
“Usually I come into a project looking to build relationships with whatever community I’m working with and gaining their perspectives on what they would want to see, what would engage them, what they want to feel, what they want to encounter in a space,” McIntyre said.
This input came from multiple brainstorming sessions with students and faculty, where participants could offer ideas verbally or draw their own concepts.
Dominic Rossi ’25 and Darian Krug ’25 both participated in a brainstorming session as part of their work with St. Joe’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Rossi, president of the St. Joe’s chapter of NAMI, said McIntyre’s process helped focus on CAPS’ mission.
“[McIntyre] was really able to listen to all of us,” Rossi said. “Even people that aren’t artistic, like me or some other people there, were able to write down their ideas and still have that engagement. It’s important because the emphasis of CAPS is on the students and their well being, so the mural of CAPS should be student-based.”
Krug, events coordinator of the St. Joe’s chapter of NAMI, agreed that both the new center and the brainstorming sessions emphasize CAPS’ focus on students.
“The fact that they are emphasizing that they want students to feel comfortable and this to be a space where people can come to and not feel stigmatized or ashamed to talk about [mental health] makes it really great,” Krug said.
Sokoloski said McIntyre’s focus on the community was key in St. Joe’s decision to bring her on for the project.
“[McIntyre] believed it would be meaningful to design a mural with input from SJU students, which is a part of her creative process that she has used often in her career,” Sokoloski said. “That idea is what convinced me, and the rest of the university, that she was the right artist for this project.”
The new center, with the mural on display, is expected to open with the rest of Sister Thea Bowman Hall at the start of the fall 2025 semester.
This article is part of the Philly Mental Health Initiative, a collaboration initiated by The Temple News student newspaper between Philadelphia-area student publications covering mental health on our campuses.
