The Welty Student Health Center has expanded its services this semester to provide massage therapy, phototherapy and physical therapy in order to fully utilize the facility’s space and resources.

The new services and equipment are the result of a semester-long planning process on the part of Claudia Ness, interim director of the Health Center, in collaboration with a number of Whitman students. When Ness began working at the center in fall 2009, she noticed that its physical therapy room, which has housed various therapy equipment and machinery since the facility opened in 2006, was not being used to its full potential.

“When this building: which is a relatively new building: was built, it did have a physical therapy room,” said Ness. “It was made to have physical therapy; it’s just that the services we were providing weren’t utilizing the room to the fullest. When I came on in the fall I took one look at that room and thought we could certainly utilize it much more effectively.”

The room housed a message table that was not being used, so after a number of students inquired about massage therapy, Ness started searching for a licensed therapist. After a long search, she located Jan Atwater, who had just moved to the area after a 30-year tenure as a head therapist at Washington State University.

Atwater is currently taking appointments for students on Wednesday evenings from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m. She charges $45 for a 45-minute massage, less than her usual rate of $70 per hour. Since Atwater began offering her services in early February, nearly all appointments have been filled, and she hopes to expand her hours as midterms and finals approach.

In addition to massage therapy, the Health Center provides physical therapy services on Wednesdays and Fridays to students with prescriptions. The cycling team frequently uses the physical therapy room’s training equipment for conditioning.

“The thing that makes this so helpful: it’s kind of a win-win from the students’ side and our side: is that we would normally be providing transportation and pickups for students who need physical therapy,” Ness said. “This way we are able to do it here in the Health Center.”

First-year David McGaughey was one of the first students to receive physical therapy at the center for a shoulder injury.

“My most recent experience with the Health Center has been going to physical therapy twice a week for the same shoulder I had surgery on,” McGaughey said. “That process was very, very easy. They not only lined up the physical therapy, doing all of the work once I had given them the prescription, but they also arranged for the physical therapists to come to the health center instead of me having to go to them.”

McGaughey also praises the center’s recent acquisition of a free-t0-use phototherapy light, also housed in the physical therapy room, which helps treat Seasonal Affective Disorder.

“Sometimes, since Whitman is such a happy place, people can feel like there is pressure to be happy, and if they’re not, they feel like something is wrong,” said McGaughey. “Whitman offers and is increasingly offering more and more ways for students to cope with this stress, between the Counseling Center, the exceptional fitness center, and now the massage therapists and sun lamp. Whitman is such a happy place in part because of these efforts.”