- \n
- cwc@augsburg.edu \u2013 Contact for appointments and general questions about CWC services<\/li>\n
- Ellie Olson (eolson@augsburg.edu) \u2013 Contact for program requests, concerns about a student, and any other inquiries<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Meet our staff:<\/h2>\n
Lauren Andersen<\/strong>
Center for Wellness and Counseling Intern
CB 103
andersla@augsburg.edu<\/a>
<\/p>Ellie Olson<\/strong>
Director, Center for Wellness and Counseling
Anderson Residence Hall 100-6
CB 103
612-330-1169
eolson@augsburg.edu<\/a>
<\/p>Joshua Kent<\/strong>
Senior Clinician for Training
Anderson Residence Hall 100-2
CB 103
612-330-1337
kentjo@augsburg.edu<\/a>
<\/p>Erica Lee<\/strong>
Counselor, Center for Wellness and Counseling
Anderson Residence Hall 100-8
CB 103
612-330-1136
lee22@augsburg.edu<\/a>
<\/p>Christine Oliver<\/strong>
Senior Clinician for Care Coordination
Anderson Residence Hall 100-7
CB 103
612-330-1693
oliverc@augsburg.edu<\/a>
<\/p>Ravaughn Perry<\/strong>
Counselor, Center for Wellness and Counseling
Anderson Residence Hall 100-5
CB 103
612-330-1336
perryra@augsburg.edu<\/a>
<\/p>Phanny Phal<\/strong>
Administrative Program Coordinator
Anderson Residence Hall 100
CB 103
612-330-1707
phalp1@augsburg.edu<\/a>
<\/p><\/div>\nStaff Bio:<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nEllie Olson (Director, Counselor)<\/strong><\/p>\n
I am a licensed psychologist with a PhD in Counseling Psychology from the University of Missouri-Kansas city. I grew up in MN and received my BA in Psychology and English at Concordia in Moorhead. I have 15 years of experience in college mental health and find deep meaning and appreciation in working with a college population. I believe that college is a time of immense growth, change, and learning, and thus is also an excellent time for students to dig into addressing their struggles, learning about themselves, and strengthening their connections to self and others through counseling.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
I believe that counseling is one of the few places where we can fully focus on ourselves in a non-judgemental and compassionately challenging space that is designed to help us reach our goals, address our struggles, and be our authentic selves. I approach my work with clients with the belief that past experiences and relationships have taught us ways of feeling, reacting, and behaving in the world that work for a time, but don\u2019t always serve us well as we grow and change. I strive to help clients understand and have compassion for their struggles so that we can then create new, healthier, more effective patterns of thinking, reacting, and behaving. I also believe that a deep sense of disconnection from self or others is at the heart of many mental health challenges and I see counseling as a place in which we can learn how to connect in ways that are consistent with our values and needs. When we work together, you can expect that I will want to get to know you and all the identities and experiences you bring to the table. You can also expect that I will be honest and authentic, that I will challenge with care and compassion, and that I will readily employ humor and sarcasm. I recognize that asking for help can be scary and vulnerable, and I will do all I can to honor that vulnerability and make our time together a place in which you grow to feel comfortable, connected, understood, and accepted as you are.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
I identify as a white, cisgender, heterosexual female who is deeply curious about all people. Being deeply curious means I work from a stance of cultural humility while also engaging in ongoing personal education focused on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I am a hardcore introvert who has learned how to take on the persona of an extrovert when needed. As a result, I love doing outreach and connecting with groups across campus, but my greatest satisfaction comes from one-on-one connections with clients, colleagues, friends, family, and the community; in the end, I believe that our connections are what give life meaning and purpose. I am a mother, a wife, a friend, a consumer of pop culture, a non-athlete turned amateur athlete, an outdoor lover, an avid reader, a recovering perfectionist, a connoisseur of candy, and a lover of cats.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nChristine Oliver (Counselor)<\/strong><\/p>\n
I am a clinical social worker who has worked in college counseling for 16 years, 10 of those at Augsburg, and I truly love working with Augsburg students and the larger Augsburg community.<\/p>\n
In addition to deep beauty and meaning, life contains much that can be genuinely and deeply challenging and painful.\u00a0 I feel honored to sit with students as they (and I) explore those questions of how, even in the face of hardship, we can show up for ourselves, the people we care about, the larger world, and our deepest values.\u00a0 Towards this end, I incorporate a lot of focus on self-compassion, mindfulness, and other skills and tools to work with one\u2019s own nervous system and its various states.\u00a0 I strive to practice in a way that is relationally based, trauma (and especially intergenerational trauma) informed, and rooted in cultural humility.<\/p>\n
I see a lot of the work of counseling as being focused on connections and reconnections with ourselves, our own wisdom, with others, and with our belonging to the larger world.\u00a0 I am very interested in systems- internal systems of coping that may have arisen over time, family systems, community systems, and larger cultural and political systems\u2026 and I believe deeply in parallel processing: the idea that the work we do in one area of our world can often be translated to other areas.\u00a0 One prime example of this would be the ways that working to relate differently to our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences can often have a profound effect on how we then relate to important others in our lives.<\/p>\n
My path to this work was somewhat unconventional.\u00a0 I came to Minnesota for college and majored in history.\u00a0 I then spent most of my twenties traveling and working outdoors, helping people connect with themselves and others via gardening.\u00a0 Among this work was four years as an organic vegetable grower, raising food alongside people experiencing homelessness and in early recovery from drug or alcohol addiction.\u00a0 Through my late twenties, I went back to night school to take psychology and related classes, and in my early thirties, I went back to graduate school.\u00a0 I\u00a0 earned a master’s degree in human development with a focus on early childhood risk and resilience and followed that with a master’s degree in clinical social work. I then trained and worked in a community mental health system in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for many years before returning to the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n
I identify as a white-bodied, cisgender female who has had the fortune of growing up and spending a lot of time in communities where not all of my identities were in the majority.\u00a0 I strive to always learn and grow, and continually try to find a balance between acknowledging the systems that mental health work is often done within, while still challenging and working to de-colonize my own work and encouraging students to craft paths for themselves taking what is helpful from current systems while also centering and honoring their own individual and other truths.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nJoshua Kent (Counselor)<\/strong><\/p>\n
I am a clinical social worker, and have worked in a wide variety of mental health settings. From private practice, to mental health outreach to unhoused youth, to hospitals.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also taught clinical courses in graduate social work programs and supervised interns. I received my undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, a master\u2019s degree in Ideology and Discourse Analysis from the University of Essex, England, and a master\u2019s degree in Social Work from 91³ΙΘΛ.<\/span><\/p>\n
My counseling approach is based on compassionate inquiry and is trauma-informed, and draws heavily on mindfulness-based behavioral interventions.\u00a0 I focus on fostering personal growth and connections.\u00a0 With a warm, easygoing, and energetic style, I help clients establish a calm inner base to practice skills to face life\u2019s challenges, address problematic behaviors, and build a life (experienced as) worth living. I believe that emotional skillfulness and clarity about our values is essential to motivation and establishing meaningful connections to ourselves and to others.<\/span><\/p>\n
I grew up in southwest Minneapolis and reside there today.\u00a0 I identify as a cis-gendered, white, heterosexual male. I enjoy an active lifestyle of running, biking, and Nordic skiing.\u00a0 I am passionate about the outdoors and escape the city whenever possible to go hiking, camping, and canoeing. I seek awe in wild places.\u00a0 I also enjoy cooking and am known to never pass up on a taste test<\/span><\/p>\n
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