About

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.
Maya Angelou

recalibrate | dialing in to wellness resources—for Berkeley students, faculty, and staff 


BACKGROUND

This website is part of the Berkeley implementation of the UC systemwide Healthy Campus Network (HCN) initiative. Per UC President Napolitano, the Healthy Campus Network aims “to make UC the healthiest place to work, learn, and live.” Berkeley’s HCN approach is to build on the wealth of existing resources and cross-campus partnerships to enhance health and well-being policies for students, faculty, and staff: environments, culture, practices, programs, and services. recalibrateis designed to support individual well-being as well as goals of encouraging and expanding wellness opportunities at the multiple levels of campus culture, infrastructure, institutional policies / practices, and individual choice.  

Launched in August 2018, recalibrate was designed to serve as a centralized, visible, accessible, and engaging website for wellness information, resources, and tools targeted at the entire campus community. We strive to be:

  • a web-based hub that helps users take advantage of a wealth of wellness campus resources at UC Berkeley;

  • a high-participation website that is inspirational, inclusive, and culturally relevant;

  • an action-oriented site that aims to reshape the way we approach and achieve wellness—how we satisfy our wellness needs personally so that we can be happy and healthy members of a thriving community of care on the Berkeley campus;

  • an online triage for wellness and activities that address acute needs or that build on an individual’s or community’s existing level of wellness;

  • a variety of resources where the user can create a self-curated relationship to wellness, ranging from self-care to mutual care as a campus community, and be a source of empowerment by fostering strength and growth in individuals and community.

METHODOLOGY

During fall 2017 and spring 2018, a campus-wide team conducted stakeholder sessions with over 250 students, staff and faculty. We received input on how campus members define wellness, what barriers exist to well-being on campus, and what campus can do to support wellness including feedback for this web-based resource.

OUR APPROACH

Building off traditional wellness wheels, which typically address physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions, recalibrate goes a bit further. We have structured the website to satisfy a broad range of modalities, learning styles, and emotional sensibilities. One distinctive feature of recalibrate is in the EXPLORE section, which aims to provide campus wellness resources as potential solutions in response to how a visitor may be feeling when using the site.

NAMING AND TRADEMARK

The naming process considered hundreds of options that embodied the core values of our site objectives and was finalized by the HCN Steering Committee. The main inspiration of recalibrate was to highlight and encourage action: first, to understand where we are in terms of our identity and our unique wellness needs at any given time; then, to adjust our actions accordingly in response to those needs, to be well and stay well. Calibrate then recalibrate. It is an ongoing process, for us as individuals and as a campus community.

recalibrate logo


The trademark itself represents the various intensities that we all go through—major life events, moods, emotions, sensibilities—sometimes we have a lot of energy, other times not as much. The dot levels reflect the ways where we can turn up or down things that will serve us best. recalibrate is meant to encourage you to know yourself well in order to be well. The arc in the logo, inspired by a dashboard gauge needle and display, represents the fluidity of our daily lives and the spectrum of feelings and experience that is possible. There are always gray areas, ebbs and flows, and different ways of perceiving and accomplishing things. Nothing is permanent. We have choices.

Finally, did you notice that “cal“ is in the name? Bonus points... Go Bears!