Texas Tech University

Founded in 1923, Texas Tech University is located on the South Plains of West Texas and carries the distinction of being the largest comprehensive higher education institution in the western two-thirds of the state of Texas. Texas Tech University prides itself on being a major comprehensive research university that retains the sense of a smaller liberal arts institution. It enrolled more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students in fall 2010.

Background

The Center for the Study of Addiction at Texas Tech University was started in 1986 by faculty member Carl Anderson, who decided that one of the things the state of Texas was struggling with was the dearth of licensed chemical dependency counselors. He decided that Tech should develop a curriculum that met the state life insurers’ standards for licensing chemical dependency counselors. The curriculum covered 18 hours of alcohol and other drug education.

“People started flocking to the program to get education hours or a license. Many stayed on to get a college education. It was Carl’s wife, Linda, who had the idea for a collegiate recovery community—a name that I actually coined. She pointed out that most of the people taking the education classes were in recovery and suggested that Tech start a program to support them in their recovery while enrolled in the university. That was the beginning of what was then known as the Center for the Study of Addiction. There were about 20 to 25 students at a time. It started with on-campus 12-step recovery meetings. Carl worked through the university to provide a one-hour course for these students that focused on relapse prevention,” said Kitty Harris, center director. “Students could take the course every semester for one hour credit, which was unheard of then, and still is. There is not another university in the country right now that gives college credit for a course that helps students support their recovery. The program took off from there.”

In 2001 Anderson retired and asked Harris to take over as director of the center. She is a licensed chemical dependency counselor and a licensed marriage and family therapist. She also had been teaching curriculum since 1986, including courses on the treatment of addictive disorders. Harris changed the name from the Center for the Study of Addiction to the Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery (CSAR).

“The new name helped to identify the group of students as being in recovery. Since then the center has taken a lot of different twists. For example, I was asked to develop a research component. It didn’t make sense not to document the recovery successes of these students as a way to help others. The second year as director I wrote a proposal for a replication grant. I quickly realized that once we began to get some publicity regarding the program we would not be able to handle all the students that would be coming our way. We were turning kids away every semester based on our space and our staffing,” said Harris. The program has grown from around 30 students to 80 students since Harris has taken over the administrative duties of the program.

In 2004, CSAR received a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to document and export a model for recovery support services on campus. Initial efforts focused on placing the service components of operating programs into a unified model emphasizing the role of on-campus support in initiating and maintaining positive lifestyle changes among those with alcohol dependency and those in recovery. Called the Collegiate Recovery Community (CRC), the model was documented in a curriculum designed to inform other colleges and universities about the process of implementing recovery services on campus. This curriculum, titled Making an Opportunity on Your Campus: A Comprehensive Curriculum for Designing Collegiate Recovery Communities, was written to incorporate both two-year colleges and four-year universities. Additionally, the curriculum can be implemented through academic programs, student services, or student health services.

The Collegiate Recovery Community (CRC) Model

CSAR developed the peer-driven CRC at Tech to support the abstinence of young adults in the abstinent-hostile collegiate environment. The support that CSAR provides the CRC is very specific. Rather than providing day-to-day supervision of the students or the residences for students in recovery, it controls the application process. CSAR requires potential CRC members to have one year of recovery, be willing to attend at least three 12-step meetings per week, which includes one on-campus 12-step meeting, and pursue their college education by taking a minimum of 12 hours per semester and maintaining a GPA of at least 3.0. Once students are members of the CRC, most contacts are informal and take place at a weekly 12-step meeting and when community members spend time at CSAR offices.

The most formal contact between CSAR staff and CRC members takes place during required one-hour weekly seminars, which include informational support about addiction. They are designed to foster relationships among CRC members, address specific relapse prevention strategies, encourage respect for diversity in individual programs of recovery, and provide an arena through which members can receive feedback and guidance from peers on life issues. Students are grouped into different seminars based on their time as CRC members. For example, first-year students are placed in a seminar together. While CSAR staff do not supervise CRC members’ recovery programs, they do advise individual students when they need assistance in negotiating recovery-related crises, advise the CRC’s elected leaders regarding community maintenance, help students negotiate college life tasks, and help organize service projects for the Association of Students About Service (ASAS). An experienced licensed professional counselor provides students with individualized academic advising based on course load, student maturity level, and academic ability.

According to Harris, the ASAS is made up of the students in the center who engage in community service. “Such service is consistent with the principles of 12-step recovery programs on the importance of service. All CRC students are required to participate in outside community service activities each semester. They volunteer for projects like Habitat for Humanity and Relay for Life, which raises money for cancer research. They do fund-raising projects to raise money for ASAS scholarships—we now have over 2 million dollars in endowed scholarships for CRC students. They also raise funds through activities like garage sales and use the money to take a group trip, like a ski trip, for the purpose of having sober fun.”

Currently 80 students are CRC members. Harris believes that the number of CRC members and CSAR itself have an effect on the campus environment when it comes to prevention and awareness.

“CRC members are very involved in the campus. They are very verbal in classes. In addition, the CSAR building is in the heart of the campus. The front steps of our building sports in very large letters ‘Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery’ and looks directly into the windows of Tech’s chancellor. We are located right by the student union building in one of the largest colleges, the College of Human Sciences. We are literally in the middle of the second largest contiguous campus in the United States, second only to the Air Force Academy. People know about us,” said Harris.

According to Harris, beyond the presence of the CRC, CSAR is an important campus resource. It works with student judicial services and counseling services, as well as responding to calls from the community.

“We field, on average, about ten calls a week from people asking for referrals for help with their personal alcohol and drug problems or their child’s problems. I think we impact the campus and the community in terms of awareness of the problems. CRC members major in engineering, business, architecture, arts, and sciences, so they are all over the campus. Every semester I get a call or e-mail from professors saying that they loved having CRC students in class. They bring a life to sobriety and a willingness to share that is phenomenal,” said Harris.

Replication of the CRC

CSAR is committed to developing a community support and relapse prevention model specific to collegiate populations. The literature of addiction treatment and recovery supports long-term interventions for individuals struggling with chemical addiction. This research correlates the length of time spent in treatment and other support services with outcomes in recovery. The longer an individual is participating in formal treatment and programs designed to support recovery, the more positive the outcome. Community support and relapse prevention models specific to colleges and universities allow recovering students to extend their participation in semi-structured programs, without having to postpone or eliminate the possibility of achieving their education goals.

“We opened three pilot schools around the country. Those were incredibly successful. With the support of a U.S. Department of Education grant for a demonstration program we began a full-fledged replication of the program,” said Harris. “But since the curriculum was published and the word got around, we just have been inundated with requests. Currently, about 12 campuses around the country have used the CRC model.”

In order to encourage campuses to implement recovery programs for students, Harris points out it is an incredibly cost-effective program in terms of student retention because helping students remain clean and sober helps them meet their education goals.

“The majority of kids in recovery who go to college and don’t have support don’t stay in school. They either relapse and drop out or they just leave. We have students in our CRC from all over the United States and even foreign countries who have been at other colleges but couldn’t make it, so they come to Tech. A major selling point for getting a campus to develop a CRC is student retention—and it is the right thing to do,” said Harris. “At Tech, CRC members maintain about a 3.34 GPA and have an 80 percent graduation rate, which is better than Tech students as a whole. This is all about investing in human capital.”

The first step that Harris advises campuses interested in developing recovery support for students to take is to get the Tech CRC curriculum and use it as a guide. For example, at Tech the CRC is housed in an academic unit in the College of Human Sciences and Department of Applied and Professional Studies. But the University of Texas program is housed in Student Health Services, and Kennesaw State University houses a program through its Counseling and Psychological Services Department. Up until recently, Tech staff have also been able to provide specific technical assistance to campuses to help them get campus recovery programs up and running. But funding for that kind of customized assistance runs out after August 31, 2011. Despite the loss of funding to replicate the Tech CRC model, Harris is confident that campuses will continue to develop programs to support students in recovery.

“I believe that we are in the throes of a real national movement toward recovery in general and specifically collegiate recovery. As a result we have developed the Association for Recovery in Higher Education, which was rolled out at the 2nd Annual Collegiate Recovery and Relapse Prevention Conference. It will join universities across the nation in collaboration on research and provide a forum for continued discussion and support for developing campus-based recovery programs,” said Harris.

“In addition, we founded the National Foundation for Collegiate Recovery, which has three primary focuses. Number one is the development of financial resources to help programs get up and running. My commitment for this foundation is to raise money to help seed programs around the country. We will also raise money to begin a real focus on collegiate recovery research. There is a great deal of research on addiction but very little recovery research. In addition, the foundation will use some of its funds for scholarships nationally for kids both to get an education and the treatment they need as part of the full continuum of care,” said Harris.

Harris is in collaboration with universities across the country to create a national database. The database, which is housed at Texas Tech, contains information from students who are part of various collegiate recovery communities throughout the nation. Harris said the students are asked questions regarding the history of their substance abuse, the types of interventions attempted by friends and family members, and whether or not treatment was previously sought.

Program Success and Evaluation

CRC has only a 6 percent relapse rate of its students while they are actively involved with the program, which is much lower than the average national relapse rate of 50 percent. The data collected for the national database will help answer why collegiate recovery communities produce a higher success rate for recovery. Harris said there are a number of components that are unique to these communities, but one of the most important is the sense of camaraderie and belonging among students.

“They need peers who are not drinking or using drugs,” Harris said. “They need peers who have found fun ways to have a good time chemically free. Although there is support in the community and on the outside of any university setting, the real true heart of being a college student is your peer group. The ability to access that on campus has been incredibly successful for so many students.”

For More Information

For additional information, go to the CSAR Web site at www.depts.ttu.edu/hs/csa/.