April 16, 2007. Americans woke up to horrifying news.

Twenty-three-year-old English major Seung-Hui Cho killed 27 students and five teachers on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Since that horrid day, many questions have come up. Why would anyone want to do this? What went wrong? What could be done?

At Fresno City College, Psychological Services Coordinator Dr. Brian Olowude, has been looking for the answer to these questions for quite some time. Particularly after the Virginia Tech shooting, Olowude felt the sense of urgency and decided to take action.

Hoping to receive state funding, he turned to proposition 63, which provides “an increased funding, personnel and other resources to support county mental health programs and monitor progress toward statewide goals for children, transition age youth, adults, and families.”

After identifying the different grants which he can apply for, Olowude attended a hearing in Sacramento. There he worked to determine what the grant will look like and also ended up being on the State Chancellor’s advisory committee for the grant.

“I was excited to do the work. I was even more excited to find that my involvement in the development of the grant would include our participating in the grant competition to obtain one of our grants,” said Olowude.

The California Community College Chancellor’s office received close to 6.9 million dollars specifically designated to student mental health. The funding was divided in a few different ways.

First there was a training and assistance grant, awarded to the Center for Applied Research and Statistics in Santa Rosa. “Over the next two years they will be working with all community colleges to provide training and technical assistance when it comes to mental health,” said Olowude.

The second grant was awarded to Kognito, an avatar based training, designed for risk training and suicide prevention training. The program is available for free to all faculty and students who are given a special access code. “The program is available on the FCC Psychology services website and we will be advertising it more on campus,” said Olowude.

The final portion of the money was awarded to the State Chancellor’s office designated for campus based grants.

“I was very excited. I worked with one of my partners at willow. We put a proposal together. We were awarded the grant which will provide faculty and staff training on how to recognize signs and refer students,” said Olowude.

Also adding to the excitement for Olowude is the start of a new club on campus known as Active Minds.

“It is a student based club with interest in student mental health, advocacy, and training. We will offer opportunities for students to become certified as pier educators to help their fellow students in a variety of issues,” said Olowude. “We will be having events on campus specifically targeting mental health. Will be doing special outreach to veterans. We plan to have a veteran’s appreciation conference. Our challenge is to make sure all of our campuses have some benefit of this.”

According to Olowude, this is the first time community colleges have received specific money from the state for mental health. Unlike CSU and UC, the state doesn’t fund services for community colleges. Instead the services are funded by student health fee or general fund.

At the State Center Community College District board meeting in July, Olowude and nurse Naomi Blanco presented the SCCCD Student Mental Health Consortium proposal. As a result, Fresno City College and Reedley College will receive over 246,000 dollars for the next two years. Faculty and staff will receive training on student mental health issues such as suicide. The program is also specifically designed for veterans, students with invisible disabilities, and minority students.

According to Olowude, the number of students who came in to Psychological Services increased by 100 percent during the 2011-2012 academic school year. “It’s because of the state of our community,” said Olowude.

Now he looks forward to assisting students even more in this critical time.

“It’s going to be a lot of work. Two years is a really short period of time but I’m working feverishly to officially launch the grant,” said Olowude. “We are at the very final stages of the grant officially launching and us being able to receive the funds. I’m very excited to start it.”