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Cooper announces $7.7 million for college-level mental health programs

Governor Roy Cooper has announced almost $8 million dollars in funding to support mental health programs in state colleges and universities. 

The new funding comes on top of a previous $5 million investment and will be directed at both new and existing mental health services for college students.

The governor released a statement on Monday highlighting the importance of identifying mental stress in students and providing access to quality care.

To that end, the funding will help secure collaboration between the University of North Carolina (UNC) System, the North Carolina Community College System, and the state’s independent colleges and universities to offer suicide prevention training to faculty and staff.

It will also be used to shore up an after-hours mental health hotline for students across all 17 institutions in the UNC System and develop a new training program for faculty, staff, and students.

The funding is derived from federal grants that have been incorporated into the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund.

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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