Former and current employees of Sacramento State’s Student Health, Counseling and Wellness Services have alleged mistreatment by Senior Associate Vice President Jeanne Harris Van Dahlen.
Employees said they are concerned that Van Dahlen’s expectations have hurt The WELL’s quality of care in both counseling and primary care.
This comes after Sac State admitted its second-highest incoming class of students this fall, which created a ratio of roughly one counselor for every 2000 students. University of California, Davis also had high admission numbers this semester, and has a ratio of roughly one counselor for every 1,300 students.
Cathy Rojas, SHCWS’s former outreach coordinator and counselor, said that the work environment has led many employees to leave or be terminated. Other former employees cited this environment and the fear of retaliation as their reason for wishing to remain anonymous.
Rojas said she believes much of the problem is the leadership of Van Dahlen. Rojas said that under Van Dahlen’s leadership, 26 SHCWS employees have left in the last two years, and claims that 18 of these employees left specifically due to Van Dahlen’s supervision. This exact number could not be confirmed, but the high turnover rate has also been reported by other former employees.
“A lot of [the problems are] not illegal, but there are things that make for a very uncomfortable work environment,” Rojas said. “The last two [sports counselors] in that role have left because of the environment of [SHCWS].”
Rojas worked for SHCWS from 2018 until her resignation in May 2024. According to Rojas, Sac State went through multiple sports psychologists during her employment, but none seemed to stick.
Some former employees say one major concern is a shortage of counselors. Sac State does not have a designated sports psychologist nor an in-residence housing counselor this semester, and as a result, many of the counselors in SHCWS work with athletes and North Village residents alongside their typical clientele.
“Our workload was incredibly changed when she came in, and in a way that I think violates the [California Faculty Association] agreement,” Rojas said.
Van Dahlen did not confirm the weekly hours of counselors, but shared that SHCWS’s goal is for counselors to spend 60% to 65% percent of their working hours in direct service to students through individual sessions, group therapy, and crisis intervention. This is outlined in the CFA counselor handbook as the maximum hours in direct service recommended by the International Accreditation of Counseling Services.
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“Before [Van Dahlen], our director would use that number in a very loose way,” a former counselor – who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation – said. “Once [Van Dahlen] came, she tried to use that number as more representative of our work. She would talk a lot about how she was facing pressure from the administration about our productivity.”
Four current and former employees reached out to share their experiences before and after Van Dahlen assumed her role, but wished to remain anonymous or later rescinded their offers, citing fear of retaliation.
Some former counselors said that spending this much time on direct services takes away time dedicated to the work that facilitates them, such as researching treatment options, writing session notes and coordinating with case managers. These tasks allow counselors to review the quality of their direct services and provide adequate care to Sac State students.
“Sac State has a significant amount of trauma,” the former counselor said. “The needs are pretty significant, so we often have to do case management type of work. We also don’t have enough case managers.”
Sac State has two case managers, allotting one case manager to roughly every 15,000 students. This means Sac State’s case managers each work with nearly 5,000 more students than UC Davis’s case managers.
Former counselors said that while productivity expectations were a main concern, Van Dahlen exhibited other troubling behavior. Van Dahlen has allegedly singled out employees with marginalized identities in meetings announcing new hires who shared those identities, according to Rojas and other former counselors. Former counselors said they often felt unheard when bringing concerns to Van Dahlen, such as issues with sound-proofing counseling offices.
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Rojas and her colleagues shared their concerns about Van Dahlen’s expectations and alleged microaggressions in listening sessions with President Luke Wood. They said Wood pointed them to the Office of Equal Opportunity, which then directed them toward human resources.
This resulted in a meeting between SHCWS employees, Van Dahlen, Vice President Aniesha Mitchell, Senior Director of University Labor & Employee Relations Mark Hyde and former Director of Counseling and Psychological Services Ron Lutz. Rojas said she received an email from Lutz stating that human resources would not allow CFA to attend because it would be a staff meeting that is not subject to Weingarten Rights.
Rojas said she and other employees left the meeting feeling belittled. Rojas and former counselors said that Mitchell asked SHCWS employees to consider how they receive appreciation and allegedly suggested that the employees did not feel appreciated or respected because they were not open to receiving appreciation or respect.
“It seemed like they were on the same team, and we felt very, very unheard,” Rojas said.
Van Dahlen did not confirm that the meeting Rojas described took place, but former SHCWS employees have shared meeting records with The State Hornet confirming it did.
A former clinician – who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation – shared that these issues are affecting all of SHCWS, not just the counselors. They shared that, while counselors faced many of the initial struggles, Van Dahlen’s leadership also made it difficult for primary care clinicians to provide students with adequate care.
“We’ve worked in pretty short-staffed environments,” the former clinician said. ”While that affects the staff, of course, because we’re working under-staffed, that affects the students as well.”
The former clinician said that the push for productivity has also affected clinicians, but short-staffing has made it easier to meet individual productivity expectations through long shifts. The former clinician also shared that priorities shifted in the culture of SHCWS when Van Dahlen assumed her role.
“It definitely seems like a more business-centered student health services versus prior to [Van Dahlen] coming in,” the former clinician said. “It feels as if the budget is our priority.”
Van Dahlen said that she could not comment on confidential matters, internal meetings or the perspectives of former employees. The State Hornet reached out to Sac State for comment and was redirected back to Van Dahlen’s initial statement.
