The Michigan Daily sat down with three members of the University of Michigan’s administration for an in-depth interview. Based on these interviews, The Daily has crafted three profile pieces in hopes of helping the campus community get to know other members of U-M administration that they might not know otherwise. The Daily introduces you to Todd Sevig, director of Counseling and Psychological Services, who sat down for his interview at the CAPS offices on the fourth floor of the Michigan Union.
For decades, an office on the Michigan Union’s fourth floor has been a hub for mental health on campus. As students come to enter the office, they pass encouraging messages scrawled on wooden boards and glass windows offering a look into the office. Students who peer through these windows will see a room filled with massage chairs, board games and tea bags — a space for students to prioritize their mental health.
Behind it all, Tom Sevig, the director of the University of Michigan’s Counseling and Psychological Services leads the unit with a love for students and an understanding of the importance of mental health. In his office on the fourth floor of the Union, Sevig sat down for an interview with The Michigan Daily.
“I love when students use it throughout the week — a few minutes every day,” Sevig said. “You all can be top-notch academic stars, do well in all your classes and major, and take care of your mental health. You can do that. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. So this idea of the wellness system is really formative and great.”
For the past 34 years, Sevig has worked with the CAPS as an active member, supervisor, senior assistant director of clinical services and interim director before assuming his current position as director of CAPS in 2001. At the start of his career, CAPS began with 16 staff members. Today, Sevig manages more than 70.
Though Sevig holds a managerial role as director of CAPS, he said he is deeply committed to supporting students through emotional growth.
“(I am) really trying to support students and become healthy, emotionally, navigating, changing identities and helping with those really hard moments that we all have in life,” Sevig said. “We do a whole lot of things to support that, again, whether it’s through therapy, whether it’s through our website, whether it’s through some of the outreach workshops that we do, or how we support student groups. I try to keep our focus on all of these things both within CAPS, but also outside of CAPS.”
Sevig said his proudest accomplishment was giving students a space to prioritize their well-being: the Wolverine Wellness Center.
“We thought about starting the wellness center,” Sevig said. “We started with one. Now, we have three campuses and a decision was made to either build more individual offices for more individual counseling, or to do this wellness idea, and looking back, I’m so glad we did it at the time. I wasn’t 100% sure, but (students) just loved them and hundreds of people use (the center) every year. I love the idea that it’s possible to actually take care of yourself and your mental health.”
Sevig was raised in northern Minnesota and Iowa. His grandparents emigrated from Norway, and Sevig’s father was a minister while his mother was a musician. As a first-generation college student, Sevig said his experience venturing into the unknown world of higher education led him to his career of helping students.
“We’re on this earth to help each other,” Sevig said. “I think (this desire) came from those early days. My dad was a minister with lower-class status, if you will. We didn’t have a lot of money, so it was a lot of years we struggled with that. And that’s what I carry with me to this day.”
Though Sevig intended to earn an engineering degree,a conversation with a career counselor at the University of Iowa made him realize he wanted to continue his interest in math while fulfilling his passion of helping people.
“This sense of trying to help other people through counseling and therapy — I’ve carried that through all these years,” Sevig said. “The other part about being in an academic environment is looking at data, looking at numbers. I love looking at our numbers every year and paying attention to what’s happening in the mental health world if you will, and love looking at trends and using them to help arrange what we do in terms of time, money and resources and so forth. So it feeds my interest and passion … but it also feeds my soul to do this work.”
Sevig graduated from Iowa State University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology in 1984 before earning both a master’s degree in 1989 and Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the Ohio State University and 1993. While he graduated a Buckeye, Sevig said he is a Wolverine by choice.
“When I first came here, I actually framed it as being bicultural, like in both Michigan and Iowa State,” Sevig said. “And then after a few years, I became a full-fledged Michigan fan.”
Sevig said he originally came to the University of Michigan because his wife was working in the University Career Center in the Dean of Students office. Sevig said coming to the University felt natural.
“I also loved being in big, large university settings,” Sevig said. “So, (after) undergrad at Iowa State, grad work in Ohio State and getting an internship at the University of Florida, I came here. There’s been so many wonderful resources, both money and other kinds of resources devoted to us. There’s always something happening here.”
Even after spending 30 years with the University, Sevig said his ability to change the U-M community drives him to continue his work.
“The other part that’s still exciting to me after all these years is really changing the world one person at a time, but also changing the world in terms of (the) climate and our culture,” Sevig said. “I think it’s gotten better since I’ve been here due to the efforts of a ton of people and being part of that.”
Sevig emphasized how CAPS has grown during his time as director. He said one of the greatest rewards is seeing students take initiative to expand mental health outreach.
“We don’t exist for the University or administration or our faculty,” Sevig said. “It’s just for (students) and everything that we do should support (student) mental health. So engaging with students whether it was the student advisory board or working with (Central Student Government) presidents. It seems common now to do that, but back then it wasn’t. So that was really rewarding.”
One of Sevig’s primary career goals was to promote CAPS as a welcoming environment for all students to combat any potential stigma against mental health services.
“Everybody is this part of (this) counseling center, which is not just to be seen as a hospital, therapist or treatment because that’s not a fit for everybody,” Sevig said. “My job is to really communicate that we’re here for all students, and not just some students.”
While Sevig does not plan to leave the University any time soon, he reflected on the time he has spent in Ann Arbor thus far. While he originally chose the location solely for convenience, he said Ann Arbor quickly became home.
“It wasn’t the plan to stay here,” Sevig said. “… Four years later, we’ve really fallen in love. I think we have roots here.”
Daily Staff Reporter Sneha Dhandapani can be reached at sdhanda@umich.edu.