The Nesting Place, FGCU’s first sensory room, is a place where all students, faculty and staff can visit to decompress their emotions and alleviate their mood.
For students looking to visit, The Nesting Place is located in Module 2 which has accessible parking nearby.
Open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, the space aims to improve focus, relieve stress and enhance the learning of those who visit through engaging their senses. The space has reduced lighting as well as sensory devices such as noise-reduction headphones, fidgets and a swing chair.
However, the one thing never allowed in the space is technology, which is prohibited so visitors can fully relax within it.
Langley Elg, an FGCU student, recently visited The Nesting Place and immediately felt the
benefits from the experience.
“The time I’ve spent at The Nesting Place so far has absolutely had a positive impact on my mental and emotional wellbeing on campus,” Elg said.
Before visiting The Nesting Place, he had never been in a sensory room before.
“I never knew that a sensory room was something that I particularly needed or could benefit this much from, but it’s become an invaluable resource on days when I would otherwise feel overwhelmed with stress from upcoming deadlines or exams,” Elg said.
The initiative comes from the Marieb College of Health and Human Services, specifically the Golisano Intellectual and Developmental Disability Initiative (GIDDI). The Nesting Place opened this semester. Within just a few short weeks of its opening, the center had many visitors.
Sky Santamaria, program assistant and support specialist at GIDDI, noticed firsthand how students are learning about The Nesting Place and visiting it.
“We recently had a young lady who came in who was having a stressful day and she knew that we were at Mod Two. I was on my way back, so she saw me and asked, ‘Do you know where GIDDI is?’ I told her, ‘Yeah, you’re in the right place. I’m actually the support specialist.’ So I opened The Nesting Place for her and she was able to walk in, calm down and leave with a better attitude than she came in with,” Santamaria said.
Although GIDDI is a center that focuses on the needs of students with disabilities, the center encourages all students to visit as every student can benefit from visiting the space.
Dr. Ellen Donald, program director of GIDDI, has been behind the initiative and hopes to improve inclusivity on campus with The Nesting Place.
“We’re here to make FGCU a more inclusive and welcoming campus for students that were born with or acquired various disabilities, especially intellectual and developmental disabilities. To try to pull together the community and the outside of FGCU, as well as inside FGCU, to kind of work more closely together,” Donald said.
Bringing students together is the major goal of this new center and, correspondingly, GIDDI. The GIDDI center hosts many events like Adaptive Sports Day, which happened in October. These events help connect students who don’t have disabilities with those who do to help bridge the social divide between them on campus.
“Realizing that we’re all a little bit different, that we all kind of think differently, and we maybe communicate differently and we learn differently, but it’s really we have a lot more commonalities than we have differences,” Donald said. “We’re trying to create a space here that people can just feel comfortable coming together, getting support, making friendships, getting involved with different programming and realizing that we’re not so different after all.”
For students looking to get involved with GIDDI, the center offers many service-learning opportunities for students of all majors. For more information, visit their website: https://www.fgcu.edu/mariebcollege/giddi/.
