STUDENTASSISTANCEAT BRAZILIAN FEDERAL UNIVERSITIES: FOCUS ON STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Student assistance is a specific area of assistance to the academic life of university students, with several fields of action, including mental health. The article presented is based on the experience of a pioneering project of a training course in crisis intervention in mental health for professionals who work in student assistance at Brazilian federal universities. At the end of the course, participants carried out a group action plan, with one or more contents developed during the meetings. The general objective of this study is to identify the themes chosen by the course participants for a proposal for action in student assistance. The instruments used were the 12 projects received on the course platform, built by professionals from different universities, with the theme being the permanence of university students. Data analysis used Salda & ntilde;a's (2013) qualitative coding methodology. The results indicate that all plans are committed and concerned with the issue of mental health and with the involvement of the largest possible part of the academic community in each activity, including the student assistance team itself, expanding the possibilities of facing these issues in the context university. We understand how crucial it is to create public policies for continuing education for student assistance workers in their daily activities, as is the case with mental health care and crisis situations for university students.