By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
           
Dawn Rogers wishes somehow there were more than just one Dr. Monique Marsh-Bell.
           
"I wish we could clone her and have her involved in more," the Deputy Athletics Director said of Dr. Marsh-Bell, who was hired last March as Baylor's Assistant AD for Mental Health Services. "Monique has brought tremendous intangibles to our department in a short time. To have someone with such talent for one-on-one sessions, group work, education and facilitation around mental health is a game-changer for Baylor Athletics."
           
What's funny is that when Senior Associate AD Kenny Boyd first approached Monique about the position, she had to admit that she's never been an athlete "and I don't know anything about the athletic department culture. Collegiate sports wasn't my life. Which is kind of strange over here, because most people have some connection."

Her only real link previously to collegiate athletics is that her husband, Brandon Bell, was a wide receiver at Prairie View A&M, helping the 2009 Panthers win their first SWAC championship in 45 years. That's it.
           
"In some ways, I feel like that's a blessing," Monique said, "because I might be one of the only people in their lives that doesn't see them as a student-athlete. They're student-athletes, but I see them as a student, I see them as a person. I want them to be successful and win every game and be the star player. But, it's not my focus.
           
"I want them to be a mentally healthy person. And we can talk about what that looks like for you in sports, for you in academics, for you with your family, with your social life, just as an individual developing an identity. But, it's not my No. 1 focus."
           
After spending 6 ½ years with the Baylor Counseling Center as a psychologist and finishing up as assistant director of community and diversity programming, Monique joined Baylor Athletics last March.
           
"Over the past year, Dr. Marsh-Bell has diligently worked to broaden our mental health resources available for our student-athletes," said Boyd, who oversees Baylor's Student-Athlete Healthy and Wellness department. "Monique has led education and training initiatives with our student-athletes, coaches and staff to highlight various areas ranging from general mental health issues to suicide prevention courses. These efforts to reduce stigma and promote lifelong wellness all start with her passion to build and maintain relationships with our department, campus and community."
           
While the Counseling Center closes at 5 p.m. each day, Marsh-Bell keeps a more flexible schedule and tries to meet the student-athletes where they are.
           
"One of the things we're seeing nationally is that their schedules just sometimes don't allow for them to go somewhere else for counseling services," she said. "And unlike the Counseling Center, if 7 o'clock at night is the only availability and I can make it work, I try my best to do that. . . . Sometimes, it's here in my office, sometimes I'm at the track, sometimes I'm at the Ferrell Center and sometimes I meet them where they are, literally. If they have 45 minutes between weights and practice, I'm like, 'OK, let's meet there.'''
           
With a passion for social justice, Marsh-Bell initially wanted to be a lawyer and work in the juvenile justice system. That's one of the reasons why she picked Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., for her undergrad studies because of the strong law school.
           
That career path changed, though, when she took a couple psychology classes as a freshman, and "I just loved it so much."
           
In the summer, she did an internship with the Children's Advocacy Center back in her hometown of Plano, shadowing a social worker and psychologist and getting a ride-along with the police department.
           
"The day (I shadowed the social worker), she had to go to a hospital and remove a newborn who had tested positive for cocaine," Monique said. "That's just not something I could see myself doing. Not that that's what they do all the time, but that's part of it. And I just didn't feel like I could do that area of mental health and social services."
           
Shadowing a therapist, she loved "seeing people have kind of this awakening, learning more about themselves, helping them figure things out in their lives, working through trauma. It was just calling to me."
           
Back at Southern, she declared her major as psychology, "and I've been doing it ever since."
           
A native of Garland, Texas, who made moves with her family to Jacksonville, Fla., Bloomington, Ill., and back to Texas in Plano as her dad was moved and promoted in his 35-year career with State Farm Insurance, Monique said she never really saw herself as a confidante that friends would come to for advice.
           
"My friends would tell me then an d now that I'm just an honest person," she said. "If they needed an honest opinion, they know I'm going to tell them the truth. I'm going to tell them like it is. Which, in some ways, is a part of how therapy needs to be. If they didn't want to hear the truth, or if they wanted to be gently guided into it, I was probably not the person that they were coming to."
           
A family of four with her mom and dad, Gloria and Fred, and older brother, Freddy, the Marshes were "kind of moving all over the place," Monique said.

"When I tell people that, they ask me if I'm from a military family. But, it was just State Farm moving dad to all these different places," she said. Monique graduated from Plano Senior High School when the family moved back to Texas to stay.

While she never really showed any interest in sports, Monique did take all kinds of dance classes, ranging from tap, jazz and ballet early on to hip-hop and salsa as she got older.

"Wherever I have lived, I have found a dance studio," she said. "I don't necessarily feel like I'm great at it, I just really enjoy it. They say dancing is freedom, and that's what I feel when I dance."

Through the years, "there are plenty of embarrassing pictures of me in dance costumes," she said. "We did the Chiquita banana song, and there's a picture of me in a full-on banana suit where my face is in the banana. It was awful."
           
After receiving her bachelor's degree in psychology at Southern, Monique listed Baylor as her "No. 1 choice" for graduate studies, but got a rejection letter.
           
Instead, she ended up at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., earning her doctoral degree in psychology and graduating in 2010.
           
Back in Texas, she did a one-year post-doctoral internship with the Houston Advocacy Center and then "ended up moving back in with my parents for a little bit."
           
"This was exactly how I thought things were going to turn out, right?" she said. "You get a doctoral degree and move back into your childhood home."
           
Still holding some bitterness for getting rejected the first time, Marsh-Bell had decided not to apply for an opening at Baylor. "But when you get all this education, and you're living in your parents' home, unemployed, at some point you say to yourself, 'I have to get a job.'''
           
Monique had already accepted a position with a Dallas juvenile detention center when she got called in for an interview and was eventually hired as a staff psychologist with the Baylor Counseling Center in November 2011.
           
"It just felt right," she said. "I prayed about it, and I prayed with my parents and with my then-boyfriend, Brandon, about it. I took the job and never looked back."
           
Although she felt Baylor was "where I needed to be," Monique said in the beginning she wasn't "sure if it's where I wanted to be" and started looking for other jobs.  That's when her dad stepped in and told her, "If the Lord has you there for a purpose, which I believe he does, you won't be able to leave until you fill that purpose."
           
After nearly a year in the athletics department, she knows the Lord wants her to be here. The only remaining question is "What it is that you want me to do in this space?"

"I need to know what that is so that I can do what it is you want me to do here," she said. "I'm settled and I'm at peace with it, but I'm still not 100 percent sure what specifically the Lord wants me to do here. But, I feel good about it."
           
David Chandler, the men's basketball athletic trainer, says Marsh-Bell is "probably the most important hire we have recently made in the athletic department and she is a perfect fit for our athletes."

"Specific injuries, concussions, etc., are spoken about a great deal, but our greatest need and challenge is the mental wellbeing of our student-athletes," Chandler said. "Monique is a wonderful and caring resource for our athletes, and she has and will benefit our athletes greatly when it comes to their mental wellbeing."

While Monique has had a lot of positive feedback and students coming back to see her during her time at Baylor, she said therapists rarely get to see the end results from their sessions.
           
"I always tell people if you're someone who needs validation or someone to be thankful for your services, then this is probably not the field for you," she said. "You're just not going to be the person when someone's winning an Emmy that they thank. No one says, 'I also want to thank my therapist.' That's probably not going to happen."
           
Monique and Brandon, who have been married a little over five years, have a 2-year-old son, Braylon.
           
"He has so much personality, so much energy, he's been great," Monique said. "We had to do some fertility treatments to get him here, so I feel like he's just a real blessing. I was told when I was much younger that I was not going to be able to have kids. So, when Brandon and I started getting closer and even before we got engaged, I had to have a conversation with him about not being able to have kids."
           
With plans to adopt and maybe go through the foster program first, "we found a really good doctor here in town that told us, 'I think we should give this a shot.'''
           
Outside of work, she likes to sew – "I'm working on an outfit right now because my birthday is coming up." Her and Brandon also dabble in woodwork, building tables and shelves for their home, "and we have a little dog, so we go on walks together as a family."