Addressing the rising prevalence of mental health issues, particularly among young people.

Mental Health

Examining innovations that help young people thrive.

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Perspectives

College students are reporting lower rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts than they did in 2023 and 2022, according to this year’s <a href="https://healthymindsnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2024-2025_HMS-National-Data-Report_Student.pdf">Healthy Minds Study</a>, indicating a trend towards improved mental health on campus. While still alarmingly high, the findings are a welcome change in direction after more than a decade of increases in student distress across the board.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“People should take heart in the small trends we are seeing, but at the same time, the levels are still quite high,” said Daniel Eisenberg, Ph.D., one of the principal investigators on the study. “I think the main message here is that things may be getting a little better, but we need to continue our efforts on many fronts.”



The Healthy Minds Study is the nation’s largest survey of student mental health. This year’s results, based on responses from more than 84,000 students across 135 colleges and universities, show severe depression symptoms have dropped to 18 percent, down from 23 percent in 2022. Suicidal ideation has fallen to 11 percent, down from 15 percent in 2022. Moderate to severe anxiety symptoms fell from 37 percent in 2022 to 32 percent in 2025.&nbsp;



The survey once again shows disparities among student groups in both prevalence and help-seeking behaviors. Students who identify as transgender and gender expansive reported significantly higher rates of mental health problems, with 66 percent experiencing depression and 32 percent reporting suicidal ideation in the past year.&nbsp;&nbsp;



L.G.B.T.Q. students also face elevated risks, with 52 percent reporting depression compared to 32 percent of heterosexual students. Meanwhile, white students with positive depression or anxiety screens were more likely to access clinical mental health treatment than their Black, Hispanic/Latino, or Asian peers with similar symptoms. Perception that mental health services are “too expensive” as well as time constraints emerged as major barriers to seeking help.&nbsp;



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"I think the main message here is that things may be getting a little better, but we need to continue our efforts on many fronts."
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Eisenberg and Sarah Ketchen Lipson, Ph.D. have been principal investigators on the Healthy Minds Study since its first release in 2007.&nbsp;Their research has been instrumental in gauging the voracity of what has been coined the “student mental health crisis.”&nbsp;Their data, showing year over year increases in distress among college students,&nbsp;sounded alarms on campuses around the country, including in 2021, when they&nbsp;<a href="applewebdata://D3F0E0FA-C04B-4FFA-87BF-467E8B1C9778/the%20Healthy%20Minds%20study">reported</a>&nbsp;that&nbsp;rates of depression and anxiety had doubled since 2010.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“For years, we braced ourselves when the Healthy Minds Study was released,” said Zoe Ragouzeos, Ph.D.,&nbsp;vice president of Student Mental Health and Wellbeing&nbsp;at New York University.&nbsp;“The challenges were already painfully visible in our counseling centers, but year after year, the Healthy Minds data made clear that these struggles weren’t isolated. They were a national reality.”&nbsp;



While they are well-known in college mental health for the significant snapshot they provide, Eisenberg and Lipson’s parsing and interpretation of the data has helped practitioners and campus leaders understand more about the complexities of student behavior and institutional support. Eisenberg explained that while concerns around unmet demand for clinical services often dominate responses to the prevalence numbers, there is far more to the story than just students vying for counseling center appointments.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“When we say that a certain percentage of students are reporting some level of depressive symptoms, it doesn’t mean that all of them need to get clinical services, and it doesn’t mean all of them are in crisis,” he said. “There is an entire array of students who are somewhere on the continuum of mental health need. Most would benefit from resources of some kind — peer support groups, mental health apps, mindfulness programs. They would also benefit from more supportive environments, whether it be in the classroom or with peers or with other professionals on campus.”



The study indicated that use of therapy, counseling, and psychiatric medication has remained stable. According to the 2024 to 2025 report, about 37 percent of students received therapy, and 30 percent took psychiatric medication. Eisenberg pointed out that an array of other services — many of them preventative — are less utilized by students on campus.&nbsp;



“For the most part, the more preventative type of resources seem to attract only a small sliver of the student population — for a variety of reasons,” he said. “Maybe they’re not engaging enough. Maybe they’re not as well connected to the infrastructure to remind students they are available. We have this massive number of students with a diverse range of needs, and we also have this massive set of resources.”&nbsp;



Dr. Zoe Ragouzeos agrees and pointed to the need to create supportive environments for all students.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“While it’s critical to match students with the right level of care, we also need to step back and look at the campus ecosystem as a whole. Prevention isn’t just about apps or workshops. It is about building a culture where faculty, staff, and peers all play a role in noticing when a student is struggling and responding with empathy, kindness, and knowledge of what to say and where to direct students for care,” Ragouzeos said.



“When we create an environment where conversations about mental health and wellbeing are normalized, we reduce stigma and make it easier for students to access the wide range of resources available to them.”



You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at <a href="mailto:mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org">mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org</a> with comments, ideas, or tips.

A Promising Trend

In a scene from the new series Overcompensating, two impossibly enthusiastic orientation leaders address a circle of wide-eyed first years. “Welcome to college, where you can have a fresh start!” one proclaims. “And you can be whoever you want to be!” the second finishes. A third leader, disabled and in a wheelchair, rolls her eyes at them and questions aloud in signature deadpan: “Can you?”



The show’s protagonist is Benny Scanlon, who begins college with a quest to fit in and quickly learns it comes at a cost. His pursuit of social success leads him to not only hide his gay identity but perform his vision of what is acceptable — masculinity, straightness, wealth — in the most extreme way possible. The façade begins slipping almost immediately, as his efforts to imitate who he imagines everyone else to be battle against his instincts to be who he really is.&nbsp;



For many in real life, the college experience offers an opportunity to self-discover beyond the confines of home for the first time. Even those who have lived independently before will find themselves starting fresh to some extent, needing to present themselves in a new place to new classmates. From the photos they put on their walls to the clothes they wear on the first day of class, they are cultivating, maybe even curating, an image of themselves — an identity.



Some will look forward to the opportunity for reinvention, while others struggle to determine who they want to put forward — and not just at the start. Either way, this process of identity formation is coming to the fore with the start of their adult lives. And it carries implications for wellbeing, especially as the developmentally crucial college years tend to coincide with <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5848432/">the emergence of mental health disorders.</a> With a strong sense of identity <a href="https://modernminds.com.au/journal/latest/self-identity-and-mental-health-building-a-strong-foundation-for-well-being">linked to overall wellbeing</a>, the role of college as a laboratory for self-discovery may indeed be one of its most important.



For those approaching college eager to reimagine themselves, the relief could be immediate. Living away from the people who know them and the family, places, and activities typically associated with them may feel liberating. That’s the case in Overcompensating for Benny’s fast friend, Carmen, who’s ready to move on from her perceived identity in high school as a socially invisible “no one.” She represents all those who have wanted to shed reputations they view as having pigeonholed them: “jock,” “nerd,” “troublemaker,” or “no one.”&nbsp;



Others may anticipate college as the place not to become someone completely new but to fulfill some part of themselves formerly untapped or suppressed. Unlike the Benny character, some LGBTQ students enter college excited to be able to express and explore that side of themselves more deeply. Beyond queer students, the general diversity on college campuses may offer those hoping to explore some latent background or interest — a spiritual tradition, academic discipline, professional venture —more opportunities to do so than ever before.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The act of attending higher education itself, or a specific institution, can also play a role in building a sense of self. That is, being a college student or a college-educated person becomes an important identity marker. First-generation college students could derive pride from that new status, as well as meaningful connection among those who share it. At schools with certain branded reputations or key programs — a passionate sports fandom, elite academics, even widespread appreciation for the outdoors — students may embrace these qualities and begin to absorb them into their individual self-concept.



The pursuit of identity often stems from being drawn to a broader whole — to belong. Identity and belonging are like two sides of a coin, both connoting a sense of purpose and meaning important to wellbeing, though one is derived from oneself and the other from connections with others. The lines between them are also blurry, as people derive individual purpose from engagement with others and membership to a group. This is often the case in college, where students’ search for themselves tends to land them in communion with others: affinity groups, newspaper offices, Greek life. Especially for those from marginalized backgrounds — LGBTQ students, first-gen students — access to peers and mentors who share their experiences can be a key catalyst for identity formation.



Of course, there are tempting pitfalls in the process of seeking identity and finding belonging at college, particularly if students do so at the expense of who they know themselves to be at their core. For all the opportunities universities offer to explore new or untapped facets of self, dominant social forces may offer a path of least resistance: becoming someone acceptable but not necessarily authentic. In a new, potentially more competitive environment, the crush of uncertainty and insecurity can close in and push many to feel they need to prove their worth.&nbsp;



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There are tempting pitfalls in the process of seeking identity and finding belonging at college, particularly if students do so at the expense of who they know themselves to be at their core.
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This tug and pull extends into the academic domain, where imposter syndrome is prominent, specifically among students accustomed to academic success who find themselves in the company of others equally proficient. The sense that their talents are ‘less than’ because they are no longer superlative can leave young people feeling unsure of themselves and the way forward. A similar effect may spread among high-performing students from marginalized groups who fear being perceived as undeserving of their achievements. Again, contending with how they see themselves compared to how others see them is part of the difficult work of becoming who they are.  



Identity formation can feel like an education unto its own, but if students realize later that certain turns led them in the wrong direction, that doesn’t mean taking them was wrong. Although some may arrive at college fully formed, assured of who they are or plan on becoming, many more will likely find identity formation to be an unpredictable and ever-evolving course — one in which self-discovery has no end point and builds from knowing who they are as much as who they are not.  For Benny and Carmen in Overcompensating, their valiant efforts pretending to be other people still leave them careening towards one apparent inevitability: themselves.

Who Are You?

If you asked people to describe the Healing Meals Community Project, you might get different answers. For families experiencing a health crisis, it is a lifeline of nutritious, medically tailored meals delivered with a personal note of support. For the high school students who prepare the food, and write the notes, it is a unique opportunity to serve others, while discovering the good in themselves. Perhaps the best way to describe Healing Meals is as an organization that leverages the powerful relationship between food, health, and community.&nbsp;



“We want everyone who comes through our doors to feel better when they leave and bring that energy to the next person they come in contact with,” Sarah Leathers, the C.E.O. of Healing Meals, said at its annual fundraiser in June. &nbsp;



According to the Healing Meals team, that positivity is baked into every meal they make; and, they say, their clients can taste it. As a healing protocol for patients dealing with a serious illness, the organization prepares and delivers meals to families in Connecticut’s Hartford, Middlesex, and Litchfield Counties. Eighty percent of those who receive the food are eligible to do so for free. All of it is organic, locally sourced, and nutritious, aimed at nourishing patients with medical conditions and/or limited diets.



Healing Meals is among a growing national community dedicated to “food as medicine,” meaning they advocate for food-based interventions in health care. Research shows that tailoring meals to meet a client’s specific medical diagnosis leads to <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2797397">positive outcomes</a> in health and satisfaction for people with severe, complex, and/or chronic illnesses. But anyone who has been in the Healing Meals kitchen, or worked in the gardens, or delivered meals to families, knows that this work is not just about food.&nbsp;



As part of its model, Healing Meals enlists teenage volunteers who show up daily, put their phones aside, and help grow, cook and prepare the food under the supervision of a chef and other adult mentors. Part experiential learning, part youth empowerment, the program lets students learn about the relationship between food and health, become an integral part of a kitchen crew, and, often, gain meaning, agency and belonging. &nbsp;



“From the moment I walked in, I felt instantly welcomed,” said Ben, a rising high school senior who is interning at Healing Meals this summer. “All of the other volunteers were just incredibly helpful to me. It was nothing I had really felt before.”



Since its founding in 2016, Healing Meals has engaged 700 youth volunteers, the majority of whom stay beyond their first experience. Leathers said while the organization’s dual mission – supporting clients and students alike -- can be challenging for donors to categorize, the success of the youth development program has taught her that one purpose often serves another. At a time when 40 percent of high schoolers <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a9.htm">report</a> persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, Healing Meals is becoming a model for a different kind of youth volunteerism, where the kids that are helping others may be getting far more in return. &nbsp;



Organic Roots



The Healing Meals story began in California, where Leathers’ sister, Cathryn Couch, was running a similar organization called Ceres Community Project. Now serving more than 2,500 clients throughout Northern California, Ceres also has a youth development component, though Couch said its inclusion was somewhat serendipitous. &nbsp;



As a well-known caterer in the Bay Area, Couch was asked by a friend to give her daughter a volunteer job for the summer. At the time, she was helping a woman undergoing cancer treatment with medically tailored meals for herself and her family. Realizing the growing need for this kind of support within her community — and witnessing the empathy and confidence her young intern was gaining — Couch put it all together, gave up her successful catering business, and launched Ceres.&nbsp;



“It addressed so many needs in the community and so many things I care deeply about,” she wrote in her origin story on the organization’s web site. “Young people would learn to cook. People who needed healing food would have it. We would help teach people about the link between what we eat and our health. And we’d help restore the idea of caring for our neighbors, something that has been lost between my parent’s generation and my own.”



Leathers had long hoped to launch something similar in Connecticut, where the sisters were raised. Having experienced a personal health crisis in 2011, she began studying the link between nutrition and health and the relationship between the mind, body and spirit. But she had also been a tutor to students with disabilities and a job coach to young people, including boys who hadn’t finished high school and were preparing to enter the construction field. Leathers, who is an engineer by training, built the Healing Meals model with these experiences as scaffolding.



“No matter where you come from or what your story is, every young person deserves to feel seen, valued, and supported,” she said. “We all need someone who genuinely cares and who helps us grow with accountability and love.”



The opportunity to mentor youth volunteers as part of the food-as-medicine model was particularly appealing to Leathers’ co-founder, Ellen Palmer. A certified holistic health and life coach, Palmer had worked with teenagers and young adults with stress and anxiety. Yes, the students would provide a valuable service, but they would also have an opportunity to contribute to something meaningful, away from the pressure of college prep and social media.



“Young people need a place to go where they can feel worthy and learn about themselves,” said Palmer, who was with the organization until 2023.



In November 2015, Leathers and Palmer went to California with their other two co-founders Ellen Deutsch and Emily Safino to complete the Ceres affiliate training course. They launched the Healing Meals Community Project from a dining room table and used a borrowed kitchen for the first year. From an event posted on Facebook, they got a handful of adult volunteers, their first four clients and $50,000 in initial funding. That funding has grown to over $1.4 million per year from people and organizations who have touched, or are touched by, the Healing Meals mission.



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"The objective at Healing Meals is to have youth lean into the positive belief that we have about them: 'You are amazing. You are capable. You can’t mess this up. We love you.'"
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Cook. Breathe. Grow.



Nine years and more than 218,000 meals later, Healing Meals now has an industrial kitchen inside what was a former golf club, sitting at the bottom of a low mountain range in Simsbury, Conn. There are organic gardens and free-range chickens out on the grounds. The students come in just after school and grab their aprons. But before they get to work preparing whatever meal the chef has planned for the day, they enter a circle, hear from a recent client, and giggle through the icebreaker.



Questions in circle range from “What animal would you want to be?” to “What does Healing Meals mean to you?” Most of the kids start out as strangers, some frightened to socialize beyond screens and across differences. But Palmer said the immediacy of the task before them accelerates a special connection.



“There’s a level setting that goes on in the Healing Meals kitchen,” she said. &nbsp;“We’re all in it together. Someone is chopping vegetables. Someone is mopping the floor. Someone is working on a recipe. Somebody else is taking out the garbage.”&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Healing-meals-inside-photo-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2875"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Executive Chef Joe Bucholz with student volunteers. Via Healing Meals.</figcaption></figure>



Joe Bucholz is Healing Meals’ executive chef.&nbsp; He said there are major differences between his current workplace and the upscale restaurant kitchen he used to run, particularly around command and control. “I do a lot of supervising, a lot of coaching, a lot of connecting,” he said. “But I’m not actually cooking the food.” &nbsp;He said he is always surprised when he hears parents say, “In our house, you are famous.”



At Healing Meals, the students are involved in food and nutrition in a number of ways. Their shifts often begin with a lesson about what they are preparing, where it is sourced, why it is being used. They are invited to eat what they cook and provide suggestions on how it can be improved or scaled. The adults in the room are there to coax the learning, whether by teaching the volunteers how to gather herbs or asking them to improvise when they’ve run out of cilantro. While there are many important protocols to follow, and safety guardrails strongly enforced, the message the youth receive is “We trust you.”



“The objective at Healing Meals is to have youth lean into the positive belief that we have about them,” said Palmer. “'You are amazing. You are capable. You can’t mess this up. We love you.'”



After preparing and packaging meals, students sit down and write individual notes to each person the organization serves. The kids are encouraged to share positive thoughts and whatever is on their minds. Instead of “Get well soon,” the notes might say “It was such a beautiful day in the garden” or “I really enjoyed making these enchiladas for you.”



“It’s great to see how much they love this part,” said Leathers. “A lot of times, the clients write back, and that makes them feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, they cared about my card.’” Just outside the Healing Meals kitchen is a wall with hundreds of notes the students have received.&nbsp;



While much of the volunteer experience unfolds organically, leadership and confidence are intentionally nurtured at Healing Meals. Students earn a Blue Apron after 50 hours of service and a Chef’s Coat after 100 hours. This final designation comes with an invitation to join the youth development committee, for which students meet regularly and contribute ideas and feedback that have led to enhancements in the program.



Addie, who will be leaving for college in the fall, has been volunteering at Healing Meals for three years. She was recently invited to join the board as a junior member. She said that, since starting at Healing Meals, her perspective on the work has flipped from “something that would be good on my resume that I should probably do”&nbsp; to “an unbelievable experience that would also be good on my resume.”&nbsp;



“I feel like people are motivated by what looks good or what their parents tell them to do. But for me, getting my Chef’s Coat, joining the development committee and then the board, these were things I worked for, I wanted for myself, that I’m proud of.”&nbsp;



Leathers said the difference between students like Addie and those who have been “voluntold,” as she calls it, can be seen in the number of them who stay on. Eighty-five to 90 percent of the students that volunteer at Healing Meals continue with the program, whether they complete 20 hours or achieve 300. Leathers believes that what keeps the students coming back is the direct impact they have on the lives of the people they serve.&nbsp;



“There aren’t a lot of volunteer opportunities for kids that can provide that,” she said.



“I still remember my favorite story that was shared in circle,” Addie said. “It was about a client who had come to the Healing Meals facility to visit, and she had noticed our wall of hearts, titled ‘Client Wall.’ She had asked if her name would be up there, and she was told to go see for herself. When she had found her name written in a heart, she had broken down in tears. She had felt so loved. In that moment, I really felt my impact. I had played a part in making this woman feel loved, something I never want to stop doing.”



Healing Minds



In addition to regular check-ins, Healing Meals surveys its students about the impact of their experiences. Increasingly, they have reported improvements to their emotional and mental health. In an email to Leathers, one parent wrote of her son, “He has reduced anxiety, reduced stress, increased confidence, increased social interactions and increased trust in others. He has since joined a sport and a club at school with his new-found bravery.”



Leathers sees this qualitative data as too powerful to ignore at a time when the adolescent and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/healthy-youth/mental-health/mental-health-numbers.html">young adult mental health crisis</a> continues to confound parents and educators. Indeed, there is ample <a href="https://time.com/6283458/volunteering-good-for-kids-health/">evidence</a> in the literature as to the benefits of service work on the mental health of young people, particularly through programs like Healing Meals which involve reflection on purpose and <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/teens-mental-health-may-improve-when-they-help-others/">meaning</a>.



Additionally, Leathers believes the palpable feeling of inter-generational connection at Healing Meals can be an anecdote to the unprecedented rates of loneliness youth are reporting and Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy deemed “an epidemic.”&nbsp;



Leathers is confident that as the organization expands to meet the increasing demand for medically tailored meals, the youth development program will grow, too. She has plans to open a new youth program in Hartford, Conn. in 2026 and looks forward to expanding in other parts of the state.



This summer, Healing Meals has launched its first-ever paid internship program for youth leaders who have earned their Blue Aprons. It is informed by the developmental relationship framework of the Search Institute, a youth-serving organization that conducts and applies research to promote positive youth development. As part of the program, Palmer is leading a session on life design that asks students to consider what they value and to reflect on how they want to feel. &nbsp;Leathers sees the internship program as a pilot where staff and youth leaders are co-creating what they hope will be a more formal version of the iterative model that has helped so many young people grow.&nbsp;



You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at <a href="mailto:mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org">mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org</a> with comments, ideas, or tips.

A Recipe for Growth and Love

Allie Jutton graduated from high school in 2022 with a pile of Advanced Placement credits and few options to put them to use at the kind of small liberal arts college she wanted to attend. But she knew she could save a lot of time and money if she could find a school that counted her A.P. work toward her degree.



Jutton, who grew up in Lakeville, Minn., landed at the University of Minnesota Morris. It offered the small college feel—just shy of 1,000 undergraduate students—and a well-publicized Degree in Three program, which could save students like her about $20,000 by graduating in three years, instead of four.



Jutton was sold. And now she’s graduating with a degree in psychology and a minor in gender, women, and sexuality studies and plans to attend Minnesota State University, Mankato in the fall for a master’s in mental health counseling.



“I came in with a lot of general education courses already done, like statistics, history, geography, and English,” Jutton said.​​ “It was cost-effective for me and my family, and it allowed me to get my degree a little faster.”&nbsp;



At Morris, the Degree in Three program isn’t a new concept. Students with the drive and desire have always had the option to finish the standard 120 credits to earn a bachelor’s degree in a shortened time frame. However, it wasn’t until 2024 that the college openly advertised that all of its 32 majors could be completed in three years, if students chose to do so.



Morris is one of almost 50 institutions that have joined the College-in-3 Exchange, a nonprofit organization advocating for more undergraduate degree options that take less time to complete. The collective includes a diversity of institutions, from Georgetown University and the University of Miami, to Merrimack College and Portland State. When the incubator started in 2021, a dozen institutions signed on—and the group has grown each year.



“Higher ed needs to be reimagined in all kinds of ways, and this is a very practical way to create a catalyst for rethinking undergraduate education,” Lori Carrell, chancellor of the University of Minnesota Rochester, said. She founded College-in-3 alongside Robert Zemsky, professor at the University of Pennsylvania.



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“Higher ed needs to be reimagined in all kinds of ways, and this is a very practical way to create a catalyst for rethinking undergraduate education."
</blockquote>



Nationwide, about 64 percent of students who start a degree program finish it within six years, with an average loan debt among borrowers of $29,300, according to the College Board. In 2023, Carrell testified to the U.S. House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development about how the College-in-3 concept could improve student retention, degree completion, and career launch, either by developing accelerated 120-credit degrees or creating new curricula that reduce the credit requirement to 90.



“Accreditors have opened their doors to this,” Carrell said.&nbsp;



Not for Everybody



While financial wellbeing is an obvious benefit of earning a degree in three years, the College-in-3 movement continues to head off concerns about less-desirable repercussions for students, like increased stress, feelings of overwhelm, or a rushed college experience.&nbsp;



Jutton shared those concerns, initially. Her fears were eased after mapping out the course work with her advisor, taking into account the credits she brought with her from high school. Still, Jutton worked two jobs while in school, as a resident assistant and also as an assistant in the student engagement and events office. During her second year, she took 20 credits each semester. It was a lot at the time, but Jutton believes the experience also gave her skills that she’ll use forever.



“It taught me valuable life lessons. I’m really good at time management and my organizational skills are better than they were coming into college,” Jutton said. “I was able to recognize when I needed help and ask for it, as well as set boundaries for what I can and cannot do.”



As more institutions are joining the College-in-3 Exchange, they are also considering how to design curricula that take student mental health and wellbeing into account, Carrell said.



“The worry that you’re just going to rush students through and turn degrees into credentials, instead of deep, transformative learning? Nothing could be farther from what we’re doing,” she said.



Janet Schrunk Ericksen, chancellor at Morris, said that since the college started actively promoting the three-year option in February 2024, it’s been well received. The Degree in Three program features prominently on the website, and Ericksen said that it receives more page views than any other part of the site. Visitors also spend more time looking at the information.



“We serve a large percentage of students from historically underrepresented populations—low-income, first-generation students,” Ericksen said. “Giving them this path is important.”



Ericksen acknowledges, however, that completing a 120-credit bachelor’s degree in a condensed timeline isn’t for everybody. It’s easier for those who can use A.P. credit or pursued dual enrollment in high school, earning some college credits before arriving on campus. Most students also take a summer class or two along the way. She believes that certain degrees also lend themselves to quicker completion than others. Physics, for example, requires foundational knowledge before moving on to the next levels, so the major might be more challenging to finish in less than four years.&nbsp;



“It’s not going to work for students who change their major six times or who want a triple major—and we have a fair number of those,” Ericksen said. “But the students who are really focused, they’re saying, ‘Yes, this is what I want, and it’s great to have a clear path.’”



An opportunity for experiential learning&nbsp;



Institutions like Brigham Young University - Idaho, which serves an older population of working adults taking online classes, are finding that eliminating elective courses and reducing degree credits to 90 or 94 are helping students complete programs in majors like business management, applied health, and family and human services. The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, an accrediting body, approved the truncated programs in 2023.



Still, not everybody is sold on the validity of a 90-credit degree. Some higher education experts and faculty members are concerned that it will create a two-tiered system and that employers may not value the degrees equally.&nbsp;



But Madeleine Green, executive director of the College-in-3 Exchange, said the timing for higher education to make such changes is “propitious.”



“For all the questions that are out there about the value of a degree, employability of graduates, the cost of higher education, those are all factors that I think have propelled institutions to think about alternative pathways,” Green said.



Designing three-year degree programs with industry partners is leading to better outcomes, Carrell said. At the University of Minnesota Rochester, for example, students in health-related majors are offered paid internships at the Mayo Clinic, as well as job interviews upon graduation. The partnership has also helped the faculty design a tight curriculum that ensures that students are prepared for the workforce, while building in strategies like block scheduling, success coaches, and capstone experiences that contribute to student wellbeing.



“To know that there are these dire workforce shortages in healthcare deserts and we’re producing people who can go out and serve communities sooner is very, very satisfying,” Carrell said.



Peh Ng, chair of the division of science and mathematics at Morris, said the students she’s helped guide through three-year degrees aren’t missing out on the hallmark experiences of college, like undergraduate research, study abroad, and internships. Still, those who arrive at Morris without having earned any college-level credits have a much more challenging time finishing in less than four years—and often they don’t.



“A three-year program is really not for every student, but if a student tries it and it doesn’t work, then they finish it in four years. So at the end of the day, it bodes well for four-year graduation rates,” she said.&nbsp;



Ng is among the faculty members who don’t agree with reducing credit requirements, especially in STEM fields, where she said the difference between taking 12 courses and seven is “huge.”



“You can’t have two tiers of programs,” Ng said. “I am a strong proponent of not changing the requirements.”



Jutton agrees with Ng—she wouldn’t have wanted to take a lesser load, she said. As she prepares to graduate, she has few regrets. Sure, another year may have afforded her a more robust social life, but she also found friendship and camaraderie among like-minded peers who were also on the fast-track to degree completion. Although Jutton will be younger than many of her graduate school cohort, she still feels prepared to move on.



“I think the biggest thing for me was finding supporters, like my career counselor and the faculty,” Jutton said. “I haven’t met someone who does not believe in me here and that was really important for me to be able to do the degree in three.”

"College-in-3"

Not many academics find mainstream success with the publication of their first book. Anthony "Tony" Jack, Ph.D. did.



In his award-winning debut, “The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged” (2019), Jack explores how elite colleges and universities tout mounting diversity but tend to recruit students of color from private and preparatory high schools rather than local, more distressed ones. His second book, “Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price” (2024), tracks the fallout of the pandemic for students with little to no support at home, and how institutions failed to anticipate and respond to their needs.



From&nbsp;assistant professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Jack joined the faculty at Boston University in 2023 as an&nbsp;associate professor of higher education leadership.&nbsp;At B.U., he is the inaugural faculty director of the Newbury Center, a resource office for first-generation students across undergraduate and graduate programs. From his perch as researcher, educator, and student affairs insider, he offers a unique understanding of the challenges facing high-needs students, as well as those supporting them. He’s also committed to being part of the solution — one that hinges on scholarship and student services working together.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;To start, could you give a bit of background on your research and areas of expertise up to now?



TJ: In my first book, “The Privileged Poor,” I discussed an overlooked diversity in higher education. Universities were doubling their efforts to recruit lower-income and first-generation college students, and many universities had actually almost doubled the number of Pell-eligible students who they were admitting. But my question was always: Where are they getting those students from? And what I show in my first book is that they were actually going to get their new diversity from old sources: boarding, day, and preparatory high schools. And I called those students the “privileged poor,” lower-income students from boarding, day, and preparatory high schools. And I called their peers who went to low-income — typically distressed — public schools the “doubly disadvantaged” and showed how students' trajectories to college shaped their trajectories through. 



One thing in that book that I wish I was able to engage with more was how the inequality at home so often comes to campus. “Class Dismissed” was born out of a pebble-in-a shoe-type moment, where all the presidents of universities were like, “I didn't know our students didn't have internet at home. I didn't really know what kind of communities they were coming from.” And I'm just like, but you do. Your admissions officers know. From their personal statements — because you make them pimp out their poverty — you know where they come from. You know what they're returning to. “Class Dismissed” was a response to that. What was important for me to bring to “Class Dismissed” is to say that COVID exacerbated the very inequalities that students were suffering with in silence. 



LW:&nbsp;And you are now involved in translating some of those lessons into practical supports, right? At the Newbury Center at B.U.? Could you say a bit about what goes on there and what it means to be the "inaugural" faculty director?&nbsp;



TJ: The Newbury Center is this amazing opportunity to put my research into action because the Newbury Center is a resource center for first-gen undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. There usually isn't this coordinated, university-wide effort to support students who are first in their families to go to college. And so the Newbury Center is unique in that sense. And it's a really amazing opportunity, as well as a monumental task. Because we have people who are coming in at 17 and 18, and we also have people who are coming in at 30 and 40.



My inclusion is to put research more central to the endeavor: How do we support our undergraduates to go to study abroad? How do we make sure that we understand the best practices to help them get internships — to get opportunities to extend learning beyond the classroom? Those are the kind of things that I'm able to do and support with research. During the summer, we actually help students who take on unpaid or low-pay internships with stipends. It is so stressful to be able to have this amazing opportunity to work in a field that you love, but you can't afford to live where the internship is. We can help fill that gap for lower-income students. Not as much as I would hope, but that's also why I'm helping to expand the center so that we can help more people. 



LW:&nbsp;So had you heard of the Newbury Center when you were at Harvard, and it became sort of a driving force for you to move over and get more involved?&nbsp;



TJ: The Newbury Center is still a very young center. Five years. The ability to craft its trajectory from early on was an attractive piece to get me to think about going from just being a producer of research to now also being tasked to create policy and advocate on behalf of students across the country. 



My work on food insecurity is a huge piece, where I can actually engage with deans. I was doing that in addition to my work at Harvard, but now it is part and parcel of my advocacy work at B.U. My work on mental health has shifted from being a finding that I have about how students do or do not seek help to now being able to invite directors of mental health services to campus as part of an annual conversation. 



LW:&nbsp;It's interesting that you say that. I was thinking about that dual role you’re playing as a professor and then in more of a student services role at the Newbury Center. Did that feel like kind of a natural balance for you to strike? Was there ever any kind of hesitation or feeling like you needed to stay in one lane?&nbsp;



TJ: No, for me, from the very beginning, my philosophy was: Why just write about it when you can do something about it? 



In “Class Dismissed,” I have this line: “Now that we know what we know, what are we going to do about it?” Don't just relegate a very, very important possible policy change — one that could fundamentally change the everyday existence for tens of thousands of students across the country — to a paragraph at the end of the paper. Why not give more life to it? It's ethical research. It's theoretically informed. It's empirically rich. Why not add that fourth element? And then also to write in an accessible way so that a president, a professor, a dean, a parent, can learn about what the children in their life are going through. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
"In 'Class Dismissed,' I have this line: 'Now that we know what we know, what are we going to do about it?'"
</blockquote>



LW:&nbsp;Right. On that note, what&nbsp;are&nbsp;young people going through right now? This is a broad question, but what are your major concerns at the moment for students, especially first-gen or low-income ones?



TJ: The thing that's top of mind right now? I mean, where do we go? We can talk about affirmative action, withholding of funds. It's just a lot, to be honest. But one thing that I think people need to realize is happening on campuses in this McCarthy-era-style politics that we find ourselves in — what we are seeing — is labeling what were once good student affairs practices as “benefits.” And any limiting of that newly labeled benefit to a particular group is seen as unconstitutional. That is a very different way of doing student affairs. Student affairs was saying, “Hey, we are here for everyone, but we also know that we have to take particular steps to welcome different groups. And we do that by allowing — supporting — affinity groups and hosting these different offices because we know that our campuses were literally not made for people here, who are here now.” 



Now that work is said to be giving an undue benefit to someone else and discriminating against, essentially, a white man, which is now the reference point for any kind of support service that you have. And that list is going to get longer and longer. It's going to go just from being a white student to a white male student to a white Christian male student to a white rich male student. And it's just going to keep getting longer and longer until that reference is a very narrow person, who is not the modal group on campus, and yet all policy and all practices are going to be seen as: Are you not allowing this person to feel comfortable here? 



LW:&nbsp;Have you been experiencing that firsthand through the Newbury Center or otherwise — restrictions to your work or your ability to support people?



TJ:&nbsp;To be honest with you, it's a day to day thing. We don't know when we're going to get another “dear colleague” letter. We don't know when another executive order is going to come out. We don't know if any university is going to keep fighting it through the justice system, knowing that the Supreme Court is what it is. And so we're waiting day-by-day to figure out: Can we continue to do the work that we do across the country?



LW:&nbsp;But so far, do you feel like — notwithstanding daily challenges or pivots — you've sort of been able to maintain the level of support that you had in years past?



TJ: So far. 



LW:&nbsp;And in terms of your student interactions, what are you hearing from them about the things that they're most nervous about? How do you guide them through that, if that's part of your role?&nbsp;



TJ: It's generalized anxiety about what is next — what's going to be possible. And so what we are trying to do is still encourage students to put themselves out there — go for every internship, go to study abroad, pick out your favorite spot in the library that you are going to be known for at your 20-year reunion: “I would always see you in the library right at your favorite window.” They can still make memories and take advantage of all the things that college provides. That is incredibly important. That's just huge. 



LW:&nbsp;What else are you thinking about going forward with this school year? What are you anticipating will be the biggest challenges both for your own work and also for the students that you support?&nbsp;



TJ: If it's two things that rob people of so much, it is scarcity and precarity. Right now, everything that we are trying to do is to make ends meet with less and in less time. And to be honest with you, this is the year that I want to be fully present for students and hear from them — learn from them — so that, as I craft out my next project, it is one that is going to not only expose what they went through but think critically about the policy and practice changes that can help support them going forward. 



LW:&nbsp;Is that something that you feel hopeful about? The idea that the policy change could really happen and make a difference?&nbsp;



TJ: First-gen-as-pawn is something I'm really grappling with right now because a lot of people are flocking to first-gen — to recruit first-gen. But they're not ready. They're still not ready.



LW:&nbsp;Not ready to support students once they actually come to campus?&nbsp;



TJ: Yeah, yeah. Those are some things I want to just grapple with. 



LW:&nbsp;In terms of a future research opportunity or just in general?&nbsp;



TJ:&nbsp;Well, for me, everything is going to be tied to investigating it. Students' voices inform the policy suggestions that I present to colleges because I believe that in students' voices are the keys to success and a more equitable future.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Is it encouraging to see other actors or organizations with a similar outlook and doing similar work?



TJ:&nbsp;It's absolutely encouraging. Because that means that people are intentionally invested in making campuses not only more accessible but equitable. They would probably never be equal. But to have a more equitable space — people who are being intentional about removing some of the hurdles that disproportionately hurt, humble, and quite frankly, sometimes just destroy those who believe in education the most. Not as, “Oh, I have to go because my family has always gone.” But literally the people who believe in it because they believe in the power that they can completely transform their life.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;So still feeling like that's possible?&nbsp;



TJ: I'm a first-generation college student myself, so this work is inherently personal, as well as it is professional. I do believe in the power of research to change things. I do still believe in the power of education to be transformative. I believe in the power of research to make that transformative experience more accessible to more people. 



One thing I would love is a push for more researchers to write in an accessible way and not ignore general audiences. Because it's important — especially now in this age of misinformation — for more people to actually understand what goes into research and how our findings are not manipulated. We need to stop talking at people and have conversations with people. And so I don't think that work is any less theoretical just because people can understand it.&nbsp;



You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at <a href="mailto:mames@learningwellmag.org">mames@learningwellmag.org</a> with comments, ideas, or tips.

A Voice for High-Needs Students

At Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., the word “character” was not always a positive. The liberal arts college, which serves a large indigenous population, was once a federal Indian boarding school, notorious for coercive character formation aimed at extinguishing indigenous cultures. Now, as it addresses its painful past, Fort Lewis College is centering character education within a reconciliation initiative that goes beyond atonement to institutional change.&nbsp;&nbsp;



With a grant from Wake Forest University’s Educating Character Initiative (E.C.I.), Fort Lewis College is launching a Reconciliation Center — a campus-wide, interdisciplinary effort that values truth-seeking, engages students in experiential learning and problem-solving, and promotes the mutual respect needed to have the difficult conversations that lead to progress. Campus leaders hope that by overlaying institutional and individual aspects of character onto its reconciliation framework, Fort Lewis College will help all students navigate a better future.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“If we are to move forward as a society, we need to do so with intellectual curiosity and cultural humility so that we build community and belonging — not just for indigenous people but for everyone,” said Mathew Schaeffer, who is the Fort Lewis College reconciliation coordinator, an alumnus, and a citizen of the Hopi tribe.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Schaeffer recalls 2023 as a seminal year for him and for the institution itself. The state of Colorado had released a report investigating the experiences of students within the federal Indian boarding school system, which included Fort Lewis College. The school was established in 1891 as a cultural integration project in line with the country’s assimilation era after the frontier wars. The school, which closed in 1911, punished indigenous students for failing to abandon customs such as longer hair or speaking in native tongue. Part of their mandate was to eradicate what was considered the “bad character” of tribal people in favor of western, colonial mores.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“We have a collective responsibility to each other and to all our students to tell the truth, to learn from that, and to move forward together.”&nbsp;
</blockquote>



Two years earlier, the college had removed placards on campus which inaccurately and harmfully depicted the original school as a positive experience for indigenous children. It was the first step in a process that led to the inclusion in the school’s strategic plan of a four-part reconciliation framework including: tribal nation building, language reclamation, health and wellness, and indigenous culture and knowledge systems.&nbsp;



When the report on Colorado boarding schools came out, Schaeffer, who was then a student, was compelled to find out how well the reconciliation effort was understood and operationalized on campus. He conducted qualitative research on the subject as his senior thesis. His conclusion — that most campus members had only a vague understanding of this work — was presented to the then-president.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“What I found was that there was an appreciation for the work people were trying to do in this area, but there was confusion about how to apply it and what it meant for their day-to-day,” Schaeffer said.



Paul DeBell is a political science professor at Fort Lewis College and was the principal investigator on the E.C.I. grant project. When Schaeffer’s research came out, he had been teaching a political psychology course with students who were interested in having deeper conversations across lines of difference. While the reconciliation work was more familiar to him, he wasn’t surprised that his colleagues had trouble internalizing it.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“People would say to me, ‘You do political theory, so you get this. But I’m a chemistry professor, what does this mean to me in my classroom?’” he said.



DeBell added there were still pockets on campus where this work was done passionately, often involving students in experiential learning or service learning in the community. These reconciliation activities came under the purview of then-Vice President of Diversity Affairs — now President of Fort Lewis College — Heather Shotton, Ph.D. DeBell and Shotton had worked together on “difficult conversations” given their respective positions and came together again to pursue the Wake Forest E.C.I. grant opportunity.   



Funded&nbsp;by a large grant from the Lilly Endowment, the E.C.I. helps colleges and universities place character education at the center of their missions and practices in various and diverse ways. After receiving a capacity building grant from the E.C.I. to build out the idea for the Reconciliation Center, Fort Lewis College was awarded a nearly $1 million institutional impact grant this July to launch it.&nbsp;&nbsp;Character education became what DeBell called “the common element among all these spaces.”&nbsp;



The Inclusion of Character



“For us to be an institution of good character that serves Native American students and all of our students, we needed to be very thoughtful, respectful, and transparent about our past,” DeBell said. “Shaving off parts of history that make us feel bad is not demonstrating good character. But in the same respect, we also wanted to think of this as an opportunity for all of our students to build on their own character traits — to think about their own position in our society and the world.”



DeBell and Schaeffer agree that one of the most valuable benefits of being awarded the grant was the ability to name, frame, and communicate what reconciliation looks like at Fort Lewis College.&nbsp;



“Thinking about reconciliation from the perspective of character development gives us a common language and helps translate it to people who might not see themselves as a part of reconciliation,” said DeBell, who noted even the word “reconciliation” is open to broad interpretation.&nbsp;



For a school with a cautionary history around character, what reconciliation should&nbsp;not&nbsp;look like at Fort Lewis is the imposition of character. Not only does the Reconciliation Center recognize indigenous people’s standards of character — historically excluded from western understanding of the subject — it encourages students to explore what good character means to them. In this sense, the character/reconciliation work offers students a new avenue for self-discovery, empathy, purpose, and meaning.&nbsp;&nbsp;



According to its grant report, the Center will “embed a Community Bridging Institute where students will work shoulder-to-shoulder with faculty and staff mentors to hone their dialogue skills as they learn to navigate conflict, embrace multiple perspectives, and move between western and Indigenous ways of knowing.”&nbsp;



One of the key pillars of the character and reconciliation work at Fort Lewis College is curriculum innovation and student impact, which leverages the school’s asset as a liberal arts college with a deep learner-centered pedagogy.&nbsp;&nbsp;Building off of a strong commitment to experiential learning, activities within the Center include undergraduate research projects with faculty mentors and an Educating Character Fellowship Program, where students and faculty will explore the intersection of reconciliation, character education, and personal meaning.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The Center just hired its inaugural director, Rosalinda Linares-Gray, who will begin building the scaffolding around the Center’s initiatives and activities, many of which are already underway. The first step is to organize those efforts and connect the people who are involved, letting them lead the way. Having a home for this work helps further one of the initiatives founding goals: to foster a campus culture where reconciliation is understood as a collective responsibility.



DeBell and Schaeffer believe the establishment of the Center has already helped in this regard, and many of the activities within the project plan include the direct engagement of faculty and staff. But they believe the most effective way of gaining buy-in across campus, or across the country, for reconciliation work is to present it as a public good — a benefit to all.&nbsp;



Asked if he worries how the Reconciliation Center might be perceived by political forces determined to root out anything resembling diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, DeBell admits to having some concern, but only if the initiative is misunderstood.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We have a collective responsibility to each other and to all our students to tell the truth, to learn from that, and to move forward together.”&nbsp;



In April of this year, Heather Shotton was named President of Fort Lewis College, making history as the first Native American to lead the institution. 



You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at&nbsp;<a href="mailto:mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org">mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org</a>&nbsp;with comments, ideas, or tips.

Character and Reconciliation

Seven years ago, Sam touched down in the United States, alone. Just 17, she had left her mother and siblings behind in West Africa to live with her father in New England, where he waited with her new green card.



But Sam’s arrival was one of the first and last parts of the move to go as planned. Her father became abusive, and after the pandemic descended, she moved in with a teacher who’d grown worried about her welfare. From then on, Sam’s education became both anchor and bridge to a better life.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“I got that security from my teachers,” she said.&nbsp;



College presented another respite from home, although it ended up coming with its own set of challenges, especially financial. From her first day on campus, Sam felt lost. She struggled to make friends in a dominant social culture that seemed to require an entrance fee she couldn’t pay. For her chronic health issues, she could barely afford transportation to appointments, let alone medical bills.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Every year, Sam said, she wrote letters to the university administration explaining her financial shortcomings and appealing for leniency. The process started to feel dehumanizing, she said, as she found herself trying to prove “my story is sad enough to give me some aid.”



Yet she pushed on, often powered by a simple but effective refrain: “I don’t want to be poor.” Halfway through her first year, she caught a break when she was connected to the&nbsp;<a href="https://thewilynetwork.org/">Wily Network</a>, a non-profit based in the Boston area that provides holistic support to students navigating college without family assistance. The Wily Network helped Sam cover basic needs and went to bat for her before her last semester when it looked like she wouldn’t be able to make the final payment.&nbsp;



Sam graduated this May, against all odds, and just in time to avoid some of the added fear students like her are experiencing, as the Trump Administration plans major changes to higher education and related social services. Months of speculation surrounding cuts to federal financial aid and public assistance, the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion (D.E.I.) resources, and the removal of immigrant and international students have left learners already at the greatest disadvantage haunted by the precarity of their situation. As the overwhelming uncertainty continues, it is these students who hang in the balance — those who rely on college for their safety and welfare and are one policy move away from losing it all.&nbsp;



Keeping It Together



As the executive director of the Wily Network, Judi Alperin King, Ph.D., has had a front row seat to the host of new challenges her students have been managing in recent months.



The ground had always been shaky for those the Wily Network serves, Alperin King said, but at least they knew more or less what to expect. “Now that shaky ground is unpredictable.”&nbsp;



“You cannot see the cracks in the foundation, and they just keep appearing,” Alperin King said. “Every day there’s a new crack, but it wasn’t in the place you thought it was going to be.”



Earlier this summer, one of Alperin King’s students flew across the country and drove deep into a rural territory, only to arrive and discover the internship that led him there had been cancelled. The work he’d been hired to assist was defunded amid the slew of cuts to federally funded programs, spanning climate and cancer research, foreign aid, and D.E.I. initiatives.



Other students had found out they lost their jobs before relocating for them, Alperin King said. This one hadn’t been so lucky.



With the student’s call alerting them to what happened, the Wily staff spurred to action, trying to figure out how exactly to get him to the airport from an area, apparently, without access to Ubers or even taxis. From there, he would need money for a ticket to Boston, a place to live when he got there, groceries to eat, and income to support himself until school started up in the fall. Without Wily on standby, he might have found himself stranded.



Some developments, like internship-ending cuts to programs and research, are affecting students in real time. Others simply loom, making everyone squirm.&nbsp;



At any given time, top of mind for students assisted by the Wily Network is whether they’ll continue to be able to pay for college. Concerns have been churning around the fate of federal financial aid since Trump first began promoting the closure of the Department of Education and then signed an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/improving-education-outcomes-by-empowering-parents-states-and-communities/">executive order</a>&nbsp;to that effect in March 2025.&nbsp;



Assurances from Education Secretary Linda McMahon that aid would continue didn’t assuage worries, especially as the initial version of Trump’s bill overhauling domestic policy included reductions to the maximum award for federal Pell Grants, which prop up more than six million students with the highest financial need.



This month, the bill that passed Congress and Trump signed into law didn’t include the Pell restrictions that had stoked the most fear, although there are other implications for financial aid. Among them are the elimination of Pell eligibility for students already receiving full scholarships from their institutions, as well as the expansion of Pell to cover shorter-term workforce training programs. In addition, the bill sets limits around the lifetime amount of federal aid students can receive for graduate school and winds down the number of loan repayment plans to two.&nbsp;



Perhaps raising the most alarm are the law’s cuts to public assistance programs, namely Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps. In 2020, an estimated 3.3 million students qualified for SNAP. But even if the changes don’t impact students directly, a trickle-down effect could. As states look to trim their budgets to fill the new gaps left in health care and food assistance, sector experts have warned higher education could take a hit that cuts back student support services or ramps up tuition costs.



The Trump bill’s changes to Medicaid and SNAP also involve denying eligibility to certain legal residents, including refugees and asylees. These restrictions come on the back of a larger crackdown on noncitizens in the United States.



From a higher education standpoint, these efforts have included the high-profile detention of international students, legally in the United States, targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their involvement in pro-Palestine advocacy on campus. The Trump Administration has also threatened to bar entry to international students who go to Harvard University as part of an ongoing power struggle with the Ivy League institution.



Any student originally from outside the United States or with family members from outside may be feeling vulnerable. Even Sam, armed with a green card upon arrival almost a decade ago, said she often can’t sleep at night from worrying about her status in the country. Learning about the recent detainment of an undocumented high school student by ICE in the town where she now lives didn’t make her feel better.&nbsp;



“I think for me, I have always been scared,” she said. “I’m legal. I paid a lot of money to be here, but if you’ve never dealt with immigration before, it’s one hell of a beast.”&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“I think for me, I have always been scared."
</blockquote>



While policy confusion stirs up fear for high-needs students around their ability to stay on campus or in the country, the support services once designed to help them navigate this type of uncertainty are also taking a hit.&nbsp;



Social worker Jamie Bennett, Ph.D., leads the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fosteringsuccesscoaching.com/">Fostering Success Coaching Institute</a>, which trains staff at groups like the Wily Network in best practices to assist high-needs students. Through her partnerships with these organizations, on and off college campuses, Bennett has gained first-hand insight into the kind of pressure they now find themselves under. At least two have undergone “mass layoffs,” Bennett said, due to funding cuts.



At a recent event Bennett hosted, free of charge and ironically focused on practitioner wellbeing, she guessed about 20 percent of those she had expected didn’t show. “Either they had lost their job or they were taking on responsibility from colleagues who were being laid off, so they couldn’t join,” she said.



For the most part, Bennett has been able to stave off any fallout for her work. But she imagines cutbacks for her partners could reduce her own services down the road. “That’s going to impact our ability to keep offering as many trainings as we do,” she said. “If they don’t have the funds to send their folks to professional development, they don’t come to us.”&nbsp;



The Wily Network’s efforts have been affected, as well, as the flurry of cuts to university departments and resources leave even veteran advocates like Judi Alperin King unsure of how to help students. “In some ways, we’ve lost our power,” she said of her and her staff of "coaches." With boundaries different from those of therapists and mentors, coaches take on wide-ranging tasks, from troubleshooting social problems and locating academic resources for students to acting as the emergency contact they wouldn’t otherwise have.&nbsp;



“We knew what to do. Not every situation, but a lot of situations, they were predictable, and we could say, ‘Okay, here are the three steps you can take to support yourself through this,’” Alperin King said. Now those steps may no longer apply.&nbsp;



Although neither Alperin King nor Bennett’s organizations receive federal funding, concerns have still emerged about whether they can completely evade government scrutiny. Both leaders have heard rumors that their group’s nonprofit status, which falls under the purview of the Internal Revenue Code, could be at risk should any of their activities draw higher concern, most likely in relation to the promotion of D.E.I.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Those warnings haven’t stopped either from maintaining commitments to D.E.I., whether in spirit or explicitly on the company website and other materials. Bennett is firm on upholding her organization’s founding ideals. “We will say what we feel is just and what we feel is aligned with our values. Which are aligned on equity. They’re aligned on inclusion. They’re aligned on everybody’s voice matters.”&nbsp;



While not overly concerned about her own job security, Bennett does worry about how that kind of stress, combined with increasing student needs, may affect the emotional wellbeing of other service providers. It’s critical, she said, for them to be “well and resourced and feel like they’re equipped to do their work, as they meet with students who have really complex situations and trauma.”



“If we start to see the support of them drop off, then it makes me nervous for what students will start to notice,” Bennett said.



At the Wily Network, one coach has begun to find her background in hospice care unsettlingly relevant to her current role supporting high-needs college students.



“You don’t really coach people at the end of life. You just sit with them, like, ‘Yep, death. Death is death,’” she said. Working with young people facing the unknown where their degree and future are concerned has started to feel like a similar experience.



“It’s more of an existential suffering,” she said.



The same coach has been struggling under the increasing weight of her students’ challenges. Guilt is a dominant emotion, stemming from the understanding she can distance herself from issues surfacing in higher education, from her job, in a way students can’t.&nbsp;



“I feel like my empathic distress for students is harder to manage because, I mean, what’s going on is hard for me, but I feel like I have a home. I have a job. I have a lot of ‘knowns’ in my life that ballast against what's going on,” she said.&nbsp;



Student mental health has always been a prime concern for coaches, but now the uncertainty and fear fueled by real and perceived policy changes seem like the ultimate pile-on for young people already emotionally tested by years of striving and struggling.&nbsp;



Alperin King knows her students are among the most resilient in higher education. She once used that fact to recruit new coaches, advertising the joys of championing talented students uniquely capable of battling through barriers — all the way to and through college.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Students without family support who make it to college have a history of defying expectations. People like Alperin King and her colleagues are now asking, “Do we really need to raise the bar?”&nbsp;







LearningWell used the pseudonym "Sam" and withheld other names in this article due to subjects' privacy concerns. 



You can reach LearningWell reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

Without a Net

When Hannah M. was a college student a few years ago, her mentor — the chair of her department — was, as she recalls, a thoughtful person who was also extraordinarily busy. “When I needed to know something about credits and certifications, she would say she’d get back to me,” Hannah said. “But she usually didn’t.” Hannah often ended up finding her own information about licensing or grants and making her own connections through LinkedIn. “I didn’t want to complain because I knew she meant well, and I had friends who didn’t have mentors at all.”



Mentorship has long been a cornerstone of youth development, but for young adults today, finding effective, supportive relationships is hit or miss. For mentors, meeting the shifting landscape of mentees’ needs can also be up to chance. According to MENTOR, a nonprofit national mentoring partnership, one in three young people grow up without a mentor figure, and those from low-income communities are even less likely to have one. This, in spite of the communication and technology advances today that surpass any other generation’s ability to make and maintain connections at a distance.



Jean Rhodes, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and founder of its Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring, has spent her career studying what makes mentorship effective. After publishing more than 250 peer-reviewed studies, she grew increasingly concerned that the field was stuck in outdated models. Despite decades of effort, the effect size of mentoring — the measurable impact on youth outcomes — has barely budged in 20 years.&nbsp;



In response, she developed an A.I.-assisted platform that equips mentors with the tools, insights, and training her center has honed over the years, delivered to the palm of your hand. It isn’t intended to replace human connection but to enhance it. Rhodes describes the program as “rocket fuel for relationships” — a way to scale quality mentoring with resources at the moments they’re needed most.



The app, called <a href="https://mentorpro.com">MentorPRO</a>, recently won the International Tools Competition for Higher Education, standing out among more than 1,000 entrants for its innovative approach to scaling relationships. It arrives at an odd juncture, a time when artificial intelligence is hailed as the zenith of information management, yet controversial for its role in therapeutic conversations. The fact that this advisory tool engages in both functions — information and support — is precisely what piques interest in the mentoring world. The question is: Can a tool feared to replace relationships actually make them more meaningful?&nbsp;&nbsp;



A backdrop of need: The mentoring gap



Today’s disparity between the number of young people who would benefit from a mentor and the number of adults willing and available to serve as mentors is known as the mentoring gap. There's been a worrying decline in "naturally occurring" mentoring relationships with teachers, coaches, and neighbors, which once provided widespread support. Organic mentoring relationships are based on rapport and familiarity, says Belle Rose Ragins, a mentoring expert and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, whose research makes the case that unless mentees have a basic relationship with their mentors, there is no discernable difference between people who have a mentor and those who don’t.&nbsp;



The mentoring gap was underscored by statistics from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which reports that the number of 18 to 21 year-olds who say they’ve had a mentor has actually declined in the past decade — from about 66 percent in 2013 to 60 percent in 2022. And the mentoring opportunities that do exist are not distributed equally, often favoring those from higher-income households. The young adults most in need of mentorship — those navigating school-to-work transitions, financial pressures, mental health struggles, and social isolation — are often the least likely to receive it, the foundation found.



The Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring began to see that traditional mentoring had reached a plateau, with its measurable impact largely unchanged for more than two decades. Rhodes suspected the problem was rooted in the way we’re going about mentoring. Too often, she said, the friendship model — mentors provide companionship and a coffee date — is well-intentioned but inadequate.



“We’re still locked in friendship-based models that don’t match the complex needs of today’s young people,” Rhodes explained. “It feels good, but without training and structure, mentoring too often becomes mismatched to what mentees really need.”



This is especially true for young people grappling with major life transitions, as well as financial stress, depression, or trauma. Because most mentors are volunteers without formal training, the support they offer rarely matches the complexity of mentees’ needs. This mismatch is compounded by problems of scale and continuity: Due to constant turnover, cyclical programs and workplaces churn through new mentors without the infrastructure to sustain quality or deliver evidence-based guidance in real time. The result is a system that feels supportive but frequently fails to equip young adults with the structured, targeted help they most require.&nbsp;



These challenges can stifle even the most well-intentioned program. At one large community college, for example, the executive director of its alumni foundation recalled a mentor scholarship program that, she thought, had a high potential for success. It was available to both women and men, highly motivated individuals with a G.P.A. of 3.0 or higher, and those accepted into the pilot were offered free tuition as well as a $500 book stipend. Mentorship was a cornerstone of the program: Participants were assigned a mentor based on their major and career interest and required to meet at least twice a month. Yet at the end of the inaugural year, only 50 percent of participants called it a success and opted to continue working with their assigned mentor.



“I was surprised and sad to hear about the results,” said the alumni foundation director. “But in the end, it’s like speed dating. It’s only as effective as the connection with the personality on the other side of the table, which is kind of a roll of the dice if you’re assigned to one another. Add to that the expectations a mentee might end up having, and unexpected needs, and it’s a total gamble. It’s almost impossible for the mentor to be prepared for all that in advance.”



A human-centered, A.I.-supported solution



During the pandemic, mentorship turned into e-mentoring by default, while colleges and other organizations struggled to stay connected with young people virtually.&nbsp;



“The sudden shift to e-mentoring during the pandemic tested the capacity, professional skills, and adaptability of many mentoring programs,” concludes the MENTOR report “From Crisis into Capacity: Final Report on Findings from Recent Research on E-Mentoring,” funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “However, these rapid innovations also fostered a belief that e-mentoring is a meaningful addition to a program’s capacity and scope, and that with proper staffing and planning time, virtual program delivery warrants further scaling.”&nbsp;



The Covid-19 shutdown made clearer the weaknesses that had existed in mentoring for years and provided an opportunity for virtual mentoring to step up. What virtual mentoring lacks in non-verbal cues, according to <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10838546/">The National Institutes of Health</a>, it gains in geographic flexibility and accessibility for a wider range of people. And that loss of in-person connection can be mitigated through intentional communication, use of video conferencing, and consistent effort from both the mentor and mentee to build a strong and supportive relationship



Rhodes began working on an A.I-enhanced platform that would step into the void, combining the flexibility of many modes of communication with the access to resources and best practices available through hundreds of pages of research. With input from her sister, a computer engineer, and support from the National Science Foundation, she designed a system that blends human-centered mentorship with A.I.’s capacity to deliver research and training in real time. As an app, it folds naturally into electronic communications. But it also serves as a genie in your pocket for information before, during, or after any kind of interactions – virtual or in-person.



MentorPRO was built in response to the shortcomings Rhodes observed in traditional mentoring. Instead of relying on casual, friendship-style interactions that may feel supportive but often fail to meet urgent needs, the platform grounds mentoring relationships in clear goals and purpose. By asking mentees to identify their priorities at the first interaction, the program helps mentors move beyond informal companionship and focus on tangible outcomes — academic progress, career readiness, or emotional wellbeing — that align with the challenges each young person experiences. This structure puts guardrails on the mentoring relationship and helps guide the partnership with growth and goals.



The first guardrail takes the form of weekly check-ins, brief surveys that ask mentees to share where they are thriving or struggling. If a mentee indicates rising distress — say, slipping into discouragement about school or career — the mentor has the chance to intervene proactively rather than react after problems escalate.&nbsp;



Another key feature is the platform’s ability to capture conversations and data within the app, creating a record of interactions, challenges, and progress. Instead of relying on memory or irregular check-ins, mentors and program staff have access to a growing dataset that helps track trends, tailor support, and maintain continuity even if mentors change. This addresses one of the biggest weaknesses Rhodes identified behind the effectiveness plateau: the inability of programs to sustain quality as mentors (especially peer mentors) cycle in and out. With institutional memory embedded into the system, mentees don’t have to start over if transitions occur.



Perhaps most significantly, in Rhodes’ eyes, the program addresses the training gap that has historically limited mentors’ effectiveness. Instead of front-loading generic training that may or may not be relevant later, the app delivers on-demand, evidence-based training modules at the moment they are needed. This is Rhodes’ “rocket fuel.” If a mentee discloses trauma, attention challenges, or career anxieties, the mentor is immediately provided with concise, research-backed resources — front-loaded and trained on information from the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring — to guide the conversation. This “just-in-time” approach closes the gap between a mentor’s good intentions and actual capacity to help, transforming volunteers into skilled supporters without requiring them to become experts overnight.



Other resources synthesize useful information. Using retrieval-augmented generation models, the program scans prior conversations, mentee surveys, and local institutional resources — such as a university advising center — into short, actionable insights for the mentor. Instead of spending time trying to remember details or search for resources — like Hannah’s busy department-head mentor — mentors can focus on listening and active responses, equipped with tailored guidance automatically, without having to remember to dig later. Rhodes emphasized that the A.I. is not a replacement for human connection, but a delivery system for the research that can make it more potent.&nbsp;



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Rhodes emphasized that the A.I. is not a replacement for human connection, but a delivery system for the research that can make it more potent. 
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“I created an 800-page training manual that curated all these studies and all the work that I think is really good, and I trained our language model on that,” she said. “It's at the fingertips of a mentor right when they need it. It becomes this wonderful way to bring science and evidence into the conversations they are having with their mentors. And it makes relationships more effective without stripping them of authenticity.”



Beyond strengthening one-to-one mentoring, MentorPRO addresses another systemic weakness: the limited networks available to many young adults. Through social capital expansion and “flash mentoring,” the app connects mentees to short-term advisors in their communities — alumni, local employers, subject-matter experts — who can provide specialized guidance. This helps young adults build broader networks of support, a critical factor for career development and community integration that traditional programs often overlook.



In this way, Rhodes sought to address the systemic barriers that exist: inequitable access, lack of scalable training, poor continuity, and irrelevance to young adults’ real needs. By ensuring that mentors — not algorithms — remain at the center, while equipping them with timely, evidence-based tools, the platform helps bridge the mentoring gap.



The human at the helm



A recurring theme in Rhodes’ vision is the phrase “human at the helm.” At an age where bots have fallen short with disastrous results — say, reinforcing a youth’s suicidal ideation — the human at the helm has never been more critical. Rhodes draws a sharp contrast with A.I. chatbots marketed as companions. “Young people need to practice asking for help, navigating conflict, and building weak ties beyond their comfort zone. That’s how growth happens.” In this model, A.I. is not a substitute but a co-pilot — an invisible force making human mentors more effective, more present, and more scalable.&nbsp;



While A.I. can streamline, summarize, and deliver evidence, only humans can offer the sacrifice, fallibility, and authentic presence that young adults crave. They can hear and support, challenge, and engage, with spontaneous pivots to humor and flashes of reciprocity and irreverence — because that’s what it is to be human and what is rewarding about human interaction.&nbsp;



The MentorPRO platform is currently in place in more than 50 partnerships with higher education, youth development, and workforce development, ranging from West Point and the University of Chicago to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and City Year to Warrior Women and the National Guard Youth Challenge. MentorPRO users report that 92 percent of mentees voluntarily downloaded and used the platform; 94 percent actively engaged with it, and 87 percent said the resources helped them achieve their goals.&nbsp;



Rhodes believes that structured mentoring — human relationships supported by scaffolding — can improve educational performance and workforce readiness, and wellbeing.



“Decades of research have shown that, with the right training and support, mentors and other paraprofessionals can deliver interventions just as effectively as professionals — if not more so — in ways that could help to bridge the substantial gaps in care and support,” concludes Rhodes in “The Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring.” “Yet, there is a critical caveat: across all the studies comparing professionals to paraprofessionals, paraprofessionals were only effective when there was ongoing training and supervision.”

Mentoring 2.0

Despite her long career in academia, Hilary Link is a bit of an anomaly in higher education. Since becoming president of Drew University in 2023, she has been working hard to embrace change by seeking advice from the outside world. 



At a time when many in the sector are battening down the hatches, Link is throwing the doors wide open, viewing this challenging time as a watershed moment for higher ed. In November, Link will continue her <a href="https://drew.edu/university-advancement/events/innovation-convening/">Presidential Innovation Series</a>, for which she invites leaders at the forefront of innovation and disruption in their industries to lead conversations that will help steer the future of higher education.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Link has instituted her own major changes at Drew, a small school in Madison, N.J. with an iconic, leafy green campus and devotion to the liberal arts. Recruited to shore up the institution’s financial position, Link has worked with the Drew community to reimagine its pedagogy to better accommodate industry’s demand for job-ready graduates. At the same time, she emphasizes what should not change, like the ability of the liberal arts to help develop the human skills needed to navigate a complex world.&nbsp;



In this conversation with LearningWell, President Link shares what she is learning and how she is going about crafting a “dream future” for Drew — one in which, she said, “everyone can be 100 percent themselves.”&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW: You are both a president and a thought leader in higher education. What motivated you to start the Presidential Innovation Series and your upcoming convening “The Future of Higher Education”?



HL: As a scholar of Renaissance Italian Literature, I was trained to analyze texts, see patterns, employ words and visuals — as a window into other cultures and societies. I have always loved the meta process of stepping back from the text or artwork in which you are immersed to ask, “What is really going on here? What does this work tell us about the cultural, linguistic, artistic, religious, political context in which it was produced?”&nbsp;&nbsp;



My scholarly work focuses specifically on theories of artificial perspective, so I embrace the concept of shifting where one stands to better understand the “big picture.” I see the convergence of being a president and being a thought leader in the higher education sector in similar ways. I have now been president at two institutions and dean of another, and while that work is all consuming, I always push myself to step back and puzzle over the “bigger picture.” How can what I am seeing at Drew University translate across the industry? What does my reading and careful analysis of this institution — like with a text or artwork — tell us about higher education in general and also this moment in our country, our world, our society? The fun for me of planning, crafting, and hosting the Innovation Series or speaking at a public convening is the chance to step back from my day-to-day work about Drew and learn from experts both inside and outside of higher ed — to help me and others see “the big picture.”



LW: In the series, you engage partners outside of higher education. What have you learned from that, both for higher education and for Drew University specifically?



HL: I have always been an interdisciplinary scholar, thinker, and do-er. My dissertation was on ekphrasis — written descriptions of visual works of art — which is a true convergence of art and literature. I have always felt that I saw new and different things in texts because I saw them through a visual lens, and vice versa. Similarly, as I have been on an “innovation journey” for Drew over the past 18 months, I have learned so much from innovators and disrupters in fields related to education but also completely separate.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Often, the “aha” moments come from the concept of “far transfer” that David Epstein talks about in “<a href="https://davidepstein.com/range/">Range</a>,” one of my favorite books. I see how someone has evolved or transformed their sector, and it makes me see a higher ed-related problem in new ways; it makes me get creative about how we might do something similar in a very different context. The panelists at our November convening are just a sample of some of the fascinating people I have had the opportunity to learn from and be inspired by, and I am excited for other higher ed leaders — and really anyone interested —&nbsp;to learn from them and bring new ideas or ways of thinking back to their campuses or fields.



LW: You are an advocate for new models for liberal arts education. What needs to change? What changes have you made at Drew in this regard?



HL: Since arriving at Drew, I feel like I have been on a journey to understand where the rapid changes in our world are pushing higher ed, and quickly. I started by having deep conversations with anyone who would speak to me — innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, educators —&nbsp;and then crafted a white paper of my dream future for an institution.&nbsp;&nbsp;



But then I put that aside because I knew this couldn’t be driven only by what I thought. Universities are complex organisms, and if we had any chance of evolving, these ideas had to bubble up more organically. So I brought in a brilliant scholar, <a href="https://learningwellmag.org/article/living-a-life-worth-working">Dr. Michelle Weise</a>, who spent a year leading some of our most innovative faculty and staff on their own discovery journey. Michelle exposed them to many different models for education, introduced them to people thinking in very different ways about “K-Gray” education, and pushed them to iterate and ideate in really liberating ways.&nbsp;&nbsp;



At the end of last year, we hosted a design-thinking charrette for about 40 campus members, and everyone agreed that any new direction for Drew needed to focus on the following human skills or qualities that we already value and prioritize: resilience, commitment to a common good, complex problem solving, and creativity and curiosity.&nbsp;



Three future-oriented visions emerged for higher education, and groups of faculty and staff spent the past summer designing around those four values to arrive at possible prototypes to present to the community. We encouraged them to think big and challenge existing systems, while focusing on specific challenges Drew needs to solve. It was up to them to define those challenges. While the groups landed in very different places, their prototypes actually gravitated around the same critical features, which was a surprise: student-enabled, personalized/individualized learning; intentional, structured mentoring; applied learning; and accessible, lifelong learning based in problem-based/experiential frameworks. While we already do these things in small ways, the groups were telling us that this is where we need to go big. The coolest part? All of the prototypes in certain ways overlapped strongly with my original “white paper” vision, which further convinced me we are on to something.



The challenge now is finding the space where we can prototype these big, system-changing ideas while protecting the excellent learning experience our university has long provided and will continue to provide for current, traditional students. One idea is to create an incubation hub at Drew where we can play with the most compelling concepts, allowing a small group of students to collaborate with us in shaping a new educational pathway that includes all four critical features from the work of our staff and faculty. This approach can allow us to rapidly learn and find the clarity we need to move forward in the accelerating changes around us. This can of course be tricky. We know we have to move fast, but higher education’s DNA is to move only after deep, comprehensive thinking on matters; it’s how we have been trained as scholars.



I also think it is important to remember that institutions like Drew and higher ed in general do plenty of wonderful, transformative, and life-changing work already, and we see its effect in our current students. So I want to emphasize not just what needs to change but also what needs not to change about Drew and similar institutions: Even as liberal arts colleges might shift from disciplinary majors to more thematically organized knowledge focusing on the problems facing our world, the benefits of a liberal arts approach are amplified, not reduced. The broad interdisciplinarity that develops individuals who can think for themselves, face the uncertain and unknown, and contribute meaningfully to local communities and society at large remains. We’re essentially remixing our strengths for a new audience who are already arriving with different interests and needs.



LW: There’s strong evidence showing that how someone experiences college affects their wellbeing long after they graduate, particularly if they have had mentors and hands-on learning. Do you take that into account in thinking about policies on campus?



HL: I love that you asked that question! In fact, as we have been leaning into redefining the liberal arts for the future in ways that incorporate and employ technology and A.I., we have doubled down on those two concepts: the “human in the loop” —&nbsp;or even better, “at the helm” — or the need for strong mentoring in a new educational model; and the need to interweave applied learning, inquiry-based curriculum, and problem-based approaches with content acquisition. These are things that technology cannot do for us, yet, and these are the aspects that I believe must drive education forward. Those of us in higher ed and those of us who parent young people know all too well the challenges in mental health, isolation, lack of resilience, and need for community young people present with today.&nbsp;&nbsp;



At Drew, we are trying to re-imagine higher education in ways that make it not just financially sustainable but that give young people the tools to engage with big global challenges, to learn through applying their knowledge, to have more say in what, when, and how they learn, and to give them a sense of human connection and relationship that they crave. We of course do many of these things already, but not systematically and not sustainably. We are pushing ourselves to be more intentional here — to shift and evolve so that we give students not just the tools to be well throughout their lives but also a desire to keep coming back to us in meaningful ways as they grow and evolve.



LW: Do you see this as a seminal moment for higher education?&nbsp; Given the attack on higher ed, do you think the sector can move out of its defensive position and into a position of strength?



HL: I absolutely see this as seminal moment and a moment when most institutions have no choice but to lean hard and fast into innovation: different ways of teaching, less traditional definitions of a “student,” new modes of delivery and crediting experiences and applied learning, and more flexible ways of creating a sense of community. As the author and Drew Honorary Degree recipient David Epstein writes in his forthcoming book, “Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better,” institutions that embrace this moment of scarcity, overreach, and challenge to be creative and resilient and that reinvent themselves for a future that is already here, will thrive.&nbsp;



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While it is easy to fret and feel defensive and “batten down the hatches” while we hope for and wait for things to change or improve, I see this as a watershed moment.
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While it is easy to fret and feel defensive and “batten down the hatches” while we hope for and wait for things to change or improve, I see this as a watershed moment. If we can come out of these challenges having heard and thoughtfully tried to address some of the public critique about higher ed and particularly the liberal arts — too politicized, too costly, broken, offering no value for workforce preparation — we can envision entirely new prototypes and models for the sector that are accessible, affordable, more relevant to all, and better suited to equipping future generations to control what they learn and when, in order to apply what they learn to solve big global issues. I have been beating this drum for more than a decade, but I think the sector is now being squeezed and pushed so much that real and lasting change can happen.



LW: What do you love about Drew?



HL: From the moment I stepped on campus as president, I fell in love with the tranquil and beautiful campus, the open, thoughtful, unpretentious and welcoming students, the inspiring faculty, and a community that cares deeply about each other and the institution. I love that Drew is a little quirky and that it holds space for everyone — no matter who you are. I love that you can be 100 percent yourself here. And I love that at a moment of deep crisis for the higher ed sector as a whole, this community has been open to change, willing to lean into where the future is leading us, and incredibly thoughtful about what we do well, as well as where we can be more agile, focused, and open to new ideas.

Learning and Belonging at Drew University

John Volin, Ph.D. is the new President of Gustavus Adolphus College, a small liberal arts school&nbsp;nestled in the scenic Minnesota River valley town of St. Peter, Minn.&nbsp;In his convocation address, Volin told his fellow “Gusties” that being there reminded him of his upbringing in South Dakota — of the rural roots that shaped him and his desire to pursue higher education in the first place.



“We are not just beginning a new school year, we are beginning a year of discovery, growth, and possibility,” he said, revealing his signature optimism. Before leading Gustavus, Volin, an environmental scientist, was provost at the University of Maine and, prior to that,&nbsp;vice provost of academic affairs at the University of Connecticut.&nbsp;&nbsp;



As a long-time college administrator and frequent first line of defense against external threats to higher ed, Volin might be less zealous about assuming a role many others are exiting. Instead, he says he has taken to heart Gustavus’ new slogan — “Go Beyond” — which for him means focusing on what’s possible, even as you manage what’s facing you. Volin has long hoped to lead an institution that would align with and benefit from his robust body of work in student-centered, transformational education. In Gustavus Adolphus, which is guided by the Lutheran mission to educate students with purpose, he has found it.  



In this candid interview with LearningWell, President Volin talks of first impressions, early priorities, and how college can be a pathway to life-long wellbeing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;You are a first-time college president at a very challenging time for higher education. What keeps you so engaged and optimistic?&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;I was reminded just the other day of why all of this is so important. A couple weeks ago, we had our first-year students arrive with their parents. There are all the hugs, the occasional tears. And you see this new cohort of students that have this energy, this curiosity. They're nervous, maybe even scared, but they have all these aspirations as well. And it really reminded me of the awesome responsibility that we have — this privilege to help shape the conditions that are going to allow those students to thrive, not just during their undergraduate years, but well into the future. And that is something that gets me excited and keeps me engaged.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was the reason I got into higher ed in the first place.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;What drew you to Gustavus? And how does the culture here resonate with your own philosophy on learning?&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;I grew up in the upper Midwest, so I knew of Gustavus and remember being intrigued by its residential liberal arts setting. As family tradition, we all went to South Dakota State University, and I've always been in public comprehensive research universities. So when Gustavus first reached out to me to throw my hat in for president, I was like, ‘Oh, this is exciting.’



But the mission to educate students to lead purposeful lives is what resonated deeply for me. The Lutheran tradition, similar to the Jesuits, is to educate the whole student — mind, body, spirit — and that is really alive here. It's more than a slogan. It really is part of the core, and you can never take that for granted. I think there is a real motivation for faculty and staff to mentor our students beyond the classroom — to help them develop a sense of belonging, a sense of community, to give them agency and character development to lead lives that contribute to society. That’s what really drew me here.



For me, this opportunity has been a long time coming. Early in my career, I started to see this huge responsibility we have to focus on the formation of our students as human beings. And data is starting to really show the benefit of that in terms of life-long wellbeing. It really does make a difference when students know that they're cared for — that they belong — even as we challenge them in the classroom. And then we need to open up opportunities for students to be able to take what they've learned in the classroom and get a really authentic experiential learning engagement. Whether it's through an internship or research experience or service learning, we know that those high-impact practices lead to overall wellbeing during the undergraduate years and well beyond. These students tend to have a higher chance of flourishing later on in life, have greater career satisfaction. And so that for me, is a real driver.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Can you describe an example of this type of approach?&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;Let’s take curriculum development. I have been a part of two very large university curriculum redesign initiatives. And yes, it’s exciting to make change, but often it’s been incremental change — over a six- or seven-year period. And it's always compromise after compromise, and no one really feels completely great about the product. But here, the faculty and staff came together and, in an eight-month period, redesigned their curriculum into a really innovative model: A third of the students’ credits are in their major; a third are in general education; and a third are in electives. So it allows for that depth that the students need and but also the breathing room to try new things. And the results have been really exciting.&nbsp;



My wife Valaria and I live on campus, and every night, we walk our dog — our 15-month-old golden retriever named Sofia. Invariably, our half-hour walks turn into 45 minutes to an hour because we end up talking with students, and I noticed that I would get very different answers to the typical question: “What are you majoring in?” Students will say “business and music” or “biology and theater,” and I love it because that’s what a true liberal arts education can offer. They are using their whole brain.



LW:&nbsp;What are some of the big things you’re working on?



JV:&nbsp;There's amazing momentum here, but we can't just be the best kept secret. We need to better define and communicate what we do. There’s been a lot of work done in marketing and communications, and our new brand, which I was introduced to this summer, is “Go beyond.” I love it because it’s an action phrase that can mean so many things: “Gusties go beyond.” “Go beyond the Hill,”&nbsp;which is what campus is often called.&nbsp;



That’s part of a new strategic visioning and planning process I just announced at convocation. By the way, they tell you as a new president, you should never do a strategic plan your first year, and yet here we are. Actually, this was a mandate coming in, so it’s perfect timing. We’re looking at this as a significant opportunity to shape the institution’s future with purpose and collective ownership. It’s about who we are and where we want to go, and it involves all members on campus. We will ask ourselves: What do we do well? Where must we do better? What can we imagine that doesn’t yet exist?



LW:&nbsp;Do you think your message about the student-centered work you are doing here will resonate with the public at a time when there is so much skepticism on the value of a college degree?&nbsp;&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;I hope it will. I think, historically, higher education has isolated itself too often from the public. But when you're on a college campus, at least in my experience, it doesn’t always feel that way. I think we can all agree that we need to be clearer and much more transparent about the outcomes of a college education. That includes career readiness, but it also includes critical thinking, adaptability, and,&nbsp;&nbsp;importantly, civic engagement. We need to demonstrate that higher ed is not a luxury; it is a public good that benefits communities as well as individuals and helps advance humanity. At the same time, we need to hold ourselves accountable on affordability and access and making sure our students succeed. We are fortunate that we have a great track record here on four-year graduation rates, but we can never stop working on that. I think trust will come when we show through action and not words that we're preparing our graduates to thrive, to contribute in meaningful ways, and to find high satisfaction in their careers. But that'll take time.&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Gustavus is a Lutheran school. Your experience has been in public, secular universities. Now that you’re here, do you see a place for faith and religion on campus?&nbsp;&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;Yes. We have five core values here: Excellence, Community, Justice, Service, and Faith, and that's everywhere. We don't shy away from these core values. At the same time, there’s no pressure on students. This is a place, where, in the Lutheran tradition of acceptance, you can come with faith, no faith — wherever you're at — and we will accept you.&nbsp;&nbsp;



There's a 20-minute service on Tuesday, a 20-minute service on Thursday midday, and one on Sunday afternoons that are all run by students. We have three chaplains on campus. No matter where anyone is on their own journey, they have the chance to plug in if they choose to. A lot of this is about being present and finding spirituality, whatever that may be. Christ Chapel, which is right in the center of campus, is gorgeous. And it's open 24 hours a day. When we first moved here, I found myself going in there one evening. I pulled the door open, and there's this little fountain running, which gives the sound of trickling water. The sun was setting, and I thought, “Wow, you can’t help but feel well here.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;So you see a connection here to wellbeing?&nbsp;&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;I think the faith-based dynamic gives us an extra advantage. I’ve never been at a university where we can actually talk about it, and I do think it helps, particularly if you put this in the context of community. It’s really all about relationships and connection. We’re hosting Bob Waldinger on campus next spring, and I’ve asked students, faculty, and staff to read his book “The Good Life.” Bob is the director of the longest continuously running study on what makes people happy, and at the end of the day, it's relationships. In a very intentional way, I want to bring this message to campus to reinforce that element here.&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Do you think about how technology, particularly AI assistance and online learning options, will affect relationships between students and faculty or students with each other?&nbsp;&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;I definitely think about that. And I also think it's an opportunity for us to get ahead of it. We certainly can't put our head in the sand, but we need to be very thoughtful about how we use technology. For the liberal arts, we need to fulfill the promise we make to families that we are institutions with high touch, smaller class sizes — all those opportunities. We have to be present. That’s our strength.&nbsp;



After the pandemic, there was discussion here about whether we should continue with some online courses, and my understanding is the students overwhelmingly voted no. They wanted in-person classes. What that signals to me is the students who come here want to get to know their professors, and they want to be able to be in the classroom and have those relationships.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;As president in a challenging time for higher education, how do you “lead” through it?&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;It is tricky, for sure, because you are in some ways the main translator for your college. You are one that sets the tone and delivers the message, and there’s a real balance to uphold. You have to help bolster morale in very difficult times, but you don't want to come off as Pollyannaish. You need to be authentic and truthful. This is a hard time for higher ed. There’s a real assault on academic freedom and a misunderstanding of what academic freedom really is. It's our mandate as leaders to be supportive of and consistent with the values of academic freedom and open inquiry, but it’s very challenging. We just have to keep moving forward.&nbsp;&nbsp;



You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at&nbsp;<a href="mailto:mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org">mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org</a>&nbsp;with comments, ideas, or tips.

A New President Strives to “Go Beyond” 

When a group of us recent graduates from Georgetown University were asked to be Hoya Fellows, we weren’t sure what to think.&nbsp;As Fellows, we were expected to weigh in on strategies and policies that affect Georgetown students, an area that we believed did not often involve listening to students. Students are seldom invited to be true active participants in the complex decision-making processes that dictate their campus experience. Most of the time we aren’t even familiar with how the process operates. As recent graduates ourselves, we wondered how much impact we could really have.&nbsp;



Our degrees did not qualify us to oversee university initiatives, let alone challenge the culture of a centuries-old institution like Georgetown. But the school’s vice president of student affairs, Dr. Eleanor Daugherty,&nbsp;trusted in our abilities to make an impact.&nbsp;Dr. Daughterty, who had invited us into the process, had years of experience studying adolescent development while working in higher education, but she admitted she was far removed from knowing firsthand what the adolescent world is like. “I am the expert on your tomorrow, but you’re the expert on your today,” she often said.&nbsp;&nbsp;



With that, we were thrown into the deep end, and like the child that learns to swim this way, we kicked our legs hard enough to keep our heads up.&nbsp;Rather than assigning us simple administrative tasks, Dr. Daugherty handed us complex challenges, like bolstering an atmosphere of “belonging and mattering” among Georgetown students. We weren’t told to be cogs in a machine; we were empowered to build new ones. We were asked to lead the way in designing new initiatives and solutions to address issues that we dealt with firsthand as students, like finding community within the university or balancing working hard with caring for ourselves while being away from home for the first time.&nbsp;&nbsp;



There would be constant pressure, not necessarily to succeed, but to maintain unwavering ambition and creativity. We were required to bring our respective passions and skillsets into conversation with the spirit of innovation, all in the name of creating a world we thought we could only imagine.



What we learned is that the deep end is not a place to drown; it is a place to learn.&nbsp;It is a place where Fellows are trusted to take on unsolved institutional challenges, to move beyond our comfort zones, and to think beyond our own years of experience. It is where we are asked to address student impostor syndrome while managing our own, tasked with changing a culture we were not sure we had the authority to critique.&nbsp;&nbsp;



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What we learned is that the deep end is not a place to drown; it is a place to learn. 
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We were given access to the full resources of the Division of Student Affairs and encouraged to collaborate with university leaders.&nbsp;We relied on each other and drew from our own experiences as alumni, as well as from the students who are still attending. Most importantly, we were not afraid to make mistakes because we were guided by leadership who encouraged us to take risks.&nbsp;For Fellows, there was no consequence for failure besides learning a lesson and trying again. It’s inevitable that we’d falter along the way, and we agreed that the only thing that fearing failure does for us is hinder and delay our eventual triumphs. Failing didn’t mean the journey ended; it just provided us another memory, lesson, and motivator to propel us towards results.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Since the beginning of the Hoya Fellowship in October 2023, the Fellows have helped student affairs launch a number of initiatives and projects, which have proven almost overwhelmingly successful. Each Fellow was encouraged to pursue projects aligned with our own strengths and to collaborate and learn from each other in the process.&nbsp;&nbsp;



One of our biggest accomplishments came directly from our own experiences.&nbsp;A major goal of student affairs has been to focus on “belonging and mattering” on a campus, which is welcoming but also often too perfect for its own good.&nbsp;On a campus like Georgetown, many students find it difficult to be anything other than perfect. This cycle of pretending to be perfect causes some of the brightest adolescent minds to wonder if they really belong in a place where everyone is as smart or smarter than they are.&nbsp;From this came the development of a class called “Blowing Up Perfection,” meant to teach students some of the skills they might not learn in other classes: how to build authentic friendships, how to face conflict, how to be resilient in the face of difficulties, how to embrace vulnerability.&nbsp;These skills help students understand that belonging comes not from perfection but from connection and self-acceptance.&nbsp;It is something we had to learn ourselves.&nbsp;



Another related initiative is Hello Hoyas, a summer program where university leadership travels around the country to visit incoming first-years in their own hometowns.&nbsp;Particularly impactful for first-generation and low-income students, Hello Hoyas offers a powerful message that students and families belong here and that we will be here for them when they arrive. Hello Hoyas expanded from five cities in 2024 to 10 cities in 2025 and has welcomed hundreds of students before they even reach campus across both years.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Expanding our impact beyond Georgetown, Fellows even helped advance scholarship and research on adolescence, most notably by leading a national research symposium that reimagined how we approach adolescent development within the context of today’s challenges and opportunities. The gathering, called “The Promise, Possibility and Power of Adolescence,” convened K-12 and higher-education administrators, educators, non-profit leaders, and renowned researchers, who were brought into conversation with adolescents themselves — the very people who would be impacted by the work. Like the Hoya Fellowship, the hallmark of the symposium was that the youth led the way.&nbsp;There, young people spanning 14 to 22 years old worked alongside adult participants to co-create innovative solutions aimed at promoting universal adolescent thriving, regardless of one’s location or access to resources.&nbsp;



Our experience as Fellows made us realize that the distance between students and administrators didn’t come from disagreement, but from mutual misunderstanding. While institutional leadership can offer frameworks of what young people&nbsp;should&nbsp;be, only young people themselves can speak authentically about their own current reality.&nbsp;The Fellows program has helped expand the opportunities for students and administration to communicate directly with one another. Our office initiatives include a student advisory, which invites all students to join university leaders for dinner and discussion.&nbsp;There are Hoya Family Forums, which invite curious parents to meet different student, professor, or staff panelists and keep families informed about what happens on campus. The Fellows have helped build bridges between Georgetown leadership, families, students, alumni, researchers, and everyone who is invested in making universities everywhere a better place for adolescent wellbeing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Through these initiatives and projects, the Fellows have helped reframe how the university approaches its students.&nbsp;There are many more opportunities for students to connect directly with leadership, even before their time on campus. And in turn, leadership can better understand the state of adolescents today. The Fellows have helped blow up the culture of perfectionism and exclusivity which permeated the otherwise very welcoming Georgetown community, and we hope to continue doing so in the future.&nbsp;&nbsp;



We never thought we’d be working for the university, let alone teaching classes or organizing national conferences. We’re driven by our pride in being members of the Georgetown community, and we’re honored that we get to serve as a connector between students and administrators, all of whom want the best for our university. The issues we tackle — adolescent development, student wellness, belonging and mattering, to name a few — reach far beyond Georgetown’s gates. Through the Hoya Fellowship, we aim to show how empowering young people to lead not only develops them but also ignites impact at scale.&nbsp;



One last note: When you throw people like us into the deep end, we’ll never want to leave the pool.



Since October 2023, Hoya Fellows have worked in key university offices across Student Affairs to develop strategic initiatives focused on student life and well-being. These positions enable the university to benefit from the experience and insight of alumni who understand the lived experience of our students, while also empowering these new graduates to help build Georgetown into the institution they hope to leave for future generations of Hoyas.

Thanks for Asking 

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David Kelley is the Donald W. Whittier Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, but most know him as the creator of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, or simply the d.school. Kelley, who celebrates 50 years at Stanford this year (as both student and professor), presents more like an eloquent historian than an engineering genius. But it should be no surprise that the founder of an institute that invented “outside the box” thinking would be such fun to talk with.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The founder of design firm IDEO and recipient of numerous honors and awards, Kelley describes his work as“helping people gain confidence in their creative abilities.” He and his brother are the authors of “Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All.” In it, they argue that labeling people, particularly children, as creative or non-creative is as limiting as it is incorrect. In this interview with LearningWell, Kelley talks about the connection between creativity and discovery, how human-centered design is changing the world, and how the d.school got its name.   



LW:&nbsp;I'm very curious about one of the main focuses of your book, which is creative confidence — unleashing the creative potential within us all. What do you think the implications of that idea are in the context of higher education?



DK:&nbsp;Most of my work could be categorized as helping people gain confidence in their creative ability. That would be what I care about the most. And I think we start out by people thinking of themselves as&nbsp;not&nbsp;creative, and I've tried to convince people — and prove — that everybody's wildly creative. They just have blocks in the way of it. So you need to change the mindset from teaching people to be creative to giving them credit that they're already a creative organism and remove the blocks keeping them from doing that. The psychologists call it self-efficacy — that you believe that you can accomplish what you set out to do. I mean, that's just it. Wouldn't you like to give every one of your students the notion that they can accomplish what they set out to do and have that confidence? I really think that's the goal here.



So how do you go about that? The way you go about it, especially with students, is to help them have some success. You set it up so that it's a problem that's easily solved, and you hold people's hands, and you lead them through it, and they're successful at some small thing. Then you do another one, and then you do another one. Pretty soon, people are saying, “Oh my god, I am creative.” So I guess I'll summarize: The main thing about creative confidence is how you help people remove those blocks. And the main reason that they have that block is that they are worried about the judgment of others.



LW:&nbsp;And that has something to do, I imagine, with what they've been told they are, right?



DK:&nbsp;Yes. You do something that's not conventionally creative, or just doesn't seem like it has a direction that's creative, and then pretty soon you're “not creative.” And people hear that when they're nine years old. They hear, “You're not creative,” and then they never address it again. It's like, you try to play the piano, and you're not good when you sit down for the first three seconds. You are not good at playing the piano, so you don't continue. It's hard. Doing things that matter is hard.



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"The main thing about creative confidence is how you help people remove those blocks. And the main reason that they have that block is that they are worried about the judgment of others."
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LW:&nbsp;So you're encouraging people to have a wider view of creativity and what that can mean?



DK:&nbsp;Yes, for sure. Sometimes, early on — I'm talking about child development — creativity is defined as drawing, believe it or not. If you can't draw well without any practice and you just don't naturally draw well, you're identified as not being creative. Well, maybe this person's musically wildly creative, or maybe they're creative in a different way. So the problem is that, whatever the conventional way of doing something, if you are off that, you're not creative. You're also not conventional. It's a funny dichotomy. But the main thing, yes, is that people are branded as not creative for a bunch of reasons, and we need to see that as wrong.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;It sounds like there's an urgency around this. Because if people are limited in thinking about themselves as being creative, then we have arguably less creative people. Why is it important to have more creative people?



DK:&nbsp;It's only if you care about the future that you think creativity is important. That's how you cure disease and how you make advancements in technology — is people being confident in their career ability and doing new things that change the world for the better. Our phrase that we like to use is:&nbsp;It's your job to paint a picture of the future with your ideas in it.&nbsp;The funny thing is once you can use your creativity and paint a different picture of the future, then everybody else can have an opinion. They can help you. They build on the ideas of other people when they can visualize it — when they can see it. So that ability to visualize the future is inherently a creative task.



LW:&nbsp;Let me ask you a little bit about the founding of the design school.&nbsp;&nbsp;Can you just give me a quick overview of that?



DK:&nbsp;Back to the notion of creativity —&nbsp;when you have a diverse group of people, you come up with better ideas. You can define diversity in any way you want: age diversity, racial diversity, or geographic diversity. But having those people — the mashup of those different people that come from different viewpoints — greatly increases the probability of you coming up with something new to the world. So that's something I wanted to codify at the university.&nbsp;



And so basically the notion of the d.school was to have a place that everybody wants to come to. A lot of the classes students take in college are required classes, and so the teacher doesn't really want to teach them, and the students really don't want to be there. I wanted a place where everybody wanted to be there all the time — that they opted into this place because it was so enjoyable, so fulfilling, rewarding, informative. So the d.school is really based on that notion of making a crossroads, where professors and students from all over the university would come together. And I'm so gratified. It turned out so great. And the reason — they all say the same thing, particularly the professors: “When I cross the threshold, I know I'm allowed to act differently here.” And that's just like music to my heart. 



LW:&nbsp;Was it a difficult concept to communicate within the school?



DK:&nbsp;It started out with a bunch of us in a room talking. It wasn't going anywhere particularly, but it got started. And then, fortunately, as we went further along, we had a perfect storm of administration. So we had a department chair and a dean and a provost and a president that all resonated with the idea. It took giving us the donation. I don't know that I ever would've gotten it started if it hadn't been for the generous donation from Hasso Plattner. But the president,&nbsp;&nbsp;John Hennessy, came to me and said, “What would it take for all Stanford students to be more creative — to be more confident in their creative ability?”



It really helped to have that. I mean, faculty are very siloed and more concerned about their little empire than somebody else's. So getting everybody's attention was difficult. It took a long time to get the place up and running to the point that people were drawn there naturally. But it did snowball. It accelerated beyond my wildest dreams because it turned out to be true — that it was super interesting for these geniuses from different departments to get together and duke it out on different topics. They really liked being there. They liked teaching together. And the way we used to do it before was I'd go in and lecture in somebody else's class, or they'd come in my class and give a lecture. But that's not a collaboration. Once people started to team-teach classes  — somebody from political science teaching with somebody from the ed school or the business school or the law school — when they were actually standing in front of the class together for the whole class, then we knew we had it. That's what we were after.



On a side note, one of the most interesting things that happened was how much the students loved watching the faculty fight. Somehow it was really cathartic for the students. They were used to the sage-on-stage, saying their point of view unchecked by anybody else in the room. So as soon as you get a couple of strong-willed experts in the room talking about a subject and they disagree, it's really interesting. I think, for the students, the faculty became more human to them, and maybe there's not a direct, correct answer to every question.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;I hear there is an interesting story about the naming of the school?



DK:&nbsp;Actually, it is not a school at all. It's completely separate from the academic hierarchy.&nbsp;&nbsp;I remember sitting around a room — a couple of my graduate students and friends — and we were figuring out how to make this happen. And it wasn't clear. We are a small organization and felt we weren't very well understood. So there was the business school — the “B-school” — that was a really big deal on campus, and to feed off their importance, we decided to call ourselves the d.school.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;That's fantastic! Can you define for our readers what you would call design thinking?



DK:&nbsp;Yeah. Design thinking is just a description of the methodology and process that we use to routinely innovate. The way I talk about it is mostly around human-centered design. So there's plenty of people who have methodologies that are business-based or technology-based, and those are all good, and we employ those. But we seemed to lack a human-centered approach. What's feasible and viable is nice, but what's desirable? How do you make it more useful or convenient for people? How does it fit better into people's lives? To me, that's what design thinking is. It's a human-centered approach. And all the discussion about design thinking is the steps — the methodology — that you use to do that, but it's all centered on: How do you make it better for people?



LW:&nbsp;What has been the reaction to this method at the d.school from the students?&nbsp;



DK:&nbsp;Well, at first, all of our classes were electives. So the students were choosing something that they were particularly interested in. And by having different faculty, there were two wildly different points of view in the same room. So the students were excited about that. I'm going to go back to the same thing about human-centered design: Everybody can buy into this because it's so human. I mean, we're all humans, and the driving force is: How is this going to be better for the students? Or how is this going to be better for the people we're trying to design something for? That humanness is just really enjoyable.



And today, one of the consequences is that I used to be able to tell the students to design a clock radio or something like that. I'd be shot if I said something like that now. They want to do something that has social value. They want all their projects to be something that's good for the world. And I think that's a consequence of the human-centered approach. What they want to do is improve the lives of people who live in a village somewhere and don't have the internet. As a steady diet, that's what they really want to do, which is encouraging for that whole generation if you ask me.



LW:&nbsp;You've been at this a long time. Any other observations about how your field has changed?



DK:&nbsp;Design was just not a big deal in the world as a discipline. I always say I felt like I was at the kids' table, and then through mine and a lot of other people's efforts, we're now at the adult table. And I think that has to do with our way of thinking — that finding the right problem to work on is as important as the problem we are solving. Before our language, everything was problem solving, problem solving, problem solving. And after design started to take off, it was all: What's a project worth working on? Need-finding, more than just problem solving. So that put it front and center: the messiness of trying to understand what people really want, what would make their lives better.



Part of everybody's process now is this human-centered approach where you go out and try to understand — we call it the need-finding —what's valuable to people. It's a messy phase. At most companies, people want to sit there and look at their laptops in a conference room. They don't want to go out into the field and experience what's really going on with people. And I don't understand why that is, but we're getting better and better in that more and more organizations start out by trying to understand what's a good problem to work on by understanding what people really want. And I think that's a consequence of design having more agency in the world.



And I can tell you a million stories. One of the ones that comes to mind with my students is this class called “Liberation Technologies.” They were asked to look at fire prevention in these villages in Africa, and I thought they would end up doing a low cost fire extinguisher. But when they got down there and used our process and talked to the people, they started to realize that, yes, they were afraid of fires, but they're really afraid of losing their documents in the fire — their immigration documents that prove they were allowed to be in this building. And so students changed the problem from fire prevention to document preservation.



Their solution was a pickup truck with a scanner in it. And they went from village to village and scanned everybody's documents and put them up in the cloud. When you have a mindset of understanding what's the real problem by talking to people, then you solve the problem in a completely different way or you even solve a different problem. But for your question, I think that's the contribution of design being in the world and our methodology having some impact.



LW:&nbsp;Do you worry about people making things that aren't good for the world?



DK:&nbsp;We used to teach an ethics class and now there's ethics in every class — to try to understand the consequences of what you're going to do. We have a culture of prototyping, where we take a first pass at what we're going to make, and then you take it out and actually get it into the situation where it's going to be used. So before you've committed to what it's going to be and get it out there, you've seen the consequences of it. Before you commit to doing something bad or something good, you want to know the non-obvious things that are going to happen when that invention enters the world.



You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at <a href="mailto:mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org">mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org</a> with comments, ideas, or tips.

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