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

Mental Health

Examining innovations that help young people thrive.

Teaching &amp; Learning

Creating a more just world through higher education.

Access &amp; Inclusion

An end goal for learning and life.

Flourishing

Opinions leading to positive change.

Perspectives

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.
</blockquote>



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

When Alyssa Acompora began her career as a nurse in the intensive care unit, she threw her whole self into the job. As a former Division I swimmer at Fairfield University, that’s what she knew how to do: go all in. But unlike athletics, nursing didn’t offer external validation for her efforts, and before long, Acompora was burned out and considering leaving.



Acompora’s experience as a former collegiate athlete struggling to adjust to life after athletics isn’t unique. Many young adults who wrapped their entire lives and identities around their sport suffer as they attempt to transition to the real world. For that reason, Acompora created “<a href="https://www.beyondtheathlete.net/about">Beyond the Athlete</a>,” a counseling service aimed at helping former athletes discover their new purpose.&nbsp;



“I thought I could just copy and paste how I operated as an athlete,” Acompora said. “But I was burning out because they don’t give gold medals in life.”



Beyond the Athlete is one of a growing number of similar businesses, especially as athletes of all levels have started speaking up about mental health, helping move the needle in the right direction. With unique challenges, the transition period between end-of-college athletic career and real career warrants a unique solution.



“These athletes face an identity crisis, especially if their careers come to an end by force, which they usually do,” said Derrick Furlow, Jr., chief athletic officer at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.onrise.care/">Onrise Mental Health Care for Athletes</a>.&nbsp;“They’ve been a part of their sport for so long and usually haven’t given thought to what’s next.”



In a world where only&nbsp;<a href="https://assets.nfhs.org/umbraco/media/886012/recruiting-fact-sheet-web.pdf">two percent</a>&nbsp;of the 460,000 N.C.A.A. athletes move on to the professional level, a sobering number of young athletes are left struggling.&nbsp;



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“I thought I could just copy and paste how I operated as an athlete. But I was burning out because they don’t give gold medals in life.”
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While some colleges are putting mental health support in place to help student-athletes adjust, many simply don’t have the resources, especially for those leaving the system. A&nbsp;<a href="https://resources.mantrahealth.com/mantra-health-naia-survey-2022">2022 survey</a>&nbsp;from the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) reveals that 90 percent of collegiate athletic directors do not feel their institutions provide adequate psychiatric support services for coaches and student-athletes.



Thankfully, former collegiate athletes are emerging to help those following in their footsteps. Their services take on different forms, but all have the same goal: to fill in the gaps that leave former student-athletes struggling as they adjust to a new world.&nbsp;



Transition issues



When Acompora first began her nursing career, she did everything she could to be the best version out there. No matter how hard she worked, there were no gold medals to validate that effort.&nbsp;



Like Acompora, understanding that life doesn’t offer external validation like athletics is something Tony Muskett has struggled with, as well. The 22-year-old recently graduated from the University of Virginia after finishing his football career there. “It used to be that when I had a big game, my social media would blow up all weekend,” he said. “Now, if I have a good day at the office, there’s no real acknowledgement. If you can’t find the internal motivation, you’ll struggle.”&nbsp;



Acompora turned to therapy for help but found her therapists couldn’t relate. “They don’t think in an athlete mindset,” she explained.&nbsp;



She kept trying, however, and eventually took some of the responsibility on herself, becoming a certified nurse coach, confidence coach, and athlete transformation coach. After eight years, Acompora began to pull out of her spin. “I began to identify patterns and habits of how I was trying to define myself,” she said. “I had to learn to internally validate myself.”



That meant identifying her core values, setting smaller goals and checkpoints, and celebrating herself along the way. This also carried over to her personal life, where Acompora learned to slow down, too. She took up yoga, surfing, and walking, defining consistency differently than she did as an athlete. “I realized I didn’t need to operate at full speed at 31 years old,” she said. “Many athletes feel like everything is a competition and that if they’re not going all out, they’re unproductive or lazy.”&nbsp;



Muskett, who works in commercial real estate, admitted he was ill-prepared for the real world. He had his sights set on the N.F.L. draft, but injuries his senior year forced him to start thinking differently for the first time in his life. “For 20 years, I was programmed for football,” he said. “When you think about the possibility of life after football, it’s scary.”&nbsp;



One reason for that, Muskett said, is that as a full-time athlete, you don’t have the time for internships and networking like other college students. Derrick Furlow said that’s a valid concern. “I was a football safety, so I was an anomaly who recognized I probably didn’t have a future at the pro-level,” he said. “I realized I needed to figure things out, so I started looking at the people around me to see who could expose me to other opportunities.”&nbsp;



Not everyone thinks ahead like that, however, and many get stuck in the grieving process. “For most athletes, the game comes to an end, and its often not by choice,” Furlow said. “They will grieve the game, wish they had done more, and often experience anger about it.”



Jaimel Johnson, an all-American soccer player for the University of Tennessee who went onto a professional career, now works as an athlete mental health specialist at Onrise. “There are a lot of variables when you transition from school to after,” she said. “You’re trying to separate your identity from the field and figure out your value to the world.”



The helpers



In 1991, Brian Satola graduated from the University of Virginia, where he played football. He’s also the father to two student-athletes and has borne witness to how much things have changed. “There’s so much pressure on these student-athletes today,” he said. “Back when I was in school, the final whistle blew, we dropped off resumes, and found a job. Today, athletes are occupied with their sport full time and then must compete for jobs against kids who have done multiple internships and have stacked resumes.”&nbsp;



During their time at school, these athletes have access to mental health resources. But when they graduate, they lose that structure. “A wall goes up and they’re left to dangle and figure it all out,” Satola said. “Colleges have limited resources to help and can’t provide the breadth of programming needed.”



For this reason, Satola recently helped found LAVA: Life After Virginia, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting U.Va. student-athletes as they navigate this transition. Working in partnership with the school and its athletic director, LAVA focuses on four key pillars: mentorship, mental wellness, alumni engagement, and career transition. “Many of these athletes don’t even know what they want to do after school, so we help pair them with alumni to get micro-internships,” he said. “We also let them hear alumni stories, so that they can understand how to launch a career.”



Satola started with a focus on the football players for now, with hopes that the model will expand to other sports at U.Va. He’s found an advocate in the coach and athletic director, who allow LAVA access to the student-athletes. “Without their support, the program doesn’t succeed,” he said. “The coach is a realist and understands the importance of mentorship and guidance for the players, and we begin offering that support from the start of the recruiting process.”&nbsp;



Johnson would like to see these conversations begin even before high school. “I think we should get to a point where we start talking about the reality of what happens after sport at the youth level,” she said.&nbsp;



The LAVA program models itself similarly to&nbsp;<a href="https://fightingirish.com/student-athlete-services-launches-4-for-forever-program/">“4 For Forever”</a>&nbsp;at the University of Notre Dame, whose intended goal is to support the student-athlete in a holistic manner, including preparing them for life after graduation. A former student-athlete created the Notre Dame program, and like U.Va., works with an external partner, called Life After Notre Dame.&nbsp;



It was at a LAVA event that Muskett connected with Satola and to his first real job. “I’ve learned that I can apply some of the same principles I learned as an athlete to my career,” he said.



Identifying those assets, as well as what careers might be of interest, is key. “Athletes need to identify what transferable skills they have and what jobs might be good fits for that,” Furlow explained. “What are you good at? What do you do for free time that you enjoy?”&nbsp;



Over their careers, these athletes have developed many transferrable skills, including time management, leadership, communication, and a hefty dose of confidence. But until someone points this out, they may not recognize how well they can apply those attributes in the real world. “We already possess the necessary skills,” said Alexis Hornbuckle, who played basketball at University of Tennessee and then won a W.N.B.A. championship with the Detroit Shock. “You’ve earned your athletic arrogance, and that comes across as confidence in a job interview. That can win in any space.”&nbsp;



Conversely, that confidence can sometimes prove tricky. For athletes who are used to existing at the pinnacle of sport, understanding that they won’t be starting out as C.E.O. is a necessary reality check. Beyond the Athlete, Acompora’s organization, offers former athletes one-on-one mentorships to help them strategize a path forward and soon will add a community-focused membership, too. “Our goal is to help students keep the training wheels on for a while as they transition,” she said.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/IMG_1053-1024x768.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-2852"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Members of the Onrise team, including Kim Quigley, Derrick Furlow, and Alexis Hornbuckle, cheer on their shared alma mater, the University of Tennessee. Via Derrick Furlow.</figcaption></figure>



Beyond the Athlete is relatively new, but in a nod to the fact that higher education is beginning to recognize the issues graduating athletes face, the organization is now an official partner of the NAIA. In this capacity, the organization provides mindset coaching, routine optimization, and identity creation. “There’s a growing recognition of the need for these services,” said Acompora. “Schools are learning that they need to care about athletes not just physically and mentally but to help them be well-rounded and prepared.”



Likewise, Onrise provides athletes with mental health specialists like Johnson, albeit in a business-to-business format. “We partner with organizations, and then the athletes can reach out to us without their coaches or anyone else knowing about it,” Furlow said.&nbsp;



Onrise designed this format so that athletes have no hesitation asking for help. All its athlete mentors receive training in a “transition formula” that they can use with the student-athletes. Hornbuckle is one of those mentors. “In my era, we didn’t talk about mental health,” she said. “You didn’t want to be labeled as crazy. That’s changing, but we still want student-athletes to feel safe navigating this space.”



Hornbuckle added that, as a former athlete, she understands the issues students face, and how hard the end of a playing career can be. “It took me four years to truly retire,” she said. “When I quit, I felt like I was letting people down, and that sent me into a bad spiral.”&nbsp;



The transition to the real world for student-athlete is highly individual, and all the newer organizations designed to help recognize that. The former student-athletes at the helm are uniquely equipped to understand the challenges the adjustment period presents.



Ultimately, no matter what supports are available to them, the student-athletes must seek out the help and put in the work for results, said Acompora. “They have to be the butterfly to my cocoon,” she said. “I can show them everything you need to transition, but they have to want it, too.”&nbsp;

The Toughest Game of Their Lives

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.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“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"

Nichole Hastings called her experience navigating college a “trial by fire.”



As a student with cerebral palsy and autism, she found the small, private institution she chose near home in upstate New York didn’t have a background supporting learners with her disabilities. As a result, she said, her time in school often involved “more advocacy than education.” It was a constant job to arrange and maintain the systems she needed to graduate — to strike a balance between necessary accommodations and room for independence.&nbsp;



More than 20 years after Hastings graduated, the barriers to getting to and through higher education for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities persist. She now helps run a public speaking course to prepare and promote the voices of current students who, like her, beat the odds and made it to college. The class from the <a href="https://www.wihd.org/">Westchester Institute for Human Development</a> (WIHD) in New York aims to make the path to post-secondary programs more visible and accessible to students of all abilities by elevating real-life stories, while equipping those who tell them with valuable communication and advocacy skills.



Mariela Adams, a program manager at WIHD, which provides resources to people with intellectual disabilities at all life stages, developed the public speaking course, inspired in large part by her experience caring for a son who is nonverbal due to profound autism.&nbsp;



Her son’s inability to vocalize what it’s like living with his disability has made Adams sensitive to the importance of hearing from those who can. “When I'm working with students,” she said, “there are times when I think if my son could speak, this might be what he would say to me.”&nbsp;



Adams’ role at WIHD had been to be “an agent of sorts,” she said, identifying and connecting people with intellectual disabilities to speaking opportunities. But as she found herself returning to the same presenters and presentations time and again, she began thinking about how to develop a larger network.



Building a new cohort of speakers by teaching them the communication skills herself seemed like a promising way forward. From tutoring individuals one-on-one, she teamed up with&nbsp;<a href="https://thinkcollege.net/">Think College</a>, an advocacy organization for inclusive higher education programs, to develop a group course.



“We just really are connected to that mission that the most impactful way of understanding what it is like to be a person with intellectual disability pursuing a college degree is by listening to them,” Adams said of her alignment with Think College.



Think College’s purpose — to connect students with intellectual disabilities to post-secondary education — stems from a recognition of what the programs can offer them. As of 2022, only about two percent of those with intellectual disabilities who graduated high school were likely to attend college, even though the majority of those who did found competitive employment, higher wages, and mentorship on the other side.



So far, Adams has run the public speaking course twice remotely over the summer for students from all around the country and once in-person for students at&nbsp;<a href="https://taishoffcenter.syr.edu/inclusiveu/">InclusiveU</a>, a program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities at Syracuse University.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/cropped-photo-1-1024x560.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2838"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Mariela Adams (farthest right) taught a version of her public speaking course at InclusiveU, a program for students with intellectual disabilities at Syracuse University. Via Mariela Adams.</figcaption></figure>



In the ten-session summer courses, students learn to develop their own unique presentation, starting by exploring the audience they want to reach and the topic they’re interested in covering and moving into content development and practicing in front of peers.



The initial classes in which students decide on their subject are key, Adams said, because the more passionate they are about it, the more powerful their presentations are likely to be. “That's my sort of guiding principle. It's got to come from where they're at, what's relevant to them,” she said.&nbsp;



The students craft strong messages based on their own experiences. Some have opted to address medical professionals and first responders, while others have targeted parents, educators, or administrators. Students have covered what to know about having a service animal in college, trying to build friendships and social connections, and needing to use a communication device when speaking becomes difficult.



Adams realizes that, while ideally empowering, opening up about these challenges can be anxiety provoking. “I really want to help them see that them sharing their lived experience can lead to significant change,” Adams said. “I also want them to see that they’re giving a lot of themselves, and I want to recognize that — that sharing your lived experience can also put you in a really vulnerable spot.”



One protective measure Adams encourages is for students to find the presentation style that makes them most comfortable, whether academic or humorous, data- or visuals-based. That way, the talks unfold on their terms.&nbsp;



The group format of the class is also helpful, as students can derive motivation and inspiration from their peers, all tasked with the same challenge.



In general, Adams tries to balance pushing students to move through the scarier parts of public speaking and offering them the support they need. “I think that we can do a lot by teaching students that even the greatest public speakers, they work a lot on their craft,” she said. “It may not feel great when you first start doing it, but you can always get better.”&nbsp;



Nichole Hastings joined the teaching team as a co-facilitator in part to be a model for students to see that people with disabilities can be successful both in higher education and as advocates and public speakers.



“I can show them that, yes, I've been where you're at. I've been through post-secondary education programs as an individual with a disability, and it's not an easy road, but if you want to pursue it, you can,” Hastings said.



During one summer session, a student with cerebral palsy, like Hastings, arrived at the second day of class and announced, “I can’t do this.” His frustrations with needing to use a communication device, which often prompted people to cut him off or not let him finish his thoughts, had become overwhelming.



“I know what I want to say, but people just don't let me get out,” the student told Hastings. “They don't let me be the person that I am because I have to use a device and I have cerebral palsy and they see my physical disability first.”



Hastings assured him that the instructors and students in the class would give him “the time, the space, the respect, everything you need to be able to do what you need to do here.”&nbsp;



From there, building awareness around communication devices and how to respond to those who use them became the heart of the presentation the student devised and Hastings coached him through.



“The reason why I do what I do and I love what I do is because once people find their voice and they find out how it can be used and how it can be heard, they grow by leaps and bounds,” Hastings said. “I've seen it.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
"Once people find their voice and they find out how it can be used and how it can be heard, they grow by leaps and bounds."
</blockquote>



Grace Medina, who is visually and hearing impaired due to a rare congenital condition called Goldenhar syndrome, came to Adams’ course after a previous public speaking opportunity, her first, opened her eyes to her own untapped talents.&nbsp;



“I was on a panel, and I was super, super nervous, did not think that I could do it,” Medina said. “And then once I got up there, and I had the mic, I was like, ‘Oh, I could do this all day. I love this.’”



At that point, she was a sophomore at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ou.edu/education/zarrow/sooner-works.html">Sooner Works</a>, a four-year certificate program at the University of Oklahoma for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.&nbsp;



After the panel gig, Medina enrolled in Adams’ speaking course. In the beginning, she found herself rambling off topic while presenting and running out of time before making all her points. Adams helped her organize the content and manage time.&nbsp;



Medina was also able to pinpoint her preferred communication style, which she said is “more lighthearted and funny” for the sake of audience members, especially those with disabilities who might be easily overwhelmed.&nbsp;



Since graduating from her program at O.U. in May 2024, Medina has started teaching at a pre-school for children with special needs, while continuing to pursue public speaking and serving as a peer mentor to students in Adams’ class.&nbsp;



This spring, she was the keynote speaker at a conference focused on inclusive post-secondary education and described the challenges and triumphs of her journey through college, particularly with a service dog, Velvet, by her side.



For Adams, the goal moving forward is to continue supporting former students, like Medina, already on the public speaking circuit, as well as reach new ones perhaps yet to discover a knack for presenting.



While funding changes at Think College mean Adams’ course didn’t run this summer, she’s anticipating another version this fall in partnership with&nbsp;<a href="https://education.uiowa.edu/reach?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_campaign=GoogleAdwords&amp;utm_term=intellectual-disabilities&amp;utm_content=homepage&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=313764867&amp;gbraid=0AAAAADfWOrVpwNa_RbVRWK79FlZTAeHFB&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwp_LDBhBCEiwAK7FnkkdnwlqpfVH0u4oUvj0PF9o8CBKC_koGB843USrQhObhie4OOSWNpRoCZmwQAvD_BwE">U.I. Reach</a>, a program for students with intellectual disabilities at the University of Iowa.



Adams is also still receiving some support from Think College to develop a guide for other instructors to start their own public speaking courses. They hope the manual will reach directors of post-secondary programs for students with disabilities who can then use it to promote their work.&nbsp;



After all, Adams said, “there isn't a better voice to tell about the program than a student that participates in the program.”

Hear Their Voices

In high school, guidance rarely reached me. The encouragement was well-meaning but abstract. I was full of potential, but no one translated that into actionable steps. No roadmap was provided.



I would have to chart my own course through systems structured by geography, class, and institutional habit and designed for students born into different expectations. 



My journey through higher education followed no predictable path. It began with my basketball coach, who introduced me to St. Joseph’s College in Maine. Several players like me from Charlotte Amalie, US Virgin Islands, had enrolled there before, creating a tenuous bridge I could follow.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/GarnettPhoto-2-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2718" width="453" height="340"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Dr. Rhoan Garnett</figcaption></figure>



I arrived on campus filled with idealism, only to discover that my teammates and I comprised virtually the entire Black student population. For the first time, I had a white roommate, and I befriended people for whom I was the first Black person they had ever met. The cultural terrain matched no map I’d been given.



Then came financial reality. Unable to afford my expected family contribution, I stopped out with my transcript frozen due to unpaid balances. This began a fragmented, eight-year journey across multiple institutions. At the University of Southern Maine, I couldn’t qualify for aid without parental support — federal rules at the time required students to be 23. After a personal loan proved unsustainable, I enlisted in the Air Force. When medical issues intervened, I worked, re-enrolled at 23, and kept working until graduation.



What reads on a résumé as a non-linear path was, in truth, a masterclass in adaptation through systems offering little direction and even fewer second chances.



Seeing the System from Both Sides



My understanding transformed when, with my hard-won undergraduate degree in hand, I joined Bowdoin College's admissions office. My recruitment trips revealed how significantly zip codes determine college access. At Chicago’s Hyde Park Academy, I found talented students with just one overwhelmed counselor for 1,800 predominantly Black students. Miles away at suburban New Trier, seven counselors served fewer students from far wealthier families. My role shifted from promoting Bowdoin to providing basic application instructions that affluent students took for granted.



The contrast was stark: brilliant minds with untapped potential, shaped by schools whose structures, not intellect, had narrowed their imagined futures.



Even as our team diversified Bowdoin’s student body, I recognized that admission alone wasn’t enough. Students who defied odds to enroll found themselves grappling with belonging and cultural translation, the very territories I had navigated years before.



This firsthand understanding later informed my dissertation research on “undermatch,” illuminating how talented students from historically marginalized backgrounds often enroll below their academic potential, not from lack of ability, but from systemic barriers to information, guidance, and belonging.



Not Grit, But Grace



The prevailing narrative celebrates individual grit while ignoring the systems we navigate. What distinguished my journey wasn’t exceptional perseverance but moments of grace when relationships created bridges across institutional gaps.



At Saint Joseph’s College, classroom discussions about poverty were framed through a white lens. As a low-income Black student among peers who shared my economic background but not my racial experience, I carried the invisible labor of translation, navigating coursework while bridging unacknowledged differences.



What made the difference wasn’t superhuman resilience but relational infrastructure. I pieced mine together slowly, while students in programs like Posse arrived already equipped with mentoring, cohort support, and cultural translation, structures mirroring what intergenerational college-goers receive naturally. When someone explained unwritten rules or affirmed the right to belong, seemingly insurmountable barriers became navigable challenges.



This reveals a deeper truth: educational environments often leave students unprepared for meaningful dialogue across difference. We raise students in segregated spaces, then expect authentic engagement without preparation. When institutions create environments where diverse students build networks and process belonging uncertainty together, they transform individual struggles into collective strength, benefiting everyone, regardless of background.



Designing Belonging



After years navigating systems not built for students like me, I began asking: What would higher education look like if belonging were deliberately designed, not left to chance?



Too often, access becomes the endpoint, and success stories become misleading proof that the system works — classic survivorship bias. Real equity requires shifting from celebrating those who overcome broken systems to designing ecosystems that recognize all students’ needs. This means partnerships between colleges, high schools, and communities, ensuring readiness extends beyond academics to navigational knowledge.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
Real equity requires shifting from celebrating those who overcome broken systems to designing ecosystems that recognize all students’ needs. 
</blockquote>



One promising approach scales the relational infrastructure found in effective mentoring programs. My research shows information travels best through trust. Students act on guidance from people who understand their context. Systems embedding personalized support within human connection democratize opportunity.



These solutions aren’t just technical. They’re deeply personal. I’ve lived in systems that confuse potential with preparedness and mistake access for belonging.



As students, especially from low- and middle-income backgrounds, rightly question whether college is worth its rising cost, I offer no simplistic promise of prosperity. The debt crisis is a matter of justice.



Yet even as the system must change, I hold fast to what Baldwin called the “liberation of consciousness”: education that sharpens critical thinking, deepens empathy, and gives us language to name systems as they are and imagine how they could be.



In a world of rising disinformation and artificial shortcuts, real education helps us discern signal from noise — a clarity I once sought amid the quiet pressure to trade opportunity for survival. It is not only a path to making a living but also to making a life. As Mandela reminded us, it remains one of the most powerful tools for changing the world, not just for ourselves, but for each other.



Inside the System I Once Observed



Even in doctoral education, belonging isn’t automatic. My research on underrepresented students navigating mismatched systems became autobiography. Despite strong initial mentorship, structural supports faded. My focus on equity didn’t align with traditional research models, and I often lacked a peer cohort or institutional roadmap. I was simultaneously in the system and not of it.



Even at the highest levels, I drew my own map in the dark. Reimagining belonging must extend to doctoral spaces, where too many still arrive unsupported, underfunded, and alone. This requires not only mentorship and peer networks but institutional recognition of the financial and emotional labor required to navigate systems never designed for us.



For Those Still Searching



My journey has come full circle, from navigating unfamiliar terrain to charting pathways for others. In my work with postsecondary transitions, I see what statistics miss: for every student who makes it through broken systems, countless others with equal potential never find their way. When I listen to students at their own crossroads, I hear familiar echoes: brilliance without direction, presence without recognition.



What ultimately matters isn’t celebrating exceptional navigation of broken systems but transforming those systems themselves. My story isn’t a model — it’s evidence for why we must design education where belonging is a foundation, not an accident, and where no student must draw their own map in the dark.







Dr. Rhoan Garnett's work bridges the personal and systemic, informed by his journey as a first-generation immigrant student who navigated educational systems without clear guidance. Through his research-practice consultancy WeBe Collab, he leads transformative initiatives, including postsecondary mindset and transition research for the Gates Foundation and AI-enhanced learning systems at College Unbound. His dissertation on undermatch, mismatch, and reverse transfer — recognized with the Gordon C. Lee Award — continues to inform equity-centered approaches to educational design.

Without a Map

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

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

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;



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“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

At a high school reunion this summer, I felt a tap on the shoulder. I turned to see a well-dressed man in a stylish blazer with a shaved head and a few ear piercings. He smiled and introduced himself.&nbsp;



“You won’t remember me. We didn’t travel in the same circles. I did a lot of drugs back then and was not known for making good choices,” he said with a small laugh. He explained that because our last names were alphabetically close, we’d often been assigned in the same groups, and he remembered I’d always been nice to him. He introduced me to his wife and told me about the company he’d founded (“I’ve gotten my act together since then”). As we said goodbye, he urged me to go home and tell my children that being kind matters. 



Initially, I was struck by the fact that he’d had the self-awareness and confidence to characterize his high-school self that way. The next day, I found myself wondering how he’d even remembered our small interactions, whatever they had been, and was amazed he stuck his neck out to say anything.



There’s a famous Maya Angelou quote:&nbsp;"People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Truer words might never be spoken about adolescence,&nbsp;a notoriously sensitive time when we’re sorting out who we are, what we do, and where we fit in. Along the way, we contend with all kinds of slights and stings by peers who are likewise figuring out who&nbsp;they&nbsp;are, often with elbows out. I’m guessing my classmate might have had more than his share of that.



Countless coming-of-age memoirs attest to the stickiness of cruelty during these years and keep therapists’ calendars full. When I was a new kid in town back in middle school, I was on the business end of some memorable comments. Not just sticky. Downright gorilla glue.



For many adolescents, those experiences remain more memorable than beefier slights later in adulthood, says&nbsp;<a href="https://liberalarts.temple.edu/directory/laurence-steinberg">Dr. Laurence Steinberg</a>, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Temple University and&nbsp;author of hundreds of articles on development during the teenage years. I reached out via email and asked him why it is that the teen years pack such a potent punch.&nbsp;



“EVERYTHING that happens during adolescence is remembered in more detail than are events, people, etc. that occur in childhood or adulthood,” Steinberg wrote back. “This is especially true for phenomena that have strong emotional correlates.”&nbsp;



But what gets retained — good or bad, major or trivial, and for how long — depends on the kid and the adult supports who can help put things in perspective.



The science of remembering



Adolescence is an intense time,&nbsp;developmentally speaking.&nbsp;The brain is weeding out and rewiring neural connections at a rate not seen since early youth. This malleability means teens are extra sensitive to emotional experiences, both good and bad.



Adolescent identities are forming in a social Petrie dish with long-term impact. Rejection, embarrassment, and abuse don’t just cause pain in the moment; they&nbsp;integrate into the sense of self.&nbsp;Adolescents are&nbsp;<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4412063/">more emotionally sensitive to negative stimuli compared to adults,</a>&nbsp;regardless of the emotional intensity of the stimuli. The physical effect of this sting is actually measurable:&nbsp;Neuroimaging studies&nbsp;show adolescents have visibly stronger neural responses to social rejection and criticism than adults or younger children. Stress hormones like&nbsp;cortisol&nbsp;amp up memory consolidation, making painful moments more vivid and enduring.&nbsp;



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Relationships&nbsp;with people who provide a social buffer — mentors, teachers, peers who show empathy — can mitigate negative impacts.&nbsp;&nbsp;
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In this way, negative events can “burn in” more vividly than positive ones, a psychological preference known as a negativity bias. It serves us, from an evolutionary perspective. Remembering painful experiences helps us adapt and evolve at an age where parents are no longer a safety net in quite the same way. When you are a teenager, it’s important to know whom and what to avoid like a third rail.&nbsp;



Remembering positive experiences doesn’t quite serve the same survival function. However,&nbsp;developmental psychologists say positive experiences provide a valuable reality check against the lasting value of unkind messaging.&nbsp;



For positive memories to stick, teens have to have a mindset in place to take note of things that go well — and assign them mental value.&nbsp;That’s no small order. It’s hard enough for adults to drive a gratitude mindset strong enough to overcome the negativity bias. Expecting students to do it is like steering a tanker away from the rocks without a license. And yet the ability to train our focus on positive details is a critical skill, developmental psychologists say. Particularly for teens who are on the rocks.&nbsp;



Helping young adults notice and name the positive&nbsp;



Indeed, <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9196161/">positive experiences can also be deeply encoded</a>, especially if they follow or counterbalance negative experiences. Relationships with people who provide a social buffer — mentors, teachers, peers who show empathy — can mitigate those impacts and even rewire those pathways toward resilience. 



And here’s the hopeful side: Positive, supportive experiences can be encoded just as deeply when they’re reinforced and recognized. A single supportive adult or friend can shift a young person’s trajectory by providing what neuroscientists call a “corrective emotional experience” — a moment of kindness or affirmation that rewires the way the brain interprets itself and its relationships. Which is why kindness and empathy are so powerful in adolescence. 



Positive interactions can slip past unnoticed, especially for teens busy scanning the horizon for threats. Finding ways to draw teens’ attention to episodes of kindness helps strengthen the neural pathways associated with positive memory consolidation. In some sociological scenarios, it’s known as naming the moment.



A teacher in my kids’ own high school told me she routinely “calls out the good” because so often the positive can go over their heads, get lost in the noise.&nbsp;



“They are so intent on looking for fins in the water that sometimes they miss the life rafts,” she said. “I have to find a creative way to repeat it when I can.”



I can only guess my classmate at the reunion became acquainted with this way of thinking somewhere along his path. His chosen field, and the company he established, is adjacent to recovery and the science of how we learn. When you swim in those waters, you come to know a thing or two about life rafts.&nbsp;

The Tricky Adolescent Memory

Disrupting, Politely

Donatus Nnani remembers being “utterly unprepared” for the first college he attended. After leaving school and serving in the military for five years, he decided to try again, this time at Austin Community College (A.C.C.), where an unusual seminar would change his life and his confidence as a student.



Nnani was one of the first students to enroll in the Texas college’s Great Questions Seminar, a discussion-based, first-year course in which students mine for meaning and relevance in renown texts, ranging from Homer’s “The Odyssey” and Euclid’s&nbsp;“Elements”&nbsp;to global religious texts and Chinese poetry.&nbsp;By design, Great Questions resembles a liberal arts class at any college or university, complete with students sitting in semi-circle and faculty strolling the room.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Great Questions was very different in the sense that it treated students as if they were already in a university setting,” said Nnani, who graduated from A.C.C. and went on to earn a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Texas, Austin. “You were expected to engage with and dissect this work on a level that isn’t always typical in community college.”&nbsp;



Challenging community college students to reach beyond what is expected of them is an impassioned goal of the seminar’s creator, Ted Hadzi-Antich Jr., associate professor of government at A.C.C. and founder of the <a href="https://instruction.austincc.edu/thegreatquestions/">Great Questions Project</a>.&nbsp;Educated at St. John’s College in the <a href="https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-books-reading-list">Great Books method</a>, Hadzi-Antich believes exploring the wisdom associated with life’s biggest questions is exactly the right introduction to higher education for all students.



“We’re talking about big concepts and looking at them from very different perspectives,” he said. “We’re reading epic poetry and studying religious texts. We’re seeing the ways the questions are raised in different times and places. What is justice? What is beauty?”&nbsp;



Hadzi-Antich’s effort to infuse a liberal arts pedagogy into a community college setting has become a personal and professional quest and, at times, “a bloody battle.” In addition to the Great Questions Seminar, he developed the Great Questions Journey, a pathway that applies a similar core-text and discussion-based learning format to a variety of courses within general education at A.C.C. Hadzi-Antich has also launched the <a href="http://tgqf.org">Great Questions Foundation</a>,&nbsp;whose programs include curriculum redesign institutes&nbsp;that train faculty throughout the country in the Great Questions pedagogy.&nbsp;



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“We’re talking about big concepts and looking at them from very different perspectives. We’re reading epic poetry and studying religious texts.”
</blockquote>



But with powerful forces pushing for job training and skills-based learning over broad education, particularly in community colleges, Hadzi-Antich and his colleagues are working against a strong tide. And yet, they&nbsp;<a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/community-college-is-the-future-of-liberal-education">make a case</a>&nbsp;that community colleges are the future of the liberal arts.&nbsp;They cite positive outcomes reported by Great Questions students, such as increases in retention and transfers to four-year institutions. Their biggest challenge may be getting higher education to rid itself of an unhelpful mindset: underestimating the intellectual curiosity of community college students.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The Power of Questioning



Well before he created the Great Questions Seminar, Hadzi-Antich was fresh out of school and teaching a class on Texas politics at a community college. “It was kind of boring. It was boring for me, and it was boring for my students,” he said. To mix things up, he assigned Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” and watched the class come alive.&nbsp;



“It was obvious these kids could read serious stuff,” he said.&nbsp;



Hadzi-Antich never went back to lecture-style teaching but kept his head down amidst colleagues who followed a more traditional format. At A.C.C., he saw an opening to bring a great books seminar concept to the multi-campus institution within its required, first-year student success offering. But securing the opportunity to introduce first-year students to a radically different educational experience was hard-won.



“I remember some administrators at the time saying, ‘I don’t think that community college students can handle that kind of curriculum, and that just gave me this kind of righteous anger,’” he said.



First launched as a pilot funded by the institution, the Great Questions Seminar would be an alternative to the other required student success course, an educational psychology class focused on effective learning. A collegial competition emerged, and remains, between the tracks, with Hadzi-Antich believing that a seminar that stimulates intellectual curiosity by exploring life’s most fundamental questions is the obvious choice.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We looked at this and said, ‘We’re teaching students to be effective at learning, but higher education is about more than optimizing your efficiency in downloading information into your brain,‘” he said. “It’s about developing as an individual and figuring out how to live a good life.”&nbsp;



The Great Questions Seminar pilot, which ran from 2015 to 2017, produced impressive quantitative and qualitative data. Semester to semester persistence rates of students who took the seminar were 92 percent, with 73 percent of students who persisted earning a G.P.A. of 3.0 or above. In a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUAS-q_Vmmw">video</a> for the Teagle Foundation, which provided a grant to support implementation at A.C.C. past the pilot stage, students referred to the course as “empowering” and “life-changing,” with one young woman saying, “I felt the courage in my own voice.” 



“You got to witness real transformation among students,” said Nnani, who is now the director of operations at the Great Questions Foundation. “Some people went from being shy, introverted, and not very confident in their ability to speak, coming forth with intelligent, insightful opinions. And more importantly, they knew it.”



Gaining confidence in critical thinking is at the heart of the Great Questions Seminar. Students consider ancient texts through the lens of fundamental questions they have about the world today. The inter-disciplinary faculty are not trained as experts on the texts but act as “engaged amateurs” to facilitate what is presented as a forum among equals.&nbsp;



With the success of the seminar, Hadzi-Antich developed the Great Questions Journey, a pathway in general education at A.C.C. with redesigned curriculum focused on transformative texts and ideas. With the Journey program, students can engage in a discussion-based version of a variety of courses, including U.S. history, mathematics, and theater arts.&nbsp;



“We’re trying to take these general education courses and make them as meaningful as possible,” Hadzi-Antich said. “We want education to be something that really matters to people, not just something you check off in order to survive in this economy.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



To date, over 7,000 students have participated in either the Great Questions Seminar or the Journey classes. 140 faculty members have been trained in the standardized syllabus. The first-years that choose Great Questions for their student success requirement are&nbsp;<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1njm5f4xoFLFbLQBr6qtdif3ftNkVfN_m/view">more likely</a>&nbsp;to transfer to four-year institutions.



For&nbsp;Hadzi-Antich, the most compelling evidence of the success of the Great Questions method is the fact that well after some class meetings end, groups of students linger in the hallway discussing the topic.&nbsp;&nbsp;



American Spaces



In 2019, Hadzi-Antich founded a non-profit to receive grant money for a variety of causes, from food at student events to a fellowship program for faculty throughout the country. The Great Questions Foundation has become a national convenor for the growing number of leaders who share Hadzi-Antich’s belief that discussion-based curriculum should intentionally include community college students, a cohort who make up almost half of all American college students.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Larry Galizio is&nbsp;president and C.E.O. of the Community College League of California, which represents one of the most established and well-regarded systems in the country. Even in a state where community college was designed as an introductory first step to higher learning, credentialing dominates. Galizio sees programs like Great Questions as important reminders of the original mission of community college: to provide a broad foundation for learning.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“There’s been a strong push in the last 15 years for shortening time to degree and getting people on a strict career pathway,” he said. “It’s very well-intentioned because community college students are often time-starved with less resources. But I think anyone in education would agree we need to educate the whole person because you’re not going to be an effective medical technician or welder unless you also know how to work collaboratively and can solve problems.”&nbsp;



Galizio believes perceptions based on class divisions exacerbate the push towards skills-based training over holistic education for community college students. “If you go to an elite university, there’s this expectation that your education is about discovery and you might change your major four times,” he said. “But at community college, the thought is these students just need to get their degree as quickly as possible.”&nbsp;



Nnani’s personal story tracks to that assumption.&nbsp;“As an African American man, I was taught that education was just about learning the basics,” he said. “Things like Shakespeare and Socrates, that was for white, privileged kids.” Nnami said his success as an undergraduate and graduate student disavowed him of the notion that there were two types of knowledge: “functional knowledge for poor people and abstract thinking for the privileged.”&nbsp;



The Great Questions Foundation is at the forefront of changing that mindset and rethinking community college as the ideal setting for the resurgence of the liberal arts. Hadzi-Antich is adamant that these ends will be achieved through the engagement of faculty, not the permission of administrators. The Foundation has trained inter-disciplinary faculty from over 60 institutions in the Great Questions method. The fellowship program, funded through a grant by the Mellon Foundation, provides stipends for 21 faculty fellows in six institutions to dig even deeper with in-person convenings, like a recent conference held at Miami Dade College.



Hadzi-Antich calls the fellowship program “the cultivation of the talent, skill, and passion to make community college the future of liberal education.” In many states like Texas, the majority of college students start out taking courses at community colleges, and younger students are pushing enrollment at many schools. Advocates see this as an opportunity to set a foundation for intellectual curiosity as well as civic engagement for a wide swath of learners.&nbsp;



At a time of deep polarization, higher education’s role in developing engaged citizens has been called into question. Community colleges may well step into the void.&nbsp;



“Higher education has a responsibility to help students understand their roles in a representative democracy and listen to the perspectives of those who are different from them,” Hadzi-Antich said. “There’s no better place to have those conversations than at a community college. They are simply the most American spaces in higher education.”  



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

Beyond Expectations

To the Rev. Brian Konkol, religion and sports have a lot in common.



The college basketball player-turned Lutheran minister knows neither is completely “good” or “bad.” With sports, he might overhear vicious trash talk in the stands, only to witness high-fives, or a teary embrace, between strangers in the stadium parking lot moments later.



“It's remarkable,” he said, “and oftentimes horrible.”



As dean of Hendricks Chapel at Syracuse University, Konkol wants to continue exploring the vast spectrum of morality sports seem to provoke and, ideally, tip the scales in a more positive direction. He teamed up with Jeremy Jordan, dean of Syracuse’s David B. Falk College of Sport, and together, they devised a character education initiative to cultivate virtue in sports by focusing on a not-so-silent and yet often overlooked majority: the fans.



Examining virtue in fandom is a novel concept within a very traditional discipline called “character education.” The rising field in the college setting focuses on helping students consider how to be better people, as opposed to just better learners. Efforts now underway include those at Wake Forest University, where the <a href="https://leadershipandcharacter.wfu.edu/eci/">Educating Character Initiative</a> (E.C.I.) supports related programs at dozens of institutions across the country.



On July 11, the E.C.I. <a href="https://news.wfu.edu/2025/07/11/wake-forests-educating-character-initiative-announces-15-6m-in-new-grants-to-33-institutions/">announced</a> the latest winners of its “Institutional Impact Grants,” which fund large-scale character initiatives at schools over a three-year term and with up to $1 million. “Character Development and Sport Fan Engagement,” the Syracuse proposal, was among the 33 selected.



In the fall, Syracuse students will begin to see and feel the project’s presence in a variety of areas on their home turf. Conversations about sports fandom and ethics — the grounds for teamwork, leadership, and loyalty, as well as rivalry, aggression, and exclusion — will start to appear in both existing curricula and new activities, including peer-led workshops, game-day campaigns, and speaker series.



It's an initiative fit for Syracuse, and for a grant with explicitly “institutional” intentions, because it plays into two of the school’s most unique and influential forces: spirituality and sports.



While Syracuse is not religiously affiliated, Konkol’s colleagues said his sweeping engagement on campus has made the multi-faith center he represents a core part of university life. His co-creator from the Falk College of Sport, Dean Jeremy Jordan, even described Hendricks Chapel as “the thing that kind of binds us and keeps us and holds us together.”



“That’s a real asset that probably people don’t understand unless you’ve been at Syracuse and I didn't appreciate until I came here,” Jordan said.



Sports, too, are key to school culture thanks to not only the athletic offerings but academic ones. In addition to its Division I status and some top performing teams, the university is home to both the Falk College of Sport and Newhouse School of Public Communications, which offers a sports media track.



This summer, Syracuse <a href="https://www.syracuse.edu/stories/david-b-falk-college-of-sport/">changed the name</a> of what was the “Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics” to, simply, “Falk College of Sport.” The shift reflects efforts to provide an exclusive space for the study of sports, as well as advance the institution’s broader leadership in the area.



“The chancellor wants sport to be something that differentiates this university and is seen as something that’s special here,” Jordan said.



With Konkol’s specialty in what he called “service to the common good” and Jordan’s in what he called “the power of sport and what it can do,” the two deans said the decision to combine their work was a “natural” one.



“Maybe we’re coming from different sides of the neighborhood,” Jordan said. “But we definitely have found a common ground that we’re excited about.”



Others have similarly recognized the potential in sports as a vessel for character education — the opportunity to explore moral, social, and psychological development in dynamics between teammates, coaches, rivals, and self.



The difference in the Syracuse case, and what piqued the interest of grant makers at the E.C.I., is the focus on sports off the field as much as on — on the fans, instead of just athletes.



This point of emphasis was of course intentional on the part of Konkol and Jordan, who not only love sports and prefer not to see them tainted by boos and jeers but are keen to engage as many people as possible in their work. “How could we impact a larger part of our student population?” Jordan said of their thinking.



In the end, the math was simple: “We have 500 student-athletes here at Syracuse. We have 22,000 students,” Jordan said. Whether that 22,000 includes more “hardcore” or “casual” fans, he added, the goal is to engage them all.



“Being able to include everyone in the project was really important to me,” Jordan said. With a more universal approach, he imagines, the initiative could give way to “new knowledge that potentially extends beyond Syracuse.”



After all, the lessons students take away need not apply only to their role as fans. Teamwork, for example, is one of the major virtues Konkol and Jordan will encourage participants to consider because, while modeled through sports, it translates to countless other domains.



“We’re all teammates,” Konkol explained. “I'm a teammate in my marriage. I'm a teammate in my work environment, a teammate in my community, in civic organizations.”



“I do believe that there is a way in which as a fan of sport, seeing great teams at work can in turn help the observer to embody teamwork in various facets of their life,” he said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“I do believe that there is a way in which as a fan of sport, seeing great teams at work can in turn help the observer to embody teamwork in various facets of their life.”
</blockquote>



Even as Jordan recognizes the limitations of operating this work on a single campus, he said the potential feels powerful. “I don't want to present that we're going to save the world. That's not what we're doing,” he said. “But I think there's real opportunity to apply this beyond simply the two hours or the three hours that someone is at a sporting event.”



For students who study sports media at the Newhouse School of Public Communications, the character initiative will enhance training and conversations about journalism ethics already built into the curricula.



The director of the Newhouse Sports Media Center, Olivia Stomski, takes sports’ impact on fans very seriously. She began grappling with that influence when she was still just a girl and watched her single father escape into his nightly games, free of the financial and familial burdens that weighed during the day.



“Sports bring people that joy, and I always wanted to be a part of that,” she said. “But I also understood that it was a pulpit from which people teach others.”



As a teacher, Stomski is dedicated to ensuring the next generation of journalists realizes how every one of their decisions — from camera angles to replays to scripts — affects viewers. “A big part of what we’re teaching is understanding that responsibility: how media shapes the culture of fans, how media shapes the behavior of people when it comes to sports,” she said.



The funds from the character education grant will help bring new intentionality and accountability to Stomski’s efforts. “We are promising that this is going to happen, and I need to see evidence that we are doing that,” she said.



Stomski will also be involved in a longitudinal study of how students’ attitudes and behaviors change over the course of the initiative. Her role will be to consider trends in their sports media consumption — where, when, how much — in relationship to indicators of character.



Jordan said this research will be unique because it focuses, again, on sports and character among fans instead of athletes and also because it is a long-term, three-year study. “It’s exciting because it allows you to pinpoint the reason for change in the outcomes that you're seeing,” he said.



To Konkol, a job well done will look like outcomes indicating the project helped students be more intentional about their values and virtues — to whatever extent. If everyone was even a little more thoughtful, the preacher in him can’t help but believe, life on campus, and beyond, might change quite a lot.



“Dean Jordan talks a lot about ‘sport for good,’” Konkol said.



“I say amen to that.”

Good Sports

Tyler VanderWeele, Ph.D., has in interesting C.V. He is a social scientist, an epidemiologist, and a theologian. And in the world of flourishing research, he is somewhat of a celebrity. VanderWeele is the director of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. The initiative aims to study and promote human flourishing and to catalyze knowledge across disciplines that intersect with key components, including family, friendship, virtue, community, work, beauty, forgiveness, religion, purpose, and meaning.&nbsp;



The program’s most recent research, the <a href="https://harvard.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c6412613756a3f960a5d92012&amp;id=1967ec5209&amp;e=0157a72f4d">Global Flourishing Study</a>, made headlines around the world for its eye-opening preliminary findings. Among them was the collapse of the U-shaped pattern of flourishing, which traditionally indicates greater levels of wellbeing among young people and older adults. According to the report, it was the poor mental health and wellbeing of the Gen Z cohort that caused the disruption. 



This month, VanderWeele and his team launched a separate initiative examining flourishing among young people — this time college students and their role in what VanderWeele calls “academic flourishing.” He describes the concept as “the relative attainment of a state in which all aspects of an academic community’s life are good,” including the degree to which institutions help students grow as human beings.&nbsp;



The <a href="https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/academicflourishing">Academic Flourishing Initiative</a> invites colleges and universities throughout the country to join in data collection and reflection in three areas: the individual flourishing of students, the flourishing of the campus community, and students’ perceptions as to how university life has contributed to their own formation. The last area excites VanderWeele, as he sees the understanding of how colleges contribute to attributes such as citizenship, character, purpose, and meaning as both innovative and, in some cases, controversial.&nbsp;



In his office in Cambridge, VanderWeele offers coffee and conversation about the issues he has made the center of his scholarship and curiosity.&nbsp;



LW: How did the Academic Flourishing Initiative come about?&nbsp;



TV: Our working definition of flourishing is “the relative attainment of a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good, including the contexts, the communities, the environments in which they live.” And while we’ve been looking at this at a global scale across numerous countries with our Global Flourishing Study, we do also firmly believe that a lot of the actual work of promoting flourishing happens in more local institutions. And from our prior <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1702996114">reviews</a>, we suggest four major institutional pathways to flourishing: family, work, education, and religious community.



As we’ve continued to reflect on how to promote flourishing in practice, we’ve thought that what we need to do is focus on each of these institutional pathways — on the dynamics that are specific to each of them and on how we can further strengthen opportunities to flourish. That led to work with schools and thinking about colleges and universities as well. On the school front, we partnered with the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/en.html">O.E.C.D.</a> to develop a <a href="https://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/index.php/ijow/article/view/3197">framework</a> for metrics for education, for flourishing, which we’re also now working on operationalizing. But being embedded ourselves in an academic context, we thought we should take these notions seriously for our own university community. &nbsp;What does it mean for an academic community to flourish?&nbsp; It certainly involves the individual flourishing of the students, the staff, and the faculty which involves our established flourishing assessments — happiness and health and meaning and relationships and character and financial security.



But the flourishing of the community is more than that. It is also about good relationships within the community, proficient leadership, healthy structures and practices in place to help sustain the community with a sense of belonging and a common mission. To that end, we’ve taken our <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42413-019-00036-8">community wellbeing measure</a> and adapted it for university context. But then we also thought, let’s turn to the mission and vision statements of colleges and universities and see how they reflect on their own understanding of themselves.



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"Let’s turn to the mission and vision statements of colleges and universities and see how they reflect on their own understanding of themselves."
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You see pretty consistent themes, especially in research universities, related to the generation, preservation, and transmission of knowledge. But you also see, very regularly, notions of student formation — that institutions are here to help shape citizen leaders of the future, to help develop students who can contribute in important ways to society, to develop leaders who have creative capacities to address, in an ethical manner, some of society’s most challenging problems.



And we started thinking, Well, if we’re going to take the mission of these institutions seriously, we should start by assessing whether these beautiful, grand, important aspirations are, in fact, being achieved. Perhaps we can begin by asking students whether they think they’ve been shaped in these ways as part of their university or college experience. Has the university helped them to grow in wisdom and justice and leadership and capacities to work across difference — in addition to, of course, developing knowledge and capacities for critical thinking? It was those sorts of considerations that really led to this work and what we’re calling “<a href="https://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/index.php/ijow/article/view/5003">academic flourishing</a>.”



LW:&nbsp; What is your pitch to institutions on why they should participate?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



TV: Essentially, we’re saying that the data collection that is typically taking place — often on retention rates and academic performance, job placement and salaries, mental health, experiences of bias and discrimination — is generally good. This is important work that should be done. But students who come to universities, and parents who send their children to universities — indeed, the universities themselves — often aspire to more. And if that’s the case, why aren’t we doing assessments on these other matters: whether there has been a growth in wisdom; whether they have greater capacity to think critically; whether they have been prepared for leadership; whether this has helped them to clarify their life purpose and define meaning? Students want this. If parents want this, and if universities and colleges aspire to this, let’s collect the data.



This is not being presented as an alternative to what colleges and universities are already doing, but rather as a supplement. And if colleges and universities don’t want to do that, then so be it. But what we’ve seen is that a number of them do, and so this is just an invitation to do so.



LW: In terms of the invitation to the colleges and universities, what exactly are you inviting them to do? How do you engage with them?



TV: We’re inviting them to participate both in assessment and data collection campus-wide, and then also to join a community of practice with other colleges and universities that are doing similar data collection. The idea is to reflect on the data, to try to understand it, and to try to work out together what the best ways forward are. How do you address the weaknesses as well as the strengths within a particular institution?



The heart of this academic flourishing survey is focused on — again — first, the individual flourishing of the students; second, the student’s assessments of whether the university or college is flourishing as a community; and third — and this is the real innovation — the students’ perceptions of the contribution of university life to their own development: to their growth and knowledge and critical thinking, yes, but also to their moral formation and character development and their capacities for leadership and citizenship, and their ability to find meaning and growth in the process of their college experience.



And so we’ve included 24 of these <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/human-flourishing/202410/assessing-academic-flourishing">student formation questions</a>, in addition to the individual flourishing and the community wellbeing questions. Universities are being invited to collect this data, and we have an automated Qualtrics survey to do this in a very straightforward manner. And we’ve now set up infrastructure to immediately convert that survey into a report for the individual school. And then that data will be used in a much larger database to try to understand dynamics across schools and universities. In addition, we’ll be hosting meetings and events to discuss the similarities and differences across institutions. If one university has a particular strength, we’ll talk about how this came about. How can the other universities strengthen in this regard?



LW: Do you get push back from people saying that flourishing and this student formation work is outside of the scope of higher education?



TV: In our <a href="https://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/index.php/ijow/article/view/5003">academic paper</a>, we include a principle with regard to the appropriate scope of efforts for flourishing in education. And we would agree that it’s not the school’s or the university’s responsibility to sustain all aspects of a student’s flourishing. This requires families. This requires neighborhoods. This requires workplaces. This requires religious communities. You can’t make the school responsible for everything, and they’re not equipped to do so.



On the other hand, just to say education is only about vocational career preparation seems too narrow because you have these extraordinary narratives — anecdotes — about transformative experiences. There’s real potential there, and we don’t want to restrict that potential. We’ve said what we’ve proposed is that the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jope/article/59/3-4/634/7734153">proper scope</a> of educational efforts oriented towards flourishing concerns those aspects of flourishing around which societal consensus can be attained and for which educational leaders and staff and faculty are prepared to address.



LW: What has been the reaction to the student formation work?



TV: Different institutions each have a very different focus, and that needs to be acknowledged. We have divided the student formation questions into these four domains: knowledge and critical thinking, character formation, citizenship and leadership, and then meaning and growth. Not all of these aspects of student formation will necessarily be of interest to all institutions.



We think pretty much any college would be interested in increasing cognitive capacities and knowledge, so those we feel are always core. What we’ve also <a href="https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum8886/files/2025-06/VirtuesAcademicFlourishing.pdf">argued</a> is, even for institutions that don’t embrace character formation as part of their mission, some of this is necessary to accomplish the cognitive and epistemic goals of their institutions. You need a certain level of perseverance to work through difficulties and to push one’s mind. You need a certain level of courage to work through controversial or challenging questions. And you need honesty in test-taking and research practices. We need justice and patience to be able to hear different perspectives we might not like.



I think everyone would agree on a lot of this. Take courage. Do we want our students to be cowardly? Let’s get a show of hands amongst the trustees and the faculty — who wants our students to be cowardly? What about honesty? Who wants our students to be dishonest? What about your practical wisdom? Who wants our students to be foolish? You’re just not going to get many takers. There’s a lot of individual character strengths that I think we can agree are important.



A number of colleges and universities have real visions of flourishing for their students, and that includes meaning and growth. Different institutions may place different weights on these various aspects of student formation, and we are not trying to be prescriptive. What we’re saying is, collect the data and hopefully your strengths align with where your primary areas of focus are. And if not, then it’s time to work on it.



LW: Do you find that schools are interested in flourishing because of the mental health association?



TV: Yes, I think there may be interest in flourishing because of mental health concerns, but we are trying to broaden beyond this. I think there may be roughly equal interest in the flourishing of the students and in these student formation questions. We’ve been leading with student formation as the real innovation here because there are other universities collecting wellbeing data. But all these aspects are related. I do think the mental health and wellbeing crisis amongst youth has gotten much of society to take these matters more seriously and to reflect upon them. What are the sources of that decline? I do think one of the sources is a lack of meaning, a lack of purpose. This is evident in surveys as well, when asking younger adults and students: What do they long for? What are they seeking? I think meaning is increasingly a common theme there.



LW: Four of your student formation questions are included in the Wall Street Journal college rankings. What does that indicate?



TV: We are certainly pleased that they would take these matters seriously, but we’ll let the college and university rankings folks continue their work. We are, however, going to try to use this data collection with the Wall Street Journal to launch the movement, but our goal after this is not to directly participate in any sort of ranking endeavors. We are focusing on the relative strengths and weaknesses of each institution, rather than comparing them. What can you be proud of and perhaps use in your marketing materials? Where are areas for growth, which you may not put in your marketing materials but want to work on internally? And then what do you learn from other institutions that may have different strengths and weaknesses than you?



LW: What’s next for the Academic Flourishing Initiative?



TV: We’re just starting out, and we’re focused on students. But as discussed in the academic piece, ultimately, if we’re talking about the flourishing of a community, that includes faculty and staff as well. So that’s another direction we would like to eventually go. We’d also like to look at alumni and parents. I think employers would be another interesting aspect of this. But we needed to begin somewhere, and students seem to be the right place to being.

What is “Academic Flourishing”?

As our plane rolled into the terminal, my seat neighbor asked if it was my first time in Egypt. I told him it was — my first in the country and second in the Middle East, although I hadn’t been back since before I started college and studying Arabic. He told me he was born and raised in Cairo and coming home after a few months coaching squash in Dallas.&nbsp;



We turned out to have more in common than being about the same age on the same plane. When he heard I went to Harvard, his face lit up in recognition. He quickly listed off the names of squash players, friends of his, who had been students. Some were Egyptian, others French and Canadian. Several of them I knew. We had lived together in the same dorm for years.



Within seconds of landing somewhere new, I met someone familiar. At the time, we laughed about the world being small. Now I wonder if it isn’t just that Harvard is big, its international network as wide as its roots in Cambridge are deep.&nbsp;



I thought about my chance encounter in Cairo after news broke of the Trump Administration’s order for Harvard to stop enrolling international students. Around a quarter of my classmates came from other countries. The concept of their absence is difficult to grasp and harder to swallow. What rare moments of connection would be missed? How many global touchpoints lost?



After four years studying the Middle East, I felt tied to the place upon arrival not because of the books I read or language I learned but because of the relationships I formed. This international education was a personal one, and it had lasted long after my Arabic began to fade.&nbsp;



When I was a student, even academic interactions with international students were personal. There was the friend from Marseille who edited my emails in French when I needed to reach out to subjects in Paris for my senior thesis. There was another from Cairo who, sitting across from me in the dining hall, would look up from her own math homework to answer my questions about Arabic. There were countless who deepened my understanding of course material — a place, culture, or tradition — because they reflected on it in the context of their own upbringing.



My most important relationship with someone from outside the U.S. had nothing to do with the Middle East. She was my randomly assigned first-year roommate, now my best friend.&nbsp;



On paper (and in reality), we’re different. She arrived in the U.S. from the other side of the world for the first time a week before move-in, while I drove the 25 minutes up I-90 from the Boston suburbs the day of. She worried about economics lectures delivered in English, which she was still mastering. I cried over essays assigned in the only language I’d ever really known or been asked to know. She spoke her mother tongue softly on the phone to her mom in the mornings when the time difference was manageable. I sometimes saw mine for lunch on a weekday.



That my house became both our closest home bonded us. We’ve stayed close for a million other reasons: a similar outlook on the value of family and friends; a common sense of humor and appreciation for art; the love of tennis we each inherited from our parents.



More than anything, I think we like listening to each other, chit-chatting. A lot of the time, our views on an idea, a social issue, a personal problem, align. When they don’t, I consider why we’re divided and often, how where each of us comes from has informed the way we think and operate now. That tendency to want to understand difference, I hope, has made me not just a better friend but a better person, maybe even a better writer.



We’re not friends&nbsp;because&nbsp;she’s from another place. But I recognize and admire all the ways her home and upbringing are inseparable from herself&nbsp;&nbsp;— her braveness and boldness, intelligence, humor, and singular thoughtfulness towards me and the world.



Sometimes a friend from a different country teaches you about the world; other times they teach you about the person you want to be.&nbsp;



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Sometimes a friend from a different country teaches you about the world; other times they teach you about the person you want to be.&nbsp;
</blockquote>



I know other students have had similar experiences. In her Harvard commencement speech last month, master’s student Yurong “Luanna” Jiang opened with her own testament to the university’s global footprint: While completing a summer internship in Mongolia, she received a phone call from classmates in Tanzania who needed help translating the Chinese instructions for their washing machine. “There we were: an Indian and a Thai, calling me, a Chinese in Mongolia, to decipher a washer in Tanzania,” she said. “And we all studied together, here at Harvard.” The crowd erupted.



Those cheers, I’m convinced, signaled agreement as much as pride. I imagine every recent Harvard student and alum could point to an instance when the university shrunk the world down a size, made a strange place knowable. They wouldn’t have had to study the Middle East like me or international development like Jiang, either. These moments usually come down to something with more staying power than a shared class or major: friendship.

Global Connections

When the save-the-date from my son’s fraternity landed in my inbox, I was confused. I had never heard of a “Mom’s Weekend.” His older siblings hadn’t participated in the Greek system in college. The email mentioned a few activities and reminded us to bring a contribution for the silent auction. Photos of past baskets were attached to guide our creativity: a customized Yeti cooler filled with beer; a margarita-themed bucket with cactus-shaped glasses, limes, and a handle of tequila; a poker-motif basket with cards, bourbon, whiskey, and cigars.



Mom’s (and Dad’s) Weekend, I learned, is a tradition in the Greek system. It’s an opportunity to have special time with your student and get to know their friends during a number of planned activities. This is no small thing for mothers adjusting to seeing far less of their children, feeling your role in their daily life fade, to some extent, into the background of a Facetime square. Our Mom’s Weekend schedule was pretty open, with just a handful of organized social events, among them a cocktail-reception-house-tour, followed by a pub night, mimosa brunch, and silent auction, with proceeds benefiting chapter activities.&nbsp;



I’m not a drinker, but all of it was a welcome window into my son’s freshman experience, more than a thousand miles from home. I decided to make it a road trip and visit family along the way. I gassed up the car and packed up my auction contribution — a barbecue-themed basket of grill utensils, spices, and sauces. (Sorry boys, not that kind of sauce.)



But I was coming into the weekend carrying more than my basket. My own experience at a small university was one where fraternities played an outsized role in campus culture and where, as editor of the newspaper, I was drawn by a campus controversy into the darker aspects of Greek loyalty. But that was then; this is now. I was hopeful I would come away from Mom’s Weekend with the sense that belonging to a fraternity today, in its more modern form, represented a positive opportunity for community among young men, including my son.



He is a private person, and I had only the vaguest idea of how his pledging process had gone earlier in the spring. Because he hadn’t participated in many of the fall rush activities — meaning, he hadn’t let it dominate his orientation to college social life — his options were limited, though he said the house he’d joined was “chill” with “good guys.” In his shorthand, that meant the parties weren’t the craziest, or the members too intense about their demands on his time. His grades were good, he had a steady girlfriend in his dorm, and nothing about the road to initiation had set off alarm bells at least from our parental perspective. We’d gotten a letter from the fraternity president assuring parents that they took their anti-hazing vows seriously.



***



During my own senior spring in college, I was working with the newspaper staff late one night to close an issue when the telephone rang on the office wall. An anonymous caller claimed to have recently broken into a secretive fraternity’s notorious windowless chapel and stolen decades of ledgers. In the pages, long-ago members had allegedly recorded their thoughts and activities, and over the years, generations of brothers had added notes the margins. The caller offered to bring me the ledgers.



At the time, I had only an English major’s best guess at the intricacies of journalistic freedoms and liabilities, something I would later study as part of a master’s degree in my chosen field. But I suspected I should not accept original stolen materials. So the caller made photocopies and left them in my car. There were references to some unsolved crimes on campus, chilling racial commentary, coded language about sexual encounters, and hazing episodes that had taken an alarming turn. More recent entries addressed changing rules and attitudes on campus and vowed that if the house were compelled to “build bridges,” they should only give enough lip service to remain the same. I began writing an article and called university administrators to let them know. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t run the piece. But they did advise against it and said they couldn’t insulate me from repercussions.&nbsp;



After the article appeared, the rallies and protests began. There were calls to suspend or ban the fraternity and some to eliminate the Greek system on campus, a move that had been raised for years. Fraternity and sorority members pointed to the benefits of bonding and the charitable deeds done. The fraternity’s alumni leaders flew in with lawyers and investigators, determined to find out who had been behind the theft. I laid low. It wasn’t my place to offer opinions or get involved in debates. But I’d taken the call and written the article, and my car tire was slashed, and the university house where I lived as an RA had a window broken. I heard the fraternity’s legal team wanted to speak with me, but there was never a subpoena. The state’s shield law protected journalists’ right not to reveal their sources, but whether that covered university students remained to be seen. My father asked me to keep a low profile because he’d rather not take out a second mortgage to explore that precedent in court.&nbsp;



Things quieted down a few weeks later when students left campus for the summer, but the fallout went on for years. The fraternity was suspended, moved to private property, and went underground. The faculty voted to abolish the Greek system, but the motion was symbolic and not supported by the administration. After I graduated, I received a manilla envelope in the mail with a printed list of companies that supposedly would never hire me. A year later, after I’d begun working at a magazine, I had a surprise visit. The receptionist said an industry publicist had arrived for an appointment and buzzed a man inside. He sat down in my cubicle, pulled a tape recorder out of his briefcase (there was once a thing called a briefcase), and started asking questions about the night I received the call at the newspaper office.&nbsp;



***



Then and now, the takeaway for me about the Greek system is this: What happens when impressionable young adults join societies like these? Membership fosters group loyalty through a secretive selection and initiation process, rituals, identity, and language. To what extent is that loyalty inclined to supersede the individual morality these young people are still developing? This is the place where you live and (literally, with fraternity cooks) the hand that feeds you. These are the people you spend your weekends with, gravitate towards in classes, and have likely committed to live with going forward. Brotherhood, and all the ways that is entwined in your life, is a lot of your world.&nbsp;



Loyalty is a funny thing when you live smack in the middle of it. It isn’t just a friendship where you go out for pizza and play video games, particularly if something doesn’t sit right in this new family-away-from-home. If we stick with the video game metaphor, you’ve been initiated by the people who created the world-building behind it. That shared game is your universe, and it feels like everyone in other Greek organizations have their own, too. The roles and personas and tones are set, whether it’s inside jokes or repeated stories, or old ledgers.&nbsp;



The experiences you have in college, positive and negative, go on to shape your character and identity, as well as your resilience in the face of adversity. The lessons learned during these years contribute to making you&nbsp;you&nbsp;— either because of the environment, or in spite of it. A college’s atmosphere set by the administration and faculty can make the difference between a student feeling like their school has their back, or doesn’t. Mine didn’t.&nbsp;



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The lessons learned during these years contribute to making you&nbsp;you&nbsp;— either because of the environment, or in spite of it.
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Mom’s Weekend was, to me, a smashing success, in part because most of what we did together existed beyond the footprint of the “weekend” itself. My son and I did a few of the organized activities, and I met some of his new fraternity brothers. But we skipped the bar crawls, and because it was too rainy to hike, went to the gym to work out. We had a delightful three-hour dinner at a local restaurant, and I got to know his lovely, down-to-earth girlfriend. She described for me her own pledging process, the pressure from sororities to present a cool image that’s your own impeccable brand, right down to a written statement about yourself and proof of a masterful social media presence. She is pursuing a demanding major and seemed to have kept pledging in perspective, though she saw it wreak havoc on others. A few weeks after Mom’s Weekend, I saw a story in the news that a fraternity at my son’s school had just been suspended for 40 years — though it was later revised to 15 — for repeatedly violating hazing rules while they were already on probation. They had been paddling pledges at the off-campus home of an alum.&nbsp;



My son has confided to his father that he’s had some mild pressure from upperclassmen who say he doesn’t spend enough time at the house. He’s already committed to living in the fraternity during his sophomore year and, just recently, also in his junior year at one of the fraternity’s off-campus annexes. He tells us that kind of advance signing is required so that the brotherhood can retain its hold on valuable rentals. I’ve long felt that my boy is his own dog and doesn’t roll over to social pressure when he has a solid home base. Still, it’s not lost on me that this housing commitment years into the future in effect makes the fraternity the primary scaffolding of his college experience. This, before he’s even declared his major. That’s a lot of clout for an organization to have over my kid, an organization I can’t say I know much of anything about. I guess I can say that the house was pretty clean during the tour.



And yet. Another part of my maternal brain knows that belonging is so important to young people’s sense of connection and community. My son’s age-cohort was the one that entered high school remotely as the pandemic did its damage, and part of that damage was their dislocation from their peers and their academic world, slouched in front of Zoom, hoodies up. The last thing I want for him is isolation. What I do want for him is the development of a discerning character — steady in his sense of himself and true to his values, whoever he’s with, whatever they are doing.&nbsp;



Leaving dinner that night, my son and I decided not to go to “around the clock” at the favorite local bar, where pitchers started off in the single digits in the afternoon, then go up by a dollar every hour. I dropped him and his girlfriend back at their dorm, then headed back toward my rental house. But first I had to stop back at the restaurant, where I’d forgotten my umbrella.&nbsp;



I parked as close as I could on a side street behind the main drag of town, home to many of the annexes like the one by son had just&nbsp;committed to for his junior year. Just&nbsp;in front of me, a group of laughing young men weaved on and off the sidewalk, shirtless in the 40-degree torrential rain. From the other side of the street, another group called out to them, chanting something about… I don’t know what, but it seemed to be positive, or maybe they were mad. They ran and crashed into each other in the middle of the street with perfectly executed chest bumps, delighted or angry, yelling things I couldn’t understand. I gave them a wide berth, more than&nbsp;happy to be an inconsequential NPC in the background&nbsp;of their game.&nbsp;



When I returned to the rental, my two housemate-moms were hanging out in the living room with their sons, watching basketball and eating popcorn. They’d gone to “around the clock,” then wanted to come back and chill at the farmhouse and watch TV. As the rain pounded the windows and wind threw the screen door back and forth, the four slouched, wrapped in blankets on a sectional in the dark room, ageless in comfortable silence.&nbsp;

Have Fraternities Changed? A Parent’s Perspective

Authors of the new book, Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn't Matter—and What Really Does, speak with LW Radio host Marjorie Malpiede about how students can leverage higher education to get a richer college experience and, in doing so, may change the system.



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Hacking College with Scott Carlson and Ned Scott Laff

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Zoe had always wanted to study abroad. When looking at colleges, she was drawn to Lehigh University because of something she saw called “Lehigh360.” As the name suggests, Lehigh360 is an institution-wide initiative that helps students see the world through a broader angle by engaging in high-impact practices, like traveling to different countries, conducting research, or working on real-world problems.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“That said to me, ‘This school cares about these experiences and the students who want to have them,’” said Zoe, now a rising junior at Lehigh who spent last summer in Africa. “Lehigh360 connected me with an amazing opportunity that literally changed my life.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



While it continues to accommodate students like Zoe who gravitate towards new experiences, Lehigh360 is also there to inspire the larger number of students who, for whatever reason, do not. Now in its third year, Lehigh360 aims to equip every student at Lehigh with the information, access, and encouragement to pursue projects or programs that can prepare them for life, as well as career. Part database, part marketing campaign, Lehigh360 seeks to fill the access gap around these opportunities by addressing a number of barriers, whether lack of awareness, affordability, or self-confidence.&nbsp;



“We want all students to have these kinds of transformative experiences, and we want a more democratic, egalitarian process, where any student that comes here should be able to participate in them,” said Michelle Spada, the director of Lehigh360.&nbsp;



Spada works within Lehigh’s Office of Creative Inquiry, where Lehigh360 was, fittingly, created. Formed out of a desire to have students work on complex problems through open-ended projects, the Office of Creative Inquiry is an academic and non-academic vehicle for digging into big global issues. Its core program is called&nbsp;<a href="https://go.lehigh.edu/impactfellowships">“Impact Fellowships,”</a>&nbsp;through which students work in small teams and with faculty mentors on a host of global and local issues over two semesters with two to three weeks of on-site fieldwork in the summer.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Within the Office of Creative Inquiry, Bill Whitney is assistant vice provost for experiential learning programs. Having seen the positive impact of the office’s work on students who engaged, Whitney and his colleague, Vice Provost for Creative Inquiry Khanjan Mehta, were curious about how many of the university’s students were taking advantage of similar experiences on campus. What little information they found proved disappointing. When they asked students and alumni about study abroad or leadership or mentorship opportunities, a lot of them said they hadn’t participated in them; many said they didn’t know about them at Lehigh.&nbsp;



“It was clear then that we needed a better way of getting all these ambitious, driven, capable students doing things that are outside of just their march to degree, as important as that is,” Whitney said. “That’s what led us to Lehigh360.”&nbsp;



Whitney said part of the urgency to improve access to high-impact programs and experiences stems from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aacu.org/trending-topics/high-impact">evidence</a>&nbsp;of their significant educational benefit. Their longer-term benefits, including helping to develop a sense of purpose and fulfillment in life and career, have broad appeal for many worried about the&nbsp;<a href="https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/reports/on-edge">lack of purpose</a>&nbsp;so many young people are reporting.&nbsp;



As strong advocates of this work, Whitney and Mehta began to convene campus stakeholders and alert them to the gap that existed in connecting students with these evidence-based practices. It was not a tough sell, given the school’s strong history of learning through doing. Best known for engineering, Lehigh’s close affiliation with Bethlehem Steel, once the anchor industry in the region, offered a host of work/learning opportunities that still exist today.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“There is a historical connection to experiential learning that I think everyone is on board with here, and there are these incredible pockets of signature high-impact opportunities,” said Whitney. “The problem is they exist in totally different spaces, and there’s no connection between them. There’s no common place to find them or learn how to get involved.”



Whitney met with over a hundred campus offices across numerous departments to achieve a significant level of buy-in for a campus-wide effort to organize and promote the many opportunities. They created a director-level position for Lehigh360 and hired Michelle Spada. Spada had previously worked on one of Lehigh’s high-impact opportunities — the Iacocca International Internship, a fully funded program for students who have some level of need — and before that, for an Africa fellowship program at Princeton University.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Spada said her previous work opened her eyes to the equity and access issues that exist in these programs. “Too often with these high-impact practices, we are just passing students back and forth — those that are really good at writing applications and presenting, those who happen to be bumping into the right people. But what about the others? Do they even know these opportunities exist or how they may get funded for them?”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Spada said the accessibility issue becomes even more pronounced considering the advantage these experiences have in today’s job market. Employers looking for distinctions beyond G.P.A. are eager to see what kinds of activities or work/learning experiences candidates have had in college. Those who decry Gen Z’s lack of readiness are likely to see working on real-world problems as a protective factor.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“When you consider that employers are putting an emphasis on these experiences, often over G.P.A., it becomes our responsibility to be much more intentional about them,” Spada said.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Lehigh360 offers a number of on-ramps to these opportunities, starting with communicating and promoting the benefits of doing something in addition to that “march to degree.” The vision for Lehigh360 is to help students find their place in the world, which includes knowing what the world needs from them. “We ask students, ‘What excites you? What really lights you up?’” Whitney said. “But we also ask, ‘What problems in the world do you want to help solve?’”



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The vision for Lehigh360 is to help students find their place in the world, which includes knowing what the world needs from them.
</blockquote>



In its most basic form, Lehigh360 is an accessible database and a toolkit that students can use to explore what opportunities exist. Students can query a number of different domains, such as travel in a certain part of the world, work internships, research opportunities, and special programs like fellowships or scholarships.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Students are introduced to Lehigh360 in their first year and reminded of opportunities through different touch points, like academic advising, student-facing services, and classroom presentations. Student “opportunity guides” help their peers with applications and references. The school even offers a pre-orientation Lehigh360 course to get students thinking about these experiences before they matriculate and to widen their perspective of what is possible.  



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/preLUsion_Zoe73-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2807"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Lehigh360 pre-orientation program "preLUsion" offers incoming first-years a head start on connecting with students and staff through shared interest projects.</figcaption></figure>



Sometimes getting a student to participate in activities outside their comfort zone involves more than just providing good information. Roisin, a rising junior at Lehigh, is currently in Edinburgh, Scotland, working for a social enterprise that helps fund small businesses in developing countries. The two-month position follows her previous internship in Uganda, an experience she said she never would have had without Lehigh360.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“As soon as I got the internship in Uganda, I went straight to Michelle and told her how nervous I was, and she was so helpful,” Roisin said. “She told me about the good experiences other students had had with the same program and showed me the value of doing this in my first year. She told me, ‘You will learn so much, and then you can apply that in everything you do in the three years you’re back at school.’”&nbsp;



With Spada’s encouragement, Roisin went to Uganda, where she taught English to elementary students, taught the staff to play rugby, and met one of her best friends. “It was the best experience of my life — so far,” she said.&nbsp;



“My experience last summer really opened up my perspective on the world,” Roisin added. “As far as teamwork and working with people I didn’t know, I just feel like I am so much more of a well-rounded person. I think everyone should be taking advantage of opportunities like these because it has honestly changed me for the better as a person. It has affected my mental health, my happiness.”&nbsp;



Roisin said the equity focus of Lehigh360 is important to her. She was able to participate in part thanks to being a “Soaring Together Scholar,” which involves a full-tuition scholarship to the university and a $5,000 stipend towards an experiential learning opportunity.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Spada believes initiatives like “Soaring Together” are small first steps in addressing the financial barriers many students encounter in even considering these programs. She and Whitney are working on leveling the playing field in this regard by connecting students to funding sources and securing paid internships for students who cannot afford to give up outside employment.&nbsp;



An important part of the equity work involves getting a better understanding of who participates and why. Following up on Whitney’s informal inquiry regarding awareness, Spada has engaged a student research team called “Impact Trails” to do qualitative research to help answer questions, such as “How did you get involved?” and “If you are not involved, what were the biggest barriers?”&nbsp;&nbsp;



The research itself is a high-impact opportunity for students and another example of how to connect learning to doing in college. “When I hear people talk about their education, I hear a lot about wanting their classwork to translate into action and into what they may want to do for the rest of their lives,” said Taylor, a rising sophomore at Lehigh and a member of the Impact Trails team. “I wanted to conduct research, and when I learned about Lehigh360 from a presentation in my first-year engineering class, I immediately looked at those opportunities.”&nbsp;



As the research continues, anecdotal evidence suggests Lehigh360 is taking off. Students said most of their friends now look into opportunities on the Lehigh360 website. Alumni lament it did not exist when they were at the school. Whitney said the effort to provide a common platform for the many opportunities that exist for students has faculty and administrators eager to get their programs included.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Still, he worries Lehigh360, like many initiatives in higher education, may be viewed as the passion of one department, as opposed to the culture of the entire university. The one thing he said he does not worry about is buy-in from the students.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The students that come here, or any university, are ready to thrive. They are ready to flourish. It’s our job to help them do that.”

A Promising Trend

Character and Reconciliation

The Tricky Adolescent Memory

Disrupting, Politely

Beyond Expectations

Keep Learning Well

Mental Health

Who Are You?

A Recipe for Growth and Love

The Toughest Game of Their Lives

Teaching & Learning

Disrupting, Politely

Beyond Expectations

Lehigh360 Offers Students a Wide-Angle View

Access & Inclusion

Hear Their Voices

Without a Map

Without a Net

Flourishing

The Tricky Adolescent Memory

Good Sports

What is “Academic Flourishing”?

Perspectives

Global Connections

Have Fraternities Changed? A Parent’s Perspective

Hacking College with Scott Carlson and Ned Scott Laff