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

Mental Health

Examining innovations that help young people thrive

Teaching &amp; Learning

Podcasts on higher education and wellbeing

LearningWell Radio

An end goal for learning and life

Flourishing

Perspectives

In recent years, the prevailing story where college substance use is concerned has been students’ declining alcohol consumption. This trend is, for all intents and purposes, a public health victory. And yet <a href="https://time.com/7203140/gen-z-drinking-less-alcohol/">some have wondered</a> if it’s not another sign, like their decreasing in-person socialization, of an overly anxious generation.



The question of cannabis often takes a back seat in this conversation. How, indeed, has the use of college students’ second-favorite drug changed amid a potential swing <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/college-loneliness-socializing/688307/">away from partying</a>? In this case, there’s the legalization of recreational marijuana in 24 states to consider, as well. Is greater accessibility ratcheting up activity, and to what end for wellbeing? The answers may surprise you, as the saying goes, and not least of all because cannabis use is historically misunderstood.



Jason Kilmer, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington, is one of the country's leading experts on substance abuse among young adults, including high school and college students. When we met on Zoom to discuss the latest trends in his field, his preferred longitudinal study on the topic had just released <a href="https://monitoringthefuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/mtfpanel2026.pdf">its 2025 results</a>. Every year for almost 50 years, <a href="https://monitoringthefuture.org/results/annual-reports/">Monitoring the Future</a>, led by researchers at the University of Michigan, has been collecting self-reported data about the drug-use habits of U.S. adults aged 19 to 65. 



The latest Monitoring the Future findings on college student cannabis use are notable because, in many ways, they’ve stayed constant — compared to last year, five years ago, even ten years ago. The data show that, despite what may be common perception, most college students are not using cannabis, nor are they using it significantly more than their modern-day predecessors. But just because the majority aren’t users doesn’t mean schools should unsound the alarms, Kilmer says. Also contrary to what some believe, researchers are only becoming more confident in the harm the drug can cause, particularly to developing brains.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
Most college students are not using cannabis, nor are they using it significantly more than their modern-day predecessors.
</blockquote>



One of the reasons Monitoring the Future is particularly helpful for higher education student affairs practitioners is that it breaks down data by not only age but college students versus non-college students (both one to four years out of high school). In 2025, the percentage of college students who reported using cannabis in the last 30 days was 25.2 percent. For non-college students, that rate was 30.9 percent — and tends to be higher across the board. Monitoring the Future then calculates whether these results differ significantly compared to one, five, and ten years ago. In this case, there were no significant changes in use for either college or non-college students within any time frame.



That lack of significant change also holds true for college and non-college students who reported daily cannabis use (using 20 or more times in the last 30 days). For college students in 2025, the latest daily rate was 5.3 percent. For non-college students, it was more than double: 12.6 percent.&nbsp;



For Kilmer, the point worth driving home time and again is that, despite what many might think, far from all college students are using cannabis. It was in fact research on misperceived norms related to cannabis that first drew him into this line of study. In 2000, a colleague found that college students who used cannabis most were also <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12324276_Students'_estimates_of_the_prevalence_of_drug_use_Evidence_for_a_false_consensus_effect">more likely to overestimate</a> use among their peers. Frequent users, likely surrounded by friends with similar habits, may struggle to believe that they’re in the minority.



One of the reasons recognizing the tendency to overinflate campus cannabis use is important is because that understanding could inform prevention tactics. An incoming student who incorrectly believes most of her peers use cannabis may be more likely to end up using it herself in an attempt to fit in, Kilmer said. But research suggests by righting the misperceived norm, some people’s real behavior can be changed — that is, in this case, they may reduce their use.



And it is best, medically speaking, for people, and especially young people, to reduce cannabis use. Notions to the contrary, Kilmer imagines, stem from another sneaky, and false, rumor: that cannabis can't be harmful. Weed may be naturally occurring in theory, he said, but that doesn’t make it safe. Since the 70s and 80s, the concentration of T.H.C., the high-inducing component, has soared from around 2 or 3 percent to as high as 30 percent or more. “Science shows it stopped being natural a long time ago,” Kilmer said.&nbsp;



As for the idea that you can’t overdose on weed, that you can’t become addicted, that you can’t experience withdrawal — none of that is true either, Kilmer emphasized. “It's never been a question to researchers. We're always struck by the fact: How did that message even get out there?” he said of the confusion. When he worked in student life, he remembered an undergraduate coming in and admitting he was worried he was addicted to weed. He wanted to know “if that's even a thing” because “my roommates keep telling me it's not."&nbsp;



The risks of cannabis use to young minds include links to mood disorders, attentional issues, and psychosis. Scientists are typically cautious about using the word “causal” to describe the relationship between any two variables. “This is a topic where we get to use the word causal,” Kilmer said. “High-potency cannabis causes psychosis.” Some people end up in an unfortunate cycle, where they think cannabis is helping them with issues like poor sleep, appetite, or anxiety, but in reality those are just the symptoms of cannabis withdrawal. So when they use more, the symptoms go away. Confidently diagnosing cannabis users with A.D.H.D. has become almost impossible, Kilmer added, because the drug’s effects can so closely mimic the disorder.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“This is a topic where we get to use the word causal. High-potency cannabis causes psychosis.”
</blockquote>



As the executive director of Student Wellbeing at Boston University, Carrie Landa, a psychologist, is attentive to the ways larger social trends among college students may be affecting substance use habits. The fact that the rate of alcohol use is down, and weed use is stable, could be promising, she said. But she warns against focusing on how much they’re using at the risk of looking past the why of it all. In years past, she’s perceived people getting high in social settings, among friends. But now, she said, “with the current generation who is really facing struggles related to interpersonal connection without technology,” she worries use is often a mode of “self-medicating.” Young people may be using weed to target sleep or anxiety issues — ones that may or may not be connected to cannabis use in the first place.&nbsp;



So perhaps social anxiety is at play in influencing student usage trends for cannabis and alcohol, even if the former is stable while the latter has gone down significantly (from 63.5 percent in 2015 to 52 percent in 2025). But it’s hard to say for sure. Kilmer said new research on the relationship between cannabis and alcohol use on campus could help clarify some of these "why" questions. In the early 2000s, he said, it was generally accepted that smokers also drank but drinkers didn’t necessarily smoke. Today, he awaits more updated information breaking down the “venn diagram” between different substances among college students. What if, for example, the smokers today don’t also drink?



What is clear to Kilmer is that alcohol and cannabis prevention efforts in colleges should remain a priority. Alcohol is still the most prevalent drug, and the effects of cannabis seem increasingly worrisome. Cannabis users may see the fallout in the classroom, too. In <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4586361/">one study</a>, the frequency of marijuana use among students was associated with skipping more classes, lower first-semester G.P.A., and taking longer to graduate. “Now that research has caught up, it really has told a very consistent story,” Kilmer said. “This is a substance worth taking seriously. It's a substance that has very clear implications for mental health and wellbeing, student success.”



The continuing challenge, Kilmer added, is how to influence student behavior. Motivational interviewing has been a successful tactic in one-on-one treatment scenarios, he said. He also encourages university counseling departments to screen for cannabis use disorder. Perpetually, Kilmer is asking himself: “How do we get that science off the page of journals and out there in a way that actually has an impact?”



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

What We Get Wrong About College Cannabis Use

Ahead of the new academic year, a panel of undergraduates convened last Tuesday on Zoom to offer an audience of educators and administrators insight into some of the influences most affecting college student wellbeing today.



As the title suggests, “The State of Student Wellbeing: Navigating Pressure, Belonging, and A.I. on Campus” covered the young panelists’ views on a wide range of both academic and personal concerns, as well as ideas for how higher education leadership can help address them.&nbsp;



The hourlong event was the second of its kind produced together by the Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities (UERU), a national consortium of leaders from research universities, and the Coalition for Student Wellbeing (C4SW), a student-led college mental health advocacy group.&nbsp;



This time, the LearningWell Coalition, which promotes best practices in college student wellbeing, was also an organizing partner. The LearningWell Coalition is the publisher of LearningWell magazine.



After words of welcome from UERU Executive Director Steven Dandaneau, Angela Lindner, the executive director of the LearningWell Coalition, opened the session with an overview of trends in college student wellbeing, as well as ways forward. Recent measures of flourishing and purpose are troubling, she said, but evidence shows experiential educational experiences, like mentorship, internships, and research, can set students for long-term success.



“To fully support lifelong wellbeing, we must liberate our students and our own universities from the burden of the notion that the only purpose of college is to punch a ticket toward a job, and we must provide access to and participate in these relationship-rich, lifelong giving experiences available to all students, not just for a portion of our population,” Lindner said.



The remaining time was devoted to the student panel, which was moderated by Carson Domey, the founder of C4SW and a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. He was joined by three of his members: Mayeesha Alvi, a rising sophomore at Yale University; Leyli Balaghi, a rising sophomore at Arizona State University; and Aneesh Chintala, an incoming first-year at the Georgia Institute of Technology.



Time and again, the panelists highlighted how intertwined their academic experience is with their lives and struggles outside the classroom.&nbsp;



Several of the stressors students identified might seem purely academic at first. Chintala spoke to his concerns about entering a university whose reputation for educational rigor he may not be able to keep up with. Alvi pointed out how a prevalent “hustle culture” on her campus perpetuates the idea that “you’re always supposed to be doing more.”



But at a certain point, each of these academic anxieties became almost impossible to isolate from others, like financial or career-centered ones.&nbsp;&nbsp;



In the nearly same breath that Chintala expressed his worry about maintaining an intense workload and top grades, he mentioned the coinciding urgency around “making sure that we have the internships, the experiences, and all of these different things needed in order to essentially get these jobs that we want.”



Alvi, too, marked these entangled academic and professional pressures and how they can be exacerbated by financial need. “For students who are helping support not only themselves, but their families, it becomes even harder to slow down because success is tied to: How am I going to support my family in the future?” she said. 



According to Balaghi, financial concerns have the potential to influence just about every decision students make. Work hours could limit their class choices or ability to engage on campus in general. Earning requirements, not genuine interest, could dictate their major, extracurricular activities, or career path.&nbsp;



There are also non-academic issues with potentially academic implications that are more personal or situational, the panelists revealed.



Balaghi opened up about the challenges of focusing on classes while grieving a close family member and far away from her support system at home. Alvi said public and government scrutiny of her university, as well as general uncertainty about the future of higher education, has been distracting.



“There's this underlying feeling that the landscape is constantly shifting,” Alvi said. “As a student, that can feel very exhausting and confusing.”



Even the prevalence of A.I. in classrooms these days, the panelists noted, may have its roots in wellbeing issues. If young people were less afraid of failure, they might be more willing to trust themselves, instead of A.I.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
If young people were less afraid of failure, they might be more willing to trust themselves, instead of A.I.
</blockquote>



“I think it speaks a lot to the very kind of changing landscape of education that so many students are just so scared of making mistakes and so scared of not being perfect that they're turning to tools like ChatGPT, like Gemini, countless others, because they know that it will usually output a correct answer,” Alvi said.



To mitigate this reliance on A.I., Alvi suggested “bringing it back to encouraging mistakes and encouraging the organic kind of thinking things through.” She mentioned a friend who was put at ease by a math professor who graded assignments based on proof of process, rather than the accuracy of final answers. 



A.I. chatbots are one tool the students all agreed should not be considered a mental health solution.&nbsp;



Chintala recognized why young people, especially young men, might gravitate towards A.I. to work through emotional concerns. Its accessibility makes it a convenient option, he said, and a non-human sounding board could appeal to those hesitant to be vulnerable with others about their feelings.&nbsp;



Still, Balaghi said, A.I. isn’t an appropriate replacement for professional, in-person mental health support. Institutions should educate students on its limitations, as well as provide the human resources they really need.&nbsp;



“University leaders, I believe, should not simply tell students to stop using A.I. Instead, I believe that they should ask what A.I. is providing that [the] current support system at their institution is not,” Balaghi said.



All of the panelists agreed that one of the best buffers against college pressures have been the people and spaces that make them feel secure. A sense of genuine belonging, whether to cultural groups or living-learning communities, has helped each make second homes of their campus. Accessible and culturally responsive mental health resources on campus, they added, can reinforce that safety, too.



“Community has made all of the difference for me,” Alvi said. “I think universities do a really great job when they create spaces where students can find people who share some part of their identity.” 



Often, the message the panelists seemed most keen to get across was that they are eager to be involved in determining and improving the decisions about how to address their own health and wellness.&nbsp;



“One thing I hope university leaders remember is that today’s students are incredibly invested in their campuses. I mean, they serve as our second home for a large majority of the year,” Alvi said in a closing statement. 



“We don't want to just receive decisions. We actually want to help shape them.”



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

Students Share Wellbeing Concerns Ahead of New Year

For nearly two decades, the rising rates of mental health struggles among college students have been well researched and well reported. This much-needed awareness catapulted the issue to the top of administrators’ priority lists, resulting in task force recommendations that focused primarily on treatment expansion. In fact, the majority of the response to what the media has coined the “college student mental health crisis” has been just that — a response.&nbsp;



A growing number of campus leaders across the country are now promoting a different lens through which to view college student mental health — one that is proactive and population-based. Encouraged by movements such as the Okanagan Charter, which advises colleges and universities to embed health and wellbeing into every aspect of campus life, this new thinking takes into account determinants of&nbsp;health, both protective factors as well as risk factors, that help or inhibit students from thriving.&nbsp;



Part of the appeal of a&nbsp;health promotion approach comes from frustration about the unsustainability and limitations of the clinical model most colleges maintain. While experts support strengthening and expanding counseling services for those who need them, demand will continue to outpace resources at most institutions. At the same time, many students who could use some level of support aren’t asking for it, indicating there could be other non-clinical on-ramps that could help with issues that may be more developmental or environmental. And as with all downstream models, counseling treats those who have already developed a problem, begging a question about what might have helped earlier.&nbsp;



As valid as these arguments may be, moving upstream by focusing on mental health, not just mental disorders, requires colleges and universities to make an institutional mindset shift. This is not always easy to achieve in a sector dominated by entrenched beliefs. The broader, more holistic approach takes interdepartmental coordination and buy-in (no more “not my job” rationalizations), introduces new phrasing like “psychological health,” and requires the currency with which institutional decisions and investments are made in higher education: evidence.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“It really takes the wellbeing conversation away from, ‘What are the student affairs people doing about this?’"
</blockquote>



“For a while now, we’ve been able to understand individual health outcomes which are easier to&nbsp;measure,” said Chris Dawe,&nbsp;the former&nbsp;chair of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ushpcn.org/">U.S. Health Promoting Campuses Network</a>, which is affiliated with the Okanagan Charter. “I think we need much better data on the kind of work we are doing at the systems level that allows us to make better decisions about what works and doesn’t work.”&nbsp;



Researchers working in the field of college student mental health acknowledge this need and are helping to close the data gap on a preventive approach. Daniel Eisenberg, along with Sarah Lipson, directs&nbsp;the&nbsp;<a href="https://sph.umich.edu/news/2025posts/college-student-mental-health-third-consecutive-year-improvement.html">University of Michigan’s Center for Healthy Minds study,&nbsp;</a>whose annual survey has been largely responsible for sounding the alarm on the rising rates of mental health issues among college students. They are now developing&nbsp;a&nbsp;best practices repository: a comprehensive, publicly accessible repository of evidence about the effectiveness of various public health and preventative programs, services, and policies that address college student&nbsp;mental wellbeing.



“Campuses offer an ideal setting for preventive strategies because there are so many different ways to reach students over a sustained period of time with supportive resources and practices,” Eisenberg said. “But campus leaders and administrators need to pay close attention to two major challenges in implementing these strategies. First, which strategies actually have strong evidence of effectiveness? Second, how can we ensure that these strategies actually reach a large number of students in a meaningful way?”



Innovative partnerships



Another key player in the evidence-based prevention research arena is MindArch Health, a company that partners with colleges and universities on improving community health. Founded by Nadine Wilches, a clinical social worker and researcher, MindArch uses a comprehensive software solution to assess and enhance mental wellbeing and resilience within campus populations. It is both a product and a strategy, starting with a survey tool institutions use with their students, and often faculty and staff, to determine a wellbeing protection/risk profile.&nbsp;



“The mission behind our work is to reduce risk and reverse rates of mental and behavioral health problems,” Wilches said. “We do that by trying to predict those most at risk using a community mental health model which is more socioecological. We look at the whole campus system and the impact of mental wellness through what we call protective factors in the research.”&nbsp;



The product, called MAP (MindArch Automation Pathway), is evidence-based, strength-based, and pre-clinical. MindArch uses an EQUIP model (Examine, Quantify, Unite, Inquire, Plan) for the process overall and the five elements of a systemic wellbeing framework in its surveys. These are: self-efficacy, psychological safety, emotional control, interpersonal attunement, and self-assurance. 



“We are measuring the factors that are known to buffer against mental health problems — things like security, belonging, connection, sense of self. And then we break all those down into questions that allow us to direct solutions,” Wilches said.



After the assessment, which includes qualitative research with key stakeholders, the MindArch process calls for bringing together leaders from across campus for a three-part planning phase that produces sustainable changes towards a tangible goal. The areas in consideration are the 4 P’s — policies, practices, programs, and places — with the question being: How has what we learned influenced these domains? Once interventions are in place, a pre- and post-assessment provides the schools with efficacy data. The outcome of the process can involve every aspect of the university, from the classroom to the surrounding community.&nbsp;



“We’re working on changing environments and environmental conditions that produce stress that can be prevented rather than saying each individual on campus needs X, Y, and Z,” said Tim Ecklund, the vice president for partnerships at MindArch. Ecklund came to the company after many years in student affairs leadership positions, including at Stonybrook University and Utica College. He said, during his career, he was struck by how little colleges and universities were doing to strengthen mental health, while they focused most of their attention on how to address mental disorders. “MindArch was what I wished I had,” he said.&nbsp;



MindArch’s preventive mindset, and its focus on strategies that can impact everyone on campus, appeals to many administrators looking for more comprehensive solutions. Cheryl Barnard, the dean of students at Miramar College, a community college in San Diego, is a customer of MindArch. She spent many years as a student affairs leader for private, four-year institutions on the east coast.



“In all my years as an administrator, mental health has always been about the delivery of a service to the students who come to counseling,” she said. “This is the first time where I feel like I have an evidence-based strategy that looks at the entire population and not just the 1 percent to 5 percent who find their way to the counseling center.”&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“This is the first time where I feel like I have an evidence-based strategy that looks at the entire population and not just the 1 percent to 5 percent who find their way to the counseling center.”&nbsp;
</blockquote>



Barnard said MindArch has allowed her to reach that larger student group with strategies that are specific to her campus. After receiving the data regarding protective factors and risk factors among students at Miramar, she pulled a task force together to consider what changes they might make on campus. One idea included putting together a skills building program for the school’s ANAPI population (Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islanders) after these students reported a deficit in their decision-making abilities. Another involved pooling resources that would combine supporting students’ health, mental health, and basic needs.&nbsp;



Barnard’s favorite part is the data. “MindArch gives you evidence-based practices based on the data you’ve collected so you’re not guessing. It’s hard to argue with a result we’ve gotten from 300 of our own students.”&nbsp;



MindArch’s broad application on campus means that many of its customers come from different corners of the institutions. Stuart Sidle&nbsp;served as the dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Mercy University in New York. He now leads a $5.25 million U.S. Department of Education STEM Ready H.S.I.-STEM grant at the university. As an organizational psychologist and student success strategist, Sidle was particularly drawn to MindArch’s focus on resiliency and its correlation to persistence.&nbsp;



“We’ve had some very good opportunities to use this data,” Sidle said, pointing to a new training for faculty that helps students with self-regulation by having them reflect on their own energy and time during exam periods. “We’re really looking at what we can we do to help people stay in a good place before they are struggling,” he said. “It really takes the wellbeing conversation away from ‘What are the student affairs people doing about this?’ to ‘Let’s all be aware of the adjustments we can make to help students thrive.’”&nbsp;



MindArch was launched in September 2025 as a for-profit company, though Wilches prefers to call it a social enterprise, as it receives donations and puts profits back into research and development. At an average of $14,000 a year, it is now in seven schools and growing. Its pitch to higher education includes its advantageous use of competing resources given its scale. Here again, is where evidence comes into play.&nbsp;



“One school saw an 8 percent improvement across four or five elements in just one academic year,” Wilches said. “Another saw an 11 percent improvement in psychological health by strengthening the protective factor they had targeted. In fact, 100 percent of our institutions have been able to get additional funding from the data we originally collected.”&nbsp;



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

Going Upstream

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"

<iframe src="https://player.fireside.fm/v3/FciRz-QZ+fK_PZPeD?theme=light" width="100%" height="200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>



On this month’s episode of LearningWell Radio, the C.E.O. of a nonprofit experiential learning organization describes a global immersive experience where students undergo personal growth while building the skills and networks needed to address the world's most pressing challenges.



Listen now on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3paMZPzVgHJM9YRX3M8TuU?si=97b0153493a14c48">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tilting-futures-with-erin-lewellen/id1732284927?i=1000784111223">Apple Podcasts</a>.



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

Tilting Futures with Erin Lewellen

<iframe src="https://player.fireside.fm/v3/FciRz-QZ+sUDr931n?theme=light" width="100%" height="200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="border-radius: 16px; overflow: hidden;"></iframe>



On this episode of LearningWell Radio, John Volin, the president of Gustavus Adolphus College, and Dan Currell, a Gustavus trustee, pair up to discuss the major changes coming to higher education and what they might mean for colleges and universities that prioritize personal growth and development.



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

The Future of Holistic Higher Education with John Volin and Dan Currell

<iframe src="https://player.fireside.fm/v3/FciRz-QZ+UdFwn-T5?theme=light" width="100%" height="200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>



On this episode of LearningWell Radio, George Abalekpor, a Georgetown graduate from the class of 2024, reflects on his experience over the last two years working inside the administration at his alma mater. As a Hoya Fellow, he has used his firsthand experience and insights into the Georgetown student experience to help guide the Division of Student Affairs.



In particular, Abalekpor has been focused on efforts and issues around student thriving. With LearningWell, he discusses some of the pressing concerns and potential solutions in this area, with an emphasis on the role of Hoya Fellows in bridging gaps between students and staff.



Listen now on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/10cIU7PJduQNmW8Bqd6RhZ?si=mu2yop08QgKCyBjPXbOjRg">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/putting-the-student-in-student-affairs-with/id1732284927?i=1000772975751">Apple Podcasts</a>.



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

Putting the Student in Student Affairs with George Abalekpor

College students are increasingly willing to talk about their mental health and wellbeing — but the adults in their world don’t always know what to do with that willingness. How can a college community better help students build relationships, recover from failure, take risks, and develop the skills to flourish long after graduation?&nbsp;



Those questions are at the heart of the newly published “The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being in Higher Education,” co-edited at Purdue University by Beth McCuskey, the vice provost for student life, and Louis Tay, the William C. Byham Chair in Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Drawing on the work of more than 120 researchers and practitioners around the world, the handbook looks at wellbeing across the higher-ed ecosystem. LearningWell spoke with McCuskey and Tay just before the release of the handbook to discuss what today’s students need most and why wellbeing belongs at the center of a university education.



LW:&nbsp;What was the motivation for creating the handbook? What need is it filling in the higher education landscape, and why now?



LT:&nbsp;A big part of the motivation is to recognize that higher education institutions do not merely have the responsibility of educating students in terms of passing down knowledge and skills but also imparting skills for wellbeing and character development. This has, I think, been a classical way of really viewing education in the first place — it’s really the whole person. Also it answers the call for the&nbsp;<a href="https://wellbeing.ubc.ca/okanagan-charter">Okanagan Charter</a>, where really the focus has been on making sure that health and wellbeing are central. There really hasn’t been a resource that consolidates all that we know in terms of research and also practice. So we felt like this was really timely and important to do.



BM:&nbsp;At Purdue, like a lot of campuses for probably a good 10 years ago now, we initially tried to solve the problem by ramping up our mental health services staff on campus. But it became crystal clear that we needed to look beyond that. It really became a campus-wide initiative to look at wellbeing more holistically.



In student life, which I oversee, we were asking, how do we build our services holistically so that we’re meeting a student where they are? Everybody has concerns or problems from time to time. Not every single concern or problem needs a therapeutic mental health intervention, but a student may need somebody to talk to. Maybe it’s study-skill development or something like that that’s underpinning the need.



We built out a programmatic model called Steps to Leaps, playing off the Neil Armstrong alumni connection to campus. It focuses on five areas: overall wellbeing, leadership development, impact, networks, and grit. Louis started working with Steps to Leaps from that research angle. He helped us think through things from that lens. Post-pandemic, he suggested maybe we should write something because I’m practitioner-based, he’s research-based, and so we can approach this from both angles. He had done some work with Oxford University Press before, so he had an editorial contact. About four years ago we pitched the concept, and it fit very neatly in their handbook model.&nbsp;



LW: The handbook has an ambitious scope, with more than 120 contributors and 46 chapters. How did you decide what — and whom — to include?



BM:&nbsp;We started off with the backdrop of overall mental health and current issues and trends. There’s also a public-health approach to student development, and we talk about staff wellbeing, faculty wellbeing, and contingent faculty wellbeing. Then we look at integration and synthesis: How do we take the theories, the different research in different spaces, and apply it in the higher-ed setting? This includes everything from Covid impact to stress and coping, friendships and wellbeing.



Then we get into interventions and programs — programs that people have launched and research or outcomes for those. And then policy and program implementation: How have different campuses done this work? There’s an example of a first-year program, basic-needs work, the Okanagan Charter, and social-emotional wellbeing through campus housing. Then we have inclusive approaches and disciplinary and global perspectives. So it’s pretty broad.



LT:&nbsp;There are lots of different institutions that are doing amazing work here, and Beth and I are only doing a small slice. I think it’s really important to gather ideas and learn from the best. The fun part of being editors is we really get to read everything and learn from everyone. And of course we exchange ideas as well through that process.



LW: How does the handbook handle wellbeing, and is there such a thing as a baseline? What does “wellbeing” mean in this context?



BM:&nbsp;We’re defining wellbeing very basically. It is flourishing — human flourishing, helping people be their best. It’s broader than supporting the students because if our base is not well, we’re asking a lot of people to make things as well as possible for others. We’ve got to look at this as an ecosystem, and I think that’s what the book does.&nbsp;



LW: How would you characterize where students are now compared with 10 years ago? What are some of the features of their state of wellbeing?



BM:&nbsp;We're in a very different place, and I think we're starting to see things evolving generationally. One of the key things we’ve been noticing is that over the past decade, more students are coming in presenting challenges related to wellbeing. Surveys show that more students have anxiety and depression, and fewer of them are flourishing.



Also starting about 10 or 12 years ago, we were seeing a whole shift in how students were approaching their education. We had seen students prior to that who wanted to experience a lot of different elements, maybe changing their major a lot, maybe even overcommitting — getting involved a lot of different places. About the mid-teens, we saw this huge commitment of students to, “This is the goal” — very goal-specific and ladder-like in their approach to how they were going to accomplish that goal, which was a very different mindset.



I think the pandemic did absolutely cause some concerns. We had the learning loss, and I believe the social learning loss. If you’re managing a residence hall, for example, you see this. People can’t have a conversation about dirty socks on the floor. How do you help people have those skills to address conflict, even tiny conflicts? That generation that came to campus right after the pandemic may have lost that skill-building in high school because of learning remotely. And then there’s the technology piece. The door is wide open here in terms of where this is going.



LT:&nbsp;They are digital natives, so a lot of interactions nowadays are filtered or mediated through technology. It’s not merely that most people are messaging rather than calling. Now we have A.I. in the mix, too. Youth are forming relationships with A.I. agents, and there are big companies actually working on that to address loneliness. But then it comes at a cost. Are young folks actually interacting with these A.I. agents and learning unhealthy patterns because it’s a frictionless relationship where you have zero obligation to the “person?”



At the same time, we know that social relationships are foundational for wellbeing. I think one of the significant challenges for a lot of students coming into college is being able to socialize well and relate to others and even tolerate disagreement.



A lot of students are aware and very authentic about where they’re at. They are very open to receiving help and receiving guidance. They come in with a lot of strengths. They also come in&nbsp;with some significant challenges because of how our world is.



LW: How does the handbook suggest colleges could think beyond counseling centers when they consider student wellbeing?



BM:&nbsp;Holistically, psychological services are an important element in how we support wellbeing, but there are a lot of other spaces, too. How is a campus a community? How do people find their people in that community? How do people get supported in that community? That is a huge part of the work, I believe.



LT:&nbsp;There is a critical need not only at Purdue but across different higher education institutions at different levels. A lot of students are coming in with significant needs. Often the ratio of a provider to the number of students is quite skewed. A lot of universities are struggling to find alternatives — peer support and now even A.I. support as almost a first response to help. I think we need to be very creative in those ways to really meet this growing need and demand and, at the same time, harness students’ own willingness to talk about these things.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
"I don’t think we should see students merely as recipients but also as a wonderful resource to be able to help their fellow students."
</blockquote>



There are other types of formats where they’re coming together, and it’s not merely one-on-one. Again, one-on-one will never go away, but there are other ways that students can feel supported if they come as a group and support one another. There is research showing that those who are actually in the position to help others, fascinatingly, also grow more and are more resilient and have greater wellbeing. I don’t think we should see students merely as recipients but also as a wonderful resource to be able to help their fellow students.



LW: Resilience and learning from failure are recurring ideas in the handbook. Are institutions — or adults generally — doing enough to help students develop those skills?



BM:&nbsp;This is one of the elements of Steps to Leaps: helping students recognize that everybody fails. The most successful among us have failed. It’s much more about what you do when you fail. Not that you shouldn’t be sad or angry — that’s all normal. But how do you pick up from that? What do you incorporate in your own toolkit based on that failure?



Along with the failure element is this whole idea of a linear journey —helping students see that journeys are never linear. We can have the greatest intentions to make them so, and then life happens.



Sometimes alumni stories can be so incredibly powerful for students because they’re looking for their mentors and heroes. It’s so important that they hear somebody they’ve been admiring say, “Here’s how I screwed up this class,” or “Here’s what happened in my first job and what I learned from that that helped me be successful in my second.” Normalizing is a big part of it. And higher ed is such a great place for students to learn those skills because it’s a relatively safe place to fall on your face. There are lots of resources there to help you. We’re all works in progress, and our students are absolutely works in progress.



The worst thing we could do is encourage people never to take a risk. When you take risks — even calculated, educated, well-thought-out risks — sometimes it still doesn’t work. Nobody likes to fail, but you want to make sure there’s that learning piece. The looking back is sometimes the more profound learning.



LW: What do adults misunderstand about the wellbeing concerns young people express today?



LT:&nbsp;There is a lot of willingness among students to seek and receive help, and a lot of desire to talk about wellbeing. I think that can often be misconstrued as students having less ambition or being too privileged. But I think that it’s a healthy pushback against what we’re doing as a society, which is this relentless pursuit of success and more. The question is: Is that really the end goal of life? Just to have more money, more status? We see that on campus here and also in the themes in our book, as researchers and practitioners are noticing it as well. I think that’s something that would be helpful for adults to recognize and perhaps have a shift in how they think about these conversations.



BM:&nbsp;We're all we're works in progress, and we appreciate that our students are absolutely works in progress. How do we help them make the most of this environment and the resources in it as they're experimenting? So much is grounded in having that social network. You know the people that have your back, who will hand you tissues as you're sobbing, the people who can help you think through a problem. But a network isn't just something you take from — you are giving to your network, and that's partly why that's so strong. A big part of what we're trying to expand is how do you build these skills and mindset, and we know employers want those skills in our students.



LW: You had contributors from around the world. How did the global perspective influence your thinking about wellbeing?



BM:&nbsp;We know that different cultures experience things differently, but sometimes we can be so U.S.-centric in how we approach things. In our society, we tend to be more “me” focused, so here wellbeing is about&nbsp;me. I think in some cultures it’s about “we”— looking more at the collective mindset than the individual mindset. Having that written out helps put on the table that there are other approaches in the world. The context of wellbeing in Singapore, for example, is going to be very different than it is in the States, so we're defining wellbeing very basically as flourishing, human flourishing. Helping people be their best, culture to culture, means different things, and we have to acknowledge that, too.



LT:&nbsp;I had thought that a lot of what we are talking about with wellbeing was perhaps a much more Western issue. However, reading some of these chapters from other countries made me realize that this is not just an issue in North America, but a global one. Somehow, all around the world, faculty and staff and students are experiencing significant challenges, and it’s something that we all need to confront.



At the same time, there are cultural differences, too. The approach to thinking about wellbeing here might be slightly different. There’s an increasing level of destigmatization, whereas in places like East Asia, it’s still very much stigmatized to seek mental health help. It’s a global phenomenon, and addressing it requires a much more culturally sensitive approach to helping students.



LW: Was there anything that surprised you as the handbook came together?



BM:&nbsp;I found the lens of the different disciplines interesting as you start unpacking it: how social science might take on certain things, versus someone approaching this from a public health lens, versus a practitioner running a housing organization on campus. Each one of these elements is a source of truth for the problem at large. It’s how we honor where people are in those processes and help facilitate that whole. If we’re talking about human flourishing, the book showed us that there’s still a lot of work to do to help people be their best.



LW: How do you envision the handbook being used, and by whom?



BM:&nbsp;We’re looking at this as multi-use. It can absolutely support the faculty side of things. The research can be used as a textbook in certain settings. But there are also practical application components to it, so we see colleagues in areas like mine deploying these ideas and having it as a resource. If I’m wanting to look at how I improve in this space, the handbook gives some good tips about how to look at what your needs are and how to build out a collaborative model. If I’m looking at it from my lens as the senior student affairs officer, I might use the book differently. If I’m a researcher, I may use the research elements as good places to get information about who’s doing what in this space. We would like to do some sort of a symposium, a place to convene and have a good dialogue on these topics with others.



LW: Was the handbook intended to be updated in future editions?



BM:&nbsp;Louis and I haven’t even talked about that yet! Just the A.I. influence alone — our book does not tackle A.I. one iota because we started four years ago. This last year has been the whole copy-editing process, and in just that time things continued to evolve quickly. From the mental health side of things, I think we're still learning about A.I. in that space. Social media is one of the elements, and it's not all bad, though sometimes people hang their hat on that. I suspect A.I. will be very similar, where there's going to be parts that cause problems in the wellbeing space, and there will be parts that that support wellbeing growth and development. It's just how we deploy it. Louis has a grant that's doing some of that work right now. So absolutely, I think there’s an opportunity to take this and run with it.

A Handbook for Student Flourishing

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW8O-ZKCHbk
</div></figure>



In this story, P.J. leans into the tactile metaphor of “who wears the pants” – exploring their inner swagger while also precariously navigating both gender and family constraints. P.J. bring us into a world where the circumstances of self-expression feel neither easy nor fully realized, reminding us of both the pain and the courage involved in tailoring an identity that fits. 



This story was produced in partnership with the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute for their Story Slam centered on a university-wide theme of Connection and Disconnection.

"Size Me Up," PJ Bekkali

If you are a college professor or high school teacher, you may have some concerns about returning to school given the challenges many of you have reported about engaging Gen Z students. From being sidelined by their screens to getting “crickets” in class discussions, you may feel as though you’ve gone from the center of attention in your arena of influence to an interloper in your own classroom. It’s enough to make even the most optimistic educator frustrated.&nbsp;



And yet, survey data consistently show that while it might seem like no one is listening, relationships with teachers are among the strongest determinants in a range of student outcomes, from academic performance to overall wellbeing – this according to the students themselves.&nbsp;



Last week, the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup&nbsp;released&nbsp;the most recent edition of their annual&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gallup.com/analytics/651674/gen-z-research.aspx">Voices of Gen Z Study</a>, which asked 1,758 Gen Zers in middle or high school what makes a school experience enjoyable and engaging.&nbsp;According to the responses,&nbsp;the strongest predictors of whether students enjoy school&nbsp;are having teachers who recognize and encourage their individual strengths and goals, along with feeling their coursework is interesting and feeling like they belong at their school.&nbsp;



“The students who are the most engaged at school are those who are most likely to say that they have close, meaningful relationships with their teachers,” the report states. “These students say that they have at least one teacher who checks in on their personal wellbeing, and not only encourages their goals and ambitions, but also helps them understand and develop those goals.”&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
Survey data consistently show that while it might seem like no one is listening, relationships with teachers are among the strongest determinants in a range of student outcomes, from academic performance to overall wellbeing.
</blockquote>



In higher education, the correlation between relationships with faculty and overall wellbeing is well established.&nbsp;A long-term Gallup study found that&nbsp;<a href="https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/9/pgae372/7758625?login=false">six key college experiences</a>&nbsp;are linked to preparedness and wellbeing later in life and that half of them involve relationships with teachers. These are: having at least one professor who makes you excited about learning, having professors who care about you as a person, and having a mentor who encourages you to pursue your goals.&nbsp;



This past spring, the LearningWell Coalition (publisher of LearningWell magazine), together with the AAC&amp;U and Morning Consult conducted the survey “<a href="https://learningwell.org/what-students-value-in-college/">What Students Value in College</a>” and found that&nbsp;relationships with faculty and staff are among the most powerful elements of the undergraduate experience. 76 percent of students said having a mentor was “very” or “extremely” valuable, making it one of the top-rated college experiences in the survey.&nbsp;



The impact of these relationships extends beyond perception into measurable outcomes. Using the PERMA framework of wellbeing, students with a faculty or staff mentor report higher wellbeing (7.12) compared to those without one (6.62), making mentorship one of the strongest contributors to student flourishing among all experiences studied.



The essential point is that educators matter more than even&nbsp;they&nbsp;might think. Despite the challenges in engaging pandemic-affected Gen Z students, they still expect and want their teachers to be present and to actually care whether they are learning. At LearningWell magazine, we have the privilege of reporting on teachers and faculty who are looking past the eye rolls and/or lack of eye contact to successfully connect with their students. This superpower may simply be the ability to engage with students as human beings, letting them know, “I care about you as a person.”&nbsp;



<a href="https://learningwellmag.org/article/welcoming-wellbeing-into-the-classroom">Jennifer Woolard</a>, a psychology professor at Georgetown University, begins every class with a breathing exercise as a way to ground students and ask that they pause and be present. She was one of the early participants in the Engelhard Project for Connecting Life and Learning, which engages faculty in making connections between students’ academic studies and their broader life experiences, especially in the areas of wellbeing, flourishing, and mental health.&nbsp;



“For me, Engelhard is about modeling,” Woolard said. “Taking the time out of class to discuss these issues says to my students that I care about their wellbeing.” Student reflections confirm they get the message. One student reported, “I felt cared for — like the professor was genuinely interested in our wellbeing rather than us just churning out good grades.”



Nearly a decade ago,&nbsp;<a href="https://learningwellmag.org/article/questions-to-live-by">Matthew DeLeo</a>&nbsp;began teaching the QUESTion Class to his sophomores at the Bronx Academy in New York City. The course gives public high school students in low-income neighborhoods the opportunity for self-reflection and personal development, with questions like: What is purpose? Is life about me, or is it about others? Why does it take courage to be yourself?&nbsp;



DeLeo said the benefits of the class were remarkable, and bi-directional. “It was the students’ growth and development — and the way they express what the program has done for them — that has enabled me to learn and grow as their teacher.”&nbsp;



<a href="https://learningwellmag.org/article/what-we-bring-with-us">Sunny Gaye Hallowell</a>&nbsp;is a professor of nursing at Villanova University. She wanted her students to be able to connect the meaning of nursing practice to who they were becoming as adults, much like they might in a humanities course. She enrolled in a year-long faculty workshop offered by the university that embeds character education, particularly human development, into multi-disciplined curriculum.&nbsp;



“I wanted to blend art and science to help students explore the human experience of health and healthcare through the eyes of both patients and providers,” Hallowell said, “and to help them form a professional identity.”&nbsp;



Even at the largest universities, a professor’s desire to connect can be felt in her classroom. At the University of Washington,&nbsp;<a href="https://learningwellmag.org/article/five-for-flourishing">Elizabeth Kirk</a>&nbsp;regularly arrives early to her introduction to nutrition class and stands outside the lecture hall to welcome her students inside — all 500 of them. Kirk participates in a program called Five for Flourishing that guides faculty members in the implementation of strategies to promote connection in the biggest classes across the university.&nbsp;



These strategies include adding language to class syllabi that expresses support for student wellbeing, organizing small student groups that meet weekly, and instituting mid-quarter evaluations for students to offer feedback on the course. They may be small gestures, but they speak volumes about Kirk’s appreciation for belonging in her classroom.&nbsp;



These educators will tell you they have good days and bad days when it comes to student engagement. But they, and hundreds like them, share a grounding principle that it is the students who are their reason for being, and not the other way around. Through all the credentials, the research and the publishing, it is the opportunity to enlighten someone through education that drives them forward.&nbsp;



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

Teachers: You Matter More than You Might Think

Playing for Keeps 

When Ezra Hall arrived at Furman University as a freshman, he signed up for the school's Adopt a Grandparent program expecting a light volunteer activity. In the introductory session, students met residents of The Woodlands at Furman, a retirement community bordering campus, in a kind of speed-dating event. There, they chose whom they wanted to spend time with over the coming year.



Hall connected with retiree Jeanne Christie. At first, they met for meals or campus events. Before long they were attending church together, celebrating birthdays and graduations, and talking about everything from family to books and career plans. Christie eventually encouraged Hall to call her Mimi, the name her own grandchildren use. It stuck, and so did the relationship, which influenced more than his college experience. After interning at The Woodlands while he was a student, Hall decided to work at the retirement community full time after graduation. Now, as the director of philanthropy and engagement, he helps create opportunities for others to have similar intergenerational relationships.



Hall's was a fortuitous match. But the circumstances that brought him and Christie together are becoming increasingly intentional. Across the country, a growing number of colleges and universities are partnering with retirement communities — or building their own — as an extension of their educational mission. Since the mid-1980s, <a href="http://UniversityRetirementCommunities.com">more than 80 of these types of residences</a> have opened across the U.S., including The Woodlands at Furman University, Mirabella at Arizona State University, University Commons at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Demand has increased along with the aging of boomers, and waiting lists for openings is common. The Woodlands, for example, has a wait list of 500 people for its 280 residences.



The opportunity starts with the chance to continue learning. Residents can audit university courses, attend lectures and performances, use campus libraries and athletic facilities, and remain connected to an intellectually vibrant community. Some are retired faculty members or administrators, and others are alumni or even relatives of matriculated students. But most are people with no previous affiliation to the institution but want to live in an environment where ideas continue to enliven their world.&nbsp;



And while the intellectual stimulation is a draw, these communities are increasingly discovering that some of the richest forms of lifelong learning happen outside the classroom — and that it goes in both generational directions. Students and residents mentor and tutor one another and form friendships that span generations. In the process, lifelong learning comes to mean something broader than continuing education. It becomes an ongoing exchange of experience, curiosity, and perspective that continues long after formal schooling ends and underscores the value of age-accumulated experience.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
And while the intellectual stimulation is a draw, these communities are increasingly discovering that some of the richest forms of lifelong learning happen outside the classroom — and that it goes in both generational directions.
</blockquote>



The experience within these communities also reflects wider evidence on the benefits of intergenerational connections. For&nbsp;<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33017736/">older people</a>, being in relationship with a younger person leads to greater wellbeing and quality of life. Likewise, a review of intergenerational programs found that&nbsp;<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29163269/">younger participants</a>&nbsp;experience greater empathy, self-esteem, and social and communication skills through their relationships with older adults.&nbsp;Given these benefits increase with stronger connections, the longer-term living/learning arrangements of campus-based retirement living pose to be particularly effective.&nbsp;&nbsp;



There are a number of compelling practical advantages to these programs as well. A.S.U. graduate student and musician Caleb Bailey is one of a handful of young people living at Mirabella. Initially, the arrangement was actually motivated by a financial issue. Growing up in rural Maryland, Bailey never imagined graduate study in classical guitar was within his financial reach. His mother managed a Lady Foot Locker store; his father’s income came from buying and reselling items on eBay. As a first-generation Hispanic college student with A.D.H.D., Bailey felt talent alone wouldn't cut it to cover tuition or rent.



"I was trying to figure out how graduate school was even going to be financially possible," Bailey recalled. At A.S.U., Mirabella houses a few graduate students in the arts free of charge each year in exchange for performances and engagement with residents. Bailey had participated in a similar artist-in-residence program while earning his undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins University, and the arrangement made graduate school financially feasible.



There, and at A.S.U., he has found much more than affordable housing. Residents attend his recitals and ask about his research. They remember upcoming performances and stop him in the hall to ask how auditions went. Others simply became enthusiastic supporters of a young artist trying to build a career. Casual conversations after concerts often stretched longer than the performances themselves. "It's like having 300-plus grandparents," Bailey laughed.



The relationships changed his musicianship as well. Residents weren't interested only in technical perfection. They wanted music that moved them, comforted them, surprised them, or reminded them of someone they loved. Bailey began thinking less about performing for judges and professors and more about performing for people. Some residents decided to rediscover instruments they had abandoned decades earlier. One resident, a retired engineer, had spent years quietly writing songs for his wife. Bailey worked with him to arrange and perform them.&nbsp;



"I realized music is about serving the listener. That shifted my whole perspective," said Bailey, who is attuned to giving residents a choice in what they’d like to hear. This is especially true of those in a higher level of care. People with limited mobility or serious health issues may have less agency in their daily routines. “It’s always nice to be asked what you’d like to hear.”&nbsp;



The experience also reshaped his professional ambitions. Today, Bailey is developing a nonprofit organization designed to expand artist-in-residence programs like Mirabella's to retirement communities around the country, making graduate education more financially accessible while enriching the lives of older adults through sustained artistic engagement. His story illustrates something advocates of university retirement communities have been observing for decades: Meaningful intergenerational learning rarely emerges from occasional programming alone.



"It doesn't happen by accident," said Andrew Carle, a nationally recognized expert on university retirement communities who has spent more than 20 years studying their development. Simply building senior housing next to a campus isn't enough. The strongest communities create intentional opportunities for residents and students to cross paths through academics, the arts, athletics, volunteerism, and everyday campus life. Over time, those encounters accumulate into relationships that no one could have predicted.



Carle describes the model as having five essential pillars, including formal lifelong-learning opportunities, access to campus life, intergenerational engagement, wellness, and a close institutional partnership with the university. Remove any one of those elements, he said, and the experience begins to look less like an extension of the university's educational mission and more like housing with a convenient address.&nbsp;



That philosophy has become central to how Mirabella approaches lifelong learning. When the community opened in 2020, administrators expected residents would primarily attend lectures and audit classes. But over time, something more dynamic emerged.&nbsp;



“I would say the vast majority came in saying, ‘I want to take A.S.U. classes.’ And as they've lived here for some years, just about 40 to 50 percent of the residents actually audit classes,” said Lindsey Beagley, Mirabella's senior director of lifelong university engagement. That’s because there are so many different avenues to intellectual and psychological enrichment. International students are invited to Mirabella to interact with others interested in speaking their language or to find companionship for a Thanksgiving meal when much of the campus empties out. Retired entrepreneurs step in as judges in departmental competitions; mentors in clubs give students a better sense of their profession.&nbsp;



“There's 400 residents who have full access to campus, so there's 400 completely different experiences, and that's what's exciting about this model,” Beagley said. “It's really their own question to answer: How do you want to spend your time? What's important to you? What do you want to learn?”



For Kathie Zurfluh, a 74-year-old former elementary school teacher, the classroom was what first attracted her to university retirement living. She and her husband had already built what they assumed would be their forever home further away in Arizona. But as they began thinking about the next stage of life, they were drawn to the idea of remaining intellectually engaged.



"The opportunity to take classes was just right up our alley," she recalled. They put their name on the list at Mirabella and sold their forever home. Today, she continues to audit university courses. But some of her most meaningful learning happens outdoors, in regular conversations with students that offer insight into the lives of young people today. Two mornings each week, Zurfluh has a volunteer shift on a Friendship Bench beneath the shade of a tree with her certified therapy dog beside her. Students know that anyone sitting on the bench is open to conversation (the banner says, “I’m all ears”). Sometimes they stop because they're homesick. Sometimes they're overwhelmed by exams or relationships. Sometimes they simply miss having an older adult to talk with. Some conversations last just a moment while students pet Griffy, her Golden Retriever, while others continue for months, with students seeking her out regularly in her expected Tuesday-Thursday place.&nbsp;



“If they call Griffy’s name when they’re coming out of class, he gets so excited I have to hold onto him,” Zurfluh said. She and Griffy have celebrated acceptances for internships and graduate school and watched nervous freshmen struggling with loneliness grow into confident seniors. In return, the students have introduced her to new music, new ways of thinking, and shared their feelings about school shootings and other realities of growing up in a very different generation.



The exchange is precisely what Carle believes distinguishes successful university retirement communities from traditional senior housing that just happens to be located near a campus. The goal isn't simply to give older adults access to university resources or proximity to students. It's to create enough regular opportunities for authentic encounters that relationships can develop organically.



Rick Brackett, the president and C.E.O. of The Woodlands at Furman, has watched those relationships ripple outward in unexpected ways. International students who may be thousands of miles from their own families often find surrogate grandparents in the community. One Japanese student would come share meals at The Woodlands with a former director of Asian Studies. After the student graduated, the former director and his wife traveled to Japan to visit and meet her family.



There are paid conduits to relationships, too, with student interns receiving a stipend to work in the dining hall or teach classes at The Woodlands. “Some of the most successful are the athletes that intern in our wellness facility and teach exercise classes,” Brackett said. “The residents love the football players and soccer players that come over — they’re just superstars.” At games, the prime tailgating spots going into the stadium are lined with residents cheering for the players they know who march by.&nbsp;



The residents can be superstars in their own way, too, with decades of professional experience and connections. Students preparing for careers in medicine, business, education or public service benefit from regular access to people whose professional lives span decades. Residents contribute institutional memory, hard-earned perspective, and even networking opportunities. One retired physician recognized that pre-med students needed a place to talk candidly about burnout, uncertainty and the emotional realities of medicine. He helped launch the Future Physicians Forum, creating conversations that complement what students learn in the classroom.



At the same time, residents remain connected to emerging ideas, technologies, and cultural shifts through daily interactions with younger people studying their field. That reciprocity represents some of the quiet innovation at the heart of university retirement communities.



For decades, lifelong learning has often been understood as continuing to accumulate knowledge through classes, lectures, and books, and through campus-based programs like the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, with 125 chapters on campuses across the United States. But the stories emerging from communities like Mirabella and The Woodlands suggest a broader definition. Perhaps the most enduring lesson these communities offer is that lifelong learning isn't just the pursuit of new knowledge. It is remaining part of a community where curiosity, generosity, and perspective continue to shape us, regardless of age.



Ten years after meeting Jeanne Christie, Ezra Hall still meets her for lunch almost every week. He continues to be influenced by the vitality of her mind, and through his career path at The Woodlands, he plays a role in future students having personal relationships of their own with future seniors.&nbsp;



“Retirees still have a lot to offer. Retirement has changed in recent years. No one wants a rocking chair on the porch anymore,” Brackett said. “Students get to see how active and engaged you can be into your 80s and 90s, if you stay healthy and still contributing to a community. It’s inspiring, and it’s a new roadmap for the students going forward.”

Learning for the Ages

This spring, a few months after starting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Jane Laurence deleted all her social media accounts.



For years, she’d tried different strategies to limit her screen time, including taking intermittent breaks from various apps. But her habits continued to be consuming and compulsive. When she finally managed to wipe the slate clean, she was stunned by the amount of time freed up on the other side. “It felt,” she said, “like quitting a part-time job.”



It’s no secret that college students around the country are struggling to reclaim their time from technologies powered by the ability to capture and retain people’s attention. What’s less clear is how or whether institutions might be able to intervene in this slippery “attention economy,” which appears to be threatening engagement not only in the classroom but, well, everywhere.



At U.N.C., a new initiative called&nbsp;<a href="https://tarheels.live/attention/">Educating for the Virtues of Attention</a>&nbsp;(EVA) has set out to be that intervention. Unlike typical digital detoxes, EVA is less about eliminating the distraction than it is centering what’s truly worthy of our attention. The goal is to help students reflect on their habits of attention and build more intentional ones through opportunities for deep in-person engagement across campus.&nbsp;



Funded by&nbsp;<a href="https://college.unc.edu/2025/07/educating-virtues-attention/">a nearly $800,000 grant</a>&nbsp;from the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University, which supports character education efforts at colleges and universities nationwide, EVA is rooted in the idea that the ability to pay attention is a critical character virtue and one in need of cultivating now more than ever.&nbsp;



An inconvenient virtue



Today, conversations about attention tend to center ideas about technology and productivity. But long before the invention of the smartphones or concerns about short-form media content, philosophers were thinking about human attention as a character virtue.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
Long before the invention of the smartphones or concerns about short-form media content, philosophers were thinking about human attention as a character virtue.
</blockquote>



Michael Vazquez is a teaching assistant professor in U.N.C.’s philosophy department and has been one of the leaders of EVA since its launch a year ago. He explained how the understandings of attention promoted by two particular 20th century philosophers, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, underpin EVA’s guiding principles.



“I think one way to put it is they [Weil and Murdoch] both think there’s a reality and a world that’s much bigger than us, and attending is a matter of seeing that reality as it really is — the reality of other people, the reality of the world, the natural world, and so on,” Vazquez said.&nbsp;



In other words, to attend is to be more active participants in the world outside ourselves. And the more we attend, the more likely we are to become people who understand and care about that existence beyond us.&nbsp;



Of course, the fickle thing about virtues is that they’re famously difficult to acquire, not to mention maintain. That pattern holds true when it comes to developing attentional habits, which requires leaving the safety of our controlled internal reality to confront a far less predictable and potentially less pleasant one beyond.&nbsp;



“They're comfortable illusions, they're self-reinforcing, and they tend to be convenient,” Vazquez said of our inward tendencies. “It is awfully inconvenient to build attentional habits that make you susceptible to the reality of other people because that challenges your assumptions, your desires, your projects.”



Still, there’s a silver lining. Attending may demand more work than not, but the payoff can be quite satisfying for those who manage it, especially young people less accustomed to trying.



“It turns out if you just put the phones away and you have analog experiences with other people, whether you're looking at art together or reading a book, you tend to feel pretty good about it,” Vazquez said.&nbsp;



Perhaps a single in-person experience isn’t enough to make us virtuous right away, Vazquez added, but there are reassuring signs that it’s still the way to deeper feelings of purpose and meaning. That attending can improve not only the lives of others but our own is what he called “the icing on the cake.”&nbsp;



Campus arteries



Vazquez described EVA programming as having three pillars: faculty and staff programming, student curricular programming, and student extracurricular programming.&nbsp;



For faculty and staff, the main activity is communities of practice. These are opportunities for educators who apply to come together and discuss, as Vazquez put it, “the place of attention in the classroom.”



While the parameters of these conversations are left purposely broad, Vazquez said faculty veer towards using the forum to talk about how they’re seeing students struggle attentionally, as well as to workshop possible interventions.



“Does it seem like students are more distracted?” Vazquez said professors ask each other. “Does it seem like these technologies are not enabling or facilitating but actually inhibiting what happens in the classroom? Longform reading, is it on the decline?”&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_8380-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-3867" style="width:667px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">EVA communities of practice unite faculty to discuss attentional issues in the classroom. Photo courtesy of Michael Vazquez</figcaption></figure>



One particular community of practice is designated for the instructors of a class called College Thriving. All first-years at U.N.C. are required to take this one-credit, intro-to-college course, which offers resources and strategies for academic success and, especially, personal wellbeing.



College Thriving is also the junction where EVA’s work with faculty and staff bleeds into efforts to impact student curricula. A major goal of the instructors’ community of practice is to think about ways to incorporate lessons and exercises around attentional habits into the course content.&nbsp;



Devon Almond, a U.N.C. advisor and College Thriving instructor, helps lead the community of practice for his colleagues. He said there’s no single, standardized way the instructors are meant to bring attention-minded content into their class, nor is any staff member who teaches the course forced to be part of the discussion group.



But attention practices are important to Almond, who came to U.N.C. after working in an alternative college setting that focused on contemplative practices like meditation. That background has made him attuned to the prevailing culture at Chapel Hill that prizes constant movement and pressure to be productive.&nbsp;



“There's all of this noise and activity and socialization and competitive scarcity that comes at the expense of recognizing the stillness, the silence, the solitude, and the slowness that gives rise to a steadfastness,” Almond said.



The buzz of a college campus can be exciting, Almond added, but he likes to use College Thriving as an opportunity to encourage students to slow down. He often hosts sessions outside the typical classroom, like at the campus museum or planetarium, where students can observe new spaces with time and intentionality that are rare for their packed daily schedules. “The campus is our canvas,” he said.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
Attending may demand more work than not, but the payoff can be quite satisfying for those who manage it, especially young people less accustomed to trying.
</blockquote>



Other class activities include a deep listening exercise for students to do in pairs, where one talks for four minutes straight and the other cannot interrupt or contribute in any way — just listen. And at the start of every class, students place a tented card in front of them that lists not only their name but their hometown and a few of the class themes and larger world causes they care about most.&nbsp;



“It's attending — it's caring — to who and what is in front of you as well as what's within you and the environments and the settings that create that,” Almond said.



The most focal component of EVA, though, is the extracurricular one. This involves both creating and incentivizing opportunities across campus for students to engage deeply with each other and new spaces and activities.&nbsp;



At this point, EVA has forged partnerships with most of the “major arteries” on campus, Vazquez said. Last year, the events ranged from a professional Shakespeare production at the performing arts center to a guided exhibition tour at the art museum to a reflective exercise in the botanical garden. 



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_8467-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-3869" style="width:665px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">EVA activities place students in new environments to pause and reflect. Photo courtesy of Michael Vazquez</figcaption></figure>



The point isn’t just to get students to participate in activities. Each event also features what Vazquez calls additional “scaffolding” to ensure the students understand exactly how they’re practicing attentional habits and why they’re important.



“Because you can go to the orchestra and you can have an intentional experience and you may even grow in your attentional capacities in some way or other, but you might not be able to name it yet,” Vazquez said. “You might not be able to think of attention as a skill that you can develop until you're given a vocabulary.”



As for getting students to show up, EVA has cultivated a few strategies. For one, EVA events are accredited with a program called Campus Life Experiences. These include a variety of events, from resume writing workshops at the career center to open mic nights with the music department, of which all new U.N.C. students need to complete a certain number each semester.&nbsp;



In terms of more intrinsic incentives, Vazquez said the most important is ensuring the main EVA activity is fundamentally interesting to students. That appeal, he added, requires that events are always free of cost and, of course, involve some kind of food.&nbsp;



Carolina Unplugged



Now coming up on its second year, EVA will continue to run the main programming it started in the first, as well as build out some additional projects.



One of these additions will be Carolina Unplugged, another community of practice-style forum that will bring together groups of students to try out or reflect on different attentional efforts that counter time on their phones.&nbsp;



Right now, Vazquez plans for one cohort of students to agree to use Bricks, which are physical devices that attach to smartphones to block distracting apps, throughout the semester and meet weekly to discuss the impact.



Another group he has in mind would similarly gather weekly but instead engage in in-person activities, like cooking or reading, that simply allow them to be present in each other’s company.



Jane Laurence, the soon-to-be-sophomore who recently deleted all her social media apps, is looking forward to being involved in Carolina Unplugged and EVA broadly as a research associate. She will assist Vazquez and the larger EVA data collection team working to both determine the program’s impact on students who participate and analyze general trends in how people approach and build attentional habits.



“I don't think that these platforms are going away, so how can we develop better relationships around them? What types of people can or can't?” Laurence said of her research interests. “What's the impact of a community that's trying to have different types of conversations about social media usage?”&nbsp;



Another student, Diya Kayaleh, is a rising junior who will help coordinate the Carolina Unplugged groups. She, too, is especially excited to see how even smaller cohort-based work can influence the larger student body.



“Okay, there's this group of people on campus doing something with attention,” she imagines even uninvolved students will begin to think. “What kind of reflection does that call within me?”



Often, Kayaleh added, she thinks there’s a tendency to underestimate the value young people place on in-person experiences and their desire to be active and offline.



“We want to collect those experiences, and there's no reason that we shouldn't,” she said. “It's not that we're so fundamentally broken or far gone that we can't. We absolutely can.”



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

Focus and Flourish

lc_logo

LC_logo

On the last day of the Summer Studio at Olin College of Engineering, four teams of faculty from around the world reflected on their experiences. They had spent the previous week pursuing a framework that would lead to engineering education improvements in their home countries. As the facilitator moved from table to table, it became clear the participants had succeeded in what they came to learn: how to apply what a start-up engineering college in Massachusetts did to transform engineering education.&nbsp;



“We had heard of the Olin pedagogy, and it had many synergies to our own,” said Uday Roopavath, an assistant professor of bioscience and bioengineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Jammu. “Before coming to the Summer Studio, I had a vision of what I wanted to do with my students, but I wasn’t able to define it. Now I can.” 



For over two decades, Olin College of Engineering has not only practiced a groundbreaking way of teaching within its own institution but also shared its methods with the rest of higher education, both domestically and globally. The effort is more than just an example of best practice sharing. The theory is that by instigating changes within institutions, a cumulative effect will occur to alter the field of engineering education and the types of engineers it produces.&nbsp;



“A big part of our mission is to transform engineering education,” said Olin President May Lee. “The Summer Studio is the flagship program for allowing us to do that, and it’s more important than ever. Olin provides the scaffolding for students to understand what it means to learn — not just take tests and get the right answer. This way of learning leads to a kind of agency within our students that is essential, particularly with the onset of A.I.”&nbsp;



Lee’s commitment to Olin’s role in influencing engineering education comes from the fact she has seen it first-hand. When Lee was the chief strategy officer for institutional impact at&nbsp;Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (R.P.I.), her colleague there, Professor Shayla Armand, participated in one of the Olin summer programs and came back promoting an entirely new way of thinking about research and teaching. Before she left R.P.I. for Olin, Lee incorporated much of that transformation into R.P.I.’s current strategic plan. She then brought Armand to Olin as provost, and the two leaders continue working together to extend Olin’s impact on the field.&nbsp;



May is the third president of Olin College, succeeding the five-year tenure of&nbsp;Gilda Barabino&nbsp;and the 21-year tenure of founding president, Richard Miller. The school was chartered in 1997 by the&nbsp;F. W. Olin Foundation with a directive for Miller to operationalize what the engineering community believed to be much-needed changes in how engineers had traditionally been trained. The prevailing sentiment was that a reliance on technical skills-based learning alone would not be sufficient to address the major changes brought on by a more integrated global economy and the launch of the internet. Engineers would need to have business and entrepreneurship skills, teamwork, creativity, and a broader understanding of the societal contexts of engineering.&nbsp;



Olin was created to become a form of privately funded national laboratory for engineering education redesign. What the college lacked in size — the highly selective school enrolls about 400 students — it more than made up for in innovation. From the beginning, Miller and his team did things differently, rejecting a number of deeply held convictions in higher education, such as academic departments and tenured faculty. 



“We were given a rare opportunity — and responsibility — to rethink what it means to be educated in the 21st century and what it means to be an engineer,” Miller said. “The expectations were extremely high.” While the campus was still being built, 30 students spent the first year living in construction trailers and acting as partners in designing pedagogy.“ The student ‘partners,’ together with the founding faculty and leadership team, developed a new paradigm for engineering education based on human-centered design and intrinsic motivation,” Miller said. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
Olin students develop a sense of identity and agency early on, many acquiring patents and starting enterprises before they even graduate.
</blockquote>



The concept of students as co-creators continues today. Olin is perhaps best known for its student-centered, project-based learning whereby students frequently work in teams, building real solutions to real-world problems. The faculty, who team-teach across disciplines,&nbsp;still&nbsp;apply human-centered engineering to their teaching — an approach that combines technical expertise with empathy, design thinking, communication, and an understanding of human needs.&nbsp;



As a result, Olin students develop a sense of identity and agency early on, many acquiring patents and starting enterprises before they even graduate. Not surprisingly, they tend toward emerging technologies. Olin alumni Evan Morikawa and Andy Barry founded Generalist, the leading A.I. research and product driven company building general intelligence for the physical world, a.k.a. “robots.”  



By the late 2010s, Olin was earning a global reputation as the producer of the new kind of engineer — one that creates solutions, not just products. In 2018, M.I.T., in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rhgraham.org/resources/Global-state-of-the-art-in-engineering-education---March-2018.pdf">its global state of the art in engineering education report</a>,&nbsp;named Olin first among 10 universities cited as current&nbsp;global&nbsp;leaders in engineering. M.I.T., which came in second, used the Olin model when revising its own engineering curriculum.&nbsp;



Learning by doing&nbsp;



As satisfying as it may have been to be an example to the standard bearer down the street, having a superlative pedagogy was only the first metric of success in Olin’s founding mission.&nbsp;



“If Olin only graduates good engineers than we have failed because we have not changed engineering education,” said Chris Lee, the interim dean of research and strategic partnerships at Olin.&nbsp;



Dean Lee leads Olin’s efforts to share with the world what the college itself has built. This transfer of knowledge has taken many forms over the years. Since the college’s inception, visitors have come to campus to sit in on classes and converse with faculty and students, all hoping to see what the engineering education incubator was all about. Miller said that in his last 10 years at Olin, he hosted leaders of 800 universities from 65 countries who journeyed to Olin to see for themselves how the learning model works.



In 2009, Olin started the Collaboratory, which included more formal workshops for visitors who not only would observe Olin’s methods but could learn how to apply them to their own institutions. This eventually led to Olin’s residential summer program. Now called the Summer Studio, the on-campus program aims to help institutions accelerate their institutional initiatives related to teaching and learning. The Summer Studio is an intensive project-based professional development experience for the teams of educators that come to drive these projects forward. Teams of up to six participants pay $35,000 to attend. 



Participation in the Summer Studio has shifted over time from pre-Covid levels of 10 to 12 teams and over 80 participants to this year’s smaller group of four teams, all from outside the United States. In July, the campus hosted teams from Saudi Arabia, India, Bolivia, and Korea. Like Roopavath, most of the team members arrive with a specific problem they want to solve. But if they come looking for Olin’s secret sauce, Dean Lee tells them there isn’t one, or at least there isn’t one that could be universally applied.&nbsp;



“We don’t give them the answers; we give them a process,” he said. “Every institution is different. You tell us what you want to do and what your culture is like, and we’ll adapt to it.”&nbsp;



President Lee underscores the point.&nbsp;&nbsp;“We would never be so presumptuous as to think that what we do ought to be copied exactly someplace else,” she said. “There are disciplinary and curricular considerations. Each institution has their own traditions, their own accreditation concerns; and there are, of course, size differences.”



The teams are each assigned two coaches, Olin faculty members, who meets with them before, during, and after the one-week engagement. During the week, the teams utilize design principles to work through an interactive loop of goal setting, constructive feedback, reflection, and re-engineering — just as they would in an Olin classroom. “We tell them at the very beginning: ‘You are going to experience what we do here. You are going to be the students,’” Dean Lee said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“We tell them at the very beginning: ‘You are going to experience what we do here. You are going to be the students.’”
</blockquote>



A primary educational framework they learn is called GAPA — goals, assessments, products and activities — which Olin uses with its students. At the Summer Studio, the process is introduced as a tool that can be applied to anything from a desire to increase attendance to redesigning first-year curriculum to starting an institution from scratch. “We tell them, ‘If this is your goal, what activities will you do? What products will you develop to show those activities are successful? How do you assess what you’ve done?’” Dean Lee said.



GAPA is only one of many takeaways of the Summer Studio. Educators from around the world share common goals, despite their different cultures and perspectives. Those that attend the Summer Studio are both receptive to new ideas and generous with their own body of knowledge. This makes for high-quality collegial relationships, even life-long friendships.&nbsp;



For Olin College, the learning is bidirectional. “A critical piece of Olin’s DNA is that we are constantly learning,” President Lee said. “We are learning from the institutions who come as participants — observing how they might interpret what we say and listening with intention to their feedback. For me, that’s an important outcome of the Summer Studio.”&nbsp;



With an opportunity to make her own mark on Olin, President Lee believes the Olin model, now well established, can be applied to a range of non-engineering institutions, from liberal arts colleges to state schools and historically Black colleges and universities — “all in service of extending our impact and transforming higher education.”&nbsp;



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

Learning Exchange

At a recent talk at Villanova University, the author and commentator David Brooks told students, “Know what you want. Want it well and want the things that are truly worth wanting.” The advice was not original to Brooks but rather to St. Augustine, who believed that knowing what you’re passionate about is critical in a world where human beings are driven more by desire than by reasoning.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Interpreting the wisdom of St. Augustine is, in many ways, the&nbsp;raison d'être&nbsp;of Villanova. The Catholic university in Pennsylvania is considered the world’s premier institution for Augustinian scholarship. Pope Leo XIV is among its graduates. But while Villanova’s Augustinian roots run deep, one might ask: What does the work of the late fourth century Christian theologian really mean to a modern university with 21st century students?&nbsp;



This is the underlying question behind a new character education initiative at Villanova called Pilgrim Virtues. The name refers to a central pillar in Augustine’s work — that human life is a pilgrimage. The program seeks to highlight what is distinctly Augustinian about character education at Villanova and share that with the campus community as well as others working in this field.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“I think the character movement has really tapped into something real, something essential in higher education, and we wanted to become a part of that from our own distinct tradition."
</blockquote>



The initiative began two years ago with a Capacity-Building Grant from the Educating Character Initiative (E.C.I.) at Wake Forest University’s Center for Leadership and Character. In 2025, Villanova received an Institutional Impact Grant of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.villanova.edu/university/media/press-releases/2025/educating-augustinian-character.html">$822,258</a>&nbsp;from Wake Forest to build out an institution-wide series of character education programs, aligned with Augustinian teaching, both curricular and co-curricular. The idea was to coordinate, catalyze and accelerate the many character education activities that were taking place within three areas at the university: the Department of the Humanities, the Honors Program, and the Augustinian Institute.&nbsp;



“I think the character movement has really tapped into something real, something essential in higher education, and we wanted to become a part of that from our own distinct tradition,” said Anna Moreland, who heads the Honors Program.&nbsp;



Moreland and her colleague Michael Tomko, the chair of the&nbsp;Humanities Department, are the driving force and guiding spirit behind Pilgrim Virtues. Moreland’s sought-after “Shaping Initiative” course series (“Shaping a College Life,” “Shaping a Work Life,” and “Shaping an Adult Life”) helps students transition to college and walk through the experience intentionally, thinking deeply about their professional callings and their life beyond campus.&nbsp;



Courses in the Department of Humanities study the questions that matter most for living a good and deeply human life.&nbsp;&nbsp;Indeed, much of the work Moreland and Tomko were doing in their classrooms already bore the imprint of both Augustine’s teaching and the character education movement. They were curious about how to connect the two and scale the work so that it touched everyone on campus. But the challenge included engaging an audience that may only be tangentially aware of, or influenced by, the saint himself. First year students are required to read Augustine’s seminal work, “Confessions,” but for many, that will be their only exposure. And while Villanova is a Catholic university, a good percentage of the students are not, or are not practicing.&nbsp;



To explore all of these considerations more deeply, Moreland did something unusual in higher education: She looked outside her university for partners. There, she “stumbled” upon the E.C.I. “We work in our silos so effectively that sometimes we reinvent the wheel,” she said. “But through the E.C.I., I realized there are all these good people around the country who are doing similar work. What we needed to do was get to know one another.”&nbsp;



Moreland and Tomko drew on the expertise of the E.C.I. to examine other character education customs, including the more recognized Aristotelian tradition. In doing so, they quickly realized they had something to offer as well as to gain. “Through our work with the E.C.I., we were able to bring the Augustinian framework — those insights and experiences — to the broader field of character education,” Tomko said. 



The leaders believed that the examination of what Villanova had to offer required introspection and input from a wide cross-section of the university. Fortunately, the Capacity-Building Grant Villanova received covered a faculty and staff workshop pilot that would be the first foray into bringing diverse voices together on campus to revitalize Augustine’s teachings in a meaningful and visible way. The method they used was emblematic of the tradition they were reawakening.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We were drawing on the knowledge and inspiration of this group we had assembled,” Tomko said. “We not only had ideas but also the practical experience of how to live well in community.” Moreland said coming together to understand what it meant to teach character at an institution like Villanova was the most profound experience she had had at the university. “We brought our whole selves to those conversations,” she said.&nbsp;



An important voice in the discussions was Paul Camacho, the associate director of the Augustinian Institute at Villanova and an associate professor of philosophy in the Humanities Department. The institute exists to&nbsp;promote the study of Augustine and his legacy&nbsp;within the pedagogy at the university. As an Augustinian scholar, Camacho helped clarify the distinctions within traditions.&nbsp;



“A lot of what has emerged in character education is based on Greek philosophy, which sometimes presents a list of virtues that could be somehow obtained like credentials, as Benjamin Franklin famously attempted in his virtues checklist,” Camacho said. “Augustine reminds us that virtue is not something that you acquire but rather is a dramatic and dialogical narrative unfolding across the whole of your life.”&nbsp;



St. Augustine of Hippo was a Late Antique philosopher, theologian, and bishop known for his insights into the human condition and one’s relationship with God. He argued that human beings are fundamentally desiring&nbsp;rather than reasoning creatures and that we are shaped by what we love. Augustine’s pilgrimage through life, his self-examination and conversion as captured in the “Confessions,” is perhaps his defining characteristic.&nbsp;



“Augustine believed the good that we are striving for is always something that’s in process, always on the move, and always in relationship with other people,” Camacho said. “The task of being human is never really accomplished.”&nbsp;



It was this journey through life that resonated most with the Villanova community and its students navigating their own education and personal growth. In identifying the pilgrimage theme, the initiative’s leaders explored what virtues would be critical for students traveling this road. If, for Augustine, love is the beginning and the end, what do you need along the way?&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“Augustine believed the good that we are striving for is always something that’s in process, always on the move, and always in relationship with other people."
</blockquote>



The five virtues they arrived on are: humility, forgiveness, patience, wonder, and conviviality. While the first three are more easily understood, wonder and conviviality, as seen through an Augustinian lens, merit definitions. Wonder, for Augustine, was an impassioned search for beauty “so ancient and so new,” as written in “Confessions.”&nbsp;Conviviality, from the Latin term&nbsp;con-vivere&nbsp;or ‘to live together’ binds its members in a common project, toward a shared goal.



The Journey Continues&nbsp;



As the early work of the initiative laid the philosophical groundwork for the pilgrim virtues, the Institutional Impact Grant is bringing theory to practice. The new grant covers a series of programs, courses, lectures, and fellowships that are all ultimately student-facing. This fall, a new course called “Augustine the Pilgrim,” to be led by Camacho, will follow the footsteps of Augustine’s life, culminating in an actual pilgrimage to Italy.&nbsp;



The faculty and staff workshop pilot is now an established program with a waiting list. The year-long workshop supports professors and practitioners in incorporating the virtue framework into classrooms and co-curricular activities. In bringing together diverse professionals from all areas of the university, the workshops have yielded positive results, both intended and unintended.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Sunny Gaye Hallowell, a professor in Villanova’s nursing school, often wondered what the world was like for her colleagues in the humanities. She felt her students, while proficient at the scientific material, had limited opportunities to connect the meaning of nursing practice to who they were becoming as adults. When she heard of the Pilgrim Virtues workshop, she was the first to sign up.



“In my discipline, we teach to competency-based learning objectives. We give students&nbsp;challenging&nbsp;questions and case studies, so they can develop&nbsp;necessary skills&nbsp;to become amazing nurses,” Hallowell said. “But what are we doing in the classroom to cultivate a human being?&nbsp;I wanted to blend art and science to help students explore the human experience of health and healthcare through the eyes of both patients and providers, and to help them form a professional identity.”&nbsp;



Hallowell&nbsp;said attending the workshop and learning the virtues gave her the language and structure to do that. Exposure to colleagues across multiple disciplines was an added benefit. “The chance to cultivate a classroom where we can walk through the virtues&nbsp;to&nbsp;think and engage independent of our own disciplines has been transformative,” she said. “It has given us a point of connection as faculty, and it has&nbsp;introduced me to&nbsp;colleagues and friends that reinforced&nbsp;the presence of an academic community I belong to.”



An important goal of the initiative is the direct engagement of students, both through the classroom and through programs like Augustinian Ambassadors, which was introduced through the Capacity Building Grant. Modeled after the faculty and staff workshops, the Augustinian Ambassadors program brings together interested students to deepen their understanding of Augustine’s teachings through texts and reflection.&nbsp;



Kate DiLella was one of the first Ambassadors and will continue in the program this upcoming year. The rising senior was originally drawn to the Ambassador role because of her Catholic faith and interest in deepening her understanding of Augustinian character, and she believes the program has the potential to benefit anyone on campus. “Many of the students in the program seem to have a similar idea of what we are striving for, but through studying St. Augustine, we are reminded that life is a pilgrimage and part of the beauty is that we can’t foresee all the bumps that will come along the way.”



Once they have become reintroduced to Augustinian virtues, Ambassadors are expected to encourage their peers to participate in numerous ways. The well-attended David Brooks lecture was one option. The hope in offering these character-building onramps is that students may be particularly receptive to them at this point in their lives.&nbsp;



Camacho has a theory on the subject based on what he sees as most prevalent in today’s students: a desire for security. “The culture, their parents, the job market are all telling them, ‘Everything is precarious out there.’ So the decisions they are making are based on fear,” he said. “But when you do that, you become smaller. You are no longer curious, and your relationships with other people become temporary.”&nbsp;



Camacho said the pilgrim virtues offer another way of relating to the unknown. “These virtues tell us we are all on this journey together. If we are willing to grant that we fall short and that other people fall short and have the humility to accept that, we can loosen up a bit. Character formation isn’t another checklist of perfection but instead this wonderful opportunity to expand our attention to become curious about the world and what we love.”&nbsp;



Asked if she believes that exploring the kinds of questions that lead to character development is unusual for students of her generation, Kate DiLella said, “I think questions about life and purpose and who we are and who we are called to be are likely on more students' minds than it may seem, and through Educating Augustinian Character, students are guided in how to think about these bigger questions in life.”



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

What We Bring with Us 

This spring, Harvard announced its decision to begin limiting the number of A’s faculty can grant in any given class. Starting in 2027, only 20 percent of students in a course, plus four additional ones, will be eligible to receive the top mark.&nbsp;



The move is the result of long-standing concerns about the rise of grade inflation at America’s oldest college. Since the pandemic, Harvard students have been more likely to receive an A than any other grade. In the 2024 to 2025 year, more than 60 percent of grades were A’s, up from around 25 percent in the 2005 to 2006 year.&nbsp;



The upwards trend of A’s is undeniable, and not just in Cambridge. But where there’s less consensus is about what, if anything, to do about it. The debate is complicated because the crux isn’t really how many A’s is too many, but whether the modern grading system as a whole is functioning as it should. And answering that question first requires settling another: What is the purpose of grading?&nbsp;



Jack Schneider, the director of the Center for Education Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has a few ideas on this topic. His 2023 book, “Off the Mark,” which he co-authored with Ethan Hutt of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explores the various goals of academic assessment, as well as new ways of approaching it.



According to Schneider and Hutt, there are three central purposes of grading: motivation — to incentivize students to complete their work and do their best; communication — to provide feedback on student performance for students and others, like employers; and synchronization&nbsp; — to be able to compare students across programs and institutions.



Each of these functions of grading has importance, Schneider and Hutt suggest. The trouble is, there may not be any one system that can accomplish them all. “We don’t think that trying to assess student learning is the problem,” the pair writes. “We think the problem is that our present technologies are too clumsy for the work we want them to do.”



In other words, landing on a single approach to grading requires some weighing of priorities. Focusing on one function, Schneider said, may well end up undermining others.



This is the problem Schneider imagines Harvard encountering. The cap on A’s elevates a particular purpose — distinguishing between students — but also opens up new vulnerabilities. It could de-motivate students who no longer see the point in striving towards A’s that feel unattainable. It could give students information about their learning relative to their peers, but not necessarily beyond that.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“Not even 50 percent of a class should achieve extraordinary distinction, if those words are to have meaning.”
</blockquote>



Harvard would contend there’s more to gain from distinctions than to lose. By raising the standard for excellence, refined distinctions send students stronger messages about what they're truly good at or, more often, when there’s room to grow.



“Not every student can achieve extraordinary distinction,” said Alisha Holland, a government professor at Harvard who served on the subcommittee that helped craft the new grading policy. “Probably not even 50 percent of a class should achieve extraordinary distinction, if those words are to have meaning.”



Others struggle to see the point in these distinctions at all. For Peter Felten, the executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning at Elon University, the most important part of grading is communicating quality feedback to students. Comparing or ranking students, by contrast, doesn’t signify much.



In an ideal world, Felten said he could even let go of traditional grading altogether. “Personally, I think grades are not particularly effective means of feedback. They're too blunt. They're not formative enough. And they tend to be a single mark in time.”



In many ways, people’s stances on grading tend to come down to whether they think it’s possible to motivate learning intrinsically, or just extrinsically. Can students be inspired without the promise of outside recognition, like grades? What would it take for them to be driven more by a personal desire for knowledge and growth?&nbsp;



In the age of A.I., the prospect of intrinsic learning takes on additional weight. After all, students who don’t see the value of working for the sake of broadening their minds seem more apt to offload their burdens to a robot helper.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The truth is, of course, that students are extrinsically motivated, as well as quite clear-eyed about that fact. The most energizing reason to perform well in a class, many students agree, is to earn the type of grade that will look good on their transcript.&nbsp;



One rising Harvard junior offered her thoughts on the recent grading policy change on the condition of anonymity. Generally more than any other concern, she said, her peers are worried about the way the cap on A’s will affect their future.&nbsp;



“At the end of the day, that’s, I think, why people care so much about their grades,” she said. “It's not necessarily about how confident it makes them feel or things like that or how validated they feel because they got an A versus an A minus. I think it’s, ‘How is this going to set me up for success?’”



Arbaaz Karim, who graduated from Harvard this spring, affirmed that grades were always most important to him in so far as they informed his competitiveness for an uncompromising job market. Since May, he’s relocated to San Francisco to work at Mercor, the startup helping major AI labs train their models and currently looking at a $20 billion valuation.



“In a perfect world, of course we would want learning to be the main priority,” Karim said. “But unfortunately the way that the real world is going to work is that jobs and employers or even grad schools are going to be looking at your academic history and how well you did.”



Peter Felten is perhaps daunted but not defeated by what he recognizes to be students’ more extrinsically-minded goals. He said his role, however herculean, is to help cultivate the sense that the learning process is as meaningful as any results.&nbsp;



“I wouldn’t say, ‘This class is hard, and not very many of you are going to get an A,’” Felten said. “I’m going to say, ‘This class is hard. You’re going to learn things. You’re going to think. You’re going to develop skills and capacities that you didn’t have before.’”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
"The best courses I've ever taught, students earned A’s because they cared, not because they were going to get an A."
</blockquote>



Felten is willing to lower the emphasis on grades in favor of lifting up the importance of the course content itself. He still wants students to strive at the highest level, but he wants them to do it for the right reasons. He knows this shift isn’t impossible, nor futile, because he’s seen it happen and felt the impact in real time.



“The best courses I've ever taught, students earned A’s in that course because they were working so hard and they cared so much and they did such good work — because they cared, not because they were going to get an A,” Felten said.



The work of intrinsic motivation is notably more difficult for both faculty and students. Teachers need to think through the kind of materials and assignments that will immerse students deeply and challenge them thoroughly. Students won’t find shortcuts or workarounds for engagement.



Jack Schneider maintains it’s never going to be a single, standardized grading rule or system that places the ultimate emphasis on learning while motivating students at the same time. That’s why he’s reluctant to call grading a problem, as opposed to a dilemma.&nbsp;



“Problems have solutions,” he said. “But dilemmas can only be managed.”&nbsp;



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

A Handbook for Student Flourishing

“Size Me Up,” PJ Bekkali

What We Get Wrong About College Cannabis Use

Teachers: You Matter More than You Might Think

Playing for Keeps

Keep Learning Well

Mental Health

What We Get Wrong About College Cannabis Use

Students Share Wellbeing Concerns Ahead of New Year

Going Upstream

Teaching & Learning

Learning Exchange

What We Bring with Us

The Grading Game

LearningWell Radio

Tilting Futures with Erin Lewellen

The Future of Holistic Higher Education with John Volin and Dan Currell

Putting the Student in Student Affairs with George Abalekpor

Flourishing

Playing for Keeps

Learning for the Ages

Focus and Flourish

Perspectives

A Handbook for Student Flourishing

“Size Me Up,” PJ Bekkali

Teachers: You Matter More than You Might Think