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The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdEbTjsAe7o/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;stkn=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==">video</a>&nbsp;opens to a young woman stepping into an elevator, head down to her phone. “This is Cory,” an invisible narrator tells us. Cory is a college student who’s been trying to cut down on her screen time. But she’s about to face the ultimate test of resistance: an elevator ride on campus with a stranger. Can she stay strong?&nbsp;



As another student enters, Cory slowly slips her phone into her back pocket. Her eyes go wide as the doors slide closed. “Don’t just stand there in silence, Cory,” the narrator encourages her. “Do hard things!” After a bit more prompting, our heroine finds her nerve and asks her new companion about the matcha tea she’s sipping. Within seconds, the two are bonding over café recommendations and their mutually dwindling caffeine budgets. They’re giggling, as they walk out of the elevator in the same direction. “Wait, are you also in Econ 101?” Cory asks. Meanwhile, the image fades, and text appears: “NYU IRL. Less phone, more friends.”



NYU IRL is the university-wide campaign New York University announced in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nyu.edu/about/leadership-university-administration/organization-directory/office-of-the-president/comms/welcome-to-the-spring-2026-semester.html">January</a>&nbsp;to promote time spent “in real life,” as opposed to online. In addition to masterminding Cory’s skit, which appeared on the university Instagram on September 9, NYU IRL encompasses a range of other educational resources and device-free spaces and programming. The driving concept is that everyone on campus could benefit from some help establishing a healthier relationship with their devices — that we’ve all been Cory in the proverbial (and literal) elevator, itching to look down at our phone rather than engage with the world around us, especially other people.



With the new school year has come announcements of several colleges and universities starting similar initiatives to help students log off and look up.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/03/business/harvard-pouches-students-phone-free/">Harvard</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bu.edu/studentwellbeing/2026/09/11/4402/">Boston University</a>&nbsp;are distributing special pouches in which students can lock their phones away for device-free socializing. The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill is organizing&nbsp;<a href="https://dailytarheel.com/482498/university/educating-for-the-virtues-of-attention-launches-carolina-unplugged-initiative-to-cultivate-positive-attention-habits-at-unc/">cohorts</a>&nbsp;to implement a screen time-limiting tool and meet regularly throughout the semester to discuss the experience.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/college-experience/2026/09/14/when-are-students-better-offline">Cornell</a>&nbsp;kicked off a weeklong effort to decrease tech use campus-wide.&nbsp;



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We appear to be universally bugged, disturbed, by the sense that our devices became our favorite shield from uncomfortable interaction and, in the process, we’re depriving ourselves of the necessary experiences of life.
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At N.Y.U., the approach has managed to differentiate itself as one of the first and most sprawling. The directive comes from the top, with President Linda Mills and Counselor to the President Kristie Patten, and reaches all three global campuses: New York, Shanghai, and Abu Dhabi. “We realized as the largest private university, with the real global reach, that we could do something very focused and at broad scale,” Patten said. Now six months in, and with programming continuing to pick up, NYU IRL seems primed to lead the charge of colleges eager to find out whether students can indeed feel better, phone-free. 



Doomed to scroll?



The “why” of all this analog enthusiasm may seem obvious. We’re not just seeing it at universities, after all. It’s on display in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.parkslopepulse.com/p/coffee-and-conversation-a-guide-to">cafes</a>&nbsp;with no-laptop policies,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/food-cooking/at-restaurants-phones-are-becoming-the-new-cigarettes-689c6435">restaurants</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/world/no-phones-concert-crowds-harry-styles-spc">concerts</a>&nbsp;asking visitors to check their phones at the door, and state-enforced phone bans at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/education-training-labor/many-states-are-banning-cellphones-schools">schools</a>&nbsp;nationwide. We appear to be universally bugged, disturbed, by the sense that our devices became our favorite shield from uncomfortable interaction and, in the process, we’re depriving ourselves of the necessary experiences of life. We’re so familiar with the doom of the scroll that we rarely talk about the one without the other. It’s just, we can’t seem to stop.



Recent lawsuits and ongoing anti-tech movements give credence to these concerns, particularly for young people. Last month, Meta agreed in a settlement to pay up to $17 billion after a consortium of states alleged the tech giant promoted its apps to children despite knowing the platforms were addictive and potentially harmful. Thousands of other cases accusing social media companies of similar wrongdoing are in progress.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.schoolofattention.org/">Attention activism</a>&nbsp;has emerged as an explicit fight to reclaim humanity from the grips of a trillion-dollar industry profiting off the commodification of our attention.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



One of the most well-known experts to address the social-emotional injury of tech for youth is, not coincidentally, a professor at N.Y.U. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, wrote the 2024 best-seller “The Anxious Generation,” which links the dawn of the smartphone to the rampant mental health issues now affecting young people. Childhood, he contends, has been “rewired” since its shift from being play-based to phone-based. Specifically, it has forced children to confront what he calls the “four foundational harms:” social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction.&nbsp;



It’s worth noting that not everyone is convinced by Haidt’s pitch. A common critique of his argument is that it is based on a questionable analysis of the data. Other scientists suggest the dual escalation of smartphone use and mental health problems indicate correlation, but not causation. In fact, a dossier of studies has shown “<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2">no, small, or mixed</a>” results as to how or whether tech and social media impact wellbeing. A combination of other factors may also be at play, among them exposure to violence, discrimination, financial concerns, and social isolation.



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But whether tech is the central culprit in the so-called youth mental health crisis, many young people do seem compelled to distance themselves from their phones, and report relief when they do. At N.Y.U., it was students, some of whom were inspired by a class with Professor Haidt, who reduced their screen time and then approached administrators about finding a way to help others do the same. “They just named numerous benefits to this that they really felt that the greater N.Y.U. community could benefit from,” Kristie Patten, the counselor to the president, said of the students in a focus group she led. 



The initiative that has since become NYU IRL continues to be “led by and for students,” Patten said. And as it came together, the guiding question was how to increase the scope and engage people from every corner of campus. A partnership with the Center for Teaching and Learning developed to create resources and learning communities for faculty on limiting tech in the classroom. A designated device-free space, called the NEST, was built out in the Greenwich Village student center, The Kimmel Center for University Life. Similar spaces emerged in Shanghai and Abu-Dhabi. A calendar of device-free events and programming advertises meditation sessions and crafting of all kinds. 
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On a cold day in April, more than 200 N.Y.U. students turned out for an outdoor dinner event, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/05/06/college-socializing-screen-free-zones/">Around the Longest Table</a>, in which they sat for a phone-free meal around a single, 0.1-mile-long table, stretched down a street in Manhattan. This September, as part of N.Y.U. Welcome week, Patten said around 1,300 first-years attended a student-organized <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdO1XoshXFO/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;stkn=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==">dance party</a> where they were asked to cover their phone screens and cameras with stickers. In less than two weeks, the <a href="https://www.nyu.edu/about/university-initiatives/nyu-irl/phone-breakup-challenge.html">N.Y.U. Phone Breakup Challenge</a> will begin, encouraging students to reset their relationships with their phones over 30 days of assignments and incentives designed by Catherine Price, a colleague of Jonathan Haidt and the author of “How to Break Up with Your Phone.” 



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In the end, for the wellbeing professionals, the goal may be less about the success of specific activities or initiatives and more about whether, over time, healthier tech habits become part of the wider campus culture. 
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Hundreds are showing up to these phone-free events, but there’s reason to believe the NYU IRL marketing team still has their job cut out for them. Students on the street outside the Kimmel Center, where the device-free NEST lives, recently expressed mixed awareness of the IRL campaign. Some said they had heard about it broadly, but not about the NEST, or vice versa. One was familiar with both, and another neither. No one had actually spent time in the NEST, though several were interested. A sophomore commented wistfully on how people used to connect more in person when she was growing up. A recent graduate said she didn’t make friends easily and figured the NEST could have been helpful when she was a new student. Another underclassman was intrigued by the option but felt she had too much else on her plate to reasonably go. 



It is possible that, as with most activities, the already-converted are showing up, while those on the margins remain difficult to reach. Carrie Landa, the executive director of Student Wellbeing at Boston University, said she has heard from students that they are eager for device-free spaces — but they’re conflicted, too. They appreciate how their phones connect them with friends and peers and worry that being too offline may cause them to miss out. Landa is taking these mixed feelings into account as she promotes her own device-free effort, BU Unplugged, using Yondr pouches that students slip their phones into and can only unlock with a specific magnetic key. “Creating messaging for something like this is hard,” she said, “because we want to acknowledge the loss while also acknowledging and reminding students of the gain.”



The task being asked of these students isn’t simple. After all, if it were, Patten said, we’d all have changed our ways by now. Zoe Ragouzeos, N.Y.U.’s vice president for student mental health and wellbeing, said she imagines it will take time and experience for students to begin to truly shift their behaviors. So while N.Y.U. can continue gauging interest in IRL activities based on the number of attendees, tracking the impact on their tech use may be more complicated and drawn out. At this point, the primary measurement tool appears to be pre- and post-surveys on tech habits and attitudes that will bookend the school year and specific IRL activities, like the upcoming Phone Breakup Challenge.



In the end, for the wellbeing professionals, the goal may be less about the success of specific activities or initiatives and more about whether, over time, healthier tech habits become part of the wider campus culture. Ragouzeos said her intention when students angst over screen time or social media comparisons is to help them think about other (offline) activities they could do instead. Could they take a walk, meditate, exercise, eat, or sleep — find some other way to pass the time or de-stress that doesn’t involve their phone? To her, hearing an N.Y.U. student simply took a break from the library by getting fresh air rather than getting on the phone would be a triumph.&nbsp;



Ragouzeos doesn’t need students to be able to pinpoint the exact moment or IRL experience that taught them a new skill or lesson, she said. “But that instinct to take a break in ways that don't include checking out with the phone, to me, is going to be how we measure our success.”



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

Analog U 

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.



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Most college students are not using cannabis, nor are they using it significantly more than their modern-day predecessors.
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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.



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“This is a topic where we get to use the word causal. High-potency cannabis causes psychosis.”
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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.



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If young people were less afraid of failure, they might be more willing to trust themselves, instead of A.I.
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“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

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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

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On this month's episode of LearningWell Radio, Michele Murray, the new president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, discusses the benefits of its long-standing approach to education and where it is headed during a time of significant change in higher education.



Listen now on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/2JPeJjw6u5quSleJU9j3LP?si=xvFI5Fy8SX-KQVpiXDozUQ">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/transformative-education-with-michel-murray/id1732284927?i=1000791112914">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.

Transformative Education with Michele Murray

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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

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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

The University of Dayton and Sinclair Community College are just two miles away from one another, but in many ways, they are worlds apart. UD is a private Catholic university providing a four-year undergraduate experience. Sinclair, a public community college, offers the most affordable associate’s degree in the state. And yet, when a group of educators from both institutions held a retreat to explore a partnership around character education, an infectious energy emerged.&nbsp;



“It was like we fell in love with each other over three days,” said Nancy McHugh, the executive director of the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community at UD. “We went in as two separate groups and came out as one.”&nbsp;



At the end of the retreat, they named themselves “the dream team,” and it stuck. This eclectic group of educators are now the driving force behind an unusual partnership in higher education based on what unites them, not what sets them apart. Funded by the Educating Character Initiative (ECI) out of Wake Forest University’s Center for Leadership and Character, UD and Sinclair will now embed character instruction into curricular and co-curricular initiatives at both schools, with a particular focus on community-engaged learning. At the heart of the initiative is the UD-Sinclair Academy (UDSA), one of the country’s most promising examples of a two-year/four-year transfer collaboration.



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They named themselves “the dream team,” and it stuck.
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Using character as the bridge, the team believes the work will produce a number of positive outcomes, including expanding the work of personal formation to all students, infusing belonging into the transfer pathway between the schools, and deepening each institution’s commitment to the community. In this sense, the UD/Sinclair character education initiative promises to be a national model for how institutions of different profiles and student populations can create beneficial relationships while deepening their respective missions.&nbsp;



Breaking New Ground



The initial retreat that brought the team together was part of an ECI capacity building grant meant to help institutions do the groundwork for their character education aspirations. Oftentimes, these planning stages bring into focus existing assets, and in some cases barriers, that can be addressed through a larger effort. Always, it is the people behind the initiatives who ultimately shape how the work takes root.



The UD/Sinclair partnership is led by two academics whose colleagues say they represent the best of each institution: UD’s Nancy McHugh and Sinclair’s Myra Bozeman. McHugh is a philosopher by training, though she calls herself a “weird one,” spending as much time outside the classroom working with students in the community as she does inside it. The Fitz Center, where she is director, is one of several centers at UD that focuses on community-engaged learning — a form of experiential education in which students apply what they are learning in class to the needs of the community. 



<div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/IMG_7636-1-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-4094 size-full"/></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
“I’ve always tried to help students understand that the work we do internal to higher ed travels out into the world,” she said. “The skills we are learning in the humanities, in the liberal arts, have this strong external-facing component that helps us understand how to live better in the world and also develop our personal and professional lives in ways that are really important.” 



Myra Bozeman, the dean of liberal arts, communication and social sciences at Sinclair, was born and raised in Dayton. “I have a deep connection to Sinclair,” she said. “I was the first child in their day care because my mother was a student here. I have a real love for the students, and moreover, the community.” 
</div></div>



Bozeman said that while most faculty at four-year colleges have an expectation about research, the expectation at Sinclair is to be out doing work in the community. This mirrored UD’s Catholic Marianist mission, advanced by its current president, Eric Spina, who in 2017 declared UD the “university of the common good.”



A year earlier, Spina worked closely with Sinclair’s president Steven Johnson to create the UDSA, an affordable pathway for transfer students from Sinclair to UD. USDA students are representative of Sinclair’s population: Most are Pell-eligible, first generation, and/or students of color. For their first two years, USDA students pay Sinclair tuition (around $5,500 annually) rather than UD tuition (around $50,000), while gaining full access to UD’s campus experience and student organizations, as well as co-curricular opportunities at both institutions. When Sinclair students transfer to UD after receiving their associate’s degree, they get a deep discount on tuition.&nbsp;



Realizing the program’s full potential involves educators from both schools continuing to learn about each other and reflecting on the perceptions they bring to the work. Fortunately,&nbsp;the trust and candor the dream team members built has enabled them to address issues head on.&nbsp;



“UD is a fantastic institution, but they haven’t, in the past, been the most welcoming platform for students of color,” Bozeman said. “Many Blacks just didn’t feel like they belonged on that campus. I personally believed UD has wanted to welcome our students, but perhaps they didn’t understand how to do it. And now we can help figure that out.”&nbsp;



UD’s 2024 Culturally Engaging Campus Environments survey revealed that UDSA students experience lower community connection and sense of belonging compared to traditional four-year UD students. However, UDSA students do experience strong educator support at UD and find they have abundant opportunities for positive regional contribution. The dream team sees this as an opportunity for growth and collaboration across institutions, with character-education tied to community-engaged learning as a vehicle to increase the sense of belonging for students in both their curricular and co-curricular lives.&nbsp;



For McHugh, the belonging gap for the UDSA students sparked an “aha moment” that would lead to a larger inter-institutional effort funded by an ECI institutional impact grant of a little under a million dollars. She told the team, “Let’s use community-engaged learning as a vehicle for character education and then use that to create a common language for character for both institutions to drive forward this sense of belonging for all students.”&nbsp;



Understanding and communicating what that looks like is an ongoing conversation, both within regular meetings of the dream team and at brainstorming sessions called “charettes.” The project materials describe character as a set of dispositions, or virtuous habits, that shape how we think, feel, and act. The overlay of community-engaged learning means that these habits are shaped by community participation and geared toward the benefit of the community.&nbsp;



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"For me, character is about enlarging my students, not making them smaller."
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While the benefits of experiential learning are well established, leaders advocate that when implemented with intentional attention to character education, these benefits compound, as student gain not just knowledge and skills but the moral and epistemic dispositions to use them wisely in service to others. In creating a common language and commitment to these principles, the project is guided by nine virtues: joyfulness, curiosity, resilience, hope, integrity, mindfulness, empathy, justice, and community belonging.&nbsp;



While the foundation of the initiative is rather philosophical, the proposed plan is a tangible list of specific initiatives with deliverables, including work within the community-facing centers and in co-curricular activities for students on both campuses. Much of the energy and resources are pointed inside the classroom. Among the project’s goals are to strengthen cross-institutional collaboration and to empower educators at both institutions to implement character education into their courses. This is happening on many levels, starting with faculty who now teach or guest lecture on both campuses, with many planning to infuse character into their coursework.&nbsp;



A newly launched faculty fellows program will train 10 new faculty a year from both institutions to use a character pedagogical framework, resulting in a cohort of 70 or so over time. These will include senior character fellows who will act as mentors to other faculty members.&nbsp;



To improve the UDSA experience for students, “all of Sinclair and all of UD would need to be involved,” McHugh said. “We need to know that when a UDSA student goes into a class in engineering, they will feel a sense of belonging because those educators will have the same sort of language.”&nbsp;Many Sinclair professors, who were unaware of even having UDSA students in their classrooms, are learning how to use a character framework to get to know them.



Dair Arnold, a professor of English at Sinclair, is now running a character pilot in her first-year composition course. While keeping with her standard syllabus, she now adds a character lens to each of her units. In the introduction to writing section, the theme is “know yourself.” Instead of one week of introductory work before the first assignment, Arnold took two weeks where she talked about what character means for students.&nbsp;



The character “cheat sheet” she gives her students defines it as “who you are becoming and how we choose to act — especially when situations are difficult, uncertain or require us to think beyond ourselves.”&nbsp;



Arnold said the students are embracing the revised format and feel excited to be a part of something intentional and different. “For me, character is about enlarging my students, not making them smaller, and giving them the skills so they can make informed choices that are good for them, as well as large groups of people.”&nbsp;



Helping Sinclair students explore their personal growth through character education is a big part of the effort to increase belonging. “I think this project is going to enable the two-year students, and their faculty, to have opportunities they wouldn’t have had otherwise,” said&nbsp;Katherine Rowell, a retired full faculty member at Sinclair who has moved her office down the street to UD and is now heading up faculty development and assessment on the character education initiative.&nbsp;



Rowell believes the character education will help counterbalance the national narrative about the purpose of community college which has been skewed almost exclusively towards workforce development. “We need both. You can’t do workforce development without also talking about integrity and ethics and resilience,” she said. “Community college students need the opportunity to work on these things, not just students at elite liberal arts colleges.”&nbsp;



The commitment UD has made to partner with Sinclair on formative education has Rowell hopeful and excited about the work ahead. “I think just the conversations — the faculty from both institutions talking about these things and making sure students are cared for — it is good to be a part of. In all my time working in community college settings, I have never had a four-year institution reach out or make any overture until now.”&nbsp;



Another dream team member, Danielle Boone, reiterates the importance of character education to the regional workforce missions of both schools, particularly Sinclair. Boone is a&nbsp;UD staff member who runs a program called Professional and Applied Learning (PAL) that supports UDSA students. She is also an adjunct faculty member at UD&nbsp;and&nbsp;Sinclair in psychology and is building character education into these courses.



Much of her work is aimed at preparing students for jobs in the community — one of the goals within the community-engaged learning framework of the initiative. Of the UDSA graduates from 2023 to 2024, 80 percent of those who are employed, have jobs in the Dayton region. Boone sees a through line from the UD/Sinclair character initiative and the needs of the regional workforce. She calls the work “employer-informed character.”&nbsp;



“This is about making sure our students show up at work as whole people and have the skills they need to persist through adversity and be successful,” she said. “That to me is character. And if we are going to argue about the relevancy of higher education than this is what we’ve got to do.”&nbsp;



Given UD and Sinclair’s shared commitment to personal growth and community, the dream team’s character initiative may well come full circle, reinforcing what the two institutions had always had in common, yet might not have known. Bozeman recalled an epiphany she had early on in the first dream team retreat: “I remember thinking to myself, ‘This is going to change our community. This is going to change it all.’”&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.

Community Partners 

I used to think that the biggest barriers to getting involved in college activities were fairly obvious. Perhaps students did not have enough time. Perhaps they could not afford an unpaid internship. Perhaps they were intimidated by a competitive application process. Those barriers are real. But after spending the last year talking to other students about how they find opportunities at Lehigh University, I began to notice another issue that was much harder to see: Sometimes students merely do not know where to look.



As part of my work with ImpactTrails, a Lehigh University initiative focused on creating equitable pathways for students to participate in high-impact practices, we interviewed approximately 98 students about their experiences with research, internships, mentorship, community engagement, and other opportunities outside the traditional classroom. How had these students heard about a research position? Who told them about an internship? Had they gone looking for an opportunity, or had an opportunity happened to find them? Did they know which office to contact, which professor to email, or even what kinds of programs were available to them given their work-study status, major, family commitments, or financial commitments?



The answers were undeniably, remarkably varied. Some students seemed to have an intuitive understanding of how to navigate college. They knew that they could approach professors about research. They knew where internships and fellowships were advertised, and they talked to everyone they could to find opportunities suited to them. At ImpactTrails, we call these kinds of students “explorers.” Other students, meanwhile, were figuring out these things for the first time. They were just as curious and ambitious, but they were spending part of their college experience learning how the Lehigh world worked before they could fully take advantage of what it offered.



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Instead of asking students to know the name of a program prior to searching for it, we wanted the tool to begin with the student. 
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Universities spend a great deal of time discussing the importance of high-impact practices. We encourage students to conduct research, get internships, work with mentors, study abroad, engage with their communities, and apply what they learn in the classroom to the world around them. According to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers,&nbsp;early career professionals who participated in experiential learning reported earning an average of $15,000 more each year.&nbsp;These experiences can also be some of the most meaningful in a college education. But we often talk about them as though the process begins when a student decides to apply. My conversations with students made me realize that it begins much earlier. It begins with knowing that an opportunity not only exists but is open and accessible to all.



At Lehigh, we began experimenting with ways of making the discovery process easier and more equitable. We developed an AI advising chatbot connected to Lehigh360, a platform designed to assist students in finding opportunities across the university. Instead of asking students to know the name of a program prior to searching for it, we wanted the tool to begin with the student. A student could describe their interests, goals, and what kind of experience they were looking for given their financial status or other commitments, and the chatbot could point them toward programs that might be a good fit.



The idea was not to create an artificial academic advisor or suggest that technology could replace the people who make Lehigh meaningful. In fact, at Lehigh, we have Opportunity Guides. These&nbsp;are trained students who are well versed in the high-impact practices offered on campus and serve as advisors in the Lehigh360 office to assist students with finding the right opportunities for them. However, we wanted to make the first step easier. If students know they want to get involved in research but have no idea what kind, where to search, or whom to contact, perhaps a conversation with a chatbot can give them somewhere to begin.



We tested the advising hub with students and asked them what they thought after using it. Their feedback was encouraging, particularly because it indicated progress on the problem we were actually trying to solve. Students liked having information about different programs brought together in one place, and several said the tool helped them discover programs they had not previously known about. “It reminded me of something I wanted to apply for,” one student said. Another added that it could help new students “not miss opportunities.”



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That approach has changed how I think about the word “access.” An opportunity can be available without being accessible.
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These results raised a new question for me: Why not expand the tool to include programs that&nbsp;&nbsp;are not considered high-impact practices? After all, students might identify high-impact opportunities of interest only to find that they can’t engage for various reasons. A research experience might require hours that conflict with a student's job. An internship might involve travel that a student cannot afford. A program might have an application process that is technically public but difficult to understand. A student might want to participate but have no idea whom to contact before applying. The opportunity is there, but the path to it is not equally navigable for everyone.



That realization led me to develop a High-Impact Opportunity Audit Tool, or HI-OAT. Rather than looking only at whether an experience provides meaningful learning, the tool asks what the experience looks like holistically from the student's side. It considers sustained engagement, mentorship, collaboration, feedback, real-world application, and reflection, but it also examines transparency, financial accessibility, disability accessibility, advising, navigation support, and whether programs accommodate students with different needs and schedules. That approach has changed how I think about the word “access.” An opportunity can be available without being accessible. A university can offer an incredible program, advertise it on its website, and accept applications, and still have students who never hear about it or who cannot realistically participate. The audit tool therefore also looks at whether programs collect student feedback, track outcomes, and use that data to improve the experience over time.



I do not think the answer is to turn advising over to artificial intelligence. Some of the most important opportunities students find in college will always come through people. A professor notices an interest and suggests a research project; a friend sends a fellowship application; a mentor encourages a student to apply for something she never thought she was qualified for. These are the moments that cannot be reduced to a recommendation algorithm. But universities can make it easier for those moments to happen. They can make their opportunities easier to discover. They can examine whether their programs are genuinely accessible. They can ask students where they get stuck and take those answers seriously. And they can recognize that not every student arrives knowing how to navigate a complicated institution. Sometimes the first step toward making an opportunity more accessible is simply making sure a student can see it.



Ayah Mallah is a sophomore at Lehigh University.

Access Is Only a Starting Point  

Working and Learning 

Kristie Norwood, the counseling director at Hampton University, a historically Black college in Hampton, Virginia, is willing to sound like a broken record when it comes to what the growing number of students attending HBCUs need and want from their education: It's all about belonging.



In the seven years since Norwood started at Hampton, following a decade-long clinical career working with veterans, she's seen her home institution transform. Amid a trend of increasing enrollment across HBCUs nationally, Hampton's&nbsp;<a href="https://home.hamptonu.edu/blog/2025/11/19/hampton-university-redefines-growth-46-surge-in-enrollment-and-a-new-blueprint-for-student-belonging/">surged 46 percent</a>&nbsp;between 2022 and 2025 alone.&nbsp;



With LearningWell, Norwood offers her perspective on why Black students today may be feeling drawn to Hampton and HBCUs widely, the mental health pressures they continue to grapple with on campus, and how her center is growing and innovating to meet the moment.&nbsp;



Dr. Norwood is a mental health expert at the Steve Fund, a leading nonprofit dedicated to promoting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of young people, particularly those from underserved and under-resourced communities.&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW: HBCUs widely, and Hampton in particular, are seeing upticks in enrollment. Has that shift been noticeable in your work, or did it surprise you?



KN: Our president, President Darrell K. Williams, came in about three years ago with this vision around having the number one student experience in America, and part of that vision encompasses mental health and wellbeing. I think that has really set the tone and really galvanized our team. Students coming across the country to college — they want a great education, but they also want other aspects that incorporate wellbeing. They want activities. They want a sense of community. They want to know that many of our students now have had some exposure to mental health care and that the support and resources are here.&nbsp;



From a student mental health perspective, are there specific factors you think have made HBCUs, and Hampton, most appealing to students lately?&nbsp;&nbsp;



At Hampton, there's a really strong sense of community and belonging. For example, each of the classes has its own name, its own identity. There's this friendly banter — or I would say really, it's friendly pride — that happens between the classes. Students walk in with this sense of community. The alumni base is also incredible. So while I am not a Hamptonian, I have come to really appreciate and value the connection that students feel to the alumni base.&nbsp;



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"It doesn't mean that you have to come to an HBCU, but I would offer for other institutions to think about, how are we creating that sense of belonging for Black students?"
</blockquote>



There's a sense that the sociopolitical climate in recent years — school bans on D.E.I., racial violence, discrimination — might be inspiring more interest in HBCUs. Does that align with what you're seeing and hearing from students?



We do hear students talk about having been connected or grown up in predominantly white spaces and that, for them, it's really important to seek out an environment where they feel a connection to parts of their culture or they're around other students where aspects of Black culture are honored and an inherent part of the community experience.



The other piece we have to think about is the impact of the global pandemic. At that point, many of these students were transitioning to high school or in middle school — critical age periods. When you transition to high school, it's a big transition. So if I didn't get those typical transition or social skills at that point, now I'm getting them when I'm coming into college, but they might feel a little bit insurmountable. On top of that, during those times, we were witnessing the killings of Black people across the country. So all of those pieces play a role psychologically in belonging. Students may feel that they want to be somewhere where they feel connected and where aspects of heritage and culture are going to be shared — going to be valued. It doesn't mean that you have to come to an HBCU to have that, but I would offer for other institutions to think about, how are we creating that sense of belonging for Black students?



Do you end up with many students in your office still searching for that sense of belonging?



I think it can be challenging for first-year students. We see many students who are looking for a sense of belonging or just trying to figure out some of those social skills. How do I make friends? How do I maintain these relationships along with workload, with student organizations? I think the other piece is that many of our students may be very connected to their families, so this is the first time they're away from home. Geographically, there are no HBCUs, for example, in California. So we tend to draw a lot of students from there who desire to attend an HBCU, and then they're far from home. I think some of those pieces cause students to come in looking for, how do I create belonging? Who am I in this new space without my parents or guardians here, and how do I feel comfortable in this space?



I wonder if you've found similarities between working with veterans and now Black college students post-pandemic, maybe especially given your expertise with P.T.S.D.?



For sure. I would say responses to stressors and trauma are definitely existent in both populations and very similar — but also just that transition. Some of the veterans I worked with, they weren't necessarily fully diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, but that sense of transition was challenging. It was like, no one understands me, even the people closest to me. Sometimes that mirrors our college students, where it's like, I don't know if my family understands me. I don't know if my faculty members understand me. I don't know if anyone from high school understands me. They're left feeling lost and then isolated, thinking it's just them, and it can lead to a spiral. So not to sound like a broken record, but I really think that idea of belonging and an authentic community is so important.



Are there other key mental health needs among Black college students today that you're seeing but maybe aren't getting as much attention or aren't as well understood?



I would say the pressure is a lot, and not just the pressure of being in college, but the pressure of navigating college and also balancing that with expectations. So many of our students are high performers, and many were the salutatorian or the valedictorian during high school. And so trying to navigate that with the questions of, who am I? And who does the world want me to be as a Black human? Who does my family want me to be? Who is safe enough for me to be authentically me? They're trying to figure these things out as they're 18 to 22 and their executive functioning, their brains, their frontal lobes are still developing. Those tend to be some parts of the transition that we normalize and help them navigate.&nbsp;



I think, culturally, some of these messages go back many generations for Black persons, such as you have to continue working hard. Even if you're suffering, continue to push through it. So I think now we're working to shift those narratives to help young adults consider their wellbeing.&nbsp;And sometimes that means resting. Sometimes that means stepping back from clubs and organizations. Sometimes that means finding a mentor on campus. It's about finding your way home to yourself, your health, and your needs.&nbsp;



And with the increases in enrollment, have you been seeing many more students coming into the counseling center?



We have absolutely seen more students coming into the counseling center, but I would say, at least at Hampton, it's partially due to enrollment, but there are other factors. We do a fair amount of outreach, and we have also established a bereavement services program and are partnering with New York Life Foundation to try to develop an evidence-based grief program. So I think that has driven students, when they experience a loss, to the counseling center, as well.&nbsp;



We also have a peer counselor program. Right now, we have about 25 undergraduate student Peer Counselors. They are called counselors, but they're not licensed clinicians. They're not seeing heavy-laden mental health concerns, but they are available to provide support, and they're a great voice. Research shows that when college students have a mental health challenge, they're likely to report that to a peer first. So peers can be a conduit to help students get to the counseling center and get engaged with a clinician if that's what they need.



Has it been difficult to keep up with the demand for services? Did the counseling staff also need to grow?



Yes. I was really excited when our new president came on board and added two clinicians to our center. So about three years ago we added an athletics mental health specialist, and then we added an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ specialist as well. Our partnership with New York Life Foundation also allowed us to hire a bereavement support clinician, as well as a bereavement care manager. So those resources have been tremendously helpful. I think many of my colleagues in higher education, if not all, would say they still need more resources — not just in college counseling centers but in the community in general — but I will say that the resources that we have are really helpful in serving students.



Do you mean mental health resources for the wider Hampton community?&nbsp;



Yes. At least in Virginia, there's a shortage of mental health professionals. So the resources versus the demand makes it difficult to make sure that everyone is servicing folks in a timely manner.



Is it a challenge also to find clinicians within that shortage who can provide culturally sensitive care or are trained to work at an HBCU?



I think all accredited programs are expected to have a cultural competence component to them for graduate training, but taking one course is not enough. It's also ensuring that clinicians engage in their own introspection of their values and biases, that they're relatable, that they understand college populations, and then also understand some of the unique experiences that come with students who are drawn or enrolled at HBCUs.



Are there ways you're hoping to expand counseling services?



I would say I have two ideas. Currently, we have SheCare wellness pods through a partnership with the Boris L. Henson Foundation and Kate Spade New York, where we're able to offer yoga, art therapy, soundbath. It's a great connection point for integrative wellness, but I would love to expand on that and to see us have not just an integrative wellness center, but a community and belonging-integrated wellness center that really has an intentional community component to it. I also would love to see us be able to have a component that helps service our students who are neurodivergent. That is a population we're seeing more of in terms of trends. And so it's important to have select spaces where those students can, again, feel a sense of community and feel a sense of belonging.&nbsp;



We also share a backyard with the [Veterans Affairs] Medical Center, so my V.A. roots feel really drawn to how we could merge that center with the community and also be able to service veterans who are transitioning out or who just want or need a continued sense of belonging.&nbsp;



Are there specific benefits that come to mind when you think about what the counseling centers at HBCUs are able to offer?



Many counseling centers actually put a cap on resources. So students may only be eligible for six sessions a year or 12 sessions a year. I have not chosen to move to that model. And part of that is because there's such a big stigma that exists, particularly within the Black community, around just seeking help in general. And so if a student only gets six sessions, I might spend four of those just talking about the stigma and what it took for them to come into this space.&nbsp;



I think we can be leaders in the field and in college counseling and talking about, how do you talk about that stigma? How do you eradicate that stigma? How do you normalize mental health? And then what are some of the unique challenges that this population may be experiencing, but maybe we're not talking about? What are they seeing on social media that might be traumatic? For example, Nolan Wells, that case just came out with the grand jury's findings. So here it's a topic of conversation, but there might be other schools where a student might be struggling around that case. Are we creating voice for all of those pieces that students are actively experiencing?



Any other Hampton projects you want to highlight?



I'm really proud. We just hosted the Steve Fund's 16th Young Growing and Rooted Conference. It was an all-day program, and it was the first time that they held it at an HBCU. So it was really beautiful to watch. We engaged in integrated wellness; we had breakout sessions, held healing circles, and our keynote speaker, Dr. Gina Duncan, an alumna of Hampton and Steve Fund expert, spoke about protective factors. I would love for us to continue programming with the Steve Fund, as well as with some of our other partners, to grow those spaces where we can have such dialogue and impact the campus and community.



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.

Building Authentic Community with Kristie Norwood 

Colleges and universities have invested significantly in expanding the wellbeing resources available to students — from mental health services and telehealth apps to basic needs programs, financial wellness, recreation, peer support, mindfulness workshops, and more. Yet many campuses continue to struggle with low student awareness and engagement, uneven utilization, and students who wait until they're in crisis to seek help. As a result, students who may not need clinical care can end up in counseling when their needs may be better addressed elsewhere. That can strain clinical capacity and leave students feeling like the support doesn’t fit. 



When engagement in a wellbeing program is low, the instinct may be to eliminate it, add different programs, or run additional information campaigns. But whether a resource lands with students might have less to do with its existence and more to do with timing and relevance. The right information at the wrong moment will likely miss the students who could benefit most. The deeper problem may not be a lack of resources or information but rather the gap between what’s available and what feels personally relevant, timely, and clear to students.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
The right information at the wrong moment will likely miss the students who could benefit most. 
</blockquote>



Students are being asked to navigate increasingly complex support systems at the very moment they may be feeling stressed, disconnected, or unsure how to describe what they're feeling. It's incredibly difficult for a student (or anyone, really) to name what they need when they're already feeling overwhelmed or burned out.



For example, a student may know they’re exhausted because they’re not sleeping well. But without an opportunity to reflect, they may not realize that financial stress or a lack of belonging is what’s keeping them awake. Without that clarity, they may focus only on sleep hygiene when the more helpful next step might be financial aid, a campus job, peer support, or a place to build connection.&nbsp;&nbsp;A long list of resources presented at orientation will not help resolve that uncertainty. It just hands the burden of figuring it all out back to the student, at the exact moment they're feeling overwhelmed.&nbsp;



Starting Even Further Upstream



There's a phrase from the advertising industry that says: "You can't see the label when you're inside the jar." Some of us in the counseling world have borrowed this saying and applied it to our clinical work. When students are swirling around inside the jar, it’s hard for them to name what they need or see what might help. As counselors, we address this by asking the right questions, actively listening, and helping students take a step back, reflect, and untangle the factors that are keeping them stuck in the jar. This process builds agency and helps them put language to their needs and eventually act on them (i.e., climb out of the jar).&nbsp;



What if we applied this same idea to all students, not just the ones who arrive at the counseling center? What if every student had the time and tools to define wellbeing for themselves, reflect on what feels most pressing, build language to ask for support, and take one meaningful next step? Giving all students this opportunity for upstream reflection and processing offers them clarity, language, and a relevant, manageable next step, helping turn awareness into meaningful action.&nbsp;



The Limits of Information Delivery



Information about wellbeing topics and available resources is critical for students to have, but knowledge alone doesn't necessarily help them recognize their own needs or feel ready to seek support. A lot of campuses teach students about topics such as stress, sleep, nutrition, financial wellness, and mental health in hopes that students will remember and apply it later when they need it. But “here’s what we have on campus to take care of your wellbeing" is hard for many students to act on when it's not top of mind, especially when they're buried in academic pressure, navigating relationships, or trying to figure out where they belong. Wellbeing also means different things to different students, shaped by their identity, values, and circumstances. A student supporting family back home may define wellbeing very differently than one focused on making new social connections on campus. Starting from an institution's predetermined definition of wellbeing risks asking students to fit themselves into our framework instead of starting with theirs.



I would argue that a student’s insight does not come from the information or the resource; it's the reflection that makes the resource personal and relevant. That's the missing piece, and it's a chance to build agency and wellbeing literacy before a student ever reaches crisis level.



What Shifting the Approach Looks Like



Side by side, this shift might look like the table below. It's important to note that the left column isn't wrong but rather provides necessary groundwork. The issue is that it stops at delivery, whereas the right column first helps lead students to clarity, action, and appropriate resource use.



<figure class="wp-block-table"><table class="has-fixed-layout"><tbody><tr><td>Common institutional approaches </td><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">Upstream, student-centered approach </td></tr><tr><td>Tell students about all available resources</td><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">First, help students identify what feels most important for their wellbeing now, then share resources that meet their priority </td></tr><tr><td>Teach general wellbeing topics</td><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">Help students make personal meaning from that information </td></tr><tr><td>Give students a large resource directory </td><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">Offer a clear pathway from a named wellbeing priority to one manageable next step, which may include connecting to relevant resources </td></tr><tr><td>Treat engagement as a communications and awareness problem</td><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">Treat engagement as an issue of student clarity, relevance, timing, literacy, and agency </td></tr></tbody></table></figure>



Questions Worth Sitting With



A few questions for anyone considering their approach:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Are students simply receiving information, or are they being invited to define wellbeing on their own terms?</li>



<li>Are students given time, space, and tools to clarify their wellbeing priorities and needs before they reach overwhelm or crisis?</li>



<li>Are students being taught skills for taking clear, manageable action attached to their specific wellbeing priorities?</li>



<li>Do students have access to resource wayfinding tools and guidance when they're not sure where to go for support?</li>
</ul>



The real barrier isn't always a shortage of information or resources. Sometimes it’s the gap between a student's overwhelm and their ability to name what's actually going on for them, personally. Closing that gap begins even further upstream than most colleges and universities start, with the chance for students to reflect, gain clarity, and turn a vague feeling or daunting challenge into one clear next step. When that’s done well, a resource list stops being something students have to decode completely on their own and becomes something they recognize as relevant to them personally — guiding them to reach out for the help they genuinely need, exactly when it matters most for them.



Anush Hansen is the founder and chief product officer at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wellsort.com/">WellSort</a>. She formerly served as a mental health counselor and wellness educator at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and the&nbsp;University of New Hampshire. Contact:&nbsp;<a href="mailto:anush@wellsort.com">anush@wellsort.com</a>&nbsp;

More Resources Aren't Enough 

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

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As a first-year student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Lamont Johnson decided to take a chance on a class called The Art and Science of Human Flourishing. He thought the elective might be an interesting, if not particularly relevant, addition to his coursework in the Wisconsin School of Business. Now in his senior year, Johnson credits the class with providing the scaffolding he needed to make it through college.&nbsp;



“I was an 18-year-old kid who had just arrived on a campus of 50,000 students,” he said. “The skills I gained in that class helped me navigate every aspect of college life over these past years including creating and fostering relationships with my peers, my professors, even the co-workers at my internship.”&nbsp;



The Art and Science of Human Flourishing (A.S.H.F) is an&nbsp;interdisciplinary, credit-bearing course&nbsp;that combines science, philosophy, contemplative practices, and experiential learning to teach students how to flourish. It was developed at U.W.’s Center for Healthy Minds, a neuroscience research center that is world-renowned for its examination of wellbeing. The course grew out of the work of the center’s founder, Richard Davidson, and&nbsp;John Dunne, along with&nbsp;colleagues David Germano of the University of Virginia and&nbsp;Robert Roeser&nbsp;and Mark Greenberg, who were at the&nbsp;University of Pennsylvania.&nbsp;(Roeser is now at Emory University.)



The scientists and scholars developed the course in the mid-2010s in response to the rising rates of mental health issues students were reporting and colleges and universities were struggling to treat. The theory was that by bringing evidence and practices on the concept of flourishing directly to the students, all would benefit, including those that had either preventable or typical problems.&nbsp;



What began as an antidote to a national mental health problem has become somewhat of a phenomenon in teaching and learning. The course at U.W. was launched as a pilot in 2017 with around 50 students and has grown into a lecture-style class with a cap of 300. But it’s not just the students who are clamoring to participate. Faculty from throughout the university, and throughout the country, have consistently reached out to the center hoping to learn how to teach it.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
What began as an antidote to a national mental health problem has become somewhat of a phenomenon in teaching and learning.
</blockquote>



After four years of hosting in-person “train-the-trainer” workshops, the Center for Healthy Minds has recently made the course available on edX, an online learning platform that provides university-level courses and programs. The 14-week course called&nbsp;<a href="https://www.edx.org/learn/education-teacher-training/the-university-of-wisconsin-madison-the-art-and-science-of-human-flourishing-essentials-for-educators">The Art and Science of Human Flourishing: Essentials for Educators&nbsp;</a>mirrors the student-facing curriculum in an effort to give educators anywhere a digital front-row seat to how transformative the program can be. The course’s growth from laboratory to universal learning platform reflects the fact that when high demand meets good science, anything is possible.&nbsp;



“What they were doing in Madison was really quite extraordinary,” said&nbsp;Kate Mondloch, a professor of art history at the University of Oregon.&nbsp;



Scaling flourishing



The A.S.H.F. course at U.W. may have remained limited to a small, curious cohort had it not been for Susan Huber. In 2019, Huber was hired by the Center for Healthy Minds to be the program manager for what was then the pilot version. Her job was to bring the course through the campus process that would allow it to become permanent. By 2020, it was offered by design to first-year students as a credit-bearing elective.&nbsp;



Huber said the A.S.H.F. course’s enduring appeal is the science and evidence-based practices within — what its architects call the psychological wellbeing framework. The acronym is A.C.I.P. — awareness, connection, insight and purpose — reflecting the four, core dimensions of human flourishing the center determined can be cultivated.&nbsp;



“It’s really an academic approach to supporting student mental health so students can understand the science behind their own wellbeing,” Huber said.&nbsp;



The course itself is a combination of didactic and procedural learning — both listening to lectures and participating in experiential exercises. These include meditative and contemplative practices, journal writing, and activities like “the values exercise,” where students narrow down a list of 100 or so values until they choose the one or ones that most resonate for them.&nbsp;



In participating in the activity, Nicholas Shashko, now a senior at U.W., chose integrity. “I learned something about myself in that 10-minute exercise,” he said. “When I figured out my value, it changed how I acted the rest of that first year — who I made friends with, the clubs I wanted to join. It shaped my whole college experience, and I don’t think I can say that about a lot of courses.”&nbsp;



Shashko, and Lamont Johnson, are student ambassadors at the Center for Healthy Minds and work with Huber and others in promoting the course on campus and beyond. Anecdotes directly from students on how they were impacted by the course may be the best qualitative evidence the center can provide. Student testimonial videos are included in the new edX course, not so much to pitch the program but to illustrate the different ways it influences students’ development.&nbsp;



Both Shashko and Johnson said they appreciated the fact that instructors established early on that flourishing would mean something different for every student who participated. “It is not like they say, ‘Here’s what flourishing is — go do this,’” Shashko said. “It is more of a guide for you to find your own definition, to find your own place on campus. They give you the tools and the skills to discover your own community.”&nbsp;



Johnson recalled how during one lesson on resilience, the instructor introduced a new term, “transilience,” which means a state of becoming or moving forward. “He told us we need to recognize that not everyone comes from a background of flourishing and that many people have significant roadblocks. I was struck by that because it showed me they were looking at this from an equity perspective.”&nbsp;



Johnson, who is African American, had come to&nbsp;U.W. from a high school with fewer resources and less rigorous curricula, adding a layer of both emotional and academic challenges. “There were times when I felt as though I didn’t belong here,” he said. “The course really helped me navigate all of that, and here I am a senior. I never thought I would make it.”&nbsp;



Asked whether he thinks of A.S.H.F. as a mental health course, Shashko said, “I generally don’t use the word mental health in describing it because it’s meant to be about flourishing, which is more about finding yourself. But when you go through that process, you gain a lot of skills that might prevent mental health problems.”&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
"That research report showed that you could teach this course at three different institutions with different instructors, and the results were consistent. After that, things really started to explode."
</blockquote>



While the students might not identify the program as a mental health intervention, research conducted on the course provides evidence of its efficacy in that realm. A 2022 multi-university&nbsp;<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-022-01952-1">study</a>&nbsp;published in Mindfulness showed that&nbsp;A.S.H.F. participants reported improved mental health, flourishing, attention, social-emotional skills, and pro-social attitudes compared to the control group.&nbsp;



“That research report showed that you could teach this course at three different institutions with different instructors, and the results were consistent,” Huber said. “After that, things really started to explode.”&nbsp;



By 2023, Huber and her team were bombarded with requests from schools throughout the country hoping to bring the course to their campuses. They decided early on not to make an online version of the student-facing course so as not to restrict its community-building element. Instead, they chose to scale the faculty training — first by opening it up to anyone who could come to U.W.–Madison to take the faculty workshop, and then, this year, by making it available on edX.&nbsp;



After four years of experimentation at U.W. and other schools, Huber and her team are confident the course is universally adaptable. Faculty can either teach A.S.H.F. as is or incorporate its elements into existing courses, as many faculty have done. Katie Pavek, a professor of nursing at U.W., took the faculty workshop to learn how to help her students adjust to the stressors of the profession —&nbsp;something she, as a nurse, had been challenged with.&nbsp;



“Because it is based on science and had been developed at the Center for Healthy Minds, I was immediately sold,” she said. “They gave us tangible tools and resources&nbsp;to take back to our classrooms and adapt to our own disciplines.” Pavek took the building blocks — the modules, units and concepts — and developed a course called U-Flourish designed specifically for health sciences students.&nbsp;



Like Pavek, University of Oregon’s&nbsp;Kate Mondloch&nbsp;participated in the faculty workshop to understand how to support her students who she observed to be increasingly despondent, particularly after the pandemic.&nbsp;Mondloch&nbsp;then decided to teach A.S.H.F. as a first-year elective satisfying the Introduction to the Liberal Arts requirement. Where A.S.H.F. is held in a large lecture hall at U.W.,&nbsp;Mondloch&nbsp;teaches it as a small seminar of 20 or so students.&nbsp;



“I really know my students well,” she said. “They are really hungry to talk about issues that matter, like how to be human in today’s world.”



Huber sees The Art and Science of Human Flourishing: Essentials for Educators edX course as a critical juncture in the center’s effort to help students anywhere thrive in an increasingly complex world. But the choice to offer it online, and the year-long effort it took to develop that option, did not come easily, particularly for advocates of human interaction and community connection.&nbsp;



Huber’s response was to make the course as true to the actual experience of students and faculty as possible. “We have seven or eight modules, and we essentially mirror the student-facing course with topics like what does it mean to be part of a community — giving them examples, live events with experts, and lots of opportunity to talk with instructors and each other.”&nbsp;



Elizabeth Morse,&nbsp;the director of interprofessional flourishing and an associate professor of nursing at Belmont University in Nashville, has just finished the course’s first offering. She said she was struck by how interpersonal and authentic it felt.&nbsp;



“It was like we got back-stage passes to everything they had done, including what worked well and what didn't," she said. “We got to experience the content through multiple different faculty and student perspectives and were repeatedly encouraged to infuse our own voice, perspective, and experience to the students in our unique contexts — to keep it authentic and impactful for students. This was empowering."



In explaining what she liked most about the course, Morse identified a benefit even its original designers may not have anticipated. "The community that emerged through this course was unexpectedly impactful. Engaging with creative and dedicated educators from across the country reminded me why I entered academic healthcare in the first place. The experience brought fresh energy, inspiration, and purpose to my work in healthcare education ”



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.

A Course for Healthy Minds

At the opening ceremony of Emory University’s ADVANCE program, students are asked to write down two things: something they want to gain from the experience and something they want to leave behind. After taking what is called “a walk of intentionality” at the camp where the program is held, students dispose of thing two — literally, by throwing the paper away — while sharing thing one aloud with their peers. And thus begins their five-day adventure in learning to live purposefully.&nbsp;



The ADVANCE program is part of the Emory Purpose Project, which, in turn, is a major component of Emory’s Student Flourishing Initiative, one of higher education’s most explicit efforts to graduate students who thrive personally as well as academically. At Emory, the initiative is as transparent about what it discourages as what it promotes. For a highly selective university where a significant portion of the students choose “pre-health” majors, the Student Flourishing Initiative encourages students to see their college experience as more than just a credentialing exercise. 



“The initiative was a recognition that college shouldn't only be about gaining knowledge, but also gaining wisdom,” said Ira Bedzow, the executive director of the Emory Purpose Project and one of the original creators of the Student Flourishing Initiative. “This involves having an understanding of who you are, who you want to be, and how you can achieve those possible selves in a way where success is internally measured as opposed to being based on societal or external expectations.”



Launched in 2021 under then-President Gregory Fenves, the Student Flourishing Initiative became a university-wide imperative as well as the flagship effort of a capital campaign of the same name. Spearheaded by then-Provost Ravi Balakanda (now president of Ohio State University), it was a demonstration of Emory’s commitment to undergraduate education at a time when college students nationally were reporting high levels of mental health struggles.&nbsp;



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“A lot of students will engage with the Emory Purpose Project because they are starting to feel that itch of ‘Okay, I’m doing everything right, but this success doesn’t feel good.’”
</blockquote>



Wellbeing remains a strong component of the initiative, but it was designed to be much broader than a response to mental health. In embedding flourishing into all facets of the university, including academics, Emory’s Student Flourishing Initiative is an ambitious experiment in institutional change and one that challenges many of higher education’s longstanding practices. Now in its fifth year under a new administration, leaders hope that the many individual gains that have been made within the initiative will compound to create lasting change.&nbsp;



The flourishing foundation



According to Bedzow, the first task in launching the Student Flourishing Initiative was to describe and communicate what flourishing means at Emory and then make something with “top-down recognition” a “bottom-up creation.”&nbsp;



“In order to get students to reflect on who they are becoming, we needed to understand how we are teaching,” he said. “What does the culture and the ethos on campus look like? How are students taking care of themselves –— mind, body, and soul? And how do we look at this from both inside and outside of the classroom?”



The initiative’s leadership team explored frameworks for flourishing, including from the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham which describes flourishing as not simply feeling happy but fulfilling one's potential. They arrived at four components of university life that would from then on include an intentional focus on flourishing. Together, they covered curricular and co-curricular elements such as academics, career development, experiential learning, and health and personal growth. They called them: The Academic Experience, Professional Pathways, Purpose and Meaning and Community and Well-Being. 



Within each of these umbrellas there are numerous efforts underway including student flourishing fellows who&nbsp;receive training in&nbsp;active listening, empathy, dialogue and relationship-building and act as campus ambassadors; and&nbsp;wellbeing coaches who provide non-clinical support on emotional and physical health.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Emory-inside-activity-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-4041"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Student participants in ADVANCE get to know each other, and themselves. Photo courtesy of Ira Bedzow</figcaption></figure>



The Purpose and Meaning pillar of the initiative provides its philosophical foundation and is best represented by the Emory Purpose Project. According to its web site, “the project encourages students to examine their beliefs, values, goals, identity, and motivations — and then connect those reflections to their academic, personal, and professional choices.” Bedzow said it calls on students to reframe purpose as a practice, not just an outcome.



Bedzow, who is an ethicist and teaches in the Goizueta Business School, helps students discover their “why,” getting them to explore the reasons behind their goals so that they might better align with who they are or who they want to be.&nbsp;It is in many ways a response to what he sees as misaligned or externally driven influences, in which feelings of inauthenticity can limit wellbeing.



“A lot of students will engage with the Emory Purpose Project because they are starting to feel that itch of ‘Okay, I’m doing everything right, but this success doesn’t feel good,’” he said.&nbsp;



The ADVANCE program (named to be the opposite of a retreat) is the flagship initiative within the Emory Purpose Project. It is described as a chosen interruption for students to think of themselves beyond&nbsp;productivity, achievement, or future outcomes. The latter half of the five-day retreat includes “stories we tell ourselves,” which Bedzow described as a way to understand how we create or limit how we grow based on the identities we form.&nbsp;



Some of the exercises may be a little unorthodox for students who are used to controlling their environments, but Bedzow said straying outside of their comfort zone is actually the point. The program’s demand reflects the fact that a fair number of students are willing to try.&nbsp;



One component of the Student Flourishing Initiative that crosses the purpose and academic domains is the&nbsp;Purposeful Teaching Fellowship, a cohort of self-selecting faculty who are learning how to develop a course that promotes student flourishing. Bedzow said he and others turned to the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence to workshop the idea, hoping to create a “contagion of desire” for professors who see the value of student-centered learning.&nbsp;



Coincidentally, one of the instructors, Liesl Wuest, who is the director of learning design and leadership at the Center, had already been thinking about how to design a course based on elements of flourishing. Her faculty partners included professionals from different departments within the university, including Wesley Longhofer, who is the center’s director and Emory’s assistant vice provost for faculty affairs.&nbsp;



“We were really curious about how to design a course that supports student agency — that helps them build confidence and supports their wellbeing,” Longhofer said.&nbsp;



In doing her research, Wuest developed the Purposeful Course Design Model that includes course alignment, design for learning, and design for flourishing. The design for flourishing branch is based on self-determination theory which is predicated on three principles: student autonomy, readiness, and competence. 



Now in its fourth semester, the fellowship is taught over six weeks, every Friday morning for two to three hours. While the fellows receive a stipend, Wuest believes their time is more of a commodity and a better indication of their commitment. Because the course guides faculty fellows in incorporating elements of self-determination theory into their existing courses, it was critical it be flexible enough to appeal to faculty of all disciplines. 



“Some classes have a lot of space to give students choice in what they read or how they participate or how they are assessed whereas others, like the professional schools, have a very tight curriculum,” Wuest said. “Supporting autonomy might look more like empathizing with students or being transparent about how decisions are made”&nbsp;



Wuest described one class where a language instructor gave students ample opportunities to work together while she set high expectations and gave rigorous assignments. The focus group with students at the end of the course revealed some surprising perspectives.&nbsp;



“A lot of the students said it was the hardest class they took at Emory, but because they felt like they were in it together, where there was no competition, it made a big difference in their learning experience,” she said. “What really came through was how they had made friends.”



While some of the programs within the Student Flourishing Initiative were new to Emory, others had either existed or were emerging alongside the initiative. One notable innovation was the Emory&nbsp;College Pathways Center, founded in 2022.



“The Student Flourishing Initiative took advantage of very organic grassroots efforts that were happening at the university that needed some coherence and infrastructure around them,” said Branden Grimmett,&nbsp;the inaugural vice provost and associate dean overseeing the Pathways Center.&nbsp;



The Pathways Center is both a concept and a building predicated on making career development at Emory a student-centered, holistic experience. Its very existence speaks to the university’s effort to help students navigate the many components of their career readiness so they may focus on their education.



“One of the things we do here is reduce the navigational energy that students have to use by putting everything in one place — things like internships, undergraduate research, advising around pre-professional directions, thinking about post-graduate fellowships like Fulbright, Marshall and Rhodes,” Grimmett said. “It is all here, including funding for these opportunities.”&nbsp;



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“For me, education has never been transactional. It’s always been about who our students are becoming, not what they are doing.”
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The Center is also curricular in that it offers practical courses on internships or how to conduct research. It is aligned with a required 13-week first-year seminar that helps students develop their college identities and to begin thinking about the world of work. All of this supports Emory’s experiential learning requirement that can be fulfilled through internships, research, study abroad, community-engaged learning, or the applied arts.&nbsp;



The Pathways Center strives to humanize the student career journey, encouraging students to connect with alumni not just for networking purposes but to gain real-world wisdom. As part of the second-year Sophomore Summit, students from the Atlanta and Oxford campuses (45 minutes away from each other) spend 24 hours together at a camp site where they hear stories of resilience and overcoming obstacles. The experiences are shared by alumni just five years out of school, upper class students, and faculty. One professor talked of the responsibility of becoming a caregiver at 12 years old to an epileptic parent. Another spoke of the challenges of establishing herself in academia as a young Black woman. 



While not seeming so on the surface, these attempts at understanding faculty and classmates as people are all part of preparing for life after college, Grimmett said. He himself is a classically trained pianist and has been a producer on Broadway. He believes non-linear pathways are more effective in preparing students for the twists and turns of the real world. “For me, education has never been transactional,” he said. “It’s always been about who our students are becoming, not what they are doing.”



Five years into the initiative, leaders of different programs within it have collected some data on outcomes, though understanding if this grand experiment really worked is hard to know. The efforts within the Student Flourishing Initiative are meant to build on one another, creating a cumulative effect that is strong but subtle. Bedzow said even the students themselves may not recognize they are participating in something bigger. 



“If we made flourishing so explicit for students, then it becomes a shiny object as opposed to the waters they are swimming in,” he said.&nbsp;



The question that remains is knowing if these efforts have grown deep enough roots to withstand leadership transitions or priority shifts. This is a particular dilemma in higher education where flashy campaigns can quickly fizzle out with new administrations. At Emory, many of the original leaders of the initiative have moved on to other positions or institutions, though the hope is their original work will continue to bear fruit.&nbsp;



Asked if he sees or feels a difference on campus since the initiative was launched, Bedzow shared the following: “I wake up every day excited to meet with students, faculty, and staff because I experience firsthand how inspiring and motivating it can be to work intentionally toward creating environments in which people can thrive. Most of all, I am excited by students who are developing the language and practices they need to become the people they choose to be.”



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.

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