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

Mental Health

Examining innovations that help young people thrive.

Teaching &amp; Learning

Creating a more just world through higher education.

Access &amp; Inclusion

An end goal for learning and life.

Flourishing

Opinions leading to positive change.

Perspectives

For more than a decade, colleges and universities have been relying on the Healthy Minds Study to help them understand the mental health of their students and those at other schools throughout the country. Indeed, this annual indicator and benchmark has become the bellwether for the state of college student mental health, capturing the dramatic increase in the prevalence of mental health issues among college students beginning around 2014.   



But as important as this survey data continues to be, the Healthy Minds Network’s principal investigators, Drs. Sarah Lipson and Daniel Eisenberg, stress that surveillance is only the start of a larger public health approach to helping every student on campus thrive. This mindset has led to strong partnerships with institutions and non-profits working to understand how mental health data can be interpreted and applied, particularly when it comes to policy changes and institutional investments.  



The latest example of this research-to-practice approach is a new report by the Healthy Minds Network, UNCF (United Negro College Fund), and the Steve Fund on the mental health and wellbeing of students at Historically Black Colleges and Univeristities (HBCUs) and Predominently Black Institutions (PBIs). Released earlier this month, the report, <a href="https://uncficb.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/UNCF_MentalHealthReport_Flourishing_FINAL.pdf">“Flourishing: Bolstering the Mental Health of Students at HBCUs and PBIs,”</a> ties Black students at HBCUs to better mental health outcomes than both Black students at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) and a national sample of students of all races.&nbsp;



Akilah Patterson, the study’s project manager and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, said she was unsurprised by the results. Citing the strong sense of community HBCUs foster as a reason for students’ apparent wellbeing, she said, “nothing can really replace that.”



The concept and funding for the study came from UNCF, a major advocate and donor to HBCUs and their students. It partnered with the Healthy Minds Network to lead data collection and assessment, while the Steve Fund, a nonprofit promoting mental health among young people of color, contributed expertise.



Between spring and fall 2023, more than 2,500 students from 18 different HBCUs responded to a tailored version of the Healthy Minds Study. They answered questions from the standard Healthy Minds Study, along with a “Black College Mental Health Module,” added to provide insight into the Black college student experience.



The results suggest relatively better wellbeing among HBCU students across a number of scales. HBCU students report to be flourishing more (45% compared to 38% of Black students at PWIs and 36% of students nationally) and experiencing more campus belonging (83% compared to 72% of Black students at PWIs and 73% of students nationally).



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The results suggest relatively better wellbeing among HBCU students across a number of scales.
</blockquote>



While loneliness&nbsp;is&nbsp;endemic among students everywhere, significantly fewer students at HBCUs (56%) are experiencing “high loneliness” than Black students at PWIs (58%). Students at HBCUs are also less likely to keep negative feelings to themselves (74%) than Black students at PWIs (86%) or students nationally (83%).



Patterson said the wellbeing of HBCU students is an understudied area. “It's not that it hasn't been studied at all,” she explained, “but it hadn't been studied in this way, on such a large scale, and also using some of the measures we chose to use.”&nbsp;



In addition to&nbsp;insight&nbsp;into&nbsp;how HBCU students are already thriving,&nbsp;Patterson’s study suggests&nbsp;their institutions have room to improve&nbsp;support. Financial anxiety, for example, is the most reported stress factor among students at HBCUs. Twenty-three percent of HBCU students, compared to 18% of students nationally, say their financial situation is “always stressful”—an indicator correlated with greater risk of having one or more mental health problems.



Students’ financial struggles can be difficult for their institutions to tackle, Patterson said. But she hopes&nbsp;research&nbsp;like hers, and other&nbsp;projects&nbsp;going forward, encourage the kind of investment in HBCUs that, in turn, provides relief for the students. Empirically, she added, she believes the research “speaks for itself.”&nbsp;



“We’ve been doing the work. HBCUs have been very committed for decades to the success and excellence of their students, and that's not going to change.”



The Flourishing Factor



The spirit of this latest report from the Health Minds Network reflects an evolution of sorts for the data leader, along with many of its peers in the mental health research community.&nbsp;Their stronger focus on “flourishing” allows for greater examination of the many determinants that comprise mental health, such as financial wellbeing.&nbsp;



In its 2023-2024 report, the Healthy Minds Network made headlines with news of slight improvements in student mental health, which had been trending negatively for several years.&nbsp;Lipson was particularly inspired by the 6% increase in student&nbsp;flourishing for&nbsp;several&nbsp;reasons, including the fact it is an outcome&nbsp;colleges mayhave some level of control over.&nbsp;



“The web of causation for flourishing is much wider and often within an institution’s control,” she said. “When we think about what goes into flourishing—a sense of belonging, decreases in isolation, maximizing our built environment—there are levers here that institutions can pull, maybe not all of them, but more so than depression or anxiety.”



Flourishing has many definitions but is most often associated with healthy growth&nbsp;in a variety of&nbsp;domains.&nbsp;So anyone can flourish, with or without a mental health diagnosis. Additionally, while anxiety and depression are still alarmingly prevalent, not all students will experience either. From a public health perspective, flourishing is an outcome that is relevant to the entire population.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Lipson&nbsp;said&nbsp;what is important about this measure, and indeed all of this research, is&nbsp;it&nbsp;helps administrators understand where to spend time and money based on what the evidence&nbsp;suggests&nbsp;is the best investment. To this end, the Healthy Minds Network has launched the creation of a&nbsp;<a href="https://healthymindsnetwork.org/best-practices-repository/">best practices repository</a>. While still a work in progress, the repository will provide that advice for a number of campus interventions.&nbsp;&nbsp;



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What is important about this research is it helps administrators understand where to spend time and money based on what the evidence suggests is the best investment.&nbsp;
</blockquote>



“What we should be investing in from a population, public health approach is a really difficult question given what little data currently exists,” Lipson said. “With the data repository, you can go to a publicly available resource and consider, ‘What are my options? What does the evidence look like? What schools have implemented this successfully, and who could I talk to there?’”

Purposeful Information  

At noon three days a week, a room overlooking the pond at the University of Virginia falls into quiet meditation while the rest of campus churns with mid-day activity. Some students sit, some lay on the floor. A facilitator leads with guided thoughts and modes of breathing, but you’re welcome to do your own thing. After about 20 minutes, everyone is back on their way to lunch and afternoon classes.



“It’s very accessible to all kinds of people. It’s a nice break in the day, and it’s powerful for the people who have discovered it so far,” says Dearing Fife, a sophomore who organizes the sessions at the Contemplative Commons.



Dearing is a student advisor at the Commons, a new soaring glass and fieldstone building that is home to the Contemplative Sciences Center (CSC). For more than 12 years, the CSC had been operating from UVA’s religion department with multidisciplinary research, experiential learning, and mindfulness initiatives. The construction of the Commons represents more than an impressive new building to house a department and some activities. It is headquarters for the interdisciplinary face of wellbeing on campus—from grounding activities like yoga and meditation to scholarship on the many intersections of contemplation and nature, art, and technology.



The construction of the new Commons makes tangible President Ryan’s desire for UVA to be a top school for holistic student life while pushing boundaries on what higher education can look like in terms of mental health promotion. For many years, UVA had been the administrative backbone of the <a href="https://learningwellmag.org/article/the-flourishing-university">Flourishing Academic Network (FAN)</a>, an inter-institutional collaboration aimed at promoting student flourishing through higher education.



A Contemplative Commons



On the western edge of campus, the new 57,000-square-foot building sits beside the serene 11-acre pond and watershed area known as The Dell. Its U-shape wraps around a Ginkgo tree-lined courtyard, and connects to central campus via a pedestrian bridge over Emmet Street inspired by the High Line in New York, with benches and plantings. It’s hard to imagine a location better suited for a center dedicated to research, teaching, and outreach for contemplative experience.



“Our building is designed around the three themes of nature, art, and technology, and all three combine together to create contemplative opportunities for individuals,” says Kelly Crace, Executive Director of the Contemplative Sciences Center. “It’s intentionally multidisciplinary, creating wonderful spaces where students just love to come and study, whether they want to come into our art galleries, or come into our Conservatorium and experience light and sound in a variety of ways, or connect with nature through our biophilic design.”



The Commons houses, and reflects, work being done at UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center.&nbsp;The facility’s purpose is to support student flourishing through a host of indoor-outdoor spaces, academic classrooms, immersive learning and events. It will soon include art installations and flexible studios that can be configured as classrooms, research labs, or even yoga studios.



Technology plays an interesting role in both design and practice in the Commons, used both to enhance mindfulness experiences and to create intentional tech-free spaces for deeper reflection. The Conservatory is an immersive room with floor to ceiling windows, sounds and light panels, with state-of-the-art audio to mimic natural soundscapes—think ocean waves, rainforests, waterfalls, wind, and buzzing bees. Other areas at the Commons are tech-free zones, encouraging students to disconnect altogether.



Innovative Classrooms, both labs and studios, are designed as multi-modal spaces that allow instructors to change the room setup based on the session’s needs. Classes can alternate between traditional seating, or more free-form setup using yoga mats or meditation cushions. Some rooms feature sprung floors, ideal for movement-based practices like Tai Chi, or facilities conducive to a Japanese tea ceremony. Others serve as academic classes that faculty members would prefer to hold in something other than a traditional classroom building.



“There's one class that meets in the Commons, for example, on medical Spanish. This professor has her own deep contemplative practice, and she incorporates it into every class that she leads,” says Connie Kresge, chief of staff of the CSC. “She’s not just bringing in somebody who's pre-med to learn a few vocabulary words. She is saying, ‘Okay, you are going to be the front line of working with humans. How do you imbue your practice with understanding of this population and a contemplative, compassionate approach?’ And so they also get the benefit of a setting like the Commons.”



Research and Practice



In a world increasingly defined by speed, competition, and information overload, the CSC represents a shift in higher education. Housed within UVA’s Provost’s Office, CSC benefits from strong institutional support, ensuring its programs are not peripheral but central to the university’s academic mission. As Michael Sheehy, CSC’s Director of Research, points out, UVA’s investment in contemplative education is unique among public universities, positioning it as a leader..



With its three-pronged mission, CSC is reshaping how students, faculty, and the broader academic community engage with education, wellbeing, and leadership. Work and programming at the Contemplative Sciences Center is organized around three pillars: Research, focus on advancing contemplative studies through scholarship; University Life, integrating mindfulness into students’ days; and Systems Change, expanding contemplative education globally through leadership and K-12 initiatives.



At the heart of CSC’s work is a research lab known as CIRCL, which stands for Contemplative Innovation, Research, and Collaboration Lab. There, scholars study many aspects of the ways meditation, nature, and technology shape our well-being from a collaborative, cross-disciplinary perspective.



One of the current projects examines how different environments impact contemplative experiences, explains Sheehy. As part of the methodology, participants will be studied meditating in five different settings, and researchers then track brain activity, heart rate, and emotional responses. “If you meditate in a garden, does it feel different than if you meditate in a featureless white room?” he &nbsp;asks. “What happens in your brain and body when you practice mindfulness in nature?” Sheehy is also editor of the Journal of Contemplative Studies and also Contemplative Currents, which &nbsp;are uniquely poised to cover both peer-reviewed academic studies and open public scholarship.



Research, academics, and collaborations go well beyond the study of nature and meditation. CSC is diving into diverse studies such as virtual reality experiences, lucid dreaming research, and exploration of leadership and public policy.



“We're having professors coming in from our Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy to talk about policy and leadership from a contemplative perspective, professors from religion to come talk about Buddhism, and we're exploring collaborative work of how we can do things with the school of data science,” says Crace. “What's really cool is getting a sense of the breadth and diversity that’s possible. People might initially think, Oh, so this is where you do yoga, or this is where you do mindfulness, that type of thing. Yes, and we're so much more than that. Being able to bring in that diversity of collaboration, I think, is really important.”



University life&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



But the CSC isn’t just about research—it’s about making curiosity and mindfulness part of daily student routines to support an overall culture of thriving. The CSC hosts monthly salons, where students and faculty can discuss contemplative topics with leading interdisciplinary scholars.  A Citizen Leaders Fellowship offers students a year-long leadership opportunity to gain skills needed to flourish during their time at UVA and after graduation.



Beyond the lab and classroom, the CSC and Commons are uniquely poised to support student flourishing with a wide range of campus programming—beginning with a celebratory weekend of concerts, food and activities in April to mark the grand opening of the Commons. Going forward, a weekly calendar of programming and well-being initiatives include regular yoga, meditation, Tai Chi, reflective writing, and spaces to cultivate mindfulness and resilience.



It’s a bold push against what Crace calls the “stress-glorification culture” of modern academia.



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People ask, Why would a university have a building for contemplation? They don’t ask, Why do you have a building for the arts, and a building for sports?
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&nbsp;“’I stayed up two nights. Well, I stayed up three.’ It's this constant one upping, where we're trying to find distinction through how hard I'm working,” he says. “It’s not only how hard I'm working, but it's important for you to know how hard I'm working, and it just creates a very toxic culture that really disrupts flourishing. We want to be a disruption to that stress culture.”



Systems Change



Flourishing is a key word in the overall picture of contemplative sciences and its place in a larger ecosystem of institutions helping young adults maturing in a way that best supports their wellness and full potential. Appropriately enough, the <a href="https://learningwellmag.org/article/the-flourishing-university">Flourishing Academic Network (FAN)</a> grew out of key individuals at UVA committed to flourishing, including David Germano, a religious historian at the University of Virginia and Crace’s predecessor as former director of CSC, and alumni Jeffrey Walker, a finance executive, philanthropist, and member of the board.



“What we're trying to do with FAN is taking a system orientation and looking at how we can prepare students for the real world, and allow them to succeed in higher ed,” says Walker. “It means giving them tools when they arrive, and educating them about what kind of tools there are out there, working on things like social emotional learning models, meditation, yoga, body movement, breath practices, peer to peer support, and also managing ego and collaborative models, and looking at leadership models.”



For real systemic change, the third pillar of the CSC reaches beyond the campus into the wider scope of academia with FAN, and reaching K-12 classrooms and international leadership programs.



 “The systems change work can be thought of as expanding what we do reaching outward,” says Kresge. One major initiative is the Compassionate Schools Project, a groundbreaking K-12 mindfulness curriculum leading new practices in Louisville, Kentucky. Another is the Dalai Lama Fellows Program, which trains young leaders around the world in mindfulness-based social change. In 2024, CSC took 17 Fellows to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama.



CSC is also working on a national initiative to integrate contemplative education into higher education policy. By partnering with education policymakers and university administrators, CSC hopes to make contemplative practices a core part of the American educational experience—and something both more easily understood and more widely undertaken.



“People ask, Why would a university have a building for contemplation? They don’t ask, Why do you have a building for the arts, and a building for sports? No one stops and says, what do you mean by arts?” says Kresge.. “We don’t have that barrier in our colloquial understand of the words arts and sports, but we do in our conversation of what contemplation is.”



Leaders like Kresge hope there would be a greater understanding of mindfulness and meditation as an ongoing tool and practice—like exercise—and not a one-time thing that can be taught in a seminar and crossed off a list.



Sheehy learned meditation from his grandmother when he was about 10 years old, and it made a lasting impression. “I’ve had the chance to live most of my life with access to knowledge about contemplative practices, because I’ve had experiential access to as a constant reference point,” he says. “That’s why I think the research we do is important, because we’re showing people how these practices wok, how powerful and empowering they can be, and give them agency over transforming their lives.”



Dearing Fife also had access to these practices at an early age, and the addition of the Contemplative Commons at UVA cements her belief she could not have found a better place for herself to attend school. A self-described “anxious kid,” she discovered meditation in middle school, and it’s been a core part of her life ever since. “Like brushing my teeth,” she says. “A non-negotiable.” She grew up knowing that learning to handle it was just going to be her thing.



“Everyone manages something in their life, and I have to manage my anxiety,” she says. She meditates once or twice a day, and believes it’s a tool many more college students would benefit from. She is aware of a first-year student who shows up to the noon meditations regularly, and likes to envision that it’s making a difference in her life—and that in a small way, as organizer of the sessions, Dearing contributes to that.



“It’s a big school, and I’m in Greek life, and that’s been great,” she says. “But I also wanted an academic realm where it’s like, This is my place, and this is where I’m going to impact the university,” she says. “And this, working at the Commons and CSC, is it.”

The University of Virginia Builds a Headquarters for Wellbeing

New research out of Vassar College links institutional efforts to address student mental health with higher graduation rates.&nbsp;



The article, “‘Woven in’: Mental Health and College Graduation Rates,” published in The Journal of College Student Retention, pinpoints four mental health interventions common among colleges with “higher-than-expected” graduation rates—that is, rates higher than predicted based on factors like endowment per student, instructional expenses per student, and more.



For other schools interested in improving retention, the authors, who include Vassar President Elizabeth Bradley, suggest implementing these practices may be a step in the right direction.



Retention at four-year colleges is an ongoing concern, as less than half of students are graduating within six years of matriculating. Still, the number of students applying to these programs has risen, along with the price tag to attend.



Previous research shows mental health issues, along with a range of financial, social, and academic factors, can stand in the way of students’ graduating on time or at all. What mental health strategies colleges should use to curb these negative outcomes, however, has been less clear.&nbsp;



The researchers behind “‘Woven in’” set out to determine these strategies by conducting case studies of five colleges with model graduation rates. The schools selected remain anonymous throughout the paper but reflect diversity in terms of student body size, geography, and “ownership type” (public, nonprofit, or for-profit).



Each case study involved a site visit and interviews with between 28 and 41 people, including administrators, faculty, and students. The interviewees answered general questions about school culture and experience, as well as more targeted ones about retention-related programs.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Together, the responses highlight four practices, shared among the colleges, for tackling student mental health on campus:&nbsp;



1. “Recognition of the breadth and depth of mental health needs”&nbsp;



At each of the five schools, researchers found a proclivity to name student mental health as an increasing problem on campus. Both staff and students recognized the issue and proposed possible reasons for it. An Associate Vice Chancellor suggested mental health concerns were more often responsible for educational leaves of absence, which can delay graduation, than academic reasons.



2. “Proactive Approaches: Early Detection and Outreach”



Another commonality between the schools was a proactive approach to mental health. Each had measures in place to reach struggling students before their problems became serious. Some ran formal programs to report concerns about students and assigned a point person to intervene. Others cultivated a strong culture of faculty referrals.&nbsp;



Regarding retention strategies, one Vice Provost mentioned the value of mid-semester reports, which faculty at his school complete on behalf of their students and turn into the dean’s offices. “Sometimes we pick up care issues where a student will say, ‘You’re right. I’m not doing well.’”



3. “Diversity of Mental Health Resources and Quality Improvement”



Every school also offered a wide range of services, recognizing the diversity of needs and importance of adapting to meet new ones. “I think the myriad of mental health resources that [the college] has contributed to why people stay at [the college] and why our graduation rates are high,” a student said. “Because if you are struggling, you will get the help that you need.”&nbsp;



Services included not only traditional counseling but education, recovery, and maintenance programming. They also addressed “identity-related needs,” specifically around race and ethnicity.&nbsp;



4. “Embedding Mental Health in the Larger Social System”



Finally, all five schools integrated mental health services into “the larger social support and academic structures,” the authors wrote. Administrators and faculty alike expressed commitment to student wellbeing and working together to address it. By confronting these problems across offices and departments, they could foster a culture that normalized talking about mental health and asking for help.&nbsp;



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“Whether in the classroom or beyond, '[Mental health] is always kind of woven in.'”
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As one administrator said, whether in the classroom or beyond, “[Mental health] is always kind of woven in.”&nbsp;

“Woven In”

Sometimes There’s a Wolf

Innovation and Financial Well-Being at CUNY

Maaz Shaikh spent the summer before 11th&nbsp;grade at football camps, among college scouts, chasing hopes of a Division I career. Just a few weeks later, the wide receiver’s first ACL tear pushed his personal endzone, dreams of recruitment, down the field. When his senior season came and he underperformed, then tore his other ACL, he knew the clock had run out.&nbsp;



Shaikh’s plans for college needed to change, or so he thought. Growing up in Cambridge, Mass., he had his eye on nearby Boston College (BC) but would have relied on an athletic scholarship to open those doors. “I really wanted to go, but we weren't financially stable enough to afford a college with that high of a tuition,” Shaikh said.



Then his guidance counselor told him about Messina College, the two-year associate degree program at BC that would be welcoming its inaugural class in July 2024, shortly after Shaikh graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Messina is BC’s ninth and newest college, created specifically for students like Shaikh from first-generation and low-income backgrounds. It offered him the financial aid he needed, along with the opportunity to transfer to a four-year bachelor’s program at BC afterward—no reapplying necessary—if he maintained a 3.4 GPA or higher.



As one of its first 100 students, Shaikh joins Messina in uncharted territory. While BC isn’t the first four-year university to offer an associate degree program, it is one of the most selective colleges to do so. Messina is also fully residential. With the will and the wealth, BC is able to invest in high-need students and their success in a way other low-cost, two-year undergraduate programs can’t afford. By the same token, its leaders are navigating challenges they can’t always predict with little by way of example.&nbsp;



The groundwork for Messina began in 2020, when BC merged with Pine Manor, a private four-year college in Brookline, Mass. that served mostly local first-gen and low-income students. Four years later, and located on the Brookline campus, Messina is following in the tradition of Pine Manor, as well as BC, whose Jesuit founders helped educate Boston’s immigrants, most of whom were Irish Catholic.&nbsp;



Fr. Erick Berrelleza, the founding Dean of Messina, said “human formation” is the mission that unites his college and BC as a whole. In the admissions process, BC recruits promising students perhaps short of qualifying for especially elite universities and standing to benefit most from Messina’s aid. All who finish the two years receive an associate degree from BC. Some will move onto a bachelor’s program. Others have the chance to get a feel for the undergraduate experience but may choose to move straight into their careers.



To fund tuition, Messina relies on federal and state aid but primarily BC’s contribution, including around $40,000 per student. (BC also put $35 million towards capital expenses to launch Messina.) This support distinguishes Messina from other associate programs, like traditional community colleges. Dr. Larry Galizio, President of the Community Colleges League of California, said there are constant funding issues within the system. Despite having the most low-income students, Galizio said, community colleges in California receive the least funding per student of any education sector in the state. “So it's just like the United States, where the people who have the most get the most.”



Messina tries to flip that theory. Through a mix of grants, loans, and work-study opportunities, the financial aid office meets 100 percent of demonstrated need. The same goes for BC’s four-year programs, although tuition there is nearly $70,000 per year, compared to Messina’s $30,000 (not including room and board). Those at Messina with the greatest need take out a maximum $2,000 loan. Everyone receives a free laptop and coverage for textbooks. If students end up transferring into a four-year program at BC, it will continue to meet their full need.&nbsp;



One condition to attend Messina is participation in summer courses. While building the residential community early on, this session gets students ahead on the 20 courses they need to take to graduate. Fewer classes during subsequent semesters help limit academic stress and offer more time for other activities amid the transition to college life.



Providing housing for all Messina students reflects BC’s core mission to teach to the whole student. “I think [formative education] happens in a residential environment,” Berrelleza said. Living on campus, students can get to know each other and staff and faculty in a way designed to identify anyone who may be struggling.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“It’s a big family,” said Maaz Shaikh, whose high school class was five times the size of his college one. “If I need help, I can reach out to whoever, and they would obviously help me.” He mentioned relationships with not only students but the student life administrators, dining staff, and janitors. Because the class size is capped at 100 students, there is little room to fall through the cracks.&nbsp;&nbsp;



If anything, Shaikh has had a “challenge with getting too much support,” he said, only half joking. Every time he passes the tutoring center, the director of student success checks in about how things are going for him. When Shaikh decided to change his major at the end of the first semester, he was able to set up a meeting and shift his entire schedule just days before the spring term.&nbsp;



He’s also been attending a weekly mentoring group and a similar forum called “Soul Circle,” run by his resident minister. In both settings, students share their issues, whether they are school-related or not. “I would say coming into college, I didn't really believe in that—that talking about my problems will make them ease off. But I would say I was completely wrong about it,” Shaikh said.



“In some ways, the least important part is the academic stuff,” Berrelleza said. “Even though they're doing that, and there's a tutoring center here… the most important work is just making sure we're responding to them and their needs as people.”&nbsp;



Yet the shared identity that bonds students at Messina’s Brookline campus can also be the barrier to feeling connected to BC’s main campus, a few miles away in Chestnut Hill, Mass. “It's a really good thing that all of us are first-gen because we all share the same goal of—I think of it as creating a legacy—of trying something new and helping out our families,” Shaikh said. “I would say that is the number one thing that motivates us all and brings us all together. Whereas if I go to Boston College and I just see a bunch of white people around me, it’s different. It's not the same.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“It's a really good thing that all of us are first-gen because we all share the same goal of—I think of it as creating a legacy—of trying something new and helping out our families.” 
</blockquote>



Students interested in transferring into a four-year bachelor’s at BC take a course on the Chestnut Hill campus during their second year. On the pre-med track, Shaikh is already attending class there. “It is very different when I go there. But I would say I don't get treated differently,” Shaikh said, adding that he’s “not a very picky person.” He also participates in a number of clubs in Chestnut Hill, including as Messina representative for the Undergraduate Government of Boston College and first-year representative for the Muslim Student Association.&nbsp;



All Messina students can engage in the spaces and extracurriculars in Chestnut Hill, except Division I sports, but some are more hesitant than Shaikh to do so. “For me, it’s easy to say, ‘Oh, we're the same.’ But I know some people on our campus usually either go home or stay at Messina [as opposed to visiting Chestnut Hill].” Because of his position in student government, Shaikh finds his fellow students approach him with their concerns about, in his words, “being this standalone campus that's mostly students of color.”&nbsp;



Other issues at Messina have been more logistical and easier to address. Early on, when Shaikh and his Muslim peers found they needed more room for prayer, Messina allocated a space. For next year, there are plans to address the lack of air conditioning during summer classes and add another shuttle to Chestnut Hill to accommodate the second and incoming class.&nbsp;



At this point, Berrelleza is focused on improving the existing Messina program, not growing it. Meanwhile, he’s taking calls from universities interested in implementing their own Messina-like work. Berrelleza encourages the effort but stresses the importance of replicating the residential element. “It's an investment. It's added resources to house and feed the students here, but I think it makes a world of difference for the type of education you can provide them.”



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“It's an investment. It's added resources to house and feed the students here, but I think it makes a world of difference for the type of education you can provide them.”
</blockquote>



As for Shaikh, who’s already started building a foundation in Chestnut Hill, his potential transfer to BC still presents questions. He wonders how his community at Messina, and the even smaller subset of students within it who want to pursue a bachelor’s at BC, will change, merge, or perhaps dissolve into a much larger campus. “Will I still be friends with the people that I'm not too close to over here? Or will I become closer friends with them because I know them more than everyone else?” he asked aloud.&nbsp;



“We'll see.”

BC’s Messina College

In the following excerpt of his upcoming white paper, Richard Miller, president emeritus of Olin College for Engineering, lays out key traits and behaviors of “good character” that correlate with wellbeing. Teaching these qualities in the classroom, Miller suggests, may help all students thrive in life and career. How exactly to “teach” character, however, is less straightforward and will require research. The full paper, out next week, will include a full list of references to all research invoked.



There is ample evidence from multiple sources that an array of attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs correlate well with wellbeing in life, both for individuals and for societies. These include traits long associated with good character including gratitude, generosity toward others, forgiveness, humility, integrity, honesty and trustworthiness. While it may appear that these elelements of character have lost their preeiminece in a society so seemingly tolerant of their absence, the connection of personal and collective wellbeing to character may help re-establish it as something worth teaching and practicing.&nbsp;



There are many questions here for higher education including whether character should be among the goals of transformational education approaches, which are strongly tied to outcomes such as belonging, agency, purpose and meaning. In many cases, the evidence on character and wellbeing comes from research in positive psychology, but other fields are also involved, including medicine, political science, economics, sociology, and public safety. While this evidence is largely from correlation and may not necessarily be causative, it indicates that there are many potential educational experiences within the character domain capable of producing enhancement to lifelong wellbeing.



However, this only intensifies the need for experimentation with different pedagogical approaches to determine if and how these characteristics may be successfully “taught” or inspired in student populations in ways that result in lasting wellbeing after the college experience. In general, this research will require diligent assessment with reliable metrics that are nationally normed. As we continue to track evidence of the impact of character on wellbeing, we do so within the context of it becoming dispensable at a time when it is most urgent.&nbsp;



Considering Life Goals.&nbsp;A recent survey of millennials found that over 80% list becoming rich among their major life goals, and another 50% of those same millennials list becoming famous as another major life goal. Apparently, there is also a strong belief among college students today that becoming rich and famous will lead to a good life. This is not new.



But scientific evidence from the Harvard Study of Adult Development—one of the most comprehensive studies in history—indicates that people who invest in long-term relationships based on trust, respect, and compassion have the highest levels of wellbeing throughout life—independent of wealth, fame, or other measures of success. On the other hand, wealth and fame are actually orthogonal to happiness.&nbsp;They don’t make you happy or unhappy.&nbsp;However, the&nbsp;pursuit&nbsp;of those things at the expense of pursuing human connection makes people less happy and less healthy.



As a result, promoting&nbsp;early&nbsp;conversations with college students about what it means to create a “good life” with long-term wellbeing is likely an important preliminary step in developing learning experiences in higher education that result in improvements in long-term outcomes for alumni. Educating students about the difference between dedicating oneself to accumulating wealth and fame—or, on the other hand, seeking life-long wellbeing, which has more dimensions—may be an important step that we can take to improve long-term outcomes. Students can’t address a problem they aren’t aware of.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Although there are several competent definitions of long-term wellbeing, the most accepted may be the one adopted by Gallup (after 80 years of research) that has been used in ranking the world’s happiest countries. It involves five dimensions: career, social, financial, physical, and community wellbeing. This longitudinal Gallup data provides the only available opportunity to explore the long-term impact of learning experiences we implement today. These are obtained by correlation studies with the Gallup data to extrapolate into future decades.&nbsp;&nbsp;



However, when reviewing the evidence for character and ethics in promoting wellbeing, the lack of available longitudinal data in this area from the Gallup surveys requires that we broaden our review and consider evidence from multiple sources. This evidence is included in the current summary to illustrate what we know about good character and ethical behavior as it correlates with wellbeing.



Gratitude.&nbsp;Research strongly suggests that practicing gratitude is associated with improved wellbeing and mental health.&nbsp;Gratitude is linked to increased happiness, reduced stress, and better overall emotional wellbeing.&nbsp;



Research indicates that gratitude improves wellbeing in several ways, including reducing stress and anxiety by&nbsp;lowering stress hormones like cortisol, leading to decreased anxiety and improved mood. Gratitude also can be shown to boost self-esteem and confidence by recognizing and appreciating the positive aspects of your life that can counteract negative self-talk and foster self-acceptance. Expressing gratitude further improves relationships by strengthening bonds and fostering positive interactions. Gratitude practices can promote relaxation and reduce worries, contributing to better sleep, while improving resilience. Finally, regularly expressing gratitude can shift your focus towards the good in your life, leading to increased happiness and contentment.



Altruism and Generosity. It is not difficult to find evidence for many elements that would be considered within “good character and ethical behavior” that correlate well with a good life—altruism and generosity, for example. Evidence shows that spending money on others promotes happiness. One widely cited study showed that spending money on others produced greater happiness than accumulating more money for oneself. In addition, it showed that participants who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those who were assigned to spend money on themselves. Another larger, more recent study reached the same empirical conclusion based on a sample size of more than 5,000 participants.&nbsp;



Extensive research on the science of generosity has been produced at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley. The research conducted and monitored there further confirms the positive benefits of engagement in altruistic activity and generosity on health and wellbeing in several dimensions.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Forgiveness. Research shows that forgiveness can promote wellbeing in several ways. For example,&nbsp;forgiveness can improve mental health by reducing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress.&nbsp;It can also improve self-esteem and promote a sense of flourishing. In addition, forgiveness can improve physical health by lowering blood pressure, improving cholesterol levels, and reducing pain.&nbsp;It can also strengthen the immune system and improve heart health. Forgiveness can also lead to healthier relationships and can be a form of coping that helps alleviate perceptions of stress.



Forgiveness interventions can be effective in promoting mental wellbeing. For example, one study found that participants who completed a self-directed forgiveness intervention workbook saw improvements in their ability to forgive, as well as reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms. Interventions in forgiveness can involve letting go of anger, resentment, and negative past events; realizing that the best revenge is no revenge; living in the present and learning from the past; hoping and planning for the future; and acknowledging the wrongdoer as a moral agent who has failed but respecting the perpetrator’s perspective.



Humility. Humility involves acknowledging one’s limitations, accepting feedback, and being open to learning from others without excessive pride or arrogance. Research suggests that humility is strongly related to increased wellbeing and mental health, including lower rates of depression and anxiety. Humility helps buffer the effects of stress on wellbeing, leading to lower levels of stress and anxiety. Humble individuals are more likely to have a realistic understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, leading to greater self-awareness.&nbsp;



Integrity.&nbsp;Though there are unlimited interpretations of the word, “integrity" is commonly accepted to refer to&nbsp;people who act with authenticity and honesty by speaking the truth; presenting themselves in a genuine way with sincerity; showing no pretense; and taking responsibility for their own feelings and actions.&nbsp;Research indicates&nbsp;that&nbsp;integrity promotes wellbeing&nbsp;by fostering trust, reducing stress, enhancing job satisfaction, facilitating healthy relationships, and fostering a positive organizational culture where employees can thrive. Furthermore, studies link “strong moral character” (i.e.,integrity) with reduced risk for depression, anxiety, and cardiovascular disease.



Honesty.&nbsp;Research and studies suggest that honesty significantly promotes wellbeing, both mental and physical. Honesty fosters trust and strong relationships. When you are honest, you build trust with others, leading to stronger relationships with friends, family, and colleagues.&nbsp;This trust is crucial for building healthy and supportive relationships, which are essential for wellbeing. Honesty reduces stress and anxiety, promotes self-esteem and self-acceptance, enhances mental and emotional wellbeing, improves physical health, and promotes openness and communication. However, there are situations in which being completely honest may result in hurting someone’s feelings, or in the case of speaking truth to power, might bring retribution.



Trustworthiness. Research indicates&nbsp;trustworthiness is strongly linked to improved wellbeing, both individually and within communities. Trust fosters a sense of safety and security, which is fundamental for mental and emotional wellbeing.&nbsp;When individuals trust others, they feel less anxious and more confident in their relationships and interactions. Trust promotes healthy relationships and social connections; contributes to better mental health outcomes; can improve physical health; is essential for building and maintaining healthy communities; and is particularly relevant in healthcare settings and in the workplace.&nbsp;In summary, trustworthiness contributes to a greater sense of security, belonging, and wellbeing, both for individuals and communities.



Influence on Community



Most of the evidence presented above is derived from studies of wellbeing in individuals that might result from attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs derived from good character and ethical behavior. However, there are similar correlations between these factors at the macro or societal level, too. Research shows that the social environment significantly impacts ethical behavior.&nbsp;Individuals are influenced by the norms, values, and expectations prevalent within their social circles, which can shape their perceptions of what is considered right or wrong. An illustration of the macro correlations is provided by comparing the list of the world’s happiest countries, determined by Gallup using their wellbeing index, with the list of the world’s most corrupt countries, as determined by the Corruption Perceptions Index published annually by Transparency International. It is striking that these rankings reveal an obvious inverse correlation across the globe between the happiest countries and the most corrupt countries. For example, Denmark and Finland are ranked at the top of the happiest countries by Gallup, and they are also ranked as the least corrupt countries in the independent ranking by Transparency International.



An Imperative for Higher Education



The evidence presented here makes clear that several elements of good character and ethical behavior are well correlated with enhanced health and wellbeing in both individuals and communities and society at large. These elements may therefore be considered candidates for introducing new learning experiences in higher education aimed at improving life-long wellbeing in college graduates. This opens the door to investigate faculty-driven innovations in higher education that are intended to promote the development of these characteristics in college graduates in hope that this will contribute to improved long-term outcomes for all enrolled students in the future.



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The evidence presented here makes clear that several elements of good character and ethical behavior are well correlated with enhanced health and wellbeing in both individuals and communities and society at large. 
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However, much remains to be determined. While there clearly are many new possible learning experiences that promise to enhance wellbeing, the magnitude of the impact of each of these—both immediate and long-term—is, as yet, undetermined. Some may prove to be more effective than anything that we know about at this point, but many others are likely to prove insignificant in improving wellbeing later in life, depending on how they are defined, taught, and promoted. The only way to determine this is through experimentation and assessment.&nbsp;



It is our hope that faculty at many institutions will take the lead in developing pilot projects and experiments to explore these issues and share their findings broadly so everyone may learn what works best. This includes not only experimentation with the core ideas behind the intervention but also the pedagogical process used to implement them at scale in a variety of academic institutions.



This will inevitably involve research and experimentation in pedagogical innovation. For example, it is not clear how to “teach” honesty and integrity so that these values and behaviors are internalized and treasured by all graduates for a lifetime. Assessment will play an indispensable role in guiding the process of developing these interventions to the point of demonstrated effectiveness. Only when effectiveness can be demonstrated by objective data shared with others can we be assured that programs are achieving their intended purpose. Ideally, the assessments will be based on nationally normed tools that correlate with long-term wellbeing, such as the longitudinal data developed by Gallup over decades of measurement in this area.



In making the case for the inclusion of character and ethics in higher education towards improved wellbeing, it would be careless not to state the context for which we make the argument. It is fair to say that each of the pillars we have explored here—including integrity, truth, humility, and altruism—are declining within the collective tissue of our society today. One example is the recent report of the decline of effectiveness of student honor codes at some of our best universities. The paucity of what character scholars call “moral exemplars” is particularly disturbing. The most effective defense against such erosion of character and ethics in society is provided by strong and consistent attention to character formation in the young. Higher education has an opportunity to help build character and instill ethical behavior in its students for the benefit of their long-term wellbeing and that of society overall.&nbsp;&nbsp;

More Reasons to Do the Right Thing

Willord Simmons is a student affairs professional whose career spans a range of institutions and functional areas. He is currently the project manager for student engagement at the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, where he oversees high-impact programs that support students exploring careers and interests in local government. At the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he is the lead teaching fellow for courses on college student development theory and student affairs practice. He is also a Ph.D. student in higher education at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where his research interests focus on student development, student success, and the multifaceted impacts of college on learners. 



As college students prepare to leave their institutions and brave the world, many are eager to sport their newly minted degrees after time spent engaging in self-exploration, discovery, and development. However, those who unknowingly attach themselves to their college success may spend subsequent years untethering their worth from the diploma hanging on their wall. Data suggest gay men may fall victim to this trend most and may be left alone to navigate the mental health fallout, which goes unnoticed by institutions focused on rewarding their high performance capabilities. Our colleges and universities should better understand their role in perpetuating this potentially harmful achievement cycle among high achieving, developing students. 



In an op-ed for The Washington Post, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/24/gay-men-academic-success-gender-gap-lessons/">Joel Mittleman</a>, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, explains that gay students in 2022 earned a bachelor’s degree at sixteen percentage points above the overall national average. While interesting in isolation, this achievement gap only widens when further analyzing the success rate of gay men in comparison to their straight counterparts. Mittleman reveals that gay men were 44% more likely to be degree recipients than straight men and 50% more likely to earn their doctorate degrees. This level of success is notable. Some may even find it inspirational. However, the reason behind such success must also be questioned. 



The development of gay men has been examined in recent years to make meaning of their orientation toward high achievement. In his 2012 book, The Velvet Rage, Dr. Alan Downs explores how gay men overcompensate to combat homophobia and the stereotypically masculine roles they often do not see themselves in. He found that gay men aim high in their career and life pursuits, as they develop into adults. Even earlier on, they often achieve greatly in their academic performance. Further supporting this compensational achievement notion, the “best little boy in the world” hypothesis initially surfaced in a seminal 1973 text of the same title by Andrew Tobias. In it, he recounts the method of deflecting attention by acting according to the norms he knew would be celebrated. By doing so, he would maintain his closeted queerness and collect accolades along the way.



Theorists and psychologists, like Downs and Tobias, bring forth an understanding of how gay men utilize their outperformance as a source of esteem they otherwise may not feel while being authentically themselves. Thus, the tie between achievement and oneself grows strong, especially the longer the men are closeted. Particularly for college students who are already navigating the tumultuous tides of identity development, the internalization of external pressures brought on by societal norms may result in added stress. Furthermore, these overcompensation strategies fueling academic pressure may only be exacerbating the already disproportionate levels of mental health challenges gay men report.



Key findings from the 2021 <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/26/lgbtq-students-face-sizable-mental-health-disparities">Proud &amp; Thriving Project</a>—a collaboration between the Jed Foundation and the Consortium of Higher Ed LGBT Resource Professionals— show that LGBTQ+ students experience higher levels of stress, loneliness, isolation, and hopelessness as compared to their heterosexual peers. These statistics are further substantiated in a study from the <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/lgbtq-college-decisions/">Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law</a> in collaboration with the Point Foundation, the nation’s largest LGBTQ scholarship fund. The results from the study reveal that fewer LGBTQ people experienced a sense of belonging in college compared to non-LGBTQ people and were over three times as likely to report that their mental health was not good most of the time, if at all, while in college. The mental health challenges of the LGBTQ+ population are not relegated to the college years, however. They are seen spanning the course of one’s lifetime. In 2018, the <a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/getmedia/a38e2def-6e1c-4b37-8c1a-d4f8ecb89c05/Mental-Health-Facts-for-Gay-Populations.pdf">American Psychiatric Association</a>reported that LGBTQ individuals were more than twice as likely to have a mental health disorder than heterosexual men and women in their lifetime. More specifically, gay men were observed as experiencing adverse mental health outcomes, including mood disorders, substance use, and suicide, more frequently than heterosexual men. 



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Perfectionistic ideals that gay men already face because of a society that does not always accept them are reinforced in the college environment, where GPAs and degree completion are prioritized.
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In concert, academic success rates, mental health data, and developmental theories paint a picture of the gay college student experience, a picture that, while still colorful, may look more muted in pigment. Perfectionistic ideals that gay men already face because of a society that does not always accept them are reinforced in the college environment, where GPAs and degree completion are prioritized. Though it is apparent that they are well-equipped to meet the academic expectations set before them, they must also harbor a great deal of resilience in the face of isolation, stress, and anxiety. With little to no acknowledgment of what may be lying beneath the shiny surface of good grades, student organization participation, and campus leadership, gay students are rewarded for their academic prowess and left to pick up the pieces of their strained mental health in the aftermath. Holistically speaking, this emotional labor presents an inequitable barrier to truly embracing both achievement and identity. This phenomenon is not the plight of gay men alone. Students from various marginalized backgrounds face similar pressures in different ways as they, too, strive for academic success.  



Higher education institutions have made progress in expanding their resources for LGBTQ+ students. Though being called into question more recently, these supports have provided visibility and community on campuses across the United States. While these spaces have served as bastions of acceptance, they simply are not enough to account for the unique mental health challenges that today’s college students face and the sustained impact of higher education. More attention must be given to high-performing students who may struggle to process their identity development separate from their achievements. While challenging, it is important for institutions to consider what tools, strategies, and mechanisms they have to support students who may not otherwise display signs of distress.&nbsp;



The induced achievement pressures that gay college students experience make their academic success a double-edged sword—both impressive and troubling. It also reveals an opportunity for reframing.&nbsp;How academic success is both defined and rewarded should be rethought. In doing so, institutions must make certain that they are not reinforcing the harmful perfectionist ideals that disproportionately affect marginalized groups. We should ask ourselves how we can support the healthy development of students while preparing them for what comes next so that they thrive while on our campuses and long after.&nbsp;

Success and Strain 

The first time Willow Clark had been outside of the United States she was as a second-year college student on a semester abroad in Costa Rica. Her experience there working for an indigenous women’s organization and living with an indigenous host family changed&nbsp;her life in ways she could not have imagined. It also gave her the confidence and the motivation to pursue a number of other experiential learning opportunities in her remaining years at Nazareth University, a liberal arts institution in Rochester, New York.



Clark will graduate from Nazareth next month having participated in 13 experiential learning programs,&nbsp;five of which were study abroad.&nbsp;As impressive as this sounds—and is—Clark’s experience with travel and service is the norm at Nazareth, where students begin experiential learning as early as their first year.&nbsp;&nbsp;



To Nazareth University President Beth Paul, what could be construed as a resume-stacking exercise at some schools is the path to personal growth at hers.&nbsp;“Experiential learning is at the core of what we do,” she said. “While it is still a ‘checkbox’ at many institutions, here it is a dominant form of learning.”



It has long been established that experiential learning (EL) in college, typically in the form of internships, study away and service learning, produces&nbsp;<a href="https://www.naceweb.org/career-development/internships/sparking-early-experiential-learning/">positive outcomes</a>, such as improved retention, engagement, graduation rates, and career preparation. Yet, despite the evidence, experiential learning has not been adopted as a fundamental pillar of higher education for a variety of reasons: it can be resource intensive; require extra work on the part of students and the school; and be intimidating for those who have not had much exposure to learning outside the classroom. The result is an uneven distribution of EL opportunities that are often limited to the privileged or the highly motivated.&nbsp;



Nazareth, on the other hand, felt the evidence of the benefits of EL was so compelling that it was the school’s moral responsibility to offer it to all students.&nbsp;To achieve this goal, the school has implemented a systemic approach to EL that addresses each of its typical barriers by integrating it into the curriculum, matching it to students’ interests, making it accessible to all students, and starting early.&nbsp;As reflected in the 2023 journal article, “<a href="https://www.naceweb.org/career-development/internships/sparking-early-experiential-learning/">Sparking Early Experiential Learning:&nbsp;&nbsp;Enhancing College Student Participation Through Support, Structure and Choice</a>,” Nazareth has “flipped the narrative” on experiential learning by making it the responsibility of the institution, not the student, and by offering it to everyone, including those who participate the least and may benefit the most.



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Nazareth felt the evidence on the benefits of EL was so compelling it was the school’s moral responsibility to offer it to all students.
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Experiential Roots&nbsp;



Nazareth’s intentionality around experiential learning is part of its DNA.&nbsp;Founded as a Catholic school by the Sisters of Saint Joseph in 1924, Nazareth University&nbsp;has been committed to EL as a way of living its mission “to serve neighbor to neighbor without distinction, to be of and for the times, and to work for progress.”&nbsp;As it celebrates its 100th&nbsp;anniversary, Nazareth is doubling down on these traditions and strengthening what it calls “change-maker education,” set forth by the Sisters of Saint Joseph.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We are a community of people who choose to work for progress,” said Paul.&nbsp;“Our education is helping students develop the capacity, the tools, the mindset, knowledge, and skills that will help them go out and make a positive difference in the world.”&nbsp;



“Nazareth is one of those places that is very true to its mission,” said Emily Carpenter, Nazareth’s associate vice president of experiential impact. Carpenter is well versed in the benefits of EL and other high-impact practices, having studied and published on the subject. She says there’s nothing more gratifying than seeing the evidence play out in real time on campus.&nbsp;



“Experiential learning at Nazareth is this beneficial spiral that helps our students feel like they belong,” she said.&nbsp;”It keeps them here. It helps them figure out what they want to do with their lives. ‘Am I going in the right direction, or do I need to change course?’ And it gives them the experience to become more confident and more willing to take on more opportunities for growth.”&nbsp;



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“Experiential learning at Nazareth is this beneficial spiral that helps our students feel like they belong."
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The school offers eight learner-centered pathways, including mentored research and community-engaged learning, designed to speak to students’ individual interests.&nbsp;A biology major may want to do research with a faculty member or mentor. A musician may choose to engage with a local performing arts organization. The backbone for this activity is The Center for Life’s Work, led by Carpenter, which offers a coaching model for all students that starts in their first year and goes beyond traditional career development to include navigating an array of experiential learning opportunities at Nazareth.&nbsp;



In 2010, Nazareth made EL part of the core curriculum, and many of its 60 majors have specific EL requirements. The intent is to strengthen the EL experience with credit-bearing courses and opportunities that are both curricular and co-curricular.&nbsp;Often, these active learning experiences are baked into courses. “You don’t have to sign up for it. You don’t have to pay for it,” said Carpenter. She pointed to one example of an English literature class in which students read the same books as incarcerated individuals in the community and discussed the material with them on Zoom.



“It was amazing to see how much they had in common.”&nbsp;



Providing the SPARK



In an attempt to address what the literature showed to be a participation gap in experiential learning, the school implemented an award-winning grant initiative in 2018 called Students Pursuing Academic and Real-world Knowledge (SPARK).&nbsp;Available to all first- and second-year students (as well as transfers) with a GPA of 2.5 or higher, the SPARK grant offers a $1,500 scholarship and tuition waivers to help cover costs for international experiences, unpaid summer internships, or mentored research—three among the eight EL pathways that often require more money and time.&nbsp;



SPARK was designed with both equity and early participation in mind. Carpenter says not all students embrace EL immediately, particularly first generation or low-income students who are less familiar with the concept, or students who are reluctant to step out of their comfort zones. SPARK grants cover a large portion of the program fees and flights associated with short-term programs, which the coaches in the Center for Life’s Work help identify. Early engagement in EL programs paves the way for additional involvement, leading to a cumulative effect of EL’s benefits and a job-ready repertoire of real experience come graduation.



&nbsp;“SPARK can literally be the nudge that students need to engage early,” Carpenter said. “Sometimes the student who does a short-term study led by a faculty member in the summer says, ‘I could totally go abroad for a semester, or I could absolutely take that internship in another city.’”



President Paul sees SPARK as central to Nazareth’s ethos.&nbsp;“At many institutions you have to wait until you graduate to make an impact in the world.&nbsp;Here you are working on real world problems right from the beginning.&nbsp;SPARK is the mechanism that allows for that.”&nbsp;



For many students at Nazareth, SPARK is the difference between getting in the game or sitting on the sidelines. And for these students, the win can be even greater. In her journal article, “Sparking Early Experiential Learning: Enhancing College Student Participation Through Support, Structure and Choice,”&nbsp;Carpenter reports on SPARK participation and outcomes overall and related to students from underserved backgrounds. The results show the value of even a small amount of incentive funding.&nbsp;



As of spring 2025, over 1,350 students participated in SPARK’s three pathways.&nbsp;Participation in total credit-bearing summer internships increased 125% in 2018, the year SPARK was introduced.&nbsp;Study abroad participation also jumped, with short-term programs increasing 157% in the first year.&nbsp;Underrepresented minority students comprised 15% of Nazareth’s total population at that time but made up 20% of SPARK participants.&nbsp;



The research also found that GPAs, retention rates, and graduation rates of SPARK participants were consistently higher than those of the non-SPARK participants, with the impact being particularly noticeable for underrepresented minority students. These students experienced a 42% bump in four-year graduation rates, and average GPAs increased from 2.68 to 3.32.



“This is consistent with the literature that says that when students from underrepresented backgrounds participate in high-impact practices, they benefit even more than their majority peers. Whatever all students are getting, they get an even bigger boost,” Carpenter said.&nbsp;



The SPARK program continues to maintain a 99% first-to-second year retention rate among participants. GPAs of SPARK participants average 3.5, compared to 3.1 for non-SPARK participants.



The Wellbeing Factor&nbsp;



According&nbsp;<a href="https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/resources/galluppurdueindex-report-2014.pdf">Gallup</a>, engaging in experiential learning and other high-impact practices, like having a mentor in college, positively influences a student’s wellbeing long after graduation.&nbsp;Carpenter hopes to validate this theory with her own data on Nazareth alumni, though doing so may take several years. Meanwhile, it is clear that Nazareth’s adoption of early EL experiences is part of the school’s wellbeing agenda—what President Paul calls “the student thriving strategy.”&nbsp;



“Experiential learning is a central part of learning to thrive,” said Paul.&nbsp;“You have to be able to open yourself up to new and different opportunities. You have to be able to take calculated risks. And you have to be able to see things from multiple perspectives.”&nbsp;



In addition to the EL requirement, Nazareth has a wellness requirement as part of its core curriculum. The requisite can be completed by taking a yoga class or being a member of a varsity sport—or students can take a course within their major that includes a wellness component. Unlike many schools that continue to delineate wellbeing from other departments, Nazareth has a Wellness Collective, led by Kim Harvey, the associate provost for student experience and dean of students, who reports directly to the provost.&nbsp;Harvey brought together a diverse group of administrators, academic deans, and student affairs professionals to consider how every department within the school is thinking about the wellbeing of students, faculty, and staff.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Using the ten dimensions of wellness that focus on areas such as financial, creative, digital, etc, we’re tapping into all of these individual aspects to help our students develop skills that they will use well beyond Nazareth in their future work,” said Harvey.



For Willow Clark, personal growth was a big part of what she gained from her EL experiences at Nazareth.&nbsp;As she heads into her final opportunity abroad—studying the Holocaust in Germany and Poland—she reflects on how what she’s experienced has impacted her wellbeing.&nbsp;



“When I think about my experience in Costa Rica, I would say it was the best and hardest three months of my life.&nbsp;It tested my mental health and my ability to relate to people.&nbsp;There was culture shock and stress.&nbsp;But ultimately, putting myself in that position made me stronger.&nbsp;And ever since then, I’ve really leaned into the idea of seeking that discomfort in my life because it is those experiences where I feel the most growth.”&nbsp;&nbsp;

Experience U

There were a thousand things different about them and one, at least, the same. They were nonprofit directors, HR officers, consultants, psychologists, journalists, researchers, quite a few university administrators, and even a college sophomore. All of them, it turns out, believe work should feel meaningful—maybe so they can be happier or help others be happy, maybe to boost their company’s bottom line or general productivity. Whatever the reason, around 150 of them from all over the country showed up in Lower Manhattan last week to explore bringing this vision to life.



The draw was the first annual conference of the <a href="https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/about/departments-centers-initiatives/purpose-and-flourishing">Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing</a>&nbsp;(IPF) on its home turf at New York University’s Stern School of Business. The theme of the March 27 event, “Purpose and Flourishing in the 5-Generation Workplace,” captures elements of the new initiative’s evolving focus, including wellbeing and career and an emphasis on the rising generation of workers. Just eight months since its founding, IPF is shaping up to be what might be called a think tank-plus, encompassing research, teaching, partnerships and events. And true to its business school sensibilities, it aims to translate theory to reality, bridging academia and practice.



“I love that this conversation can lead to actionable plans, programs, new ways of thinking, new ways of teaching,” IPF Director Suzy Welch said in her opening at the convening on Thursday. “We can help our young people, but also everybody, have ideas about how to find their purpose and live it and help organizations be a part of that process.”



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“We can help our young people, but also everybody, have ideas about how to find their purpose and live it and help organizations be a part of that process.”
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Suzy Welch, now a professor at Stern, unknowingly laid the foundation for IPF when she was still in school herself. Working as a crime reporter after college, she developed an interest in business journalism that led her to Harvard Business School. There, scholarship criteria had her studying around the clock to keep her grades up and debt down. “It made me an unpleasant student,” she said of her academic diligence. She remembered a peer chastising her for not attending a graduation party and, he told her, ‘not valuing fun.’ Incredulous at first, she started to wonder if he wasn’t right. Did she value fun? What did she value at all?



“I had no idea. I had never had those thoughts before,” she said. “I was growing up in a time where we did not sit around talking about those things, like what is the meaning of life, how do we flourish, what is purpose.” These new questions would guide her personal and professional life up to, and including, when she started teaching the class on them—literally. Before she launched the initiative, Welch designed a course called “Becoming You: Crafting the Authentic Life You Want and Need,” which she described as “a journey of self-discovery” and a chance for students to explore “a first cut at what their purpose might be.”&nbsp;



Students responded to the material, and “Becoming You” earned a waitlist of hopeful participants. But something was missing, Welch found. She wanted to push the ideas beyond the classroom and individual students. She envisioned uniting thinkers and leaders in not only academia but business and nonprofit spaces, who were already tackling these issues—purposeful work, effective leadership, productivity—but on their own. “There should be a sort of a center where we all get together and talk about this,” Welch told then-Dean of Stern Raghu Sundaram. He agreed, and so began the plans for IPF.



An important step in getting this project off the ground was the addition of Senior Associate Director Dustin Liu to the IPF team. Liu joined from Stanford University’s Life Design Lab, where he was the associate director. The Life Design Lab promotes the work of “Design Your Life” (DYL), a Stanford course teaching students how to apply design principles to figure out their values and plot their futures. DYL, Liu said, is centered on “developing mindsets and behaviors through a particular framework”—the DYL framework—whereas IPF is an “umbrella” exploring various frameworks across jobs and institutions.



Liu said to think of IPF’s focus as a two-by-two matrix: “individual purpose” and “individual flourishing” on one edge and “organizational purpose” and “organizational flourishing” on the other. Liu and Welch, like DYL, are interested in how to help students thrive. They also want to home in on how people’s wellbeing influences the wellbeing of their workplace, and vice versa. “Those of you who are academics in the classroom know that when you look into the faces of the students, there's a crisis,” Welch said at the IPF convening. “But it’s not just students.”



If the energy at the conference is any indication, IPF has identified a gap many are eager to help fill. The event brought into tangible focus the people IPF aims to connect and the concepts and practices they hope to promote. Audiences heard from, to name a few, a business professor about generational stereotypes that create divisions in the office where there could be alliances; a psychologist about the communication strategies that can cultivate more functional work relationships; and a corporate leader about management styles transforming employee productivity and retention. Many attendees worked in student-facing roles, and many within that group had a background in DYL. But not all.&nbsp;



Whatever experience they arrived with, these like-minded people, having found each other at last, filled the conference room with the joyful buzz of early morning introductions and boisterous chatter that lasted all day. They didn’t sound like a group that will be keeping what they learned to themselves.&nbsp;

Putting Purpose to Work

Ellise LaMotte, Tufts University’s Associate Provost for Student Success, knows how difficult college can be, particularly if you feel you don’t belong. Where she now works to connect all kinds of students with the support they need to succeed, she once felt utterly alone as a Black woman in a predominantly White, male field.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



LaMotte says the early setbacks she experienced as a first-year engineering student only made her more determined to make it in technology, business, and academia. After graduating from Northeastern University with an engineering degree, she spent years in telecommunications, earning a master’s and then a Ph.D., after working at Babson College. That led to a position at Olin College of Engineering, where she came full circle, realizing she had arrived at a position to make a difference in the STEM space for students, especially underrepresented ones.&nbsp;



In this interview for LearningWell, LaMotte discusses what motivated her to continually move forward in school and life, starting with her desire to make her parents proud.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Has education always been important to you?



LaMotte:&nbsp;Growing up in my household, I honestly thought there was a law on the books requiring everyone to attend college. That stemmed from my dad. He had a great work ethic and expected us to have the same. Our only responsibility was to work hard on our education. He was determined to ensure that my brother and I attended college and were going to be successful and self-sufficient.&nbsp;&nbsp;



So, my first motivation for attending college and pursuing advanced degrees was simple: to make my parents proud and to make sure I took advantage of their hard work.



As I grew older, I excelled in math and science—and, more importantly, I liked the subjects. The first time we dissected a cow’s heart, I was all in, and math was like a game I wanted to win. Everyone around me told me I could become an engineer and could make a lot of money. That advice led me to attend Northeastern University in Boston.



LW:&nbsp;What was that experience like?



LaMotte:&nbsp;It was very different. I grew up in Jamaica, Queens, New York, in a predominantly Black and brown neighborhood, and suddenly, I found myself in spaces where I was in the minority all day long—usually the only woman and the only black person. That change of environment started playing out in my head, reinforcing the messages I always heard:&nbsp;“You have to be twice as good. You have to work twice as hard.”



I was determined to succeed, but I didn’t know how. My freshman year was a disaster. I had never failed a class in my life, yet I failed physics. That alone was tough, but what made it worse was another physics professor, who was also my advisor, one day came over and asked me and the two other women in the class, “Why are you in my classroom?” Then, he flat-out told us, “You should go home to your moms and become nurses, or teachers.” Needless to say, I dropped the class.



LW:&nbsp;Wow. What got you through?&nbsp;



LaMotte:&nbsp;First off, my self-determination was strong. Second, I joined a Black women’s engineering sorority, Sigma Beta Epsilon, Inc., and I saw that these women, who were not much older than me and who looked like me, were succeeding in engineering. This was another piece of my how-to-be-successful puzzle. I now had mentors who said to me, “You can do this.” Fast forward to today, and these women are my friends who have become family. Other puzzle pieces I discovered from the sorority members were how to study, how to use my time wisely, and how not to be afraid of faculty office hours. And with this encouragement, I got a lot braver. In every class, I sat in the “power” middle seat in the front row. I thought to myself, “If you are going to ignore me, then you are going to ignore me intentionally.” There was no doubt that my motivation in college and afterwards stemmed from the mantra, “I’m going to do this because you think I cannot.”



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“I’m going to do this because you think I cannot.”
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LW:&nbsp;What did you do after college?&nbsp;&nbsp;



LaMotte:&nbsp;My first job out of college was with a telecommunications company, and compared to college, my experiences were similar. I was usually the only woman and only Black person in a management role. I supervised people who were older than me and who were mostly White men. One man said to me, “You are my granddaughter’s age. What can I learn from you?”&nbsp;&nbsp;Another time, I was told to change my hairstyle from braids, which I did not, potentially costing me future advancement. Through it all, I learned a great deal during my years in telecommunication, and these lessons learned shaped me professionally. However, I ultimately found the corporate world unfulfilling.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;How did you end up in academia?&nbsp;



LaMotte:&nbsp;I moved out of the corporate world into the non-profit space, supporting women entrepreneurs as they grew their businesses. I enjoyed creating initiatives and programs that directly support the dreams of others. From there, I found my way into higher education. I was finishing my Ph.D. in Education when I got an opportunity to join Olin College of Engineering, working for the provost as the director of academic services. Olin is a very creative place, where I found community and found I could get involved in initiatives on campus supporting students. I thought this is what I was meant to do—to support students in STEM who are underrepresented so they can shine. Over time, I wanted to be more student-facing, and that was the impetus for my move to Tufts University.&nbsp;



I would also like to add that I had many role models during my doctoral journey. My professors and in particular my dissertation chairperson Dr. Tara Parker were instrumental as I altered my motivation, from extrinsic to ones that were more intrinsic. I now set goals to satisfy my interests and passions, so I can focus on honing my skills to support students whether I am at work or in my community providing service.



So back to my Tufts University journey, my first role there as the Center for STEM Diversity director was a great experience and made me realize my goal was to provide support for a larger student population on campus. So that opportunity and others at Tufts grew into my current role as Associate Provost for Student Success, working directly with President Sunil Kamar, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives Marty Ray, and Vice Provost for Education Cigdem Talgar. In this role, I work collaboratively to develop initiatives and opportunities, so all Tufts students are succeeding and thriving, regardless of their backgrounds. We are always thinking and asking the question, “What programs or structures can we put in place to support students at varying levels so they can thrive?”&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;You’ve fulfilled so many of the goals that motivated you. I’m assuming you have made your family proud.



LaMotte:&nbsp;Oh yes. I mentioned my dad. He was my silent cheerleader, and my mother was my out-loud cheerleader. They were present for my college and graduate school graduations. My mom was present for my doctoral graduation. Even though my dad was not there physically, his spirit was, as he received a shout out from University of Massachusetts’ Chancellor Dr. J. Keith Motley during his welcome address. As for my own nuclear family, my daughter witnessed me working while attending school, and she has always been proud of me for my efforts. Thus, I believe I am a good role model for her. As for my husband, he supports me in whatever I want to accomplish, makes way for me to reach my goals, and says to me at every turn, “Just go for it.” So, I always do!

Influencers for Life 

Like today's future workforce, Dr. Michelle R. Weise is bound to hold numerous roles in her already accomplished career. The former college professor turned ed tech executive worked at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation before becoming the chief innovation officer of Strada Education Network's Institute for the Future of Work.



Weise is also the author of&nbsp;Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs That Don't Even Exist Yet. In it, she argues for reimagining how we train learners and earners for the prolonged careers that come with longevity, though not necessarily in ways one might think. In this interview for LearningWell, Weise talks about what little structure exists for us to gain the knowledge we will continuously need. She advocates for changes within post-secondary education and the workforce that will help align one's inner and outer lives and lead us to recognize our shared humanity in an increasingly isolated world.



LW:&nbsp;Your book suggests there are numerous jobs we might have in our lives. What has your own work life been like in that regard?



Weise:&nbsp;When I look back, I can see the stepping stones, but I didn't really plan any of this out. It was a lot of pivoting, learning new skills, and then taking that newly acquired knowledge and launching to the next thing. My first job was as a tenure-track English professor. That was supposed to be my job for life, but I realized early on that it didn't feel like the right calling for me. My first job outside of academia was for an ed tech startup that was helping service members transition out of the military into civilian careers. We were creating tools and services to help them translate their skills into the language of the labor market. Even though I didn't know it back then, that focus on learners' translation of their own skill sets has been a resonant theme throughout all of my work.



I ended up building out the higher education practice of Clayton Christensen's think tank on disruptive innovation. That was, as you can imagine, incredibly formative for my thinking, research, and exposure to every burgeoning innovation in ed tech and workforce tech. I've since built out various innovation labs for universities and have also worked with a wide range of stakeholders in the learn-and-work ecosystem and even created the Strada Institute for the Future of Work for Strada Education Network. All of these innovation and thought leadership roles have been focused on connecting post-secondary education more closely to the workforce.



LW:&nbsp;Could you define "long life learning" and what you think the implications of that are for the workforce?



Weise:&nbsp;Our lifespans are extending, and our work lives are getting longer. People are staying in the workforce at historically high rates, well into their sixties and seventies. There's been this conception that folks who are currently retiring only had a couple of jobs or maybe one job throughout their careers—the "gold watch generation"—but the data shows that's not true. Even our early baby boomers are retiring with an average of 12 job changes under their belts. So for the rest of us, we can expect many more job changes and pivots to come. For younger generations, that may mean maybe 20 or 30 job changes over a lifetime. For me, the simple mental model of a longer life and longer work life brings into sharp relief that we have no architecture, no infrastructure, no systems really set up to help us keep up with a rapidly evolving future of work.



So, the book is really my attempt to put the decades-old concept of lifelong learning into action by laying out how we can begin to invest in the on- and off-ramps we'll all need to move more seamlessly in and out of learning and work. How might we get just what we need and then keep moving along on the workforce highway without always having to make a tradeoff and forgo our wages in order to advance our education? What are the ways in which we can do this much more fluidly and in the flow of work?



LW:&nbsp;How can we begin to solve for that from both a preparation lens and a workforce lens?



Weise:&nbsp;I'll start from a curricular perspective. In an ideal world, we'd like to hire talented people whom we could trust in highly ambiguous circumstances. We'd like to trust that they'd take in various kinds of information, signals, and analyses, make sense of all that, and then use good ethical judgment to inform their decision-making process. It's a mix of both human and technical skills. We need people to be able to dance across disciplines, take ideas from another domain and use them in new ways. But it's very hard to train someone to do this unless we teach them how to really deal with ambiguity.



In order to do that, we can't keep teaching in silos. In our industrial learning complex, we silo everything we teach. We don't illuminate the ways in which disciplines interact and overlap. For me, the future of teaching and learning will center on purpose learning—orienting learners around solving a problem they care about like poverty, hunger, or climate change, and in the process of struggling with that larger challenge, they learn why certain principles and disciplinary knowledge are necessary. They also learn how to transfer and apply knowledge from one domain to another.



The refrain in higher ed is that we teach people how to fish, but we don't actually do this well. We teach people very specific content and problems&nbsp;within&nbsp;a discipline. We don't help our learners understand the coherence across a vast array of courses as a body of understanding.



At the same time, in order for our learners to thrive in an increasingly uncertain future, especially now in an age of AI, they're going to need to hone their human skills to complement the work of machines. The term "human skills" might make us think, "Oh, I'm human, I have these innate skills." Yes, but they require deep practice. And for older adults in the workforce, where do they go to practice skills like emotional intelligence, communication, and systems thinking? The lack of these human skills make themselves known in the workplace when there's friction, when there's an inability to build strong and collaborative teams. We also need to be thinking about how we build the right kinds of learning experiences for working learners to actually deepen their human expertise and their character skills.



LW:&nbsp;What role does the workplace play?



Weise:&nbsp;If you think about a T-shaped learner, it's having both those human broad-based skills and some technical or technological expertise. And if we return to the concept of a longer work life, we're not only going to have to deepen our human skills over time. We're also going to have to gain different kinds of expertise over time and get skilled up. Sometimes we're going to need that new knowledge in a very shallow way—just enough to be dangerous. Other times, it will require deeper engagement. We need to do this in an affordable way, within the flow of work.



In my book, I lay out five principles needed for a healthier learning ecosystem, and the fourth is this idea of integrated earning and learning. Right now, when someone's in the workplace and wants to skill up, we say, "Here's some tuition reimbursement money. Go do it on your own time on top of this full-time job or multiple part-time jobs and on top of your caregiving activities. Be self-disciplined." But we need to bring the onus for training back onto employers. It's not just on post-secondary education to solve this problem.



In 1979, we used to offer workers something like two and a half weeks worth of training for new skills. According to Peter Capelli, by 1995, that went down to less than 10 hours per year. But those 10 hours weren't even about building new skills for the future. It was for things like compliance training, risk mitigation, sexual harassment training, or discrimination training. When I was writing the book, Accenture had data that around 44% of employers had zero upskilling opportunities for their existing workforce. We have to begin to reimagine on-the-job training. Skilling people up has to be a shared responsibility about building skills for the future.



LW:&nbsp;You use the phrase "living a life worth working." How would you interpret that?



Weise:&nbsp;My work has been oriented around issues like career navigation, skills gaps, skills building, precision education, and automation and AI's impact on our careers. And at a certain point, I realized that something was missing. I call it "the soul of work," but it's this question of how do we align our inner lives with what it is that we do when we're making some sort of contribution in the world? This incredibly human element has been missing from all the trending discussions about the future of work.



One of the things that has been helpful for me as I've been studying the loneliness epidemic more is this understanding of the ways in which we're clearly searching for something more. I found this interesting data that in the US alone, the consumer wellness market has reached $480 billion a year. Globally, it's close to $1.8 trillion. People are paying for detox cleanses, intermittent fasting, and even bone broths. We're clearly in search of something, and this is happening along with the deterioration of our communities, family structures, and faith-based organizations. In the wake of all that, we're feeling like something is missing. There's some hole or aching need we need to fill.



And so when I talk about a 'life worth working,' it's not that we all have to suddenly drop what we're doing and pursue our passions. It's about how we actually find moments of real authentic encounters, even in what can sometimes feel like mundane work or even in some things that are not necessarily compensated as paid work. How do we find the small moments of encounter that give us that feeling of purpose and meaning in our lives?



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"When I talk about a 'life worth working,' it's not that we all have to suddenly drop what we're doing and pursue our passions. It's about how we actually find moments of real authentic encounters, even in what can sometimes feel like mundane work."
</blockquote>



And that is really tough because studies are showing that we're becoming more narcissistic and less empathetic. We are becoming so cloistered in ourselves that even small interactions are hard for us.&nbsp;



I was thinking about how there have been all these return-to-work mandates recently, and I think in the minds of management, they're thinking, "My people aren't being as productive as they should be, so I need to bring them back in-person, so I can watch them and make sure they'll be efficient and productive." Those water-cooler moments and those serendipitous moments of connecting are being hailed as a way to get to greater productivity and deeper collaboration. But what I think we're missing is that we need those moments of serendipity to actually build more of those small and authentic encounters because we have become so consumed with ourselves.



LW:&nbsp;Is this something we can teach or learn?



Weise:&nbsp;How to move towards this kind of service orientation and thinking about others rather than ourselves? I think it's really hard. Our entire system is set up to build super individual high achievers, and then suddenly learners graduate from college, and we expect them to be great team players. I've always been impressed by how [Olin College] grads go through 20 to 30 different team-based projects connected to the real world by the time they leave. Why aren't more schools doing this? It's a way for us to help learners deepen their human skills and practice teaming and collaboration. In addition, by focusing on larger problems, learners must engage in design thinking. And the first step is empathy to understand the challenge they're trying to solve for a company or an organization. They get to immerse themselves in acts of caring that are pointed away from themselves.



LW:&nbsp;You talk about human skills being an important part of mastering machines versus the other way around. What are your thoughts on the use of AI in higher education?



Wiese:&nbsp;People are getting really fearful about the use of AI, but instead of thinking about how it can replace humans, we should be leveraging this technology to fix a super unsexy problem: stitching together incredible amounts of data across our higher ed and workforce systems. We have so much data in various silos and legacy systems, and we don't know how to tap into it all. GenAI gives us a way forward.



Think about how retail companies have built virtuous loops of information about us as consumers. Amazon's doing randomized control trials on us every few seconds. In higher ed, we need to get smarter about our own people, our own prospective learners, to be able to offer them something that really taps into a pain point in their work lives.



This is where I see real potential for AI in higher education.

"Living a Life Worth Working"

Higher education has long debated its role in character development. Religious schools, secure in their subjectivity, have made producing people of good character part of their core mission. But for public universities serving diverse populations, the entire concept can be fraught, starting with the language itself. How are we defining character? And should values and principles be part of a student’s education?&nbsp;



Arizona State University appears to have threaded the needle on character education with an initiative called&nbsp;<a href="https://pi.education.asu.edu/">“Principled Innovation”</a>&nbsp;– a framework for ethical decision-making that can be used by individuals or in community settings. It is based on “pro-social” values that lead to defendable outcomes like “what’s good for humanity” without being overly prescriptive.&nbsp;Under the leadership of President Michael Crow, ASU has added Principled Innovation to the list of design aspirations that drive the university, calling it “the ability to create change guided by values and ethical understanding.”



Ted Cross is ASU’s Executive Director of University Affairs and Crow’s point person for the roll-out of Principled Innovation.&nbsp;He says character education is best understood as a reflective process that enables students to flourish – in a way that is flexible and individualized.



“We want people to improve themselves,” said Cross. “Positive psychology has a take on that; philosophy has its own angle. We packaged all of that into an inter-disciplinary approach that helps faculty, staff, and students ground decisions and actions in values and character.”



Informed by the Jubilee Centre’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/character-education-/the-jubilee-centre-framework-for-character-education-in-schools/">Framework for Character Education in Schools</a>&nbsp;at the University of Birmingham, Principled Innovation includes four domains of practice – Moral, Civic, Performance, and Intellectual – each of which encompass certain character “assets” or virtues meant to guide one’s ability to&nbsp;create positive change in the world. ASU’s institutional commitment is expressed through Principled Innovation as a guiding principle, while the practice of Principled Innovation is supported through a pedagogical approach, engaging tools and resources, communities of practice, and curricular and co-curricular activities.&nbsp;



Building the Framework



The design lab for Principled Innovation was ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. In 2017, the dean of the college, Carol Basile, was&nbsp;concerned&nbsp;by the&nbsp;state&nbsp;of K-12 education systems and decided to change things from the inside out&nbsp;–&nbsp;through addressing the education workforce and teacher and leader preparation. She came to the conclusion that to do so, character education needed to be included. To understand how, she enlisted Cristy Guleserian, a colleague at the college who is now its Executive Director of Principled Innovation.&nbsp;



“We asked ourselves, ‘What could it mean for a college of education at a public university to integrate a character education framework into the systems of teacher and leader preparation?’ said Guleserian. “In having these conversations, we realized it couldn’t just be integrated into a curriculum to teach future educators about character. It had to be our approach to everything we do and something that we embraced as a college community.”&nbsp;



With this as their north star, Guleserian and her team worked intentionally with faculty, staff, students, and community partners and eventually incorporated the practices and assets of what would become Principled Innovation into everything they did, from fostering culture and environments to teaching, advising, and student services. But getting to an agreed-upon understanding of what all this would look like involved cultivating authentic relationships through a series of one-on-one discussions and all-college design sessions – a process Guleserian described as equal parts invigorating and challenging.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“There was a lot of skepticism at first&nbsp;–&nbsp;a lot of questions about whose character, whose values, and whose virtues we were talking about. I remember spending about an hour going back and forth about one word,” she said.



In one of the sessions, a participant offered what would be a break-through in the log jam. “We need to ‘ASU-ize’ this,” he said. The&nbsp;group understood him to mean “co-create” a concept that more explicitly reflected ASU’s diverse community and well-publicized mission.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We recognized that innovation is at the core of what we do here at ASU and our charter holds us responsible for being inclusive for the well-being of the communities we serve. So the framing of Principled Innovation was born from that shared purpose,” said Guleserian.



The framework is intentionally flexible. In an essay for the book&nbsp;The Necessity of Character, ASU President Michael Crow and Ted Cross write, “By refusing to adhere to a&nbsp;single&nbsp;philosophical or religious worldview, ASU has made room for students to draw on their different backgrounds as they engage with our character education initiatives.&nbsp;Only by remaining flexible in this way have we been able to secure ‘buy-in’ across the university.”



At a research university known for outside the box thinking, Crow has made innovation part of ASU’s nomenclature. But the decision to include it in the title was more than just good branding. Principled Innovation proposes the notion&nbsp;that “just because you can innovate, doesn’t mean you should,” reflecting a growing national movement to infuse character into the critical actions of scientists and others in the innovation community.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



When asked if there could be “Unprincipled Innovation,” Cross said “definitely.”&nbsp;



“It’s not enough to be innovative if you don’t innovate with purpose and principle. It’s not enough to help people learn how to make a good living if we’re not helping them learn how to live good lives, whatever that means to them,” he said.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“It’s not enough to be innovative if you don’t innovate with purpose and principle. It’s not enough to help people learn how to make a good living if we’re not helping them learn how to live good lives.”
</blockquote>



Principled Innovation in Practice



Building on the work of Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College (now called College for Teaching and Learning Innovation), Principled Innovation is currently practiced in ten colleges at ASU, including the W. P. Carey School of Business and the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions, as well as the Office of the Provost and Educational Outreach and Student&nbsp;Services. All of this work uses the framework&nbsp;and assets for reflective practices and community practice that lead to positive change.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The framework asks, ‘What are some of the possible intended or unintended outcomes of the decisions we make and how can we mitigate some of the possible negative consequences before we take action?’” said Guleserian.



A good indication of how the framework may influence ASU’s pedagogy is the launch of the Principled Innovation Academy, which is housed in University College. The curricular program&nbsp;involving human-centered problem-solving methods and team pitch competitions has already engaged with 750 students.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Cross calls the program “shark tank meets design thinking meets character education,” where students create and pitch ideas using the Principled Innovation framework. Last year’s winner was a career recommendation engine for students that works by asking them questions like, “What are your work values? What are your personal values? And how would that map to your career?”&nbsp;



It is clear that the careful work that went into developing Principled Innovation at ASU helped propel it from a concept within one school to a major design principle for the entire university. But for advocates like Cross and Guleserian, the buy-in it has received at the country’s largest public university says something about the times we are in.&nbsp;



“The U.S. is so deeply divided that we are talking past each other,” said Cross. “There’s a lot of anger and aggression and mistrust. But if we can engage multiple perspectives in the way we design and create things, the way we teach and collaborate, it helps us to develop environments of trust and belonging.”

Principled Innovation 

Sukhwant Jhaj, Vice Provost for Academic Innovation and Student Achievement at Arizona State University, spoke with Dana Humphrey, co-host of Invented Here, about ASU’s Work+ program, a bold and transformative initiative redefining how we think about student employment. Sukhwant shares how Work+ evolved, its impact, and the lessons he’s learned in bringing the initiative to where it is today. Learn more about the Work+ Collective here: <a href="https://theworkpluscollective.asu.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://theworkpluscollective.asu.edu/</a>.



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Invented Here

Maggie Messina graduated from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 2022. She works in Private Client Business Development at Cambridge Associates in Boston. Here is her response to the question: “What experience or person in college most influenced your development as a human being?”



College is a formative experience for all. It’s a time when you leave the safety of your hometown, the friends you’ve known forever, and all that is familiar to you. Amidst the unfamiliar faces and places, you begin to search for belonging. For me, during my first two years of college, an unexpected yet incredibly meaningful place of connection was the dining hall.&nbsp;



At the heart of my dining hall experience was Derek, the welcoming presence at the swipe station. Derek wasn’t just the person who checked my student ID as I walked in—he became a constant source of positivity and encouragement during my transition to college life. As a freshman finding my footing, Derek always greeted me with an enthusiastic high five and hello. During the whirlwind of sorority rush week, he congratulated me when I got into my top-choice sorority, Tri Delta, even throwing his hands into a triangle to represent it everytime I walked through the doors wearing all my new merch.&nbsp;



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Derek wasn’t just the person who checked my student ID —he became a constant source of positivity and encouragement during my transition to college life.&nbsp;
</blockquote>



But it wasn’t just the celebratory moments that made Derek special—it was the way he showed up for me during the tough times. When I felt homesick or defeated by a bad grade, Derek was there with encouraging words and a hug that always made the day seem a little brighter.&nbsp;



What I learned most from Derek is that kindness matters. Small gestures—like smiling and waving at someone as they pass, holding the door open for a stranger, or offering a pencil to your classmate when they forget—can have a ripple effect far beyond what we can see. Today, as a young professional, I strive to embody that same sense of kindness. It’s one of my current firm’s values, and I take pride in representing it every day.&nbsp;

Influencers for Life

There is finally some better news about student mental health: this year’s <a href="https://healthymindsnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/HMS_national_report_090924.pdf">Healthy Minds Study</a> shows for the second year in a row a drop in depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation among college students. While the overall rates remain alarmingly high–more than a third of students say they struggle with mental health issues–this two-year decline suggests that increased pre- and post-Pandemic <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2023/04/11/survey-college-presidents-upbeat-despite">attention and support</a> may be making a difference.



More robust services alone, however, will not solve the student mental health crisis. I’ve witnessed it up close, as a faculty member and administrator at Bennington College, and at a remove, as a higher education program officer at Endeavor Foundation. It is very real. A college is not a treatment center, nor can it reasonably provide everything that students and their families require as they grapple with a tangle of issues.



Colleges and universities must simultaneously reinvest in the most powerful educational contributions that college can make to fortify student mental health: helping students discover their purpose and see beyond themselves.



Finding purpose–once understood as a primary aim of college–has been steadily squeezed out by the gradual and insistent equating of education and career preparation. Intense pressure for return on an ever more <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cost-us-universities-wildly-expensive-education-tuition-fees-america-2024-3">costly investment </a>has changed the face of U.S. higher education. The liberal arts, in particular, which emphasize discovery of self and the world, continue to strain under perceived lack of relevance to careers, despite<a href="https://stradaeducation.org/report/the-real-long-term-outcomes-of-liberal-arts-graduates/#:~:text=Liberal%20arts%20graduates%20have%20high,than%20workers%20with%20less%20education."> plentiful evidence </a>to the contrary. Unsurprisingly, the study of the humanities, the lifeblood of the liberal arts, is in precipitous<a href="https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-the-number-of-college-graduates-in-the-humanities-drops-for-the-eighth-consecutive-year/"> </a><a href="https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-the-number-of-college-graduates-in-the-humanities-drops-for-the-eighth-consecutive-year/">decline</a>.



Further, we are compelling youth to determine ever earlier what they will study. Uncertainty has become a proxy for the waste of time and money. But many teenagers do not know what they want to do and–crucially–have not had enough exposure to the possibilities to make such determinations. College is meant to foster this developmental process through exploration and the ignition of interests and passions. This discovery has long been advanced by the liberal arts as essential to well-being, in service of both the student and civic and social good.



A recent <a href="https://8ce82b94a8c4fdc3ea6d-b1d233e3bc3cb10858bea65ff05e18f2.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/6a/c6/dd4610d942e58053e781c106654d/walton-gallup-gen-z-happiness-report-032724.pdf">Gallup survey</a> found that the happiness and satisfaction of Generation Z is directly linked to the belief that their life has significance. Yet, today, more and more students are making the choice of a major based on the salary that related jobs command, rather than freely choosing the fields they are most drawn to making their own. Across higher education, the number of bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences, engineering, health, and business has more than <a href="https://ktvz.com/stacker-money/2024/07/30/stem-is-the-new-liberal-arts-the-changing-trends-of-college-majors/">doubled over the past ten years</a>.



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the&nbsp;content&nbsp;of higher education is shrinking, and with it a primary pathway to finding well-being through fulfillment.
</blockquote>



Declines in arts and humanities majors are leading, on a macro level, to <a href="https://stradaeducation.org/report/the-real-long-term-outcomes-of-liberal-arts-graduates/#:~:text=Liberal%20arts%20graduates%20have%20high,than%20workers%20with%20less%20education.">consolidations and cuts of disciplines</a> at all but the best resourced institutions. Concurrently, liberal arts-focused colleges are <a href="https://www.highereddive.com/news/how-many-colleges-and-universities-have-closed-since-2016/539379/">disappearing</a> at a steady clip. Both dramatically and quietly, the content of higher education is shrinking, and with it a primary pathway to finding well-being through fulfillment.



The contraction of the liberal arts and humanities is also robbing students of opportunities to understand what it means to be human. While there is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/smartphones-social-media-mental-health-teens.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&amp;referringSource=articleShare">debate</a> as to whether the youth mental health crisis can be directly attributed to social media addiction and technology use, there is also widespread acceptance that both have radically changed how young people know, experience, and respond to the world. A stunning portion of teen’s social interactions are mediated by tech companies, their time displaced in the repeating reels of Tiktok and Instagram. The development of broad perspective, something at the heart of the liberal arts and humanities, is critical to releasing them from this algorithm.



Students need the span of knowledge, breadth of understanding, and portals to past human experience that a liberal arts orientation offers, whether at a small college or a large university, both for themselves and for society. Such far-reaching intellectual anchoring nurtures the ability to wrestle with the large, open questions that frame our existence and situate ourselves within them, individually and collectively.



Disciplines such as literature, history, and the arts are sourced from the human condition itself and particularly suited to opening the mind to new ways of understanding it. At the same time, to combat social isolation, students need common curricular experiences and co-curricular opportunities for engagement, debate, and dialogue. They need to be able to locate their very different individual selves as part of something larger, together.



But general education, the vehicle for delivering common content, has lost its vitality over time, weakened, in part, by demands for greater career preparation. Even at liberal arts institutions, core curricula—rendered fraught by decades-long political and ideological debates about their makeup—now largely privilege individual choice over shared, common experiences. As a result, students have fewer bridges to each other through common historical and societal knowledge, when what they need are more and stronger ones. Recognizing the opportunity to rebuild their educational frameworks around understanding of our shared humanity is one of the most significant steps that colleges and universities can take to strengthen student mental health.



At Endeavor Foundation, we are supporting<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/endeavor-foundation-launches-national-collaborative-to-address-mental-health-crisis-on-college-campuses-302068166.html"> a project </a>at eleven small liberal arts colleges to do exactly that through collaborative efforts. Together, these colleges are infusing the personal and intellectual discovery they catalyze with new forms of support and inquiry. They are introducing initiatives to help students metabolize stress and build resilience, as well as bolster their real-time connection to others and draw out purpose through their studies. And they are helping students identify, prepare for, and secure future <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2024/07/17/teach-students-find-meaning-their-work-lives-opinion">work</a> born of what matters to them.



There is no doubt that policy makers and educational leaders must address the skyrocketing cost of higher education. Students, most especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, can no longer be left with crippling debt or, worse, excluded from the very social mobility that college promises and–ultimately–delivers. At the same time, we must reset the narrative that career preparation is college’s main function and re-value students’ future mental health as an equally vital outcome.







Isabel Roche is the Executive Director for Special Programs in Higher Education for the Endeavor Foundation.

A Way Forward

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In a season filled with political one-uppmanship, the word "weird" has become a catch phrase for all things suspicious or “dodgie,” effectively putting a spotlight on views outside the mainstream. The highly politicized attacks on higher education might well fit into this same category, considering the fact that the many criticisms against colleges and universities are, indeed, bizarre and unsupported by the majority.



While the most aggressive denunciations of higher ed are catnip for the media and burrow into the public consciousness, many of these criticisms come from a vocal minority. Even some of the most politically charged topics, where one might suspect the arguments to have persuaded a larger share of the public, aren’t producing these outcomes. Consider the aggressive anti-DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) stance that has gripped the attention of the media and the public: despite the buzz, banning programs that help students feel they belong on campus is incredibly unpopular. Only 27% of Americans, and less than half of Republicans, oppose DEI initiatives in colleges, according to a 2023 <a href="https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/45414-how-americans-feel-regulation-public-universities">YouGov poll</a>. The same goes for controlling what subjects students can learn in college, another pervasive yet unpopular battle cry. Only 33% support government regulation of public college professors' classroom speech, according to a separate <a href="https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/44070-americans-oppose-laws-regulate-professor-speech">YouGov poll</a>.



The reality is that most of our friends and neighbors still want their kids to go to college, where they hope they’ll grow personally and intellectually, finding a sense of identity, agency and purpose that sets them up to flourish throughout their lives. It's time to embrace the fact that, despite its flaws and the genuine need for improvement (particularly in affordability), college remains a positive force for young people and society at large.



Also, in the realm of the “weird” is the notion that college exists solely for skills training and job placement, an idea that doesn’t align with the wants of students, their families, or employers. According to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2016/10/06/5-the-value-of-a-college-education/">Pew Research Center</a>, 73% of college graduates with two- or four-year degrees found their degree very or somewhat useful for both personal and intellectual growth. Additionally, 90% of employed adults emphasized the importance of interpersonal skills such as patience, compassion and getting along with people to their work – attributes cultivated by a well-rounded college experience that includes mentorships, teamwork, and applying what is learned in the classroom to real world problems. <a href="https://hiring.monster.com/resources/blog/future-of-work-2021-summary/">Monster’s Future of Work</a> report highlights that employers value dependability, teamwork, flexibility, and problem-solving – skills often honed through a well-rounded education.



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To&nbsp;reassert the value of the college experience and restore public trust, we must provide the type of higher education experience that people want.
</blockquote>



Just as the idea that higher education should simply deliver skills is out of step with the American public, so too is the belief that college is no longer worth it. <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/varying-degrees-2024/">Polling</a> shows that 75% of people believe there is a good return on investment in a college degree, and nearly 70% say a close family member needs at least an associate’s degree for financial security. In a 2024 <a href="https://www.gallup.com/analytics/644939/state-of-higher-education.aspx">Gallup-Lumina pol</a>l, 94% of adults said at least one type of postsecondary credential is “extremely valuable ” or “very valuable.” Moreover, <a href="https://health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/social-determinants-health/literature-summaries/enrollment-higher-education">research</a> shows that higher education is linked to improved health and wellbeing, including reduced risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, anxiety, and depression. College graduates exercise more, drink less, and are more likely to seek preventive healthcare. They report higher levels of self-esteem and job satisfaction than high school graduates who do not go on to earn higher education degrees.



But just as the data show we cannot believe all of the anti-higher education rhetoric, we must not ignore that people are upset with the sector, and for valid reasons. We must address the affordability issue, a major driver of the anger and frustration directed at colleges and universities. And we must work harder to make a stronger case for the value of higher education on human development, workforce development, and society overall that can be embraced by Americans of all viewpoints. Forty-five percent of Americans believe colleges and universities have an <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/02/01/colleges-and-universities-k-12-public-schools/">overall negative impact on the country </a>– this in spite of the data showing that college graduates are more likely to vote, volunteer, donate to charities, join community organizations, and participate in educational activities with their children than non-degree holders.



Rather, to reassert the value of the college experience and restore public trust, we must provide the type of higher education experience that people want: one that fosters personal and intellectual growth, offers a transformational experience, and lays the foundation for a lifetime of flourishing.



Dana Humphrey is the Associate Director of the Coalition for Transformational Education. The Coalition for Transformational Education is a group of leaders in higher education dedicated to evidence-based, learner-centered education that lays the foundation for wellbeing and work engagement throughout life. Through assessment, collaboration, and best practice-sharing with our member institutions, we strive to inspire the academy to prioritize lifelong wellbeing.

The “weird” attack on higher education

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Around 2021, administrators at the University of Utah discovered an unsettling pattern while reviewing student data: In an effort to satisfy requirements and pass some mandatory courses, some students had needed to retake a class five, ten times, or more. In one example, administrators found that a student had spent over $50,000 taking a single math course. These repeated attempts went unflagged because academic advising and course tracking systems were siloed instead of fully integrated across departments. In effect, when it came to the university body, one hand didn’t know what the other was doing—and neither one was reaching out to the student struggling with the path toward graduation.



The revelation brought into focus the number of students struggling with key courses without sufficient support or intervention. But more broadly, it illuminated a systemic disconnect: a lack of coordination between advising, academic support, and course scheduling, which was likely contributing to Utah’s unsatisfactory retention and graduation rates. The path towards a solution was paved with integrated technology and data transparency.



“University policy hadn't been updated in over 30 years and was kind of adrift, just stacking additional credits on top of requirements. No one had made the case about how that impacts degree completion, how that impacts debt, and tying those things together in a really simple, clear way,” says Chase Hagood, vice provost for student success, who was hired in 2021 to be part of the new initiative’s leadership. “But not everyone was behind the open sharing of data. What does it take for a whole university to come together to say, ‘We believe in the exceptional educational experience. What is it going to take to get us there?’ We joined the Innovation Alliance, and the Coalition for Transformational Education, and getting in those peer groups helped elevate the work we do.”&nbsp;



University leaders recognized the need for a more integrated, proactive approach, beginning with more democratized data. Within two years—and the addition of a new president and provost—this recognition had become forged into a commitment, leveraging EAB’s Navigate360 as the CRM platform to connect the campus. This became the tech muscle behind Navigate U, a 2024 university-wide initiative aimed at improving metrics of student success, including retention and graduation rates. Utah is banking on software and data analysis to follow individual student performance, flag potential issues, and introduce&nbsp;&nbsp;interventions—and on the horizon, even track behavior trends.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Eight Pillars and Key Features



University leadership recognized that existing approaches had "topped out" their effectiveness at steering 32,700 students toward their graduation goals. A new comprehensive strategy was needed, one that put the data capabilities to work under pillars of priorities, each with key features of innovation. The pillars of Navigate U were designed to bring together student support services, streamline policies, and integrate data systems to provide real-time insights into student progress through a structured, coordinated, more supportive approach.



“This whole Navigate U method is about looking at the institution and figuring out how we can prepare as clear a pathway as possible to help the student through here in four to six years,” says&nbsp;Brandon Johnson, senior associate dean of student success and transformative experiences. “By asking those questions, we stop blaming the students. We stop blaming high school for lack of preparedness. If we admit a student into the university, we should do everything possible to make sure that they are as successful as they want to be.”



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"If we admit a student into the university, we should do everything possible to make sure that they are as successful as they want to be."
</blockquote>



One key feature of Navigate U is its proactive advising system.&nbsp;Previously, students often had difficulty knowing where to go for guidance, as advising structures varied across colleges. Some students had clear academic roadmaps, while others struggled with course selection and degree planning. Navigate U introduced a centralized approach, ensuring that all students are assigned an advisor with clear, standardized expectations for advising practices. Advisors now have access to real-time student data, allowing them to identify students at risk of falling behind and intervene earlier.&nbsp;



Another feature is the data integration and early alert system.&nbsp;In the past, crucial information about students—such as course performance, attendance patterns, and engagement with support services—was scattered across different departments. Navigate U centralizes this data through the EAB Navigate platform, enabling faculty and advisors to monitor student progress more effectively. This system can flag students who may need extra support, whether due to failing grades, repeated course withdrawals, or financial concerns. It connects students to resources like tutoring, coaching, and peer mentoring programs. It also promotes student engagement, recognizing that a strong sense of belonging is critical for success. First-year transition programs, on-campus housing opportunities, and community-building efforts have been expanded to support this goal.



Course availability has also been a major focus of Navigate U. Many students faced delays in graduation because required courses were either full or not offered frequently enough. The initiative introduced a strategic course scheduling system, using data to predict demand and ensure essential classes are available when students need them. Additionally, the university implemented new guidelines for course enrollment thresholds to spur the scheduling of courses based on historical data and anticipated demand, and identify courses with high demand to consider opening additional sections.



“One of the things with no institutional policy was monitoring thresholds,” says Hagood. “You might be running a class with six students over here, but in another college—or even within the same college—maybe a department head says,&nbsp;‘No, you have to have at least 15.’&nbsp;We had no across-the-board guidelines to help deans make the best use of resources and kind of press them to think about it. It wasn’t good for faculty, and it wasn’t good for students.”



The pillars also target academic wellness, engagement, transitions, and financial structures.



Goals and Metrics&nbsp;



Graduation rates are a particular area targeted for improvement. At present, the six-year rate is around 66% (a previous peak of 70% declined during the COVID-19 pandemic). By addressing obstacles such as course bottlenecks and repetition, outdated policies, and inconsistent advising, the initiative aims to see 80% of students completing their degrees in six years&nbsp;by 2030.&nbsp;



In tandem with this is the goal to increase the rate of retention. Currently, about 85% of first-year students return for their second year. With enhanced advising, course availability, and academic support, the university aims to raise this to 90% or higher, aligning with top public research institutions.&nbsp;



The goals extend beyond graduation. With an improved focus on career readiness and job placement, Utah seeks to ensure that 90% or more of graduates secure employment or enroll in graduate school within six months of completing their degree. This effort includes strengthening connections between academic programs and career services, expanding internship opportunities, and incorporating career development into students’ academic experiences.



In tracking these key metrics and continuously refining its strategies, Navigate U&nbsp;intends&nbsp;to create a more efficient, supportive, and results-driven approach to student success. And with a new kind of tracking under development, the school hopes to gain a clearer picture of each student’s academic journey in order to provide targeted assistance before small setbacks become major obstacles.



The enhanced tracking aims to put more points of data into profiles to build a more comprehensive picture of the student life cycle: where they’re going, and where they’re not.&nbsp;



“The next phase is working out how we incorporate swipe data from student affairs and event attendance, and then we can start to see this really interesting profile of the student. Are they using the library? Did they go to a coaching appointment? Did they meet with their advisor? Do they attend sporting events?” says Johnson. “If we start to see some gaps, we can launch some outreach to a student because we’re seeing them not only&nbsp;notengaged in some of these academic support resources, but they’re not engaging in campus life and wellness and belonging-fostering activities and events.”&nbsp;



If a student had been missing class, for example, administrators could use their swipe history in the residence halls, dining halls, and gyms to get a picture of where they’re spending their time. And if they see the student is spending a lot of time swiping into the Student Union, they can send a coach, advisor, or mentor to informally reach out to them there.&nbsp;



“The more we know about our students and how best to support them, the better it is for the student,” says Johnson. “I would love a day when we can create a spider web profile like you see on some of those career and personality assessments with different indicators and quadrants. You can see if it’s low or heavy in one area, then we can act on the areas that need to be filled in.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Johnson believes one of the greatest behind-the-scenes benefits of the Navigate U work might be the introspective thinking it encourages in faculty and administrators. It’s hard to look at a longstanding practice with fresh eyes if it isn’t considered broken. But that, he says, is where the work happens.&nbsp;



“With some honest conversation, sometimes we come to see that something probably isn’t in the best interest of students after all. Instead of asking,&nbsp;‘Why are we doing this?’—because there’s usually some answer for why—we try asking,&nbsp;‘Do we really need to keep doing this? Is it something that’s benefitting us or the students?’” says Johnson. “Those questions are happening more often. And I think we’re fixing a lot of things.”

Navigate U

Life Lessons with John Bravman

At a Boston College retreat, sophomores are asked three questions: What are you good at? What brings you joy? Who does the world need you to be? The exercise is part of a program called “Half-time” meant to help students begin a lifelong process of vocational discernment. For Jesuit universities such as BC, this type of formative education, defined as “educating whole persons for lives of meaning and purpose,” is part of the fabric. It is now the focus of a new academic department at BC called the Department of Formative Education (DFE).&nbsp;



The department extends BC’s leadership in formative education, expanding the focus from the practice of undergraduate education to research on “life-wide and lifelong” formative education. Housed within the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, DFE features an undergraduate major (Transformative Educational Studies), a master’s program (Learning, Design, and Technology), and the first ever Ph.D. program in Formative Education.



“Our programs tackle big formative issues,” said Chris Higgins, the Department’s founding chair. “How can we nurture vision and values?&nbsp;What are the dispositions that sustain democracy?&nbsp;How do we co-evolve with technological tools? How can we cultivate a sustainable relationship to the earth? What does it mean to flourish as a human being?”&nbsp;



Such questions, Higgins explained, demand an interdisciplinarity approach, spanning&nbsp;anthropology, design thinking, history, the learning sciences, philosophy, and the psychological humanities.



Stanton Wortham is the inaugural Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean of the Lynch School. An anthropologist by training, Wortham spent several years at the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked with scholars of varying disciplines within the liberal arts on how their expertise applied to education. When he arrived at BC, he was able to continue this work of integrating the liberal arts into scholarly inquiry on education, with the blessing of BC President Father Leahy. In creating the new department within the Lynch school at BC, Wortham was inspired by the Jesuit reverence for the liberal arts and its emphasis on formative education.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Most of our education ignores the multi-dimensional nature of how people learn,” he said. “Formative education is this notion that people have several different types of development—social, emotional, ethical, spiritual—and all of those things are going on in a young person’s life at the same time.”  



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“Most of our education ignores the multi-dimensional nature of how people learn.”
</blockquote>



Wortham believes the optimum form of human development is when all these dimensions are aligned—a state he refers to as “wholeness.” The other two pillars of formative education are purpose, which helps young people explore what will bring them both meaning and a living; and community, the recognition that this discernment about life’s purpose happens together with others. Character and ethics are naturally woven in.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Too often at an institution, we tell young people that if they just learn a lot of stuff and get a good job, then everything is going to be fine. And it’s just not true if you’re not connected to something that has bigger meaning,” said Wortham. “We can’t tell students what to believe, but it is our job to help them ask questions about what is ultimately important to them.”



Wortham envisioned a department known both for its research and its teaching. He wanted to convene a group of liberal arts faculty that would bring diverse disciplinary perspectives to the study of formative experience, practice, and aims. This research on holistic development then enriches courses aiming to inspire students to think about education in this formative way.&nbsp;&nbsp;



To lead the department, Wortham recruited Higgins, a philosopher, who had been leading the Transformative Education Studies program (TES). Now part of the Department of Formative Education, TES is growing with 95 majors to date. “‘Transformative education’ names both what we study and how we study,” Higgins explained.



“Our courses explore questions about personal and social transformation. Questions such as, what does it mean to be an educated person? And what kind of schools do we need in a democratic society? At the same time, we want these classes themselves to be transformative experiences, spaces where our students can reflect on their own efforts to form themselves into somebody who can lead a flourishing life.” 



Higgins shares Wortham’s perspective that education has grown too narrow and instrumental. His recent book,&nbsp;Undeclared, calls out the contemporary university, with its “credentialing mindset,” for paying only lip service to the idea of general education. Far from being encouraged to explore, students get the message that they had better “pick a lane and step on the gas!” Instead, he offers a vision for an educational renaissance in which “soulcraft,” described as “the quest to understand, cultivate, and enact ourselves in lives worth living,” is the primary focus.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Higgins’ creative energy is reflected in the department itself, down to its name which he said is intentionally ambiguous. “Formative education is open for interpretation,” he said. “I don’t want to determine the kinds of questions that my colleagues want to explore.”&nbsp;



Those questions are wide-ranging and include topics one might not immediately think of. Professor Marina Bers studies how children can develop ethically and interpersonally through engagement with coding and robotics. Caity Bolton, a cultural anthropologist, is studying what holistic human and social development looks like through Islamic education in East Africa and the Arab World. DFE affiliate faculty member Belle Liang has developed a “purpose app” for college students.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Just in its second year, the DFE doctoral program is already producing notable research. For example, Ph.D. student Harrison Mullen has received a grant from the N.C.A.A. to study the experience of athletes forced to retire from the sport that has been so central to them. Framing the issue in formative terms, Mullen considers how practices such as sports help us make sense of what it means to lead a worthwhile life. In interviews with retired athletes, he explores the deep sense of loss that accompanies this life transition.



At the Department of Formative Education, as at BC overall, personal reflection is fundamental. “It’s the Jesuit thing,” said Higgins. “We are devoted to careful study of the ‘what’ and the ‘how’—but we also never forget the ‘why’ and the ‘who.’&nbsp;Why&nbsp;does this matter? And how does this help you understand&nbsp;who&nbsp;you are and what you stand for?&nbsp;



Higgins offered examples of TES courses and their activities. “In ‘The Educational Conversation,’&nbsp;we invite students&nbsp;to reflect on their key formative influences through an educational autobiography.&nbsp;In ‘Spiritual Exercises,’ we introduce students to a range of spiritual practices, starting with the exercises devised by the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola.”



For Wortham and Higgins, the time is ripe to reconsider the hyperfocus on academic achievement. They believe educators in a variety of settings are looking for a richer, formative language to describe their practices and aims. To this end, the Lynch School is launching the Transformative Education Lab, which will share research and best practices around whole-person education. Wortham and Higgins hope that the lab will extend Boston College’s leadership in formative education to new audiences, helping to recenter questions of meaning and value in educational debates.&nbsp;



“Academic achievement is critical. Subject matter knowledge is critical,” said Wortham. “But these students we are teaching and testing are people. We need to consider their mental health, how they will build relationships with others—all the things that make them thrive as human beings.”

More Reasons to Do the Right Thing

Success and Strain

Experience U

Putting Purpose to Work

Influencers for Life

Keep Learning Well

Mental Health

Purposeful Information

The University of Virginia Builds a Headquarters for Wellbeing

“Woven In”

Teaching & Learning

Navigate U

Life Lessons with John Bravman

Formative Education at Boston College

Access & Inclusion

Sometimes There’s a Wolf

Innovation and Financial Well-Being at CUNY

BC’s Messina College

Flourishing

“Living a Life Worth Working”

Principled Innovation

Invented Here

Perspectives

Influencers for Life

A Way Forward

The “weird” attack on higher education