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

“The Real World of College,” Continued

In the liberal arts, small student populations, intimate learning environments, and dedicated faculty and staff create pathways for students to develop a sense of purpose, belonging, and identity on campus — pillars of wellbeing that will sustain them long after commencement day. Amid a youth mental health crisis with young adults reporting that their lives <a href="https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/reports/on-edge?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email">lack purpose</a>, the liberal arts mission of whole-person development has never been more vital. For twelve small colleges across the United States, that mission has become a collective venture thanks to a $3.275 million grant from the Endeavor Foundation. “Collective challenges require collective solutions,” says Warren Wilson College President Damián Fernández. “The Endeavor Foundation’s collaborative approach to addressing student mental health and wellness—one of the pervasive issues of our times—promises broader and deeper impact.”&nbsp;



The Endeavor Lab Colleges (ELCs) are a consortium of 12 small liberal arts colleges across the United States who share a commitment to student mental health, experiential learning, civic engagement, and purposeful work. Working across their campuses as a cohesive ecosystem, the collaborative has been supported by the Endeavor Foundation in New York City since 2016. In 2023, the ELCs — Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH; Bennington College in Bennington, VT; Blackburn College in Carlinville, IL; College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, ME; Northland College in Ashland, WI; Prescott College in Prescott, AZ; Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA; St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD; St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM; Sterling College in Craftsbury, VT; Unity Environmental University in New Gloucester, ME; and Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC — received the $3.275 million grant to fund the first phase of their collaborative project, “Enhancing Student Learning and Experience through Campus Wellness, Student Well-Being, and Mental Health Initiatives.”



Capacity to care



Phase I of the Endeavor Mental Health Initiative, which will continue to unfold over the course of the 2024-2025 academic year, focuses on building capacity — on the individual ELC campuses and across the “collaborative school” — for shared pilot projects within four categories: curricular initiatives to promote mental health and wellbeing in the classroom; purposeful life and work; place-based experiential learning; and expanded services, which include clinical and non-clinical mental health interventions such as peer mentoring, faculty and staff trainings, and bringing 24/7 counseling services to campus.



The colleges each received $100,000 for capacity-building in the 2023-2024 academic year and will receive an additional $75,000 to continue their efforts in the upcoming academic year. Also during Phase I, the Endeavor Lab Colleges will convene on progress and implementation, share expertise, and deepen their inter-institutional collaboration. With successful completion of this phase, the colleges will earn access to an additional $5.225 million over three years. Together, they will design and implement mental health and wellbeing that can be shared and adapted across the collective and become self-sustaining.



Dr. Lori Collins-Hall is the project manager for the Endeavor Foundation Mental Health Initiative. She also serves as vice president and chief operating officer of Sterling College, a liberal arts college in rural Craftsbury, Vermont and member of the Endeavor Lab Colleges. Prior to her work with the Endeavor initiative, Collins-Hall spent 20 years as a professor of sociology at Hartwick College in upstate New York, where her teaching and scholarship focused on criminal justice reform, alternatives to incarceration, and victim advocacy. She then served for five years as the provost and vice president of academic affairs at Antioch College in Ohio (also a member of the Endeavor Lab), before coming to Sterling in 2021.&nbsp;



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“Collective challenges require collective solutions. The Endeavor Foundation’s collaborative approach to addressing student mental health and wellness—one of the pervasive issues of our times—promises broader and deeper impact.”
</blockquote>



From the first leg of her career at Hartwick College to her work with the Endeavor Foundation nearly 30 years later, Collins-Hall has been dedicated to community-based service work, exploring the transformative potential of the liberal arts model and place-based learning at institutions that value experiential education.&nbsp; Both Antioch and Sterling (as well as Blackburn College and Warren Wilson College, also Endeavor Lab institutions), are among the ten federally-recognized work colleges that compose the Work College Consortium. These small colleges share a commitment to place-based education, community engagement and service, integrating work into the learning experience.&nbsp;



Collins-Hall describes the Mental Health Project as a “capstone” to a career dedicated to cultivating pathways for student success in the liberal arts. For her, mental health care and the liberal arts share a common goal of whole-person development: “Within the liberal arts framework,” Collins-Hall says, “health and wellness becomes another avenue for being a whole person.” Whole-person development encompasses critical thinking, social engagement, and a sense of community —ideas we often associate with higher education and, more broadly, with the experience of “becoming” oneself — but it also includes self-care, self-reflection, and understanding one’s own behaviors within a larger social context. At their core, Collins-Hall explains, the Endeavor Lab Colleges have joined as a united front to develop methods “to integrate mental health and wellness as an acceptable and central piece of the liberal arts’ mission toward becoming a holistic person.”



The big impact of a small college



While the Endeavor Lab Colleges vary somewhat in size —&nbsp;most have fewer than 1,000 students; Sterling College has fewer than 100 — they all fit within the “small liberal arts college” or “micro college” designations. Institutions of their size and scope provide intimate learning environments, community engagement, and social belonging. For students, this kind of college environment can be an opportunity to establish a strong sense of self and place. As Collins-Hall describes, “These small colleges are community-oriented. They are student-focused,” and, importantly, she says, “they tend to be very relational, so people feel the impact when their communities are healthy — and they feel the impact when they’re not, perhaps more immensely, more directly.”



Among the most significant offerings of a small college environment is the development of students’ sense of purpose. Though purposeful work and learning have been shown to promote wellbeing and life satisfaction throughout a person’s lifetime, a <a href="https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/reports/on-edge?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email">2022 Harvard University study</a> of teens and young adults found that a striking 58 percent of respondents reported feeling little to no purpose or meaning. By prioritizing purpose, one of the four project areas of the Endeavor Lab Colleges, a liberal arts education can set students up for wellbeing in their post-graduate lives.



But these small institutions are not without challenges. As <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cha">undergraduate enrollment falls</a>, Americans’ <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/646880/confidence-higher-education-closely-divided.aspx">trust in higher education</a> continues to falter, and colleges now <a href="https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-are-now-closing-at-a-pace-of-one-a-week-what-happens-to-the-students/">close at a rate of one per week</a>, higher education has reached an inflection point —&nbsp;and perhaps no institution feels the weight of change as acutely as the small liberal arts college. While the endowments of larger universities may insulate them somewhat from cultural and financial pressures, those same pressures can be lethal for small colleges. Wells College in Aurora, NY was originally the thirteenth member of the Endeavor Lab Colleges; in April, it abruptly announced its closure after 156 years. (The shutdown and its fallout were the subject of a deep-dive by <a href="https://hechingerreport.org/the-story-of-how-one-college-abruptly-closed-but-kept-everyone-in-the-dark/">The Hechinger Report</a>.)



Through a consortial approach, the Endeavor Mental Health Initiative preserves the immense value that the small liberal arts colleges provide their students while mitigating the budgetary challenges to creating and sustaining new programs. These are, as Collins-Hall describes, “some of the smallest, leanest, least financially resourced institutions.”&nbsp;



Joining forces on mental health and wellbeing amplifies what each institution is able to accomplish on its own. “The support of the Endeavor Foundation and participation in the collaborative is vital to our small, private school as we strive to provide the best possible educational experiences to our students,” says Randolph College President Sue Ott Rowlands. “Our Endeavor Foundation grant funding has made it possible for us to enhance services to our students.”



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While the endowments of larger universities may insulate them somewhat from cultural and financial pressures, those same pressures can be lethal for small liberal arts colleges.
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Dr. Matt Vosler is a professor of outdoor leadership at Warren Wilson College. Vosler grew up in rural Western Ohio, where the outdoors were an integral part of his life — so integral, in fact, that he did not realize their impact until college, when his priorities shifted and experiences in nature became scarce. During his undergraduate studies at Ohio University, Vosler found himself spending less time outside— and feeling less fulfilled —&nbsp;than ever before.&nbsp;



“Growing up in a rural area, being outdoors had always been a part of my daily routine. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t, and I was suffering.” At this realization, Vosler abandoned the pre-medical track he was on and went on to earn a degree in recreation, or, as he affectionately put it, “the study of play.” While pursuing a master’s degree in experiential education at Minnesota State University Mankato, he studied the traditional K-12 schooling system and the history of education reform in the U.S., leading to a revelation about the structure of education and the kinds of learners it is designed to serve. “When I left my K-12 education, I thought I wasn’t a good learner,” Vosler reflects. He experienced hyperactivity and ADHD as a child, and the traditional educational model was at odds with his style of learning. Upon discovering experiential education as an adult, Vosler thought of the many learners, including himself, who could benefit from the hands-on approach. He earned his PhD in curriculum and instruction, specializing in the transformative potential of outdoor education.&nbsp;



Today, Vosler points out, students entering college had their middle school and high school years interrupted by the pandemic, spending formative developmental years online. Connection with nature <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3709294/">supports attention restoration and stress reduction</a>, but for a generation of college students that is less social and spends less time outdoors than its predecessors, the power of nature as a space for holistic wellbeing has eluded many. In his role at Warren Wilson, Vosler is devoted to exploring the connection between mental health and experiential learning in non-traditional classroom spaces. <a href="https://www.campusnature.com/home">Nature Rx</a> is a program that joins traditional mental health supports, such as counseling and clinical services, with the use of nature as a powerful supplementary tool for wellbeing. The mission, Vosler says, is to “empower students to cultivate relationships to nature, to others, and to themselves, creating sanctuary within the chaos of the modern college experience.” In a time when “<a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blogs/just-visiting/2024/05/23/problem-system-indefinite-future-reward">hustle culture</a>,” careerism, and pursuit of high-paying jobs are a proven detriment to college students’ <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/its-not-all-about-the-money">sense of purpose</a>, that sanctuary is worth protecting.



“At a small college, our capacity gets stretched. With the Endeavor grant, we were able to hit the ground running,” Vosler says. “We can grow and sustain our outdoor programs, ensuring that mental health and wellbeing remain an institutional priority.”



At Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA, Dean of Students Chris Lemasters is spearheading the Endeavor Lab’s expanded services initiative. With a background in residential life, Lemasters embodies the community-oriented approach to wellbeing that the liberal arts model encourages. “In the 2024-2025 academic year and beyond,” Lemasters says, “we have an opportunity to bring new and comprehensive mental health resources to expand the scope of our services and consistently keep mental health on the radar.” This expansion will go beyond acute care, such as mental health first aid, by prioritizing wellbeing across all areas of student life.



With an undergraduate population of just under 500 students, Randolph’s faculty promotes experiential and student-centered learning opportunities. Last year, Professor of Religious Studies Suzanne Bessenger and her colleagues built a contemplative studies minor into the Randolph curriculum, after a course taught by Bessenger proved meaningful for students. The contemplative studies field illuminates the human psychological experience through philosophical inquiry, deepening students’ exploration of self while encouraging intercultural exchange of ideas.



At Bennington College, Italian studies professor and First-Year Forum Director Dr. Barbara Alfano is exploring curricular opportunities such as <a href="https://socialwork.buffalo.edu/social-research/institutes-centers/institute-on-trauma-and-trauma-informed-care.html">trauma-informed learning</a> to integrate wellbeing into the classroom within the first year of college. The First-Year Forum is a year-long advising course designed to help first-year students navigate campus resources, engage with their community, explore their interests, and develop their writing and critical thinking skills. As director of the First-Year Forum, Alfano thinks a lot about how the first year shapes the college experience. Her work within the Endeavor Lab focuses on integrating wellbeing into the liberal arts curriculum through developing shared curricular and co-curricular learning modules.&nbsp;



Meanwhile in the Midwest, Blackburn College in Carlinville, IL conducted a Mental Health Needs Assessment to identify the status of student wellbeing on campus and helped college leaders locate areas for improvement. Now, the survey will expand from Blackburn into a multi-institution survey that will help all twelve Endeavor Lab institutions collect data on life experience, mental health, sense of belonging, and self-care behaviors among their students, creating a collective database for tracking and supporting mental health and wellness across the ELCs.&nbsp;



In Bar Harbor, ME, College of the Atlantic Community Engagement Coordinator Nick Jenei is constructing campus maps to foster a sense of place and deepen students’ connections to their campus, local communities, and the cultural and natural history in their midst. Using interactive digital maps, the initiative leverages mobile phone technology to promote real-world engagement and will be adapted to create a sense of place and connection on other Endeavor campuses. Being connected to one’s physical place — its people, history, and environment — has shown <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7585135/">positive effects on human health</a>, improving both emotional wellbeing and academic performance in college. 



Together, the Endeavor Lab Colleges are not only enacting change on their own campuses, but tapping into the growing pool of knowledge they have built together. Their models for mental health and wellness are scaled and adapted to reach across the collaborative school of the Endeavor campuses. “These initiatives will support thousands of students on the members' campuses but reach far beyond,” President Fernández says. “The work will have a multiplier effect through the creation of a model for all colleges and universities to implement refined best practices for student mental health and wellness."

A Collective Endeavor

LearningWell Radio in Conversation with Alex Kafka

A <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/varying-degrees-2024/">new report</a> released last week from public policy think tank New America underscores the nation’s complicated relationship with higher education and provides instructive insights for a sector struggling to define its place in the country. While the survey gives more evidence of the public’s waning trust in higher education, it reaffirms Americans’ belief in its economic value and their desire to personally benefit from it. The consistency with which people of both parties view the good and the bad of higher education is also an indication that when it comes to going to college, Americans may be more alike than they are different.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Trends within the “Varying Degrees” survey, now in its eighth year, show that the public’s opinion of higher education continues to decline, with only 36% of all respondents saying the current state of higher education is fine as-is. The share of Americans who think that higher education is having a positive impact on the country today has dropped by 16 percentage points since 2019, to just 54 percent, in the latest report. Yet the survey also shows that despite its disillusionment with college, 70% of Americans want their children or family members to earn at least some kind of post-secondary degree and more than 75 percent think that the value of an associate and a bachelor’s degree is worth it even if students need to take out debt.



“The decline in public confidence for college is certainly concerning. But a decline in the public confidence of colleges and universities in general doesn’t necessarily mean that Americans no longer see colleges as worth it. Just as the higher education system is complex, so too are the opinions of Americans,” said Sophie Nguyen, a senior analyst at New America and one of the authors of the report.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Indeed, the love/hate relationship that Americans appear to have with higher ed gives a glimmer of hope for the sector in a hostile political climate where conservative politicians, frustrated with the dominance of academia’s left-leaning factions, have been battling with the academy on a wide range of topics at both the federal and state levels. (In the survey, only 39 percent of Republicans think colleges and universities are having a positive impact.) Yet, despite comments like the one made recently by vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who vowed to “aggressively attack the universities,” not all Republicans view higher education as the enemy.&nbsp;&nbsp;



On this score, data on economic mobility may be more influential than rhetoric. Research shows that those with a bachelor’s degree earn significantly more than those with only a high school diploma.&nbsp; Just last week,Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce predicted that a bachelor's degree will significantly increase the chances of getting a “good job” in the future. (The report defines a "good job" as one that pays a national minimum salary of $43,000 to workers aged 25 to 44 and $55,000 to workers aged 45 to 64.)&nbsp;&nbsp;



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“The love/hate relationship that Americans appear to have with higher ed gives a glimmer of hope for the sector in a hostile political climate.”
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In the New America survey, Democrats and Republicans agreed at similar rates (two-thirds) that those with at least some higher education will have better access to good jobs, better earnings, and greater financial well-being. When it comes to the benefits that those with higher education might bring to their communities, more than 80 percent of survey respondents agreed that they increase tax revenues, contribute to a skilled workforce, and create more jobs. Three in four believed that those with postsecondary credentials vote and volunteer more often and offer greater support for local businesses. Despite some variance, these beliefs were primarily party-neutral.&nbsp;



The one area that shows the strongest alignment is the perception that college costs too much.&nbsp; In the New America survey, nine in 10 respondents believe that people are choosing not to enroll in higher education because they cannot afford it. Eight in 10 think that this lack of affordability is the biggest barrier to enrollment for low income and first-generation students.&nbsp; One of the most important findings in the survey is the fact that more than 70 percent of respondents (85 percent of Democrats and 66 percent of Republicans) said the presidential candidates’ stances on higher education affordability will be important to their votes. While it is yet unclear how the candidates will address affordability from an education policy perspective, it is worth noting that voters will be watching.&nbsp;



On the question of who should pay for college, the survey shows a predictable gap between party affiliation, reflecting divergent philosophies on whether higher education is meant for public good or private gain. The authors write, “This question has seen a decline, since we started asking, in those believing the government should be responsible, particularly since 2020. This year just over half of Americans—56 percent— believe the government has the primary responsibility for funding higher education, with 43 percent believing individuals should fund higher education because they personally benefit. There has always been a sharp partisan divide in the response to this question, and this year was no exception. Nearly eight out of ten Democrats believe that the government should fund higher education because it is good for society, whereas nearly seven out of ten Republicans believe that students should fund higher education because they personally benefit.”&nbsp;



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“Nine in 10 respondents believe that people are choosing not to enroll in higher education because they cannot afford it.”
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Yet here the survey delivers another reason to check one’s assumptions. Despite philosophical differences, about seven out of 10 of all respondents agree that states should spend more tax dollars on public two- and four-year colleges and universities with Democrats and Republicans both agreeing, though at different rates. Additionally, the vast majority of Americans (80 percent) agree that the federal government should increase the maximum award for Pell grants so that students with the greatest financial need receive more grant-based assistance.



Another point of consistency which emerged from the survey is the view that higher education, as an industry, does not spend money wisely or run efficiently. Given tuition rates that are unattainable for many Americans, this perception may be contributing to the waning public trust. The call for more transparency in higher education is also widely held.&nbsp; Approximately 65 to 75 percent of respondents agreed that institutions should lose access to taxpayer dollars if students have poor outcomes which raises questions about whether institutions are providing sufficient information to students and families. “Over the years,” the authors write, “Americans have made clear that data transparency is important, with near universal agreement across party lines.”

Public Opinion

In the landscape of higher education, student fathers face a particularly stark lack of recognition and support. A new report by Generation Hope,"<a href="https://www.generationhope.org/empowered-dads-student-fathers-report">EmpowerED Dads: Amplifying Voices, Advancing Higher Education for Student Fathers</a>," sheds crucial light on the unique challenges and needs of these individuals. As we strive for a more inclusive and equitable educational environment, it is imperative that we amplify the voices of student fathers and advocate for policies that support their success.



Student fathers often juggle multiple roles, balancing their studies with the demands of caregiving and employment. This multifaceted responsibility is compounded by societal stereotypes that frequently cast fathers, particularly fathers of color, as absent or uninvolved in their children's lives. The report highlights that Black and Latino student fathers, in particular, face significant obstacles, including higher rates of basic needs insecurity and lower utilization of support services​.



Despite these challenges, student fathers demonstrate remarkable resilience and dedication. They are not merely pursuing degrees but striving to provide better futures for their families. However, their efforts are often overshadowed by a lack of visibility and recognition within the academic sphere. This invisibility can profoundly impact their self-esteem and academic performance, perpetuating a cycle of underachievement and disengagement.



The Need for Tailored Support



To address these issues, tailored support systems that acknowledge and address the specific needs of student fathers must be developed and implemented. Policies and institutional practices must evolve to provide flexible scheduling, accessible childcare, and financial assistance for this demographic. Additionally, mental health services should be made readily available to help student fathers manage the stress and anxiety that come with balancing their multiple roles.



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As we strive for a more inclusive and equitable educational environment, it is imperative that we amplify the voices of student fathers and advocate for policies that support their success.
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Furthermore, creating a campus culture that celebrates the contributions of student fathers can go a long way in fostering their sense of belonging and purpose. Universities should promote awareness campaigns and support groups that provide a platform for student fathers to share their experiences and build a supportive community.



Policy Reforms and Institutional Changes



Policy reforms are crucial in driving systemic change. Legislators and educational institutions must work together to ensure that student fathers are included in discussions about higher education support strategies. Financial aid policies should consider the unique financial pressures faced by student parents, and academic policies should offer greater flexibility to accommodate their schedules.



Generation Hope's report underscores the importance of including student fathers in the broader conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education. By advocating for policies that recognize and value the experiences of student fathers, we can create a more equitable and supportive educational environment for all students.



A Call to Action



The journey of a student father is marked by resilience and a deep commitment to their families and education. It is time for us to recognize and support their efforts. By amplifying their voices and addressing their unique needs, we can help student fathers achieve their academic goals and secure better futures for themselves and their children.



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Brittani Williams is the Director of Policy, Advocacy and Research at Generation Hope.



<a href="https://www.generationhope.org/">Generation Hope</a>&nbsp;engages education and policy partners to drive systemic change and provides direct support to teen parents in college as well as their children through holistic, two-generation programming.

Seeing the Unseen

Democratizing the Liberal Arts

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 reassert the value of the college experience and restore public trust, we must provide the type of higher education experience that people want.
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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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Dr. Zoe Ragouzeos, Vice President for Student Mental Health and Wellbeing at New York University&nbsp;and Dr. Eric Wood, Director of Counseling and Mental Health at Texas Christian University discuss what they are seeing in students returning this fall, how traumatic events of the past several years are affecting incoming students, and trends in the way we think about student behavioral health and wellbeing in higher education.&nbsp;



You can listen to the episode on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/5QW5Rxw1zPJFm45gxpzKaf?si=b73e02185ad84f3b">Spotify</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/learningwell-radio/id1732284927?i=1000669024701">Apple Podcasts</a>.

Talking student mental health and wellbeing with experts on campus

Given his background, Dr. Estevan Garcia might be considered an unusual member of a college president’s cabinet. But as Dartmouth’s new Chief Health and Wellness Officer, the physician and public health expert works directly with President Sian Beilock on an issue she has made a well-publicized priority in her first year in office – protecting the mental health of students, faculty and staff. Garcia, who is a pediatrician specializing in emergency medicine, came to Dartmouth from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health where he helped led the effort to address the behavioral health crisis in emergency departments during the pandemic.



It is now Garcia’s job to lead Beilock’s health and wellbeing agenda, most specifically through the implementation of the school’s comprehensive strategic mental health plan called the “Commitment to Care.”&nbsp; The origins of the plan predate Garcia’s arrival and was informed by a collaboration with the Jed Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting emotional health and preventing suicide in young people. Beginning in 2020, the Dartmouth community lost several students, including by suicide, as the pandemic eclipsed college life.



<figure class="wp-block-image alignleft size-large"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Estevan-Garcia-1-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2085"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Dr. Estevan Garcia</figcaption></figure>



Four years later, the Jed Foundation featured Dartmouth as a success story in its impact report and Garcia is now focused on the longer term outcome data that will provide a more precise evaluation of their recent work.&nbsp; He views the plan as a pathway to a wellness culture at Dartmouth that prioritizes self-care, community care and mental health innovation. With an increased staff and budget behind him, Garcia is addressing a number of wellbeing issues often associated with elite institutions, particularly ones like Dartmouth, located in remote areas with less community resources.&nbsp; These include the stress of perfectionism among high-performing students and the lingering lack of belonging many students feel, particularly those with mental health issues and/or those with diverse identities. As the fall semester brings new and familiar challenges to students’ wellbeing, Dr. Garcia is ready and at the table.



LW: What was the thinking behind having a new position in this area reporting directly to President Beilock?



EG: I think her vision for the role was to elevate student mental health and wellness as a high priority but also to bring under one umbrella campus-wide health and wellbeing. Part of my portfolio is faculty and staff health and wellness so it was important to President Beilock to have that direct communication on all of the activities in this area across campus.



LW: How has your background in public health prepared you and/or motivated you to take on the position of Chief Health and Wellness officer at a college?&nbsp;



EG: What brought me to this work came from what I saw in emergency departments during, and predating COVID, with adolescents and young adults in crisis. To me, that was really shocking.&nbsp; When I started in the Department of Public Health {in Massachusetts} I partnered with the Mass Department of Mental Health through the community behavioral health programs, providing options that would divert the mental health crisis from emergency departments when appropriate.&nbsp; I spent those two years heavily involved in the work we were doing to create an actual road map for behavioral health in Massachusetts.&nbsp;



My background is in emergency medicine. &nbsp;I useasthma as an example of the way we look at illness in the emergency department.&nbsp; You would come to the emergency department after you had gone through your asthma action plan – “I'm a green, I'm a yellow, I'm a red,” -- here's how I step up my care so by the time you came to us, you had exhausted your plan.&nbsp; Westarted to view behavioral health in the same way.&nbsp; “I'm at home fighting with my parents, or “I'm depressed, I can't leave my room” or “I'm in crisis, potentially I'm suicidal” – all of those scenarios have varying degrees of illness and severity.&nbsp; Ifwe treated them all as emergencies, we would be failing our patientsand our ability to manage true crisis and emergencies.



LW: Do you have a similar strategy around health and wellbeing that you are utilizing at Dartmouth?



EG: When I first came here, it was important to explain to my colleagues what we mean by health and wellness because not everyone understands this. One of the things I did was develop a pyramid that shows the different degrees of mental health needs. The base of the pyramid is the 70% of the students we have here – very successful, high achieving – experiencing the stress that comes with that.&nbsp; There’s another 20 to 25% who could use some clinical support.&nbsp; The final piece at the top of the pyramid is the group of students who were most clinically concerning, potentially suicidal, and these are the student we need to act quickly to support and get into the appropriatesetting.&nbsp;



The goal of this kind of structure is to understand that much of what we do is at the base – that 70% of our students need easy access to services and almost no barriers to the many wellness activities we should be providing across campus. The idea is that college is the right timeto experiment with wellness and to build your portfolio of activities and support strategieswhen you are successful – when you are at the base - so you can manage the challenges that will come your way. &nbsp;You will be more prepared when you fail a test, or break up with your girlfriend, or have other challenges– all the things that challenge yourequilibrium andcould push you into crisis.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“College is the right timeto experiment with wellness and to build your portfolio of activities and support strategies&nbsp;when you are successful –- so you can manage the challenges that will come your way.”&nbsp;&nbsp;
</blockquote>



For the 20 to 25% in the middle, we have clinical &nbsp;supports that help themmanage their illness, while also providing access to wellness activities.&nbsp; With the smaller group, my job is to really help identify them as their situation evolves and get them the support that they need, and this can be a protective setting in a hospital if that’s necessary.&nbsp; And it is really important that we don’t make them feel that they are alone.&nbsp; You have to care enough about the students that require services outside of the college to partner with them – to give them time away, with support, and then bring them back with the appropriate accommodations. This is how I see my job.



LW: What have been some of your early priorities?



EG: President Beilock has recently completedher first year as presidentbut was very involved in the creation of the strategic plan for mental health and wellness before that. I would say the majority ofmy work since I came to Dartmouthhas been to implement that plan.&nbsp; It has multipledeliverables and my job was to take that on and run with it, delivering on health and wellness as a priority for the president and for the campus.



Part of those deliverables involved new permanent staffpositions – across ourstudent health and wellness divisions.&nbsp; It was really a huge investment by the college and we had to make sure those were the right positions and we were utilizing them in the right way. &nbsp;



The Dartmouth community has faced several challenges since I arrived.&nbsp; I think it is helpful to have a clinician at the table.&nbsp; Health and wellness staff arenot enforcers, but supporters.&nbsp; We arevery much there to support students, and help them engage in tough conversations. I think partnering with students has been one of the strongest game changers for me personally. I worked with them before as patients but now they are really partners to me in the work we are doing around health and wellness.



LW: What was the history behind the Commitment to Care plan?



EG: When Covid started, we (in reference to Dartmouth) were doing the best we could, but clearly it was very isolating on this campus and colleges across the country.&nbsp;It was not your normal college experience by far here and of course everywhere.&nbsp; Beginningin 2020, we had several student deaths including bysuicide, and it was clear they needed to address what was happening.&nbsp; In the summer of 2021, they brought the Jed Foundation in and that led to a major mental health review - &nbsp;campus visits, survey data, all of that.&nbsp; Additionally, the provost at the time set up a steering committee to work on an all-Dartmouth strategic plan on health and wellbeing from May 2023 to September 2023, that was the foundation of the Commitment to Care. It was across all campuses – undergrad, grad schools, professional schools.&nbsp;



What makes it unique is that it is very stakeholder-driven, very student-driven and the result is this multi-year, campus-wide engagement with actual deliverables. What I found interesting when I first came to campus, folks would introduce themselves – students, staff, faculty – and they would say “I was on the committee for mental health” or “I was on the committee for health promotion.”



LW: What are the elements of the plan? &nbsp;



There are five pillars to the plan which drive the many activities and initiatives that we are working on. &nbsp;(From materials): Center wellbeing in all we do both inside and outside of academics; Create an inclusive community to foster mental health and well-being for students with diverse lived experiences; Equip students with the resources and skills to navigate both success and failure with strength and confidence; Proactively address mental illness to aid students in reaching their goals; Invest in innovative applications of evidence-based approaches to respond to changing environments and needs.



It is a very broad approach involving all aspects of the college.&nbsp; Regarding the second pillar, we pride ourselves on attracting first generation students and students with diverse lived experiences, and it is important for us to center those lived experiences in what happens on campus, particularly here in rural New Hampshire. This includes how we address mental health and wellness and creating a sense of belonging.



President Beilock was clear that focusing on wellbeing is critical to a successfulacademic career. One of the key pillars for us is helping students navigate success and failure, this is number three.&nbsp; There is an understanding that our students are incredibly driven. They are gifted and they are used to being at the top. They are not used to failure. But failure is part of succeeding and it is how you pick yourself up and move forward that is important.&nbsp; We call it normalizing life.



Regarding wellness services, we have made significant gains here.&nbsp; One of the first things I did was to move wellness to be a separate divisionwith a director reporting to me. &nbsp;Our health services are really top notch and I wanted wellness to be on equal footing.&nbsp; Additionally, we are arural community sometimes makingrecruitment difficult.&nbsp; To better meet the needs of our students, we needed to find ways of extending and diversifying our services.&nbsp; We partnered with a tele therapycompany, that gives us 24/7 behavioral health support for students and that made a big difference in accessibility when our team was not in the office.&nbsp; We have several hundred students who have engaged with the service.&nbsp; We have unlimited access to 30 minutes therapy slots any time of day or night and will beexpanding that to 50 minutes for those who need it.



The addition of the tele service didn’t lower our need for in-person services but it enabled other students to access therapy who might have been uncomfortable doing so before.&nbsp; We know that a quarter of our students utilize our mental health services and that is similar across our student groups.&nbsp;&nbsp;That is a significant point since historically, underrepresented students seek help less frequently.&nbsp;



And the other piece – which I think is one of the harder ones – is thinking about data analysis and evidence-based approaches to make sure that what we are doing is impactful. This is really important because as we are delivering on a lot of these initiatives, we need to know what is helpful and not helpful and then redirect our time, energy and resources accordingly.



LW: You have said that some of your work is inside as well as outside the classroom.&nbsp; What has been your experience there?



EG: There are a few tracks to this work, one involving academic policies and calendars that students have said would be meaningful to them in terms of reducing their stress levels over academics.&nbsp; There’s also some interesting things faculty are doing in their classrooms by integrating mindfulness techniques in their academic disciplines including physiology and languages.&nbsp; &nbsp;These are just some of the ways we are partnering with academic leadership, and I will say it does make a difference now that we are at the table.

Dr. Estevan Garcia is at the Table

Listen Here: 



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They are familiar culprits: smartphones, social media, the decline of in-person social connection that began before, bloomed during, and held firm after the COVID-19 pandemic. A growing reserve of data and reporting raises the alarm about Gen Z’s age of discontent, always coming to the same conclusion: it doesn’t look good for the digital generation. As panic descends over what the Surgeon General has labeled a mental health emergency and, more recently, a <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/03/new-surgeon-general-advisory-raises-alarm-about-devastating-impact-epidemic-loneliness-isolation-united-states.html">loneliness epidemic</a>, few accounts of Gen Z’s state of mind manage to foreground what I suspect is at the root of my generation’s distress: the shrinking of three-dimensional life, and with it, the loss of risk, adventure, and thrill.



Forty-two percent of Gen Z suffers from depression and feelings of hopelessness, a rate almost <a href="https://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/stories/foundation/generation-z-is-waging-a-battle-against-depression-addiction-and-hopelessness" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">twice as high</a> as that of American adults over 25 (23%). On the climate crisis, 56% believe <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00278-3/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">humanity is doomed</a>. Since 2010, anxiety among American college students has increased by 134%, depression by 106%, bipolar disorder by 57%, and anorexia by 100%. In a 2023 poll of <a href="https://www.gallup.com/education/509231/college-students-experience-high-levels-worry-stress.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">college students</a>, 39% said they had experienced loneliness the previous day, ranking it above sadness (36%).&nbsp;



As our parents’ generations had fewer children and nurtured them longer, we were raised to be risk-averse. Emergency room visits for accidental injuries—falling off a bike, breaking an arm, spraining an ankle on the soccer field—have <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/data-finder.htm?&amp;subject=Unintentional%20injuries">declined</a> significantly among children and teenagers born in the early aughts. That sounds like a good thing—fewer broken arms means kids are safer, right? But while accidental, play-related injuries have gone down, emergency room visits for self-harm have <a href="https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/research/the-evidence">increased</a> 188% for adolescent girls and 48% for boys since 2010. We are not safer; not with ourselves.



As Gen Z grows up, our adulthood shows signs of <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28925063/">developmental delays</a>. We go on fewer dates and have <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-03/young-adults-less-sex-gen-z-millennials-generations-parents-grandparents">less sex</a>. We are getting our <a href="https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/teens-are-becoming-adults-later-than-they-used-to-1513305588">driver’s licenses</a> later or not at all; we are living with our parents longer. We <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/509690/young-adults-drinking-less-prior-decades.aspx">drink less</a> and go to fewer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/feb/10/meet-generation-stay-at-home-dont-pay-to-go-clubbing-watch-it-at-home-on-your-phone">parties</a> than past generations. Our abstinence from risk is not a reflection of strict moral influences or time redirected to other, “safer” ways of interacting with the three-dimensional world—far from it, we are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/04/opinion/gen-z-adulthood.html">less likely</a> than past generations to engage in hobbies, play and <a href="https://www.fandomanalytics.com/post/the-next-generation-fandom-survey-from-the-emory-marketing-analytics-center">watch sports</a>, or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/04/opinion/gen-z-adulthood.html">work</a> after-school jobs. We are, quite simply, doing less than any generation before us.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter is-resized"><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfYf020qbZ-IfpH-yzYHoZhDZZc_cwLnthAXfsAjWw3D7nvsMTj7FTEvHOTxTsYHbHO5gjI13qF7Z9Oi8cBbL4KJUn-VFN0AritOne_BnecxDM_AQOXtxltY-4V4ghSZOoIG0j60baDiEcFwMNb3oxKVmk?key=DukyNi8GP42rlrOVVIuO6g" alt="" width="610" height="510"/></figure>



Chart: Zach RauschSource: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iO7D7uaELibyM2SiW_2MaGSi9Z91CXdG0y9QzfLaswk/edit#gid=295927474">Monitoring the Future</a> Get the data <a href="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/DHuIn/2/#embed">Embed</a> <a href="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/DHuIn/full.png">Download image</a>



Social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation Jonathan Haidt argues that our increasingly two-dimensional lives are the result of “the end of play-based childhood” and its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/smartphones-social-media-mental-health-teens.html">replacement</a> with “phone-based childhood.” During a <a href="https://youtu.be/laR1eSWAMKw?si=16LliF2SZC2N2pIn">recent talk</a> in London, Haidt asked audience members of the Gen X and Baby Boomer generations to think back to their childhoods. He asked them to remember the things they did with friends, the adventures they had, and then imagine removing 70% of those encounters – remove hobbies, then risks, thrills, and adventures where you might have gotten hurt—imagine 80% of that gone, he said. Now imagine growing up with what’s left. That is the extent to which Haidt believes smartphones gutted Gen Z’s childhood and adolescence. Our lives are now smaller, hollowed out, contained within digital software.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter is-resized"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/IMG_3449-1024x782.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2013" width="586" height="447"/></figure>



“The fact that risk-taking activities like drinking are going down is a broader sign that young adults and adolescents are engaging with the world far less,” says Dr. Jessie Borelli, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of California, Irvine. “Becoming an adult involves risk. Making mistakes, including through risk-taking behaviors, is practicing being an adult.”&nbsp;



Moreover, she says, “Getting together in person is effortful. You have to endure a certain amount of discomfort, whether it’s the cost of leaving the house, encountering traffic, or the time it takes to put on different clothes.”&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
We are not safer; not with ourselves.
</blockquote>



For a subset of the population who grew up on social media and spent some of their most formative developmental years taking classes and interacting with peers only online, any effort at real-life interpersonal connection carries inherent risk — embarrassment, rejection, heartbreak, abandonment. When we weigh the decision of whether to engage effortfully with the world or just stay home, it’s no wonder we gravitate toward the option that involves less risk.



What that cost-benefit analysis is missing, however, is the fact that loneliness and isolation have profound consequences for not just our emotional wellbeing, but our <a href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25663/social-isolation-and-loneliness-in-older-adults-opportunities-for-the">long-term physical and cognitive health</a>. “Social isolation and loneliness increase a person’s risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, depression, anxiety, suicidality, and premature death,” says Shannon Vyvijal, the Communications and Programming Coordinator for the <a href="https://www.social-connection.org/">Foundation for Social Connection</a>. The upside, Vyvijal says, is that “social connection is really both a remedy and a preventative measure. In addition to making us healthier, it makes our communities safer. Socially connected communities have lower rates of gun violence and drug deaths. It makes communities more prosperous and helps local GDP. It leads more people to volunteer in their communities. It helps us become more civically engaged. We begin to trust institutions and one another again.”



Gen Z knows it’s lonely. “Loneliness is a discrepancy between how connected we are, and how connected we want to be,” Vyvijal says. “If, like many members of Gen Z report, you are someone who wants to date and hasn’t yet, or you are on dating apps and not satisfied with the level of connection they provide, that discrepancy is contributing to loneliness.” The disconnect between having and wanting connection often sets in motion a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the stigma of social undesirability increasing a person’s tendency to retreat from others. “The lonely brain continues to self-isolate,” she explains.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
They—we—are not content to live in a purgatory of risk-averse, adventureless post-post-adolescence.
</blockquote>



Even as hyper-individualism in work and school swells and spills over into life after-hours, Gen Z is begging for community. We are begging for risk. Signs of our accelerating desperation occupy every corner of the Zoomer internet. In the r/GenZ subreddit, an 18-year old appeals to their peers for advice on <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZ/s/hd865a4GvK">how to make friends</a>; a 21-year-old college student laments her campus’s <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/s/mnxv33MZLF">lack of community</a>; a 19-year-old worries she’s a “loser” for having never gotten drunk or <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZ/s/kQbbJ4L6CE">gone to a party</a>.&nbsp; On Facebook, young adults post <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/friendship-applications-gen-z-loneliness/">friendship applications</a>. A Gen Z woman complains of the <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@princess_milkyy/video/7298522177152814378">death of clubbing</a> in a TikTok video that amassed over 3.5 million views. A viral <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/tiktok-videos-single-women-crying.html">dating deep-dive</a> from The Cut shows young women crying on camera while describing their longing for partnership.&nbsp;



Not far behind, tech companies roll out solutions for Gen Z to cure our loneliness without looking up from our phones. Tinder backs a new “<a href="https://www.heyvina.com/">dating app for friends</a>.” On Bumble BFF, users <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BhulRftj6X4/?igsh=b2FkanNoZW91eTNm">swipe right</a> on pictures of prospective friends. Still lonely? Try downloading Replika, “<a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/replika-ai-friend/id1158555867">THE chatbot for anyone who wants a friend with no judgment, drama, or social anxiety involved</a>.” No risk, all reward.



But Gen Z is getting older, in spite of its delayed adulthood, and making the move toward real-world community as a form of generational healing. The tide of self-isolation appears to be turning as loneliness and boredom reach a fever pitch, with a growing number of young adults taking the matter offline and into their own hands. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jun/23/run-clubs-australia-social-clubs-gen-z-activities">Running clubs</a>, singles parties, book clubs, wine nights, and self-made social events are on the rise. A new trend emphasizes the importance of <a href="https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&amp;context=clcom_facpub">third places</a>—communal spaces like public parks, libraries, and coffee shops where people can come together and fill the time between work and home. They are taking their <a href="https://news.samsung.com/uk/social-media-fuels-rise-in-alternatively-awesome-hobbies-as-gen-z-embrace-their-creativity-online">hobbies</a> offline. They are <a href="https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2023/august/gen-z-most-likely-to-gift-time#:~:text=to%20gift%20time-,Boom%20in%20young%20volunteers%20as%20survey%20shows,most%20likely%20to%20gift%20time&amp;text=We%20have%20seen%20a%20boom,than%20any%20other%20age%20group.">volunteering more</a>. They are urging moral awakening over self reinvention. They—we—are not content to live in a purgatory of risk-averse, adventureless post-post-adolescence.



I can’t say I wish playground injuries on kids or hangovers on college students. I do hope, however, that we will return to a margin of risk where it’s OK to fall off your bike, get your heart broken, dance badly at a party—because that’s part of the deal of living in the three-dimensional world. If we watch from a safe distance, that world will keep outgrowing us.

Where Did All the Good Times Go?

This election season, there has been a lot of talk about defending Democracy. What that means to young people, and how they will act upon it in their lifetimes, is the question and the focus of College Presidents for Civic Preparedness. Growing out of The Institute for Citizens and Scholars in 2023, the coalition of diverse leaders coalesced around a concern that the lack of civil discourse—indeed, the dismissal of civics as an integral part of higher education—may be contributing to the polarization of America and the inability of young people to engage in meaningful debate. As the protests over the war in Gaza roiled campuses last spring, they frequently gave way to vitriol, misinformation, and obstinate behavior. And these leaders find themselves fighting what has been a simmering fire on campuses across the country: the urgent need to educate students in the practice of becoming productive, well-informed citizens.



“In my conversations with college presidents, they emphasized the need for higher education to rebalance its responsibilities between private and public good. They see an opportunity to strengthen our democracy through promoting healthy civil discourse,” &nbsp;says Rajiv Vinnakota, President of The Institute for Citizens and Scholars, a nonprofit organization focused on cultivating talent, ideas, and networks to develop young people as empowered, lifelong citizens.



Cultivating good citizenship may once have been an expected goal of higher education. But some presidents express frustration with the difficulty of getting institutions to embrace this as a priority, says Vinnakota. Pushback from a broad range of stakeholders—including students, faculty, trustees, alumni, and policymakers—reflects a decades-long trend in public opinion, where college is viewed more as a personal gain than a public good. This can lead institutions to burrow down on career development, while ignoring civic engagement.



There may be more at stake here than a healthy Democracy. <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/145811/worldwide-personal-wellbeing-related-civic-engagement.aspx">Gallup surveys</a> in 130 countries show people with higher personal well-being are more likely to say they give something— time, money, or help to a stranger— back to their communities. Civic Engagement Index scores, which measure people's likelihood to do all three, are twice as high among those who are "thriving" compared with those who are "suffering."



The Institute for Citizens and Scholars took the lead in connecting these administrators to create what Vinnakota envisioned as “a coalition of the willing where the collective power of presidents working together might move this common cause forward.” The Institute began by initiating a series of virtual conversations among presidents in early 2023, and officially launched the coalition with 15 leaders in August of last year. The group has since grown to 92 presidents and counting—particularly critical in a year where questions and confusion over fundamental principles such as free speech, and the right to protest vs. the protection of individual rights, dominated the public zeitgeist. &nbsp;



The roster is a diverse and impressive array of schools. Participants range from elite institutions like Dartmouth, Vassar and Amherst to large public universities like Cal State San Marcos and Indiana University, including minority-serving institutions like Claflin College and Howard University. Vinnakota says presidents join for different reasons, but are united by the shared understanding that civic preparedness must be at the heart of the academic experience and campus life.&nbsp;



“Some college presidents are already making this a central focus within their institutions. These are the true believers. Others are earlier in their journey and are eager to learn from leaders and utilize the tools we provide,” he says “Many have faced significant challenges since October 7th [the start of the Israeli-Hamas war] and are relying on our support to help guide their institutions through this period as effectively as possible.”



Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway was an early member of the group, and says connecting with other leaders who shared his concerns and experiences was one of the first benefits of coming together.



“It was obvious in meeting Raj that I wasn’t alone in being concerned about the quality of the discourse in civic spaces or on civic topics. I wasn’t alone at being dismayed at the poor level of awareness in a college-going population about the basic building blocks of our democracy,” he says “Joining a group of leaders who shared this feeling of deep concern about the quality of civil discourse became a means for me to put into action a lot of what we’ve been thinking about here.”



Holloway, who defended his institution before Congress in the antisemitism hearings in May, believes the dismissal of civics education only serves to further erode a discipline that has been in decline. According to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the US invests just 5 cents in civic education for every 50 dollars allocated to STEM subjects.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
Joining a group of leaders who shared this feeling of deep concern about the quality of civil discourse became a means for me to put into action a lot of what we’ve been thinking about here.
</blockquote>



“The defunding of civics education is a major part of the problems we are seeing today,” he says. Holloway lays the blame, in part, on the quality of the education itself. “One of the reasons for the pushback [on civics] is that, frankly, it was being done poorly. It was antiquated and writing people out of history,” he says. “Civics should be about speaking to the complexity of our nation and all the different strengths that come with it, but we didn’t evolve our government civics courses to meet that need in K-12.”



Holloway teaches a first-year semester course at Rutgers on civil discourse and is a staunch defender of free speech, in all its discomfort. He believes the decline in civic preparedness education came at a time when the country may have needed it the most. “The ways education has been totally unprepared for the addictive power and influence of social media has added to the problem,” he says. “The complete freedom for people to say whatever they want may look like free speech but there is no accountability and no civility and that’s a really toxic combination.”



Building a Good Citizen



College Presidents for Civic Preparedness is taking all of this on with three Civic Commitments that each member institution adopts: “Educating for democracy is central to our mission. We will prepare our students for a vibrant, diverse, and contentious society. We will protect and defend free inquiry.”



In interpreting this, Vinnakota believes we need to ensure that young people are civically well-informed. “This means understanding how their government functions, the historical context of our current situation, and having the ability to distinguish fact from opinion,” he says. “Secondly, they should be productively engaged for the common good, which includes voting and having respectful conversations about public issues—even when there are disagreements. Finally, a commitment to democracy involves building trust in institutions, government, and fellow citizens.”





According to their materials, the presidents develop programming on their campuses to advance these civic commitments in keeping with their unique institutional missions. These include: hosting speaker series that promote diverse viewpoints; expanding course offerings centered on civic preparedness; utilizing orientations for student debates and free expression skills; designing student programming around constructive dialogue and civic engagement and learning; promoting voter engagement initiatives; and highlighting the themes of democracy and civic life through speeches and seminars.



In its recent report, “From Polarization to Progress,” the coalition describes the ways in which the schools are working toward these goals, both collectively and individually. The group continues its confidential presidential forums, and held its annual meeting at Howard University in January. Its blueprint, built off of the three major goals, includes launching initiatives and learning opportunities in several domains, reflecting a theory of change that spans policy and practice. They are:



<ul>
<li>Administrative, led by presidents and provosts and involving campus-wide initiatives like Campus Call for Free Expression, a series of activities designed to spotlight the principles of critical inquiry and civil discourse;</li>



<li>Classroom, involving curricula, first-year learning and certification programs, as well as faculty development through the Faculty Institute, which held its first convening in June at Rutgers;</li>



<li>Centers and Institutes, such as Wellesley College’s Hilary Rodham Clinton Center for Citizenship, Leadership and Democracy;</li>



<li>Auditorium, encompassing speakers, public events and lectures.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



Many of the myriad initiatives were already well-established, but bringing them together under one umbrella is part of the learning. The report notes strong activity in the past year: 88% of members offered courses or seminars that centered on civil discourse; 98% generated new civic research, fellowships, or initiatives; 98% hosted speaker series, dialogue dinners, or debates; and 94% held community, civic, or political engagement events. In 2025, 20% of current consortium members will offer programs that reach every student.



Bennington College President Laura Walker would be considered a “true believer.” The former president of New York Public Radio was drawn to the small liberal arts college in Vermont largely because of its mission “to work towards a world more beautiful, sustainable, democratic and just.” She has launched programs that support this mission including the Free Expression Task Force, which brings together a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, and Board of Trustees members to craft long-term policies that ensure these fundamental rights are preserved and nurtured within the institution. This fall, Bennington’s Center for the Advancement of Public Action is launching a seven-week course called “Saving Democracy Together,” open to Bennington students, alumni and the public.&nbsp; &nbsp;



Like Holloway, she believes we dismiss civics preparedness in higher education at our peril. “I believe we are witnessing the effects of this lack of prioritization, compounded by the fractured media landscape and other factors, in today’s political climate,” she says. But Walker, like the other leaders in the group, is in it to change it. “Despite the sometimes grim appearance of our political landscape, it is not too late to effect change. I remain hopeful that we can make a concerted effort to reconnect education and democracy in ways that secure our future.”&nbsp;



Vinnakota says the organization’s blueprint will lead to a number of changes on today’s college campuses: a decrease in polarization; comfort speaking up, especially if you feel you have a minority viewpoint; and a willingness to engage with people whose views are different than yours. In prioritizing constructive conversations, it is clear that this group of leaders, many battle-worn from drowned-out assemblies and political intervention on free speech, have civil discourse as top of mind going into this school year ahead of a contentious election.



“The presidents know that the protests are not going away. The students have been very clear about that,” says Vinnakota. “The question is how can administrators address this in a productive manner?&nbsp; How can we engage students in an effective way where they feel as though they are making an impact on the direction of this country?”



Holloway sees this as the opportunity. “College is a great moment of re-articulation where a young person comes in and can have a set of experiences that either affirm their views or radically change them,” he says. “To me, this is the perfect breeding ground for wrestling with ideas.”

The “College Presidents for Civic Preparedness” have an Agenda 

Rochester, Minnesota has one of the highest per capita physician to population ratios in the country. Home to the Mayo Clinic, it benefits from the prosperity and diversity of its anchor institution, consistently rated the best hospital in the world. In 2009, the city strengthened its distinction as “America’s City for Health” when it launched a research university that would complement Mayo Clinic’s medical research enterprise and meet its ongoing workforce needs. The community appears to be getting all that and more with the University of Minnesota Rochester (UMR) – an innovative learning environment that centers equity and wellbeing as it takes on healthcare’s grand challenges.&nbsp;



“Building a major university here, particularly one focused on health care, has been so important to the fabric of this city,” said Mayor Kim Norton. “I am so proud of the work that they do and the success they have had with their students.”&nbsp;



UMR opened its doors to its first 57 students in 2009 after a multi-year effort among community leaders brought a regional branch of the University of Minnesota to town. It has grown to nearly 1,000 students who prepare to enter a variety of health-related fields, clinical, technical, and administrative. Two-thirds of the students are in at least one category that would be considered historically underrepresented. This fall, nearly 50% of the student population will be BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color).&nbsp;



Bringing more students of color into the medical professions is one of the goals of the UMR/Mayo Clinic partnership which hopes to provide a stronger pathway to medical careers as it diversifies a health care workforce that serves patients from around the world. “We have a strong focus on diversity, equity and inclusion here to make sure we represent all of society and that our patients can see themselves in their caregivers,” said Karen Helfinstine, Mayo Clinic’s Vice Chair of Education Administration. “Our partnership with UMR is critical to cultivating the workforce of the future.”



From the university side of the partnership, Mayo Clinic provides the promise of a good career for its students as well as an opportunity to foster an educational environment leading to flourishing in life and work. The teaching hospital adjacent to the university has built-in opportunities for experiential learning, research and mentorships — educational experiences that have <a href="https://www.gallup.com/education/194264/gallup-alumni-survey.aspx">proven to lead to improved wellbeing</a> — and all part of UMR’s innovative, student-centered learning environment.&nbsp;



The university’s motto is simple and forthcoming, aptly describing the building blocks that have led to its early success. “Students are at the center. Research informs practice. Partners make it possible.” Lori Carrell is UMR’s Chancellor and its passionate champion. It is clear she views the world through an asset-based lens, believing starting from scratch is an opportunity for innovation, just as students who have struggled possess valuable qualities.&nbsp;



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The teaching hospital adjacent to the university has built-in opportunities for experiential learning, research and mentorships
</blockquote>



“One of the things that our students have in common is that they have persevered through major challenges in childhood or and adolescence,” she said. “There’s a resilience element we have the privilege of seeing in admissions. If a student can describe how their perseverance has been a catalyst for their passion to make a difference in the world through a career in health, we believe them to be well equipped for the rigor and compassion of this work.”&nbsp;



A communications scholar who has published books on the need for change in higher education, Carrell says the methods they were experimenting with at UMR are what attracted her to it in 2014, when she first became Vice Chancellor. One of the university’s founding principles is a unique research mission where every faculty member does their primary research on student learning and student development regardless of their own subject matter expertise.&nbsp;



“One of the great misses in higher education is we do not apply educational research or neuroscience about learning to how we structure college degrees or college life,” she said. “At UMR, we had a blank canvas to do that. Our faculty are in one interdisciplinary department called the Center for Learning Innovation. They demonstrate teaching excellence by providing evidence of learning and they progress in their careers by doing research on student learning and student development.”&nbsp;



Andrew Petzold is a biology professor at UMR and, like Carrell, was drawn to the school because of its innovative teaching environment. “We are really in the trenches collecting data on the educational process and what students are actually learning and we use that to better inform our teaching in the future,” he said. “The interest is in student success rather than just publishing anything we possibly can.”&nbsp;



Petzold says that the interdisciplinary focus on educational research leads to joint scholarship as well as active, student-centered classrooms. “We all have our own disciplinary focus, but I can talk and collaborate with other faculty in a much easier way because we all have a background in educational research.”&nbsp;



UMR’s unique teaching environment has been highly recognized within the system and beyond. In its short history, seven UMR faculty members received the <a href="https://scholarswalk.umn.edu/faculty-award-programs/university-awards/awards-outstanding-contributions-education/horace-t-morse">Horace T. Morse-University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Contribution to Undergraduate Education</a>. But fans of UMR’s research-embedded learning are quick to acknowledge the importance of pairing great teaching with proven student success strategies, many included in AAC&amp;U’s high impact practices. Every student at UMR has a student success coach. With a ratio of one to 80, “success coaches” help with everything from flagging academic struggles to connecting people to internships to making sure students are focusing on their wellbeing. Graduating students joke that their student success coaches are what they most want to take with them when they go.&nbsp;



“These kinds of personal connections are where the sense of belonging comes from,” Carrell said. “‘I am connected to somebody and I matter here, so I can be ok even on really hard days.’”&nbsp;



UMR’s health majors are academically rigorous and can be challenging for some students. For this reason, the campus launched with a “JustASK” program which is important to active learning and made possible by the openness and collaborative nature of the faculty. “There are no lectures here,” said Carrell. “Our instruction is active and experiential so students have to be prepared to do project work in the classroom and they have to have access to faculty if they need help,” she said. Instead of office hours, which many students don’t utilize, UMR faculty sit out in open spaces as an interdisciplinary team at JustASK so someone is available to help with a question or concern.&nbsp;



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“These kinds of personal connections are&nbsp;where the sense of belonging comes from. I am connected to somebody and I matter here, so I can be ok even on really hard days.”
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Perhaps the most notable outcome of UMR’s evidence-based learning practices is the fact that the university has all but eliminated the achievement gap between underrepresented students and other students. . This outcome is something the campus community is very proud of but does not take for granted. She says building on UMR’s early success with students will take vigilance and a comprehensive approach which includes addressing one of the biggest barriers to a college degree for underrepresented students – affordability. Here, UMR and Mayo Clinic are leading the way with an innovative partnership called “NXT GEN MED.”&nbsp;



In December of 2024, the first class of NXT GEN MED students will graduate with a degree from the University of Minnesota within 2.5 years. The accelerated degree program for students interested in non-patient care careers has taken the traditional eight semester bachelors degree and applied it to a yearly calendar, lessening overall costs for students who are also given scholarship money if they are eligible. The partnership with Mayo Clinic includes a paid, credit-bearing internship, a Mayo Clinic mentor as well as a student success coach and research experience. As a result, UMR students are well positioned for employment upon graduation, either at the Mayo Clinic or in other institutions.



“What has been so beautiful about this partnership is hearing from the students how meaningful these experiences have been for them,” said Mayo Clinic’s Karen Helfinstine.



The program is an early example of a movement to create undergraduate degree options that increase student success while decreasing student cost known as “College-in-3.” Chancellor Carrell is a national leader in this area and views her advocacy as an extension of her work to revitalize the sector. When it comes to higher education challenges, Carrell says there are two for which there is little disagreement: college costs too much and many students who start do not complete. “College-in-3” programs are meant to address both of these problems at once, with evidence-based curricular designs.&nbsp;



“These programs are not about lopping something off, they’re about crafting something better. You’ve got three years. How do you design research-embedded, experiential, transformative learning that leads to human flourishing? That’s the opportunity.”

Learning and Flourishing in America’s City for Health

The college years are a crucial time for young adults to cultivate the skills of leadership and character, which significantly influence not just students’ personal and professional development, but shape the values of the next generation of leaders. Mastering values-based leadership helps students effectively guide and inspire teams, fostering collaboration and problem-solving abilities that are vital in today’s dynamic work environments. Moreover, developing strong character traits such as integrity, empathy, and resilience lays the foundation for ethical decision-making and builds trust with peers and colleagues. Together, these skills not only enhance academic and career success but also contribute to creating purposeful change within oneself, one’s community, and beyond. The educators entrusted and charged with imparting these skills must translate abstract ideas into practical frameworks. What does it mean to teach character? To nurture leaders of integrity and purpose? Steve Sosland, vice chancellor for Leader &amp; Culture Development for the Texas Tech University System, has spent his career finding answers to these questions across different organizations and sectors.



Higher education is Sosland’s fifth industry. After graduating from West Point, he began his career in the U.S. military, where he spent 11 years as an infantry soldier. He later worked in corporate America, first in the restaurant industry and later helping other junior military officers find jobs in the business world with companies that sought to hire veterans for their leadership and character skills. In 2010, Sosland became the chief operating officer of Hill Country Memorial hospital in Fredericksburg, Texas, where he and a team of leaders transformed the then-failing hospital into a pillar of excellent healthcare and leader development, for which President Obama awarded the hospital the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2014.&nbsp;



Sosland’s first role in higher education was as the executive vice president and chief people and performance officer at the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center at Fort Worth. Today, in his role at Texas Tech, Sosland reflects on this unlikely trajectory and highlights the thread that connects each disparate sector and organization: in every dimension, his career has been dedicated to “working with organizations to incorporate a values-based approach to leadership,” which, he says, “advances personal development, quality of life, and wellbeing by helping individuals live in alignment with their own core values.”&nbsp;



Sosland’s own life is an example of this dynamic process. Today, he says his purpose is “to influence those who will transform the lives of others,” but that mission wasn’t apparent to him at the outset. “When I was in my twenties, looking ahead at my career, I could not have predicted the path,” he explains. “When I was in my fifties, looking back at it, I wanted to find the common thread, and what I found was that I had worked in environments with a strong sense of core values and a culture built around those values. That culture was either there when I arrived, or I used leadership development as an opportunity to create it.”



Leader &amp; Culture Development at Texas Tech takes a comprehensive, bird’s-eye view approach to bringing values-based leadership and purposeful work to the university system’s five campuses. “If we are going to help students, it is fundamentally important for us to first focus on faculty, staff, and administration,” Sosland says. “If we work with the students by directing them to leader development programs and helping them become leaders of character, but they don’t see role models around them, then it brings into question all of our work.”&nbsp;



The Path to Purpose



To ensure that students have those role models, Sosland works directly with university leadership, shaping the tone and character of the institution. Part of that work involves&nbsp; exploring purpose, both personally and institutionally. “The way that I work with senior leaders — college and university presidents, deans, department chairs — is by helping them to identify their purpose, both personally and for their entity,” he says. “We then identify their challenges — be them challenges of morale, wellbeing, efficiency, inter- and intrapersonal issues — and we address those challenges within the cultural environment, taking a people-first approach. I call this concept generational leadership. I might very rarely interact with students, but I interact with deans to help them lead their department chairs, who then help the faculty members, who help the students.”



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“Our work reminds them of what was already inside of them.”
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<a href="https://www.gallup.com/education/248222/gallup-bates-purposeful-work-2019.aspx">Purposeful work</a> is often described as “aligning who you are with what you do.” Sosland describes this alignment as “a sense of oneness in a person’s values at home and at work, which is one way to define integrity: from the root integris, meaning oneness or unity.” Though research suggests that purposeful work can promote wellbeing and fulfillment throughout life, a <a href="https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/reports/on-edge?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email">2022 Harvard University study</a> found that 58 percent of teens and young adults reported having little to no sense of purpose in life. It is a remarkable figure, but not an entirely surprising one. In a 2021 study of more than 10,000 young people across 10 countries, 56 percent of 16- to 25-year-olds surveyed said they <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/88npnp/fifty-six-percent-of-young-people-think-humanity-is-doomed">believed humanity was doomed</a> due to the climate crisis. The study, published in <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00278-3/fulltext">Lancet Planetary Health</a>, also found that 60 percent of respondents blamed their national governments for this bleak state of affairs.&nbsp;



Amid a youth mental health national emergency, growing sentiments of dread and <a href="https://thred.com/culture/offbeat/understanding-gen-zs-expected-uptake-in-nihilism/">nihilism</a> plaguing young people, and Gen Z taking to the internet to voice their existentialist views in the form of <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/kamala-harris-coconut-tree-meme-explains-vital-truth-2024-election-rcna163682">political memes</a> and parody videos, the idea of finding purpose could seem almost quaint. But initiatives focused on character and values-based leadership have material impact and the potential to change lives—particularly the lives of college students, who are on the lookout for purpose and in the process of creating and sustaining their core values.



To make the case for purpose, leaders in higher education must not overlook the fact that high tuition costs and poor financial wellbeing lead students to increasingly seeking pay over purpose. In addressing this concern, Sosland cites James Truslow Adams, who coined the phrase “the American Dream” in his 1931 book The Epic of America. “Adams said that our college education largely focuses on how to make a living, but perhaps it should be how to make a life,” he explains. “How to make a living is important, but I think that as universities, we’ve lost our way. We are so hyper-focused on teaching how to make a living that we lose sight of teaching how to make a life. What we are doing at the Texas Tech University System is raising these as equally important matters. We are focused just as much on building the character of the students as we are on helping them get a job, because it is their character that will help them survive in challenging times. We are preparing them to find work that aligns with their core values.”



Grit is one value that comes up in Sosland’s conversations with higher education leadership, faculty, and students. “When it comes to purpose, we are asking, Why do I exist? We ask it on a personal level, and we ask it on an organizational level. Why does this organization exist? How do we create an environment that is rich and allows people to grow and develop to their full potential? And how do we do it so that, along the way, they gain the skills of resilience and grit that will get them through life’s challenging times and help them when they face failure?”&nbsp;Dr. Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and renowned scholar of grit and self-control, <a href="https://angeladuckworth.com/grit-book/">defines grit</a> as the combination of passion and perseverance toward a long-term goal. Sosland cites Duckworth’s philosophy of grit as influential to his work in character and leadership development. “Our universities are in West Texas,” he explains. “Most of the population of Texas is in the eastern third of the state, but West Texas is largely rural. Our universities primarily serve rural areas with harsh weather conditions — sand storms, harsh winds, harsh temperatures. In these conditions where a lot of our students grow up, they have to be resilient. They have to navigate tough environmental conditions just to survive. Their grandparents and great-grandparents lived through the Dust Bowl. In their backgrounds, grit and resilience are imprinted deep within them. But, as with anyone, this gets lost. They get caught up in the what-ifs of life, and they sometimes forget what was imprinted from parents and teachers and coaches early on. Our work reminds them of what was already inside of them. That is what identifying and living in alignment with core values does for both individuals and organizations.”

Making a Living, Making a Life

As the academic year drew to a close in May, I waited for my fears to be actualized. After a spring of over 3000 arrests of college students—something unprecedented in my professional experience of nearly 30 years—I found myself questioning my confidence in the core commitment I made to my students. I have always expected students to change the world, to utilize the educational experience to be, what I call “comfortably uncomfortable.” Yet, I was getting increasingly uncomfortable as encampments, protests, and arrests proliferated around campuses in the United States. I worried, for the first time, that perhaps we were afraid of our students and their calls for intervention in a time of global crisis. I saw campuses closing their gates and worried we might temper our commitment to the rigorous exchange of ideas that so fundamentally defines higher education and the joys found in this setting.&nbsp;



And then I listened. Over the course of a week, I attended nearly a dozen graduation ceremonies involving countless student voices. I have gone to senior balls and hugged tearful students who, only a few weeks earlier, presented me with lists of demands. Time and again, I am reminded that our adolescents are experts in their lived experience. We fail that expertise when we presume the wisdom we gained as adolescents decades ago somehow supplants the wisdom of today’s lived experience. We need to listen and then apply our wisdom as leaders and educators. As I reflect on that remarkable spring, I am reminded of a few key factors influencing our future work together:&nbsp;



Teenagers don’t “get over” a pandemic.&nbsp;The impact of the isolation resulting from the pandemic interrupted an important stage of adolescent development among teenagers. It has left an undeniable impact upon today's youth and it will influence our understanding of early, mid, and late adolescence for years to come. This should not be a surprise to educators. Assessments of adolescent health and well-being clearly established a prevalence of stress, anxiety and depression that preceded the pandemic. Isolation caused by the pandemic increased loneliness and adversely impacted interpersonal skill development. For a community whose high school and early college experience was defined as “Wake up, open Zoom, close Zoom, sleep. Repeat,” learning how to meaningfully connect with others is anything but inherent. The <a href="https://healthymindsnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/HMS_National-Report-2022-2023_full.pdf">Healthy Minds report of 2022-23</a> noted 42% of respondents missed companionship and nearly 70% of respondents reported feeling isolated often or some of the time. It is now normative, not exceptional, for our emerging adults to be lonely, want true friendships (not the social media kind), and are urgently seeking a sense of community. The resilience I may have learned in my college experiences in the 80s, is not the same resilience our students learned during periods of mass shootings, isolation, and the desire to be compassionate actors in a complex world. Our students are trying very hard to change the world on a stopwatch, understandable given the disruption of time, space and developmental growth caused by the pandemic.



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I have gone to senior balls and hugged tearful students who, only a few weeks earlier, presented me with lists of demands.
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Listen to what our students are telling us. They care. And they are learning how to show it to an older (yes, that’s us) generation that doesn’t seem to be listening. Countless encampments, arrests, and fear of a global crisis enfolded this past academic year on the heels of years of mass shootings and uncertainty. There is no better time than now for higher education to invest in our youth and engage in developing skills associated with care for others, curiosity, and, yes, conflict. Let’s remember everything we learned in high school through interpersonal interactions. Our hearts were broken and restored, we had best friends and best best friends (they might have changed often based on how the day went), and there was a “cool kids” table in the cafeteria. We learned, through interpersonal engagement, empathy by being in the 3D presence of emotion expressed without a mask on.&nbsp;



In their graduation remarks at my institution, students repeatedly appealed to each other for community, dialogue, and compassion; not revolution. One of my favorite graduation speakers remarked on this theme by sharing, “We are united by...this innate desire to be interconnected and care for one another everywhere we go.” They are just learning how to do that in a world where Chicken Little, to them, is starting to look like a soothsayer. These students share our compassion but they haven’t learned as well how to express and moderate that compassion and care for others. They may protest sometimes, they may express frustration when they see horror: they are retroactively learning how to express those feelings in real time, in 3D. Our colleges and universities are well prepared to provide some calm and purpose.&nbsp;



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There is no better time than now for higher education to invest in our youth and engage in developing skills associated with care for others, curiosity, and, yes, conflict.
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I am confident our institutions can continue to do what they know is best: educate and inspire global scholars who will transform our world. The expression and curiosity of those scholars serve as a litmus test for the success of today’s adolescence following the interruption of the pandemic. Higher education must pursue our mission in a manner that is responsive to the curiosity, compassion and isolation our students carry within them. The actions of our younger scholars are impacted by these realities and require responsive and continued commitment to their post-graduate success in a world that is complex—and eager—for their impact. Let’s listen, please, and then do what we do best.



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Eleanor J.B. Daugherty, PhD, MEd, is the Vice President of Student Affairs at Georgetown University. Daugherty previously served as Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students at the University of Connecticut (UConn).&nbsp;

Our Students Have Something to Tell Us

Higher education is currently under enormous scrutiny. Part of this scrutiny results from the challenge of balancing the traditional roles of college in helping students “find a job” and “find themselves.” Eliminating the conflict between these goals, and indeed underscoring their interdependence, offers an excellent opportunity for higher education to take steps toward restoring public trust. To take full advantage of this opportunity, we must work harder to deliver the real value of a college education: a transformative learning experience.



For generations, traditional age students have enjoyed the benefits of college’s unprecedented ability to offer intellectual discovery at the inflection point of their personal development. This exceptional combination comes with a shift in learning that distinguishes college from primary and secondary school experiences dominated by extrinsic motivation like deadlines, teacher approval, and grades. Higher education, when done well, sets the stage for life-long learning by introducing intrinsic motivation that goes beyond knowledge and skill, shaping attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs — or “mindset.” Colleges and universities’ ability to teach students how to learn, not what to learn, is fundamental to the personal and professional success of graduates, often including, ironically, higher education’s harshest critics.&nbsp;



Experiences in college can lead not only to professional success, but to a greater sense of wellbeing long after graduation. Current evidence based on <a href="https://www.gallup.com/education/328961/why-higher-education-lead-wellbeing-revolution.aspx">measures of life-long wellbeing</a> developed at Gallup indicates that having emotionally supportive mentors, particularly faculty, correlates strongly with life-long wellbeing. Gallup alumni surveys additionally show that initiatives that increase students’ sense of agency, through experiential learning opportunities such as projects or internships, also correlate with wellbeing long after the college years. One particular program, <a href="https://www.gallup.com/education/248222/gallup-bates-purposeful-work-2019.aspx">Purposeful Work at Bates College</a>, produced profound evidence that a sense of wellbeing is substantially enhanced in students who find career opportunities closely related to areas of study that develop a sense of purpose and meaning.



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Higher education, when done well, sets the stage for life-long learning by introducing intrinsic motivation that goes beyond knowledge and skill, shaping attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs.
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The challenge facing higher education is how to achieve a broader recognition of the need to strengthen students’ transition from extrinsic to intrinsic learning and encourage experiences like hands-on learning and mentorships correlated with wellbeing at a time when vocationalism and return on investment dominate the public narrative.&nbsp; Barriers such as check-box general education curricula and faculty reward systems that disincentivize truly student-centered, innovative teaching exacerbate the problem as does the underlying issue of the cost of a college degree.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Restoring the public’s esteem for higher education by promoting lifelong wellbeing and refocusing the conversation on the student experience make up the central mission of <a href="https://thecte.org/">The Coalition for Transformational Education</a>. The Coalition is a learning community of almost 30 institutions across the country dedicated to changing the ways we teach and students learn, each pursuing distinct initiatives that offer best practices in engendering identity, belonging, agency and purpose in students based on experiences known to promote wellbeing.



The Coalition is focused on promoting this transformation across all of higher education by changing the narrative about what matters most in the student experience and encouraging faculty to experiment at the undergraduate level with evidence-based interventions to improve outcomes and wellbeing, and scaling these to all enrolled students. All of the institutions that are members of the Coalition are committed to assessing the interventions they introduce and refining them over time to continually improve their long-term impact.&nbsp;



All members of the Coalition are committed to producing positive educational experiences that touch all enrolled students, not simply those that are focused only on specific populations such as the talented and gifted or the under-resourced or under-prepared. The Coalition is dedicated to making all of these interventions accessible to every enrolled student, regardless of their academic record or financial resources. The Coalition has the potential to transform higher education in ways that allow it to deliver on its full promise of career preparation and personal development, ensuring that students graduate not only with broader and deeper intellectual outcomes, but also with a greater sense of who they are and who they can become.

The Case for Transformational Education

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Students at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering enter their studies with a sense of hope and purpose. They are often young people with an interest in public welfare and socially conscious work, setting out to design auspicious futures for an ever-changing, ever-complicated world. But what happens when four years of stress, hustle culture, and careerism obscure the sense of purpose that brought them to engineering in the first place? When students lose sight of their purpose, the effect is not only demoralizing in the short term — it can have <a href="https://www.gallup.com/education/248222/gallup-bates-purposeful-work-2019.aspx">lifelong implications</a> for wellbeing, work engagement, and fulfillment.



Dr. Harly Ramsey observed firsthand how an engineering education culture can obscure purpose and impair wellbeing in students as a professor at the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC. She has been dedicated to offsetting this trend for several years, teaching in the Viterbi School’s Engineering in Society program (formerly the Engineering Writing Program), a unique program designed to integrate humanities topics such as ethics and communication into the engineering curriculum. It is from this intersection of thought that Ramsey, a professor of technical communication practice whose PhD is in English, approaches her role as an engineering educator. In 2021, The <a href="https://thecte.org/">Coalition for Transformational Education</a> gave USC a grant to launch the <a href="https://visionventure.usc.edu/">Vision Venture</a> video series, an interview project that connects engineering students to recent alumni as a way of helping students reconnect to their sense of purpose, agency, and direction. 



When, in response to the Vision Venture project, Ramsey’s students participated in a series of anonymous surveys related to wellbeing, she was surprised by the troubling results. “These students sit in front of me twice a week. I feel like I know them.” Yet, she recalls, “I had no idea how stressed and isolated many of them felt.” She was also struck by her students’ warped perception of time, noting that many had lost sight of the future — and forgotten the reasons they wanted to be engineers in the first place.&nbsp;



That lost sense of purpose is now central to Ramsey’s research, as well as to her approach to teaching. “The process of education that we put engineering students through in the course of four years has been found to decrease their interest in public welfare,” Ramsey says. Indeed, a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43671164">2014 article</a> by sociologist Erin A. Cech, which Ramsey cites as influential to her work, reveals that despite widespread discourse on “the importance of training ethical, socially conscious engineers,” longitudinal data suggest that “students’ interest in public welfare concerns may actually decline over the course of their engineering education.”



“As a moral agent and a person who cares about my students,” Ramsey says she feels obligated to use the classroom to promote purpose and agency, laying the foundation for wellbeing after graduation. “Enough of them need help; let’s bring it to them,” she said.



It was with this mission in mind that Ramsey joined forces with Dr. Julie Loppacher, the director of USC’s Kortschak Center for Learning and Creativity, to bring 5-minute self-regulation exercises into the classroom. Loppacher and Ramsey designed the accessible, co-curricular model for improving student wellbeing, learning, and sense of purpose based on self-determination theory and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377192262_Using_Self-Determination_Theory_to_Examine_Student_Responses_to_Five-Minute_Self-Regulation_Strategies_in_the_Engineering_Classroom">presented the results</a> at the 2023 Frontiers in Education Conference.



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The culture of “pride in the grind culture” among engineering students adds to the collective stigma around mental health.
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Triage Time



Stress and its impact on mental health are pervasive issues among college students across all disciplines, but for engineering students, the problem may be especially pronounced. A demanding academic workload, pressure to perform well in exams, and “a culture of normalized stress” among engineering students all contribute to the phenomenon of lost time (and loss of purpose) that Ramsey identified among her students and for which she coined the term “<a href="https://peer.asee.org/engineering-moment-as-a-pedagogical-approach-using-narrative-theory-to-promote-student-awareness-of-their-engineering-identities.pdf">triage time</a>” in 2022. Hustle culture, grind culture, careerism — by any name, normalized stress can be detrimental to students’ sense of agency and meaning, as the pressure to succeed obscures the pursuit of passion and purpose. For some, a social environment that rewards stress and encourages burnout for bragging points compounds the pressure. As 2024 Viterbi School graduate Jesse Tennant put it, “There is an environment where many are struggling and few want to admit it. Students seem to ‘out-stress’ each other. Many students stack their schedules to the max and constantly talk about how busy they are.” This, Tennant adds, culminates in “a cycle of escalating stress, where interacting with classmates can make one feel inadequate for not being stressed enough.”&nbsp;



The sentiment echoes the findings of a <a href="https://learningwellmag.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=96e11f20f007486def28c8a3a&amp;id=3e684cbf98&amp;e=254175d6d6">2023 report</a> from the Harvard Graduate School of Education that rates of anxiety and depression among 18- to 25-year-olds, which are twice as high as rates among teens, are exacerbated by a pre-professional hustle culture that favors employability and income over purpose. That <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/its-not-all-about-the-money?sra=true">careerist approach</a> to education may pose financial and social barriers to leading a meaningful life, causing some students to neglect the pursuit of joy and purposeful work.



While the culture of stress is not unique to the field of engineering, Tennant says, “I believe that engineering students have a unique learning experience. Many engineering classes routinely have low exam and project scores. I took a class last semester where the average for every exam was below 50%. While the class was curved at the end of the semester, scoring in the traditional F range is demoralizing and can make you question your intelligence and whether you ‘belong’ in the program.” Moreover, research suggests that engineering students, many of whom operate in a climate of normalized — and, at times, celebrated&nbsp;— stress, may be especially reluctant to seek help. The culture of “pride in the grind culture” among engineering students adds to the collective stigma around mental health, Ramsey says, compounding the barriers to getting help.&nbsp;



Taking five



Self-determination theory identifies three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Loppacher and Ramsey wanted to test whether dedicating 5 minutes of class time to self-regulation techniques, such as goal-setting, journaling, and cognitive reframing, could help students meet these needs. “Emotions have an impact on our cognitive state and ability to learn,” Loppacher explains. “They can be profoundly positive, and they can be profoundly limiting.” Self-regulation techniques are academic and emotional tools that improve a person’s cognitive state, preparing them to learn, feel, and be better. Each technique is grounded in data, which Loppacher shares with students to provide a basis for every prompt. Rather than simply telling students that goal-setting increases self-efficacy and achievement, for example, Loppacher presents research that students who set <a href="https://absel-ojs-ttu.tdl.org/absel/article/download/90/86">SMART</a> (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals are more likely to attain them. Participation is optional, and exercises are capped at 5 minutes at the start of class.&nbsp;



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At a time when youth mental health is considered a national emergency and experts fret over a seemingly irremediable generational divide, fostering open, intergenerational dialogue can dispel panic and misunderstanding.
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While some professors may be reluctant to yield valuable class time to student wellbeing, restricting the exercises to 5 minutes and conducting research on their efficacy ensure that the process is accessible and productive. Ramsey and Loppacher emphasize that professors are not expected to be mental health professionals, nor should they be obligated to go beyond their scope of expertise or deduct learning time from their classes. In fact, Ramsey says, “Whether or not professors care about student wellbeing, self-determination theory is a learning tool that helps students perform better in class.” By fostering holistic learners, this approach can also increase professors’ self-efficacy by improving classroom engagement and performance.&nbsp;



The student response



Ramsey and Loppacher will expand the program beyond the Viterbi School of Engineering in the 2024-2025 academic year, as they recognize a ubiquitous need for co-curricular supports. Loppacher conducts optional interviews with students who have participated in courses that implemented self-regulation techniques and concludes that there are many benefits to the program, both obvious and subtle. Many have noted the importance of intergenerational understanding as it relates to stress, hustle culture, and wellbeing. At a time when youth mental health is considered a national emergency and experts fret over a seemingly irremediable <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2019/11/26/boomer-blaming-finger-pointing-and-the-generational-divide/">generational divide</a>, fostering open, intergenerational dialogue can dispel panic and misunderstanding. “Intergenerational relationships are extremely important in our lives, especially as learners,” Loppacher says. In one interview, a student stated, “The intergenerational recognition of my stress levels was incredibly powerful.” When asked about the role faculty and staff play in student mental health, Tennant echoed this idea of recognition and care. “While many professors and staff genuinely care about students, this should be the standard, rather than an exceptional attribute,” he says. “Students should feel confident each semester that their mental health will be prioritized by the entire institution, rather than hoping they have a caring professor.”



The idea of care — for others, for oneself, and for the future — reverberates throughout many students’ reflections on the 5-minute self-regulation exercises. “The demonstration of care from my professor was the most important thing,” one student reflected. “This isn’t just a writing class,” said another, “you actually care.” Research underscores the importance of care: in the 2018 <a href="https://www.gallup.com/education/194264/gallup-alumni-survey.aspx">Gallup Alumni Survey</a>, alumni who reported having “someone who cared about me as a person” during their undergraduate years were more than twice as likely to report high levels of well-being and work engagement later in life — but fewer than 5 percent of alumni said they had. Some students have reported that a mere acknowledgement of their “human-ness” by a professor was novel: “We’re all people…engineering is a very work-heavy major...so it’s helpful to have a reminder that you are not a machine…you need to do these things [self-regulation strategies] for the human part of yourself.”

Shifting Gears

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For college students getting ready to embark on their post-graduate lives, a sense of purpose can be a North Star, illuminating the path toward personal development, fulfillment, and success. Having a clear sense of purpose provides students with direction and resilience, brings meaning to their endeavors, improves their <a href="https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/reports/on-edge?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email">mental health</a>, and empowers them to make informed decisions about their futures. When students can identify and live according to their purpose, they can cultivate a deep sense of belonging within themselves and their communities. The pursuit of purpose shapes the college experience and <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/its-not-all-about-the-money">lays the foundation</a> for meaningful living beyond graduation — but how do students find something as elusive and individual as purpose? At Belmont University, they are finding it through alumni in the <a href="https://thecte.org/project/belmont-university/">Purpose Mentorship Program</a>.



“We are trying to help students know who they are, who they were made to be, what makes them unique — and how they can capitalize on that for the sake of communal flourishing,” said Joe Mankowski, the Transformational Project Strategist at Belmont University, where he heads the Purpose Mentorship Program.&nbsp;



Belmont is a private Christian university in the heart of Nashville, Tennessee. It attracts students with dreams of making it on Music Row, young entrepreneurs, aspiring medical professionals, and — like most college students —&nbsp;young adults who are still trying to find their passion and understand how to pursue it. A 2019 <a href="https://www.gallup.com/education/248222/gallup-bates-purposeful-work-2019.aspx">study</a> conducted by Gallup in partnership with Bates College explored that pursuit, defining and measuring purposeful work experiences among college graduates. The study found that 80 percent of college graduates say that it is extremely important (43 percent) or very important (37 percent) to find purpose in their work — yet, less than half of those graduates reported finding it. Graduates who report a strong sense of purpose in work are almost ten times more likely to meet the criteria of overall well-being, which encompasses mental, emotional, physical, and financial health. This research reiterated previous findings that deriving purpose from one’s work is correlated with “having someone who encourages students’ goals and dreams.”&nbsp;



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“We aren’t just training students for a job; we are forming whole people.”
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In Belmont’s Purpose Mentorship Program, that “someone” is a university alum — a person who has been in the student’s position, often within the last several years, and made the transition from commencement day to purposeful work. Launched in the 2021-2022 academic year with funding from the Coalition for Transformational Education and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, the initiative is emblematic of a broader mission that President Greg Jones and Reverend Susan Pendleton Jones brought with them to Belmont. Making it a <a href="https://news.belmont.edu/whats-your-why-course-stimulates-mind-and-community/">focal point</a> of his administration, President Jones’s Discovering Purpose course asks students, “What’s your why?” This question, which is also the driving concept behind the Purpose Mentorship Program, prompts students to reflect on the process of meaning-making both as individuals and as members of a vibrant community.&nbsp;



Originally piloted by the Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business and the Massey College of Business, the Purpose Mentorship Program fosters meaningful connection between alumni and students, helping students to envision their futures and articulate their goals. Alumni are recommended by faculty and staff based on character, humility, and leadership skills in addition to professional success. Each mentor circle is composed of one alumni mentor and a cohort of 2-5 students. Mentors are prepared with curriculum-based discussion points and encouraged to engage in their own self-reflection on purpose and identity. The groups meet monthly to walk through how one’s purpose develops over the course of the college years and manifests in life beyond graduation.



As a Belmont alumnus himself, Mankowski views the Purpose Mentorship Program as a reflection of Belmont’s mission to cultivate “whole-person development,” educating leaders of character and wisdom. “Being part of a community that has so consistently and fully invested in its students has motivated me to find ways to invest back into the community,” he says.&nbsp;



Mankowski understands just how vital the relationships formed through the program are for students making decisions about their futures. Equally significant, he says, are the questions it asks. As he explains, “If you know why you’re here, it gives you so much latitude and freedom.” The program begins by asking students who they are in the context of their communities — college students, interns, roommates, daughters, sons, partners. While understanding those identities can begin to help students locate their goals, Mankowski says, it also is imperative that they “take a step back and ask, ‘Why do I think humans exist? Why do I think we work? Why do I think we love?’”



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“In an achievement-based culture, it’s so easy for students to prioritize work at the expense of self-reflection, self-awareness and introspection. We are holding space for that exploration.”
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In a climate of careerism, immense student debt, and hustle culture, students may fall into the trap of basing their identities entirely on work in an effort to secure high-income jobs. When students pursue these bestowed metrics of status and worth —&nbsp; job titles, grade-point averages, salaries — <a href="https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-social-workplace-social-capital-human-dignity-and-work-in-america-volume-iii/">at the expense</a> of finding their purpose, their <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/its-not-all-about-the-money">overall well-being</a> can suffer. That’s why, according to Dr. Amy Crook, Vice President for Transformative Innovation, Character and Purpose, the search for purpose is <a href="https://news.belmont.edu/belmont-students-alumni-discuss-purpose-through-inaugural-mentorship-program/">more than work</a>. It is a lifelong quest for identity and understanding — not just within oneself, but in service to others. “We want students to realize they are more than their job,” Crook said. “Their ultimate happiness, fulfillment, joy and ability to make the world a better place is much larger than their job titles. We aren’t just training students for a job; we are forming whole people, and we want them to feel confident in exploring these bigger questions. And we are doing so through supportive, caring contacts who can be honest about the obstacles they faced and the opportunities where they were able to make choices to have a more fulfilling life.”



Mankowski echoed this sentiment, noting that “in an achievement-based culture, it’s so easy for students to prioritize work at the expense of self-reflection, self-awareness and introspection. We are holding space for that exploration.”&nbsp;



What better guides for their North Star journey than those who paved the way before them? Mankowski views alumni relationships as crucial to the purpose initiative. The program pairs students with alumni mentors based on 5 distinct areas of purpose designed to gauge motivations and values, rather than organizing them by career or major. These 5 personalities — the creative visionary, the compassionate guide, the sincere storyteller, the thoughtful investigator, and the organizational innovator — act as a litmus test for students and alumni to connect across professional disciplines, forming what Mankowski calls “unlikely partnerships” that reinforce the belief that purpose is not a professional identity, but an ideological one. The program also directs students to courses that may be best suited to their style of purpose — the sincere storyteller might enjoy a creative writing workshop, while the organizational innovator may gravitate toward the biology lab&nbsp;— bringing meaning and individuality into the classroom. This approach helps students connect their curriculum to real-world experiences, building the relationship between purpose and academic or professional life.



The transformative potential of the Purpose Mentorship Program lies in these relationships — between students and alumni mentors, and between academic life and self-reflection. Mankowski notes that the program gives students “a sense of unconditional mattering — that is how we connect with ourselves, with our life’s purpose, and with each other.”

The “weird” attack on higher education

Talking student mental health and wellbeing with experts on campus

Dr. Estevan Garcia is at the Table

Where Did All the Good Times Go?

The “College Presidents for Civic Preparedness” have an Agenda

Keep Learning Well

Mental Health

“The Real World of College,” Continued

A Collective Endeavor

LearningWell Radio in Conversation with Alex Kafka

Teaching & Learning

Shifting Gears

What’s Your Why?

“The Real World of College,” Continued

Access & Inclusion

Public Opinion

Seeing the Unseen

Democratizing the Liberal Arts

Flourishing

Learning and Flourishing in America’s City for Health

Making a Living, Making a Life

Our Students Have Something to Tell Us

Perspectives

The Case for Transformational Education

Democratizing the Liberal Arts

Where Did All the Good Times Go?