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

Mental Health

Examining innovations that help young people thrive

Teaching &amp; Learning

An end goal for learning and life

Flourishing

On Wednesday morning, Scott Delaney woke up to an email from an address he didn’t recognize. In a hasty 6 a.m. message, the writer explained to have been hearing from contacts at community-based organizations running substance use disorder and harm reduction programs that “their grants were all cancelled.” The stranger wondered: Had Delaney, who leads&nbsp;<a href="https://grant-witness.us/">Grant Witness</a>, an online database tracking federal grant terminations, heard the same?



In fact Delaney hadn’t — yet. By 10 a.m.,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5677104/trump-administration-letter-terminating-addiction-mental-health-grants">NPR</a>&nbsp;broke the story that, the previous night, the Trump administration had notified hundreds that their funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) had been terminated, apparently due to misalignment with “agency priorities.” Upwards of 2,100 grants were cancelled, worth a total around $2 billion. Delaney’s Signal threads blew up. Emails and&nbsp;<a href="https://grant-witness.us/submit-samhsa.html">web form</a>&nbsp;submissions reporting specific grant terminations and requesting information flowed in. The Grant Witness team spent the day building a new system to track SAMHSA grants. Come evening, Delaney had put his kids to bed and was settling back down at the computer when he learned the Trump administration had reversed its decision: The cancelled grants are now restored.



In that moment, following the news of reinstatement, silence fell upon the Grant Witness Slack chat. Delaney described a sense of relief, perhaps second only to disbelief: a stomach-clench of mixed emotions no doubt reflecting the experience of mental health professionals across the country. They had spent hours mobilizing, scrambling for answers, only to end up with a new set of questions, among them: Is it over?



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This latest instance of federal policy whiplash plays into a larger pattern that makes it difficult for some to completely shake off concerns. 
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Certain developments on this front have been reassuring. That lawmakers from across the political aisle activated to restore the funding indicates vast support for these programs, which widely focus on suicide prevention and substance use treatment, including for young people. The letter SAMHSA sent rescinding the terminations also seems to promise a quick return to regular programming. “Your award will remain active under its original terms and conditions,” a copy of the email obtained by LearningWell states. “Please disregard the prior termination notice and continue program activities as outlined in your award agreement.”&nbsp;



But this latest instance of federal policy whiplash plays into a larger pattern that makes it difficult for some to completely shake off concerns. This fall, LearningWell <a href="https://learningwellmag.org/article/uncertainty-weighs-on-mental-health-researchers">covered</a> the ongoing uncertainty that has weighed on mental health researchers over the fate of federally funded projects. Throughout 2025, mass grant freezes and terminations by the National Institutes of Health, for example, disrupted scientific research across a range of disciplines. In the case of mental health, the particularly unfunny irony is of course that the stress of these cuts has been damaging to the mental health — and careers and livelihoods — of the researchers themselves. 



“It’s really hard to know and trust, frankly, the information and know how it's going to play out,” said Sara Abelson, the senior director of training and education at The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs at Temple University. At the junction of mental health and higher education, the ground beneath her has felt shaky for a while now. Amid this week’s cuts, Abelson paid special attention to one grant impacted that provides funds to colleges and universities: the Garrett Lee Smith Campus Suicide Prevention program. According to&nbsp;<a href="https://hope.temple.edu/assessing-insufficiency-federal-investments-college-student-basic-needs">research</a>&nbsp;Abelson has been conducting on federal grants for student basic needs, between 2016 and 2024, G.L.S. touched nearly 250 campuses in 45 states and Puerto Rico. These are the kind of wide-reaching “lifesaving supports” she said have been threatened. Will next time be for real?&nbsp;



Delaney also isn’t quite ready to unwind. Well-versed in the grant cancellation and restoration process, he worries about how long it will take this round. On Wednesday, some grantees shared with him documents, called Notices of Award, they received reestablishing their funding to zero. These NOAs are legal contracts, with the terms offset, in Delaney’s experience, only when a new one is issued. So, he wonders, are the grantees technically owed their original funds at this point? Will some end up pausing their work out of caution? SAMHSA did not respond immediately to a request for comment as to whether revised NOAs will be sent or the expected timeline.



Others worry, because the potential reasons for the original cancellations remain, future cuts may still be coming. Kathleen Ethier, the former director of the division of adolescent and school health at the Centers for Disease Control, believes U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/10/linda-mcmahon-rfk-jr-mental-health-students/">expressed views</a>&nbsp;on the over-discussion and over-pathologization of youth mental health issues don’t bode well for the future of related initiatives. “I do think that there is an ideological reason why these grants were targeted,” she said, “and I do think we have to remain vigilant about the ways in which this administration is going to support young people's mental health in schools.”&nbsp;



The continuous federal funding upheaval may have had at least one positive outcome for mental health advocates, though. Now they know how to respond. While Delaney said the initial rush following this week’s terminations — to organize his team and collect new information and field inquiries all at once — felt akin to Whac-A-Mol, previous experience helped him maintain a sense of control. “I think because we've done this before, honestly, I felt ready to tackle this,” he said. “We knew what to do, we knew who to contact, and we were going to be able to put together a database that was going to be really helpful, and we were going to be able to do it really well, really fast.”



“It's really, really energizing to see the vast numbers of folks pull together, the communities activate and mobilize, and you can draw a lot of strength from that,” Delaney said.



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

SAMHSA Grant Reversal Fuels Additional Anxiety in the Field   

Xochitl Casillas’ students were moping again. As the dean of Chicano Latino student affairs at the Claremont Colleges, she had come to expect this phenomenon: When February rolled around, and Valentine’s Day became imminent, those without partners seemed to feel their singledom more keenly than ever. She called them, affectionately, the “lonely hearts club.” She also wanted to help.



Starting last year, Casillas organized an event on Valentine’s Day-eve for students who didn’t want to be alone to come together. The main activity was an art workshop, called Campus Colors and Connection, which asks students to consider the feelings different colors provoke and then create abstract drawings to represent those feelings or related experiences. By sharing their work and thinking with each other, they could learn more about their peers, as well as themselves.



“This is the time where a lot of people who want partnership may not have it,” Casillas remembered telling the group. “But today, this is an opportunity to connect.”



The workshop Casillas led her students through was developed by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artandhealing.org/">The Foundation for Art and Healing</a>, a nonprofit that promotes the arts as an intervention for loneliness. Jeremy Nobel, M.D., Ph.D., a physician and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, started the foundation to explore the impact of the arts on health generally but pivoted towards developing arts-based resources for loneliness about a decade ago. At that point, loneliness was emerging as a predominant mental health concern, and research had begun to suggest what Nobel already suspected: The arts could help.



Today, with loneliness widely considered a national crisis and young adults particularly affected, Nobel continues to believe in art as an antidote. Lately, he and his team have made a special push to bring their work to colleges and universities. Educators, like Casillas, all too familiar with their students’ struggles, have become eager partners. Even those who might question handing crayons to twenty-somethings are considering: Can they afford not to try?



“I think loneliness is where depression was 20 years ago,” Nobel said, “where people didn’t even want to say it out loud.” In other words, Americans may have come around to the idea that depression is a medical condition, rather than a personal defect, but they don’t necessarily treat loneliness with the same open mind. Nobel, whose background is in internal medicine, likes to say loneliness is just a biological signal that a person needs to connect, like feeling thirsty is a signal to drink water. He urges others to adopt this same understanding, or risk the consequences.&nbsp;



<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3874845/">Evidence</a>&nbsp;shows that, physically, loneliness can make people vulnerable to inflammation, higher blood pressure, and a weaker immune system. Mentally, they may act less rationally and more impulsively; they may begin to see the world as threatening. And the lonelier they stay, the more threatening the world seems and the more difficult it becomes to develop connections in the future. Nobel calls this “spiraling.”&nbsp;



Young people report to be the loneliest of any age group, despite seeming so well-connected online. Even considering the end of the pandemic and return to in-person learning, Gen Z continues to indicate widespread loneliness; in 2024, up to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gwi.com/blog/gen-z-loneliness">eight in 10</a>&nbsp;were saying they had been lonely in the last year. As for why, a slew of familiar explanations abounds, like the impact of social media, drawing youth away from “real” human interaction.&nbsp;



Art and Healing



For Nobel, the connection between loneliness and the arts wasn’t immediately apparent. At first, his interest in the health impacts of creative expression was focused on how it might help treat acute trauma. He had personally sensed the benefits after using poetry to make sense of his feelings about the Sept. 11 attacks. A psychologist overseeing a similar brand of work in a more formal setting confirmed patients were finding relief, specifically across race and class backgrounds.&nbsp;



“The arts seemed to be helpful across all these wide horizons,” Nobel said, “which meant something was going on that really rewired your brain in some important ways.”&nbsp;



In 2003, Nobel launched The Foundation for Art and Healing, eager to explore the effects himself. He kept the focus on trauma-affected groups — first those with military backgrounds, then those dealing with sexual, domestic, meteorologic, and other forms of trauma. As the scope expanded, Nobel heard a common refrain: The programs “made them less lonely and more connected.”&nbsp;



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Brain imaging now shows how areas associated with social connection light up while subjects engage with art. 
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Science was catching up, too.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2022.738865/full">Brain imaging</a>&nbsp;now shows how areas associated with social connection light up while subjects engage with art. Other findings suggest it can reduce hormones associated with&nbsp;<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5004743/">stress</a>&nbsp;and increase&nbsp;<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7075503/">“feel-good” ones</a>, like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.&nbsp;



As evidence mounted, the foundation turned its attention fully to art’s possible sway over loneliness. In its current form, the organization aims to raise awareness and reduce stigma around loneliness, as well as disseminate research-based programs that help people connect. Offerings include original films, online exercises, and in-person workshops,&nbsp;all&nbsp;within the organization's signature initiative,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artandhealing.org/project-unlonely/">Project UnLonely</a>.



Core to all this work, and meant to maximize its impact, is the foundation’s public health approach. The Foundation for Art and Healing team partners with other businesses and organizations to implement its services, rather than delivering them directly. It also prioritizes simple and low-cost interventions that don’t require prior medical or professional training to implement. “The key is to do things that meet three criteria: effectiveness, scalability, and sustainability,” Nobel said.&nbsp;&nbsp;



While the foundation also targets the general public, the elderly, and workers in high-stress environments, Gen Z has become a particular focus. Community-based organizations like museums and libraries can be good partners for reaching the 18 to 28-year-old demo. But, Nobel said, “by far the most direct way is through colleges and universities.”&nbsp;



So far, the foundation has reached more than 50 campuses and 6,000 students. The institutions range from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to large public research universities in the south and small community colleges on the west coast. The activities appeal to a range of campus community members, including those in student affairs, residential life, spiritual life, athletics, and even campus museums.&nbsp;



At the Claremont Colleges, students used the Campus Colors and Connection exercise to explore their common cultural identity. When Casillas asked them to represent, through different colors and shapes, what brings them joy, for example, she said her Latino students depicted cooking with a grandparent in the Dominican Republic, swinging in a hammock in Puerto Rico, and speaking Spanish. She watched them become eager to tell their stories and encourage new friends to do the same.&nbsp;



“People are like, ‘Oh, it feels like we're back in elementary school. We're just coloring,’” Casillas said. “But I think they didn't realize how vulnerable they were going to get.” After the 45-minute Valentine’s Day session ended, students lingered to continue the conversation.



The simplicity, perhaps child-like nature,&nbsp;of the exercise might push some away. But Nobel said the playfulness is the point. It’s also part of the draw as a less intimidating, or clinical, form of self-care. “We never frame it as therapy,” he said of the workshops. “We often don't even use the word loneliness in our promotion of it.” Instead, the directive is simple: “Create and connect.”



Expanding Connections



The University of New England was an early adopter of Campus Colors and Connection, starting about four years ago. Coming out of the pandemic, Dean of Students Jennifer DeBurro said she and her team decided to take a “10,000-foot view” of the student wellbeing issue: “We were asking ourselves questions about on-ramps: What are some of the additional ways that we could provide opportunities for students to connect with peers in a low-risk, easy way?” That’s when they were introduced to Nobel’s work.&nbsp;



First a one-off program, Campus Colors and Connection is now part of U.N.E.’s orientation program. “They can just talk — talk about what's making them nervous about going off to school, talk about what's exciting, reflect on a memory,” DeBurro said of incoming students.



When it comes to evaluating the workshop, the primary mechanism is the survey students fill out after participating. Questions prompt them to reflect generally on the experience, and so far, the results are positive. The vast majority have reported they would recommend the workshop to others (96 percent), as well as feeling more in touch with their emotions (84 percent) and more connected to their peers (84 percent). 79 percent of those who indicated feeling lonely beforehand said they felt less lonely afterwards.&nbsp;



Yet Nobel recognizes the survey work isn’t as robust as it could be. He hopes to expand assessment to consider the potential impact on student success, including academic performance and retention. “Does being more connected increase learning? All the evidence says it should,” he said.&nbsp;



As the foundation aims to strengthen assessment efforts, Claremont and U.N.E. continue to extend their partnerships with the foundation. Casillas has now led Campus Colors and Connection not only for her Latino students broadly but with a group of student mentors, who learned to run a version of the session themselves. She also brought the workshop to fellow staff.&nbsp;



U.N.E. recently began offering a tailored version of the Campus Colors and Connection for first-gen students. “We continue to talk about it in as many different corners of the university as we can,” DeBurro said, “so that any opportunity we have to bring it to a new population, we do.”



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

Colors and Connections

When Eric Wood talks about the future of college mental health, he does so from the front lines. The longtime director of Texas Christian University’s Counseling and Mental Health Center and past president of the Texas University and College Counseling Directors Association has just been elected the next president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (A.U.C.C.C.D.). His tenure will begin in October 2026.&nbsp;



Known for his innovative Comprehensive Collaborative Care Model and award-winning e-book, “A New Narrative for College Mental Health,” Wood is stepping in to lead the nation’s largest organization for campus counseling leaders at a moment when the field, like all of higher ed, is confronting change. We caught up with him fresh off hosting a national symposium on performing artists and athletes and took the opportunity to ask him about A.U.C.C.C.D.’s plans and priorities.



LW: Congratulations on your election as president-elect of A.U.C.C.C.D. What do you see as the major challenges for the organization in the coming year?



EW:&nbsp;We as counseling centers have done a really good job capturing the narrative of how important college mental health is. College mental health has a lot more significance than people realize. If you think about the demographic we serve, the traditional 18- to 25-year-olds, that’s a prime demographic for pretty much anything — substance use, suicide, emerging disorders. It’s also the best time to treat them because if you can treat them then, they may have fewer episodes later, or none at all. Whereas if they wait 10 or 15 years, it's a lot more ingrained and harder to treat.&nbsp;



Colleges and universities have greater access to that demographic than any other health-care system. They live, walk by, and travel by our campuses every day. So the question is: What opportunities does that create if government and other organizations really recognize this?



LW: You’ve become known for T.C.U.’s innovative model of collaborative care. Can you explain what that is and how it ties into your national leadership goals?



EW:&nbsp;We call it the Comprehensive Collaborative Care Model, and it’s reshaping how universities think about their role in mental health. We started it during the pandemic. The mindset had always been that college counseling centers were designed for developmental concerns — the stress that comes from change — not necessarily for students with high mental health needs. But those dynamics have shifted. Now we have students with much higher needs, and our systems weren’t designed for that.



So instead of building hospital-style treatment centers, we built bridges. We partner with community providers who were&nbsp;designed&nbsp;to work with individuals with high needs but who lack the infrastructure and access we have. They come onto our campus, use their programs, and our students stay in school, on our campus, in programs with other college students. It’s a win-win-win: The student’s insurance covers most costs so there’s just the co-pay, and we’ve gotten grants and donors so the treatment centers have the chance for little or no overhead. We’ve trained over 100 schools to replicate various parts of the model.&nbsp;



LW: You mentioned that politics and policy changes are affecting mental health care on campuses. What are you seeing?



EW:&nbsp;If you're in a university that's depending on federal funding, there’s a new level of raised exposure. There’s a perception that if a state or federal funding source doesn’t like something at your institution, they’re going to cut your funding off. People don't realize that even if it had nothing to do with college counseling centers, it is going to trickle down if schools have that cut in funding. When universities face federal or state funding cuts, that trickles down to us. A 20 percent budget cut across campus means a 20 percent cut for the counseling center, too. And yet the demand for services has never been higher.



A lot of the culture-war legislation, like D.E.I. bans, has had unintended consequences. Some states have medical exemptions for those laws, but others don’t. We’ve seen schools cut services that were never meant to be targeted, like gender specific groups with mental health and addiction issues. This is an age group much more likely to seek help on campus than they would after graduation, so when you remove those options, you lose opportunities to intervene early.



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“When policymakers pass laws or set funding priorities, I hope they think carefully about how that affects college mental health.”
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We’re trying to make lawmakers aware that mental health has&nbsp;never&nbsp;been a partisan issue. Surveys show eight out of ten Americans believe schools are responsible for providing health care to students. The narrative we’re pushing is: “Look at the possibilities higher education offers society. Why would you want to limit that potential?”



LW: What other issues are most pressing for college counseling centers right now?



EW:&nbsp;We’re still seeing the ripple effects of the pandemic. And we do know that in this age group one of the things that spiked is their likelihood to transfer. The students entering college now were in middle school during the shutdowns — the classes of 2028 through 2030. That’s a critical cohort with a lot of struggles. They missed key developmental years, and those formative years had a lot of disruption going from middle school to high school, and we see that in their social and academic adjustment carrying over to higher education.&nbsp;



And as digital natives engaged in all the social platforms, they’re used to absorbing all the culture and content and polarizations in society. That’s their reference point, and a lot of them may not know what it’s like to&nbsp;not&nbsp;have that level of polarization. So they’re bringing that to campus. When they see politicians saying certain words or treating each other some way, you're going to see that carry over to how they treat faculty. They see that people just break rules; you see that happening in politics and society, and that carries over into the res halls because that's the frame of reference.&nbsp;



We’re also seeing a higher level of parental involvement. Their parents spent more time with them during lockdowns, engaged in a closer front-row seat to their education, so now we’re seeing that continue — sometimes helicopter-level involvement — in college life.&nbsp;



LW: What’s on your personal wish list as incoming president?



EW: To keep building that narrative and have a stronger voice nationally. We’ve had some success getting attention from politicians and national outlets, but there’s so much more to do. When policymakers pass laws or set funding priorities, I hope they think carefully about how that affects college mental health.



And college is where the developmental concerns play out because this is the prime age. The reason why colleges created counseling centers wasn't because we thought every student had a clinical diagnosis. Most students do not. The centers exist because we define stress as heightened in times of major change, and a major one is when you start college. You only have about four or five of those moments in your life when everything can change. So starting college is one of them — you change where you eat, where you live, your identity, everything — and then graduating college is a second one. So you have so much change bookmarking the college experience. And then you do have associated stressors, like navigating the social environment, and we know that demographic tends to engage in high-risk behavior, so a lot of prevention work is important. That is why college counseling centers exist, and I contend colleges and universities are the best in the world at doing that. But because there's currently a lot more students with high mental health needs coming to campus, the disconnect occurs that we aren’t good at what we're doing. That couldn’t be further from the truth.



The mental health of young people is&nbsp;always&nbsp;going to be a popular, bipartisan cause. We just need to remind people of that and continue the collaboration.



LW: How do you see that collaboration playing out at the national level?



EW:&nbsp;Collaboration is essential. Some states have strong organizations, like Texas, but not all do. One of my goals is to help develop those networks. State laws affect us differently, so we need local collaboration as well as national unity. There’s strength in numbers, whether it’s state collectives, regional conferences, or collaborations across university systems, like the athletic conferences.



It’s also about mutual support. A lot of what’s in the headlines about higher education doesn’t directly involve counseling directors, but it still affects us through funding cuts, political pressures, or staffing shortages. Directors need to come together because having a collaborative amplifies our method, our messages. We need each other to stay resilient.



LW: You just hosted a symposium on athletes and performing arts. What can you tell us about the thinking behind spotlighting those populations?



EW:&nbsp;It really came out of conversations we were having on our campus about performing artists and athletes — two groups that represent the university in powerful ways but have very different kinds of support systems. Varsity athletes get a lot of institutional support, but there are just as many performers and non-varsity athletes who face similar pressures and injuries without the same safety nets.&nbsp;



For example, if a student athlete gets hurt, the university often covers the care, and they can still progress toward their degree. But if a dancer or musician gets injured, they often can’t progress toward their degree because performance is part of their coursework. That difference really highlights why universities need to think more broadly about how they support these students.&nbsp;



So we decided to organize a symposium to explore that. We reached out to experts from Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Harvard — literally the pioneers of performing arts medicine — and every single one of them said yes. We even had ballerina Tiler Peck as a keynote. It turned into a two-day virtual event that drew about 100 sign-ons per session; many of them were in classrooms watching together. It was the first time we’d done anything like it, and it really underscored how much synergy there is between athletic and performing-arts wellness.



LW: How long have you been at T.C.U., and what do you think your election says about A.U.C.C.C.D. and where it’s headed?



EW:&nbsp;I started at T.C.U. right out of my Ph.D. program in 2007 and became director in 2019, so I had one good semester before the pandemic hit. Everything we’ve built since then has been about adapting to change and meeting students where they are.



I’m honored by the role. I think part of the reason I was elected is because we’ve done a good job at innovation at T.C.U., and I think it shows a shift in the narrative about college mental health. For a long time, the assumption was that we as colleges were limited — that if a student had a serious mental health disorder, they needed to go elsewhere, just like you wouldn’t expect a university to perform surgery. But that’s changing. For example, one of our specialized programs is an intensive outpatient program on campus. I’d love to see every residential campus in America have one. The impact would be generational.



So, I think my election signals that people are starting to recognize the potential and the possibilities of what we can do — and that we can do it at a fraction of the cost, using programs that already exist. And why would you want to do anything to ruin that potential? To have my colleagues across the country say, “We want that kind of innovation leading us forward” — that’s deeply meaningful. It tells me people see the potential of college mental health, and they’re ready to invest in it.

Leading the Next Chapter of College Mental Health

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



Nationwide, about 64 percent of students who start a degree program finish it within six years, with an average loan debt among borrowers of $29,300, according to the College Board. In 2023, Carrell testified to the U.S. House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development about how the College-in-3 concept could improve student retention, degree completion, and career launch, either by developing accelerated 120-credit degrees or creating new curricula that reduce the credit requirement to 90.



“Accreditors have opened their doors to this,” Carrell said.&nbsp;



Not for Everybody



While financial wellbeing is an obvious benefit of earning a degree in three years, the College-in-3 movement continues to head off concerns about less-desirable repercussions for students, like increased stress, feelings of overwhelm, or a rushed college experience.&nbsp;



Jutton shared those concerns, initially. Her fears were eased after mapping out the course work with her advisor, taking into account the credits she brought with her from high school. Still, Jutton worked two jobs while in school, as a resident assistant and also as an assistant in the student engagement and events office. During her second year, she took 20 credits each semester. It was a lot at the time, but Jutton believes the experience also gave her skills that she’ll use forever.



“It taught me valuable life lessons. I’m really good at time management and my organizational skills are better than they were coming into college,” Jutton said. “I was able to recognize when I needed help and ask for it, as well as set boundaries for what I can and cannot do.”



As more institutions are joining the College-in-3 Exchange, they are also considering how to design curricula that take student mental health and wellbeing into account, Carrell said.



“The worry that you’re just going to rush students through and turn degrees into credentials, instead of deep, transformative learning? Nothing could be farther from what we’re doing,” she said.



Janet Schrunk Ericksen, chancellor at Morris, said that since the college started actively promoting the three-year option in February 2024, it’s been well received. The Degree in Three program features prominently on the website, and Ericksen said that it receives more page views than any other part of the site. Visitors also spend more time looking at the information.



“We serve a large percentage of students from historically underrepresented populations—low-income, first-generation students,” Ericksen said. “Giving them this path is important.”



Ericksen acknowledges, however, that completing a 120-credit bachelor’s degree in a condensed timeline isn’t for everybody. It’s easier for those who can use A.P. credit or pursued dual enrollment in high school, earning some college credits before arriving on campus. Most students also take a summer class or two along the way. She believes that certain degrees also lend themselves to quicker completion than others. Physics, for example, requires foundational knowledge before moving on to the next levels, so the major might be more challenging to finish in less than four years.&nbsp;



“It’s not going to work for students who change their major six times or who want a triple major—and we have a fair number of those,” Ericksen said. “But the students who are really focused, they’re saying, ‘Yes, this is what I want, and it’s great to have a clear path.’”



An opportunity for experiential learning&nbsp;



Institutions like Brigham Young University - Idaho, which serves an older population of working adults taking online classes, are finding that eliminating elective courses and reducing degree credits to 90 or 94 are helping students complete programs in majors like business management, applied health, and family and human services. The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, an accrediting body, approved the truncated programs in 2023.



Still, not everybody is sold on the validity of a 90-credit degree. Some higher education experts and faculty members are concerned that it will create a two-tiered system and that employers may not value the degrees equally.&nbsp;



But Madeleine Green, executive director of the College-in-3 Exchange, said the timing for higher education to make such changes is “propitious.”



“For all the questions that are out there about the value of a degree, employability of graduates, the cost of higher education, those are all factors that I think have propelled institutions to think about alternative pathways,” Green said.



Designing three-year degree programs with industry partners is leading to better outcomes, Carrell said. At the University of Minnesota Rochester, for example, students in health-related majors are offered paid internships at the Mayo Clinic, as well as job interviews upon graduation. The partnership has also helped the faculty design a tight curriculum that ensures that students are prepared for the workforce, while building in strategies like block scheduling, success coaches, and capstone experiences that contribute to student wellbeing.



“To know that there are these dire workforce shortages in healthcare deserts and we’re producing people who can go out and serve communities sooner is very, very satisfying,” Carrell said.



Peh Ng, chair of the division of science and mathematics at Morris, said the students she’s helped guide through three-year degrees aren’t missing out on the hallmark experiences of college, like undergraduate research, study abroad, and internships. Still, those who arrive at Morris without having earned any college-level credits have a much more challenging time finishing in less than four years—and often they don’t.



“A three-year program is really not for every student, but if a student tries it and it doesn’t work, then they finish it in four years. So at the end of the day, it bodes well for four-year graduation rates,” she said.&nbsp;



Ng is among the faculty members who don’t agree with reducing credit requirements, especially in STEM fields, where she said the difference between taking 12 courses and seven is “huge.”



“You can’t have two tiers of programs,” Ng said. “I am a strong proponent of not changing the requirements.”



Jutton agrees with Ng—she wouldn’t have wanted to take a lesser load, she said. As she prepares to graduate, she has few regrets. Sure, another year may have afforded her a more robust social life, but she also found friendship and camaraderie among like-minded peers who were also on the fast-track to degree completion. Although Jutton will be younger than many of her graduate school cohort, she still feels prepared to move on.



“I think the biggest thing for me was finding supporters, like my career counselor and the faculty,” Jutton said. “I haven’t met someone who does not believe in me here and that was really important for me to be able to do the degree in three.”

"College-in-3"

In 1965, students at the newly established University of California, Irvine, chose, as their mascot, the anteater. The unusual selection was an attempt to distinguish the university from others within the state system, leading to a campus identity that remains unique.  



Today, U.C. Irvine has embraced a university-wide approach to teaching and learning that once again reflects its independence. Anteaters Virtues is a pedagogical and research initiative that promotes a set of intellectual character traits meant to underpin a student's educational journey. If this sounds like something critics of higher education might call indoctrination, Anteater Virtues is, in fact, the opposite. 



“We don’t just train people to be doctors or engineers or business leaders; we train people to think for themselves, and that is profoundly liberating,” said Duncan Pritchard, a distinguished professor of philosophy at U.C. Irvine and the creator of Anteater Virtues.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The virtues — curiosity, integrity, intellectual humility, and intellectual tenacity —&nbsp;&nbsp;are first introduced to students at orientation. Students work on them, in different forms, as they advance to their degrees. The hope is that these intellectual building blocks will help students develop a greater capacity to learn and to succeed in a rapidly changing world.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Launched as a pilot in 2017, Anteaters Virtues is hitting its stride. The initiative has recently received a $400,000 grant from the Lilly Endowment as part of the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University, supporting schools dedicated to making character education central to their academic mission.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The grant will fund, in part, a major push to bring Anteater Virtues to other institutions attracted to the method’s commitment to freedom of ideas and the development of durable skills. Indeed, the initiative’s leaders believe that a return to intellectual virtues may be what’s needed to address many of the problems facing higher education today.&nbsp;



Anteater Origins&nbsp;



Duncan Pritchard&nbsp;is an&nbsp;epistemologist from the U.K. who had a keen interest in the intellectual side of character education when he arrived at U.C. Irvine in 2017 from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. As a knowledge scholar, Pritchard sought to understand how intellectual virtues could be embedded into an educational setting.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“A lot of people are focused on moral or civic virtue in terms of character education, but my interest is in intellectual character: How can we get students to understand that what they are doing is actually cultivating intellectual virtues that will stay with them for life?” he said.



Pritchard explored the idea of identifying and explaining a digestible set of&nbsp;&nbsp;intellectual virtues that would be taught throughout a student’s trajectory. The vision included faculty training to infuse these virtues into the classroom.&nbsp;



Pritchard admits that attempting to transform curriculum at an Research-1 university seemed like “absolute madness,” but he was surprised and encouraged when he received the full support of U.C. Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman and Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning Michael Dennin.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“When Duncan came to me with this idea of creating intellectual virtues that would be a framework for teaching and learning, I thought, ‘Yes, this is what anteaters are all about,’ and so that’s what we called it,” Dennin said.&nbsp;



While Dennin was excited about the potential of Anteater Virtues, he said he always viewed the initiative as a “long game” effort.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We could have made a big announcement telling everyone they have to use these, but that was never going to work,” he said. “Instead, we said, ‘Let’s do this slow and steady, get the modules developed, and engage some early adopters.’”&nbsp;



With leadership backing him, Pritchard focused on two tracks: implementation and assessment. After introducing the concept as a pilot, he expanded it to the entire university with a grant from the Templeton Foundation.&nbsp;To allow the initiative to scale quickly, he developed online modules. Core modules are included in the orientation course that all incoming U.C. Irvine students take, with other introductory modules embedded into regular courses or taken for extra credit. More advanced modules, including a capstone version, round out a more in-depth experience.



To help assess the work, Pritchard enlisted the expertise and support of Richard Arum, a professor of sociology and education and the former dean of the U.C. Irvine School of Education. The well-known sociologist and author is also the director of the U.C. Irvine MUST Project (Measuring Undergraduate Success Trajectories). Arum’s unprecedented data collection on undergraduate experiences and outcomes would now include measuring the effect of Anteater Virtues. Like Dennin, Arum became an eager partner.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“This work really spoke to me as a faculty member and a scholar and as someone who has been thinking about how we educate individuals in the 21st century,” said Arum, who is the author of “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.”&nbsp;



“A lot of character education to me is politically challenging and not very productive, given people’s different perspectives,” he continued. “But shifting some of that work into intellectual virtues — academic values — that can promote scholarly dispositions, I found to be a very useful intervention.”



It became clear that for the virtues initiative to be embraced on campus, even one as free-spirited as U.C. Irvine, it would need to be strategically positioned — from the chancellor’s endorsement to its distinction among character work to its iterative implementation. Perhaps the most important step to ensure the Anteaters Virtues’ acceptance on campus was the careful identification and communication of the virtues themselves.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Dispositions for Life&nbsp;



“When I think about the core of a research university, I don’t think we could do much better than to start with curiosity,” Dennin said. “That’s what we’re all about.&nbsp;It is important as a virtue but also as an antidote to something I find disturbing in society today: that questioning things, which should be a positive, has become a negative.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“When I think about the core of a research university, I don’t think we could do much better than to start with curiosity. It is important as a virtue but also as an antidote to something I find disturbing in society today: that questioning things, which should be a positive, has become a negative.”
</blockquote>



A major theme throughout the four virtues is a return to inquiry as a core value of education. After curiosity comes integrity, which at first glance may appear to be about plagiarism and misconduct in the age of A.I. Pritchard said Anteater Virtues turns this around, asking students: What does good conduct look like? The last two virtues — intellectual humility and intellectual tenacity — complement one another, though Pritchard said they are often misunderstood.&nbsp;



“The reason we chose intellectual humility and intellectual tenacity is that a lot of students think of them as opposing concepts — that to have conviction is to not listen to another’s point of view and that humility is a lack of conviction,” Pritchard said. “What we are trying to convey is that intellectual humility is respect for others’ viewpoint and is critical to one’s capacity to learn new information, and tenacity means stick to your guns but also be sensitive to the fact you could be wrong.”&nbsp;



Arum is particularly appreciative of this virtue pairing and believes it holds a strong message across the board.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Some of the problems we are having in the sector as a whole, with students and faculty alike, come from&nbsp;not&nbsp;embracing intellectual dispositions,” Arum said. “It’s great to have convictions and want to do good in the world, but the way that that is acted upon sometimes abandons humility and curiosity. So it becomes just advocacy, and that’s very off-putting. If faculty are not showing an openness to other perspectives, how can we expect that from students?”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Getting faculty to embrace Anteaters Virtues is a large part of the effort. To gradually build the virtues into the curriculum, Anteater Virtues is now part of&nbsp;&nbsp;pedagogical training for faculty and teaching assistants, hundreds of whom have taken the modules. Pritchard said the reaction thus far has been encouraging.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Now we’ve got engineers talking about intellectual grit, an educational theorist talking about humility. We have a Shakespearian scholar talking about integrity. In each case, they are connecting the intellectual virtues to what most interests them,” he said.&nbsp;



Pritchard said they are well on their way to attaining their target of 80 percent of students being exposed to the virtues programs through general education courses, and all of them have taken introductory modules as part of their orientation. Students, faculty, and staff are also regularly reminded of the virtues by posters on campus and continuous references by Chancellor Gillman, who promotes the project whenever possible — from convocation to commencement.&nbsp;&nbsp;



For those who remain skeptical, or less enamored by the virtues’ philosophical core, Pritchard said he uses the development of durable, enduring skills as his pitch. In a technology-based marketplace, specialized skills can quickly become redundant. “This is something that you learn at university that will stay with you for life,” he said.



Evidence of the program’s effectiveness is also convincing. Arum’s research on the effort is nascent though promising. Following pre- and post-studies of student and faculty experiences with Anteater Virtues, one report revealed: “The intervention was effective at promoting knowledge of what intellectual virtue is, why it is important, and how to implement it, suggesting the importance of instruction in virtue learning.”&nbsp;



But despite the early data, Arum summons the integrity virtue in cautioning against broad conclusions. “Large public universities are very noisy places,” he said. “It is very hard to capture the attention of either students or faculty.”&nbsp;



As the Anteaters Virtues team continues to communicate the project’s benefits, they are expanding the focus to other universities in the United States and abroad with support of their institutional impact grant from the Wake Forest E.C.I. program. Public versions of the model are now freely available and come with a commitment to help other universities learn how to implement and assess the program.&nbsp;



“We’re sort of a beacon now,” Pritchard said. “We’ve done it here, and we want to use it to promote a conversation about higher education generally — what its purpose is and how we can use this model to help meet the existential challenges that are coming our way.”&nbsp;



Dennin agrees, believing an intellectual virtues framework can address a number of the issues facing higher education from academic freedom to the value of a college degree to the myriads of opportunities and challenges posed by the proliferation of technology.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Dennin even wonders if Anteater Virtues can help with a critical question about the use of A.I.: “What do we do that A.I. doesn’t do?” he asked aloud.



“What does faculty bring to class if A.I. can deliver information and answer questions?” he said. “How does a student learn if they are just using A.I. to do the work? This is where curiosity, integrity, humility, and tenacity come into play. You may have all the information, but what conclusions are you drawing?”&nbsp;



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

Knowledge and Virtue at the University of California, Irvine

John Volin, Ph.D. is the new President of Gustavus Adolphus College, a small liberal arts school&nbsp;nestled in the scenic Minnesota River valley town of St. Peter, Minn.&nbsp;In his convocation address, Volin told his fellow “Gusties” that being there reminded him of his upbringing in South Dakota — of the rural roots that shaped him and his desire to pursue higher education in the first place.



“We are not just beginning a new school year, we are beginning a year of discovery, growth, and possibility,” he said, revealing his signature optimism. Before leading Gustavus, Volin, an environmental scientist, was provost at the University of Maine and, prior to that,&nbsp;vice provost of academic affairs at the University of Connecticut.&nbsp;&nbsp;



As a long-time college administrator and frequent first line of defense against external threats to higher ed, Volin might be less zealous about assuming a role many others are exiting. Instead, he says he has taken to heart Gustavus’ new slogan — “Go Beyond” — which for him means focusing on what’s possible, even as you manage what’s facing you. Volin has long hoped to lead an institution that would align with and benefit from his robust body of work in student-centered, transformational education. In Gustavus Adolphus, which is guided by the Lutheran mission to educate students with purpose, he has found it.&nbsp;&nbsp;



In this candid interview with LearningWell, President Volin talks of first impressions, early priorities, and how college can be a pathway to life-long wellbeing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;You are a first-time college president at a very challenging time for higher education. What keeps you so engaged and optimistic?&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;I was reminded just the other day of why all of this is so important. A couple weeks ago, we had our first-year students arrive with their parents. There are all the hugs, the occasional tears. And you see this new cohort of students that have this energy, this curiosity. They're nervous, maybe even scared, but they have all these aspirations as well. And it really reminded me of the awesome responsibility that we have — this privilege to help shape the conditions that are going to allow those students to thrive, not just during their undergraduate years, but well into the future. And that is something that gets me excited and keeps me engaged.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was the reason I got into higher ed in the first place.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;What drew you to Gustavus? And how does the culture here resonate with your own philosophy on learning?&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;I grew up in the upper Midwest, so I knew of Gustavus and remember being intrigued by its residential liberal arts setting. As family tradition, we all went to South Dakota State University, and I've always been in public comprehensive research universities. So when Gustavus first reached out to me to throw my hat in for president, I was like, ‘Oh, this is exciting.’



But the mission to educate students to lead purposeful lives is what resonated deeply for me. The Lutheran tradition, similar to the Jesuits, is to educate the whole student — mind, body, spirit — and that is really alive here. It's more than a slogan. It really is part of the core, and you can never take that for granted. I think there is a real motivation for faculty and staff to mentor our students beyond the classroom — to help them develop a sense of belonging, a sense of community, to give them agency and character development to lead lives that contribute to society. That’s what really drew me here.



For me, this opportunity has been a long time coming. Early in my career, I started to see this huge responsibility we have to focus on the formation of our students as human beings. And data is starting to really show the benefit of that in terms of life-long wellbeing. It really does make a difference when students know that they're cared for — that they belong — even as we challenge them in the classroom. And then we need to open up opportunities for students to be able to take what they've learned in the classroom and get a really authentic experiential learning engagement. Whether it's through an internship or research experience or service learning, we know that those high-impact practices lead to overall wellbeing during the undergraduate years and well beyond. These students tend to have a higher chance of flourishing later on in life, have greater career satisfaction. And so that for me, is a real driver.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Can you describe an example of this type of approach?&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;Let’s take curriculum development. I have been a part of two very large university curriculum redesign initiatives. And yes, it’s exciting to make change, but often it’s been incremental change — over a six- or seven-year period. And it's always compromise after compromise, and no one really feels completely great about the product. But here, the faculty and staff came together and, in an eight-month period, redesigned their curriculum into a really innovative model: A third of the students’ credits are in their major; a third are in general education; and a third are in electives. So it allows for that depth that the students need and but also the breathing room to try new things. And the results have been really exciting.&nbsp;



My wife Valaria and I live on campus, and every night, we walk our dog — our 15-month-old golden retriever named Sofia. Invariably, our half-hour walks turn into 45 minutes to an hour because we end up talking with students, and I noticed that I would get very different answers to the typical question: “What are you majoring in?” Students will say “business and music” or “biology and theater,” and I love it because that’s what a true liberal arts education can offer. They are using their whole brain.



LW:&nbsp;What are some of the big things you’re working on?



JV:&nbsp;There's amazing momentum here, but we can't just be the best kept secret. We need to better define and communicate what we do. There’s been a lot of work done in marketing and communications, and our new brand, which I was introduced to this summer, is “Go beyond.” I love it because it’s an action phrase that can mean so many things: “Gusties go beyond.” “Go beyond the Hill,”&nbsp;which is what campus is often called.&nbsp;



That’s part of a new strategic visioning and planning process I just announced at convocation. By the way, they tell you as a new president, you should never do a strategic plan your first year, and yet here we are. Actually, this was a mandate coming in, so it’s perfect timing. We’re looking at this as a significant opportunity to shape the institution’s future with purpose and collective ownership. It’s about who we are and where we want to go, and it involves all members on campus. We will ask ourselves: What do we do well? Where must we do better? What can we imagine that doesn’t yet exist?



LW:&nbsp;Do you think your message about the student-centered work you are doing here will resonate with the public at a time when there is so much skepticism on the value of a college degree?&nbsp;&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;I hope it will. I think, historically, higher education has isolated itself too often from the public. But when you're on a college campus, at least in my experience, it doesn’t always feel that way. I think we can all agree that we need to be clearer and much more transparent about the outcomes of a college education. That includes career readiness, but it also includes critical thinking, adaptability, and,&nbsp;&nbsp;importantly, civic engagement. We need to demonstrate that higher ed is not a luxury; it is a public good that benefits communities as well as individuals and helps advance humanity. At the same time, we need to hold ourselves accountable on affordability and access and making sure our students succeed. We are fortunate that we have a great track record here on four-year graduation rates, but we can never stop working on that. I think trust will come when we show through action and not words that we're preparing our graduates to thrive, to contribute in meaningful ways, and to find high satisfaction in their careers. But that'll take time.&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Gustavus is a Lutheran school. Your experience has been in public, secular universities. Now that you’re here, do you see a place for faith and religion on campus?&nbsp;&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;Yes. We have five core values here: Excellence, Community, Justice, Service, and Faith, and that's everywhere. We don't shy away from these core values. At the same time, there’s no pressure on students. This is a place, where, in the Lutheran tradition of acceptance, you can come with faith, no faith — wherever you're at — and we will accept you.&nbsp;&nbsp;



There's a 20-minute service on Tuesday, a 20-minute service on Thursday midday, and one on Sunday afternoons that are all run by students. We have three chaplains on campus. No matter where anyone is on their own journey, they have the chance to plug in if they choose to. A lot of this is about being present and finding spirituality, whatever that may be. Christ Chapel, which is right in the center of campus, is gorgeous. And it's open 24 hours a day. When we first moved here, I found myself going in there one evening. I pulled the door open, and there's this little fountain running, which gives the sound of trickling water. The sun was setting, and I thought, “Wow, you can’t help but feel well here.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;So you see a connection here to wellbeing?&nbsp;&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;I think the faith-based dynamic gives us an extra advantage. I’ve never been at a university where we can actually talk about it, and I do think it helps, particularly if you put this in the context of community. It’s really all about relationships and connection. We’re hosting Bob Waldinger on campus next spring, and I’ve asked students, faculty, and staff to read his book “The Good Life.” Bob is the director of the longest continuously running study on what makes people happy, and at the end of the day, it's relationships. In a very intentional way, I want to bring this message to campus to reinforce that element here.&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Do you think about how technology, particularly AI assistance and online learning options, will affect relationships between students and faculty or students with each other?&nbsp;&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;I definitely think about that. And I also think it's an opportunity for us to get ahead of it. We certainly can't put our head in the sand, but we need to be very thoughtful about how we use technology. For the liberal arts, we need to fulfill the promise we make to families that we are institutions with high touch, smaller class sizes — all those opportunities. We have to be present. That’s our strength.&nbsp;



After the pandemic, there was discussion here about whether we should continue with some online courses, and my understanding is the students overwhelmingly voted no. They wanted in-person classes. What that signals to me is the students who come here want to get to know their professors, and they want to be able to be in the classroom and have those relationships.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;As president in a challenging time for higher education, how do you “lead” through it?&nbsp;



JV:&nbsp;It is tricky, for sure, because you are in some ways the main translator for your college. You are one that sets the tone and delivers the message, and there’s a real balance to uphold. You have to help bolster morale in very difficult times, but you don't want to come off as Pollyannaish. You need to be authentic and truthful. This is a hard time for higher ed. There’s a real assault on academic freedom and a misunderstanding of what academic freedom really is. It's our mandate as leaders to be supportive of and consistent with the values of academic freedom and open inquiry, but it’s very challenging. We just have to keep moving forward.&nbsp;&nbsp;



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

A New President Strives to “Go Beyond” 

The Greenway Institute is in Montpelier, Vermont, but in theory, it could be anywhere. The start-up engineering school is both a place and a strategy for a radically different way to earn a college degree.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We started with the question: How do we make college more affordable and more attractive to a larger set of students?” said Mark Somerville, president of the Greenway Institute and one of its co-founders. “You do it by giving students an experience that is exciting and empowering, that will help them thrive but won’t cripple them financially.”&nbsp;



Somerville believes that combining student-centered pedagogy with a resource-sensitive business model will bring many more students into higher education at a time when the absence of both is keeping them out. While its doors are not yet open, the Institute has spent three years prototyping a curriculum by which students learn engineering in unconventional classrooms, while working in the community and earning a salary. The goal is for them to graduate debt free and ready to take on the real world.&nbsp;



As the Greenway Institute prepares to matriculate its first class of students, it holds broad appeal for families, faculty, and communities seeking something more and different from higher education. Its work-integrated learning model is emerging as one of the innovative ways the sector can restore the public’s trust in the value of a college degree, now at a record low. What influence the Greenway Institute has on higher education hinges on its own success, which includes the conviction that, if they build it, the students will come.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Innovative Roots&nbsp;



Mark Somerville is no stranger to disruption. He was an early team member and then provost at Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, an award-winning start-up that broke the rules in engineering education with its inter-disciplinary, project-based approach. During his time at Olin, Somerville worked with and helped launch new programs and institutions in the United States and in other countries, including Fulbright University in Vietnam.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Somerville said his two co-founders, Troy McBride and Rebecca Holcombe, had been working on pieces of the Greenway concept for some time. In 2022, they collaborated with Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and received a grant from the National Science Foundation to consider how to make engineering more appealing to more students by designing a curriculum that involved sustainable thinking as a core competency for every engineer. Greenway’s tag line is “Engineering our Sustainable Future,” but its value proposition involves a wide interpretation that includes an economic component that the Institute now markets.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We propose that in the age of climate change, sustainability should be something all engineers are thinking about no matter their discipline,” Somerville said. “But beyond that, we need to be thinking about how to enable people to live well and thrive on this planet.”&nbsp;



With his background in innovative educational models, Somerville was frustrated at what he sees as higher education’s failure to integrate transformational education with a sustainable business model. This concern eventually led to the work-integrated learning model Greenway is promoting. Its viability involves breaking precedent by making work a central and integrated part of the learning journey: Students receive credit for working — and get support and instruction from Greenway while they are on the job.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The four-year program involves two years of residential education that are high-touch and heavily hands-on. Greenway adopts a collaborative mastery orientation to learning, focused on process, metacognition, and developing strong relationships with faculty. This is coupled with two years of working at a company, in a credit-bearing, co-op style that lets students earn an average of $50,000 per school year. Well-paid co-ops are not unusual in engineering but integrating them into the academic process is.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Even schools that have really strong co-op programs don’t usually allow students to get credit when they are out in the world doing real stuff that matters to people,” Somerville said.&nbsp;



At the Greenway Institute, students not only get credit for their work but are connected to a faculty member who acts as a coach and mentor throughout their two-years of employment.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Students are mastering a whole set of professional and design skills in the workplace that we are able to put educational scaffolding around,” Somerville said. “They are learning more because there is someone there who is helping them do the reflection work, the sense-making that is often missing in apprenticeships.”&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Copy-of-Mark-Discussing-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2818"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">President Mark Somerville addresses students and staff in pilot class. Courtesy of the Greenway Institute.</figcaption></figure>



The out-of-the-box pedagogy is paired with smart economics. As Somerville described it, students are earning money half the time they are in school. They are learning in-person at the school’s physical plant for half the time they are enrolled and distance-learning during the time they are out in the workplace. That set-up drives down the cost of running the institution and, thus, what it costs students to earn their degree.&nbsp;&nbsp;



For the first classes of students coming to the Greenway Institute, that cost will be zero. According to Somerville, the free tuition is security against an accreditation process that will take until the first class of students graduates to complete, making attending Greenway a risk as well as an opportunity. With confidence in its model, the team at the Greenway Institute sees this and other challenges as just part of what you take on when you’re creating something new.&nbsp;



Collaborative Pioneers&nbsp;



Hannah Root had been a middle school science teacher in a rural district of the state when an opportunity at the Greenway Institute made her change course.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“My classroom was full of hands-on, real-world projects, and we were having a blast,” she said. “But it was really hard to witness how many of these young people didn’t see themselves as pursuing higher education, even though they had tons of skills and lots of promise. I was drawn to the idea of creating a space where students, like the ones I had in my classrooms, could feel like they could succeed.”&nbsp;



Root wears many hats on the small campus in Montpelier, but her primary focus is helping run the two pilot programs that are part of the curriculum development. In 2023, through a partnership with Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, the Greenway Institute enlisted a group of sophomores to participate in a credit-bearing semester away in Montpelier to pilot the project-based portion of the model. This past spring, another cohort from Elizabethtown participated in the work-integrated learning program.&nbsp;



Root said the students in the pilot were attracted to Greenway’s hands-on element and the opportunity to help launch a new school. “These were students who knew they weren’t textbook learners,” she said. “They didn’t want to sit through lectures when they could go and build stuff and learn by experience.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



One of the students was Emanuel Attah, a sophomore and mechatronics engineering major, who interned at Hallam-ICS, an engineering consulting firm near Burlington, Vermont. “I heard a presentation about Greenway in one of my classes, and I was immediately like, ‘I want to be there. This is literally calling my name,’” said Attah, who is from Nigeria.&nbsp;



Attah said his time in Montpelier prepared him to be “a whole engineer,” able to tackle complex problems but also to interact with colleagues and supervisors and understand how things work in the world. In addition to work and classes, he said he and his peers received a lot of coaching.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Before we even got started, we’d discuss basic things like, ‘How are you going to get there? Who is your supervisor? How are you going to ask for feedback?’” he said. “One of the things we did was to define our professional tenets of behavior: ‘How are you going to show up? How are you going to be your best?’”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Attah recalled fondly the “asset-low” living arrangements the founders designed to teach basic life skills and keep costs low. “We lived on our own. We cooked our own meals. We commuted to work by ourselves. We had an authentic, real-world experience.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Attah said the Greenway Institute gave him the confidence to want to stay and work in the United States after graduation. Regarding the financial advantage of earning while learning, Attah said, “It really helped me out. Otherwise, I would have had to work at some other kind of job for like 15 hours a week to help pay the bills.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



The students aren’t the only ones who are inspired by the Greenway Institute’s innovative model. Annick Dewald is a founding faculty member at Greenway. The Smith College graduate worked briefly at Boeing before going to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to receive her doctorate. There, she helped design high altitude, long endurance solar aircrafts for earth and climate observation missions. Before coming to the Institute, she worked at an aerospace start-up, where she managed a team of 14 interns tasked with building a 30-meter wingspan aircraft.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“That start-up experience, plus working closely with students, is what drew me to the Greenway Institute,” she said. “I saw the advantages of working at a small space, where you get a lot of responsibility, you get a lot of different experiences, rather than a really clear job description and a very narrow focus.”



Dewald described her experience working with students in the spring pilot of 2025 as highly collaborative. “The community we built was really, really strong because we were all co-creators, so we broke down the hierarchy of faculty and student, where we were all on first-name basis.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Dewald said equity in education is something all Greenway staff care deeply about. The key elements of the Institute’s model reflect that sentiment, starting with a framing of engineering as collaborative and altruistic which may attract more women and people of color into a field from which they have felt excluded. The professional development scaffolding students receive will help first-generation engineering students succeed. And cracking the affordability nut will help make engineering education, indeed all of higher education, more accessible — or so goes the plan.&nbsp;



For those who are cheering for the Greenway team, there is ample proof of concept. Since 2020, Somerville’s colleague and advisor, Ron Ulseth, has been running a similar work-integrated program at Iron Range Engineering&nbsp;in Minnesota. A partnership between Minnesota North College and Minnesota State University,&nbsp;Iron Range also connects students with paid, supervised internships, project-based learning, and a similar professional support system.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Iron Range differs from the Greenway Institute in that it is for community college students who are majoring in engineering. Students spend a total of nine semesters, first in community college, then in Iron Range’s academy and boot camp, where Ulseth said they “learn how to be an engineer.” For their last two years, they are out working in engineering co-ops, getting paid and also earning credit toward their degree.&nbsp;



Ulseth said that earning money and learning how to navigate the workplace help address the barriers that lead students towards worst-case scenarios, like leaving college with significant debt and no degree.&nbsp;&nbsp;



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“Earning money and learning how to navigate the workplace help address the barriers that lead students towards worst-case scenarios, like leaving college with significant debt and no degree.”&nbsp;
</blockquote>



“Many of our people were disadvantaged in their ability to continue their education given the structures that exist, be it racism, socioeconomic issues, or fill-in-the-blank,” said Ulseth, who recently stepped down as Iron Range program director.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Iron Range has achieved A.B.E.T. (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accreditation and was recognized as “an emerging world leader in engineering education” in a 2018 report by M.I.T. These distinctions are important benchmarks for the Greenway Institute, as it seeks its own accreditation and the financial backing that will help it get there. Meanwhile, the team continues to develop its signature curriculum and is beginning to market the new institution to students and families. It may not be for everyone, but given the thirst for change in higher education, the Greenway Institute may well be a concept whose time has come.&nbsp;&nbsp;

A New Way at the Greenway Institute 

Happiness today is most often associated with comfort, or momentary pleasure, but our founders envisioned something very different when they drafted the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, “the pursuit of happiness” may be the most misunderstood phrase in the national vocabulary.&nbsp;



As we approach our 250th anniversary as a country, a new course at Arizona State University aims to clarify the term “happiness” and, in doing so, remind us of the virtuous ideals on which our nation was founded. “What the Founders Meant by Happiness: A Journey Through Virtue and Character” is&nbsp;a partnership between A.S.U. and the National Constitution Center, and course co-creators Ted Cross of A.S.U. and Jeffrey Rosen, the center’s&nbsp;C.E.O. emeritus.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Based on Rosen’s book, “The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America,” the course explores how the study of classical virtue shaped the founders’ understanding of happiness, character, and civic duty. But in creating the course, Rosen and Cross hoped to do far more than correct an interpretation that has been misconstrued over time. The course engages students in getting to know our founding fathers and mothers who, despite their flaws, made the pursuit of virtue something that would guide the growth of the country.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The course’s title, “What the Founders Meant by Happiness,” is revealed in the first part of the course, stemming directly from Rosen’s body of work as a constitutional scholar.&nbsp;“The founder's happiness did not mean ‘feeling good,’ but ‘being good’ — not the pursuit of immediate pleasure, but the pursuit of long-term virtue — meaning self-mastery, character improvement, and lifelong learning,” Rosen said.&nbsp;



The course draws reflection from learners about how the original meaning of happiness can be held for individuals and society today.&nbsp;



“We hope that students and learners become reflective on not only what happiness means to them but which of those values and virtues they would like to adopt in their own lives and what implications that may have on how we interact with one another,” said Ted Cross, who leads&nbsp;<a href="https://pi.asu.edu/">Principled Innovation</a>,a character education initiative at A.S.U. that places character and virtue at the center of decision-making.&nbsp;



The open access, online course has 12 modules and is currently available <a href="https://pi.asu.edu/courses/civic-virtue/">at A.S.U. without credit</a> (though Cross hopes that will change over time) and on the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/education/civic-virtue-course">National Constitution Center’s website</a>. Those who complete all 12 modules receive a certificate. The co-creators describe the course as “providing a framework to cultivate civic identity and character at scale, modeling how institutions can democratize character education while reinforcing civic flourishing.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
Rosen said the aim of this course is to shed light on a critical pillar of our democracy: holding dear a common understanding of what it is we stand for.
</blockquote>



The second part of the course revisits the founders’ stories — from Thomas Jefferson to Benjaman Franklin to Phyllis Wheatley — revealing their moral sources for recovering happiness as the pursuit of virtue and self-control. Key to this telling is their humanness in borrowing their insights from philosophers like Aristotle and Cicero and their admission that their quest for moral fortitude often eluded them. It was the pursuit that mattered most. Explained in this context, Cross said, the content becomes relatable.&nbsp;



While it stands on its own from a content perspective, the course itself reinforces the missions of both its founding organizations. As part of A.S.U.’s Principled Innovation, it fits nicely within the character education framework, which has been adopted by A.S.U. President Michael Crow as a foundational design aspiration of the university. The school is promoting the course not just to students but to educators at A.S.U. Prep, the university’s preparatory charter school, and other K-12 educators.&nbsp;



As the nation’s only institution dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding of the constitution, the National Constitution Center has been marketing the course throughout the country, hoping to attract students and life -long learners alike to engage with all or some of the modules. The course is the latest addition to the center’s growing suite of educational resources initiated by Rosen when he was the president and C.E.O.&nbsp;



Rosen said the aim of this course is to shed light on a critical pillar of our democracy: holding dear a common understanding of what it is we stand for.



“People should think as they will and speak as they will, but we need models to inspire us,” Rosen said. “We need exemplars. Without a consensus about our heroes, it’s difficult to invite people to envision happiness in this once familiar but now forgotten way.”



The course underscores another important tenant of democracy in America by examining the juxtaposition of freedom and self-control, once again illustrated through the intentions and practices of our founders. “I’ve always believed that democracy depends on political self-government,” Cross said. “Our founders set up a system that has many degrees of freedom, but it depends on individual citizens being able to manage themselves and interact with each other in virtuous ways.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



The course was launched in February 2026, and the response thus far has been positive, in part due to an engaging storytelling format (a hook Cross said was intentional for younger learners). But time will tell if deeper meaning about virtue and self-control will come through for a generation often criticized as being isolated and self-absorbed. The co-creators believe the lack of moral exemplars this generation has experienced, both in popular culture and leadership, may actually increase the course’s appeal.&nbsp;



“We know that young people want to be happy,” said Cross, who has taught courses in positive psychology. “My contention is if you learn to be good, you will also feel good, that there is a root to feeling good that comes through character development, purpose, and meaning.”&nbsp;



Rosen agrees and sees the course as an example of a renaissance of character education in the U.S.&nbsp;



&nbsp;“We’ve had a tremendous reaction to the course thus far and we are hoping that this will be part of the movement for the cultivation of virtue that is increasingly strong in America today,” Rosen said. “There's a hunger for this right now in this country.”&nbsp;



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

Knowing What We Seek 

Adding three to the “staying” side and another three to the “going” side, I recently opened a spreadsheet to keep track of the friends who I will (not) see as often around campus throughout junior year. It was only once I began to record my friends’ impending study abroad adventures that I accepted the truth about my own college life: I will not sacrifice a semester at school in order to go abroad.&nbsp;



I feel this looming sadness as a sophomore at Georgetown University, which has a particularly global-minded student body. Studying abroad at Georgetown feels more like a rite of passage than the right opportunity for a certain kind of student. About 16 percent of bachelors-earning undergraduates nationally will study abroad, while Georgetown boasts a 57 percent abroad rate. In our School of Foreign Service, the percentage hovers around 80 percent. For this reason, many Georgetown students no longer waste their precious breath to ask if a peer plans to study abroad. Rather, students ask each other where they are traveling and for how long.&nbsp;



Whichever way the conversation goes, the student staying on campus becomes accustomed to bearing the burden of proof for his own decision. For some, foreign travel is just so obviously enriching for their career paths that they could hardly imagine it not applying as clearly to their friends’ journey. Others just cannot fathom how anyone could opt out of taking a semester-long adventure.&nbsp;&nbsp;



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Sometimes pursuing an unconventional path for the sake of being true to oneself actually requires as big a leap — as much self-introspection and reliance — as chasing adventures on the other side of the world.
</blockquote>



The typical student who chooses not to go abroad is one familiar with hearing that he will regret it for the rest of his life. The language of regret is hardly unique to studying abroad. So many decisions to abstain from what others are doing are vulnerable to self-doubt when they are expressed. What was once an assured decision sounds uncertain in the voice of a student who has lost his confidence. Sometimes pursuing an unconventional path for the sake of being true to oneself actually requires as big a leap — as much self-introspection and reliance — as chasing adventures on the other side of the world. There is more than one way to realize our full selves in college, including by learning to trust our own instincts.



Especially at Georgetown, it is no coincidence that most students study abroad during their junior year. When I saw the peak of academic rigor, my junior fall, in the distance, I promised myself that I would instead opt for the rolling hills of Florence, Italy. Little could be better than escaping dining hall food for cacio e pepe, all while augmenting my pre-law G.P.A. with classes that past villa dwellers had told me were a breeze.&nbsp;



But the longer I waited for my once-in-a-lifetime study abroad experience to begin, I realized that college itself was a life-altering experience.&nbsp;The opportunity to live abroad for such an extended period of time may never come again, but college also feels quite precious.&nbsp;Friends, classmates, and professors are an inevitable part of student life, but they only form a community when they live and work in close proximity. Study abroad professors offer valuable knowledge, but they are still unlikely mentors when compared to a professor whose office is just a short walk away from a residence hall back on campus.&nbsp;



Even if abroad coursework covers major or general education requirements, there may be more that a student wants out of their degree. A degree can become more than an arrangement of words on a diploma since unique classes can imbue a student’s coursework with personal significance. Many college students still remember the drag of taking obligatory classes in high school and revel in realizing the academic freedom that was long withheld from us.&nbsp;



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The opportunity to live abroad for such an extended period of time may never come again, but college also feels quite precious.
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That abroad coursework even covers major or general education requirements is also never guaranteed. For up to a week before new semester class registration, thousands of students are piecing together the right classes with the best professors, to fit the right requirements at the right time. For students like me who double major with a minor, a good semester schedule is already almost as puzzling as it gets in college. Nothing kills a good study abroad plan quite like discovering that two required classes conflict timing-wise and that overloading credits is the only excruciating solution.&nbsp;



Students can find themselves studying abroad despite these constraints, but the pain tolerance should be higher for students whose course of study necessitates a journey abroad. If I was a Classics major, my degree path would feel incomplete without a semester abroad in Italy. As of now, I remain convinced that Washington D.C. is the right place to further my education and experience in American politics.&nbsp;



Leading with what convinces me is enough to feel satisfied with my own decision to stay, even as so many people I care about are going. There is some irony here: the study abroad decision that I would most likely regret would have been prompted by an exogenous fear of regret itself. If I ever go abroad, I want it to be because I led myself there, not because I mistook someone else’s path for my own.



Aaron Polluck is a sophomore at Georgetown University studying government. He writes for The Georgetown Voice.

Study Abroad Is Not for Everyone

At a time when public conversation often seems defined by fragmentation, colleges are increasingly asking how they can help students develop the habits of thoughtful disagreement. A growing number of institutions have created centers focused on civil discourse, hoping to foster intellectual complexity, humility, and respect. Davidson College’s new Institute for Public Good reflects this broader movement while also drawing on a distinctive institutional history — a culture shaped for generations by an Honor Code that places character formation at the center of learning.



In August, the small liberal arts school in North Carolina formally established the institute as a hub for civic engagement, ethical leadership, and open dialogue. Home to only around 2,000 students, Davidson has quickly attracted unusually strong support for the project, including more than $50 million from a combination of private and public funders.



The early momentum reflects a central claim of the institute’s leaders based on the school’s core identity: that the most meaningful civil discourse is rooted in a broader culture of character formation, rather than programming alone.



According to Chris Marsicano, the inaugural director of the institute and a Davidson graduate, this new initiative is the college’s “attempt to plant a flag in higher education and say, ‘We’re going to do this right.’”



“We’re going to develop the leadership for the next generation of leaders, and we're going to do it in the ways that we care about when it comes to character,” Marsicano said. “We're tired of seeing political leaders who do not have integrity, and certainly the American public are.”



The institute’s first major contribution came from the Educating Character Initiative (E.C.I.) at Wake Forest University, whose $750,000 grant and seal of approval evidently opened the floodgates. Since the beginning of 2026, Davidson has announced a $4 million grant from the Department of Education — the largest federal award in the college’s history — and, most recently, $47 million raised from a handful of alumni and individuals. In honor of one family of donors, the center has been renamed the D.G. and Harriet Wall Martin Institute for Public Good.



Honored Traditions



Marsicano didn’t always think of Davidson’s focus on honor and integrity explicitly as “character education.” But now, he finds, the shoe fits.&nbsp;



“In some ways, I’ve always been into character education,” he said.



The same could be said of Davidson as a whole. Its signature Honor Code dates back to the college’s inception, and every year, the newest students continue to participate in a formal ceremony where they sign their names on the pledge not to lie, cheat, or steal.&nbsp;



The implications are academic, but not only. Perhaps the most notable feat of the Honor Code is that it holds up beyond the classroom. Somehow, it doesn’t simply slip from students’ minds once they’ve closed their blue books or handed in their papers.



Connor Hines, a senior at Davidson, said the Honor Code shaped his thinking long before he arrived on campus. His mother, an alumna, had invoked the code to teach him the difference between right and wrong.



“I can hear her saying, ‘Well, when I went to college, we had this Honor Code and you weren't allowed to do X, Y, Z,’” Hines said. “And so that really has been the lens which I've viewed most of my life through and grown up around.”



Hines, now the president of Davidson’s student government, insists the Honor Code really does play out in the everyday. He said his peers and professors operate with such a distinct level of care for and sense of accountability to each other that his friends from other schools comment on the difference when they visit. The vow to return a lost wallet, Hines explained, translates similarly to an effort to remember personal details about others and make them feel known on campus among the crowd.



“If it were just a parchment statement hanging up in our academic building that you don't interact with, sure, it would probably fade away,” Hines said. “But just with the number of opportunities that you have to interact with the Honor Code, I think is what continues its enduring strength.”



Davidson’s emphasis on civil discourse has been similarly enduring. The school’s original debate clubs, the Philanthropic and Eumenean Societies, are known to have been the heart of early social life. The groups’ dueling members used to stand on the balconies of their adjacent matching brick buildings on the quad and battle back and forth on chosen issues.&nbsp;



Although the societies don’t function today as they once did, the original sites remain, and every four years, the college republicans and democrats face off from the same balconies to debate the presidential election. A crowd of several hundred more students gathers to spectate.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
"The ability to disagree with each other is in our D.N.A."
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The Eumenean Society remains a student-run civil discourse organization, while Philanthropic took on a more literary focus. At current Eumenean meetings, students pull random topics out of a bowl to debate that range from federal housing policy to M&amp;Ms versus Skittles. Davidson students continue to feel the pull towards intensive engagement with each other in both the liberal arts academic and social life.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The ability to disagree with each other is in our D.N.A. We are a liberal arts college in a purple state on the border between two states,” Marsicano said. “We have people who are conservative from New England and liberal from the south. We have people from abroad who are as libertarian as they come and socialist students from right down the street. That is who we are.”&nbsp;



Marsicano added that the protections for freedom of speech upheld in Davidson’s constitution are among the strongest “of any college in America.” “Any student group can invite anybody to campus to speak, and the administration cannot stop it from happening,” he said.



Hines, a political science major who grew up a short drive away from Davidson, considers himself a moderate conservative. His best friend and roommate for the last four years is a communist, the first Hines had ever met.



“I've spent way too many long nights and hours in the library having discussions and debates around policy, politics, political theory, probably to the detriment of my work,” Hines said.&nbsp;



“You can have those conversations because we're a small school — 2,000 people — yes. But the diversity of thought within those 2,000 students is incredible.”



&nbsp;A New Home



Now both the Honor Code and the tradition of civil discourse are taking up residence in a new home: the Martin Institute for Public Good, which will be operating out of the historic Philanthropic and Eumanean buildings.



With the Martin Institute organized into four categories of programming, the Honor Code falls under Ethics, Honor, &amp; Leadership, while civil discourse is part of Deliberation &amp; Free Expression. The other two areas of work are Public Policy &amp; Research and Arts and Public Life.



These categories capture not just the variety of topics the Martin Institute is bringing together but the diverse approaches. Within the same center will be an arm for community engagement opportunities, for academic development and innovation, and for public policy and other research.



“It is probably the most ambitious academic initiative at Davidson College in the past 30 years because it is trying to follow a model that, at least to our knowledge, is not followed elsewhere fully,” Marsicano said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“Our model is one that builds up character in a time where people are starving for it."
</blockquote>



The funding from the E.C.I. is supporting work in Ethics, Honor, &amp; Leadership, where the primary initiatives include faculty grants to incorporate character education into curricula and a national convening bringing together student honor councils at various colleges.



The national convening, which has been held twice now, is a chance for students around the country interested in ideas of academic and general integrity to discuss their common or unique challenges and help each other work through them.



Artificial intelligence and its implications for cheating, for example, have become particularly pressing concerns in recent years. Even if no one is entirely confident in the best way forward, Hines said, it’s exciting to be building a “network of leaders between schools that we can rely on if we continue to have questions or as we just navigate the challenges that we face.”



Hines also spearheaded the production of Davidson’s first-ever Celebration of Honor, a week-long, all-campus event to highlight the impact of the Honor Code. Programming spanned a panel of stand-out Davidson alumni discussing the legacy of the Honor Code in their lives to less formal gatherings, like an ice cream social, Hines called opportunities to “just connect.”



Another effort benefitting from E.C.I. support is an ongoing attempt to develop a new version of the Personal and Social Responsibility Inventory, a tool used to assess different facets of campus climate, to include academic freedom. That resource would allow Davidson to measure its own success in that area and help other campuses do the same.&nbsp;



The $4 million from the Department of Education will go towards Deliberation &amp; Free Expression programming, specifically the development of a Deliberative Citizenship Network. Through the D.C.N., Davidson will be supporting a group of 100 other institutions in their efforts to train faculty, support students, form partnerships, and engineer new tools to strengthen campus discourse around contentious issues.&nbsp;



Marsicano said he’s not overly concerned that the funds from the Department of Education could be affected — that is, revoked — like other federal grants to higher education in the last year. But he was firm that should the money be threatened, Davidson won’t be sacrificing its own vision or values for the sake of staying afloat.



While Davidson focuses on bolstering opportunities and resources for its own community where its traditions run the deepest, it anticipates a new road as a leader in this work for others.



“Our model is one that builds up character in a time where people are starving for it," &nbsp;Marsicano said. “They're starving for exemplars. They're starving for training and education.”&nbsp;



“We just happen to have a model that is set up to do it.”



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

The Davidson Difference

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hZt4doNbZ4
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 This story from Olin College of Engineering graduate Michael Costello finds him wondering which pieces of his high school identity to bring into college. In the absence of actively cultivating his identity, he discovers his ability to flourish in college gets tangled up — like hair that hasn’t been cut in a while.

Storytelling | "Split Ends," Michael Costello

Julia entered college in 2023 pretty sure of two things: that she wanted to major in either art history or French and that she wanted to study abroad. At the time, her dream career involved working in and around museums. 



Now a junior, she is majoring in both French and art, but considers her third major, business, her “primary field” — and sees going into finance a means to all her desired ends. She regrets that study abroad is no longer in the cards, collateral damage in the struggle to meet strenuous requirements for all three departments.&nbsp;



“One day when I exit the corporate world and I've made enough money, I would love to use my business skills and connections in the art world and be able to travel,” Julia said. “When I got on campus, I started to appreciate that there’s a difference between the things you want to do and the things you actually do so you can someday work in the things you want to do.” 



Her calculation reflects a broader shift taking place on college campuses across the country. The rising number of students pursuing double majors — and sometimes triple majors — has increased five-fold at some universities, as students strive to differentiate themselves in a competitive job market and hedge against an uncertain economic future.



But as students stack credentials, advisors and mental health professionals are raising questions about what may be lost in the process: not only balance and wellbeing but also the exploratory, formative aspects of college that can shape a life and career in less easily quantifiable ways.



The Credentials Arms Race



Some observers note what they call a “credential arms race,” the growth of students accumulating academic achievements to remain competitive.&nbsp;



Data from colleges across the U.S. suggest that the share of students graduating with more than one major has risen significantly over the past decade. Reporting by The Hechinger Report has documented a wide spectrum of increases: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has seen a 20% increase; Brown University, 97%; Harvard, 334%; and Drexel, a 591% increase.



Administrators acknowledge the trend is part of a broader socio-economic picture: students worrying about job prospects and attempting to increase their career viability and areas of expertise. Students often frame the decision pragmatically; in an era of economic volatility, rising tuition costs, and rapid technological change, pursuing multiple fields of study can feel like a form of risk management.



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In an era of economic volatility, rising tuition costs, and rapid technological change, pursuing multiple fields of study can feel like a form of risk management.
</blockquote>



But advisors say the motivations are varied, and evolving. Today’s students are navigating a labor market shaped by automation, shifting industry demands, and heightened expectations around early career readiness. Many feel pressure to demonstrate both specialization and versatility at the same time — a challenging balance for anyone, let alone someone still discovering their intellectual interests. And as college costs skyrocket, many feel pressure to make a degree, or degrees, matter as much as they can.



“There’s a sense that students want to keep as many doors open as possible,” said Nigel Richardson, the assistant provost for university advising and student success at the University of Florida. Richardson said he and colleagues increasingly hear from students who arrive on campus already planning to double major or add multiple credentials. “A lot of students are thinking more means better,” he said. “If I have more credentials, that’s going to make me more competitive.”&nbsp;



Hedging Bets in an Uncertain Economy



Students’ motivations for stacking majors are often deeply pragmatic. Many are aware that the labor market they enter after graduation may look quite different from the one that existed even a decade earlier. News headlines regularly discuss artificial intelligence, layoffs in once-stable industries, and the possibility that workers may hold many different roles over the course of their careers.



Even when students don’t explicitly cite A.I., advisors say the broader sense of uncertainty influences how they approach their education. Richardson noted that students are increasingly thinking strategically about how their academic choices position them for employment. Some combine technical and non-technical fields, pairing disciplines like data science with psychology, economics with public policy, or business with the arts.&nbsp;



“Students are thinking about covering bases, but they aren’t fully aware of the costs,” Richardson said. “It’s this desire for more, and their answer — in this environment that they’re in and paying for — is another academic program.”



Alyssa, a sophomore at a highly competitive school in the northeast, has always found child studies fascinating. She speaks eloquently about her fascination with what makes children tick and evolve while maximizing their potential. Working with a nonprofit dedicated to the wellbeing of under-resourced children, she said, has always been her passion. But not her current path.



“I always knew I wanted to have a corporate moment first — to have a sustainable lifestyle — and later, after I’ve been a corporate strategy expert, I can segue into being the head of a nonprofit for children, get globally involved. I’m passionate about that work, but I’m more passionate right now about being corporate first because that’s going to make my life way easier to support in the long run.”&nbsp;



She applied to college with child development as her intended major, knowing it was a less-competitive route into that school. Once she was accepted, she set the groundwork to add a major in business and set her sights on pursuing consulting firms. She just completed a career fair in New York to be introduced to the Big Four, an opportunity she secured by getting involved with her school’s career office early in her first year.&nbsp;



“You have to do all these things because everyone else is doing all these things. It’s not enough to be a double major. You also have to be in the business frat — which I didn’t get into, after trying three semesters — and minor in Chinese or math or data science and have extra-curricular leadership. Everyone’s just generating anxiety,” Alyssa said. The competitive campus environment she describes is one where students are running on all cylinders to be and do everything, realizing that academic credentials alone may not be sufficient to secure employment. Energy and commitment might be the most valuable resources of all. “You have to be really intentional with your time,” she said. “You can’t risk not succeeding in a course, not graduating on time.”&nbsp;



When Efficiency Meets Opportunity



Clearly, not all students double major expressly out of fear of job competition and instability. Many are making room for two strong interests. Some have the advantage of arriving on campus with significant numbers of Advanced Placement or dual-enrollment credits. This allows them to fulfill general education requirements quickly — and puts them on an efficient path, if they choose to maximize the use of credits towards multiple credentials for the same time and cost. Others benefit from financial aid structures that cover a set number of credits, encouraging them to maximize the academic opportunities included in that tuition.



In such cases, adding another major can appear to be an efficient use of resources. Students may reason that if they are already enrolled full-time, pursuing an additional field of study adds value without increasing cost. It’s just slicing and dicing your time in a focused way. Some institutions have also designed interdisciplinary programs that make double majoring cover even more ground.&nbsp;



But efficiency can come with tradeoffs. Richardson introduces students to the idea of a “T-shaped” education — one that combines breadth across disciplines with depth in a particular area of expertise. He cautions that pursuing breadth can sometimes come “at the expense of depth,” limiting opportunities for sustained research engagement or deeper learning within a primary field. The major itself is only one piece of the professional profile, he stresses, along with research, volunteering, and shadowing, all part of a holistic experience.&nbsp;



“If you’re not going deeper into a topic, you’re not increasing your level of understanding or opportunities for hands-on expertise or fruitful relationships with faculty and classmates. Students might think it’s going to make them more competitive. But they could miss that meaningful engagement that’s expected within each of these respective departments in their pursuit of this double or triple major.”



The Stress of Optimizing



Completing multiple majors calls for careful academic planning — timing when required courses are offered — and a willingness to take on heavy course loads. Students may need to coordinate requirements across departments, enroll in classes offered only once per year, and forgo scheduling flexibility.



Kirsten Behling, the associate dean of student accessibility and academic resources at Tufts University, said her office frequently works with students managing the demands of double majors or combinations of majors and minors.



“Students are generally a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of content that they have to cover and how tricky it is to organize getting into the courses you need when they’re offered,” she said. “With multiple majors, they hit the burnout button earlier. They may think they’re doing O.K., until they aren’t.”



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“With multiple majors, they hit the burnout button earlier. They may think they’re doing O.K., until they aren’t.”
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Academic coaching services can help students develop time management strategies and adjust expectations when workloads become difficult to sustain. Behling noted that students sometimes feel locked into rigid academic pathways once they commit to multiple programs or realize they have to miss out on certain options. The inability to participate in study abroad or other experiential learning opportunities can be a significant loss, she added, given the role such experiences play in developing independence, cultural competence, and professional skills.



Missing out on options also has a very everyday component: just plain missing out on hanging out. Mental health professionals find that heavy academic loads can reduce the time students have for social interaction, exercise, and rest.



Eric Wood, the director of counseling and mental health at Texas Christian University, said it is logical that students taking on multiple majors feel the weight of increased demands on their time.



“If you’re doing double majoring, you’re doing more courses,” he said. “You have more demand from faculty, more demand from coaches, and less time socially — even less if you also are holding a part-time job.” Wood said concerns about the job market are common among college students, particularly graduating seniors. “I think it’s only natural that they are absorbing what they hear and read about the economy and job market and A.I. and doing everything they can to protect themselves. But sometimes you don’t realize that frantic protection isn’t actually protecting you.”



When students respond to that anxiety by seeking ways to strengthen their academic profile, counselors try to gently remind them that additional coursework is not the only or best path to career readiness. “Some advisors encourage students to consider whether adding another major will genuinely support their goals or simply add pressure,” Wood said.



A Narrowing of the College Experience?&nbsp;



College has traditionally been framed as a time for intellectual exploration and personal development, as well as career preparation. But students may feel pressure to optimize every aspect of their academic trajectory, leaving less time for activities that contribute to broader growth. Networking events, internships, leadership roles, and collaborative projects often require time flexibility that becomes harder to maintain alongside dense academic schedules.



Behling observes that many students increasingly approach higher education with a highly instrumental mindset. “There’s definitely a ‘means to an end’ mentality,” she said. “I have to do this thing that looks good in order to get this job or this graduate school entry, and sometimes this is emphasized by family, too. If the Tufts experience becomes a means to an end, it’s less about the collegiate, holistic experience — which is something I really believe in — and more the drive, drive, drive to get to the other side of graduation.”



Students are doing what they think they need to do to get a job, Behling said. But that perception may not always reflect employer expectations. Advisors often emphasize that internships, research experience, and interpersonal skills play a significant role in hiring decisions.



Richardson encourages students to ask&nbsp;why&nbsp;they want multiple majors and what they hope those additional programs will accomplish. A second major can contribute to intellectual growth, he advises, but it is not the only way to demonstrate versatility. Often, he finds that students are motivated less by curiosity than by a desire to reduce uncertainty.&nbsp;



“Oftentimes when I’m having this conversation, what comes out is risk management: ‘I have to have the funds; I have to make sure the doors are opened.’ I often don’t hear much about intellectual exploration, and I try to find ways to help them remain curious,” he said. “There are many different ways to approach their preparation to graduate, which could include multiple majors, but there might be other skills and personal attributes that end up mattering a lot more.”



A Recalibration of Success



The rise of double and triple majors suggests that students are responding actively to changing expectations about education and employment. Yet advisors emphasize that academic credentials represent only one dimension of readiness. Relationships, experiences, and intellectual curiosity often shape opportunities in ways that transcripts alone cannot capture.



The challenge for students — and for institutions — may be finding ways to support ambition without sacrificing wellbeing or the broader developmental value of the college experience. Meaningful one-on-one conversations with influential faculty advisors can help. But it’s more easily done in the context of a larger culture shift. In an arms race, it’s hard to unilaterally walk away.



“I do think I do a pretty good job trying to be in the present and appreciate where I am. I love my school. It feels like home, and I love spending time kicking back with my friends,” Alyssa said. “But then I look around at what everyone else is doing, and I feel so dumb that I’m not doing more. It’s just so much harder than I thought.”

Stacking Majors in an Age of Anxiety

Despite battling a double-bout of Covid-19 and strep throat, Destiny Barletta is smiling when she joins our Zoom call. The director of alumnae connections at Wellesley College even dressed up for the occasion, sporting a lime houndstooth blazer (and summoning the signature pantsuits of her institution’s most famous graduate, Hillary Clinton). There’s very little, apparently, that could keep Barletta from talking about her work supporting the professional development of Wellesley alumnae.  



<div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:27% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Untitled-2-840x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-3539 size-full"/></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
And that means all of them. Unlike many colleges and universities whose career centers focus on enrolled students and more recent graduates, the prestigious women’s college in Wellesley, Mass. has, for the last ten years, extended services to alumnae of any age or stage. As Barletta explains, career is rarely one-and-done, particularly in our rapidly changing world. At Wellesley, career development now means embarking on a lifelong search for growth and meaning. After all, even former Secretary of State Clinton navigated her share of job transitions — and weighty ones at that.



As the offerings at Wellesley’s <a href="https://careereducation.wellesley.edu/">Center for Career Education</a> continue to become better known, more are taking advantage. 1,915 graduates attended advising appointments between June 2024 and 2025, nearly 300 more than in the previous year. With LearningWell, Barletta describes what that lifelong professional engagement looks like in practice, why it’s important for alumnae and students alike, and how it’s bringing a global institutional community closer together. 
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LW:&nbsp;I thought we could start by talking about your title — the director of alumnae connections. What exactly does that entail?&nbsp;



DB:&nbsp;So that entails thinking about career education in terms of alums and their careers, much in the way that many career centers work with students — exploration, industry advising, and&nbsp;support&nbsp;around very functional things, like cover letters and application materials and interviewing. All of those kinds of conversations that we have with students, we also have with alums, but tailored to where alums are in their careers — all the way from those second destination roles to thinking about what an active retirement might look like.&nbsp;



Reentry to the workforce after a break for some kind of caregiving is something that happens a lot. Wellesley is a women's college, so that is an important part of&nbsp;many conversations. And then we’re also thinking about opportunities and programs for alums to connect with students as a part of career exploration. So, how can alums be a valuable resource for lived professional experience for students?&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Was yours a role that always existed at Wellesley? Or at what point did you all decide to dig more into the&nbsp;alumnae&nbsp;piece?



DB:&nbsp;This did not always exist at Wellesley. About 10 years ago, the&nbsp;career center&nbsp;at Wellesley was reimagined and became what now we call&nbsp;Career&nbsp;Education. And at that time, with a very generous gift from an alum, we began to offer career advising for alums for their whole careers. So at that point in time, this role came into existence.



LW:&nbsp;Do you know what the thinking was behind that decision to invest more in&nbsp;alumnae engagement?



DB:&nbsp;It was a commitment to the idea that&nbsp;graduation&nbsp;isn't a stopping point for&nbsp;an intentional&nbsp;career journey. We do such good work&nbsp;around experiential learning to help&nbsp;students see that their professional identities, in a variety of ways, are integrated into their broader life experience, and it's not just one thread that you can pull out that then stops the moment you graduate. So if we are doing our work really well, students graduate and see&nbsp;their&nbsp;career journey is just that — a journey. It's something that you continue to tend to and&nbsp;navigate, as you build skills, build experiences, build connections, and explore.&nbsp;



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"If we are doing our work really well, students graduate and see&nbsp;their&nbsp;career journey is just that — a journey."
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And so that ability to continue to connect with Wellesley around networking and advising becomes really important. And we appreciate that requires an investment. It's an investment in staffing and in training and in funds. But it also helps our students to see that when we say that this is ongoing work, we mean that. We're here through the duration of that, and your fellow people in your Wellesley community are here for that.



LW:&nbsp;I like that because I imagine with Wellesley grads, who are so high performing, there could be a lot of that feeling like, “My first job needs to be my last.” Do you find that’s a pretty common sentiment?



DB:&nbsp;Yes, that is very true — true of Wellesley students and grads, but also more broadly. There is this sense that what comes on the other side of graduation needs to be right. You need to get it right. And helping graduates think about what does “right” mean for them, that is a values question. But also, what we know about the future of work is that having a flexible, skills-based approach that is grounded in some really solid experiential learning can prepare grads for a variety of first destination roles, with this kind of underlying assumption that there isn't a single “right” thing. There is just a thing that is going to utilize skills and experiences you've built and provide you with additional opportunities for meaning and growth so that you have a sense that what comes next is also important.



LW:&nbsp;Do you see trends in terms of the age or stage of&nbsp;alumnae who&nbsp;come to you most often?



DB:&nbsp;We do. So we think of engagement in two ways: individual advising appointments and then participation in a webinar, an event, a cohort,&nbsp;programming.&nbsp;In&nbsp;terms of appointments, probably 60 percent are 10 years out or less, and then about 40 percent are folks who are further along in their career.&nbsp;Engagement in&nbsp;programming, events, webinars, cohorts tends to be a bit more even across class years.&nbsp;



But we do see, in terms of advising, now that our model of engaging with alums throughout their whole career has been in place for a decade, our appointments are increasing. Because as you continue to have students who know, as they graduate, that this is an opportunity that remains available to them, they continue to engage.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;What about trends in industry or profession? Are there certain jobs you see&nbsp;alumnae&nbsp;come to you for help getting?



DB:&nbsp;I mean, there are trends for Wellesley students broadly, and our alum data tracks mostly with our first destination data in terms of industry. But we do see a five-years-out uptick, when many alums are entering a career transition: “I thought I was going to do X, and now I realize that is not the path I'm interested in pursuing. So what am I thinking of next?” You see it almost like clockwork. And while that uncertainty is hard, the ability to&nbsp;seek&nbsp;more intention than just checking a box and climbing a ladder is, in and of itself, a really positive thing.



LW:&nbsp;You mentioned individual advising as one key service. Are there others that you think of as being most impactful or popular?



DB:&nbsp;We do a yearly webinar&nbsp;series, which generally features alum panels with conversations about what it looks like to work in certain industries — human resources, environmental impact, patient-facing healthcare, biotech,&nbsp;consulting, all of these kinds of&nbsp;different industries. And so that gives alums an opportunity to hear from other alums working at various stages in their career and in various roles in a broader industry and then to continue to connect with those alums&nbsp;for career resources.&nbsp;



We also offer a program&nbsp;based on the Design Your Life program out of Stanford for alums who are in a place of transition and want to be in an alumnae&nbsp;cohort as they use that Design Your Life framework.&nbsp;The&nbsp;sessions are led by our&nbsp;alumnae&nbsp;career advisors, and we do those twice a year in a series.&nbsp;This is the fifth year, and participants find it very helpful.&nbsp;They&nbsp;bring a certain shared experience of their Wellesley time,&nbsp;which creates&nbsp;a foundation that feels safe and can be very generative.&nbsp;



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"They&nbsp;bring a certain shared experience of their Wellesley time,&nbsp;which creates&nbsp;a foundation that feels safe and can be very generative."
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LW:&nbsp;Do a lot of&nbsp;alumnae&nbsp;come to you with questions around changes in the workplace or for guidance around technology and A.I.-type skill building?



DB:&nbsp;We definitely do talk about upskilling. Because how people are thinking about skill development is shifting — I think rightfully so — in terms of the idea that you go in this kind of linear or vertical fashion, and then sometimes you need to stop and build a new skill, and then you continue up. It really is a much more fluid and ongoing approach. And you're always thinking about: What are your skills? What are your experiences? What tools do you need to onboard? And then those tools offboard, and something else comes along.&nbsp;



It's been really interesting. So much of just the career space is teaming with conversations about A.I. You can't escape it. But one of the threads that's coming through is the power of a really solid liberal arts&nbsp;education&nbsp;that helps as a foundation for navigating all of these changes. And we definitely see that's true.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Do you see a throughline between your career services work with&nbsp;alumane&nbsp;and a generally more engaged culture of&nbsp;alumane, either with students or with each other?&nbsp;



DB:&nbsp;Wellesley does&nbsp;have a very&nbsp;strong&nbsp;alumane&nbsp;network. I also think there is a sense of being motivated toward sharing and generosity because people often remember a time of uncertainty, of vulnerability. And it's such an opportunity for people who felt, in their own experience, that there was an opening for support, for guidance, for information, when they see that they're now in a place to provide that.&nbsp;



And it gives a sense of perspective, especially in this moment.&nbsp;This is a challenging time for students to be graduating into the workforce, and having that voice of alums who have gone before can provide a sense of perspective: “I graduated in ‘08 when the collapse happened and what I came into also felt really challenging.” Just this ability to see that others have navigated different, but also challenging, experiences in a way that was ultimately successful for them can create&nbsp;a&nbsp;support line that&nbsp;is&nbsp;important for students who are graduating, and then also for the alums.



LW:&nbsp;Do you think that culture is also strengthened or unique in some ways because Wellesley is a women's college?



DB:&nbsp;I do. There seems to be this kind of structure when conversations happen within a Wellesley context that you have the expectation that you will be seen and heard, and you don't have to fight for that, which is really powerful.



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

Advising for Life

Like many educators during the pandemic, Kevin R. McClure felt the burnout. Faculty members were juggling research and leadership responsibilities, teaching and helping students, while navigating their own personal issues and watching colleagues struggle. As chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, he began writing and speaking about these challenges and the coinciding tide of resignations. Institutional leaders and journalists tuned in for insight into why so many employees were disengaging — and what colleges could do differently to retain their people.



Those conversations culminated in “The Caring University: Reimagining the Higher Education Workplace After the Great Resignation”&nbsp;(2025), a book that argues burnout is not an individual failure but a signal of deeper organizational problems. His research on college leadership, workplace culture, and organizational care helps campus leaders to build institutions where doing meaningful work isn’t to their own people’s detriment.&nbsp;



LearningWell connected with McClure to discuss what it looks like when a university takes steps to prioritize its employees and the difference that effort makes in engagement.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Let’s start by looking at what it means for a university to be a caring institution. Why are we talking about this for higher education in a way that differs from, say, a grocery store chain?



KM:&nbsp;Higher education has not done a great job of prioritizing the wellbeing of staff and faculty. That's not to say that it is worse than other industries per se, but we aren’t knocking it out of the park. Based on data that I collected through interviews with over 150 staff, faculty, and leaders across the country, what I heard over and over again was this question about whether or not this is a place that really cares about me. There was a feeling that they were expendable — that their health came second or third to other priorities that the institution had — and it was willing, in some cases, to sacrifice the health of some employees. This was particularly evident during the pandemic. We’d see a certain kind of comfort with the idea that we're just going to lose people and either not replace them and absorb some of those cost savings or just repost the position expecting that people will line up to take it — a kind of churn and burn.



As I was doing these interviews, I heard a fair amount of pain from people on a regular basis. These are institutions that are dedicated to human growth and development, and we should be the world leader as employers. There was a time where we had the ability to point to indicators that we are leaders in certain regards, and that's harder to claim today. And so it's really an invitation for those of us that work in higher ed — those of us who are leaders in higher ed — to say we can do better than this.&nbsp;



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"There was a feeling that they were expendable — that their health came second or third to other priorities that the institution had."
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LW:&nbsp;What did the great resignation look like in higher ed, and what did it reveal about universities as a workplace?



KM:&nbsp;We certainly saw a number of people who left, and there was pretty heavy recruitment of people into ed tech as kind of an adjacent industry selling products and services to higher education. And we saw a number of people looking for places better aligned with their values or places where they might get slightly better pay or slightly more flexibility. And so similar to other parts of the great resignation, it wasn't necessarily people leaving work all together so much as it was this kind of great shakeup of people moving jobs.&nbsp;



The part that makes it somewhat unique is that higher education employees don't always have a ton of mobility options. They may be in a particular field where there are only a handful of jobs open in a given year, and their ability to just move somewhere else is quite limited. A fraction of them have job security through a tenure system, which only actually works out to about a quarter of faculty. So in higher education, a great resignation looks a little different because of these other dynamics at play. The question becomes: What are we as an institution going to do differently to attract and keep really talented people? And very often, the answer was that there wasn’t much of anything happening in response to that.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Your book makes a strong case that employee wellbeing is foundational to student wellness and institutional success. What does that look like on campus? How do students and the whole school benefit when faculty are happier and doing well?



KM: When you look at some of the things that we know about student success, they include things like sense of belonging, a sense of mattering, doing work that is meaningful, feeling included, and getting engaged in the life of the institution. They're all concepts that have a similar if not identical concept when it comes to retaining and attracting employees. And it's because a lot of these things are just base-level, fundamental components of what humans need in order to be healthy and thrive. As we've had all these conversations about student success, I've been trying to point out the fact that these are all things that are good for employees as well. We don't have to just think of them as things for students. What this book is trying to do is to push us to not necessarily think in terms of specific populations but to say we are a community of learners, and we ought to be thinking across the entire organization about some of these things. And if we do that, I think we are going to see downstream benefits and outcomes for students.  



You know, students are smart and perceptive, and they pick up on when an institution is thinly staffed and when faculty and staff seem really stressed. They're able to pick up on P.R. spin and prestige games that institutions play. And they have an awareness, I think, of an institution where things are imbalanced, and they can feel it really acutely when somebody leaves — when they lose a mentor or someone on campus that has been important to them. And so if we think about foundational conditions for a community to do well and to be well, we need to say instead that this is something that's good for everybody.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;You’re clear that care isn’t a matter of band-aid solutions like extra wellness days. What does institutional care look like when it’s embedded in policies and structures beyond encouraging people to, say, make sure they get out and take a walk?



KM:&nbsp;Institutions have often relied on that more individualized type of response to challenging workplace conditions: Don't overwork. Don't say yes to too many things. As you put it, go take a walk. We've put a lot of onus on individuals to navigate through this themselves, and my argument is not necessarily that we should throw out self-care. Everybody should be thinking about the choices that they're making.



But when you look at the root causes of some of these workplace problems, they are often structural and cultural — a reflection of choices that we make across the organization, our strategic planning, and the priorities that we set. When we set goals, we need to ask how they are going to affect our people and what additional capacity we are asking of them as a result. It means looking at some of our practices and policies and whether they're really designed for the realities of living, breathing humans with caregiving responsibilities and health limitations. Oftentimes, our practices and policies are designed for people that are robots or don't have any kind of demands of a body.



LW:&nbsp;In the book, you critique the idea of the “ideal worker” in higher education — the myth of the teacher constantly available to be a life-changing mentor for students. How does this myth of “The Giving Tree” professor affect not only employees but also the learning environments we create for students?



KM:&nbsp;There is a real need for us to be thinking about workload and establishing some real guardrails to prevent that sort of thing from happening. Yes, it's up to people on their own to parse out how they should be handling these things. But often we've got reward and recognition systems that are based on the idea that the more productive and performative that you are, the more likely you are to be recognized, so there's kind of an inbuilt incentive for people to go above and beyond. We don’t want to take away incentives for honoring work that is good and valuable to the institution. But we also don’t want to suggest that just because someone&nbsp;is&nbsp;setting some healthy boundaries on what they take on that they are considered someone who's not pulling their weight.



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"We don’t want to suggest that just because someone is setting some healthy boundaries on what they take on that they are considered someone who's not pulling their weight."
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LW:&nbsp;It’s hard to determine what an appropriate level of engagement is — how much to put yourself out there and pull your weight — particularly when we’re talking about supporting students and colleagues. Is there a way the university could be better involved in modeling expectations?



KM:&nbsp;Of course there’s some nuance with this, and it gets a little bit complex, but I do think that there is a role to be played by leaders in modeling what this can look like. When there’s an opportunity for any of us in leadership roles to show what a healthy boundary looks like for newer people that are coming in, it makes it a little bit easier for them to make that choice — to not feel like they're going against the grain — because this is the norm. If we as leaders have a situation where someone is clearly overwhelmed, we need to take some steps to help and say, “Hey, you've got too many students that you're mentoring right now. Our norm is closer to eight, and we see that you've got 15. Let’s figure out a system so that we can better distribute this so it's not entirely on your shoulders.”



LW:&nbsp;What makes it harder is that it’s personal. Employees aren’t building widgets. They’re investing time in helping colleagues or developing a young person in their field looking for guidance.



KM:&nbsp;All of it's very personal. The reality is that most of us are people who got into this work because we really believe it's important. It's meaningful to us. So much of our scholarly work is collaborative, and we have commitments and obligations to other people. It feels very hard sometimes to pull back on that because it feels like you're risking some of those relationships or failing to show up for people you care about.&nbsp;



But again, there's a real role in setting healthy expectations — expectations for people who are seeking promotion, for example, that aren’t over the moon, but reasonable.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Higher education tends to be good at measuring enrollment, retention, and revenue. How could institutions think differently about measuring wellbeing — for employees and students — and following through?



KM:&nbsp;A basic level is we probably should be collecting more data that better gets at the employee experience. Right now, we do very little of this beyond a periodic employee engagement survey. There might be some exit interviews that happen as someone leaves, but even that can be very sporadic. And so the bar right now is quite low in terms of what we do. Anything that we do above that is going to be a step in the right direction. Then, once we better understand who our employees are and what their experience is on the job, we can make sure we've got capacity to analyze that data and that it doesn't just sit on a shelf.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
"People have to start believing that this is a system worth investing in."
</blockquote>



We have at our disposal at colleges and universities people who are trained in social science research, and there's no reason why we couldn't be figuring out some better ways of designing studies to better understand the employee experience and improvements that we can make. Too often institutions collect data, but then they don't act on it. And then people lose faith that this is a process that's going to lead to change, and then they opt out of doing it in the future. People have to start believing that this is a system worth investing in.



LW:&nbsp;Do you have some examples of universities doing it well?



KM:&nbsp;Almost every positive example in the book begins with some type of data collection effort. They are starting from a position of: “Let's get a better handle on what the problem is — specific to our institution, our culture — and then let's design something that speaks specifically to us.”&nbsp;



One of the issues that I flag in the book is about the lack of career advancement and career pathways. There's a great example from Miami University in Ohio where a marketing communications department had lost a significant number of people. They began with an employee culture survey, and through that, they identified that the biggest issue was people felt like there wasn't room to grow, particularly people that were not interested in being supervisors. From that, they designed a new career pathway model — one for people that wanted to supervise and one for folks that didn't. There is another example at the University of Louisville that identified the need to pay better attention to the employee experience. They now have a dedicated staff that is working on better onboarding, better recognition systems, better employee training, and I think that has been a smashing success.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;It’s such a time of change right now. Are there already new things you wish you could add or adjust in the book?



KM:&nbsp;I feel like I should write an epilogue! We're in a moment that makes all of this more complicated. I mean, how do you show care for people that are coming to join your faculty from other countries, when it doesn't feel like the door is quite as open or students that have come here to study are being detained?&nbsp;



Politically speaking, we have institutions that have had sources of revenue disrupted or cut, so they have less to work with. It’s very difficult to try to pursue a model of organizational care at the same time that you're laying people off. We have spaces where there's real challenges with enrollment decline.&nbsp;



A lot of this is not symbolic or hypothetical anymore, and we will see the consequences of that over time. That's the world we live in right now, and those of us still in it are trying to do the very good work with students, and remain hopeful.

Building a More Caring University

When Jaydn Decuir was looking at colleges, her father asked her an instructive question: “What is it you need to solve the problems you wish to solve?” She thought about her own community and how she hoped she could someday lessen the burden of gentrification on those who were displaced. She decided she would become a civil engineer. Her first choice was Howard University.&nbsp;



Students like Jaydn Decuir are the heart and soul of Howard. They are high-performing, civically engaged, and mindful of their positions as future Black professionals in careers where they’ve been historically underrepresented. The prestigious Research 1 university, which is also an H.B.C.U. (historically Black college and university), has graduated more African American Ph.D. recipients than any other university in the United States. Many of them serve in leadership positions focused on social justice.&nbsp;



Howard University is now engaged in a campus-wide character education initiative that takes all of this into account, as it considers how to codify, promote, and integrate character work throughout the university. In 2025, the university received a substantial Institutional Impact Grant from the Educating Character Initiative (E.C.I.) at Wake Forest University. Funded by the Lilly Endowment, the program seeds and studies character education programs at colleges and universities of diverse profiles across the United States. 



“What we do here is create leaders, and you cannot have those conversations or that training without talking about character,” said Dr. Dawn Williams, the interim provost and chief academic officer at Howard. “What this initiative allows us to do is name it, and study it, and that leads to capacity building and replication.”&nbsp;



The grant will help organize the formal and informal character education efforts already underway at Howard into a center. Research will inform an H.B.C.U.-based framework for character education that can be infused into the curriculum and shared with schools throughout the country. Perhaps most importantly, the work will help answer questions such as: What is different about character education at an H.B.C.U. with a rich legacy of social change? And what does character education look like for institutions that have both held it dear and been excluded from its record?&nbsp;



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What does character education look like for institutions that have both held it dear and been excluded from its record?&nbsp;
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“When you think about character, different things come to mind that may have been informed by books, experiences, or individuals,” said Dr. Jorge Burmicky, the principal investigator on the grant and faculty member at the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Howard. “Now we get to add to that word — its meaning and traditions — from the perspective of our work here at Howard.”&nbsp;



Studying the Scholars



As a higher education scholar focused on racial equity, social justice, and leadership, Burmicky said the opportunity to lead the exploration of character at the nation’s premier H.B.C.U. was “by far my wildest dream.” Through a previous capacity building grant from the E.C.I., Burmicky had participated in&nbsp;the&nbsp;Common Good Character Trust project, where he met with other scholars and thought leaders to reimagine character education through a&nbsp;contextually relevant lens.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Burmicky said the first part of the project, which is housed within the provost’s office, aims to study and potentially transfer exemplars of character education that exist within the university. In seeking a baseline, he immediately consulted Ron Smith, the executive director of the Karsh STEM Scholars and the Humanities and Social Sciences Scholars programs at the university. Smith had been running these highly selective learning communities since 2016.&nbsp;



The Karsh program is modeled after the Meyerhoff Scholars program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, with the expressed intention of addressing the underrepresentation of African Americans in STEM professions. Its unique capacity to nurture leaders of good character made it the ideal subject by which to assess and organize character education at Howard.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Our programs are anchored by a set of values that can easily be discussed as building character within students,” Smith said. “We have expectations for our students on how to build community and to connect ourselves to what has always been central at Howard: our motto — Truth and Service — which runs deep through our veins.”&nbsp;



The signature component of these initiatives is the Summer Bridge Program (S.B.P.), a six-week curricular and co-curricular living-learning community for emerging leaders that is capped by a two-week study abroad component. While sharpening skills within their disciplines, the S.B.P. challenges student to think more critically about virtues such as justice, courage, empathy, self-awareness, and humility. It upholds eleven core values, including “be honest and earn the trust of others” and “be open to new ideas and different perspectives.”&nbsp;



As a Karsh Scholar, Jaydn Decuir became part of that community. She met her roommate and best friend on the first day of the S.B.P. and said her experience that summer will stay with her the rest of her life.&nbsp;



“I imagined the Summer Bridge Program to be technically-heavy, but it was so much more than that,” Decuir said. “We had so many discussions about what was happening around us, around the world, and what our viewpoints were on different issues. I am forever grateful for it.”&nbsp;





This holistic preparation is meant to equip students with skills beyond their disciplines, as they navigate graduate schools and professions that have unique challenges for students of color. In this way, the S.B.P. reflects what Burmicky outlined as some of the larger goals of the character initiative. “Our approach focuses on how students develop character by seeking truth, engaging diverse perspectives, and making ethical decisions, all while navigating their racial and ethnic identities,” he said.&nbsp;



Other reasons the S.B.P. became the organizing element for character work at Howard include the fact that it enjoys broad support throughout the university, with partnerships across departments; and it provides a robust laboratory for assessment.&nbsp;



“Since Karsh and the Summer Bridge Program have already been doing this work, the research allows us to learn from these experiences and transfer that learning to other areas of campus,” said Tatianna Duperier, a doctoral student at Howard who was hired through a partnership with the ASCEND (Alliance for Scholarship, Collaboration, Engagement, Networking and Development) initiative at Yale University to assist in the research.&nbsp;



This summer, Duperier will begin a series of student surveys and qualitative interviews that will be used to make improvements to the program while ideally serving as proof of concept for expanded character education throughout the university. Both Interim Provost Williams, and Burmicky believe the empirical evidence they will gather will inspire others on campus, particularly faculty.&nbsp;



“With this data, we can say to others within the university: ‘Look at what we’ve done at Karsh and the Summer Bridge Program,’” Burmicky said. “‘What are you doing that is similar in the engineering department, in the professional schools? How is our medical school preparing physicians for their careers though this lens?’”



Unpacking a Complex History&nbsp;



It was Martin Luther King Jr. who famously dreamed of a day when people would&nbsp;be judged not "by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Indeed, the history of character — and character education — within the Black community is pervasive but also complicated by slavery and structures and policies that were not designed with communities of color in mind.&nbsp;



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It was Martin Luther King Jr. who famously dreamed of a day when people would be judged not "by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” 
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As part of the Howard initiative, Burmicky and his team are developing&nbsp;an H.B.C.U.-based theoretical model for character education and studying existing models and strategies for character education in higher education. In this work, they are looking at key considerations of character education through an H.B.C.U. lens, including the legacy of character within Black education and the paucity of Black-centric character education within the literature.&nbsp;



As Burmicky points out in the E.C.I. proposal, Black scholars refer to character education as the “raison d’etre” of H.B.C.U.s (Shaw, 2006), but little has been studied or written about it. While many higher education institutions in the United States have implemented character education, much of the documented empirical evidence has taken place at predominantly white institutions or from white or ethnocentric lenses. “The absence of Black students and culturally and racially responsive methods and epistemologies in these processes has been documented in the literature”&nbsp;(Burmicky et al., 2025, p. 5).



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Carol Moye serves as the E.C.I. grant’s director of assessment and program learning. She believes the exclusion of Black voices has had major implications for character in Black education and for the field of character education.&nbsp;







“One of the things we have to look at is the perception of character education — but from whose culture and whose viewpoint,” she said. “We have always had character in the Black community, but it did not present in the way people wanted us to be perceived. There was this sense that we would impose character on these people with the assumption they did not already have it. We need to turn this narrative around for our students and urge them to find the character they have and utilize it in the work that they do.”&nbsp;
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The character imposition notion contrasts starkly with the undeniably rich commitment H.B.C.U.s have to social justice and public service. Most definitions of character education include a beyond-the-self element and a desire to serve one’s community. At Howard, as in other H.B.C.U.s, this concept is foundational.&nbsp;



“Leadership for us has largely been about communal responsibility,” said Williams, who believes the most visible evidence of Howard’s commitment to service is the students themselves. “We don’t have to talk our students into being change-makers. That’s who we attract.”&nbsp;



Building a Unique Contribution&nbsp;



Given these strong traditions, the question may not be so much how to expand character education to include H.B.C.U.s as what the legacy of character work within H.B.C.U.s can add to the field of character education.



This is something that Michael Lamb, the senior executive director of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University, will no doubt consider as they work to understand how character education is contextualized in diverse educational settings.&nbsp;



"As we like to say, character is for all but not one-size-fits-all,” Lamb said. “Different institutions have different ways of understanding&nbsp;and educating character. At the E.C.I., we're especially committed to helping institutions develop programs that fit their own institutional context and culture and to learning from them in the process.H.B.C.U.s have been educating character for generations, so they have much to teach us about how character can be developed&nbsp;in different contexts."&nbsp;



The final deliverables for Howard’s three-year grant include: the launch of the H.B.C.U. Character and Leadership Education Initiative at The Center for H.B.C.U. Research, Leadership, and Policy at Howard; and the development of a H.B.C.U.-based framework for character education that will be launched at a national convening, in conjunction with ASCEND, in 2028 at Yale University. The team hopes that, by then, the organizing effort they conducted at Howard, and the learning they will have shared, will benefit the university, the H.B.C.U. community, and all those who work to support character and social justice — what Howard calls Truth and Service.&nbsp;



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

Truth and Service

Khaleigh Reed stood onstage recently at the University of Colorado Boulder introducing an author she admired: Ibram X. Kendi, the writer of “How to Be an Antiracist.” The event was the keynote of the university’s five-day Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, and the role was an honor for the senior, president of the Black Women’s Alliance. 



It was a moment she could not have imagined just a few years earlier, beginning community college in her hometown of Colorado Springs. At the time, applying to a four-year university felt out of reach with the limited scholarships available to her. But after a few years of deliberate academic and financial planning, Reed found herself not just introducing Kendi onstage but nearing completion of a bachelor’s degree and considering jobs and graduate programs beyond.



“The transition from community college to Boulder wasn’t always easy, but this is the way it worked for me,” said Reed, a senior. “Now I’m in a great place. I’m a very different person than I was then, and I saved a lot of money.”



Reed’s journey from a local community college to a bachelor’s degree represents one of many ways to achieve career credentials. The latest figures for higher education show a small uptick in enrollment and underscore the significance of community college — as well as students’ growing awareness of their diverse options. Overall enrollment figures from fall 2025 show a 1 percent increase, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Within that number are micro stories: The community college sector experienced a 3 percent increase, the lion’s share of growth, while public four-year colleges went up 1.4 percent. Private for-profit and nonprofit four-year colleges saw a decline of 2 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.



The figures reflect more than the current crisis of affordability, said Martha Parham, senior vice president of public relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, though there’s that. They affirm the tactical, versatile ways community college helps students achieve their career goals — whether that involves gaining transfer credits affordably, training to join a manufacturing workforce, or testing one’s chops in the arts.



“The strategic use of community college is just a smart way when we think about the student loan crisis and excessive debt,” she said. “Community colleges are responsive to the needs of their local communities, they’re accredited, they’re affordable, and they’re accessible.”&nbsp;



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What appears to be fueling growing interest now is their role in the conversation about return on investment and students’ strategic appreciation of the ways they can customize offerings for their own goals.
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There is a well-documented history&nbsp;of prominent Americans who’ve attended community colleges.&nbsp;Jackie Robinson&nbsp;attended&nbsp;Pasadena Junior College&nbsp;before transferring to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he became the first athlete to letter in four sports. Steve Jobs took classes at&nbsp;De Anza College&nbsp;after leaving Reed College.&nbsp;Arnold Schwarzenegger&nbsp;studied business at&nbsp;Santa Monica College&nbsp;after immigrating to the United States, his accessible entry point into American entrepreneurship. Designer&nbsp;Eileen Fisher,&nbsp;chef&nbsp;Guy Fieri, and performers Queen Latifah, Halle Berry, and&nbsp;Tom Hanks all&nbsp;credit community college with giving them their starts.



About&nbsp;40 to 45 percent of all undergraduate students in the United States are enrolled in community college,&nbsp;a figure that swelled to its current levels dramatically in the late 20th century and has been fairly constant since. What appears to be fueling growing interest now is their role in the conversation about return on investment and students’ strategic appreciation of the ways they can customize offerings for their own goals: for dual enrollment (high school students taking courses), associate’s degree and certification programs, and affordable credit attainment en route to a bachelor’s degree.&nbsp;



High Schoolers in Higher Ed



Of the added 3 percent of students who enrolled in community colleges in fall 2025, almost one third of them were 17 or younger, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center — meaning, they were still in high school. This “dual enrollment” status enables students to earn transferable college credits before they graduate. What was once a niche option for advanced students has become a more mainstream pathway, a way to reduce college costs and accelerate time to degree. And in some communities where high schools are under-resourced, community college can be the only way students can take the courses they need to pursue more challenging or specialized paths.



When Emily Harmon attended high school in a rural corner of northeast New York, her small school didn’t offer many science options. A single K-12 building served about 330 students, didn’t offer any Advanced Placement or honors classes, and had limited electives. She wanted to pursue engineering and, throughout her junior and senior years, took classes at two community colleges. After graduation, she attended Cornell with a full scholarship.&nbsp;



In this way, dual enrollment blurs the boundary between secondary and postsecondary education, reframing college credits as something students can work toward directly while in high school — for a cost, Harmon noted, not much more than the price would have been to take the A.P. exam toward college credit.



“In the world of underfunded rural public education, it was decent setup,” she recalled. “I think it’s always a good thing to show that you took the most advanced classes possible in your situation, and in my case, that’s how I could do it. And if I went to a New York state college or a less stringent private university, I could’ve placed out of a lot with those credits.” Cornell did not accept the credits for her science classes taken in high school. But Harmon notes that one of her classmates who took the same science classes was able to enter the State University of New York at Albany with the credits of a mid-year sophomore.&nbsp;



Certifications and the Pipeline to E.M.T.s, Apple, and BMW



Two-year degrees and short-term certificate programs — many designed to be completed in months — draw students to community college seeking fast, practical routes into the workforce. These programs are often built in close partnership with regional employers and tailored to labor needs.



This workforce focus is not incidental; it is foundational. Many of the fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. economy now require education beyond high school, but not necessarily a four-year degree. Community colleges occupy that middle ground, translating employer demand into credentials that are short, targeted, and relatively affordable. They train the majority of the nation’s nurses and first responders, as well as workers in fields like advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, and logistics — roles that keep regional economies running but rarely feature in the public’s image of higher education.



To get a sense of what’s available, prospective students need only call their local community college, which in many cases, has programs aligned with other communities and states, as well.



“There are thousands of different programs across the country that speak to a local workforce with global computing skills, like an Arizona school with an environment to train cyber security experts mimicking real hacking scenarios,” said Parham of the A.A.C.C. “But we also have very local programs that service the local workforce with curricula that align directly with available regional jobs. South Carolina has a program for certified BMW mechanics. Tesla does in its backyard. I’ve seen slot machine repair technicians come out of programs in Nevada. Community colleges are responsive to local business needs.”&nbsp;



The appeal of these programs extends beyond recent high school graduates. Community colleges enroll a disproportionate number of older students — parents, midcareer workers, and people returning to school after job disruptions — many of whom are balancing education with work and family responsibilities. For them, short-term credentials offer a quicker return on investment and a clearer link between education and employment than traditional degree programs.



Community College as On-ramp to a Bachelor’s Degree



When he was a high-performing high school junior in Massachusetts, Robert carved out a unique way to enrich both his academic path and his passions while saving money. After he graduated high school, he spent one year taking core courses at a local community college while performing gig work in a regional jazz ensemble. A year later, when he was accepted into the University of Massachusetts Amherst Commonwealth Honors College, he was able to focus exclusively on his joint degree in math and computer science.&nbsp;



“Community College allowed him to knock out all prerequisite courses,” said his mother, who is a youth career coach. She praised the excellent adjuncts at her son’s community college, where teaching was grounded in real-world experience. “Financially, the cost for the year was 10 percent of a residential private or out-of-state public four-year college. And the wider age range of peers really helped younger students see how adults process a day of mixed learning and work, which was a great model for being organized and serious.”



This use of community college as a low-cost on-ramp to a bachelor’s degree is a popular one. Like Khaleigh Reed, students accrue basic credits at a local community college for a year or two, then plan to transfer to a four-year institution — maintaining a minimum G.P.A. to take advantage of transfer-guarantee and articulation agreements that allow students to move seamlessly into public four-year institutions. Programs such as California’s Associate Degree for Transfer and the New England Transfer Guarantee are designed to remove uncertainty from the process while dramatically reducing the cost of a bachelor’s degree. Currently, about 31 states have some form of transfer program to ensure and ease transition to the state’s public universities.



All of which sounds good on paper. But life has a way of being complex, particularly for students whose family, financial, and work circumstances made four-year college difficult in the first place. An estimated 80 percent of community college students begin with the intention to pursue a four-year degree, a transfer process often called the “2+2 pathway.” In actuality, about 30 percent do transfer to a four-year school within six years, and roughly half of those complete the bachelor’s degree, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/tracking-transfer-four-year-institutional-effectiveness-1.pdf">joint report</a>&nbsp;by the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University; the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program; and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Priorities change. Life gets lifey. I had all the best intentions of finishing or trying something new, but fate throws you a few curve balls,” said Yvette, a single mother and social services administrator in Rhode Island. “Sometimes your workaround ends up being fine after all. What I do is rewarding.”&nbsp;



Education is, after all, a course of discovery, and a lower-priced school lowers the stakes if the path ends up not being the right one. Knowing that outcomes can be mixed makes the price point especially important. What is the harm in of venturing to take a basic class in computing, or introduction to acting?&nbsp;



Tom Hanks is a case in point. He took some classes at Chabot Community College, where he first began to study acting, then transferred to state college for a year before dropping out to pursue acting full-time. “That place made me what I am today,” he wrote in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/opinion/tom-hanks-on-his-two-years-at-chabot-college.html">New York Times opinion piece</a>&nbsp;and love letter to the appetite-whetting possibilities of community college.



The experience, he wrote, was formative not because it pointed immediately to a career, but because it allowed him to experiment without the financial pressure to decide too quickly — an approach he later credited with shaping how he thinks about storytelling and creative work.&nbsp;



“Classes I took at Chabot have rippled through my professional pond. I produced the HBO mini-series ‘John Adams’ with an outline format I learned from a pipe-smoking historian, James Coovelis, whose lectures were riveting,” he wrote. “High school graduates without the finances for a higher education can postpone taking on big loans and maybe luck into the class that will redefine their life’s work.”



Hanks, for one, is a big fan of free community college, some form of which is available in about 35 states. These programs, many called College Promise or Reconnect, often offer two years of free tuition for eligible in-state students who meet certain conditions, like G.P.A. requirements and income limits.



His hope, he wrote, is that free community college will lower obstacles to veterans, mothers, workers who have been out of the job market,&nbsp;and&nbsp;high school graduates without the finances for a higher education who might luck into the class that will inspire their life’s work.



“Many lives,” he wrote, “will be changed.”

Points of Entry

Listen Here:



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D.&nbsp;Graham Burnett is a professor at Princeton University. He is also a revolutionary in a movement aimed at protecting one of humanity’s most precious freedoms: our attention. For several years, he and his colleagues in the “Attention Liberation Movement” have been studying, teaching, and warning of the commoditization of human attention by tech companies who make trillions off their ability to capture and keep our eyes on a screen. What is at stake, according to the advocates, is human flourishing.&nbsp;



The new book by Burnett and his co-authors — they call themselves the “Friends of Attention” — is called <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/782387/attensity-by-the-friends-of-attention/">“Attensity!”</a> It is a manifesto for attention activists (no training needed) to organize around what Burnett calls “the fight of our lives.” The book is both highly informative and surprisingly funny about a serious subject that appears to be hiding in plain sight. Everyone feels it, yet no one really calls it out, for reasons the book aptly explains. The prelude to each chapter affirms: “You are correct: something is seriously wrong.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



In this interview with LearningWell, Burnett talks about how this movement came to form, how it is similar to social change movements of the past, what attention really means, and how we can band together to reclaim it. All proceeds from “Attensity!” go to the non-profit, the Institute for Sustained Attention, and its flagship project,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.schoolofattention.org/">the Strother School of Radical Attention</a>. The book is available for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/782387/attensity-by-the-friends-of-attention/">preorder now</a>.



Here is a preview of our conversation. To listen to the full interview, tune into LearningWell Radio on January 6.&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;This is a really important book, and it’s also really witty. I was literally laughing out loud. As a writer, I cannot help but ask: Was there a reason that you and your colleagues chose to write in this fun style on such a serious subject?&nbsp;



DGB:&nbsp;Oh, thank you for that question. This book was literally written by a bunch of friends carving time out in the summers over a couple of years to take residency retreats and think and talk and periodically play wiffle ball, and then argue and talk and think more, and then draft, and then hammer it together. Some of what I think you’re referring to is the lively, uninhibited energy of the book, and I think we succeeded in capturing some of that rollicking vibe.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;“Attensity!” is a call to arms. What is it that we are fighting against, and what is it we are fighting for? That’s a big question, I know.&nbsp;



DGB:&nbsp;It’s big, but it’s also simple. I believe, and my colleagues and friends believe, we are in the fight of our lives. This is not a test. In the last 10 years, new technologies have made possible a new kind of human exploitation. It was not previously possible to turn the most intimate movements of the human spirit directly into cash. You could not monetize care, interest, or curiosity directly, but now you can with these extraordinarily powerful devices which we call phones, even though obviously they’re not really phones. They’re like little, mini supercomputers, highly networked in our pockets at all times. They’re cognitive prosthetics that have transformed the experience of personhood.&nbsp;



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"It was not previously possible to turn the most intimate movements of the human spirit directly into cash."
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These devices and the market gains they have made possible have enabled a multi-trillion dollar new industry that is quite literally commodifying the essential characteristics of human personhood. You know those books about how we have to learn to put our phones down? This is not that book. We all know that the devices are a problem, tied in complex ways to a global pandemic and when it comes to youth and mental health issues. They are seriously compromising features of what we thought of as our educational systems and our lives as individuals and in community. We know all that.&nbsp;



Our book wants to point to the underlying cause of all this, which brings us to the idea of human fracking. The problem is not the phones. The problem is not social media. Because if the phones had been designed by your mom, you would use it to call your mom; and if social media had been designed by two artists and a Buddhist monk, social media would be like a groovy place for us to express ourselves. The problem is the underlying business model, which has essentially permitted a small number of heedless and greedy rational actors to maximize their return on investment.&nbsp;



Their goal is to create systems that maximize our time-on-device selectively to stimulate components of our cognitive processes in highly Machiavellian ways to enhance our engagement experience at whatever cost to our emotional state. It is a project that is profoundly harming us. It is quite literally at odds with human flourishing in the most basic ways, and we need increasingly and clearly to call that out.&nbsp;



Here’s where the book really makes its big move. We need to have a positive vision for an alternative, and this book swings in hard with a simple assertion: What we need is a movement. We don’t need screen time apps to assist us in protecting seven additional minutes of time with our device. We don’t need pharmaceuticals to assuage our cognitive capacities in their increasingly intricate anguish, although we are certainly happy that pharmaceutical products are available to help those of us who are suffering. But Big Pharma’s not going to save us.&nbsp;



Big Tech’s not going to protect us from itself. And frankly, it’s not as if a bunch of regulators are suddenly going to appear and reign in the deepest pocketed, most technologically sophisticated corporations on the planet. That’s just not going to happen. What we need is collective action. We need to join together — recognize that the goodness of what we like to do with our mind and time and senses and with each other needs to be protected and enacted by us. We need to push back.&nbsp;



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

Warning: Your Attention is Being Fracked

James Forten was nine years old when he stood among the crowd outside the Pennsylvania State House to hear the newly signed Declaration of Independence read aloud for the first time. In 1776, he was a free Black boy, for whom the universal human rights laid out in the Declaration were far from promised, nor intended to be so as a result of the forthcoming revolution. Forten still fought for America. At 14, he joined the Continental Navy and, upon being captured by the British, chose imprisonment at home over an offer of release to England. He survived the war and went on to grow a flourishing sail-making business. It made him one of richest men in Philadelphia and funded wide-ranging abolitionist efforts, including William Lloyd Garrison’s famous paper, “The Liberator.”



Those who tune into the latest documentary from prolific filmmaker Ken Burns, “The American Revolution,” will learn about Forten in the final episode. His is one of many lesser-known stories in the six-part, nearly 12-hour series and, perhaps, a favorite of Burns, who invoked the young revolutionary during a panel discussion at New York University last week: “He does not for a second believe these self-evident truths don’t apply to him,” Burns said emphatically of Forten’s immediate grasp of what the Declaration of Independence could mean. “He knows they apply to him.”



To Burns, Forten seems to offer a model for how today’s young people, too, might pull from foundational American ideals to shape their own vision of the future. The documentarian was at N.Y.U. as part of a campaign to promote his new film among students at colleges and universities. On November 19, the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-american-revolution/campus-conversation-event">“Campus Conversation”</a> brought together Burns, his co-director Sarah Botstein, two experts featured in the film — law professor Maggie Blackhawk of N.Y.U and history professor Christopher Brown of Columbia University — and a moderator, politics professor Patrick Egan, also of N.Y.U. They asked each other: At a time when students might feel removed from — or repelled by — their nation’s early and flawed history, how could this film’s fresh telling be helpful to them, even inspiring?



Coinciding with the event was an announcement from its host school: The day prior, N.Y.U. launched its new <a href="https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2025/november/nyu-launches-the-berkley-institute-for-civil-discourse-and-civic.html">Berkley Institute for Civil Discourse and Civic Solutions</a>. It’s one of the latest centers of its kind, designed to promote engagement with diverse perspectives, in an ongoing trend towards building them on college campuses. Egan, the moderator of the Burns conversation, is the institute’s inaugural director.



Early American history would certainly be fertile ground for civil discourse centers interested in taking up and sorting through topics fraught with controversy. “The American Revolution,” for one, does not shy away from challenging, sometimes disturbing truths; their inclusion is part of an explicit mission to offer a complete portrait of this moment in history. The patriots of the 13 colonies may have bravely defended their freedom from tyranny, the film reveals, but they also hanged British representatives in the streets — poured hot tar over one in particular and covered him humiliatingly with feathers. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence asserting the necessity of liberty for all, while being attended to by an enslaved valet, the young son of Jefferson’s father-in-law and one of his slaves. George Washington, who also owned hundreds of slaves, was the revered general who led his forces to victory and recruited them in part by promising each enlisted hundreds of acres in Western, Native-populated land that wasn’t his to give away.&nbsp;



At N.Y.U., Burns captured one of the most central and slippery contradictions of early America — as both anti-colonial mission and burgeoning empire at once. “We called it the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, and we knew where we were going,” Burns said in reference to plans for westward expansion.&nbsp;



Confronting these contradictions may be how “The American Revolution” draws in today’s college students. In moving beyond a traditional or glorified rendition of the founding, the documentary digs up details that feel less tired or overfamiliar. Even more, it presents a period whose intense divisions are evocative of American life in 2025 and how people at every level of society, not just the top, drew from the emerging notions of equality and democracy to push for personal understandings of justice.



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“The people who wrote it down may not have been representative of us, but the people who have put it into motion — even until today —&nbsp;are&nbsp;us. And it still is something that a lot of us are pushing for and that young people do care about it.”
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Yasmeen Rifai, a junior studying politics at N.Y.U., attended the conversation with Burns and said she appreciated its inclusion of “all the other groups that are so often left out.” What resonated with her most was the discussion of how those at the margins adopted and repurposed certain foundationally American ideals, for example, from the Declaration of Independence.



“The people who wrote it down may not have been representative of us, but the people who have put it into motion — even until today —&nbsp;are&nbsp;us,” Rifai said. “And it still is something that a lot of us are pushing for and that young people do care about it.”



Young people in particular were central to the revolutionary movement, said Christopher Brown, the Columbia history professor who participated in both the panel and the documentary itself. So despite ongoing cycles of older generations grumbling about the politics of younger ones, a youthful inclination to fight for the future appears to be as old as the country itself. “Political activism is part of our culture. It's part of what freedom is about,” Brown said in an interview with LearningWell. “So I also think that the Revolutionary Age is a little bit of a reminder that this is a country that was founded in political division and was energized by political mobilization rather than political quiescence.” That goes for politics across the aisle, he said.



Young people may find the applications of Burns’s film are not only political or intellectual but also personal. In the style of “formative education,” engaging with the liberal arts, history included, is a way of exposing students to different ideas and traditions they can then use to reflect on their own, larger values — moral, spiritual, and otherwise. Stanton Wortham, an anthropologist and dean at the Boston College Lynch School of Education, said this process of reflection is what he and others in the formative education field call “discernment.”



“It's a projection of yourself into a historical situation,” Wortham said of the practice for students of history. “That gives you a chance to develop not just intellectually because you're learning new things and learning how to reason and look at evidence and so forth, but it also gives you a chance to engage with this ethical challenge that somebody else was facing and think about your own values and what your own values would lead you to do.”



The purpose of the approach, then, is not to tell students what to believe, but rather to expose them to the kind of provocative questions that let them consider for themselves. When it comes to the American Revolution, questions of tyranny and rule, justice and violence, might emerge. “A lot of people got killed. Was that okay? Was it okay that a whole bunch of people got killed for these particular ideals because they imagined a particular way of life was right?” Wortham said he might ask students of the period. “Does that apply today? There are lots of people today who are living in situations that are unjust, so should we be supporting people who are fighting back against what we or they consider as unjust things?”



Of course, all the ways students could interact with Burns’s new film are not a promise that they will, in fact, do so. Yasmeen Rifai, the junior at N.Y.U., had yet to see the series at the time of the campus event, although she said the conversation did make her want to start. Christopher Brown said former students now in their 30s and 40s have written to him to say they saw him in the documentary, though more recent ones have not. 



Amanda Garvey is only a first-year at N.Y.U. but already knows she wants to pursue a major in history. She attended the conversation with Burns last week because, she said, she loves the American Revolution. Originally from Bucks County, Penn., she grew up a short drive away from where George Washington once famously led troops across an icy Delaware River and towards a crucial victory in the war for independence.&nbsp;&nbsp;



By Garvey’s discernment, the panel discussion illuminated an important and enduring legacy of not just crisis, but possibility. “What's happening right now, it's kind of a crazy time. I think the idea that these people were fighting for what they truly believed in — I think it still can be applicable today,” she said.



“Not everything is lost. There’s still hope, and I like that.”



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

History for Fresh Eyes

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University of Washington professor Elizabeth Kirk regularly arrives early to her introduction to nutrition class and stands outside the lecture hall to welcome her students inside — all 500 of them. She also grants every student email a personal response, reflecting a philosophy that the essential transaction of higher education is the connection between instructors and students.



But lately, Kirk has watched her students become increasingly withdrawn and has been eager to try out new ways to engage them. A recently launched, interdisciplinary initiative at U.W., called Five for Flourishing, wants to help.&nbsp;



In 2024, a team of U.W. administrators spanning student and academic affairs developed Five for Flourishing to guide faculty members like Kirk in the implementation of strategies to promote connection in the biggest classes across the university's three campuses.&nbsp;



The strategies are: adding language to class syllabi that expresses support for student wellbeing; setting up a slide before each class offering wellness resources or prompting students to engage with one another; reminding students before major assignments that they are opportunities to grow rather than reflections of intelligence; organizing small student groups that meet weekly; and instituting mid-quarter evaluations for students to offer feedback on the course.



Taken together, the strategies mean to improve wellbeing by cutting through the feelings of anonymity that can run rampant in huge classes. The interventions set the precedent that professors want to connect with students and care about their personal and academic success. The intended outcomes — sense of belonging, classroom engagement, and intellectual risk-taking, among others — are those often associated with smaller courses and more intimate faculty-student dynamics.



Part wellness intervention, part student success initiative, Five for Flourishing grew out of the needs of several departments. Its dual focus is captured in its interdisciplinary leadership, which includes the provost’s office, the Center for Teaching and Learning, and the U.W. Resilience Lab, a hub for campus wellbeing efforts.



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The interventions set the precedent that professors want to connect with students and care about their personal and academic success. 
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According to Penelope Moon, the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, what makes Five for Flourishing unique is the way all five interventions come together, and the unlikely team that assembled them. “The package is an innovation,” she said. “The partnership is an innovation.”



Marisa Nickle, the senior director of strategy and academic initiatives, laid the groundwork for Five for Flourishing. While U.W. staff may be “naturally collaborative,” she said, they tend to be “structurally siloed.” That was a barrier she was prepared to overcome.



With her boss, vice provost for academic and student affairs Philip Reid, Nickle had attended the presentation of another wellbeing initiative that she liked but feared was overly complicated. Curious about how a simpler version could work at U.W., they sought advice from Moon as well as Megan Kennedy, the director of the Resilience Lab, which promotes campus wellbeing through research, education, and strategic programs.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Kennedy was ready to lend her expertise and welcomed the cross-departmental nature of the initiative. “I think the question universities are trying to answer around mental health is: How do we distribute the responsibility beyond student life and the counseling center and crisis services?” she said.



What many institutions need, Kennedy added, is “a really clear pathway for how everyone can take responsibility.”



But wellbeing interventions in academic spaces are not always easy to implement for time-pressed faculty. Nickle said a major question steering the work was: “How can we bring student success into the classroom and do that in that lightweight way that also thanks faculty for their time and effort?”&nbsp;



With Kennedy and Moon both on board, and critical support and funding from Vice Provost Reid, the group began to develop an official program, first by deciding on the strategies themselves.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“It came together fairly quickly,” Moon said. "It was pretty easy to identify the things that probably would help, and then we dug into the literature to confirm suspicions.”



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“How can we bring student success into the classroom and do that in that lightweight way that also thanks faculty for their time and effort?”&nbsp;
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Once the five strategies were established, the team turned to enlisting faculty members for a two-year pilot phase of the project, during which educators would institute the interventions in two classes. The recruitment didn’t present much trouble, given plenty of professors, like Kirk, were already interested in incorporating these kinds of learner-centered techniques.&nbsp;



Not surprisingly, Kirk had been using some of the Five for Flourishing strategies before the program existed. Mid-term evaluations, for example, were standard practice for her and continue to be. She’s long valued how they allow students to feel heard and her to respond to their needs in real time.



Other interventions, though, were new to Kirk, like the “growth-mindset” reminders. It’s another way she’s appreciated being able to establish a rapport with her students.&nbsp;



“This is just my way of assessing how well I'm getting across to you — how well you are understanding what it is I'm saying,” she now tells her class before tests. “Because if I need to revisit some things, I want to do that.”



While Kirk doesn’t expect one practice to expel her students’ performance anxiety completely, she thinks they appreciate the sentiment. One even wrote in the course feedback that the language “made me feel calmer.”



Samantha Robinson, a professor in the chemistry department, teaches lectures with between 100 and 300 students. The uphill battle is made steeper by chemistry’s reputation as one of the most difficult and demanding subjects.&nbsp;



“They hear horror stories. They’re under this impression that we're ‘weed-out’ classes,” Robinson said. “And that isn't ever our goal.”



In 2025, Robinson started implementing Five for Flourishing in two courses that tend to draw those without strong chemistry backgrounds — those who might feel particularly uncomfortable or nervous about the class.



“Those are really great student populations for this sort of an initiative because they are feeling pretty intimidated to be in a STEM class in a lot of cases,” Robinson said. Five for Flourishing, she hoped, could increase their sense of belonging and support.&nbsp;



Over time, Robinson determined which elements of the program she found helpful. She likes the syllabus and growth-mindset language and the “moment-to-arrive” slides. The midterm evaluations present more of a challenge because, given the highly structured nature of her courses, she can’t plan to change much about them half-way through the term.



Both Robinson and Kirk came out with mixed reviews of the effort to have students meet weekly in small groups. They know it’s difficult to get students to get together on their own outside of class.



Robinson found that the students in a 120-person course were more likely to meet than those in her 285-person class. Kirk tweaked the structure so that the groups gathered during “quiz sections,” a pre-existing T.A.-led class time.&nbsp;



More formal assessment of the initiative has also been ongoing since the beginning thanks to the contributions of Lovenoor Aulck, a data scientist working in the provost’s office.&nbsp;



Aulck developed pre- and post-course surveys to assess the impact of the five interventions on students’ reported sense of belonging, confidence, and academic support, among other measures. Aulck said he’s found “small positive gains,” based on data from the first year of implementation.&nbsp;



Some of the promising findings include that, by course end, students were more likely to indicate feeling accepted and comfortable being themselves in class and less likely to indicate feeling worried about being judged negatively based on their identity.



But data collection is in its pilot phase as much as the rest of the program; and the Five for Flourishing staff plans to continue tweaking each facet of the work as needed.



That doesn’t mean the program can’t grow at the same time. Already, the group has collaborated with the University of Georgia to help engineer its own version of Five for Flourishing called Wellbeing by Design.&nbsp;&nbsp;



As the U.W. team monitors their own progress, and swaps stories with partners near and far, perhaps students nationwide will begin to find their big classrooms feel a little smaller.



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

Five for Flourishing 

Many 18-year-olds who step onto campus hungry for possibility may not believe that four years later, they could walk across the graduation stage feeling more uncertain than ever. While it is easy to blame the students, this all-too-often outcome is reflective of the failure of a higher education system that has become exemplary at producing compliant students but far less so at encouraging creative thinkers.&nbsp;



As someone who feels privileged for my positive college experience and the post-graduation time that followed, I can’t help but wonder how a different set of expectations could have benefited me and my generation. What if, instead of striving for measures of output that stay with us temporarily (the conveyor belt model), we were encouraged to build intellectual capacities that stay with us forever (the creative engine model). Maybe then Gen Z would feel more engaged, more fulfilled, more productive, and more prepared for our careers.&nbsp;



The Conveyor Belt Model&nbsp;



Many colleges have done an excellent job of building a culture of pressure, comparison, and G.P.A. obsession. Often, this consists of rigid majors and predetermined career tracks. Creativity is often treated as a “less important” extracurricular, not central to learning. This results in decreased risk-taking within our learning. My post-grad friends are often reporting a LinkedIn doom scroll, chronic burnout (already), anxiety, and a loss of intrinsic motivation to “do.”&nbsp;



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It’s not that Gen Z can’t handle college; it’s that college isn’t exactly handling Gen Z. 
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We grew up in a world far from predictable — with limitless information, an unstable economy, mental health challenges, environmental concerns, rapid growth in technology and media, political polarization, and socio-cultural vulnerability, especially for marginalized groups. Older generations may mistake Gen Z burnout for fragility, but I argue this interpretation misses the point. The learning ecosystem within which Gen Z currently operates is built on dated values and old assumptions. It’s not that Gen Z can’t handle college; it’s that college isn’t exactly handling Gen Z.&nbsp;



The Creative Engine Model&nbsp;



As opposed to the conveyor belt producing students who can check the boxes, fostering creative learning environments for students could help Gen Zers achieve improved wellbeing and more success entering the workforce.&nbsp;



Believe it or not, Gen Z students want&nbsp;“<a href="https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/the-uncheatable-projects-students-want">uncheatable projects</a>,”&nbsp;as coined by educational consultant Michael Hernandez in a pedagogical philosophy I explored in my final undergraduate education course. This approach includes&nbsp;transitioning traditional assignments into multimedia projects where the motivation is the experience itself, not the output (the grade). This drives student engagement and works against the conveyor belt model. It encourages intrinsic curiosities and passions, rather than shallow memorization, translating into longer-lasting learning. It avoids the infinite “Whac-A-Mole” (referenced by Hernandez) of repetitively policing new shortcuts students use — especially as A.I. tools rapidly evolve — as the desire to learn comes from within. In this model, students can strategically implement tools to improve their work, rather than resorting to abusing them. The truth is if Gen Z students want to cut corners, they will figure out how to do so quicker than educators can ever stop them. This method faces that head on, utilizing purpose and personal connection.&nbsp;



Creativity and passion must be treated as learning priorities, rather than extracurricular activities that come second to classroom work. My peers hustled in their internships, extracurricular activities, and jobs; yet we were trained to say, “School comes first.” Shouldn’t they both matter? How can these extracurricular learning opportunities work hand in hand with class to enhance one another? Think back to high school: Can you recall the answers from a random exam? Likely not. How about your favorite field trip or project? More likely. The same cognitive processes of creating long-lasting learning align from younger to older ages, especially when uniquely tailored to the students to feel more meaningful and less flat.&nbsp;



Please, encourage us to fail.&nbsp;



Often, the penalization of making mistakes in the current system makes it undesirable to fail. In that context, no one would take the risk to mess up. One way to combat this is through less conventional, interdisciplinary studies. The less binary the answers, the better. This is more holistically reflective of the real world we live in after all. Another is through ensuring students are met with an elaborate support system of relationships that make them feel safe enough to fail. This support system is essential — a mutual system of care. We are constantly encouraged not to fail but seldom learn how to fail, learn, and recover.&nbsp;



A great example of this is the makerspace model.&nbsp;



A makerspace is a welcoming, hands-on environment with tools and resources to collaboratively design, explore, tinker, and create. Access and encouragement to use this kind of model should be broader than just in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics), as it trains us to navigate uncertainty and to problem solve with confidence and resilience in a community.



As we add risk to our education journey, we ask that educators in higher education do the same. Changing a system is unpredictable and entering the unknown is often not a desirable route. But, we cannot keep fostering the conveyor belt culture when learners’ potential deserves so much more, particularly in these rapidly changing times. Educators and students alike must agree to learn together through a transition, taking reflective and precise note of what works and what should be changed.&nbsp;



We need a more humane and timely college experience to better prepare students to walk the graduation stage.&nbsp;



One that treats creativity as an essential skill, not a hobby.



One that treats risky exploration as productive, not wasteful.



One that avoids treating students as empty vessels to be filled with information to reproduce. 



This may not change the job market that Gen Z faces, but creating the opportunity to support young people to tackle the complex issues of today’s society far better prepares them for the post-graduation transition they face. We have the potential to graduate an energized cohort of young people by imagining boldly, questioning deeply, and re-building creatively. I am inspired by my generation, and our post-secondary education system should consider how to more effectively support our potential.&nbsp;



Nicole LeVee graduated from American University in 2025 and is pursuing her master's degree in learning development and family services at the University of Colorado Denver.

College should Be a Creative Engine — Not a Conveyor Belt 

Around 500 professionals across higher education logged on Thursday for a webinar focused on how to institutionalize a culture of wellbeing on college campuses.&nbsp;



The virtual event, called “<a href="https://learningwell.org/beyondsilos/">Beyond Silos: Bridging Academic and Student Affairs to Advance Student Wellbeing</a>,” was a joint initiative of the LearningWell Coalition and U.S. Health Promoting Campuses Network, two national organizations dedicated to promoting health and wellbeing at colleges and universities.



The webinar was inspired by the understanding that the efforts of a few positive actors on campus, no matter how committed, can’t move the wellbeing needle alone; they need the support of each other and collective action of the wider institution to make meaningful change.



“What if our systems were designed so that without any external intervention, they produced wellbeing and flourishing just by the way that they function?” asked Kelly Gorman, one of the four panelists and the director of the office of health promotion at the University of Albany.



The other three experts included Jennifer Fee, the assistant director of curriculum and training development for the Skorton Center for Health Initiatives at Cornell University; Angela Lindner, the interim vice provost for undergraduate affairs at the University of Florida; and Joe Tranquillo, the associate provost for transformative teaching and learning at Bucknell University.



Marjorie Malpiede, the editor-in-chief of LearningWell magazine, moderated the session, which began with a discussion of why a whole-campus approach to wellbeing is the right one.



Several of the panelists described how implementing wellbeing efforts institution-wide creates a system of support for students that extends beyond bare-bones crisis management or clinical mental health care. The goal is not just to keep issues from worsening, they said, but to foster new heights of flourishing.&nbsp;



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“What if our systems were designed so that without any external intervention, they produced wellbeing and flourishing just by the way that they function?”
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Jennifer Fee noted how these kinds of wrap-around supports are key to student academic performance. As for faculty and staff, she said, developing the whole-campus approach pushes them to practice creative problem solving and work across differences and between departments — that is, “beyond silos.”



On a higher level, Joe Tranquillo called out how the whole-campus approach, and ideally improving student wellbeing outcomes on a mass scale, might be influential in improving public trust in higher education as a whole.&nbsp;



“I think that we need to show what transformations are occurring in our students — how they're becoming these amazing citizen leaders that are going to go out into the world and do great things,” he said.



But the panelists weren’t shy about identifying the challenges that come with trying to unite different departments and disciplines under a common goal, even one as non-threatening as wellbeing. Institutions of higher education, they noted, are famously quick to factionalize and historically slow to change.



Angela Lindner called one foundational barrier to institutionalizing wellbeing a “challenge of the heart.” “This is less about how to do the work,” she said, “and it’s more about convincing folks that it's important to do.”



Lindner described a steady struggle to inspire broad interest in an issue that faculty and staff may perceive to be outside their usual focus and adding to their already full plates. From there, sustaining any energy that does emerge is another battle.



Buy-in from top leadership is particularly key, given presidents’ ability to fund and promote a wellbeing agenda. But again, the panelists said, such a champion is not so easily won or kept.



Still, the spirit of the panel remained hopeful. All four experts are as familiar with the obstacles to institutionalizing wellbeing as they are the workarounds.



“One mistake is only paying attention to the coalition of the willing,” Tranquillo said he’s learned. “That feels good. It works great at first because you make really quick progress… But what it does is it means that there's then a bunch of people who are not included in the change.”



Tranquillo urged the audience to be persistent in efforts to draw fresh support, but also to be patient with the process. “Sometimes the best you're going to do is to get them to stop fighting you,” he said.&nbsp;



Gorman added that bringing in new and diverse leadership for projects can help expand involvement as well as impact. “You can't have just one person or one office leading everything,” she said. “You need leaders from all different areas to bring their perspective to the table.”



Most of Fee’s attention is directed toward helping faculty understand the importance of incorporating wellbeing in the classroom and then actually doing so.



“I have to make sure that they're seeing the strategies that I'm sharing with them as not one more thing, but helping them do their jobs better, contributing to the academic success of students,” she said.



The online toolkit Fee developed, called WISE (Well-being in Scholarly Environments), includes evidence-based resources for instructors to, for example, write a wellbeing-forward syllabus or develop coursework that builds connections between students.



The need to develop ways of tracking and measuring student wellbeing was also a recurring theme. Clarifying the desired outcomes can reveal gaps in the work and roles that need to be built, Tranquillo said.&nbsp;



“There should be dashboards,” Lindner added. “It should be open and available, and everybody can see how we’re doing in this agreed upon set of wellbeing metrics across the board.”



Meanwhile, buy-in may build with time and necessity. Faculty will come up against wellbeing’s impact on academic performance; residential life will see repercussions for social involvement; admissions will connect the dots to stop-outs and retention.



“At some point, when you get to a level of root cause analysis,” Gorman said, “you're going to be on the same playing field. You’re going to be at that same table.”



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