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

Mental Health

Examining innovations that help young people thrive.

Teaching &amp; Learning

Creating a more just world through higher education.

Access &amp; Inclusion

An end goal for learning and life.

Flourishing

Opinions leading to positive change.

Perspectives

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



The Flourishing Factor



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



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



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



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



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



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



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

Purposeful Information  

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



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



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



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



A Contemplative Commons



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



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



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



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



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



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



Research and Practice



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



Systems Change



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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

The University of Virginia Builds a Headquarters for Wellbeing

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



2. “Proactive Approaches: Early Detection and Outreach”



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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

“Woven In”

Sometimes There’s a Wolf

Innovation and Financial Well-Being at CUNY

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



“We'll see.”

BC’s Messina College

To&nbsp;Angelina Rojas and her classmates at TechBoston Academy, gun violence isn’t an abstract policy issue. It’s a lived reality.&nbsp;



Rojas and many other kids at the Dorchester middle and high school have friends and family members who have been injured or killed by guns. Three years ago, a teacher and a student were shot outside the school as they boarded a bus bound for the state basketball game. 



So when Rojas took the stage with seven of her peers last month to offer a solution to the gun violence epidemic, she spoke with passion and a sense of urgency.



“We’ve learned that people are uncomfortable, scared to have this conversation about gun violence,” she told a panel of judges. They would decide whether her group would get to present its solution on a much bigger stage: The Aspen Ideas Festival, an annual gathering of global leaders, funders and entrepreneurs. “It became our job — our job! — to become voices for victims, for survivors. 



“My cousin was shot. He is paralyzed,” Rojas said, her voice rising to a shout. “I’m here because of him!”



The presentation was part of the annual Aspen Challenge, a 10-week long program that invites teams of high schoolers to develop durable solutions to complex societal problems. Started in 2013 in Los Angeles, the challenge has spread to 11 other cities, spending two years in each location. It landed in Boston this year. 



For students like Rojas, the challenge is an opportunity to make concrete change in their own communities. For their schools, it’s a way to cultivate the human skills employers are demanding — skills like communication, collaboration, and problem-solving.



A 2022 evaluation of the program found that participants showed an increase in skills such as collaboration, resilience, leadership efficacy, and social perspective-taking.



The challenge may also be part of the answer to rising rates of disengagement in school, said Rebecca Winthrop, co-author of The Disengaged Teen. By enlisting teens in solving problems that affect them directly, the activity provides both relevance and agency — two key antidotes to disengagement, according to Winthrop.



“A lot of kids don’t see the point of school,” she said. “They don’t see how what they’re doing is connected to the real world.” 



In Boston, the work began in January, when teams from 17 of the city’s high schools gathered to hear local and national leaders present on five issues chosen by the students: affordable housing, community violence, access to green spaces, post-secondary pathways, and the role of social media in glamorizing substance abuse. Among the speakers was Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin was killed in a high school shooting in Parkland, Fl. in 2018. 



Oliver, whose organization, Change the Ref, seeks to empower young people to fight for stricter gun control laws, showed students videos and pictures of provocative protests and disturbing ad campaigns that his group has produced to get lawmakers’ attention.



He told the teens about the time he got arrested for scaling a construction crane near the White House to hang a banner about gun violence and urged the students to take risks — within limits.



“I don’t want you to get arrested,” he told them. “I just tell you that sometimes you want the attention, and you use the guerilla style to get it.”



Oliver’s challenge to the students — to produce a media campaign that would raise awareness around the gun violence epidemic and empower youth nationwide to take action in creating safer schools and communities — appealed to students at TechBoston Academy immediately.



“It’s heartbreaking to see article after article about gun violence,” said Brian Hodge, the TechBoston team captain, partway through the kickoff. 



But there were still three more issues to hear about before the group would pick one.&nbsp;



The event drew representatives from Boston’s school board and district leadership, including assistant superintendent for strategic initiatives Anne Rogers Clark, who said the challenge aligns with the district’s goal of developing future leaders for Boston.



Clark said conversations with decision makers in other cities that have joined the challenge convinced those in Boston that “it changes the orientation of how students view themselves,” helping them “develop a sense of themselves as agents of change in the larger world.”



The district encouraged its high schools to identify “emerging leaders,” for the challenge, rather than established ones like the student body president. They wanted students with potential, students “who haven’t had the opportunity to show what they can do,” Clark said.   



Many of the students who participate in the challenge, in Boston and other cities, come from low-income communities of color that are often overlooked or underestimated by policymakers, said Katie Fitzgerald, director of the Aspen Challenge.



“The biggest untapped resource in our communities is young minds,” she said. “They have the answers. They just need us to get out of their way.”



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“The biggest untapped resource in our communities is young minds.”
</blockquote>



Studies show that student engagement drops precipitously between elementary and high school. In one recent <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-disengagement-gap/">survey</a> by Winthrop and her colleagues, three quarters of third graders said they loved school, but only a quarter of tenth graders said the same.



While this problem isn’t exactly new, the consequences of disengagement are higher than they once were, according to Winthrop, who is director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. 



“Students can’t just coast along and develop the high-level skills they need to succeed in the workforce,” she said.



Jeri Robinson, the chair of the Boston School Committee, laid some of the blame for disengagement on what she sees as outdated methods of educating children. 



“Our way of doing schooling for the last 100 years has not taken advantage of the things students experience day-to-day,” Robinson said at the kickoff. “Kids are bored with school because we make it boring.”



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“Our way of doing schooling for the last 100 years has not taken advantage of the things students experience day-to-day."
</blockquote>



The Aspen Challenge is one of numerous efforts being undertaken by districts, schools, and nonprofits to make learning more relevant and engaging for students. But such work remains at the margins of the education system, Winthrop said.



Following the kickoff, the teams had 10 days to choose an issue to tackle. Then they had to design a solution, develop a work plan, and craft a budget. Each team was given $500 in seed money by the Aspen Challenge, which is funded by the Bezos Family Foundation. 



At TechBoston Academy, students chose to focus on gun violence because they felt that the official response to the shooting at their school had been inadequate. They wanted their district and the city to do more to prevent gun violence and to help students recover from its trauma, according to Bruce Pontbriand, the civics and government teacher who served as the group’s leader. The project’s tentative theme was “broken promises, broken hope,” he said.



“Adults have been promising things and falling flat on those promises,” Pontbriand said. 



Still, the students wanted the documentary that they envisioned to end on a positive note, to uplift the school community and help it heal, he said.



Healing, Pontbriand said, is something that the teachers and staff at BostonTech need as much as the students. He still thinks about the fact that he could have been on the bus that was shot at if he hadn’t had a headache and decided to drive to the game. 



“To help them, we need to get over our own stuff,” he said. 



Halfway through the challenge, in late March, each of the teams received a visit from a member of the Aspen Challenge staff. At TechBoston, Arisaid Gonzalez Porras, operations coordinator, showed up with Japanese cheesecake and enormous blueberry muffins.  



The students, all of whom are 11th graders in Pontbriand’s AP Government class, told Gonzalez Porras how TechBoston has been scarred by the shooting and how it has negatively influenced others’ perceptions of their school.



“It paints us in a bad light,” said Aaron Curry. “I hear people talking about our school, and that’s not us.” 



The students said their documentary would be both educational and transformative. It would teach kids to make better choices, while also instilling hope and a sense of unity.



“We are all going to rise together with this video,” Rojas said. 



Five weeks into the 10-week challenge, the students had already reached out to district leaders, public officials, city councilmembers, and grassroots organizations and conducted several focus groups and one-on-one filmed interviews. 



Gonzalez Porras praised their progress and asked pointed questions about how the students would promote their video and measure its impact. She wanted to know what their call to action would be and encouraged them to consider how they might continue their work after the competition ends. 



“The judges like it when you’re thinking about scaling,” she said. 



Hodge, the team captain, was quick to respond.



“When we win the Aspen Challenge, we plan to use the money to start a nonprofit,” he said. 



Gonzalez Porras indulged his optimism. “When you’re in Aspen, make sure you call out to people in the audience” who might provide funding, she suggested.



Over the next few weeks, the students edited the video for their documentary and got 11 city council members to sign a pledge to provide more support for prevention and healing. 



Finally, in late April, it was time to pitch their solution.



Teams in the Aspen Challenge are evaluated based on a one-page written report, a six-minute on-stage presentation, and an exhibit. The judges want evidence that students worked well together and engaged in meaningful collaboration with members of their communities. They’re looking for big ideas that take a creative approach to a stubborn problem. And they want proof that a team’s solution has made a sustainable impact.



At the end of the day, three teams would be awarded the grand prize: an all-expenses paid trip to the Aspen Ideas Festival. Three others would take home prizes for originality, collaboration, and resiliency, and one would be chosen by their peers for a “People’s Choice” award.



The TechBoston team introduced members, their team name, Team Unity, and an updated, more inspirational, theme: “Keep Hope Alive!” They showed a two-minute snippet of their documentary that included news coverage of the shooting at their school and testimony from team members whose families have been affected by gun violence. They answered questions about the obstacles they’d encountered during their project and the themes that emerged from their focus groups. 



When, at the end of the day, they were bypassed for an award, it came as a big disappointment, Pontbriand said.



“We had to relive a lot of that [trauma] before we got to the solution piece,” he wrote in an e-mail. “After the announcement, the kids were a bit retraumatized.”



In a group interview a couple weeks later, Curry said students were “still working through the emotions” around the loss and “taking a hiatus to focus on school.”



But Team Unity hasn’t given up on its mission to change the way the district and city prevent and respond to gun violence. The students are working with Pontbriand to design a course that will allow them to continue their work next year. Pontbriand said that Snoop Dogg’s son, film producer Cordell Broadas, has offered to help the team finish its documentary and “take it to the next level.” 



The students are also collaborating with three city counselors to create more afterschool activities for high schoolers, after a survey showed that less than half of students at their school feel like they belong. They want their peers to find positive communities, so they don’t wind up in negative ones.



“The Aspen Challenge is over, but the work is not,” Pontbriand said in the interview.



Robinson, the school board chair, hopes that the challenge’s goal of engaging students in real-world problem solving won’t end here, either.



“It can’t be two months and done,” she said at the kickoff. “What will the district and the city learn from this?”



“I’m hoping it will create as much change in our adults as in our kids,” she said.

The Change-Makers

The two most visible student political groups at the University of Texas at Austin are also the most opposed.



“There's College Republicans, which is rah-rah Republicans, and there's College Democrats, which is rah-rah Democrats,” soon-to-be senior Carson Domey said. He gravitated towards neither and wondered how an in-between space could be so hard to come by among more than 40,000 undergraduates.



The 21-year-old eventually arrived at a solution, the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life, a leadership development group that promotes “people instead of partisanship.” The “room for exchange of ideas” drew him in, Domey said, but the difficulty getting there explains his interest in a new insight from the Harvard Youth Poll, a semi-annual, national survey from the Institute of Politics (IOP) at the Harvard Kennedy School. This spring’s poll, released in April, offers a window into youth politics, including that only 34 percent of young people who identify as Independent or unaffiliated report a sense of belonging, compared to 51 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans.&nbsp;



This latest iteration of the Harvard poll homes in on the impact of mental health in more ways than one. When it comes to today’s youngest — and most anxious and depressed — voters, the intersection of personal wellbeing and political formation is the object of growing concern.&nbsp;



In 2000, the Harvard Youth Poll emerged after two undergraduates noticed a curious trend among their classmates: They seemed interested in public service but also appeared to prefer community service activities over more traditional political engagement. Was there something different, the students wondered, about their generation’s relationship with politics?  



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Was there something different, the students wondered, about their generation’s relationship with politics?  
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To find out, they approached John Della Volpe, then-president of an opinion research firm with ties to the IOP, to help design and conduct a survey of their peers’ political attitudes and activities.



Fifty polls later, the project has stayed true to its original mission, although the form changes every time. Della Volpe, now director of polling at the IOP, said the different questions season-to-season reflect “each cohort’s unique views” and how “they’re interested in understanding perspectives of their generation.”



While the poll’s founders delved into trends in political engagement, the students of 2025 probed more personal categories. In addition to views on federal leadership, DEI initiatives, and foreign policy, this spring’s survey inquires about social connections, financial stress, and life goals.



One of the resounding themes this time is, as Carson Domey pointed out, feelings of belonging. Among its major findings, the final report highlights that fewer than half of respondents say they feel a sense of community, and only 17 percent feel “deeply connected” to a community.



From there, the survey correlates sense of belonging and civic engagement. Forty percent of those who report feeling “deeply connected” to a community say they consider themselves politically engaged, compared to 14 percent of those without a strong sense of belonging.



To Domey, the struggle for belonging among young Independents seems to reflect the impact of polarization on Gen Z and the longing for community and the pressure to identify with a party as a result. Party affiliation, from his standpoint, may have as much to do with political theory as want of personal connection. 



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Party affiliation may have as much to do with political theory as want of personal connection. 
</blockquote>



The Covid-19 pandemic certainly didn’t help these feelings of disconnect. One in five respondents to the Harvard poll indicate they became more socially isolated during the 2020 lockdown, and these people are in turn more likely to be dealing with symptoms of depression now — five years later.



Those at major transition points, either starting high school or college, during the initial quarantine are most likely to report a lasting negative impact on their social lives. They are now 19 and 23 years old, respectively.&nbsp;



John Della Volpe said he is wary of the over-attribution of certain political trends among Gen Z to their experience during the pandemic. Yet the way that the emergency disrupted their lives is important, and all the more for being just one of many crises they’ve encountered so far.



For Della Volpe, the real eye opening moment on the weight so many young people carry came before the term “Covid-19” existed. He was conducting a focus group, not long after the 2016 mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. that left 49 killed and 53 wounded. 



“The way you think about your taxes or your finances,” one student told him, “that's the way we think about living and dying every time we walk into a classroom.” 



Within around two years, the same young people read about, or perhaps witnessed, the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. during which a car attack killed one and injured 35 others, including students from the University of Virginia; the mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas, Nev. that killed 58; and the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. that killed 17 staff and students.



“This generation's not monolithic, and everyone's experience is different,” said Rachel Janfaza, a youth politics expert. “But across the board, it would be hard to say that their politics is not at least somewhat interwoven with the fact that they have grown up amid crisis, and it is taking a toll on their mental health.”



Overfamiliarity with catastrophe does seem to dovetail with another major finding of the Harvard survey: widespread disapproval and distrust in the government. Only 15 percent say they think the country is “heading in the right direction,” and 19 percent say they trust the federal government to do the right thing most or all the time.



This discontent does not discriminate by party. While Donald Trump’s approval rating is about the same (31 percent) as in 2017, approval of Democrats in Congress dropped from 42 to 23 percent.



Janfaza imagines young people have become suspicious that “adults, elected officials pretend to know what they're doing and have it all figured out.” Following the trials of the Covid-19 pandemic, she said, “the curtain has been peeled back.”&nbsp;



“What I will definitely say is there is a mass feeling of uncertainty that’s on both sides of the aisle.” Domey said.&nbsp;



Now that uncertainty seems to be affecting young people’s plans for the future. In what might be the most important finding for generations to come, less than half of the Harvard poll respondents rated having children as “important.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



This trend may be the result of financial anxiety, with a quarter of respondents saying they are “barely getting by.” But Janfaza mentioned a conglomeration of factors: “Less stigmatization around not wanting to have kids, paired with rising cost of living, and fear about climate change, and just overall gloom and doom.”



Still, if frustrated, Gen Z-ers are not resigned. “They are showing up. They are saying they want to be involved,” Janfaza said. “Their lives are affected by these issues in their communities, and they are speaking up and out about it in a number of ways.”



To Domey, the Harvard poll feels like a call to help students cultivate new sources of much-needed certainty in their lives, whether through community or other senses of purpose.



“Like, how do we care for the whole person in college?” he said.

Personal Politics

Mary Beatty was stressed about the upcoming presidential election. It was fall 2024, and Beatty, then a senior at the University of Richmond, was spending her final year of college classes mindlessly doom scrolling on her laptop.&nbsp;



Her mom suggested she try knitting. One day, Beatty, a leadership studies major, brought a beginner’s crochet kit to her classes, which ranged from five to 25 people. The repetitive, small movements required to crochet a blue narwhal—an item the kit provided instructions on how to create—forced her off her laptop and drew her into the class.&nbsp;



&nbsp;“I’m able to absorb the information better if my hands are doing something tactile,” she said.&nbsp;



Beatty is among a new crop of students who are turning to an old craft to help them focus and relieve stress. Knitting has emerged in classrooms across the country, at liberal arts colleges and state universities alike. Student knitters and educators tout knitting’s unique ability, backed by research, to reduce stress and enhance focus.



Annabel Xu knits throughout all five of her first-year courses at Harvard Law School and has the wardrobe to show for it. This spring semester, she knit a blue sweater, a purple top, and a pink cardigan, which she made for her mom for her birthday.



During class, Xu will occasionally place her needles and yarn aside to jot down notes on paper or answer a cold call—a term for the fear-inducing Socratic method in which a professor peppers a student with probing questions.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Xu said she received permission from her professors to knit in their classes after explaining that knitting helps her concentrate. “I’m not slacking off,” she assured them.&nbsp;



Xu, who learned to knit on YouTube during the coronavirus pandemic, uses the continental stitch, a repetitive, rhythmic movement that she said keeps her hands occupied without requiring much brain power.&nbsp;



There is a misperception, she said, that students who knit in class are not paying attention.



“People will say things to me like, ‘It’s funny that you were knitting, but then when you got called on, you knew the answer.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, because I was paying attention.’”



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“People will say things to me like, ‘It’s funny that you were knitting, but then when you got called on, you knew the answer.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, because I was paying attention.’”
</blockquote>



<a href="https://www.craftyarncouncil.com/health-resources">Research supports</a> anecdotal evidence that knitting promotes mindfulness and focus, according to Teresa May-Benson, a life-long knitter and occupational therapist who practices outside of Philadelphia.&nbsp;



“Sensory and motor activities help regulate the brain,” Benson said. “Doing things with your hands, especially if it is something productive, is very organizing. It is common that students, especially those with ADHD and other attention issues, find it helpful.”&nbsp;



Not everyone in the classroom benefits from knitting. Harvard Law School student Nikhil Chaudhry said peers knitting in his classes has interfered with his ability to concentrate on the professor.



In one of Chaudhry’s classes, a student knits directly behind him, which he said sends the noise of metal needles clinking into his ears. In another class, a different student knits directly in his line of sight to the professor.&nbsp;



“Knitting looks so different from everything else that it’s really a visual distraction,” said Chaudhry, who is surprised that professors tolerate students knitting in their classes.&nbsp;



“It is disrespectful,” he said. “You have an eminent legal scholar, who you’ve paid $80,000 a year to learn from—and you’re knitting.”



A Harvard Law School spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the school’s policy regarding classroom knitting.&nbsp;



Harvard Law School Professor Rebecca Tushnet said that while she would allow students to knit in her classes, other professors may find it “off putting,” especially if they expect students to take notes.&nbsp;



“Anecdotally, students have knitted in classes for a long time. I’ve spoken to a number of lawyers who either did it or remember a classmate who did it,” she wrote in an email. “I would allow a student to knit because I know from personal experience that it can aid focus on the class, as long as the knitting is simple enough.”



Students and teachers have not always supported students knitting in class or engaging in other sensory activities.



Beatty, the University of Richmond student, said her public high school in Connecticut banned all types of fidget instruments, such as friendship bracelets and fidget spinners.&nbsp;



“There was a belief that you couldn’t get away with that in the real world,” she said. “The mentality was, ‘This would not fly in college.’”&nbsp;



Samuel Abrams, a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, suggested knitting may be more prevalent at schools that promote a progressive approach to education, compared to schools that “may expect more traditional behavior.”&nbsp;



“I believe in a progressive education and progressive teaching,” he said. “The result of which is I want to be as accommodating and open to whatever learning styles suit my students in the best possible way.”



Abrams said, in total, he has had more than a dozen students—of different genders—knit in his classes.&nbsp;



He said he allows students to knit because it is an evidence-based intervention to promote focus that has few drawbacks relative to other accommodations he has granted. Abrams said a student once brought a support animal to class that went loose and caused students to scream. (He declined to name the kind of animal to protect the student’s anonymity.)&nbsp;



“As with most things, it’s about having the right tone and recognizing that we want to try to maximize everyone’s needs and set the right conditions in our classrooms to make it work for people,” Abrams said.



Knitting may be out of the ordinary and visually conspicuous. But it is far from the only behavior taking place in the classroom that could be viewed as distracting.



Mary Esposito, a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said she has seen students use their computers during class to play video games, shop for clothes, and even watch porn.



“Students are going to do what they’re going to do,” the business major said.&nbsp;



Esposito <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C6UH-4cumXt/?hl=en">went viral on Instagram for a video</a> following the TikTok trend “there’s always that one kid in class” and&nbsp;depicting her crocheting a pink scarf toward the back of a lecture hall.



The video garnered roughly five million likes and 15,000 comments. Esposito, who said she is diagnosed with autism, uploaded a series of follow-up posts responding to the comments and dispelling beliefs that she knits in class to bring attention to herself or because she is not serious about academics.



“As someone who is on the spectrum, this is really helpful for me to do in class because my hands need to be doing something,” she said. “It’s more of a tool for engagement—not distraction. That was the bigger dialogue that this video started aside from being just a silly, funny trend.”



After posting the video, Esposito said, people came forward telling her they also knit during class. “All the sudden, going viral, it proved there were actually other people like me.”&nbsp;



Esposito said her grade point average is a testament to knitting’s educational benefits (she has made the dean’s list the last two semesters). She recommended anyone struggling to focus in class travel to their nearest arts and crafts store to purchase needles and yarn.

Knitting in Class

For 20 years, the Louisiana Center Addressing Substance Use (LaCASU) had been making strides in its work supporting state colleges and universities struggling with drug and alcohol prevention efforts. By all accounts, LaCASU’s research, training, and data collection made strong contributions to treatment and recovery at Louisiana State University and beyond. But gaining real traction, not to mention funding, required the power and gravitas of merging with an official state government body.



“My emails went over a little bit different coming from a board of regents email address,” Dr. Allison Smith, former associate director at LaCASU, half-joked to a crowd in Baltimore, Md. on April 23. She was participating in a panel discussion at the conference, “Building Resilience and Success: State and System-Level Mental Health Innovations,” hosted by SHEEO (State Higher Education Executive Officers Association) and The Jed Foundation.



In an age when federal funding is uncertain, campus leaders are looking for novel sources of state-based support for student mental health. The conference in Baltimore highlighted a number of ideas, options, and success stories. A new resource guide, <a href="https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Student-Mental-Health-State-Toolkit.pdf">“Engaging State Policymakers to Support College Student Mental Health,”</a> presented by the American Council on Education (ACE), offers more to take home.&nbsp;



“It was sort of like, well, in the current administration, where does it make sense to direct our energy?” said Hollie Chessman, director and principal program officer at ACE. “How do we continue to move the needle on mental health on our nation's campuses?” The answer, she found, was rooted in pulling the right (state) policy levers.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“In the current administration, where does it make sense to direct our energy? How do we continue to move the needle on mental health on our nation's campuses?”
</blockquote>



While data suggests small improvements trending in some aspects of mental health in college students, anxiety and depression remain rampant. The 2024 Healthy Minds Study reported depression and anxiety symptoms had decreased three and two points, respectively, compared to the previous year. Yet 38 percent of students still reported struggling with depression, and 34 percent with anxiety.



The scale of the issue, which escalated year-over-year from 2007 to 2022, has drawn concern from both sides of the political aisle. Several bills promoting mental health interventions on college campuses, and at all education levels, have received bipartisan support in recent years. In 2022, the aptly titled Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, including initiatives targeting the reduction of gun violence, passed with $1 billion earmarked for school mental health services. In April, the Trump administration <a href="https://apnews.com/article/school-mental-health-grants-trump-biden-dei-00bec2d96371f023ac56fe3f32f3e92f">canceled this funding</a>.&nbsp;



Chessman and her colleagues at ACE had been worried about this kind of fallout for student mental health programs. In 2024, they were spearheading a $13.8 billion bill to back research, training, and other services at universities. This year, they refocused their attention on other projects, including a toolkit to illustrate a pragmatic route towards a solution.&nbsp;



Coalescing with peers provided the path forward. Talks with a mental health coalition of leaders in the field, such as the American Psychological Association, Active Minds, and the Healthy Minds Network, revealed a gap ACE might fill: The experts were anticipating a pivot towards state-level advocacy, but needed direction on how to go about it. “From that conversation,” said Ngan Nguyen, ACE government relations associate, “we started to think about drafting a toolkit.” Nguyen and her co-associate Alexander Cassell became the lead authors.



The final guide features four main parts. First comes an emphasis on data collection to specify campus needs, with links to surveys for assessing mental health and a Return on Investment Calculator for College Mental Health Services and Programs. Then, the toolkit outlines a series of talking points. The first point covers the prevalence of mental health issues and their implications for college attrition and basic needs insecurity. Others home in on the interventions state funding in particular can promote, and the benefits of telehealth. The third and longest section delves into examples of work other institutions have done in partnership with states to advance mental health. The fourth lays out a final host of resources, including other organizations and assessment tools, to further university advocacy efforts.&nbsp;



One of the main goals, and challenges, of designing the toolkit was ensuring relevance across states and for a range of professionals and institutions, Nguyen said. She thought about whether the strategies would be helpful for campuses in a variety of political climates; for those just launching advocacy efforts and others far along in the process; for university higher-ups, as well as general staff and students. The tools needed to be easy to customize.



&nbsp;“The toolkit gives folks a really solid foundation, and then [they can do] whatever makes sense for them,” Chessman said. She added that not just the process but the end result might look different depending on the school or the state. “Maybe the climate in their state has the opportunity to ask for money. But it doesn't have to be for money.”



Gathering data on return on investment for mental health initiatives struck Nguyen as one of the most crucial and broadly relevant recommendations. Tom Harnisch, vice president for government relations at SHEEO, agreed. (Harnisch also serves on the LearningWell editorial board.) “Investments in student mental health are important, but they’re going to be in a competitive environment, with a range of other items, vying for a limited pool of available state funding,” he said. “The focus on return on investment and student success is critical.”



Harnisch also highlighted the toolkit’s section listing examples of successful state mental health policymaking. “Policies to expand access to student mental health services. Growing the pipeline of mental health professionals. Boosting state funding. Addressing basic needs insecurity,” he recounted with enthusiasm. “There are so many ways that states can make a difference.”

Taking It to the States

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



Not for Everybody



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



An opportunity for experiential learning&nbsp;



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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

"College-in-3"

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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

"Living a Life Worth Working"

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



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



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



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



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



Building the Framework



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



Principled Innovation in Practice



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



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



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



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



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



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

Principled Innovation 

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



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Invented Here

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



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



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



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



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



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

Influencers for Life

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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







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

A Way Forward

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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

The “weird” attack on higher education

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



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



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



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



Eight Pillars and Key Features



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



Goals and Metrics&nbsp;



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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

Navigate U

Life Lessons with John Bravman

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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