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

Mental Health

Examining innovations that help young people thrive.

Teaching &amp; Learning

Creating a more just world through higher education.

Access &amp; Inclusion

An end goal for learning and life.

Flourishing

Opinions leading to positive change.

Perspectives

The 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. 
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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.’”
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<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.



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“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?”
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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

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.”
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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."
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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

In high school, guidance rarely reached me. The encouragement was well-meaning but abstract. I was full of potential, but no one translated that into actionable steps. No roadmap was provided.



I would have to chart my own course through systems structured by geography, class, and institutional habit and designed for students born into different expectations. 



My journey through higher education followed no predictable path. It began with my basketball coach, who introduced me to St. Joseph’s College in Maine. Several players like me from Charlotte Amalie, US Virgin Islands, had enrolled there before, creating a tenuous bridge I could follow.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/GarnettPhoto-2-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2718" width="453" height="340"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Dr. Rhoan Garnett</figcaption></figure>



I arrived on campus filled with idealism, only to discover that my teammates and I comprised virtually the entire Black student population. For the first time, I had a white roommate, and I befriended people for whom I was the first Black person they had ever met. The cultural terrain matched no map I’d been given.



Then came financial reality. Unable to afford my expected family contribution, I stopped out with my transcript frozen due to unpaid balances. This began a fragmented, eight-year journey across multiple institutions. At the University of Southern Maine, I couldn’t qualify for aid without parental support — federal rules at the time required students to be 23. After a personal loan proved unsustainable, I enlisted in the Air Force. When medical issues intervened, I worked, re-enrolled at 23, and kept working until graduation.



What reads on a résumé as a non-linear path was, in truth, a masterclass in adaptation through systems offering little direction and even fewer second chances.



Seeing the System from Both Sides



My understanding transformed when, with my hard-won undergraduate degree in hand, I joined Bowdoin College's admissions office. My recruitment trips revealed how significantly zip codes determine college access. At Chicago’s Hyde Park Academy, I found talented students with just one overwhelmed counselor for 1,800 predominantly Black students. Miles away at suburban New Trier, seven counselors served fewer students from far wealthier families. My role shifted from promoting Bowdoin to providing basic application instructions that affluent students took for granted.



The contrast was stark: brilliant minds with untapped potential, shaped by schools whose structures, not intellect, had narrowed their imagined futures.



Even as our team diversified Bowdoin’s student body, I recognized that admission alone wasn’t enough. Students who defied odds to enroll found themselves grappling with belonging and cultural translation, the very territories I had navigated years before.



This firsthand understanding later informed my dissertation research on “undermatch,” illuminating how talented students from historically marginalized backgrounds often enroll below their academic potential, not from lack of ability, but from systemic barriers to information, guidance, and belonging.



Not Grit, But Grace



The prevailing narrative celebrates individual grit while ignoring the systems we navigate. What distinguished my journey wasn’t exceptional perseverance but moments of grace when relationships created bridges across institutional gaps.



At Saint Joseph’s College, classroom discussions about poverty were framed through a white lens. As a low-income Black student among peers who shared my economic background but not my racial experience, I carried the invisible labor of translation, navigating coursework while bridging unacknowledged differences.



What made the difference wasn’t superhuman resilience but relational infrastructure. I pieced mine together slowly, while students in programs like Posse arrived already equipped with mentoring, cohort support, and cultural translation, structures mirroring what intergenerational college-goers receive naturally. When someone explained unwritten rules or affirmed the right to belong, seemingly insurmountable barriers became navigable challenges.



This reveals a deeper truth: educational environments often leave students unprepared for meaningful dialogue across difference. We raise students in segregated spaces, then expect authentic engagement without preparation. When institutions create environments where diverse students build networks and process belonging uncertainty together, they transform individual struggles into collective strength, benefiting everyone, regardless of background.



Designing Belonging



After years navigating systems not built for students like me, I began asking: What would higher education look like if belonging were deliberately designed, not left to chance?



Too often, access becomes the endpoint, and success stories become misleading proof that the system works — classic survivorship bias. Real equity requires shifting from celebrating those who overcome broken systems to designing ecosystems that recognize all students’ needs. This means partnerships between colleges, high schools, and communities, ensuring readiness extends beyond academics to navigational knowledge.



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Real equity requires shifting from celebrating those who overcome broken systems to designing ecosystems that recognize all students’ needs. 
</blockquote>



One promising approach scales the relational infrastructure found in effective mentoring programs. My research shows information travels best through trust. Students act on guidance from people who understand their context. Systems embedding personalized support within human connection democratize opportunity.



These solutions aren’t just technical. They’re deeply personal. I’ve lived in systems that confuse potential with preparedness and mistake access for belonging.



As students, especially from low- and middle-income backgrounds, rightly question whether college is worth its rising cost, I offer no simplistic promise of prosperity. The debt crisis is a matter of justice.



Yet even as the system must change, I hold fast to what Baldwin called the “liberation of consciousness”: education that sharpens critical thinking, deepens empathy, and gives us language to name systems as they are and imagine how they could be.



In a world of rising disinformation and artificial shortcuts, real education helps us discern signal from noise — a clarity I once sought amid the quiet pressure to trade opportunity for survival. It is not only a path to making a living but also to making a life. As Mandela reminded us, it remains one of the most powerful tools for changing the world, not just for ourselves, but for each other.



Inside the System I Once Observed



Even in doctoral education, belonging isn’t automatic. My research on underrepresented students navigating mismatched systems became autobiography. Despite strong initial mentorship, structural supports faded. My focus on equity didn’t align with traditional research models, and I often lacked a peer cohort or institutional roadmap. I was simultaneously in the system and not of it.



Even at the highest levels, I drew my own map in the dark. Reimagining belonging must extend to doctoral spaces, where too many still arrive unsupported, underfunded, and alone. This requires not only mentorship and peer networks but institutional recognition of the financial and emotional labor required to navigate systems never designed for us.



For Those Still Searching



My journey has come full circle, from navigating unfamiliar terrain to charting pathways for others. In my work with postsecondary transitions, I see what statistics miss: for every student who makes it through broken systems, countless others with equal potential never find their way. When I listen to students at their own crossroads, I hear familiar echoes: brilliance without direction, presence without recognition.



What ultimately matters isn’t celebrating exceptional navigation of broken systems but transforming those systems themselves. My story isn’t a model — it’s evidence for why we must design education where belonging is a foundation, not an accident, and where no student must draw their own map in the dark.







Dr. Rhoan Garnett's work bridges the personal and systemic, informed by his journey as a first-generation immigrant student who navigated educational systems without clear guidance. Through his research-practice consultancy WeBe Collab, he leads transformative initiatives, including postsecondary mindset and transition research for the Gates Foundation and AI-enhanced learning systems at College Unbound. His dissertation on undermatch, mismatch, and reverse transfer — recognized with the Gordon C. Lee Award — continues to inform equity-centered approaches to educational design.

Without a Map

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.”



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“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.” 
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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

At Roanoke College, purpose is part of the brand. With the motto, “Our purpose is to help you find yours,” the school prides itself on guiding young people towards full and rich lives focused on doing good in the world.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The champion of this bold expression of formative education is Roanoke’s President Frank Shushok. With degrees in education and 30 years of experience in the field, Shushok is passionate about the role higher education can play in young people’s personal and professional growth and has compelling reasons for why they should be intertwined. In this interview with LearningWell, Shushok talks about creating counter-cultures on campus in which students are frequently asked meaningful questions without binary answers.&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;How has your background influenced your role as a college president?&nbsp;&nbsp;



FS:&nbsp;First of all, I am a person of faith, and what I mean by that is my whole life has been shaped by a sense that life is for a purpose. Believing that my own life can push forward goodness in the world is something that both centers me and compels me. I’ve also been focused on interfaith curiosity and collaboration, and along the way, that has drawn me into many conversations about how people find meaning and purpose in their lives.&nbsp;



Almost all people yearn to understand why they’re here, and I find very few people who, at the end of that question, don’t believe their life should be for something good. Whether I’m sitting at a table with Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, Christians, or atheists, I have found that when we begin a conversation about how we find meaning and purpose in life, designing a life toward virtue is a really powerful connector.&nbsp;



That framing says a lot about how I view higher education. I absolutely believe every student should be able to graduate and find work that can support them economically and support their families. But I also want them to find purpose in that work and to find an alignment between their gifts and talents and a need that the world has. When that happens, energy and hope abound, and who doesn’t want more of that?



I’m such a fan of the good work that’s being done on the science of hope and the idea that hope has three actionable components: goals, pathways, and agency. In short, to have hope, you need a goal you’re shooting for and practical ways to go after it. You also need pathways and a consistent belief that you can get there — agency. What I love about the agency part is some people have plenty of agency and some people are growing in their agency, and that’s the golden time when they need someone to walk alongside them until they have the confidence to make progress toward their goals. That’s our job. Fundamentally, I believe that higher education is there to inspire in students a sense of purpose, shaped by character, and that makes life so much richer for them and for everyone in their orbit — their families, communities, workplaces, etc.&nbsp;&nbsp;



But for whatever reason, I find a lot of college students haven’t thought about how their education can be about connecting to much more than a job-slash-career. Often, it’s not a question or a conversation they’ve been having at home. And it’s not a conversation that they’ve been having in the educational environment they were in prior to college. Sometimes, they make it all the way through college and never have this dialogue with anyone, even within themselves. In fact, they mostly have had one conversation, which is about the return on investment question: “If I go to college, what should I study so I can get a certain job, so I can have a particular level of economic security?”&nbsp;



Those are also good questions, but they’re much more powerful if they’re coupled with other questions like the imperatives we have in our strategic plan, which champions the exploration of purpose, the pursuit of character, and the graduation of leaders. This is a distinction of the Roanoke experience. We’ve created this entity called PLACE (Purpose, Life And Career Exploration) drawn from our old career center model, and what we’re saying here is this process is about so much more than getting a job.&nbsp;&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Do you think these imperatives are particularly important at this moment in time?&nbsp;&nbsp;



FS:&nbsp;Absolutely. I found a&nbsp;<a href="https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/reports/on-edge">report</a>&nbsp;released by the Harvard Graduate School of Education sobering. Thirty-six percent of young adults aged 18 to 25 are struggling with anxiety, and 29 percent are dealing with depression. The study reveals some likely suspects, including worrying about finances, feeling pressure to achieve, being concerned with the world unraveling, and feeling like they don't matter to others. But the number one driver of poor mental health for young adults was a lack of meaning, purpose, and direction in their lives, with 58 percent reporting. We can’t ignore that deep yearning to understand what makes life matter.



LW:&nbsp;How do you go about “meaning making” with students?&nbsp;&nbsp;



FS:&nbsp;There are many practices to engage, but we need practices that shape culture so that culture shapes practices. What I mean by that is we first ask good questions, which will help us get good at being thoughtful and spur us to think more deeply about better questions worthy of our time. In a way, it’s countercultural. The power of a question is a crucial thing to acknowledge. Occasionally, I experiment to see how long it takes for someone to ask me a meaningful question — a question that asks me to reveal something about who I am, what I believe, where I’m going, what’s motivating me, and why I care.



If you pay attention, you can go a whole day without anyone asking you that kind of question. I think what we can do in a place like Roanoke College or any institution of higher education is to create a culture where we teach ourselves to be countercultural and to ask questions of meaning and purpose, questions that engage all of our not-so-disparate parts: our intellectual selves, our emotional selves, our moral selves. But we have to acknowledge we live in a world where people are moving at warp speed. Technology overwhelms people, and no one’s asking them meaningful questions. In turn, they’re not developing the habit of asking other people meaningful questions. Without meaningful questions, there is little need for astute listeners. And when we don’t develop astute listeners, we’re often not encouraging thoughtful learners.



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“Without meaningful questions, there is little need for astute listeners. And when we don’t develop astute listeners, we’re often not encouraging thoughtful learners.”
</blockquote>



I have two questions that I keep at the forefront of my mind every day as I approach my work: First, what am I trying to increase the probability of occurring through my daily activities, conversations, and experiences? And second, what am I doing when I’m doing what I’m doing? See, every one of us is engaged in seemingly unidimensional transactions, but underneath them is a greater purpose. Whether you’re serving food in the dining center or you’re advising or you’re standing in front of a classroom, the kinds of questions you ask and the kinds of listening you do and the way that you view your purpose — what you’re doing when you’re doing what you’re doing — it shapes everything. So many people on a college campus don’t understand the incredibly transformational and powerful role they play as educators when they enact the important and powerful pedagogical practice of asking meaningful questions, followed by deep and curious listening.



LW:&nbsp;How do you get a whole campus to embrace this approach?&nbsp;&nbsp;



FS:&nbsp;It’s slow and iterative, like all transformations. In many ways, the headwinds pull you away from doing these things, so you must drive into the wind. You must be committed and undeterred when the car’s shaky. Sometimes, you have to slow down a little, meaning it will take a little extra time, but it will be worth it. But if you believe that the whole world can shift by doing this, you can stay the course.



There’s a book that I’m particularly fond of by Peter Block called “Community: The Structure of Belonging,” where he talks about the small group as being the unit of transformation. You think of these movements as top-down, and they are to some degree because one of the first things you must do is declare a shift. In our case, we determined and stated that we would make the exploration of purpose, the pursuit of character, and the graduation of leaders a distinction of Roanoke College.&nbsp;



But a stated plan becomes a cultural transformation at the small group level. It’s the small conversations. What new conversations do we want to have, where will we conduct them, and who at every level will start? These things happen at the micro level, and then they become exponentially more likely to occur naturally on a campus. Over time, you’ll be surprised that everything has been transformed.



My assumption about how we build people of character and shape virtue and moral fiber is that none of it happens outside the context of community, and you can’t desire community until you’ve experienced it. One of the immediate structural challenges when people enter a new environment is to help them experience community. There are a lot of young people who come to a college campus who haven’t experienced it, and they don’t know that they need it. They’re not going to look for it. We have many, many lonely young people. It’s up to us to play a structural role in creating an environment that increases the likelihood that community happens.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Would you connect this work to what employers say we need more of: people who understand people?&nbsp;



FS:&nbsp;Yes. When you think about the technical skills that are required to build a 21st century aircraft, it requires incredible knowledge of physics, engineering, aerodynamics. But we also need people that can convene other people from different vantage points and communicate in adaptive ways that allow for understanding based on different acculturation. And look what happens from a character or virtue standpoint. If there is pressure to produce something in a particular timeframe that may not be safe, that’s not a technical question. That’s a moral question.



You really need expertise and character. You need a competent “what” and a firm “why.” You need to know what you’re doing when you’re doing what you’re doing. Are you taking care of humanity? Are you loving people? Are you looking for opportunities to lift others up? Are you viewing yourself as part of a greater community? Those are the kinds of questions, the kinds of values, that when coupled with the job that you have, make such a powerful combination.



LW:&nbsp;Does higher education have a role to play in addressing the polarization we are experiencing on so many levels?&nbsp;



FS:&nbsp;Yes. I think this is why I’m attracted to this conversation of character. Most of the skills that are important in character formation are learning to listen and asking good questions, which may be as simple as forming a meaningful question, versus a question with a binary answer. You get better at these things when you’re equipped, and then you get to practice in an environment where there are people with diverse viewpoints and different backgrounds. And I think a legitimate critique of higher education is that we have preferred echo chambers and haven’t been interested in listening to and learning from some voices, and there are some good reasons why that’s been the case. But if we view leadership as growing the skill and capacity to bring people together to achieve a common goal that is good for all, then yes, we can widen the circle. And I think those who can do that most effectively must be well-informed people of character. Because that is what will keep you in a place of productivity when times are tough and conversations are hard.&nbsp;&nbsp;



You can reach LearningWell editor Marjorie Malpiede at mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

When Questions Are the Answer 

Despite some signs of post-pandemic recovery, the college mental health crisis remains alive and not-so-well.



Young people passionate about their own and their peers’ mental health continue to sound the alarm on college campuses, while institutions across the country devote their own staff, resources, and time towards interventions to the same end.&nbsp;



But are the two groups missing something or, more specifically, each other in the process?&nbsp;



The&nbsp;<a href="https://c4sw.org/">Coalition for Student Wellbeing</a>, a new student-led mental health advocacy group, is founded on the premise that the most authentic and effective solutions to student mental health issues will come from ensuring those making the decisions hear from those affected by them.&nbsp;



Unlike other student groups that focus on issues within their institutions, the Coalition unites members across colleges nationwide to address a broad range of mental health concerns. The goal is to ensure that the student voice is part of the policy-making process, whether on campus or in Washington.



“The college student experience is so unique and dependent on the person,” said Carson Domey, the founder and executive director of the Coalition. “We need to tailor systems of care but also systems of education so that students are involved in these policy making conversations at all levels.”



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“We need to tailor systems of care but also systems of education so that students are involved in these policy making conversations at all levels.”
</blockquote>



Domey himself has never been one to sit on the sidelines. A rising senior at the University of Texas at Austin, he started the Coalition in August 2024, having been active in youth mental health advocacy for years.



He entered the world of policymaking and politics well before he could vote. By 11, he had been carted back and forth to hundreds of doctor’s appointments for a rare form of Crohn’s disease and began <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2016/07/09/this-11-year-old-is-working-to-expand-telemedicine-coverage-in-massachusetts/">pushing for legislation</a>&nbsp;in Massachusetts to expand access to telemedicine.



When a close friend died from suicide three years later, the scope of Domey’s advocacy grew. Since high school, he has pursued state-level mental health changes, like adding the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline to student IDs and expanding the definition of physical education to include mental health.&nbsp;



At U.T. Austin, Domey makes time to be not only a full-time student and director of the Coalition but the chair of the Texas State Policy Council at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. His combined advocacy efforts regularly shift him between the Massachusetts and Texas legislatures.



Domey called the Coalition’s mission “purposefully ambiguous.” The broad purpose is “to bridge the gap between students and decision-makers,” though he didn’t set parameters around the type of “decision makers” members should target, nor the specific actions they should take to reach them.&nbsp;



He likened the group to a sort-of universal puzzle piece, ready to fit in wherever needed.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Raising awareness around student perspectives on mental health is one key focus. Members utilize a variety of platforms, like Substack, to publish their ideas on concerns, from suicide prevention and basic needs support to combatting loneliness.



A new webinar series the group launched similarly promotes young voices, and also puts them in conversation with experts. In June,&nbsp;<a href="https://c4sw.org/event/building-the-foundation-why-k-12-mental-health-education-matters-for-college-wellbeing/">the first webinar</a>&nbsp;centered on the importance of K-12 mental health education to set up students for success in college and beyond. The second, airing in August, will be a “town hall” for students to share their thoughts on “the state of higher education going into the fall semester,” Domey said.&nbsp;



But being a piece of a larger “puzzle” also means finding ways to compliment the efforts of other existing organizations and individuals, hungry for a student-informed edge.&nbsp;



One example of this kind of collaborative advocacy is the group’s fall 2024 visit to the White House to contribute to a roundtable discussion on suicide prevention.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter is-resized is-style-default"><img src="https://live-learningwell-wp.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/IMG_4662-1-1024x576.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-2774" width="1024" height="576"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Members of the Coalition for Student Wellbeing traveled to the White House in fall 2024 to participate in a roundtable discussion about suicide prevention.</figcaption></figure>



Then, this spring, the Coalition teamed up with Active Minds to produce a&nbsp;<a href="https://activeminds.org/resource/student-id-cards-a-lifeline-for-college-students/">toolkit</a>&nbsp;of resources to help students advocate for printing the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline on student ID cards — an extension of Domey’s work in Massachusetts.&nbsp;



The response from those the Coalition hopes to influence has been promising, as many leaders embrace the importance of including students in mental health policymaking on campus.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The group’s&nbsp;<a href="https://c4sw.org/our-team/">advisory board</a>&nbsp;comprising top administrators and advocates, including President Domenico Grasso of the University of Michigan and President Mark Gearan of Hobart and William Smith College, offers insights and expertise to help the students refine their advocacy efforts.



Gearan said he believes the student-inspired nature of the Coalition makes it both unique in the higher education space and valuable for administrators like himself.&nbsp;



“It’s not that everyone can always agree with students, but the North Star is what is best for the student experience,” he said, adding that the diversity of the Coalition’s national membership is an added advantage.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Domey has lost track, he said, of “the amount of times that I’ve just sat down with either a president, a provost, a dean of students, and really tried to get to know their role and their perspective more to make us a better organization.”



“We’re so much better for being able to have those resources,” he added.&nbsp;



Domey expressed similar enthusiasm about the quality and connectedness of his&nbsp;<a href="https://c4sw.org/our-team/">student council</a>. “There’s honestly a very small amount of students that I would say work on youth mental health nationally,” he said. “The pro is we’ve all gotten to really know each other, and it’s a really cool community of people spread throughout the country.”



While members may come from a range of backgrounds, they share a passion for mental health and, in many cases, impressive advocacy records.



Domey met Ela Gardiner, soon-to-be sophomore at Hobart, when they were both in high school in Massachusetts and already education advocates on the state stage. Gardiner had been elected one of her high school’s delegates to the Student Advisory Council of the Board of Education.&nbsp;



She also struggled with anxiety and depression, an experience that spurred her mental health advocacy in the transition from high school.



When Gardiner discovered she could no longer see her Massachusetts-licensed therapist at college in New York, she dove into trying to adjust licensure policies and ensure students don’t lose crucial support at a vulnerable time. Along the way, she joined the Coalition.&nbsp;



Shira Garg, a rising junior at the University of Georgia, connected with Domey and the Coalition through an internship involving research on college student mental health screening tools. Now, her pre-med focus not only grounds an interest in wellbeing but helps spearhead the Coalition’s assessment of gaps in the mental health space.



For the Coalition’s members, the collective dedication to mental health is a major motivator.



“All the students that are involved are so passionate about the topic, and I think that in itself kind of propels each one of us to want to do more and more and more,” Garg said. “When you surround yourself with peers that really want to make change, you also follow in their footsteps.”



The objective moving forwards is recruiting more members from new backgrounds and strengthening the foundation further, Domey said.&nbsp;



“It all goes back to reflecting the stories of others and really trying to be that voice for as many people as you can.”



You can reach LearningWell reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

Student-Centered Solutions   

Lindsay Baker tended to be uncomfortable with conflict, a trait that extended to her professional life as an instructor at the University of Rochester. So when she heard about the new Mindful Professor Training Program available to the school’s faculty members, she saw an opportunity to address her aversion to engaging in difficult conversations.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“After Covid, I wanted to stay involved with learning and professional development, and this program offered the chance to focus on things related to mindfulness that I haven’t looked at in awhile,” said Baker, an instructor of opera and arts leadership. “So I started asking myself, ‘How can I be more present in a conversation that might be challenging? What's my own stuff I can take care of and shed before tense situations, so I can be open to better conversations with students and colleagues?’”



Launched in 2023, the Mindful Professor Training Program is a semester-long initiative that guides faculty through the principles of mindful leadership, helping them not only tend to their own wellbeing but also shape healthier, more supportive classroom environments.&nbsp;According to a&nbsp;<a href="https://healthymindsnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/The-Role-of-Faculty-in-Student-Mental-Health.pdf">2021 study</a>&nbsp;from the Healthy Minds Network (HMS), 21 percent of faculty surveyed said supporting students in mental distress had taken a toll on their own mental health — and 61 percent believed it should be mandatory for faculty to receive basic training in how to respond to students in distress.&nbsp;The Mindful Professor Training Program comes out of more than just post-pandemic urgency: a deeper recognition that the mental state of those who teach affects those who learn, and vice versa.&nbsp;



“If we want to support students, we have to support the faculty and staff with these tools,” said Rebecca Block, director of the program and the university’s health promotion specialist. “We’ve known that students benefit from mindfulness. But what about the faculty? They’re the ones setting the tone.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“We’ve known that students benefit from mindfulness. But what about the faculty? They’re the ones setting the tone.”
</blockquote>



The inspiration for the Mindful Professor program took root in the years surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Faculty across higher education found themselves suddenly navigating Zoom classrooms and working with students in emotional crisis without training beyond empathy and instinct.



Research bore out what many were feeling intuitively. The 2021 HMS study showed that while 80 percent of faculty had spoken with students about mental health, only half felt equipped to identify emotional distress. “That was an eye-opener,” Block said. “We realized we needed a new kind of training as national data keeps on getting worse. We have to think differently because what we're doing is not working.”



Block teamed up with consultant Lisa Critchley, whose background in mindful leadership in business settings brought a complementary expertise. Together, they created a curriculum that bridged personal mindfulness with leadership skills.



The result was a first-of-its-kind program in higher education: eight weekly workshops that combine meditation, discussion, applied classroom practices, and leadership skill-building. Critchley begins each session with a grounding meditation — breathwork, posture awareness, gratitude practices — before guiding faculty through exercises in mindful communication, self-regulation, and mentorly insight.



Lindsay Baker enrolled in the program in spring 2024 after spotting it in a faculty newsletter and joined a cohort of participants from a wide range of academic disciplines.&nbsp;



“I used to have a really solid meditation practice, but it had fallen off,” she said. “I was curious whether this would help jumpstart it again and whether I could bring some of it into the classroom.”



She found that she could. From the earliest sessions, Baker was struck by the value of pausing — “arrival practices,” as she calls them. “I started incorporating little rituals into my acting classes: a breath before entering the studio, a moment of grounding before auditions. It’s simple, but it changes the space.”



Baker also found herself applying the lessons offstage. As she juggled multiple productions during a particularly intense semester, the program’s emphasis on resisting urgency helped her avoid spiraling into panic. Perhaps even more powerful was the community that the program fostered. Faculty came together across disciplines — from vocal coaches to mathematicians, from nursing faculty to researchers — that didn’t ordinarily have an opportunity to share substantive conversations.



“There was just this sense of acceptance that there is no one single way and we’re there to support each other,” Baker said. “Some people were hardcore meditators. Others said, ‘Hey, I remembered to breathe today — that’s a win.’”



Mindful Leadership, Not Just Mindfulness



What sets the Mindful Professor Training Program apart from traditional wellness offerings is its focus on leadership. While mindfulness courses for educators have existed for years, the University of Rochester’s program explicitly teaches participants how to show up for others — a skillset that can have tremendous impact on the tenor of a conversation and its outcome.



Mindful leadership equips faculty with emotional regulation skills that ripple outward. “How a teacher shows up in the classroom — whether calm or frazzled — actually influences students neurologically,” Block said, referencing the role of mirror neurons, which cause our brains to “match” the emotional state of those around us.



A teacher who brings a calm presence into a tense classroom doesn’t just feel better, Block said. They set a tone. They create an environment in which students feel more grounded, focused, and able to learn.



“Faculty who've gone through the program are better able to regulate their own emotions to be thoughtful when they speak, and they say it can impact the way the conversation goes,” Block said. “If you show up for a stressful conversation with a student in a calm way versus a stressful way, it’ll really affect the way the conversation goes and the way the student feels supported.”



Early results suggest the program is having an impact. Post-program surveys found 100 percent of participants incorporated mindfulness into their daily lives and teaching practices. The majority reported they’d experienced greater confidence in supporting student wellbeing and managing their own stress.&nbsp;And 85 percent said they were either “extremely” or “moderately” confident in their ability to use mindfulness strategies to support student wellbeing.



The program’s success has caught the attention of researchers and peers nationwide. Block and Critchley have presented their work at over a dozen national conferences and, last month, published a study in the peer-reviewed “Journal of American College Health” on the program’s measurable benefits.



To meet growing demand — and logistical challenges — the university is expanding its reach to make it easier for faculty to participate from different physical corners of the campus. This fall, a full cohort will be hosted at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Next spring, the team hopes to bring the program to the Eastman School of Music. A fully asynchronous version is also in development, aimed at increasing access for faculty with demanding schedules or at satellite campuses.



“Our goal is to meet people where they are. Sometimes the biggest barrier to participating in wellness work is just making it to the building,” Block said. “So we’re adapting.”



A Wider Movement Toward Educator Wellness



While the Mindful Professor Training Program is unique in its scope and integration of leadership training, it is part of a broader shift in higher education toward acknowledging the mental health needs of faculty.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The University of Rochester’s broader “Well-being for Life and Learning” initiative offers an array of workshops focused on student wellness, and many faculty who complete the Mindful Professor program continue with follow-up coffee hours, self-care seminars, and classroom innovation labs.



With six cohorts completed and more than 60 graduates to date, the Mindful Professor program is gaining wider interest. Block receives regular inquiries from institutions looking to replicate the model, and when she speaks about it at conferences, she said she’s encouraged by the growing interest.



“We’re still growing,” she said. “But if our faculty feel more grounded, more connected, and more equipped to support students, that’s a win. They can really support not only student wellbeing, but their own teaching efficacy.”&nbsp;



Inside the classroom, Baker is able to recognize that efficacy in the moment. “I’ve been able to identify and experience what we were talking about in the program in terms of that self-regulation and the ability to let some things go,” she said. “In those heightened moments of urgency or stress response, now I recognize what it feels like, and what I can do.”



You can reach LearningWell editor Marjorie Malpiede at mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

The Mindful Professor 

Five years after the onset of the pandemic, concerns about the lasting impact of quarantine on the way students engage with each other and in the classroom linger. For some universities eager to intervene, one promising approach to boosting student interaction is peer-assisted learning.



At Florida Atlantic University (FAU), the Learning Assistant (LA) Program hires and trains undergraduates previously enrolled in a course to support students in subsequent semesters. Opening these new channels of engagement is improving not only the student experience but learning outcomes, too.



“In today's day and age, students don't talk to other students in the classroom. They go in, and they're on their phone; they’re on their laptops,” said Jennifer Bebergal, FAU’s associate dean for academic support and student learning and leader of the LA Program. “This is an opportunity for them to build that connection.”



These connections form on multiple fronts: Beyond bringing in additional support staff, the LA program requires faculty members to redesign their course to prioritize student collaboration. In classes typically involving two-hour lectures, for example, the second half gets devoted to group work.&nbsp;



In 2001, the University of Colorado Boulder developed the LA “model” in an effort to prepare students to become high school physics teachers, which the state was lacking. From one department at one university, the program has expanded to more than 120 across the country and globe.



FAU’s approach is distinct because the institution designates an administrative office to oversee and expand implementation. It gives stipends to faculty to compensate them for their redesign efforts and enforce cross-campus standards. At most schools, Bebergal said, academic centers or department heads are responsible for their own initiatives, primarily in STEM fields.



Across all institutions, though, three features of the LA Program stay the same: pedagogy, preparation, and practice. Pedagogy refers to training the LAs receive to support other students; preparation happens at weekly meetings between LAs and the professor to improve and tailor instruction; practice is what comes alive in the classroom.



LAs are not meant to teach course material but rather support the learning process. They don’t provide solutions to problems but coach students along the way.



“That's something that we learn a lot about during our pedagogy sessions — to try to not just give them the answer but more lead them through the thinking and logically arriving at the answer,” said Sebastian Hernandez, a rising junior and repeat-LA.&nbsp;



Tito Sempértegui, senior instructor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry, helps lead the LA Program with Bebergal. As a professor of courses with LAs, he said he appreciates the added support in the classroom but especially how LAs provide unique insight into students’ understanding of the material.



“There’s a barrier between the students and the faculty members that is overcome with the presence of the Learning Assistants,” Sempértegui said. “Students are more likely to talk to them, and they do.”



The relatability of LAs may also help students envision their own success. “They see students who look like them, whether it’s race, gender, ethnicity,” Bebergal said. Something as simple as sharing an interest or club with an LA could help students feel more comfortable and capable in class.



Deepened classroom engagement is often the by-product. When relationships become a defining feature of the classroom experience, peers notice each other’s absences. “It builds that sense that the students matter in their experience here, and we care that they're in class, and we care that they're learning the material,” Bebergal said.



Connecting with an LA in his first-year math class is what led Hernandez to want to become one himself. He had arrived at FAU hoping to pursue environmental engineering, but the prospect of taking calculus was daunting.



“I had a lot of self doubt that I was actually going to be able to do it because of the math,” he said. “Later I realized that it wasn't really that I was bad at it or there's something wrong with math specifically.”



The support of his LA was key. “She helped me a lot, and she made the concepts seem very easy, and she even made it look exciting to the point where I really got into calculus,” Hernandez said. “So I just wanted to do that for other people.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“She helped me a lot, and she made the concepts seem very easy, and she even made it look exciting to the point where I really got into calculus. I wanted to do that for other people.”
</blockquote>



While taking into account anecdotal affirmations, Bebergal and her team assess learning outcomes for students in classes with LAs. As of fall 2022, the DWF (drop, withdrawal, fail) rate in both Calculus I and II had dropped by about half since the introduction of LAs in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Meanwhile, the percentage of students earning As in the courses significantly increased.



Outside class time, LAs offer office hours for students who either can’t make it to the professor’s sessions or prefer the lower-stakes environment of meeting with a peer.



As a student in class with LAs, Hernandez said LA office hours could be even more useful than receiving in-class support. “At least me, I feel a little intimidated to go to my professor’s office hours. I think he's busy and stuff like that,” he said. Conferring with another student, he said, felt “a lot more welcoming.”



Professors take different approaches to incentivizing visiting LA office hours. In his first semester as an LA, Hernandez said, students could earn extra credit by completing a worksheet and explaining the concepts to their LA outside of class. In another course, attending LA office hours was a requirement baked into students’ final grade.



In addition to the students in the classes, LAs themselves stand to gain from the program. First, it offers paid, on-campus employment for the FAU population, one-third of which is eligible for Federal Pell Grants for exceptional student financial need.



For LAs, teaching also presents its own confidence boost, Bebergal said. “Our new LAs come in really nervous. They have imposter syndrome: ‘Yeah, I got an A in this class, but I'm not going to be able to help others.’” Over the course of the semester and into their subsequent turns in the role, she said, “you just see them grow exponentially.”



LAs aren’t just benefitting from helping students, though. They have more time one-on-one with the professor and their LA peers, too.



Hernandez said he sees the payoff on at least two fronts: “It's very rewarding to be able to help someone,” he said. “But also, it really solidifies my own learning because I think the final step in mastering a concept is being able to teach it to someone.”



“It's like a win-win.”



Florida Atlantic University is a member of the LearningWell Coalition. To learn more about the program, please contact Dana Humphrey at <a href="mailto:dana@learningwell.org">dana@learningwell.org</a>.



You can reach LearningWell reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

Learning Together at Florida Atlantic University

On April 8, 2025, the Trump Administration announced the end to $4 million in funding for research programs at Princeton University exploring risks associated with climate change. At the time, it was the latest instance in an ongoing wave of federal cuts to environmental initiatives. But this case sparked interest for another reason: According to the <a href="https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2025/04/ending-cooperative-agreements-funding-princeton-university">press release</a>, at least one of the programs was eliminated because it was allegedly “contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth.” 



Environmental experts were quick to denounce the idea that the solution to anxiety about climate change would come from avoiding research on the topic. But it's not the first time the phrase “climate anxiety” has been summoned for political gain, on either side of the aisle. The truth is the term gets used to describe all variations of distress over the state of the Earth. Parsing out the possible interpretations is an important exercise for educators, practitioners, and students themselves. 



A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2542-5196%2824%2900229-8">2024 study</a>&nbsp;of “climate emotions” in 16- to 25-year-olds found that up to 85 percent are “worried” about climate change and its potential impact; and for around 38 percent, these worries negatively affect daily life. Concern over climate change has become so widespread among young people that it's affecting how they vote, whom they choose to work for, what products they buy, even their decision to have children. But are young people’s responses to climate change a clinical issue to be treated? Or do they fall in line with those to most social problems, just with a catchier, more damning name?



The framing of “climate anxiety” presents something disordered in need of a cure, but from a clinical perspective, there is a distinction between an anxiety disorder and experiencing some sense of anxiety. After all, the vast majority of young people may feel worried about climate change; the majority don’t have an anxiety disorder.



“Anxiety or worry on its own isn’t necessarily a problem or something to be treated,” said Kaitlin Gallo, a Boston-based psychologist whose practice focuses on young adults and college students. She said she’s encountered a spectrum of concerns when it comes to climate change. Even among her patients who tend to have clinical-grade issues, their climate concerns do not necessarily map onto an anxiety disorder. “Oftentimes, the worry is occurring outside of the context of an anxiety disorder, and it’s just what I might call sort of a normal or understandable worry given the state of the world,” she said.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“Anxiety or worry on its own isn’t necessarily a problem or something to be treated.” 
</blockquote>



It’s when the worry becomes “hard to control or to move on from” that it could begin to signal a deeper anxiety disorder demanding a more clinical response, Gallo said. Even then, the end goal may not be to try to get rid of the concerns.



“I think sometimes when worries are realistic, then there’s just a different way to deal with them,” she said. “Sometimes it might not be reasonable or helpful to change the thought, but rather to think about how you want to live your life in the face of that concern.”



People who experience an anxiety disorder are certainly susceptible to dark fears about a fiery end. For others, particularly young people who have more time on the earth, climate distress, even fear, may be an unavoidable part of living.&nbsp;



Olivia Ferraro, a 25-year-old living in New York, said dismissals of climate change are what really makes her crazy.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“To watch business as usual go on around you with very little recognition of how distressing the state of the planet is can be really confusing. Because you’re like, ‘Am I insane?’” she said. “This feels like a problem that we should be moving to solve with World War II urgency. Everything needs to be mobilized to prevent catastrophe.”



When she first started experiencing more acute distress about the state of the climate and its future, Ferraro was surprised at the lack of sympathy she met from family and friends, especially those she expected to understand. If anyone had asked them, she knew they would say they cared about the environment.



Realizing her regular network might not be able to give her support she needed, she started exploring other options. She was especially interested in talking to people her age, given climate change, she said, “is a threat felt uniquely the younger that you are.”



“I wanted to be with people who could share that experience of, ‘I’m freaked out because I don't know if I'm going to have a child anymore,’ or ‘I will be my parents’ age when a lot of these predicted catastrophic shocks happen. How can I think about my life when I'm 50 where I can't get water from the tap?’” Ferraro said.



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“I wanted to be with people who could share that experience of, ‘I will be my parents’ age when a lot of these predicted catastrophic shocks happen.'"
</blockquote>



The support group she ended up finding was one she had to help create. Eager for an in-person space in New York, she started hosting “climate cafes,” or listening circles that bring together people with environmental concerns to share how they’re feeling.&nbsp;



A grassroots initiative, climate cafes have popped up with chapters nation-wide. Ferraro said they can offer relief from advocacy-related burnout or help someone who doesn’t even identify as an “environmentalist” learn about new ways to contribute to the cause. On the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.climatecafe.eco/">website</a>&nbsp;for Climate Cafe NYC, the branch refers to itself as “the social home of NYC climate action.”



“A lot of it is holding hands with people as they kind of walk into that unknown, knowing that you’re doing it together and that there are other people who are experiencing this,” Ferraro said.&nbsp;



Part of the purpose is helping each other avoid hopelessness. “We can be sad, but to be despaired is a totally other feeling. That’s when you’ve given up,” Ferraro said. “We want to help people avoid despair and avoid nihilism and really, even though it’s very hard work, stay openhearted and willing to connect with people and understand how we can work together.”&nbsp;



The need for these kinds of outlets is evident in the many students who are bringing their climate-related concerns to school with them. Professor Sarah Jaquette Ray said the emergence of this distress in her classes pushed her down a path towards a new expertise: emotions and the environment. Now she’s chair of the environmental studies department at Cal Poly Humboldt.



As recently as a decade ago, Ray said environmentalists were trying to ramp up concerns about climate change, with what she calls the “scare-to-care” approach. Opening young people’s eyes to the devastation that could come, the thinking went, would inspire them to act, before it was too late.



The strategy may have worked, but too well. Ray said she saw students becoming more enthusiastic about climate-related issues, but they also seemed more despairing. “I was noticing my students were not coping very well with the material,” she said. “I didn’t think my teaching was changing, but something was changing about the students.”



Up to that point, Ray had felt like her students were taking the issues in stride, embracing problem solving. With time, she said, “It felt more like an existential crisis for them.” She decided part of the problem was that students were learning a lot about what was going wrong and a lot less about how to manage their own response to the problems. “They weren’t learning all that stuff alongside coping skills or emotional intelligence or any kind of cultural frame as to why these things might be getting worse,” she said.



She set out to fill the gap. Research into the spiritual and therapeutic tools activists have used in other social movements became the basis of an understanding about how to deal with climate concerns. This mental health-forward approach to environmental issues also appears in her book “A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet.”



Still, Ray continues to wait for the day when higher education institutions have integrated trauma-informed instruction and emotional intelligence into environmental education. That component “is just beginning to percolate on the edges of the tipping point,” she said.&nbsp;



William Throop, professor emeritus and former provost at Green Mountain College, is also interested in activating a more personal dimension of environmental studies. For the philosopher-by-training, with a background teaching environmental ethics, it’s important to not only present possible climate change solutions to students but equip them with the life skills to enact them. This is an approach he views as part of “character education,” which he said prioritizes “the student as a person, not just as a collector of information.”



By learning what he calls “skillful habits,” Throop said, students stand to become “better critical thinkers, better ethical thinkers and actors.” In his book, “Flourishing in the Age of Climate Change,” he discusses a set of “hope skills” particularly helpful for confronting climate issues.



“Hope communication,” for example, is a skill Throop suggests could be particularly pertinent for tackling climate change. “How do you describe in a clear way the facts of a situation which are problematic and yet don't turn people off?” he said. “How do you motivate people who address those facts in the way you communicate about them?”



Teaching hope, Throop said, might sound “like something a psychologist ought to do.” He thinks otherwise. “It's something that should be embedded in curricula addressing these issues.”



As some faculty become more in tune with how students react to learning about climate change, students continue to turn towards each other to process the emotions they are experiencing.&nbsp;



Eva Salmon, a rising junior at Barnard College, said she doesn’t usually struggle with anxiety in other facets of life; yet concerns about the climate are a constantly “simmering undertone” in the back of her mind. “In general, seeing everything happening in the world, it feels like my heart is constantly breaking, and I'm constantly experiencing a sense of betrayal.”



“Anytime it's relevant, I can feel the grief. I can feel the anxiety. It really is there,” she said.



Compounding these emotions for students is the sense that their institutions are leaving them to lead the way alone. That’s the consensus among many members of Sunrise Columbia, the Columbia University branch of the Sunrise Movement, a national youth climate activism effort.&nbsp;



Because it’s independent from the university, Sunrise Columbia can hold the administration’s feet to the fire in ways a club receiving school funding can’t. The student-run group conducts its own investigations into the university’s use of funds from fossil fuel companies to fund climate research.&nbsp;



<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/18Bpe6KIpzGmQ2y54vgx99KHV9B15zzEA/view">“Complicit Columbia”</a> is the 53-page report the students published on their findings that the university accepted at least $43.7 million from fossil fuel companies between 2005 to 2024. More than a third of the funds benefitted the university’s research hub, the Center on Global Energy Policy.



Salmon, one of the student authors of the paper, said she takes issue with the fact that students, rather than university personnel, were the ones to take on this initiative. “The university needs to be more attuned and aware and doing its own research into these things. But for now, this is what we have,” she said.



The group of friends Salmon collaborates with has been key to keeping her motivated despite her frustrations. In general, she said she believes “a lot of the bad that's happening in the world” is the result of “not prioritizing community” and disconnect among people. It’s a problem she feels grateful not to have.&nbsp;



“To have found community and the space in the way that I have really has brought me a lot of peace and joy,” she said. The sense of support pushes her activism to the next level. “I think I would've done it regardless, but I don't think I would've felt quite as empowered and impassioned.”



“At the end of the day, even if all this is happening around us, we have each other. And that feels like a very powerful, powerful thing,” she added.



Salmon’s overriding objective is to stay positive, to concentrate on the friends that are supporting her and the work they do together that bring her relief. “I really try and focus on recognizing the beauty in every step I take or recognizing things I like around me and just expressing gratitude for that,” she said.&nbsp;



Olivia Ferraro, the climate cafe host, has adopted a similar outlook. While “climate anxiety” may be more apparent in her life than it was a few years ago, that discomfort has fed a deeper appreciation for the time she has left and a desire to make the most of it. It’s a guiding force that has changed her approach to relationships and decision-making.



“It’s been really freeing, honestly,” she said. “I like my life a lot more now than I ever did before."

Deconstructing 'Climate Anxiety'

Here at LearningWell, we are always interested in new approaches university leaders take to foster community on campus—with students, among students, and within the faculty and administration. So our ears pricked up when, at a recent gathering of educators, we heard Connie Book, the president of Elon University, speak about her practice of ambushing parents with good news phone calls. 



We asked her to expand on this and other things she does to help cultivate connection. Her experience and insights tap into her years as the first female provost and dean at The Citadel, a military college in Charleston, S.C., and far earlier to her own upbringing in a large family as the sixth of nine children.



LW:&nbsp;I heard you speak recently about your Friday phone calls to parents of students who’d done something noteworthy. I love this idea of catching students in the act of doing something good. Can you tell us more about it?&nbsp;



CB:&nbsp;Sometimes it's when they've done something like won an academic award, but other times it's when they've taken on some role on campus, like they're on a committee or helping us with something new that we're trying to accomplish. Or sometimes it's just students that I think, Oh, he's really interesting. He just makes the student body more present. It's such an easy thing to do. The parents are always grateful, and the kids are, too.



I do it on Friday afternoons because at the end of a long week, Fridays can be a day that some unpleasant things get dumped before the weekend. When I worked at The Citadel, the military guys would never take appointments on Friday afternoons because they said that’s when the second lieutenants came in and wanted to dump the problems on them, and they didn't want to let this ruin their weekend. So it's my realization that my Fridays could, depending on what was going on campus, really stage either a terrible weekend or a relaxing weekend. So I started being a lot more intentional about Friday afternoons.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;As a mother of college kids myself, I imagine it could be really moving for a parent to get that call. Can you give us an example?



CB:&nbsp;The first call I made was in my second year here at Elon when one of our first-generation college students won a Goldwater Award. If you're in higher ed, you understand what that means. But I thought, I think her parents don't even realize what a significant achievement that was. So I just decided on Friday afternoon, I had the staff pull her record, and I called her father. They see the out-of-state area code for the university come up on their phone, so the first thing I say is, “Your child is healthy and fine and not in trouble.” Just to get all that off the table. I did have such a powerful conversation with him that day. It felt so good to share with him what a remarkable daughter he had and that she was doing such good things, and then explain what the Goldwater was and how much our community here enjoyed having her. And then he shared about all the hard work she had done to get to college from the time she was very young. It was a conversation about the hard work that young people do to make sure they have a good opportunity, the process, and the appreciation when scholarships come through and they can afford college. Just leaving home from Arizona to come to Elon was a risk. After I hung up, I thought, Wow, I should do this more often because it was driving my sense of mission and purpose about the work. You can get so wrapped up in politics or budgeting or some other challenge that it can be a barrier to really feeling the mission, and on those calls, I feel the mission and the impact it's having.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;What are some other ways you make yourself more present for the student body? Do I recall hearing you mention something about Ping-Pong?



CB:&nbsp;Yes. Friday is my day to connect with students. So I play table tennis at one o'clock for an hour. They sign up on a whiteboard. There's always a line there to play. Students will say, “This was on my bucket list, to come play with you before I graduated.” I have parents show up, because they've heard I do it, and they're good at it. So they're like, “Oh, the next time I'm on campus, I want to play the president.”



LW:&nbsp;And how did this activity occur to you?&nbsp;



CB:&nbsp;When my son was in middle school, he really started answering every question with one word answers. “Yes. No.” I could not get him to talk about anything. So I told him that winter, let's bring the Ping-Pong table inside. We had played occasionally, but we started playing every day. And then I noticed that because you talk when you play, he would start talking more after a couple of sets.&nbsp;



That’s true with the students here, too. I'll always say, “Well, what's your major? Where are you from?” And we get talking. My son now is an Olympic-rated table tennis player, so I know how to play, and I like to win. If they have a good hit and beat me, I'm always like, “Aaand … What's your name again?”



LW:&nbsp;So this game isn’t just a walk in the park! But that is true about communication with teens, having that shared activity to get you talking.&nbsp;



CB:&nbsp;I actually&nbsp;do&nbsp;walks with students, too, a couple of times a semester. I'll invite student groups, post where I’m going, and anybody can show up and join us. What's really funny about that is that students, when they see where I'm going to be, sometimes they do come to lobby me for different things. I had some theater students ask for a budget increase. It's almost like I had a little tracker on me. “Yeah, we know where she is.”



LW:&nbsp;Ha! Future politicians. What about community building with faculty, staff, administration? Do you have strategies for outreach with them as well?



CB:&nbsp;I would say our culture is pretty open already. Like last week, I had two faculty conversations that I announced literally on Monday and had them on Friday. And I always have audience microphones. I have three suggestion boxes on campus and an online one where anybody can tell me anything.



LW:&nbsp;Are they used?&nbsp;



CB:&nbsp;Yes. And they do tell me anything. Some are like, “The doorknobs are broken here.” But they are usually about things that make the workplace or the learning environment better. “Have you considered doing this?”&nbsp;



I am a believer in letting people know you are open, saying to them essentially, “Hey, if you see something, let me know because I can't see what you can see.” It may not create the solution they have in mind. Bring me the problem, but don't get too wedded to the solution. They have to be open to us&nbsp;problem-solving together.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Do you have an example of some kind of problem brought to you that way?



CB:&nbsp;We have an ombuds program here for the faculty. It's very official. You have to do the training. We pay a stipend. But one of the staff people that serves as the ombuds also happens to be an employee in Human Resources. And people said, “I'm not comfortable going to HR to talk to the ombuds person because it's supposed to be a confidential unit.” I had never thought of that because we have been doing this through HR for a long time, and it never occurred to me that people saw that as a disciplinary unit so that there was hesitancy. We did add another ombuds person to the mix. And we worked together on the job description to give people more choice.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;What kinds of things did you learn from the requests coming into the ombuds person?&nbsp;



CB:&nbsp;What was really powerful about that is that I was always thinking it was workplace disagreements, but I learned a lot that people need somebody to talk to about personal challenges. They were coming to her for things like food insecurity, car repairs. And I was like, Wow, it's almost like pastoral care. We have on-site counseling services for students but not employees. So it was a good learning moment for me as well.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Is that going to spark any kind of a change in the way you offer counseling services or pastoral services for employees?&nbsp;



CB:&nbsp;It could. We have a chaplain here, and the chaplain has an emergency fund. Part of it was letting the ombuds person know they have a resource in the chaplain, who can help. But for some people, religion might be a barrier, too.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Is there anything else you’d like to add about community building? We’re at a very difficult moment nationally—both socially and politically, as well as educationally. Is there anything you do at Elon to break down barriers?&nbsp;



CB:&nbsp;Well, we have 7,000 students on campus at Elon, and there’s a longstanding community dead-period—a time where you don't have any classes—on Tuesday and Thursday mornings around 10 o'clock. On Tuesdays, we have College Coffee—free coffee and donuts outside when the weather is good—and there's always several hundred people that come. And then on Thursdays, we have a spiritual program with singing. We’re not religiously affiliated. We’re independent. But there's certainly a really vibrant feeling with multiple faiths represented.&nbsp;



Also, we have a street that runs down the middle of campus, and during really difficult times, we will put a chalkboard out there. The day after the election, for example, we put up boards inviting the hopes that students had about the future. Politically, we don't overly lean one way or the other, so the responses were really down the middle. Like, “There's happiness for all to find joy in every day.” Or, “Strength and unity. God is good. We can all love and accept each other, no questions asked.” And then we kept them up in the student union for several weeks. I decided to take some pictures of them because every now and then I like to remember that part of what we're doing on college campuses is the critical work of a future that we won't be alive to witness, but we are planting all these seeds for a really strong future for all of us all around the world. To me, that is purpose-driven work. And I like to pull it out and be reminded.



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"I like to remember that part of what we're doing on college campuses is the critical work of a future that we won't be alive to witness."
</blockquote>



LW:&nbsp;You have a very insightful and empathic way of talking about students and the experience of leading a university, something people might not expect to evolve from working in a military environment. How did you come by this mindset?&nbsp;



CB:&nbsp;That's a really good question. Growing up in my own family, I'm number six of nine kids, and both of my parents were educators. I think about all the great lessons of sharing and compromise and negotiation that you learn in a family. I think one of the things as a president that I think a lot about is that I see and witness things. And then my job is often to tell the story of that to people who influence the resources and regulatory policy that shape the world we live in on campus.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;Thank you for that plug for the benefits of a large family. I have five children, but it doesn’t always feel like the world sees that as a positive.&nbsp;



CB:&nbsp;Oh yeah, the good lessons of humility, of being an equal and doing your part. My job was to do the laundry growing up, three loads a day.&nbsp;



LW:&nbsp;The chore chart. And the role of fairness and truth-telling. And squabbling and learning to work it out. Those are powerful things.



CB:&nbsp;I have been really aware of the power of this witnessing piece. And so now I think I'm intentionally looking all the time, talking to parents, and wanting to be effective in sharing the power of the work that's going on on college campuses. Especially at a time when the negative rhetoric is suggesting that it's not needed and it's not worth it. Yet we all know 99 percent of what we're experiencing on a college campus is good and powerful.&nbsp;

Not by the Book

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



Influence on Community



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



An Imperative for Higher Education



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



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



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



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



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

More Reasons to Do the Right Thing

If you studied or worked at a health-promoting university, would you know it? Would you recognize the institution’s commitment to wellbeing in your daily activities, your relationships, your environment? For the colleges and universities that are part of the&nbsp;<a href="http://ushpcn.org/">U.S. Health Promoting Campuses Network</a>&nbsp;(USHPCN),&nbsp;the answer to these questions is yes, or at least, that is the aspiration.&nbsp;



The&nbsp;USHPCN is a&nbsp;coalition of colleges and universities dedicated to infusing health into their everyday operations, business practices, and academic mandates. It was launched in 2015 to promote the “Okanagan Charter: An International Charter for Health Promoting Universities and Colleges,” which offers&nbsp;a blueprint for making wellbeing an institution’s foundational principle.



As it celebrates its 10-year anniversary, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.healthpromotingcampuses.org/okanagan-charter">Okanagan Charter</a>&nbsp;(OC) is now an institutional priority at 39 schools in the United States. Around 300 others are not official “adopters” of the charter but participate as “members” of its broader network. For these colleges and universities, the O.C. serves many purposes. It is a pledge, a road map, and in some cases, a license to experiment with new approaches outside the traditional lanes of higher education. More than anything perhaps, the Okanagan Charter is a major shift in thinking about what constitutes wellbeing on campus, as well as who is responsible.&nbsp;&nbsp;



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The Okanagan Charter is a major shift in thinking about what constitutes wellbeing on campus, as well as who is responsible.
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“With the Okanagan Charter, institutions around the country are reimagining higher education as a catalyst for human and planetary flourishing on every campus, everywhere,” said Sislena Grocer Ledbetter, chair of USHPCN and associate vice president of counseling health and wellbeing at Western Washington University.&nbsp;



International, Indigenous Origins&nbsp;



The Okanagan Charter reflects an international recognition of the influence of higher education on “people, place, and planet”—the three domains frequently cited within the common language the OC provides.&nbsp;“Higher education,” the charter goes, “plays a central role in all aspects of the development of individuals, communities, societies and cultures—locally and globally.” Indeed, colleges and universities serve as not only large institutions but major employers, creative centers of learning and research, and educators of future generations.&nbsp;



The OC grew out of the work of the World Health Organization’s Health Promoting Universities movement of the 1990s.&nbsp;&nbsp;The document was formally launched at a&nbsp;2015 International Conference on the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus in Kelowna, Canada. The first draft of the charter was based on input from 225 people with the support of a writing team and an additional 380 delegates who critiqued and refined the document. Its introduction includes an acknowledgement that the OC was developed on the territory of the Okanagan Nation.&nbsp;&nbsp;



In addition to recognizing the influence of universities on people, place and planet, the charter’s creation and early appeal was in response to the growing international crisis in mental health. According to the&nbsp;<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6408297/">Healthy Minds Study</a>,&nbsp;the rate of (mental health) treatment (for college students) increased from 19% in 2007 to 34% by 2017, while the percentage of students with lifetime diagnoses increased from 22% to 36%.&nbsp;By 2015, it was becoming apparent that campuses in the United States were indeed not well.&nbsp;



One recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2024.1443937/full">paper</a>, “The Okanagan Charter to improve wellbeing in higher education: shifting the paradigm,” suggests a public health approach is the way to solve this problem which led to overwhelmed counseling resources and concerns over inconsistent help-seeking. One of the authors is Rebecca&nbsp;Kennedy,&nbsp;assistant vice president for student health and wellbeing&nbsp;at the&nbsp;University of Alabama at Birmingham, the first school in the United States to sign the Charter.&nbsp;



“For many years now, universities have been trying to help students on their campuses thrive and flourish, increasing the availability of services on campus,” Kennedy and her co-authors explain. “Many of these services, including mental health treatment, are directed towards individuals, which is important for that individual, but does nothing to create conditions that prevent the need for these services at the population level.”&nbsp;



In their research, the authors found a paucity of population-based strategies and little examination on system-wide approaches. “There was little evidence of policy, systems, or settings wellbeing strategies in the higher education literature. There was a lack of scientific investigation and evaluation examining the impact of changes to public policies, regulations and laws that impact the health of college students.”



The Okanagan Charter is an effort to fill that void first by creating a framework for improved wellbeing at the population-level on campus and then capturing data that will show its effect over time. According to the charter, “Health promotion requires a positive, proactive approach, moving ‘beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions’&nbsp;that create and enhance health in settings, organizations and systems, and address health determinants.”&nbsp;



For colleges and universities, this means applying a “settings and systems” approach to scenarios one might think of as singular or isolated. One example the authors offer is the diet of college students. While adding more nutritional food to the dining hall menu may be one (downstream) solution to improving students’ notoriously unhealthy eating habits, keeping dining halls open and accessible after hours or during breaks so students avoid resorting to vending machines would be the upstream approach. A Campus Determinants Model, within the Okanagan Charter and mapped to person, place and planet, further demonstrates these distinctions.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Understanding What Institutional Wellbeing Looks Like



The document, which is 11 pages, provides institutions with a common vision, language, and principles on how to become health and wellbeing-promoting campuses. It includes two calls to action: “Embed health into all aspects of campus culture, across the administration, operations, and academic mandates; and lead health promotion action and collaboration locally and globally.”



What that looks like for campuses within a sector as diverse and tenuously connected as higher education is the big question and the primary work of&nbsp;&nbsp;the&nbsp;USHPCN. Associated with the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.healthpromotingcampuses.org/networks/">International Health Promoting Universities &amp; Colleges Network</a>, the USHPCN supports campuses in interpreting and operationalizing the Okanagan Charter framework, acknowledging the unique factors that influence the OC’s adoption on each campus. Designees from the institutional members, as well as from the schools who have formally adopted the charter, work as a network, meeting regularly and sharing best practices and metrics.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Julie Edwards is the assistant vice president of student health and wellbeing at Cornell University and the chair-elect of the steering committee of the USHPCN. She is well known among the OC community, as she chairs the potential adopter cohort and is frequently called upon to consult with schools just starting their journey. She urged Cornell to adopt the Charter in 2022 and has made it a pillar of her work and that of the entire university with the full engagement of partners, from faculty members and facility managers to the president’s office.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“First and foremost, the Okanagan Charter gives us shared language and a shared vision,” Edwards said of the OC’s implementation at Cornell. “An unintended but powerful outcome is that people have become genuinely excited to understand this health-promoting concept and their role within it. Wellbeing is no longer looked at as just an initiative from Cornell Health.”



Edwards said Cornell had an existing foundation of wellbeing support for students, staff, and faculty, as well as for the planet through sustainability initiatives. The Okanagan Charter was the Venn diagram that put it all together. After the adoption of the Charter, the school created multiple guidelines that align with the guiding principles. For example, if you’re thinking of revising or creating a new policy at Cornell, you are asked to consider the question, “Is this health promoting?”&nbsp;&nbsp;



These criteria are used in decision-making throughout campus. To diffuse some of the academic stress among Cornell’s high performing students, changes have been made to transcript policies, including to avoid discriminating against students who have had to take an incomplete. Many colleges have also implemented credit caps to reduce stress of taking over 20 credits in a semester. Another recent policy change is that employees at Cornell are now allowed two additional floating holidays to use as they please.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Through the Okanagan Charter, Cornell developed a Community of Practice—a structure that Edwards describes as “bringing together diverse folks who have shared goals to work together to solve complex problems.” With the participation of about 150 people on campus, the Community of Practice is also working on assessing the impact of the policies that have been adopted.&nbsp;



“My hope is that when students, staff and faculty come to Cornell, they can feel a sense of care and compassion and support for their wellbeing. They can feel that they have equitable access to the services that are provided, and they are able to connect with others in meaningful ways to flourish.”&nbsp;



At a very different campus, the team from University of Massachusetts, Amherst is equally as enthusiastic, though less far along in the OC process.   “We’ve been forming relationships, listening to speakers, really cementing the excitement for this concept as we move into implementation,” said Elizabeth Cracco, the assistant vice chancellor of campus life and wellbeing. 



Cracco said the Okanagan Charter, which is now part of the university’s strategic plan, came into view after the pandemic when every stakeholder on campus focused on a common goal. “During the pandemic, there was such a great demonstration of serving the greater good of the campus, and that made us want to keep going, to keep thinking collectively around wellbeing.”



Connecting the OC’s population-based approach to student mental health is a welcome strategy for Cracco, who is a trained clinical psychologist with student counseling within her purview. She said the Okanagan Charter allowed her to add a layer to this work, expanding their existing focus on providing individual mental health support.



“The systems we have built to deal with students who are in distress have not gone away,” she said. “But using this collective impact framework, we are able to consider larger issues, such as, ‘How are we going to undo some of the intended or unintended consequences of everyone’s attention going to a screen instead of each other or themselves?’ That’s a whole campus problem. That’s faculty, staff and students.”&nbsp;



Cracco said what excites her the most about the work is the unexpected partnerships it is forging with other stakeholders on campus. As was the case during the pandemic, she is working alongside numerous teams on campus that are experimenting with new ideas, including creating a greater sense of belonging in the classroom and even making changes to the built environment. “We have a faculty member in the school of architecture who is working with her senior students on the redesign of our residence hall lounges,” Cracco said.&nbsp;



Cross-sector partnerships are a commonly reported benefit for schools who have adopted the Okanagan Charter. For some, like Furman University in South Carolina, the OC framework was a natural extension of what was already happening on campus. Since 2018, the school has offered the trademarked initiative “The Furman Advantage,” a student-centered pathway that requires a first- and second-year program combining academic advising and student wellbeing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Furman’s involvement in the Okanagan Charter, first as an institutional member and then as a full adopter, was initiated by the Wellbeing Strategy Committee, co-chaired by Dean of Students Jason Cassidy and Meghan Slining, a faculty member in health sciences who is a well-known public health expert on campus.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Cassidy said he had a good feeling about the Okanagan Charter right away and appreciated being part of a learning community that the USHPCN provides.&nbsp;



&nbsp;“People from campuses all over the country are really open to sharing what they’ve done, how they’ve done it, and meeting with you one-on-one,” said Cassidy. “But there’s no playbook. They give us a unified skeleton, and then it’s up to us to put the meat on the bones that makes the most sense for our campus community. I think that’s the only way you could get something like this accomplished.”&nbsp;



While the adoption of the OC may have been an easy lift at Furman, it still represents a significant change in thinking on campus. Slining said she is frequently asked to explain the OC to people who, in another world, would never be expected to understand it. Their response continues to pleasantly surprise her.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“This is not business as usual where the only people who care about health and wellbeing are from the health sciences,” she said. “Centers and groups all over campus are writing the language into their mission statements and figuring out how to incorporate it into their work. They’re fired up.”&nbsp;

A Framework for Flourishing 

As our plane rolled into the terminal, my seat neighbor asked if it was my first time in Egypt. I told him it was — my first in the country and second in the Middle East, although I hadn’t been back since before I started college and studying Arabic. He told me he was born and raised in Cairo and coming home after a few months coaching squash in Dallas.&nbsp;



We turned out to have more in common than being about the same age on the same plane. When he heard I went to Harvard, his face lit up in recognition. He quickly listed off the names of squash players, friends of his, who had been students. Some were Egyptian, others French and Canadian. Several of them I knew. We had lived together in the same dorm for years.



Within seconds of landing somewhere new, I met someone familiar. At the time, we laughed about the world being small. Now I wonder if it isn’t just that Harvard is big, its international network as wide as its roots in Cambridge are deep.&nbsp;



I thought about my chance encounter in Cairo after news broke of the Trump Administration’s order for Harvard to stop enrolling international students. Around a quarter of my classmates came from other countries. The concept of their absence is difficult to grasp and harder to swallow. What rare moments of connection would be missed? How many global touchpoints lost?



After four years studying the Middle East, I felt tied to the place upon arrival not because of the books I read or language I learned but because of the relationships I formed. This international education was a personal one, and it had lasted long after my Arabic began to fade.&nbsp;



When I was a student, even academic interactions with international students were personal. There was the friend from Marseille who edited my emails in French when I needed to reach out to subjects in Paris for my senior thesis. There was another from Cairo who, sitting across from me in the dining hall, would look up from her own math homework to answer my questions about Arabic. There were countless who deepened my understanding of course material — a place, culture, or tradition — because they reflected on it in the context of their own upbringing.



My most important relationship with someone from outside the U.S. had nothing to do with the Middle East. She was my randomly assigned first-year roommate, now my best friend.&nbsp;



On paper (and in reality), we’re different. She arrived in the U.S. from the other side of the world for the first time a week before move-in, while I drove the 25 minutes up I-90 from the Boston suburbs the day of. She worried about economics lectures delivered in English, which she was still mastering. I cried over essays assigned in the only language I’d ever really known or been asked to know. She spoke her mother tongue softly on the phone to her mom in the mornings when the time difference was manageable. I sometimes saw mine for lunch on a weekday.



That my house became both our closest home bonded us. We’ve stayed close for a million other reasons: a similar outlook on the value of family and friends; a common sense of humor and appreciation for art; the love of tennis we each inherited from our parents.



More than anything, I think we like listening to each other, chit-chatting. A lot of the time, our views on an idea, a social issue, a personal problem, align. When they don’t, I consider why we’re divided and often, how where each of us comes from has informed the way we think and operate now. That tendency to want to understand difference, I hope, has made me not just a better friend but a better person, maybe even a better writer.



We’re not friends&nbsp;because&nbsp;she’s from another place. But I recognize and admire all the ways her home and upbringing are inseparable from herself&nbsp;&nbsp;— her braveness and boldness, intelligence, humor, and singular thoughtfulness towards me and the world.



Sometimes a friend from a different country teaches you about the world; other times they teach you about the person you want to be.&nbsp;



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Sometimes a friend from a different country teaches you about the world; other times they teach you about the person you want to be.&nbsp;
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I know other students have had similar experiences. In her Harvard commencement speech last month, master’s student Yurong “Luanna” Jiang opened with her own testament to the university’s global footprint: While completing a summer internship in Mongolia, she received a phone call from classmates in Tanzania who needed help translating the Chinese instructions for their washing machine. “There we were: an Indian and a Thai, calling me, a Chinese in Mongolia, to decipher a washer in Tanzania,” she said. “And we all studied together, here at Harvard.” The crowd erupted.



Those cheers, I’m convinced, signaled agreement as much as pride. I imagine every recent Harvard student and alum could point to an instance when the university shrunk the world down a size, made a strange place knowable. They wouldn’t have had to study the Middle East like me or international development like Jiang, either. These moments usually come down to something with more staying power than a shared class or major: friendship.

Global Connections

When the save-the-date from my son’s fraternity landed in my inbox, I was confused. I had never heard of a “Mom’s Weekend.” His older siblings hadn’t participated in the Greek system in college. The email mentioned a few activities and reminded us to bring a contribution for the silent auction. Photos of past baskets were attached to guide our creativity: a customized Yeti cooler filled with beer; a margarita-themed bucket with cactus-shaped glasses, limes, and a handle of tequila; a poker-motif basket with cards, bourbon, whiskey, and cigars.



Mom’s (and Dad’s) Weekend, I learned, is a tradition in the Greek system. It’s an opportunity to have special time with your student and get to know their friends during a number of planned activities. This is no small thing for mothers adjusting to seeing far less of their children, feeling your role in their daily life fade, to some extent, into the background of a Facetime square. Our Mom’s Weekend schedule was pretty open, with just a handful of organized social events, among them a cocktail-reception-house-tour, followed by a pub night, mimosa brunch, and silent auction, with proceeds benefiting chapter activities.&nbsp;



I’m not a drinker, but all of it was a welcome window into my son’s freshman experience, more than a thousand miles from home. I decided to make it a road trip and visit family along the way. I gassed up the car and packed up my auction contribution — a barbecue-themed basket of grill utensils, spices, and sauces. (Sorry boys, not that kind of sauce.)



But I was coming into the weekend carrying more than my basket. My own experience at a small university was one where fraternities played an outsized role in campus culture and where, as editor of the newspaper, I was drawn by a campus controversy into the darker aspects of Greek loyalty. But that was then; this is now. I was hopeful I would come away from Mom’s Weekend with the sense that belonging to a fraternity today, in its more modern form, represented a positive opportunity for community among young men, including my son.



He is a private person, and I had only the vaguest idea of how his pledging process had gone earlier in the spring. Because he hadn’t participated in many of the fall rush activities — meaning, he hadn’t let it dominate his orientation to college social life — his options were limited, though he said the house he’d joined was “chill” with “good guys.” In his shorthand, that meant the parties weren’t the craziest, or the members too intense about their demands on his time. His grades were good, he had a steady girlfriend in his dorm, and nothing about the road to initiation had set off alarm bells at least from our parental perspective. We’d gotten a letter from the fraternity president assuring parents that they took their anti-hazing vows seriously.



***



During my own senior spring in college, I was working with the newspaper staff late one night to close an issue when the telephone rang on the office wall. An anonymous caller claimed to have recently broken into a secretive fraternity’s notorious windowless chapel and stolen decades of ledgers. In the pages, long-ago members had allegedly recorded their thoughts and activities, and over the years, generations of brothers had added notes the margins. The caller offered to bring me the ledgers.



At the time, I had only an English major’s best guess at the intricacies of journalistic freedoms and liabilities, something I would later study as part of a master’s degree in my chosen field. But I suspected I should not accept original stolen materials. So the caller made photocopies and left them in my car. There were references to some unsolved crimes on campus, chilling racial commentary, coded language about sexual encounters, and hazing episodes that had taken an alarming turn. More recent entries addressed changing rules and attitudes on campus and vowed that if the house were compelled to “build bridges,” they should only give enough lip service to remain the same. I began writing an article and called university administrators to let them know. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t run the piece. But they did advise against it and said they couldn’t insulate me from repercussions.&nbsp;



After the article appeared, the rallies and protests began. There were calls to suspend or ban the fraternity and some to eliminate the Greek system on campus, a move that had been raised for years. Fraternity and sorority members pointed to the benefits of bonding and the charitable deeds done. The fraternity’s alumni leaders flew in with lawyers and investigators, determined to find out who had been behind the theft. I laid low. It wasn’t my place to offer opinions or get involved in debates. But I’d taken the call and written the article, and my car tire was slashed, and the university house where I lived as an RA had a window broken. I heard the fraternity’s legal team wanted to speak with me, but there was never a subpoena. The state’s shield law protected journalists’ right not to reveal their sources, but whether that covered university students remained to be seen. My father asked me to keep a low profile because he’d rather not take out a second mortgage to explore that precedent in court.&nbsp;



Things quieted down a few weeks later when students left campus for the summer, but the fallout went on for years. The fraternity was suspended, moved to private property, and went underground. The faculty voted to abolish the Greek system, but the motion was symbolic and not supported by the administration. After I graduated, I received a manilla envelope in the mail with a printed list of companies that supposedly would never hire me. A year later, after I’d begun working at a magazine, I had a surprise visit. The receptionist said an industry publicist had arrived for an appointment and buzzed a man inside. He sat down in my cubicle, pulled a tape recorder out of his briefcase (there was once a thing called a briefcase), and started asking questions about the night I received the call at the newspaper office.&nbsp;



***



Then and now, the takeaway for me about the Greek system is this: What happens when impressionable young adults join societies like these? Membership fosters group loyalty through a secretive selection and initiation process, rituals, identity, and language. To what extent is that loyalty inclined to supersede the individual morality these young people are still developing? This is the place where you live and (literally, with fraternity cooks) the hand that feeds you. These are the people you spend your weekends with, gravitate towards in classes, and have likely committed to live with going forward. Brotherhood, and all the ways that is entwined in your life, is a lot of your world.&nbsp;



Loyalty is a funny thing when you live smack in the middle of it. It isn’t just a friendship where you go out for pizza and play video games, particularly if something doesn’t sit right in this new family-away-from-home. If we stick with the video game metaphor, you’ve been initiated by the people who created the world-building behind it. That shared game is your universe, and it feels like everyone in other Greek organizations have their own, too. The roles and personas and tones are set, whether it’s inside jokes or repeated stories, or old ledgers.&nbsp;



The experiences you have in college, positive and negative, go on to shape your character and identity, as well as your resilience in the face of adversity. The lessons learned during these years contribute to making you&nbsp;you&nbsp;— either because of the environment, or in spite of it. A college’s atmosphere set by the administration and faculty can make the difference between a student feeling like their school has their back, or doesn’t. Mine didn’t.&nbsp;



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The lessons learned during these years contribute to making you&nbsp;you&nbsp;— either because of the environment, or in spite of it.
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Mom’s Weekend was, to me, a smashing success, in part because most of what we did together existed beyond the footprint of the “weekend” itself. My son and I did a few of the organized activities, and I met some of his new fraternity brothers. But we skipped the bar crawls, and because it was too rainy to hike, went to the gym to work out. We had a delightful three-hour dinner at a local restaurant, and I got to know his lovely, down-to-earth girlfriend. She described for me her own pledging process, the pressure from sororities to present a cool image that’s your own impeccable brand, right down to a written statement about yourself and proof of a masterful social media presence. She is pursuing a demanding major and seemed to have kept pledging in perspective, though she saw it wreak havoc on others. A few weeks after Mom’s Weekend, I saw a story in the news that a fraternity at my son’s school had just been suspended for 40 years — though it was later revised to 15 — for repeatedly violating hazing rules while they were already on probation. They had been paddling pledges at the off-campus home of an alum.&nbsp;



My son has confided to his father that he’s had some mild pressure from upperclassmen who say he doesn’t spend enough time at the house. He’s already committed to living in the fraternity during his sophomore year and, just recently, also in his junior year at one of the fraternity’s off-campus annexes. He tells us that kind of advance signing is required so that the brotherhood can retain its hold on valuable rentals. I’ve long felt that my boy is his own dog and doesn’t roll over to social pressure when he has a solid home base. Still, it’s not lost on me that this housing commitment years into the future in effect makes the fraternity the primary scaffolding of his college experience. This, before he’s even declared his major. That’s a lot of clout for an organization to have over my kid, an organization I can’t say I know much of anything about. I guess I can say that the house was pretty clean during the tour.



And yet. Another part of my maternal brain knows that belonging is so important to young people’s sense of connection and community. My son’s age-cohort was the one that entered high school remotely as the pandemic did its damage, and part of that damage was their dislocation from their peers and their academic world, slouched in front of Zoom, hoodies up. The last thing I want for him is isolation. What I do want for him is the development of a discerning character — steady in his sense of himself and true to his values, whoever he’s with, whatever they are doing.&nbsp;



Leaving dinner that night, my son and I decided not to go to “around the clock” at the favorite local bar, where pitchers started off in the single digits in the afternoon, then go up by a dollar every hour. I dropped him and his girlfriend back at their dorm, then headed back toward my rental house. But first I had to stop back at the restaurant, where I’d forgotten my umbrella.&nbsp;



I parked as close as I could on a side street behind the main drag of town, home to many of the annexes like the one by son had just&nbsp;committed to for his junior year. Just&nbsp;in front of me, a group of laughing young men weaved on and off the sidewalk, shirtless in the 40-degree torrential rain. From the other side of the street, another group called out to them, chanting something about… I don’t know what, but it seemed to be positive, or maybe they were mad. They ran and crashed into each other in the middle of the street with perfectly executed chest bumps, delighted or angry, yelling things I couldn’t understand. I gave them a wide berth, more than&nbsp;happy to be an inconsequential NPC in the background&nbsp;of their game.&nbsp;



When I returned to the rental, my two housemate-moms were hanging out in the living room with their sons, watching basketball and eating popcorn. They’d gone to “around the clock,” then wanted to come back and chill at the farmhouse and watch TV. As the rain pounded the windows and wind threw the screen door back and forth, the four slouched, wrapped in blankets on a sectional in the dark room, ageless in comfortable silence.&nbsp;

Have Fraternities Changed? A Parent’s Perspective

Authors of the new book, Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn't Matter—and What Really Does, speak with LW Radio host Marjorie Malpiede about how students can leverage higher education to get a richer college experience and, in doing so, may change the system.



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Hacking College with Scott Carlson and Ned Scott Laff

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This is the first in a series of stories on the Educating Character Initiative and the efforts of its member institutions.



Commencement season has come and gone and, with it, higher education’s annual homage to values such as good citizenship, service, and personal integrity. As in their mission statements and matriculation materials, colleges often summon these character virtues, but rarely do they teach students how to incorporate them into their lives.&nbsp;



As higher education continues its self-reflection amidst an onslaught of external criticism, there is a growing movement to revive the idea of teaching character to college students, though questions abound. What would that look like in the modern university? Does “character” mean ethics? Civic engagement? Holistic learning? And how would the idea take root within a diverse array of institutions?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The epicenter for this exploration is Wake Forest University’s&nbsp;<a href="https://leadershipandcharacter.wfu.edu/eci/">Educating Character Initiative</a>&nbsp;(ECI), a national network of colleges and universities committed to putting character at the center of higher education. The intra-institutional network is part of Wake Forest’s&nbsp;<a href="https://leadershipandcharacter.wfu.edu/">Program for Leadership and Character</a>&nbsp;(PLC), an undergraduate and graduate-level research, teaching, and learning initiative with a mission to “inspire, educate, and empower leaders of character to serve humanity.”&nbsp;



In 2023, the program received a $30.7 million grant from&nbsp;<a href="https://lillyendowment.org/">Lilly Endowment Inc.</a>&nbsp;to expand its work, $23 million of which allowed it to award grants to other institutions to create or strengthen character education on their campuses. In 2024, the ECI awarded nearly $18 million to colleges and universities in a number of categories, including teacher-scholar grants to individuals and capacity-building and institutional impact grants to institutions. This spring,&nbsp;another $2 million was awarded for teacher-scholar and capacity-building grants, and this summer, the ECI will award the 2025 institutional impact grants, which provide schools funding between $100,000 and $1 million.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Among those eligible for the funding are public and private research universities, minority-serving institutions, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, military schools, and faith-based institutions. This growing number of grantees has formed the basis of a national learning community, led by staff at Wake Forest, that is a laboratory of sorts for the ways in which character education is interpreted, taught, and internalized in diverse environments.&nbsp;



“The creation of the ECI has allowed us to catalyze a national movement around character,” said Michael Lamb, executive director of the PLC. “We are not just giving colleges and universities funding. We are giving them the tools and support to educate character in ways that work for them and their unique cultures.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Jennifer&nbsp;Rothschild is the director of the ECI and leads the high-touch process that keeps the network humming with what she calls “a parade of consultation.” Grantees, and would-be grantees, participate in webinars, conferences, site visits, and numerous phone calls with ECI staff. A philosopher by training, Rothschild relishes the process that goes into bringing character ideas to life, whether by helping to develop faculty training to incorporate character into courses or giving schools license to be creative and flexible about terms or scholarly definitions.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Some of our schools are far along in this work,” Rothschild said. “Others have a need and an idea. Our job is to find the thing that clicks for them. We ask lots of questions: ‘What do your students need? What do you want your students to be able to do and feel? Where are the obstacles to this work on your campus? What are your strengths and expertise?’”&nbsp;



For Heather Keith, executive director of faculty development at Radford University, the ECI helped sharpen the focus of an existing program called Wicked Problems, where students consider ways to approach intractable issues like climate change and social injustice.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Students were learning a lot of discreet skills like problem solving and critical thinking,” Keith said. “But we wanted them to think about these problems in character terms like hope and moral courage.” The grant from the ECI funded a faculty workshop called Active Hope to help students understand how to be part of the solution in ways that, Keith said, “made them feel empowered, not just in despair.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Keith said the ECI has provided a community for people doing this work and the chance to be part of something bigger. “I developed a network at ECI that I never had before,” she said. “It feels like there is a revitalization of character in higher education, and ECI is at the forefront of it.”&nbsp;



Character’s Comeback



To achieve the individualized character education Rothschild describes, the ECI uses what it calls a “contextually sensitive” approach. Avoiding being prescriptive about this work may be the key to reseeding it within higher education, which is both curious and cautious about the concept.&nbsp;



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Avoiding being prescriptive about this work may be the key to reseeding it within higher education, which is both curious and cautious about the concept.&nbsp;
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In an educational environment dominated by credentialling and return on investment, teaching college students to become good human beings may seem as dated as parietals. Character education has been in decline since the mid-century,&nbsp;&nbsp;as higher education focused more on research and less on teaching and personal development. Campuses became a reflection of a more pluralistic, secular society, which made talking about virtues awkward, if not fraught. And while helping students develop traits like honesty and responsibility may seem universally acceptable, character education has become one more term caught in the crosshairs of higher education’s culture wars.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“When I first said the words ‘character education’ at my previous public university, people immediately reacted poorly to it because they thought it was code for some kind of agenda,” said Aaron Cobb, the senior scholar of character at the ECI. He noted that the ECI welcomes grantees across the ideological spectrum. “I was like, ‘No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the formation of the student as a whole person.’”&nbsp;



Additionally, the notion of colleges stewarding personal growth may come off as coddling or indoctrination. Indeed, the lack of a common language around the concept feeds its vulnerability to misinterpretation and is something the ECI is working to address.



In the book “Cultivating Virtue in the University,” Michael Lamb, along with Jonathan Brant and Edward Brooks, helps clarify the meaning of character education: “The aim of character education is not to displace students’ reflective capacity to choose but to equip them to choose wisely and well. As such, character education in universities should not be taken to imply a didactic pedagogy or the undermining of student autonomy, but the opposite. Character education at the tertiary level should be critical and dialogical, with full recognition and encouragement of students’ own moral identity, judgement and responsibility and an emphasis on intellectual analysis and critical engagement.”&nbsp;



In his work at the PLC, Lamb frequently communicates both the need for character education and the value of it. The Request for Proposal (RFP) for the ECI, which he co-wrote, includes references to a survey administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, which found that 85 percent of 20,000 faculty across 143 four-year institutions said they “agree” or “strongly agree” that it is important for faculty to develop students’ “moral character” and “help students develop personal values.”&nbsp;



In its invitation to institutions, the ECI identifies several desired outcomes for institutions wanting to take this on: “Intentional efforts to educate character can support student wellbeing and flourishing, sustain academic excellence and integrity, promote equitable and inclusive communities, foster good leadership and citizenship, advance career preparation and vocational discernment, and encourage the responsible use of technology.”&nbsp;



For many colleges and universities throughout the country, these outcomes are even more desirable amidst the youth mental health crisis, disengagement among students, employers’ disappointment in the lack of “well-roundedness” in young workers, and the myriad of practical and ethical issues surrounding the proliferation of generative AI. For others still, the most compelling reason for reviving character in higher education is to stem the erosion of character witnessed by countless examples in everyday life.&nbsp;&nbsp;



In interviewing over 2,000 students for their book “The Real World of College,” Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner found that most students had a transactional view of college and a preoccupation with themselves. “In general, we found students to be preoccupied with themselves and their own problems, showing little concern for broader communities and societal challenges,”&nbsp;Fischman said.



Fischman believes character interventions can be effective ways of moving students from “I” to “we,” if the initiatives are well-understood and carefully assessed. “We are in need of these programs more than ever. By supporting and connecting them through a facilitated network like ECI, individuals and schools can learn from one another’s efforts, rather than reinvent the wheel. An essential piece of this work is assessment — to understand what’s working so that we can build on the effective approaches.”



Fischman and Gardner, who work for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thegoodproject.org/">The Good Project</a>&nbsp;at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, are part of a growing thought leadership community around character that includes, among others, the Jubilee Centre at the University of Birmingham, the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, the Oxford Character Project, the Institute for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame, and now the ECI. National funders concerned about the state of character and ethics fuel this work, including the&nbsp;Kern Family Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation, both of which have given millions to Wake Forest and others.&nbsp;&nbsp;



In issuing its substantial investment in the ECI, Lilly Endowment CEO N. Clay Robbins said, “We are living in a moment of deep cultural and political polarization and increasing distrust of leaders and institutions.” He described the aim of the award as “educating a new generation of morally and ethically grounded leaders to rebuild trust and enhance civic engagements.”&nbsp;



Character in Action



Perhaps the strongest evidence of the current appetite for character education is the response to the ECI’s RFP. In 2024, its first grant year, the ECI received nearly 140 proposals from institutions across the country. Asked if she was surprised by the reaction,&nbsp;Rothschild said, “Yes, definitely. We hoped for 40 or so proposals, enough good ones to enable the awarding of the funds Lilly entrusted us for that year. What happened was we received an overwhelming number of proposals of exceptional quality.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



To meet the unexpected response, Lilly awarded an additional&nbsp;$12.4 million in funds, primarily to supplement the 2024 awards. The money went to 18 minority serving institutions, two military academies, one community college, 23 faith-affiliated institutions, 24 public institutions, and five multi-institutional projects.&nbsp;



The “point people” behind these numbers are a mix of faculty, administrators, teaching and learning professionals, and student affairs personnel. Aaron Cobb, who leads the programming the ECI schools participate in, said he is pleased that almost all of the initiatives are “all-campus” efforts. The eagerness of the grantees and prospective partners to understand and execute on the work translates into continuous contact with ECI staff. Since January, Cobb alone has held 159 total coaching/consultation/prospective partnership meetings, averaging about eight sessions a week. The work has proven fruitful for many, as some schools that received a capacity-building grant have returned with proposals for institutional impact grants this year.&nbsp;



Rothschild said what she finds exciting about the growing learning community is the energy and ideas people new to the conversation are bringing in. “These are&nbsp;not only traditional character people who are reaching back to Aristotle,&nbsp;though of course we have and love those, too,” she said. “What unites these efforts is an understanding that character is a matter of concern for both the individual&nbsp;and&nbsp;the common good.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



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“What unites these efforts is an understanding that character is a matter of concern for both the individual&nbsp;and&nbsp;the common good.”
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Cobb agreed, saying, “I’ve learned so much about character from people who may be doing it under a different name and are teaching me more about what it means.”



For faculty members Ted Hadzi-Antich and Arun John at Austin Community College, the prospect of an ECI grant meant pursuing their passion to bring liberal arts-like reflection to the community college experience through revisions to their general education program.&nbsp;



“For our students, completing general education is likely to be the only opportunity for the kind of interdisciplinary study they get to reflect upon what it means to be a human being and what kind of human being they want to be,” Hadzi-Antich said.



Character education is just as necessary for the community college population, Hadzi-Antich believes, yet much less available. He noted that when he and John turned to existing research to complete their application, they found plenty of references to four-year institutions but nothing about character in community colleges.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The capacity-building grant they received from the ECI has allowed them to bring faculty together across disciplines to create curriculum to identify, name, and cultivate character for students in all classes, including math and science. While there was some confusion at first about how to do the work, Hadzi-Antich said there were no concerns about it being well-received.&nbsp;



“In the community college setting, we see character in terms of intellectual virtues like curiosity, open-mindedness, and intellectual humility, and there’s nothing controversial about that,” he said.&nbsp;



Reflection is a big part of the program Austin Community College is running. “We encourage students to take a step back and ask questions like, ‘Why am I doing this? What am I trying to achieve here?’ We can now give these opportunities to community college students, who so deeply deserve it and are very, very open to it,” John said.



Anna Moreland, a humanities professor at Villanova University, had a very different motivation for joining the ECI. Already part of the character community, Villanova, which is an Augustinian Catholic institution, used the grant to form a year-long faculty and staff workshop to understand what was distinctive about educating Augustinian character. The effort was not without its challenges. 



“There were folks on our grant writing team that were worried that the Augustinian values were going to become a subset of the ECI values. And that’s where we had some very serious, very hard-hitting conversations,” Moreland said.&nbsp;



She said working through this dissonance actually produced the opposite result in the development of five distinctive Augustinian virtues. “This laid the groundwork for the possibility of people at Villanova to contribute in a distinctive way to the educating character conversation, nationally and internationally.”&nbsp;



The process of discovery may be as inspiring as the outcome.&nbsp;“The effort brought us together in a way that I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced at Villanova,” Moreland said. “It was a really profound experience.”



More about the ECI when our series continues.&nbsp;

Colleges with Character

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



Providing the SPARK



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



The Wellbeing Factor&nbsp;



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



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



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



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



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



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