Faculty and staff at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Va. don’t typically have resources for new campus initiatives that aren't absolutely necessary. 

But when students at the formerly Methodist-affiliated school requested a renewed focus on spiritual life, administrators were able to answer those prayers. Renovations began on the college’s chapel, which was empty and in disrepair, to forge a revamped, interfaith space for not only religious gatherings but meditation, lectures, and performances.

The explanation for the sudden deepening of Randolph’s pockets is a share of a $3.275 million investment from the Endeavor Foundation. The two-year grant, which started in November 2023, funded the collaboration of 13 different small liberal arts colleges to develop new ways of enhancing student mental health and wellbeing. Last month, Endeavor announced it has committed another $5.225 million to launch a second phase of the project over the next three years. 

At a time when many are counting liberal arts colleges out, questioning their focus on broad intellectual development over vocational training, Endeavor is betting on them for the same reason. Its support of Randolph and its peer institutions stems from a belief that their “whole person” educational approach and close-knit, engaged communities are uniquely poised to help young people find the sense of purpose and belonging that so commonly elude them. And by working together, the theory goes, the schools may push their innovation and impact even further.

“Ultimately, our hopes were to generate initiatives that would strengthen these institutions — that would showcase the liberal arts and the power of a liberal arts in a world that's increasingly skeptical for various reasons of its value,” said Ashley Kidd, the program director of grants and research at Endeavor.

In 2016, Endeavor first united small liberal arts colleges after noticing a trend of “really wonderful, community-engaged” schools struggling against declining enrollment and finances, Kidd said. The foundation invited presidents from some of these at-risk colleges to discuss institutional issues and other developments, and the convening became an annual tradition.

Over the following years, Endeavor awarded various presidents small to mid-size grants to tackle discrete projects on their campuses. Toward the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, though, the foundation approached the larger group with a proposition: to form a collaborative of their schools with a focus on one issue of their choice.  

“The conversation turned to: ‘What do you really all need? And if we were to invest a larger sum of money in something that was a collaborative project or two, what would be the primary initiative or initiatives on your plate?’” said Lori Collins-Hall, who was involved at that point as interim president of Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vt. 

“The presidents very quickly gelled around student mental health and wellness, and from there, the collaborative was born,” she said. 

13 colleges from Maine to New Mexico, Ohio to North Carolina, signed on to join what has since been named the Endeavor Lab Colleges (E.L.C.) Collaborative. Collins-Hall also left her post at Sterling and became the E.L.C.’s project director. Beyond Sterling and Randolph, the initial member institutions included Antioch College; Bennington College; Blackburn College; Northland College; Prescott College; St. John's College, Annapolis; St. John's College, Santa Fe; Unity Environmental University; Warren Wilson College; and Wells College. 

Not all would make it. Wells and Northland have since closed, while Unity Environmental left the collaborative after structural shifts, including an emphasis on remote learning, meant it no longer shared the profile of the other member schools. 

Bennington College in Bennington, Vt. was notably influential in the presidents’ decision to coalesce around wellbeing. Shortly before choosing this focus, the leaders had heard from Bennington President Laura Walker on the results of a study she commissioned to assess student needs and institutional gaps around mental health on her campus. That report, Walker said, “became kind of the foundation for not only our work at Bennington but also the work of the Endeavor project.”

“The presidents very quickly gelled around student mental health and wellness, and from there, the collaborative was born.”

Next, the presidents agreed on four areas to direct their collective and respective institutional energies: infusing curricula with wellbeing-related content; helping students explore their sense of purpose and meaning; creating experiential learning opportunities, especially in nature; and enhancing clinical and nonclinical services, like counseling and peer support.

The majority of the first Endeavor grant went towards compensating faculty and staff, who came from all levels across the institutions, in their joint work to determine the best ways of approaching and executing the collaborative’s priorities. The remaining money was split among the schools for practical capacity building according to distinct institutional needs. 

Randolph dedicated funds to not only the redesign of its chapel but the addition of a comprehensive telehealth service, TimelyCare, as well as mental health training and professional development for staff. A minor in contemplative studies, an interdisciplinary field exploring the human contemplative experience, also took off.

Bennington, meanwhile, invested in the renovation of its fitness center and a revamp of the first-year career preparation course. The college’s standing interest in the arts also inspired a pilot course combining art engagement with mental health processing.

“It was a wonderful mix,” Bennington’s President Walker said of the class. “The students reported they had increased motivation, reduced isolation, and positive changes to mental health. And because so many of our students are artists and creative, it also gave them the sense that they had power to change people's lives and their mental health through their art.”

For both Randolph and Bennington, another perk of the Endeavor partnership has been the ability to leverage the funds to raise money from other sources. By pointing to dollars already secured for, say, bolstering interfaith programming at the chapel or building out career services, the schools have garnered even more support for their efforts.  

By the end of phase one, the collaborative’s ideative efforts had resulted in the transformation of the initial four priorities into five fine-tuned initiatives to guide future work: Cultivating Curricular Review and Innovation, Building Models of Community Care and Resilience, Center for Purposeful Life and Work, Mapping Belonging, and Nature Rx.

Mapping Belonging and Nature Rx evolved from the commitment to experiential learning, where Mapping Belonging uses reimagined campus maps to cultivate student belonging to the place and its history, while Nature Rx helps connect students to the school’s outdoor spaces.

Unlike phase one, when colleges might use their individual funding to pursue whichever of the priorities was most compelling to them, this next stage will urge every school to tackle each of the five initiatives. According to the president of Randolph, Sue Ott Rowlands, this part of the new grant is especially important. 

“We're not just going to pick and choose what we do,” she said. “We're going to commit to all of the five areas, and that's going to push us — make us really expand our engagement and thinking and open up a lot of opportunities for our students.”

Also in the second phase, the collaborative efforts of the colleges will continue to grow. Currently, a working group of faculty from across the participating schools is spearheading each of the five initiatives, while the chief academic officers of every college also work together.

Part of the mission of the working groups is to devise a way of assessing the impact of their particular initiative. On a larger scale, each institution will measure how the whole of the Endeavor-funded work is affecting campus by conducting pre- and post-surveys on student wellbeing, as well as that of faculty and staff.

Despite the colleges’ limitations resources-wise, Bennington President Laura Walker said she’s been excited to have access to the wealth of “real talent” on their other campuses. “I think one of the best things about this project has been the collaboration among colleges and the support group,” she explained.

Collins-Hall said she thinks most participating faculty and staff have been similarly “jazzed” to work together and come to meetings. “I have people who have been doing this for two years on a biweekly schedule who are excited to be back for year three. That doesn't happen with any committees in higher education.”

At Randolph, one of the unexpected challenges of Endeavor’s support has been acclimating faculty and staff to the idea that there are now resources to pursue projects that were once off the table — that they no longer need to stretch every dollar to the extent they might have before.

“It was a very interesting process to say, ‘No, wait, we can do that. We have Endeavor funds to help us with that,” President Ott Rowlands said.

Now she’s telling her team: “Think a little bigger.”

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