Author: Mollie Ames

Learning from Despair

Posted on by Mollie Ames

On a Monday evening in March, a few dozen students at the University of Pennsylvania trickled into a darkened classroom. Their professor, Justin McDaniel, greeted them at the front of the small lecture hall with two reminders: to pass in their phones and pick up the books they’d be reading that night. As the group traded in their tech for texts, McDaniel introduced their first author: Carson McCullers, a literary prodigy who wrote her first masterpiece at 23 and was dead by 50 following lifelong illness and chronic alcoholism. McDaniel said she was his “biggest crush” growing up. 

This is the tenth year that McDaniel, the chair of Penn’s religions department, has taught Existential Despair, a literature course that meets once per week for seven hours straight. Between roughly 5 p.m. and midnight, students typically hear a lecture on that day’s writers before settling in to read a book (or three) about human despair and concluding with group discussion. The lights in the room go off during those 11 p.m. conversations. No devices are allowed, ever. Only McDaniel knows what the reading will be before class starts. The rest can only expect it to be depressing.

Those skeptical that any students would be drawn to this dark experience will be shocked to learn it’s one of the most sought-after classes at Penn. This semester, McDaniel said, he fielded more than 500 requests — 80 more than last year — to fill 45 spots. The course’s general mystique no doubt contributes to its appeal, as would the lack of graded assignments. Arguably the most discussed reason for the class’s success has been its format forcing Gen Zers, with their ever-shrinking attention spans, to “read again.” But the urge to reclaim a childhood love of reading may offer only a partial explanation. By embracing a new and unusual approach to learning, and maybe even living, students are participating in an intensely present and explicit quest for meaning.

Choosing Despair

Students in Existential Despair read provocative texts from around the world and across time periods — from McCullers’ “The Ballad of the Sad Café” to contemporary French novelist Marie NDiaye’s “Self-Portrait in Green” — whose central experiences with despair compel readers to turn inward. In contemplating characters’ struggles with isolation, anxiety, and grief, McDaniel’s students end up questioning what they themselves want from this short and often cruel life. What really matters to them? And who do they want to be?

When he first started teaching Existential Despair, McDaniel was already well aware of young people’s hunger for meaning. For one, he’d devoted part of his own 20s to living in remote Thailand as a Buddhist monk. More recently, over the last 24 years and across three universities, he’s taught another unconventional but highly popular course, Living Deliberately, which is an introduction to monasticism. In addition to weekly lectures, the class requires students adopt certain elements of the ascetic lifestyle, like waking up at 5:30 a.m. and adhering to restrictions in their dress, drinking, and communication. For one month, they make a vow of silence, meaning no speaking or technology use whatsoever.

The last time McDaniel ran Living Deliberately, there were 200 people vying for 14 openings. He characterized the applicants as typically non-religious but envious of those who are, and looking for “something real and something dedicated” to guide their lives. “In a chaotic world, in a very highly competitive world,” McDaniel said, “students often seek order; they seek predictability.” 

Young people don’t want to simply settle for a fate that’s defined by “joining this club, aiming for this promotion, deciding on the Lexus versus the Acura.”

Increasingly, students’ reasons for enrolling in Existential Despair seem to mirror those for Living Deliberately. In the beginning, McDaniel said, he chalked up the interest in Despair mostly to its “weird and cool” structure — the midnight meetings, the lack of syllabus or tests or papers. But lately, he’s noticed a particular drive among students to be better read and to get off their screens. They seem eager for a new and more purposeful way of engaging with the world. 

Kayla, a senior taking Existential Despair this semester, said she was first pulled toward the class because it was as different a learning experience as she could imagine. With an eye toward her impending graduation, the engineering major had been feeling herself “grinding away” and wondering whether there wasn’t more she might want from her life. For the last year and a half, she’s gone as far as to embark on what she called a “personal crusade,” trying to rediscover old hobbies, including reading, and reduce her technology dependency. “Just because school is a little soul crushing,” she said. She’s recently traded in her iPhone for a flip phone. 

Existential despair, as a phenomenon, is one way of framing this kind of restlessness with the status quo. We all confront the precarity of our mortality at some point, McDaniel said, adding that Buddhists believe life is just a series of distractions to avoid that most fundamental and disturbing truth. “Because we know it’s just getting up, eating, and going to sleep. We kind of know it,” McDaniel said. “And that’s why we’re desperate for gossip or we’re desperate for award shows.”

But the Kaylas of the world aren’t ready to cede their lives to the distractions. She, like many of McDaniel’s students, would rather pull back the curtain on the darkness of being alive and learn to sit with those feelings. Because, however unsettling, wading in promises something elusively more meaningful than turning away. Especially as they move further into adulthood, McDaniel said, young people don’t want to simply settle for a fate that’s defined by “joining this club, aiming for this promotion, deciding on the Lexus versus the Acura.”

Technology is of course one of the most obvious distractions for college students. And with the rise of A.I., they’re seeing the online universe expand at the same time that it seems to be becoming less trustworthy. “I’m not disturbed because I don’t trust it at all,” McDaniel said of the internet. “But they actually do trust it. And so for them, it’s like you’re taking away the world.” That’s part of the reason he thinks they want to invest more in their physical reality. “I think it’s really, really hard on them, and they’re craving, craving for something genuine.”

At Penn specifically, many who come into McDaniel’s class are also contending with the weight of an omnipresent achievement culture. Kayla spent the last four years devoted to her studies and chasing success in preparation for a career she isn’t sure will make her happy anymore. Grace Burke, a current first-year in Existential Despair, had been struggling to adapt to what she called Penn’s East Coast focus on “what you do,” as opposed to her own Mid-Western mindset that prioritizes “who you are.” In her first semester, she was rejected from all the extracurriculars she hoped to join and watched as her nice new friends seemed to be consistently more successful. “I just was very confused — found myself very lost — in what’s important about my identity in a very new place and environment,” she said. She’d started to question whether she was even at the right school.

Finding Humanity

In many ways, Justin McDaniel could be a character in one of the novels he teaches, starting with the fact that he’s, well, complicated. At first glance, his all-black uniform, resistance to eye-contact, and intense intellectuality might make him seem the quintessential brooding Ivy League philosopher. But as is so often the case, there’s more to uncover from there. His office door, for example, is the only one in its hallway covered in a colorful smattering of sticky notes, printed-out poems, even an endearing meme. Inside, his space overflows with floor-to-ceiling books and art. As a lecturer, he walks around the room engaging his audience in an excitable manner that often involves cursing about authors and/or students. “I see blank faces,” he said after introducing one writer in particular. “Oh fuck. Oh my fucking God. I’m about to get so angry.” He wasn’t, really.

For some, McDaniel’s unapologetic, unfiltered way of being and teaching is refreshing; for others, it’s off-putting. In Existential Despair, his irreverent commentary tended to elicit chuckles from his audience that sounded torn between entertained and uncomfortable. “I think he’s a very controversial person in general,” Grace said. For her, McDaniel was a main draw to the class because he struck her from the beginning as a professor worth learning from. “He’s very flawed, and we all are, but he’s very candid about it. And I think he would like to show us authors and people who are also very flawed and also very candid.” 

Several students commented on how McDaniel’s authenticity helps build an environment where everyone can let their guard down — where there’s not as much pressure to be or act the smartest. In interviews with course applicants, for example, he doesn’t seem interested in assessing their intellectual prowess. Instead, he asks them to create a drawing based on a poem he reads to them or to write a poem on the spot themselves. The general unpredictability of the class — the fact that students don’t know what they’ll be reading — also means they couldn’t prepare if they wanted to. They just have to be. Sometimes McDaniel makes other changes without notice. Once he held the entire session in silence. Another class they spent in a cemetery.

The books, though, are the primary teacher in this course. McDaniel’s bet is that by delving into the experiences of some of the most troubled characters in some of the darkest literature, students will gain perspective on themselves and the world. He’s not suggesting that the novels or authors he selects offer good life advice, just that there’s insight to be found in the human condition. “You learn from when things go wrong, and that’s what good fiction will give you. Film does it well, too, and music does it well. Art does it well. So it doesn’t matter the medium as much. It matters that it’s complex and thoughtful.” 

In McDaniel’s world, the places young people typically seek guidance — like their friends or the internet — will simply never measure up to the wisdom of a whole human history’s worth of art and literature. “I have no idea why you would spend $92,000 in tuition to get life advice from another 19-year-old,” he said. A similar way of thinking can apply to online content. “I can’t trust a video I see on the internet, but I can trust James Baldwin,” he said. “I mean, Somerset Maugham or Sheila Heti on relationships is much better than any junk advice you would get in the manosphere. It’s just better advice, even though it’s a hundred years old.”

“I can’t trust a video I see on the internet, but I can trust James Baldwin.”

Grace said one of her favorite reads in the class so far has been “In Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept” by the poet Elizabeth Smart. (Others mentioned “The Passion According to G.H.” by Clarice Lispector, “The Book of Illusions” by Paul Auster, and “A Sheltering Sky” by Paul Bowles.) In “Grand Central Station,” Smart details her obsession with her lover and fellow poet George Barker, with whom she had four children but never married. In total, he had 15 children with four different women, just one of whom was his wife. “It kind of knocks you flat, in terms of who are you to judge?” Grace said of Smart’s book. “She really committed to a path that she felt was right, and she carried that conviction every single day. And there’s just this sort of unwavering intensity to the book that I find really compelling.”

One common outcome for students in the class seems to be a sense of gratitude. For senior Gabe Agüero, the breadth of new experiences and perspectives he’s been exposed to have opened up a range of new possibilities to think about when it comes to his own life. Studying finance and A.I. at the Wharton School, Gabe had been accustomed to defining himself based on the career path, and ideally success, he was headed towards. “This is almost making me realize that there’s more to life and there’s more to appreciate,” he said. “It just kind of made me think more about what do I want for my life? And I still don’t have that answer, but it’s definitely making me reconsider, and it’s allowing me to see what I want my life to be in a completely new lens.”

For the most part, McDaniel said, he has no interest in what, precisely, his students learn. “I have no learning goals. I’m consciously against them,” he explained. Instead of outcomes, he’s focused on the learning process. That’s what education is all about, he insists. “It is about complexity. It is about negative capabilities. It is this conscious and unforgiving and unapologetic exploration of things we don’t know and the desire to keep unknowing.” 

At the same time, McDaniel does have a vision whereby his middle-aged, former students better withstand their inevitable struggles. “I want my students, when they’re 45 or 55, when they’re dealing with a lot of these really existential problems, not to turn towards bourbon or hitting their spouse or screaming at their kids or storming out of a job or getting addicted to opiates,” he said. He imagines when they end up dealing with life’s least comfortable moments, his students might turn to books, or other resources, to move forward.

The most paradoxical aspect of McDaniel’s course may be that the distressing material his students read isn’t making them prone to hopelessness, or worse, defeatism. The effect is quite the opposite. “Some of the books we’ve read are quite disturbing in really sad ways. I’ve cried at some of the books,” Kayla said. “But no, I don’t find it depressing at all, and I don’t know if anyone actually does.” 

“I leave each class either reflective and pensive, or happy.”

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

Supporting Student Mental Health Requires a Whole-Campus Approach

Posted on by Mollie Ames

More than 60 percent of college students meet the criteria for at least one mental health problem, according to the national Healthy Minds Study. Yet only about 12 percent receive care through campus counseling centers.

That gap tells us something important.

When students are struggling, they are not always walking into counseling offices. Research shows they are far more likely to turn to family, friends, or peers first. They also confide in professors, advisors, coaches, mentors, and resident assistants, people they see regularly and trust.

This raises a simple question: Are our campuses set up to meet students where they are?

Too often, they are not.

At many institutions, student mental health is still treated as the responsibility of counseling centers. These centers are essential, but they were never meant to carry this work alone, especially as the world students are navigating has grown more complex and the ways they seek support have evolved.

As a psychiatrist and senior medical director at The Steve Fund, I have spent much of my career focused on improving mental health care for young people, particularly those from underserved and under-resourced communities. Through The Steve Fund’s Excellence in Mental Health on Campus initiative (E.M.H.C.), we have worked with colleges and universities across the country to better understand what it takes to create campuses where students can thrive.

What we have learned is both encouraging and instructive: When institutions treat mental health as a shared responsibility across the campus community, meaningful change becomes possible. Since 2016, The Steve Fund has partnered with 66 colleges and universities across 23 states, reaching more than one million students. Across these campuses, mental health has gradually shifted from being seen as a clinical issue to a broader institutional priority. 

That shift shows up in practical ways, as campuses implement strategies to strengthen awareness of mental health resources and integrate student wellbeing into the broader campus environment.

Some campuses embedded mental health resources directly into course syllabi, so students encounter support information within their academic environments. Others incorporated counseling center information into the institution’s Simple Syllabus template and added counseling resources under the “Student Resources” section of the campus website, making support easier for students to find. Institutions expanded outreach efforts to increase awareness and trust in counseling center services. Examples included featuring counseling center staff on the student radio station, creating a “What to Expect from the Counseling Center” video in partnership with the marketing department, and placing counselors in academic buildings rather than solely in separate health centers.

When students are struggling, they are not always walking into counseling offices. Research shows they are far more likely to turn to family, friends, or peers first.

Student engagement and leadership teams hosted events designed to foster connection, inclusion, and belonging — protective factors that support student mental health and persistence. Some campuses introduced breakout sessions for parents and caregivers during new student orientation to help families better understand student mental health challenges and available campus resources.

Institutions have also launched coordinated campaigns to increase awareness of counseling services using multiple communication channels, including campus flyers, digital displays on campus TV screens, and targeted outreach to departments, student clubs, and organizations.

These changes may seem modest on their own. Together, they reflect a broader shift in how campuses think about student wellbeing, and it sends a powerful message: Student wellbeing matters everywhere on campus.

Just as importantly, campuses are beginning to recognize that student voices must be central to shaping mental health solutions.

Through listening sessions and peer-led discussions, institutions gained deeper insight into the realities students face, from academic pressure and financial stress to impostor phenomenon and experiences of exclusion or isolation. When students were invited to participate in the decision-making process, institutions were better able to design programs that felt relevant, accessible, and culturally responsive.

Another important lesson has been the value of collaboration across institutions.

Too often, colleges attempt to solve mental health challenges in isolation. But through the E.M.H.C. learning network, participating campuses are sharing strategies and innovations, accelerating progress across institutions.

One campus convened a district-wide mental health summit that brought together students, faculty, and staff to discuss wellness and belonging. Another embedded mental health priorities into its institutional strategic plan. Others developed faculty training programs focused on trauma-informed leadership and how to recognize and respond to student distress.

These examples point to something important: Improving campus mental health does not always require entirely new programs. Often, it begins with rethinking how existing systems, from orientation and advising to faculty development and campus communications, can better support student wellbeing.

This shift is particularly critical for students from underserved and under-resourced communities. Many students of color, first-generation students, and students from low-income backgrounds face additional barriers when seeking mental health care, including stigma, lack of culturally responsive providers, and feelings of isolation on campus.

When institutions intentionally center belonging and cultural responsiveness, students are more likely to seek help and remain engaged.

Ultimately, the lesson from our work is straightforward. Mental health must be embedded in the environments where students learn, live, and connect. Counseling centers remain essential, but they cannot carry this responsibility alone.

Faculty shape classroom experiences. Student affairs leaders create spaces designed to foster belonging and peer connection. Administrators set priorities and allocate resources. Each has a role to play. When those efforts come together, campuses move from reacting to creating conditions that support wellbeing from the start.

And that shift matters, not only for student mental health, but for student success.

Students who feel supported are more likely to persist in college, engage in campus life, and reach their academic and professional goals. Mental health is not separate from student success; it is foundational to it.

The challenges facing today’s college students are real and complex. But across the campuses we have worked with, one thing is clear: meaningful progress is possible when institutions commit to building environments grounded in trust, belonging, and culturally responsive care.

The path forward is not about doing more in one place. 

It is about making sure students are supported wherever they are.

Colleges must move beyond viewing mental health as an isolated service and begin treating it as a core element of the campus experience. That shift is underway, but far from complete.

The lessons from this work are outlined in The Steve Fund’s Excellence in Mental Health on Campus retrospective report, which highlights strategies campuses are using to embed mental health into institutional culture and student success initiatives. The full report can be accessed here: Excellence in Mental Health on Campus (EMHC): A Retrospective Report – The Steve Fund

Dr. Annelle Primm is senior medical director of The Steve Fund, a leading nonprofit dedicated to promoting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of young people from underserved and under-resourced communities.

Study Abroad Is Not for Everyone

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The opportunity to live abroad for such an extended period of time may never come again, but college also feels quite precious.

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

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

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

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

Knowing What We Seek 

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Split Ends” by Michael Costello

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

The Davidson Difference

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honored Traditions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The ability to disagree with each other is in our D.N.A.”

The Eumenean Society remains a student-run civil discourse organization, while Philanthropic took on a more literary focus. At current Eumenean meetings, students pull random topics out of a bowl to debate that range from federal housing policy to M&Ms versus Skittles. Davidson students continue to feel the pull towards intensive engagement with each other in both the liberal arts academic and social life.  

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

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

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

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

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

 A New Home

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

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

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

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

“Our model is one that builds up character in a time where people are starving for it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gen Z at Work with Dustin Liu

Posted on by Mollie Ames

On this episode of LearningWell Radio, Dustin Liu, the senior associate director of the Institute on Purpose and Flourishing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, joins for a conversation about the tropes and truths of working alongside Gen Z. He discusses the complexities of navigating today’s five-generation workplace and how educators and employers alike can make it one where everyone flourishes.

Listen now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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

Stacking Majors in an Age of Anxiety

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

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

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

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

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

The Credentials Arms Race

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hedging Bets in an Uncertain Economy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Efficiency Meets Opportunity

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

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

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

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

The Stress of Optimizing

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

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

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

“With multiple majors, they hit the burnout button earlier. They may think they’re doing O.K., until they aren’t.”

Academic coaching services can help students develop time management strategies and adjust expectations when workloads become difficult to sustain. Behling noted that students sometimes feel locked into rigid academic pathways once they commit to multiple programs or realize they have to miss out on certain options. The inability to participate in study abroad or other experiential learning opportunities can be a significant loss, she added, given the role such experiences play in developing independence, cultural competence, and professional skills.

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

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

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

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

A Narrowing of the College Experience? 

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

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

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

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

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

A Recalibration of Success

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

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

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

How to Flourish with Daniel Coyle

Posted on by Mollie Ames

On this episode of LearningWell Radio, reporter Mollie Ames hosts best-selling author Daniel Coyle for a conversation about his latest book, “Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment.” He talks us through the biologically-rooted reasons humans need others to be and do well, and how educational settings can be particularly fertile ground for the kinds of connection that flourishing requires.

Listen now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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

Advising for Life

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

And that means all of them. Unlike many colleges and universities whose career centers focus on enrolled students and more recent graduates, the prestigious women’s college in Wellesley, Mass. has, for the last ten years, extended services to alumnae of any age or stage. As Barletta explains, career is rarely one-and-done, particularly in our rapidly changing world. At Wellesley, career development now means embarking on a lifelong search for growth and meaning. After all, even former Secretary of State Clinton navigated her share of job transitions — and weighty ones at that.

As the offerings at Wellesley’s Center for Career Education continue to become better known, more are taking advantage. 1,915 graduates attended advising appointments between June 2024 and 2025, nearly 300 more than in the previous year. With LearningWell, Barletta describes what that lifelong professional engagement looks like in practice, why it’s important for alumnae and students alike, and how it’s bringing a global institutional community closer together. 

LW: I thought we could start by talking about your title — the director of alumnae connections. What exactly does that entail? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If we are doing our work really well, students graduate and see their career journey is just that — a journey.”

And so that ability to continue to connect with Wellesley around networking and advising becomes really important. And we appreciate that requires an investment. It’s an investment in staffing and in training and in funds. But it also helps our students to see that when we say that this is ongoing work, we mean that. We’re here through the duration of that, and your fellow people in your Wellesley community are here for that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They bring a certain shared experience of their Wellesley time, which creates a foundation that feels safe and can be very generative.”

LW: Do a lot of alumnae come to you with questions around changes in the workplace or for guidance around technology and A.I.-type skill building?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Q&A