Category: Mental Health

When Adam Delaney entered college in 2024, he’d already honed a remarkable set of skills. He wasn’t fresh off captaining a high school team or founding a club like many other first-years. Around the time most of his classmates were born, Delaney was 19, joining the Marines, and readying for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his 20s, he was concerned about life or death, rather than As or Fs. 

That doesn’t mean navigating higher ed came easily when he decided to go back for his bachelor’s at 40. His time in the service made him supremely competent at tackling situations most civilians can’t imagine; it also made doing anything else afterwards challenging in a way most will never understand.

So what can colleges and universities do to give veterans like Delaney the greatest shot at success? At Arizona State University, the expansion of services for military-connected students has been critical amid the ballooning of that population — up nearly 15,000 in the last four years alone. The approach, though, has gone beyond streamlining systems for processing G.I. benefits, as important as those are. Leadership at A.S.U.’s Pat Tillman Veterans Center is investing in a tailored and deeply relational approach to support, aiming to pull in those like Delaney and keep them — through to graduation. 

While Delaney knew little about the Pat Tillman Center before enrolling at A.S.U., he now attributes it with restoring a sense of family he didn’t realize he’d missed. “It makes it feel more like we [veterans] belong than anything else,” he said. “Students who are there just out of high school or something like that, they all share that; they have that community with each other. So it was cool to have our own community as well.”

The Uphill Battle

In 2011, the Pat Tillman Center launched to offer military-connected students, who include current and former service members and their dependents, a designated space for advising and connecting with each other. Spanning 3,340 square feet in the basement of the student union on the main Tempe campus, the facility replaced the old face of A.S.U. veteran support: a window in the registrar’s office where students could go, slip their paperwork under the glass, and be on their way. 

When the center opened, fewer than 2,000 military-connected students attended A.S.U. Now there are 25,000. A surge in remote learning has been key to the rapid expansion of both the university’s military population and its general one. Of the 194,000 students at America’s largest public university, more than a third are remote; at least 11,000 of them are military-connected.

The expansion of services for military-connected students has been critical amid the ballooning of that population — up nearly 15,000 in the last four years alone.

Shawn Banzhaf, the executive director of the Pat Tillman Center, believes the center has helped drive enrollment, whether online or off, by sending a message to service members that they matter here. “The more you can understand them, the more they feel like they belong, the more they’ll stay here, and the more they’ll tell their buddies about it,” he said. That strategy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts: The more vets who come in chasing the promise of community, the stronger it gets — up to 25,000 and counting.

Of course, the numbers mean very little without the necessary support to back students up and bring them together. A point of pride for the Pat Tillman Center staff is that most served in the military, so they’re intimately familiar with the challenges their students can encounter. Banzhaf described a road through college riddled with fits and starts. In 1991, he enlisted in the Army National Reserve freshly out of high school, in large part to be able to pay for higher education. Once he found himself juggling a civilian career as a police officer, a family, and deployments, including 15 months in Iraq, he was forced to adapt. In the end, 20 years passed before he finished his degree.

Banzhaf said the challenges veterans encounter in college — and the Pat Tillman Center aims to address — are wide-ranging and sometimes surprising, especially to those on the outside. One of the most underestimated, he finds, is the financial strain. While the G.I. Bill may cover expenses like tuition and housing costs, it can leave others, from food to gas to medical bills, to pile up, while income has often stopped coming in. 

Adam Delaney had been out of the Marines for more than a decade when he decided to go back to school. Nervous about abandoning his six-figure salary as a sales manager at O’Reilly Auto Parts, he turned to the Pat Tillman Center early on, finding staff could walk him through options — scholarships, work-study, federal aid — to lighten the load. They armed him with a detailed checklist to guide him through finding and completing the necessary forms. “They took the stress away,” he said. “I could do this without having a job and, you know, survive.”

Other concerns for student veterans are more cultural. They don’t just tend to be older or in a different life stage than their peers; they’re adjusting to a vastly different way of life. Military tradition emphasizes structure, disciple, and respect for hierarchy, Banzhaf said. “Veterans are used to you saying, ‘Do this, then go here. Do this, then go here and do this.’ And if you don’t do all these things, somebody gets killed.” In college, there are far fewer rules and almost no play-by-play instructions. Veterans often chafe, Banzhaf said, at the sight of students glued to their phones in class, ignoring their professor. 

To help with this transition, A.S.U. offers specific orientations and a first-year College 101 course tailored to veterans’ needs and experiences. “Veterans don’t need to know how to live in dorms,” Banzhaf said. “They don’t need to know the best practices of staying away from the bars.” Instead, Student Success for Veterans covers issues like the “hidden curriculum” — rules and expectations often implicit in higher ed but unknown to those who have been out of school for a while. Students also learn how to help others navigate trauma, and Banzhaf said many come to realize the ones most in need of help are themselves. 

Trauma is a critical barrier the Pat Tillman Center recognizes can impede veterans’ success. Delaney said his alcoholism, which spawned from post-traumatic stress disorder after his tours in the Middle East, led to two uncompleted degrees at two different community colleges before he got to A.S.U. That’s why he’s now pursuing a degree in social work to support other veterans on similar recovery journeys. It’s also why Banzhaf and his team continue to build out a range of programming for holistic wellbeing, from equine and art therapy to guitar and cooking classes. “If you can think of a way,” Banzhaf said, “we’re doing it.”

Trekking Through

One of the Pat Tillman Center’s most unique offerings is a program called Treks for Vets, which involves leading a group of student veterans in a rigorous, multi-day hiking trip. Banzhaf was part of a team that started the program after participating in a similar one with a Colorado-based nonprofit, Huts for Vets. He spent four, ten-hour days in the Aspen Mountains, climbing between 9,000 and 12,000 feet in elevation, and found the experience as rewarding as it was exhausting. In the wild he learned he hadn’t resolved his trauma from the war as completely as he’d thought. 

Back at A.S.U., Banzhaf was committed to helping recreate the opportunity for his students. Now, twice a year, he takes a group of seven to 10 A.S.U. veterans to a base camp in northern Arizona for four days of trekking — and then some. The students do readings and discuss them together. They relish in nature, disconnected from technology. They participate in morning Qigong, a meditative movement practice. They eat nourishing meals.

The bonds that form during this time are not so dissimilar from ones formed in military service.

The bonds that form during this time are not so dissimilar from ones formed in military service, Banzhaf said. In both contexts, participants are pushed together in a uniquely close way and made vulnerable by grueling exercise. An important differentiator is that, on Treks for Vets, students have the opportunity to be open, whether on the trail or in organized conversations, about some of the most challenging and raw elements of their service. There’s no rank or title here, Banzhaf likes to remind them. 

“All of a sudden these hard chargers that are used to not showing any emotion at all, because it could cost you your job or it could show that you’re weak and it could hurt your pride, start opening up because it really, truly doesn’t matter,” said Delaney, who was a participant in Treks for Vets before becoming a trip leader. He’s seen conversation topics run the gamut among his expeditions, though the through-line is veterans being open and connected in a rare and freeing way. Sometimes they talk about combat and trauma. Other times it’s the transition to college. “And that’s fine too,” Delaney said, “because it’s something people have been holding in, and we all sit and talk about it.”

Not everyone signs up for Treks for Vets wanting or expecting more than a camping trip. But most, Banzhaf suspects, “come because they need something.” Maybe it’s a change of scenery; maybe it’s connection or direction or meaning. Students who were contemplating suicide have told Banzhaf the trip kept some them from attempting. “It brought them to a place of hope and encouragement and community and all the things that all of us need anyway, but they just hadn’t found it, yet.”

Banzhaf’s only regret where Trek for Vets is concerned is that it can’t reach more students. Ideally, he said, he’d be running trips four times a year, but without the funding to train new staff, expansion just isn’t in the cards right now. At $15,000 per trip, Treks for Vets ends up eating up about a third of the Pat Tillman Center’s $100,000 annual operating budget, which depends on a per-student stipend from the Veterans Affairs Department. The university covers salaries for staff, but there’s always room for more. Where the V.A. recommends universities hire one School Certifying Official per 125 student G.I. Bill users, Banzhaf has just eight, attending to thousands.

The limitations on staff make the strength of connections among students that much more important. Delaney believes he’s never felt like a “number” among vets at A.S.U. because of the emphasis on peer support. In his first fall, it was students — some working for the Pat Tillman Center; others not — who were often his confidants to learn about new opportunities for military-connected students or talk through challenges. This semester, Delaney and a friend from Treks for Vets buddied up to take all the same classes after learning they share the same field of study. “We know who the other veterans are when we see them walking down the hallway like, ‘Yep, that guy’s a vet, or that girl’s a vet.’” he said. “You can spot them. That starts the conversation.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evidence shows that, physically, loneliness can make people vulnerable to inflammation, higher blood pressure, and a weaker immune system. Mentally, they may act less rationally and more impulsively; they may begin to see the world as threatening. And the lonelier they stay, the more threatening the world seems and the more difficult it becomes to develop connections in the future. Nobel calls this “spiraling.” 

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

Art and Healing

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

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

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

Brain imaging now shows how areas associated with social connection light up while subjects engage with art.

Science was catching up, too. Brain imaging now shows how areas associated with social connection light up while subjects engage with art. Other findings suggest it can reduce hormones associated with stress and increase “feel-good” ones, like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. 

As evidence mounted, the foundation turned its attention fully to art’s possible sway over loneliness. In its current form, the organization aims to raise awareness and reduce stigma around loneliness, as well as disseminate research-based programs that help people connect. Offerings include original films, online exercises, and in-person workshops, all within the organization’s signature initiative, Project UnLonely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Expanding Connections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This September, The Wall Street Journal ranked Bentley University the 12th best college in America. Its criteria included considerations such as the institution’s impact on salary and how quickly the degree will pay for itself. While pleased with the bankable metrics, leaders at the Boston-based business university will tell you their real differentiator is fostering the personal formation of their students.  

“We put a lot of emphasis on technical fluency and quantitative literacy, but what really makes the difference in the marketplace is the ability of our students to think critically, to communicate extemporaneously with comfort and poise, and to exhibit confidence, not hubris,” said Brent Chrite, President of Bentley University.

Helping students gain and demonstrate these attributes is the thinking behind BentleyPlus, a competency development program focused on encouraging experiences that lead to dispositions such as resiliency, purpose, and agency. While reflecting the business university’s high regard for the liberal arts, BentleyPlus is a separate and intentional effort to get students to understand that marketable skills are not confined to the classroom. 

BentleyPlus began as a pilot in 2021 and is now a university-wide effort combining career readiness with dimensions of wellbeing. The program involves four major pillars, starting with an introductory program where first-year students select two out of 11 competencies to work on throughout their time at Bentley. The competencies, such as ethical reasoning, leadership, and work ethic, are organized into three buckets: cognitive skills (Think), intrapersonal skills (Develop), and interpersonal skills (Act).  

Students are then encouraged to pursue co-curricular experiences that help them develop these competencies — not by adding more to their plates but by making what they’re doing more meaningful. BentleyPlus advisors meet with students three times a year to help them reflect on their experiences and articulate their value. An awards ceremony with a BentleyPlus certificate completes the program. 

While a nod to the university’s holistic pedagogy, BentleyPlus also reflects a concern, among employers nationwide, about the lack of “durable” skills in entry-level employees — everything from communication and collaboration to grit and work ethic. Another factor driving the project is the persistent emotional and mental health issues college students and recent graduates are reporting, including disengagement with work and school post-pandemic.

While a nod to the university’s holistic pedagogy, BentleyPlus also reflects a concern, among employers nationwide, about the lack of “durable” skills in entry-level employees.

As vice president of student affairs, Andrew Shepardson has his eye on all of these phenomena. He sees BentleyPlus as more evidence of the university’s long history of student-centered education. In 2014, Gallup released the groundbreaking Gallup Alumni Survey, originally known as the Gallup-Purdue Index, showing the influence of certain college experiences on career readiness and wellbeing. Shortly afterward, Bentley became one of the first schools in the country to enlist Gallup in conducting its own alumni survey. 

As with the national research, Bentley’s alumni reported higher levels of wellbeing correlated to experiences like “having professors who make me excited about learning,” “having someone who cared about me as a person,” and actively participating in extra-curricular activities.  

“That information was huge for us in terms of sending a strong message to our students and faculty,” Shepardson said. “You may be a finance major fixated on working at a hedge fund, but you would really benefit from taking a discussion-based humanities course or working on an initiative off campus.”

Shepardson said that while students regularly participate in co-curriculars, he noticed they can struggle to articulate how these experiences transfer into skills in the marketplace. He recalled one example of a senior who became flummoxed when asked in a job interview how his experience as president of a club had helped prepare him for the position he was seeking.  

“He made no connection between this significant leadership experience and what might be expected of him in the real world,” Shepardson said. 

A natural partner for BentleyPlus was the team from the Pulsifer Career Development Center, who, as front-liners, recognized the importance of curating durable skills in addition to academics. “Our career folks thought this was phenomenal,” said Lauren Hubacheck, assistant vice president for student affairs. “They said, ‘We can do all the career development work with our students, but you all are connecting tangible stories that show skills like dialogue and leadership.’”   

While focused on competency building, BentleyPlus eventually took a stronger turn towards wellbeing, as Hubacheck and Shepardson began to see this as the through line in all of the work they were doing.   

“Employers were telling us that the greatest number of leaves of absences were with entry-level employees and for wellbeing purposes,” Hubacheck said. 

In talking with his staff and colleagues around the country, Shepardson was hearing about disengaged students whose anxiety was keeping them from talking with their professors or connecting with other students.  

“It became apparent that wellbeing was the higher order,” Shepardson said. “We needed to give students a clear understanding that their ability to work on a competency was not going to be successful if they didn’t have that wellbeing piece in place right from the beginning.”

This year, BentleyPlus 2.0 was launched with its own strategic plan; a full-time associate dean, director, and assistant director; and a commitment from leadership to promote wellbeing in all aspects of university life. 

The Underlying Competency 

Rebecca Jimenez is the newly hired associate dean of wellbeing and BentleyPlus. She said she had her first “pinch me” moment when working the negative mindset table at orientation, where students were asked to select from an array of cards displaying unhelpful concepts like blame and self-doubt.  

“I said to them, ‘Let’s work on how to change that,’ and they loved it. They did the exercise with such intention. I thought, Wow, they really care about this stuff.” 

Jimenez had been working on what she calls “wellbeing communications,” an effort to help people understand what wellbeing means in their lives and to arrive at a definition that incorporates all of its associated elements. Often confused with wellness (mindfulness and yoga), wellbeing can mean different things to different people. After extensive research, Jimenez created a new wellbeing narrative for the university that is part of the BentleyPlus strategic plan. 

“Wellbeing at Bentley is a dynamic balance of personal and community wellness, where students feel supported, connected, and empowered to flourish,” the plan now states. “It’s about caring for oneself, making intentional choices, nurturing meaningful relationships, and engaging in environments that promote joy, purpose and belonging.” 

As part of the BentleyPlus first-year program, students take a wellbeing self-assessment and develop wellbeing goals to be addressed over time with their advisors. Right now, all of the BentleyPlus advisors are student affairs professionals, but the enthusiasm they convey in working one-on-one with students has attracted the interest of other community members, including faculty.  

For Jimenez, bringing BentleyPlus into the classroom is an important next step. 

“Not only can we make wellbeing front and center in the classroom, we can help faculty connect what they are doing with wellbeing outcomes. We can help them say out loud to their students: ‘What we’re doing here is critical thinking.’” 

As with the pilot, the new version of BentleyPlus has the strong backing of career services. Staff there suggested that first-year students participate in the wellbeing self-assessment prior to a popular career development course, acknowledging that wellbeing work proceeds career prep. Perhaps most significant is the new way they encourage graduating students to consider their career choices. 

With support from BentleyPlus, they now ask: “Does the organization you are interviewing with align with who you are as a person? Do they value building relationships and connecting with others?” 

These may just be the questions today’s employers are waiting to hear. 

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

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 $5.22 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 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 particularly 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.

In a scene from the new series Overcompensating, two impossibly enthusiastic orientation leaders address a circle of wide-eyed first years. “Welcome to college, where you can have a fresh start!” one proclaims. “And you can be whoever you want to be!” the second finishes. A third leader, disabled and in a wheelchair, rolls her eyes at them and questions aloud in signature deadpan: “Can you?”

The show’s protagonist is Benny Scanlon, who begins college with a quest to fit in and quickly learns it comes at a cost. His pursuit of social success leads him to not only hide his gay identity but perform his vision of what is acceptable — masculinity, straightness, wealth — in the most extreme way possible. The façade begins slipping almost immediately, as his efforts to imitate who he imagines everyone else to be battle against his instincts to be who he really is. 

For many in real life, the college experience offers an opportunity to self-discover beyond the confines of home for the first time. Even those who have lived independently before will find themselves starting fresh to some extent, needing to present themselves in a new place to new classmates. From the photos they put on their walls to the clothes they wear on the first day of class, they are cultivating, maybe even curating, an image of themselves — an identity.

Some will look forward to the opportunity for reinvention, while others struggle to determine who they want to put forward — and not just at the start. Either way, this process of identity formation is coming to the fore with the start of their adult lives. And it carries implications for wellbeing, especially as the developmentally crucial college years tend to coincide with the emergence of mental health disorders. With a strong sense of identity linked to overall wellbeing, the role of college as a laboratory for self-discovery may indeed be one of its most important.

For those approaching college eager to reimagine themselves, the relief could be immediate. Living away from the people who know them and the family, places, and activities typically associated with them may feel liberating. That’s the case in Overcompensating for Benny’s fast friend, Carmen, who’s ready to move on from her perceived identity in high school as a socially invisible “no one.” She represents all those who have wanted to shed reputations they view as having pigeonholed them: “jock,” “nerd,” “troublemaker,” or “no one.” 

Others may anticipate college as the place not to become someone completely new but to fulfill some part of themselves formerly untapped or suppressed. Unlike the Benny character, some LGBTQ students enter college excited to be able to express and explore that side of themselves more deeply. Beyond queer students, the general diversity on college campuses may offer those hoping to explore some latent background or interest — a spiritual tradition, academic discipline, professional venture —more opportunities to do so than ever before.   

The act of attending higher education itself, or a specific institution, can also play a role in building a sense of self. That is, being a college student or a college-educated person becomes an important identity marker. First-generation college students could derive pride from that new status, as well as meaningful connection among those who share it. At schools with certain branded reputations or key programs — a passionate sports fandom, elite academics, even widespread appreciation for the outdoors — students may embrace these qualities and begin to absorb them into their individual self-concept.

The pursuit of identity often stems from being drawn to a broader whole — to belong. Identity and belonging are like two sides of a coin, both connoting a sense of purpose and meaning important to wellbeing, though one is derived from oneself and the other from connections with others. The lines between them are also blurry, as people derive individual purpose from engagement with others and membership to a group. This is often the case in college, where students’ search for themselves tends to land them in communion with others: affinity groups, newspaper offices, Greek life. Especially for those from marginalized backgrounds — LGBTQ students, first-gen students — access to peers and mentors who share their experiences can be a key catalyst for identity formation.

Of course, there are tempting pitfalls in the process of seeking identity and finding belonging at college, particularly if students do so at the expense of who they know themselves to be at their core. For all the opportunities universities offer to explore new or untapped facets of self, dominant social forces may offer a path of least resistance: becoming someone acceptable but not necessarily authentic. In a new, potentially more competitive environment, the crush of uncertainty and insecurity can close in and push many to feel they need to prove their worth. 

There are tempting pitfalls in the process of seeking identity and finding belonging at college, particularly if students do so at the expense of who they know themselves to be at their core.

This tug and pull extends into the academic domain, where imposter syndrome is prominent, specifically among students accustomed to academic success who find themselves in the company of others equally proficient. The sense that their talents are ‘less than’ because they are no longer superlative can leave young people feeling unsure of themselves and the way forward. A similar effect may spread among high-performing students from marginalized groups who fear being perceived as undeserving of their achievements. Again, contending with how they see themselves compared to how others see them is part of the difficult work of becoming who they are.  

Identity formation can feel like an education unto its own, but if students realize later that certain turns led them in the wrong direction, that doesn’t mean taking them was wrong. Although some may arrive at college fully formed, assured of who they are or plan on becoming, many more will likely find identity formation to be an unpredictable and ever-evolving course — one in which self-discovery has no end point and builds from knowing who they are as much as who they are not.  For Benny and Carmen in Overcompensating, their valiant efforts pretending to be other people still leave them careening towards one apparent inevitability: themselves.