Month: June 2025

Learning Together at Florida Atlantic University

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She helped me a lot, and she made the concepts seem very easy, and she even made it look exciting to the point where I really got into calculus. I wanted to do that for other people.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s like a win-win.”

Florida Atlantic University is a member of the LearningWell Coalition. To learn more about the program, please contact Dana Humphrey at dana@learningwell.org.

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

The Mindful Professor 

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

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

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

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

“We’ve known that students benefit from mindfulness. But what about the faculty? They’re the ones setting the tone.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mindful Leadership, Not Just Mindfulness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Wider Movement Toward Educator Wellness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deconstructing ‘Climate Anxiety’

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

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

A 2024 study of “climate emotions” in 16- to 25-year-olds found that up to 85 percent are “worried” about climate change and its potential impact; and for around 38 percent, these worries negatively affect daily life. Concern over climate change has become so widespread among young people that it’s affecting how they vote, whom they choose to work for, what products they buy, even their decision to have children. But are young people’s responses to climate change a clinical issue to be treated? Or do they fall in line with those to most social problems, just with a catchier, more damning name?

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

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

“Anxiety or worry on its own isn’t necessarily a problem or something to be treated.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Complicit Columbia” is the 53-page report the students published on their findings that the university accepted at least $43.7 million from fossil fuel companies between 2005 to 2024. More than a third of the funds benefitted the university’s research hub, the Center on Global Energy Policy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Global Connections

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colleges with Character

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Character’s Comeback

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

Avoiding being prescriptive about this work may be the key to reseeding it within higher education, which is both curious and cautious about the concept. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Character in Action

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

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

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

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

“What unites these efforts is an understanding that character is a matter of concern for both the individual and the common good.”

Cobb agreed, saying, “I’ve learned so much about character from people who may be doing it under a different name and are teaching me more about what it means.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More about the ECI when our series continues. 

Without a Map

Posted on by Mollie Ames

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

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

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

Dr. Rhoan Garnett

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

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

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

Seeing the System from Both Sides

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

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

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

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

Not Grit, But Grace

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

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

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

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

Designing Belonging

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inside the System I Once Observed

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

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

For Those Still Searching

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

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

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