Loren Muwonge has lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin all her life. A senior in high school, Loren’s passion for the future of her city is as striking as her résumé. In addition to being a star student in the top percentile of her graduating class, Loren is the district 2 representative for the Milwaukee County Youth Commission, where she promotes civic engagement and provides a student perspective to policymakers charged with advancing educational and racial equity among Milwaukee youth. She is also a member of the Student Enrichment Program for Underrepresented Professions (StEP-UP) at the Medical College of Wisconsin; a Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA) scholar at Princeton; and an active volunteer for her church’s community outreach programs. In October, she spoke at a national policy summit on young adult mental health sponsored by the Jed Foundation.
When Loren speaks about what compelled her to advocate for education reform, equity and inclusion, and mental wellbeing on the national stage, she emphasizes the local roots of her activism. A 2018 study by the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program found that Milwaukee had the highest “black-white segregation” of any American metropolitan area. This modern reality is largely due to decades of redlining, the discriminatory practice of denying loans and services to certain neighborhoods classified as “hazardous” to investment—the effects of which Loren has personally witnessed. As a Youth Commissioner, her initiatives include addressing and repairing the harm wrought by redlining in Milwaukee, as well as education reform, equitable resource distribution, and mental and behavioral healthcare access for low-income youth and students of color.
During her Youth Commission’s swearing-in ceremony, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who himself served on the county’s first-ever youth commission, remarked of the initiative, “Too often young voices go unheard; their problems, they go unaddressed, and a vicious cycle of disengagement and neglect perpetuates the problems that we see each day.”
In hearing her story, it is clear that Loren’s voice, and those she amplifies, will not go unheard.
LearningWell had the privilege to interview Loren Muwonge, and the following is a summary of our conversation.
LearningWell: What would you like LearningWell readers to know about your background and how you began your advocacy journey?
Muwonge: I come from a redlined area in Wisconsin, one of the most segregated places in the nation. So, it’s really obvious and sometimes discouraging to see how that segregation manifests in my community, where some neighborhoods look better than others, and the areas that look worse and have fewer opportunities are the ones that are predominantly populated by minorities and people of color. That has led a lot of my advocacy work—seeing how redlining affects quality of life for residents, such as low-income communities having worse air quality than their suburban counterparts.
LearningWell: How did your advocacy work begin to include student mental health?
Muwonge: I’m very inspired by Fred Hampton [of the Black Panther Party]. I was impressed and inspired by Hampton’s efforts to improve the success of his community by creating a free breakfast program for school children. I looked at my community, my peers, and their needs and I began to identify that my community can’t truly thrive without accounting for the mental health of the students. And for me, it really just became a matter of, okay, right now there is a need to improve mental health, especially in my district, in relation to the pandemic and the rising crime that we’re seeing with school shootings. I realized the best way that I could help was accounting for the mental health of my community by directly listening to the concerns of my peers.
LearningWell: Why is it important for education policymakers, administrators, and faculty to hear student perspectives on mental health and wellbeing?
“While everyone who pursues higher education has worked hard to be there, not everybody has been adequately supported to thrive in that place.”
Muwonge: We are the people directly affected by education policy, and while professionals may be able to look at data to assess trends—they might even spend time in the classroom, proctoring, observing—they can’t experience it firsthand. The data doesn’t replace the firsthand experience of being a student at this moment in time. We live in an evolving nation, with new factors affecting education, such as A.I., the rise in school shootings, and the student experience during the pandemic. It would be to their benefit if policymakers would talk to those directly affected, since we can provide feedback, voice our concerns, and give a human perspective that the data can’t.
LearningWell: Based on your K-12 experience, do you believe that student wellbeing is a priority in American education?
Muwonge: I do not believe that student wellbeing is a priority in American public schools. There are many aspects to that issue, including the hours that teachers are working. I believe that teachers in America are undervalued, and they’re not given adequate support, whether it be for school supplies, resources, or fair pay. And I think that truly seeps into the education that students receive, because teachers don’t have enough time to account for factors such as wellbeing, especially since there are many parameters set in place that make it difficult for teachers to help and intervene. And then there are limits on their time; they have so much curricular content to get through, and they’re not being adequately supported themselves.
LearningWell: Much of LearningWell’s audience is involved in higher education. What would you like them to know about the student experience? As you prepare to head to college, what do you hope to see on campus in terms of mental health, equity and inclusion, or student wellbeing?
Muwonge: I’d like them to account for the fact that while everyone who pursues higher education has worked hard to be there, not everybody has been adequately supported to thrive in that place. And it’s important to consider the fact that many people may not have the necessary K-12 education that they need to succeed in higher education. They may not have the financial support that they need to thrive, whether they struggle with tuition costs or just being able to afford groceries, transportation, or visiting family back home if they attend college out of state. Again, everybody’s worked hard to be there, but not everybody’s being adequately supported to thrive. What I hope to see when I get to college is financial freedom, financial security for myself and my peers. I’d like to see universities place an emphasis on requiring all students to pursue an internship or some sort of professional experience within their college education, because analyzing the statistics of our nation right now, a college education in most cases isn’t enough. Many colleges do have access to different internship opportunities, but not all students utilize them or even know about those programs. If colleges were encouraging or even requiring students to gain exposure in their fields, I believe it would help set their students up for success.
LearningWell: You’re now a high school senior in the midst of the college application process. Do you anticipate that institutions’ mental health programs and resources will have any bearing on your college decision?
Muwonge: A lack of mental health services would be extremely deterring. I’ve done some research into wellbeing resources, and it has weeded out certain colleges. If I find that they aren’t able to adequately support and account for my and my peers’ mental health, especially when you’re considering out-of-state colleges where you won’t have in-state insurance, or you won’t have family close by, it affects the decision. If you are low-income, it may not be as easy to afford mental health services, and it’s important for me to go to a university that will accommodate that. If I’m investing into this university for my education, I’d like to see that what I invest is going to serve me and my peers.
LearningWell: Do you plan on continuing your advocacy work when you go to college?
Muwonge: I’m intentional about making a home somewhere that has convenient transportation and is a walkable city. That way I’m able to contribute to different communities and local organizations, so that I can continue serving in a way that is bigger than myself and bigger than my college campus.
For the first 30 minutes, University of Rochester academic advisor Hana Goldstein thought her advisee seemed totally fine. Suddenly, she broke down in tears.
“I was about to say to her, ‘Okay, have a great day. We’ll chat in a couple of weeks.’ And then she just started crying,” Goldstein said. “She opened up to me.”
It’s not uncommon for Goldstein to find her one-on-one sessions with students veering from the academic to the personal. Some students are quick to tell her about an issue they’re facing outside the classroom, she said, while others choke back those troubles, at least initially. “You never know what someone’s going through.”
There is a growing acknowledgement on college campuses that student mental health is influenced by a community of care, and not just one office or service. But taking a more public health approach to college mental health suggests all community members must be prepared to respond if a person reaches out or breaks down. At the University of Rochester, a new wellbeing initiative hopes to fill that need with a curriculum-based training program that helps faculty and staff support struggling students, and each other, in a way beyond “report and refer.”
This fall, the Health Promotion Office at the University of Rochester launched the Well-being for Life and Learning Training Program, designed for student support staff like Goldstein, who are hungry for tools to support struggling students. The opt-in, self-paced program requires participating faculty and staff to take four core and two elective workshops on a range of wellbeing topics from supportive communities and suicide prevention to intercultural communication and religious diversity.
At its core, the Well-being for Life and Learning Program is a student success initiative, born from the understanding that if students are living better, they will learn better. Rochester’s Health Promotion Specialist for Student Well-Being, Rebecca Block, leads the Well-being for Life and Learning Training Program. She said faculty and student support staff interactions are particularly important to this work.
Photo by J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester
In 2021, when the Boston University School of Public Health, Mary Christie Institute, and Healthy Minds Network published a report on The Role of Faculty in Student Mental Health, Block found statistical support for the challenges she’d witnessed teachers confront first-hand. Of the more than 16,000 faculty surveyed, nearly 80% said they’d spoken to students about their mental health in the last year, while only 51% said they could confidently identify a student in distress. The majority (73%) said they would welcome opportunities to improve their skills in this area.
“That report made it more acceptable, I think, at a research institution to say, ‘Okay, this data came out of this study with over 12 universities’ faculty reporting this issue. This means that we should do something about it,’” Block said.
That same year, in 2021, Block launched the Support Student Mental Health workshop series, bringing together ten experts to lead sessions on topics including trauma-informed pedagogy, recognizing students in distress, and educator self-compassion. By spring, 2023, the Health Promotion Office was polling Rochester’s faculty and staff, finding 85% had spoken to students about their mental health in the last year, but more than half had never received formal training to “navigate discussions with students in distress.”
Upon the success of the workshop series, Block began considering an even more formal, expanded platform to provide faculty and staff with the tools to support not only student mental well-being but their own well-being and that of the community generally. The result, launched this fall, was the Well-being for Life and Learning Training, complete with two unique tracks for faculty and staff, respectively, and offered both online and in-person. By showing faculty and staff how to care for not only struggling students but also themselves, the course tries to relieve some of the pressures that might otherwise detract from their own wellness and ability to teach.
“This is really the first thing I’ve done that’s really focused on students’ well-being and mental health and how we as staff people can actually make an impact on their lives.”
Block said she first became passionate about faculty wellness as a teacher in New York secondary schools. She noticed how instructors’ stress, often internalized from their students, affected teaching. “Working in those classrooms really was the pivotal moment for me. I was like, ‘These kids are not going to learn. They’re not going to be well if their teachers are not able to regulate their own emotions, if they’re not able to support students in the ways that they need.”
For Amy McDonald, director of Rochester’s Health Promotion Office, one of the primary functions of the Well-being for Life and Learning Training Program is its contribution to a more institutional approach to student mental health and wellness. Historically, McDonald said she’s found a gap between the 70 or 80 health education programs run every year at Rochester and the reality of student health outcomes. “We were working so hard to help these students on an individual level, but it really wasn’t impacting their health. So, we really started to shift our thinking to, ‘How can we take a more systems and settings approach to this?’”
“Because we can teach them skills and give them the knowledge,” McDonald added, “but if they don’t live and exist in an environment that supports those choices and makes those choices easy, it’s going to be impossible for them to achieve that well-being.”
So far, the Well-being for Life and Learning Program has managed to draw employees from a variety of areas on campus with diverse levels of expertise in mental health care. Before enrolling, Hana Goldstein, for example, had already participated in a range of trainings and certifications to inform her student care as an academic advisor. Still, she said she was able to find workshops covering issues she had yet to explore in depth, including addressing grief and loss with students.
Because Health Promotion staff designed these workshops specifically for faculty and student support staff at the University of Rochester, Goldstein said she thinks they’ve chosen facilitators well-suited to advise their unique audience. She said she appreciated the leader of the elective workshop on “Compassion Fatigue” coming from Rochester’s Employee Assistance Program, which manages mental health services for employees. “Compassion fatigue can kind of seem like, ‘Oh, it’s just about self-care, and feel a bit redundant at times,’” Goldstein explained. “It was nice to hear about it from the perspective of someone who is not necessarily student-facing, but from someone who is more staff- and faculty-facing.”
Other staff who have participated, like Claudia Pietrzak, the user experience and social media manager for Rochester’s River Campus libraries, arrived at the workshops with a more limited background in mental health training. “This is really the first thing [I’ve done],” Pietrzak explained. “I mean, I have done safe space training and racial justice training here at Rochester and at previous institutions, but nothing that’s really focused on students’ wellbeing and mental health and how we as staff people can actually make an impact on their lives.”
The opportunity for formal training was exciting for Pietrzak, who said she would otherwise approach the mental health issues of students like those of friends. “It’s kind of like, ‘Well, I know what I would do for a friend, but I don’t know what I can do or what I should do as this person that I am on campus—where I’m an adult, even though I don’t often feel like it.”
In the four workshops she’s taken since early October, Pietrzak has already found practical applications in her everyday life. The suicide prevention course left “an impression on me [where] I know more what to look out for when working with other people and I know more about what it is I can do,” she said. The same compassion fatigue class that Goldstein took also came in handy, Pietrzak said, as she had just recently spoken to a coworker struggling under the weight of students’ rising stress levels as finals neared.
“The session on compassion fatigue was really good because, as a friend to this colleague, I felt very empathetic towards her, but I’m also kind of stressed out, too. So it’s like, ‘How do I take care of myself and not absorb this person’s stress?’” The course reaffirmed the importance of setting boundaries, Pietrzak said, to help her avoid ‘sinking with the ship.’
Moving forward, Rebecca Block hopes the Health Promotion Office will be able to connect the impact of the training to improved student success outcomes. “How can we tie GPAs or graduation rates or retention rates to students that attend classes from the people that have completed the training?” she said. “Is there any correlation there?”
For now, at least anecdotally, the Health Promotion team feels heartened by the positive feedback from the community, as they try to raise awareness around the initiative. “I worked with one of our athletic trainers a couple weeks ago, and he was going to bring [the program] to the director of athletics to see if it could be mandated that all head coaches complete the training,” Amy McDonald said.
“So that would be our goal—that it’s seen as something that is so beneficial that it’s required for employees to take.”
Eric Wood currently serves as the Director of Counseling & Mental Health at Texas Christian University. With over 16 years of experience in college mental health, Dr. Wood founded TCU’s innovative Comprehensive Collaborative Care Model and has helped train over 100 colleges and universities to implement various aspects of the nationally recognized program. Dr. Wood serves on LearningWell’s Editorial Board.
As more states move to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming, there is one consideration that should be placed above political ideology: student mental health. No matter how sensitive or controversial an issue is, student counseling centers on college campuses see to students’ mental health needs without judgement, and this is true for any issue. Yet new laws recently passed by the 88th Texas Legislature reflect a very specific point of view which threatens to compromise what the data show are best practices in college mental health.
The first law is Senate Bill 17, which prohibits public colleges and universities from having diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and policies. It specifically states that these schools cannot conduct any “training, programs, or activities designed or implemented in reference to race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation…” When SB17 was introduced, it included an exemption for “health services provided by licensed professionals at an institution of higher education.” This part of the exception was removed, which was surprising to those of us in college mental health.
Eric Wood, PhD
Health care professionals need to talk about and provide outreach specific to race, ethnicity, and gender identity. The Texas State Occupational Code even requires licensed mental health care providers to obtain bi-yearly Continuing Education Units on multicultural issues. This is because appropriate interventions address identity. Senate Bill 17 allows schools to focus on first-generation students, students with low-income, or students in underserved populations. However, students do not define their identity by these concepts, and many mental health concerns relate to identity.
This is particularly concerning given the mental health crisis we continue to combat. The majority (73%) of college students reported moderate or severe psychological distress in 2021, according to the National College Health Assessment, and according to the National Healthy Minds Study, 60% of college students reported experiencing one or more mental health challenges in the last year.
Meanwhile, experts like Sara Abelson, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor and Senior Director at the Hope Center at Temple University, present significant research showing that sense of belonging in schools in general, and in college in particular, is protective for adolescent mental health and acknowledging and valuing one’s identity is a strong predictor of belonging.[1] Lack of perceived belonging is associated with a host of negative psychological outcomes and is a critical risk factor for suicide.[2] Conversely, strong sense of belonging has been shown to be a predictor of flourishing (or positive mental health) (Fink, 2014), particularly among African American college students. (Mounts, 2004).
“Health care professionals need to talk about and provide outreach specific to race, ethnicity, and gender identity.”
Senate Bill 17 is not only at odds with what the data show is effective, it is confusing and difficult to accommodate given other mandates such as the recent passage of House Bill 906. This bill requires that institutions of higher education provide students with information about mental health services and suicide prevention efforts on campus. This information must include education about “appropriate interventions” for a person considering suicide. Since it’s well established that individuals of various races, ethnicities, gender identities, and sexual orientations have higher rates of suicide, suicide prevention efforts need to address these groups. However, according to Senate Bill 17, providing direct outreach for these domains on campus might be perceived as excluding other students, so many counseling centers’ staff are thinking that they won’t be allowed to do this.
The 88th legislature did not intend to, and does not want to, hinder the ability of licensed health care providers to prevent possible suicides, or any other negative outcomes, on campus. Some might argue that there’s no contradiction between Senate Bill 17 and House Bill 906. I can attest that many directors of student counseling centers are confused, if not deeply concerned. If anything, clarification is needed about what licensed health care professionals can do regarding interventions that are specially designed for high-risk groups. The fact that health-care providers were originally exempt from Senate Bill 17 indicates that there was, at one point, awareness for these concerns.
Larry Moneta, EdD, served as vice president for Student Affairs at Duke University from 2001 to 2019, when he retired to a life of consulting, teaching, and grandparenting. Dr. Moneta serves as adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and teaches in the Global Higher Education Management program and the Executive Doctorate Program for Higher Education Management.He can be reached at lmoneta@gmail.com.
Sometimes, it’s all about choosing where to eat. On this particular day in 2012, I was deciding between a couple of places on the Duke University campus, with just enough time between Board of Trustee sessions to grab a bite. Fortuitously, I elected to grab a bagel in a venue in the student union where the president and vice president of The Duke Endowment (this is the Duke family endowment…not Duke University’s) also happened to be eating. At their invitation, I joined them where we engaged in a fascinating and, what would eventually become a significant, conversation about the status of students’ mental health.
The leadership of the Duke Endowment had apparently been following the news of rising suicides, greater expression of vulnerability and declining overall mental health of students and wondered to what I attributed all of this. I shared my thoughts which included concerns about over-protective parents, over-scheduled children, excessive use of technology and social media, overwhelming and global news dissemination, persistent and pronounced hate incidents, and more. In response to questions of solutions to this crisis, I offered vague but unclear ideas about population-level, preventative interventions rather than simply relying on more counselors and other forms of distress response efforts. We began focusing on resiliency-building techniques rather than disease response approaches.
At the urging of my luncheon colleagues, I began to develop a proposal for a research study that would lead to the development of population-level interventions to strengthen students’ resiliency. Over the course of that year, this idea germinated into a multi-million-dollar proposal that involved nearly 20 faculty and administrators, engaged four colleges and universities, and focused on tracking the undergraduate class of 2018 through their entire collegiate experience. The Student Resilience and Well-Being Project collected data on more than 6,600 variables across 11 waves of data collection from more than 2,000 students.
Unfortunately, just as our efforts to summarize and disseminate our findings were about to happen, the Covid crisis hit, and all attention was justifiably diverted to addressing that pernicious situation. Ironically and alarmingly, the post-Covid conditions on college and university campuses make this work even more important and valuable. According to the American Psychological Association:
“By nearly every metric, student mental health is worsening. During the 2020–2021 school year, more than 60% of college students met the criteria for at least one mental health problem, according to the Healthy Minds Study, which collects data from 373 campuses nationwide (Lipson, S. K., et al., Journal of Affective Disorders, Vol. 306, 2022). In another national survey, almost three quarters of students reported moderate or severe psychological distress (National College Health Assessment, American College Health Association, 2021).”
The article goes on to identify a variety of approaches campuses are taking to address this issue. Unfortunately, most efforts seem more reactive than proactive, requiring more and more precious resources which have begun to dwindle as Covid emergency relief funds dissipate.
In the years since the completion of our Resiliency and Well-Being Study, many of the faculty and staff associated with the project have retired or moved on to other roles and assignments. I retired in 2019 but remain active as a consultant and teacher and have been involved with various approaches to virtual and campus-based healthcare. It seems clear to me that the outcomes of our study and the key areas of intervention identified by the study are more important than ever.
The study identified four key foundations of resilience as noted in this graphic.
The Duke Endowment publication notes several initiatives that were launched towards the end of the study period, based on preliminary findings that confirmed the influence of these four focal areas. But, years and the impact of Covid have passed since that time, and a fresh look at potential interventions guided by these findings is warranted. In the rest of this article, I want to offer my thoughts, as someone with 50 years of collegiate student support experience, on further ways to address the campus mental health crisis based on our findings.
Self-Control (Self-Regulation)
Can colleges really teach or even modestly influence students’ self-control? Vulnerability to negative influences seems well-established by high school age, so the challenge to campuses is to reverse a years-long period of social conformity and group-think mentality. We’ve struggled with students’ alcohol consumption and substance abuse for as long as I’ve been an administrator…and much longer. I do believe that campuses have made a difference but can do much more to establish a culture with reduced peer pressures and reduced willingness by students to conform to destructive behaviors.
“Being resilient doesn’t mean never failing.”
Creating a culture and climate of positive self-control—one where most students will make behavioral choices that conform to their values and ideals, rather than submit to the will of others—requires persistence and patience. There’s no inoculation for foolish or dangerous behaviors and occasional but measured risk-taking is well-recognized as part of the journey to maturity. But diminishing overt hazing, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual misconduct and other common, destructive aspects of American collegiate behavior is essential. In my experience, the practices that have had the best effect to achieve this objective include:
Surrounding incoming students with peer influencers and mentors who model healthy behaviors, reinforce messages of self-empowerment, and invite healthy forms of engagement. The selection and training of resident assistants, for example, at residential campuses is key. The same is true for peer academic advisors, orientation leaders, and any students who serve as mentors and advisors to entering students.
The development of communities that are self-governed and guided by principles of inclusion, care, and forgiveness. Again, residential campuses have a great opportunity to accomplish this through residence hall models that foster small and frequent gatherings. The science of space[1] can inform how best to create physical spaces that foster these exact conditions. Non-residential campuses can accomplish the same through learning cohorts, clubs and organizations, study groups, and other facilitated group gatherings.
Adjudication practices that are less punitive and more educational with a focus on self-reflection, self-awareness, and self-compassion. Early intervention at the point of modest miscues can offer opportunities to prevent irrecoverable disasters.
Well-being coaches who can work with teams of students on nutritional guidance, fitness plans, stress avoidance, relief tools and more.
Faculty development programs that inform faculty about the science of self-control, encourage the development of effective time management skills for students and advise them how to respond to early indications of procrastination and incomplete assignments.
As may be obvious, moving the needle on a culture of self-control requires campus-wide coordination and consistency. Messaging about institutional values and norms regarding student behaviors must begin with enrollment recruitment messaging, continue through onboarding processes, and extend through academic and co-curricular student engagement. Healthy behaviors need to be modeled by peer and professional staff, by faculty and by deans. Even alumni who might signal historical patterns of behaviors perhaps previously tolerated but now recognized as inappropriate must be ‘re-educated.’ For campuses with significant graduate and professional students in attendance, customized versions of this approach may be useful as well. This is especially true where graduate students represent a significant part of the instructional staff.
With a new crop of students arriving each year, socialized by mass media, ill-informed peers, and romantic historians (their parents), the process of acculturation to healthy norms and of reinforcing the positive attributed of self-control is ongoing. Measures of changing patterns of behavior are available and should be part of a campus analysis of movement towards good community health and well-being.
Academic Engagement
Our study, unsurprisingly, found that students who were most excited and most engaged by their studies were also among the healthiest of our students. Being academically engaged doesn’t mean having the highest grades (though engaged students do tend to score above average). These students, in the words of one of our researchers, have a ‘gusto’ for their studies. They love what they’re learning and can’t wait to get back to it. For faculty, in particular, having a classroom full of engaged students is the holy grail!
Recent research by Gallup-Purdue University offers insights into practices which stimulate academic engagement and post-graduate career and personal success.
The findings highlight the importance of faculty who are great teachers, who actually get to know their students, and who provide opportunities for project work, in collaboration with others, for more than a brief period of time. Guided immersion into some intellectual effort is key.
In addition to caring and engaged faculty, students benefit from a variety of mentors which can include alumni, campus administrators, and volunteers from the local community. The development of practical skills through apprenticeships and internships is also critical as is leadership and followership opportunities through campus clubs and organizations.
“Sometimes you have to break a model to build a better model.”
This study focused on the power and influence of engagement in the academic realm, but in my experience, engagement across the campus environment is equally advantageous. The students whom I knew to be deeply involved in athletics, campus newspapers, community service, campus social groups, and more always seemed to me to be among the healthiest. Of course, there are outliers…I know plenty of students who were highly functioning alcoholics. But it was always quite clear to me and my colleagues that disaffected students struggled the most while engaged students thrived.
The broad literature on ‘belongingness’ (space limitations prohibit from a full treatment in this article) reinforces the findings on academic (and non-academic) engagement. The stronger the sense of belongingness at and to an institution, the greater the likelihood of engagement and well-being.
Self-Compassion
Being resilient doesn’t mean never failing. In fact, I imagine that healthier people are more self-confident and are prone to taking calculated risks. On campus, self-confident students pursue leadership roles, try out for lead roles in campus stage productions, take more challenging courses and take greater advantage of all the opportunities available to them. But self-confidence doesn’t always equal self-compassion, and inevitable failures, especially among the most ambitious students, can result in extremely debilitating consequences.
Our study showed that students who scored highest on self-compassionate scores also scored highest on our overall well-being indices. This means that healthy students accepted their failures but didn’t wallow in them. They learned from their mistakes, gave themselves grace for their missteps and moved on. If only we were all so kind to ourselves!
Can self-compassion be taught to all students? Absolutely! There’s considerable evidence of the relationship between mindfulness practices and self-compassion reinforcing the value of mindfulness training for all students as a campus-wide practice. In my time at Duke University, members of our counseling staff developed a program called Koru Mindfulness (now The Mindfulness Institute) which was promoted widely among first-year students. For other students, faith-based practices and engagements offer support for self-kindness and compassion. Athletics teams have begun to adopt self-compassion awareness to assist with recovery from losses and academic advisors are increasingly being trained to assist students with recovery from exam and course underperformance.
Relationships
What’s better than good friends? And I don’t mean all those Facebook or other social media friends! When it comes to the power of friends as stimulant for health, it’s not about the numbers. Having even one or two really good friends—friends who will look out for you, forgive your missteps, and celebrate/grieve with you unconditionally—makes a huge difference, according to our study. This may seem pretty obvious to all of us, but institutional efforts to promote friendships aren’t quite so simple.
Sometimes you have to break a model to build a better model. For example, at Duke, I discovered through our ongoing assessments that every year, more and more incoming students were pre-selecting a roommate rather than letting one be assigned to them randomly. Digging into the data, I discovered that most who chose this option were white students and mostly from wealthy families. This wasn’t too surprising as these students had the social capital to meet other students at summer camps or from their high schools and chose to room with one another rather than risk assignment with someone perceived to be ‘less compatible.” The problem, in addition to the self-segregation outcome, was that these roommates rarely actually became friends. The superficial characteristics they had in common rarely served as the foundation for a good friendship so, in time, these relationships drifted apart.
Given what we learned, we made a change. With the support of institutional leaders, we prohibited the pre-selection of roommates and mandated random assignments of all students (with some exceptions among varsity athletes). I also enlisted the support of a faculty member who had previously conducted research around roommates, friendships and diversity of relationships who agreed to track the consequences of the random assignments. It was gratifying to learn that random assignments lead to longer-lasting friendships and greater appreciation of differences among students from varying identities and cultures.
Residential campuses have ample opportunities to sponsor options for exposure to potential friends and non-residential campuses can do so through various student clubs and organizations. The point is to be deliberate about connecting students in pairs, teams, and communities. The student projects mentioned in the academic engagement foundation can also help forge friendships. The quality of a campus environment can also encourage friendship development. One of my first projects at Duke was to convert a passageway that promoted unengaged movement into a beautiful plaza where students (and others) preferred to stop, relax, and converse with those around them. I’m a huge proponent of campus architecture, both indoors and outside, that foster connections and engagement.
The four foundations I’ve noted are proven elements that promote students’ well-being. I’ve shared a few practices that align with the principles embedded in each foundation, but every campus will have their own approaches. If your campus has uniquely addressed one or more of these foundations, I’d love to hear about it!
[1]Strange CC, Banning JH. Designing for Learning : Creating Campus Environments for Student Success. Second ed. San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass; 2015.
Foundational to learning well is a campus ecosystem that encourages healthy behaviors. Making healthy food accessible, offering opportunities for movement and exercise, and preventing substance use are key to a healthy campus, though all of this is easier said than done. On top of these challenges, it is commonly recognized—and research confirms—that students are not getting enough high-quality sleep. Less than half (46%) report getting seven or more hours of sleep per night1 and only 35% meet standard criteria for getting good quality sleep.2 Similar to substance use, some college students, parents, and even administrators, might see lack of sleep in college as something that is to be expected. However, sleep could just be the key to unlocking successful prevention efforts—it can support, or hinder, all the aforementioned healthy habits.
For many young adults, sleep habits are established prior to coming to college, and therefore these behaviors might be difficult to shift. In recent years, there has been much discussion about homework, extracurriculars, and school start times and how they impact sleep during high school. These concerns are well founded; short sleep duration among high school students in the US increased between 2009 and 2019,3 with 78% getting less than the recommended eight hours of sleep per night.
Navigating a new college environment is difficult, especially for students who have moved away from the structured environment of a family home. Students not only have to negotiate differences in routines and sleep habits with new roommates, but they are also pressured to socialize late into the night.4 There are plenty of opportunities to stay up later and messages about “pulling all-nighters” are pervasive. Shifts toward later bedtimes are common among undergraduates.2 Therefore, sleep problems that began in high school can worsen during college. With all that colleges have to offer, if a student is chronically tired, these opportunities might be lost. However, the science of sleep is complicated. Quantity is important, but quality of sleep is key and impacted by many different factors. Further, establishing good sleep habits during college is not only essential for the college years, but can carry forward into adulthood. So, what can colleges do to encourage healthy sleep patterns?
First, what do we mean by “good sleep” and which conditions make it possible?
“Good sleep” is restorative in nature. It is ideally for the right length of time, with few disturbances or awakenings throughout the night. Experts recommend that young adults sleep just under eight and a half (8.4) hours per night.5 Importantly, sleep schedules should be consistent. Although napping during the day might seem like a good idea, it is not a substitute for nighttime sleep.6 Making up for lost sleep on weekends should also be avoided because it interferes with the regularity of sleep cycles. Sleep hygiene, which health promotion professionals refer to as the habits that surround getting good sleep, depends on both personal and environmental factors. Personal factors include sticking to consistent bedtimes, reducing nighttime anxiety, limiting screen time close to bedtime, not relying on late nights to catch up on work, and avoiding excessive drinking, caffeine use, and other forms of substance use.
Academic behaviors can indirectly influence sleep. Attending class regularly, being attentive during class, and asking for help with the material as one progresses through a course, can reduce the pressure to catch up and “cram” to learn the material. Positive environmental factors that a student might be able to control include creating a quiet room with low light and noise levels, creating a comfortable sleep space, and communicating with roommates about sleep preferences. Environmental factors that are mostly under the control of the university and faculty include setting sensible course policies and schedules and timing campus events so that they promote healthy sleep patterns. We discuss these factors in more detail below.
Why is sleep important?
Regularly getting high-quality sleep is essential for several reasons, three of which are especially critical for college students. First, sleep affects both physical and mental health. During sleep, the human body repairs tissues and fights off disease-causing pathogens.7 Although it is commonly recognized that having mental health issues can affect your sleep,8 the reverse appears to be true as well. Individuals who do not get enough sleep are more at risk for experiencing depressive symptoms.9 A recent review of several research studies concluded that insomnia is a predictor for the future onset of depression, anxiety, and alcohol abuse.10
Second, sleep quality is linked to cognitive functioning and academic performance. One of the primary reasons why we sleep is to consolidate memories of things that happened and information that we learned during the day. It is well-documented in the research that sleep affects academic performance, which is reliant on the ability to recall and process new information.Even after accounting for several other predictors of academic success, getting fewer than the recommended number of hours of sleep during the first year of college is uniquely associated with lower GPAs.11
Hartmann and Prichard12 analyzed data from the American College Health Association’s annual survey of more than 55,000 students and found significant associations between the frequency of sleep problems during the past week, GPA, and the likelihood of withdrawing from a course. Each additional day per week that a student experienced sleep problems raised the chance of dropping a course by 10%, and decreased GPA by 0.02 points. Multiply that throughout a semester, and we have a serious problem. The authors concluded that “sleep education represents an underutilized opportunity for universities to maximize retention rates and academic success.”
The relationship between sleep and academic performance is not a simple one. A student’s level of interest in a course, having a disruptive living situation, being involved in athletics, having a job, or being a parent can all complicate the relationship between sleep and academic performance. Assessing how these variables affect one’s sleep, and making modifications, if possible, is important.
Third, several studies have shown thatgetting poor sleep might increase cravings for alcohol and cannabis13 as well as lead to a greater likelihood of binge drinking and cannabis use.14 Though not entirely clear, some speculate that poor sleep might contribute to elevated stress levels and/or irritability and anxiety where substances might be used to alleviate a negative mood state.
Regardless of the directions of all of these associations, it is clear that establishing consistent sleep routines will result in significant payoffs for student well-being.
“The vast majority of undergraduates (73%) report never receiving any information about sleep from their university, despite two-thirds reporting interest.”
What interferes with sleep and how?
Schedules
For college students, the most obvious contributor to disrupted sleep patterns are the multiple demands on their schedules. Juggling responsibilities for class, work, and extracurricular activities with social and family obligations can create a situation where sleep becomes an afterthought. Ironically, getting enough sleep helps us use time more efficiently and productively during the day. Unfortunately, the overwhelming feeling of not being able to keep up with everything can create a vicious cycle where sleep becomes even more impaired.
Substances
Excessive caffeine use, especially later in the day, can impair the ability to fall asleep. Much research has been conducted on the negative health effects of highly-caffeinated energy drinks and how they can lead to disrupted sleep patterns.15
From a practical standpoint, staying up late to party and drinking alcohol impairs natural sleep cycles by delaying bedtimes and oversleeping in the morning. Biologically, alcohol use suppresses REM sleep time, which occurs in the second half of the night. Many studies confirm the negative impact of alcohol consumption on sleep duration and quality.16,17
Drazdowski et al.18 studied 354 college students who used cannabis and found that 44% reported using cannabis to help them sleep. However, contrary to most students’ beliefs, greater use of cannabis for sleep predicted worse sleep, a longer time to fall asleep, and more problematic cannabis use. Research shows that chronic cannabis use can also interfere with sleep.17,19 When individuals try to cut down or stop cannabis use, common withdrawal symptoms include restless sleep and strange dreams. Reinstating cannabis use will relieve these withdrawal symptoms, leading to a catch-22 situation where the student believes that cannabis is the key to better sleep.
Screen Exposure
An added challenge that this generation’s college students are experiencing like never before is the impact of technology on sleep. “Blue light” emitted from electronic devices acts as a stimulant to your brain by suppressing production of melatonin, the hormone that your body naturally produces to help you fall asleep in response to darkness. Exposure to screens, including cellphone use at bedtime, can prolong the time it takes for us to fall asleep and can lead to waking up too early.20
Exercise
A regular exercise routine comes with many benefits, including improved sleep quality. Experts suggest avoiding intense exercise at nighttime, which can raise cortisol levels and make it hard to fall asleep. For student-athletes, who easily get enough exercise, sleep routines might still be interrupted because of the multiple demands on their schedules. In a review of scientific findings on how sleep deprivation adversely affects athletic performance, Vitale et al.21 states “Optimizing all three pillars (i.e., diet, exercise, and sleep) is critically important to overall health and recovery and is a better strategy than resorting to supplements and energy drinks that athletes (and the general population) may turn to when fatigued and lacking adequate sleep.”
What can campuses do to promote good sleep habits among students?
Engage students in discussions about the importance of sleep. The vast majority of undergraduates (73%) report never receiving any information about sleep from their university,12 despite two-thirds reporting interest. In addition to offering actionable suggestions for improving sleep hygiene, students could also strategize in small groups about how to handle situations involving a disruptive roommate or work together with housemates to agree on nighttime routines that are conducive to better sleep.
Implement evidence-based strategies to reduce excessive drinking and cannabis use. A comprehensive plan to address college student substance use will promote the health, safety, and success of college students.22 Because of the strong associations between these behaviors and sleep hygiene, reducing substance use will help students maintain healthy sleep patterns.
Refrain from promotion of highly-caffeinated energy drinks in dining halls and convenience stores on campus.
Train residence life staff to discuss expectations early on that part of being a respectful roommate is respecting the sleep needs of the other person. They can encourage roommate conversations on needs and preferences for rest and sleep. Also, students who appear to be up extremely late at night or always appear tired and groggy might need an extra check-in or a referral to resources to address either a mental health or a substance use issue.
Train health and counseling center staff to discuss how sleep trouble can be an indicator of other concerns. Given that sleep can exacerbate mental health problems, holistic screenings (assessing both sleep and mental health issues) in health and counseling centers might serve as a springboard for having meaningful conversations that illuminate a bigger picture of what might be impacting a student’s sleep.
Offer sleep workshops for students to educate them about strategies to minimize sleep disruptions. For example, using the Grayscale setting on a cellphone can decrease the stimulating nature of colors, posts, etc. on social media. One study showed that individuals who used the Grayscale setting significantly decreased their screen time, and few reported “annoyance” to using this strategy.23 In general, students need practical tips related to using their time efficiently and decreasing procrastination, both of which can lead to nighttime anxiety and detract from getting a good night’s sleep.
Discuss what faculty can do, such as adjusting assignment deadlines. Many experts4, including Dr. Sarah Lipson, a principal investigator of the Healthy Minds Network, advise schools to revisit policies around deadlines and extensions. Faculty should consider multiple, shorter assignments and quizzes rather than relying on very few big exams, which likely exacerbate procrastination and cramming. Rather than traditional midnight and 9AM deadlines that might perpetuate the behavior of working through the night to finish an assignment, it might be prudent to set a more reasonable submission deadline, such as 5PM. Colleges should consider messaging about healthier ways to manage time and that staying up all night to study might not produce the best outcomes.
Infuse information about sleep hygiene in classes through guest lectures or health center staff presentations. These can be good opportunities to correct misperceptions on the effectiveness of all-nighters, stimulants, and other “quick fixes” that can become habitual.
Reconsider how final exam programming is structured. Holding de-stress events at 11PM in the student center, while well-intentioned, is mixed messaging. Administrators should think about whether having study spaces open 24/7 is best for students. Putting a positive spin on health messaging by encouraging students to engage in healthy behaviors (e.g., get enough rest, eat nourishing food, and exercise regularly), rather than focusing on telling them what not to do might be more effective.
This generation’s knowledge of and fondness for better health and well-being is a facilitator of sleep conversations that campuses can use. Tapping into what matters to students already—good mental health, academic performance, and physical well-being—can go a long way. We can take the adage of “meeting students where they are” a step further by connecting their challenges to practical resources and solutions. Getting good rest is a worthwhile lesson that all of us can learn.
A commonly used tool to measure sleep quality is the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). The PSQI can serve as an efficient screening tool for sleep problems and takes about 5-10 minutes to administer.24
Amelia M. Arria, Ph.D. is currently the Director of the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and a Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health.
Kelsey O’Hara is the Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator for The Maryland Collaborative at the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.
References
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Everyone has a story to tell but not everyone’s story means so much to so many. At the turn of the century, Ghanaian-born Patrick Awuah, Jr. was an engineer at Microsoft in Seattle when he returned to Ghana to start a new university aimed at inspiring young Africans to become ethical, entrepreneurial leaders among historic, systemic challenges. After nearly twenty years since its founding, Ashesi University has changed the course of higher education in Africa, and, with it, the lives of thousands of students and their families.
Awuah’s decision to return to Ghana was a difficult one, particularly for someone who had so successfully transcended the circumstances that encumbered many of his peers. Awuah was educated at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania where the liberal arts pedagogy encouraged curiosity and debate. As an engineering student, he was writing code and building things as well as studying philosophy and political theory. The government-run university system in Africa was more rote learning than critical thinking, providing only a monolithic option for the less than 5% of young people in Ghana who attended college at the time. Awuah became convinced that to enact economic and political change in Africa, there needed to be a mindset shift in teaching and learning that would encourage that small percentage of young people to think big.
A few things happened then that would lead him to act on his conviction. Crisis in Rwanda and Somalia painted a negative picture of Africa in the American media, which made Africans in America eager to change the narrative. In the late 1990s, Microsoft’s annual earnings exceeded Ghana’s gross national product, igniting a sense of moral obligation for those who had left and done well. In 1995, Awuah had a son, born in the US, and he worried for the first time about the racism that is uniquely experienced by African Americans. With a business plan he and his colleagues created while at UC/Berkely, a foundation that would serve as a fund-raising vessel, and the support of his wife, Rebecca, Awuah returned to Ghana in 1998 to begin the process of establishing Ashesi, which means “beginning” in Akan. The university enrolled its first students in 2002.
Awuah faced a chilly reception from accreditors and peer organizations but nonetheless launched Ashesi with 30 students, half of whom received need-based scholarships. Today, it serves about 1,400 students and has a target of growing to 2,500. Ashesi is now recognized as one of the finest universities in Africa with a proven track record in fostering ethical leadership, critical thinking, an entrepreneurial mindset, and the ability to solve complex problems. Through its example, it has changed the way Africa educates its young people and has created a learning community throughout the country and the continent.
As the story continues, Awuah talks about how he did what he did, what he learned, and what it will take to realize his dream of an African Renaissance.
LearningWell: How did your experiences in the US influence your decision to focus on education in Ghana?
Awuah: Higher education in Africa has been about looking at the past and regurgitating things that others have discovered. At Swarthmore, faculty were not interested in me memorizing information and repeating it back to them. In fact, if you did that, you got a bad grade. It was about active learning. In terms of my time at Microsoft, the company’s success was largely dependent on the US economy and how it operated within that. But, very importantly, it was, and is, influenced by the people who work there. They were innovative, they created things, they always thought about what they wanted to do next, and they competed with other companies that were doing interesting things. I realized that this had a lot to do with the kind of education that they’d had. I realized then that we needed a different way of teaching and learning and of nurturing future leaders.
LearningWell: You set out to influence the percentage of people who go to college in Ghana, not on raising the college participation rates. How did this become your goal?
Awuah: At the time I was thinking, “I am an individual living in Seattle with limited means. What can I do that would make the most difference?” It seemed to me that if you could change the way that, say, 5% of the people are educated, you can change the country, because they are the people who are going to run businesses. They are the people who will run the courts, the government, the police force, the military, etc. And the way they view the world and the way they engage with the world has profound implications for everyone else. I felt like I could demonstrate a different way of teaching and learning for Ghana that would get to these same outcomes.
“The people who learn first how to take intellectual risks in the classroom are the people who can eventually take risks in business. The most important thing is for a mind to not be afraid.”
LearningWell: What was your vision for the university?
Awuah: We wanted to establish a university that moved away from rote learning to a model that nurtured people to be philosophical and active learners about what our society should look like and understand that thinking that way would bring tremendous value to society. First of all, it was very important to me that I founded a university that I would want to work in, whether I was a man or a woman. And one that I would be happy sending my kids to—inclusive and high quality. I also wanted it to be an institution that reflected Ghanaian society and, ultimately, African society.
We want to educate people who are going to be good leaders. And for us that meant people that sit at the intersection of leadership, scholarship, and citizenship. Scholarship means everyone’s a student and everyone’s a teacher. That means we are sharing our knowledge with each other and we are asking questions that expand conversations, not narrow them. Leadership is about helping others be more successful, helping society be more successful. We want people who are collaborative, who engage the talents of others, who communicate effectively, which means they listen well and speak well. And we want good citizens—people who care about the common good, who are ethical. They think about the long-term implications of the decisions they make.
I also, right from the beginning, wanted to make sure that striving for excellence did not mean being afraid of making mistakes or afraid of owning up to mistakes. Sometimes people think that excellence and imperfection are at odds with each other, but the day you lose excellence is the day you think you have achieved perfection. So that is the culture I set out to build.
LearningWell: What was the initial response to your plans among the academic community and others?
Awuah: The people in corporate Ghana were glad to see something like this in the works. They were just skeptical I could stay the course. “Ok, great idea but is this guy really going to do it?” (I was young then and looked even younger.)
Ghana’s accreditation system involves a peer review process and the faculty that came to review our curriculum didn’t really like it. They didn’t like the multi-disciplinarity of it. The liberal arts core curriculum they didn’t understand. “Why would a computer science student take courses in philosophy? They should just do more math.” There was a lot of push-back and a lot of convincing.
I think that some people felt somewhat disrespected by Ashesi’s reason for being. “What is so wrong with us that you need to disrupt what we’re doing?” When it came to hiring faculty, we got no applicants from Ghana. No one in academia here took me seriously. Private universities were not allowed in Ghana until the late 1990s and the whole thing was such a new idea. But after a couple of years, this started to change. I was very fortunate to have a senior professor from the University of Ghana who joined my advisory board, and she eventually joined my team as the dean of faculty and that made a huge difference.
“Some of our African American friends would say to us Africans, “You guys don’t seem to have a Black consciousness.”
LearningWell: You had a strong social justice mission. What does equity look like at Ashesi? Is it different than in the United States?
Awuah: I think in the US, there are too many labels and that affects people’s mental health and sense of belonging. Here, we just see people as people. We now have students from all over the continent. The fact that someone is from Rwanda or Kenya or Nigeria or Zimbabwe–or if someone is poor–this is not a label. We try to only see them as who they are—all of us just engaging with other people.
I’ve advocated for this here because of what I saw in the US. When I was first in college, there was something I didn’t understand. I actually didn’t understand it until my son was born. Some of our African American friends would say to us Africans, “You guys don’t seem to have a Black consciousness.” Our response was “Of course we know we’re Black, what do you mean?” But the difference was that when I was growing up, I didn’t move around the world with this notion I was Black, I was just “Patrick.” When I go to other countries where the first thing they think of me is “You’re Black,” that creates a lot of barriers.
So we’ve tried to be very careful about not doing that here, especially as we become more diverse. For example, we want this campus to fully reflect Ghanaian society in terms of physical and learning disabilities. We’ve set a goal that 4% of the Ashesi community will be people with disabilities. We’ve asked our HR department and hiring managers to think about what jobs someone with autism or Down syndrome might do. And then these people will just be part of our community. They’ll just be “Kofi” or “Adwoa” or “Sarah.” This makes for a healthy, compassionate place where people feel like they belong and that helps with wellbeing.
LearningWell: After nearly 20 years, what do you feel has been achieved at Ashesi? What’s still needed?
Awuah: Things are quite different now than they were 20 years ago. The way we approached education was challenged very strongly. Now, there are 50 or 60 private institutions in Ghana. The accrediting system now encourages universities to have what they call a general studies component, what we call our core curriculum. There’s a notion that educating people broadly is a good thing.
We see a lot more engagement. We started a collaborative about six years ago and we said, “Let’s get together and share pedagogy and ideas on how we run our universities. About 10 universities joined us at that time and we now have 400 universities from all over the continent. There’s a palpable sense of excitement and optimism about lowering the barriers between our institutions and learning from each other.
I can honestly tell you there are thousands of people whose lives are very different than what they would have been had Ashesi not existed. Their families have changed and that is very gratifying to see. And it has had an impact. When we first presented to the accreditation board, we had a goal: 90% of our students would find employment or graduate school placement within six months of beginning their search. No one thought this was going to happen. This is in a country where it was accepted that 90% of graduates would take five years to find their first employment. We’ve met our goal every year. The last class we measured was something like 96%. So, the expectation was very low and it is now very different. Everybody’s asking universities to track how they’re doing on career placement and that’s going to compel all of us to be educating people in ways that actually enable the economy.
Everybody is now talking about educating people in such a way that they can be job creators, they can be entrepreneurs. There are people who say, “If you want to educate entrepreneurs then have them take a course in entrepreneurship.” They don’t realize that the liberal arts is a really good way to educate entrepreneurs—individuals who know how to question the status quo or imagine new things. The people who learn first how to take intellectual risks in the classroom are the people who can eventually take risks in business. The most important thing is for a mind to not be afraid.
In terms of what still needs to happen? Our graduates are highly sought-after in industry, but are our graduates able to uphold high ethical standards in the outside world? Each year, alumni return to campus to share personal examples of being invited to join corrupt schemes. These alumni tell current students how they successfully chose the ethical path, sometimes turning down a great deal of benefit.
I am grateful for Ashesi’s growing reputation, and proud of the work of our students, alumni, staff, and faculty. But Africa needs even more from Ashesi and needs more institutions like Ashesi. Sitting in Africa’s classrooms today are students whose education will set Africa’s course over the next 20-to-30 years. When more African universities follow Ashesi’s model, we will see a better future for Africa and for the world.
When Hannah Herrera entered college, she thought she wanted to be an athletic trainer and physical therapist. In high school she’d been on the cross-country, track, and dance teams, and had a strong inclination towards helping student athletes.
At Tulane University, she took a class in life design principles, and gained some insights into her own motivations and goals. The first was that she didn’t love science classes. The second was that she wasn’t actually passionate about working with athletes, per se—she just really wanted to help young people. A third and pivotal bit of self-awareness was a greater appreciation of herself as a first-generation college student, and how it shaped her ambitions.
“There’s a strong sense of imposter syndrome among first-generation students, and a need to do well and make money so we can pay our families back. And that’s completely valid. But after taking these life design courses, I came to feel that I didn’t have to make the salary of someone in medicine to make a difference,” she said.
Hannah graduated last year and is now working as a wellness support coordinator in Residential Life. Her tentative plan is to get a master’s degree in a wellness field. “I can work with students who were like me four years ago, and if I can help a couple of students realize their dreams, I feel like that’s very much worth it. But I don’t have to decide. I just have to be headed in a direction that feels right.”
The life design classes were offerings in Tulane’s Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking. The center was founded in 2014, and in the years since, has evolved to include an intentional approach to career and life planning. Around the same time, on the other side of the country, Stanford University’s Bill Burnett was expanding the Life Design Lab he’d co-founded. The book he wrote applying the principles and class exercises to the general public would shoot those concepts into the motivational stratosphere. Designing Your Life became a #1 New York Times bestseller, shaping the public dialogue on building a career and life that is meaningful and productive. But it would also boomerang the conversation back to higher education, where Burnett and his team would have to manage a floodgate of inquiries from educators interested in bringing the work to their campuses.
At its core, life design is about curiosity, a desire to see what might be possible rather than coasting on autopilot to the next expected thing. At a time when the public dialogue (and every cash-strapped family) is asking about the value of a degree, schools applying design thinking to career development are providing students with a new way of thinking about not just their careers, but themselves.
Stanford’s Life Design Studio—and thanks to COVID, the Virtual Life Design Studio—has brought hundreds of schools like Tulane into the conversation. From Bowdoin to Berkeley, Northeastern to Northwestern, Harvard to Harvey Mudd—and across Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia—faculty and administrators in the workshops learn to guide students through envisioning many directions their lives might take based on their interests, aptitudes, and values. And because of this, increasing numbers of students are learning that their options are both more mappable and limitless than they’d ever imagined.
“After I took that class, I was able to identify the things that really mattered to me, the things I wanted from my career,” Hannah said. “It opened my mind to the possibilities that are out there by allowing yourself to try things out and see what sticks.”
For all its impact, Stanford’s Life Design Lab doesn’t have its own building, and isn’t a department students can major in. It’s a modest teaching lab that consists of four full-time staff lecturers tucked within the mechanical engineering department, simply because that’s where Burnett already taught product design. Classes are available to students whether they dream of being doctors, dancers, or data crunchers. The Lab team wants them to approach their goals by thinking like a designer, by which they mean, creating a methodology for creative problem-solving. It involves reframing challenges to generate out-of-the-box solutions, prototyping new ideas, and testing these prototypes with real users to create successful products. It’s called design thinking because you are actually designing your options the way you would a house, or a suite of software.
“After I took that class, I was able to identify the things that really mattered to me, the things I wanted from my career,” Hannah said. “It opened my mind to the possibilities that are out there by allowing yourself to try things out and see what sticks.”
Conceptually, Designing Your Life applies the process to adults in a range of life stages—early, mid, late career, or retirement (the “encore”)—and offers approaches to the various ways people get stuck. First, the individual needs to define what problem it is they’re actually solving—is it income, experience, time, connections, geography?—and take stock of the obstacles. The methodology is both mental, and visual; a new way of seeing things is called a successful reframing. And much of the language is tangible and evocative. People might be facing obstacles that are unfightable, which are “gravity problems” (essentially unchangeable), or merely “anchor problems” (you’re held back, but not by the immutable laws of physics). The process involves getting rid of dysfunctional beliefs to generate fresh ideas, then using the better ones to build experiments, or prototypes.
For students, prototyping might include trying out internships. Some tools take the form of exercises. Writing in a Good Time Journal involves listing your activities over the course of several weeks, and keeping track of which ones you find most engaging—quite literally, catching yourself in the act of having a good time. Mind Mapping uses a free association of words building outward from a core idea, making secondary connections quickly to bypass your inner censor. (For example, your censor might rule out “music” on the Mind Map, because you’d been told that karaoke performance wasn’t your finest hour.)
Tools can also be marching orders, activities to increase your knowledge base and test your hunches. An assignment to, say, simply go talk to people who do what you’re curious about doing.
“You wouldn’t think that would be life-changing. But for many people, it actually is. Because once you’re in conversations with people about things you’re curious about, then opportunities start to happen. Doors open,” said Kathy Davies, the managing director and studio lead for Stanford’s Life Design Lab. “But it’s no small step for a lot of people. Just getting in the practice of talking to people, especially post-Covid, frankly, can be hard to do.”
This way of thinking and the habits formed to solve problems have lasting effects for students stressed about their place in the workforce after graduation.
“What we hear from students over and over is: ‘This is a place I get to have conversations that I don’t have anywhere else.’ And, ‘This gave me the tools to figure things out,’” said Davies. “When we’re looking at efficacy, we have data that show it reduces career anxiety, increases career agency, and increases people’s ability to be creative and diverge in their thinking before they convert.”
Big Thinking on the Ground
Bowling Green State University (BGSU) has one of most extensive interpretations of Stanford’s life design programs in the country, applying the principles from the admissions process all the way through alumni relations. Life Design at BGSU began as a small pilot program in 2019. In 2020, 60 faculty and staff members from different departments participated in Bill Burnett’s three-day training, a collaborative examination of the key aspects of life design and how to apply them to shape student experience. Thanks to a $13.5 million alumni gift, the Geoffrey H. Radbill Center for College and Life Design, (along with the Michael and Sara Kuhlin Hub for Career Design and Connections) was built to be a comprehensive dual-focused program addressing students’ journeys through the school, and then their career visions.
Adrienne Ausdenmoore, executive director of the Radbill Center, had already been engrossed in life design concepts when she attended Stanford’s first studio workshop for educators in 2017. Bowling Green’s President Rodney Rogers had been in the process of creating a strategic plan to redefine student success when he picked up Designing Your Life on a trip and was so motivated by the concepts and curriculum that he asked Burnett’s team to lead a workshop on campus.
“The team at Stanford has built a really incredible global learning community that’s valuable from a professional development standpoint, as well as a global movement perspective,” said Ausdenmoore. “There are hundreds of schools that have participated in the workshops. Some come away and end up offering it in the form of one small workshop, and then you have universities doing it on a very large scale. We’re definitely one of those.”
“Students are trained to just ‘get through this,’ and they’ll come out with something at the other end. They’ve just been in linear thinking for so long, seeing their life as a progression of climbing the ladder.”
What does this look like for students experiencing the existential angst of what to do with their lives? In the Radbill Center, there are collaborative workspaces strategically built around the perimeter, primarily used for one-on-one sessions with their assigned coaches. Most first-year students begin their initial semester at Bowling Green with a life design seminar that meets for an hour a week. By the time they are seniors, they will have incorporated life design programming into their academic experience as well as career readiness needs.
Bowling Green also offers a life design track dedicated to addressing the unique needs of student athletes, in partnership with the athletic department. The goal, says Bryan Mestre, assistant director for student-athlete development, is to introduce them to design thinking skills to navigate challenges and discover solutions while partnering them with career mentors to explore career possibilities in addition to, or beyond, their sports. Thinking about their wellbeing is an added dimension.
“The Life Design program empowers student athletes to champion their mental health, transforming challenges into opportunities through empathy, innovation, and resilience,” said Mestre, who co-teaches the class with a Life Design coach. One of his exercises walks student athletes through designing a “dashboard” to consider different dimensions of their lives—Academics, Career, Purpose, Well-Being, and Connections—and gauge how well-balanced they are.
Like Bowling Green, Tulane also has life design classes for freshmen, and for student athletes. Because of the city’s devastating legacy of Hurricane Katrina, Tulane has a strong focus on service and equity. It’s no accident that the life design program is anchored in the Phyllis M. Taylor Center, founded in 2014 to help students identify their path in making change. Tulane further extends its focus on equity by offering a life design course to its Bridge Program, geared toward students who benefit from added academic supports.
“Our unique lens is to help students hone in on a social or environmental challenge that they care about, and then use that as a portal to understand the ecosystem of people that are working to address that challenge,” said Dr. Julia Lang, the associate director of Career Education and Life Design, and the first staff member at the Taylor Center. “New Orleans is such a hotbed for so many of the social and environmental challenges that we see in the world, and it’s also a hotbed of innovation. Phyllis Taylor’s vision was to create a one-stop-shop kind of hub for students interested in changemaking while learning about design thinking, with the tools and methodologies that could help them be creative problem solvers.”
Recent graduate Zach Rubin is one example of Tulane’s integration of innovation and changemaking. When he arrived at Tulane, he knew he wanted to study business, and assumed he’d go into finance, maybe work in an investment bank. Once he delved into really exploring his interests and aptitudes, he zeroed in on architecture and urban planning, and wrote his honors thesis on sustainable design. He won Tulane’s change-maker Catalyst Award and Spark Innovation Award, which he used to travel to Singapore and continue his honors research. He just graduated and is working in venture capital at the intersection of real estate development and community enrichment.
“I’m a very community-oriented person, so I’m looking to create change on issues that require a lot of deep domain expertise and knowledge,” he said. “So, I’m doing the hard work upfront, and [I’ll] pivot down the road to what I eventually want it to become.”
The applications of life design are as individual as the schools that conceive of them, and Stanford’s website has a page of clickable school logos to learn about the directions different institutions have taken. At Johns Hopkins, some faculty members set out to use design thinking to reframe the traditional annual performance review process with an annual self-review. Smith College created Designing Your Life for Women. Trinity College wanted to create a solution to a particular retention challenge: high achieving students who were not deeply engaged and disposed to thinking about transferring to other colleges. At Northwestern, the career center for the Kellogg School of Management decided to roll out a series of life design workshops for its alumni. And in remote western Australia, Curtin University applied a grant it received to focus on the region’s rural women by creating a life design program geared toward their economic empowerment and career sustainability. The options are as unlimited as a mind map.
Whatever the application, Life Design fills a self-examination gap for college students often constrained by externally imposed “tracks.”
“We’re always considering the questions, ‘What do I want to do with the rest of my life?’ And ‘How do I get there?’ None of my friends from home, from high school, are doing something like this,” said Madeline Loiacono, a senior in the Nursing program at Bowling Green. “None of them have the same directionality and the same drive that life design has given me. I think when you give vocabulary to such a profound problem-solving process, and you give vocabulary to the growth mindset, and you really pick apart the way you think, it provides a new direction for what it means to think about your career.”
Dr. Lang finds it “mind-blowing” that students can spend a decade in school and thousands of dollars in tuition, but never be given the help to develop a thoughtful plan.
“Students are trained to just ‘get through this,’ and they’ll come out with something at the other end. They’ve just been in linear thinking for so long, seeing their life as a progression of climbing the ladder,” she said. “But if you don’t choose where and why you’re climbing, then all of a sudden you’re 40 and you go to open up this treasure that’s supposed to be hanging up at the top in front of you, and you realize there’s nothing actually there.
Carson Domey is a youth mental health advocate in his sophomore year at The University of Texas at Austin, studying Economics and Government. Carson currently serves as the chair of The Mary Christie Institute’s National Youth Council on College Student Mental Health.
In an increasingly connected world, it might seem paradoxical that loneliness has been deemed an epidemic by the U.S. Surgeon General. Yet, the profound impact of isolation on youth mental health is undeniable, as the life-altering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for community and social connections, particularly within education.
For college students like myself, who left behind support systems and existing relationships, the need for a sense of belonging and companionship becomes ever-so-critical. The pandemic only exacerbated this challenge of socially acclimating into a new environment, as during COVID-19, opportunities to develop such skills were limited.
The impact of the pandemic on students cannot be understated. The abrupt shift to online learning equally impacted students’ social and academic development. The absence of in-person interactions and hallmark experiences throughout high school and college resulted in students missing crucial social development opportunities. These skills, such as forming relationships, effective communication, and collaboration, hindered as a result of the lack of ample opportunities to hone such traits.
While online classes offered some benefits in terms of flexibility and accessibility, this medium certainly came with a price. The absence of natural social interactions in classrooms, lecture halls, and hallways left a void that no virtual meeting or Zoom icebreaker questions could fill. The spontaneous lighthearted moments during class and the collective energy and camaraderie lacked due to the nature of this new means of education.
As a student at the University of Texas at Austin, this fall, I have witnessed firsthand the commitment by faculty to address this issue. The first week of school included not only overviews of syllabi, but an emphasis from professors on the importance of fostering community in and out of the classroom. For example, many professors allot specific times for students to meet and engage with their peers during lectures, and we have furthered these bonds throughout the semester by working together on group projects. The dedication to creating a connected environment was echoed throughout classes as small as 30 students to lectures as large as 150 students. This trend sends a resounding message: even in the face of adversity, the critical essence of community is irreplaceable.
Fostering such an environment requires educators to go beyond the conventional boundaries of their roles and see themselves as facilitators of both knowledge and community. Equally, students must be willing to step out of their comfort zones, engage with their peers, and invest in the bonds that will endure throughout their academic journeys and lives. The benefits of community and a connected college experience can contribute positively to mental health, academic performance, and overall well-being.
“For college students like myself, who left behind support systems and existing relationships, the need for a sense of belonging and companionship becomes ever-so-critical.”
The declaration of a loneliness epidemic and post-pandemic landscape underlines the urgent need to invest in and prioritize building community through education. The impact of COVID-19 on students’ ability to socialize and develop essential interpersonal skills warrants a response. It is my hope that educators’ dedication to building connections will continue to grow and serve as a beacon of resilience in the face of the recent adversity experienced by students and faculty alike. By recognizing and embracing the importance of community on college campuses, we can shape a culture and environment capable of bringing out the best in the next generation.
On-campus jobs tend to be born from necessity, largely transactional, and not viewed as particularly meaningful. But what if brewing coffee in the campus cafe, or making calls in the development office, could be supported by mentors and learning modules that made these experiences an integral part of students’ educations and careers? At Arizona State University (ASU), a few innovative thinkers started asking that question.
“So many students are engaged in work while they’re going to school,” said Brandee Popaden-Smith, director of the Work+ Learn program at ASU. “How do we help those students get every bit that they can out of that experience?”
Students may work because they need to, says Popaden-Smith, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t gain high-quality employment experience in the process. She and her team imagined student employment could be fulfilling in more ways than one—not only for the coinciding paycheck, but for providing students critical professional development skills and complimenting their studies in the classroom.
In 2020, Work+ was piloted and then developed at ASU’s University College as an initiative supporting student success. Focused on students currently employed by the university, Work+ is, at a minimum, a win-win strategy to help busy student-employees get the most out of their dual roles. At its core, it’s about equity and access.
Around 40% of full-time college students and closer to three-quarters of part-time students in the U.S. are “working learners,” or those employed during the school year as they complete their degrees. The majority are lower-income or first generation students. At ASU, the largest public university in the country, 35% of their approximately 140,000 students (undergraduate and graduate) are the first in their families to go to college. Around 11,000 are working learners, teeing Work+ up to be a program with wide-reaching impact, both locally and nationally.
Work+ offers several online modules, or “levels,” for student employees to gain critical career skills and contemplate professional pathways. This content responds in part to the 2019 study from Gallup and Bates College, “Forging Pathways to Purposeful Work: The Role of Higher Education,” which suggests students who participate in a course or program encouraging them to think about pursuing meaning in their work are more likely to secure this type of employment. The same research established a positive correlation between college graduates who find purpose in their work and their overall well-being.
Sukhwant Jhaj is ASU’s vice provost for Academic Innovation and Student Achievement and is the point person on the project for ASU Provost Nancy Gonzales. “I focus on issues of institutional strategy as they connect with questions of academic innovation and student success,” Jhaj said. “Things like, “What’s next?’”
According to Jhaj, Work+ targets three questions, with a particular focus on the second. “How do you end achievement disparities that exist? How might we redesign for an integrated work and learning future? And how might we design services using design thinking analytics?” These objectives then align with the larger university’s charter, which emphasizes not only academic excellence and innovation as a research institution, but the fundamental importance of access and inclusion to that end.
Part of this accessibility mission is to elevate on-campus work to the status of the often-sought-after-but-less-widely-available internship. “For a long time, internships were kind of the main high value work experience that students could get while they were pursuing their degree program,” said Popaden-Smith. “But they’re not easily scalable, especially for an institution our size where we’re trying to ensure that every single learner has these types of opportunities.”
Making work more integral to education also creates a sticking factor for students at risk of stopping out. “When you take a look at our working learner populations broadly across the nation, they’re highly representative of historically marginalized groups, and they are the ones facing the significant barriers to persisting through their educational experience,” said Popaden-Smith. She said programs like Work+ that infuse employment with education help students, who might otherwise be forced to choose one over the other, to stay in school.
Crystal Woods, a psychology major in her last semester at ASU, said she has appreciated participating in Work+ through her job as an academic peer advisor, especially in anticipation of her upcoming graduation. “I feel like the closer you get to graduating, the harder it gets to really decide what you want to do.” Even though she had amassed plenty of professional experience already, working since she was 16 and often two jobs throughout college, Woods said Work+ modules helped her develop career skills she wouldn’t have known how to approach otherwise. She has taken quizzes to learn more about potential career paths that could suit her and kept a record of all her progress along the way.
“So many students are engaged in work while they’re going to school. How do we help those students get every bit that they can out of that experience?”
Woods believes ASU offers a supportive environment in general for first-gen students like herself, and engaging with Work+ boosted her confidence further. “Entering school, I never thought I could be doing what I’m doing or getting the grades or even graduating early. And so reflecting back on it, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh. I did do it as a first-generation [student].” The work experience helped her shift from a deficit to an asset mindset. “I don’t walk into interviews as nervous as I was. I kind of walk in [with the attitude of] ‘they need me more than I need them’—even if I really do need them.”
A critical part of making Work+ effective for students comes down to the role of their employers. Supervisors who engage with Work+ help lead their students through their online modules, providing continuous support and feedback to reinforce the coursework on professional development in practice. These advisors also gain access to a wealth of resources designed to facilitate their own experience, from approaching the hiring process to navigating a mentorship relationship.
For Kate Armbruster, who is not only a student-employee supervisor but a doctoral student at ASU researching working learners, the impact of student-supervisor relationships is hard to overstate. “This is not just about student employment, student-employees,” Armbruster said of Work+, which she engages with as both a supervisor and researcher. “It’s very much about the supervisor, as well, because we need the supervisor to have buy-in and be motivated and understand how important their role is in student success—how much of an impact they have on student employees.”
Crystal Woods attributes much of her progress as a working learner to her boss and mentor, Amanda, who introduced her to Work+ and also comes from a first-generation background. “Since she was the person who encouraged me, I was able to get research opportunities and work in labs, which I didn’t even think I was smart enough to do. But here I am.”
As successful as it has been for her, Woods admits Work+ is not always an easy sell for students with little time left in their already-strapped schedules. “I know that when you’re already at work and you’re a student and you have homework, it’s just so much on your mind. Work, work, work. Why would they want to do another sort of work? But it’s beneficial at the end of the day.” That’s what she tells other students.
Meanwhile, Work+ Learn Director Popaden-Smith plans to continue trying to reach as many students as possible, if not all of them, with opportunities Work+ offers. “We’re actually in the process, in order to scale to the entirety of the institution, of shifting to, ‘How are the values and how is the framework of Work+ the foundation for all student employment at ASU?” she said. She envisions the larger Work+ philosophy permeating all student employment experiences and benefiting each and every student employee and supervisor.
For Vice Provost Jhaj, the destiny of Work+ extends well beyond his ASU. “We are focused on how we might reimagine the experience of students that we employ and, in doing so, help rethink work-study nationally,” he said.
A dozen years ago, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa published what was–as academic books go–a blockbuster. In it, they argued that students weren’t learning a whole lot during their first two years of college. And, beyond that, they weren’t particularly engaged with their professors. Indeed, they often drifted through campuses, anchored neither by academic knowledge nor by relationships with potential mentors.
Academically Adrift not only captured the attention of those in higher ed; it also garnered national headlines. The book tracked more than 2,300 students at 24 four-year colleges and universities who took the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) in the fall of 2005 and again in the spring of 2007. Nearly half of them showed no improvement at all on critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills.
It raised deep concerns for lots of folks. If students weren’t learning, and didn’t feel engaged, what was going on? Those concerns have shaped Arum’s thinking, though his quest to understand the undergraduate experience has become more multifaceted in the years since.
Arum is now a professor of sociology and education at the University of California, Irvine, and has devoted a large part of his career to sorting through massive amounts of data, trying to understand what makes college meaningful, useful, and enduring. At UCI, he’s working on an enormous data collection effort, which aims to understand what decisions contribute to undergraduate flourishing.
And he’s come to the conclusion that colleges have lost a sense of purpose, and their unmooring has, to some degree, also unmoored students. Many colleges, he argues, have become less connected to their communities and to the world around them.
When Academically Adrift came out, one of its striking findings was that student disengagement went far beyond standardized tests. Multiple surveys found that time studying had declined radically between the 1960s and the early 2000s, dropping from roughly 25 hours a week to 12-13 hours a week.
Arum says that some who heard those numbers wondered whether technology might have changed things (students can look things up more quickly), or whether students in the 1960s tended to inflate the amount of time that they studied. Arum thought neither of those theories were particularly likely. In a follow-up book, Aspiring Adults Adrift (2014), he and Roksa tried to contextualize US college students by examining international data on studying. “And the US was lower than almost every country,” Arum says. “Rock bottom.”
Aspiring Adults Adrift also addressed the question of whether focusing on the first two years of college might be misleading. Perhaps students were skating through freshman and sophomore years, but then buckling down after that? Perhaps junior and senior years were when the real learning and engagement took place? It was a hopeful notion, but wrong, as Arum and Roksa discovered. Indeed, the drift not only continued through junior and senior years, but it kept right on going after graduation.
And where does that drift come from? The top, Arum argues. “I think there has been institutional drift, in terms of what college means and how students understand and experience it. The institution is focusing a lot more on a lot of other stuff, and a lot less on the traditional academic function. And that’s true if you just look at higher ed budgets.”
Arum says that colleges frequently talk about “career preparation” – and that has always been true, to some degree. But he worries that “credentialism,” as he puts, is not a positive development and tends to exclude higher ideals. “College is about finding meaning and purpose in life and developing orientations around civic engagement and civic responsibility,” Arum notes. “If it’s just about making extra money, it may not be sufficient in terms of meaning and purpose for all students.”
“What we know from research is that when people find meaning and purpose in their work, and in their studies, they persist. They achieve. It’s central to understanding people’s behavior. And the institutions that have dropped that discourse have done a real disservice to students.”
To Arum, this has had a profound spillover effect on civic engagement. His research found that more than a third of college graduates said they read the newspaper either monthly or never. Even more graduates said they discuss public affairs with family or friends either monthly or never.
“Where does that drift come from? The top, Arum argues. “I think there has been institutional drift, in terms of what college means and how students understand and experience it.’”
And feeling adrift in the world–not anchored to a community or the civic debates within it–can play into deep feelings of loneliness. It’s a phenomenon that the political scientist Robert Putnam famously explored in his 2000 book Bowling Alone, and that has become commonplace in America over the past few decades.
At colleges, between 2013 and 2021, students reporting anxiety and depression almost doubled. “Campuses have responded by increasing the number of counseling support services on campus,” Arum says. “But guess what? They can’t increase them enough to deal with the increasing problems. So the solution can’t simply be that–it has to also be helping the students find meaning, purpose, community, connections, and attachments that will lead to mental health wellbeing and flourishing.”
So what does Arum believe would work to amp up student engagement? For teachers, he says, it’s essential to explain why a course is relevant. Many students sign up for courses to check a box; they don’t arrive with a sense of the potential impact of various bodies of knowledge. Less lecturing and more active learning are also critical, he believes.
But he argues that institutions also have to talk about meaning and purpose as a central rationale. They should answer questions like: “What are you doing for the community? What are you doing for the schools that are struggling down the street? What’s your responsibility to them? How are you engaging with local industry? In a society that’s plagued with mass incarceration, what are you doing about getting into the prisons and educating incarcerated individuals there, so that they can lead productive, meaningful lives in the future?”
With his new project at UCI–Measuring Undergraduate Success Trajectories (MUST)–Arum is diving deeper into the question of how you make college work for students. How can it make their lives better? MUST started in 2019, with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Arum hopes it will prove to be a model for colleges and universities across the US.
The project merges a huge variety of data, including info from a student’s college application, courses that a student takes, who takes those courses alongside them, when they use academic support, who their roommates are, what clubs they’re joining, and who’s in those clubs. Plus, there’s clickstream data from Learning Management Systems like Canvas.
Then there’s a subset of students who are frequently questioned on topics like friends, mentorship, experiences with discrimination, critical thinking, and problem solving. And a couple of weeks a year, some students will get texted 50 times a week to find out: Right at this moment, what are you doing? Who are you with? Do you feel psychologically engaged or disengaged?
In 2021, Arum noted that President Biden has talked frequently about infrastructure. But, he said, the “infrastructure we need in this country today is… infrastructure about how to deliver, measure, iterate, and improve higher education. I can think of no greater infrastructure need than that. Because individuals alone can’t do this.” He believes that the federal government is missing an enormous opportunity to improve education, and to ensure that it does what every other industry does: “use data to better improve its performance.”
Trying to understand well-being and progress during college, Arum argues, is essential to both expanding access and ensuring success. He notes that “our country is falling behind in educational completion rates, relative to other advanced economies.” And as more Americans question the value of higher education, it’s imperative to understand what works and what doesn’t. If we don’t use data to improve outcomes, Arum says, “it’s a failure of imagination.”
Kara Miller writes The Big Idea column for The Boston Globe, which examines game-changing ideas in everything from traffic, to education, to housing. Kara has worked across radio, TV, and print for the past 15 years. From 2011-2021, she hosted and served as the Executive Editor of the public radio program Innovation Hub, which she launched. She has taught at Babson College and at the University of Massachusetts.
