Seeing the Unseen

In the landscape of higher education, student fathers face a particularly stark lack of recognition and support. A new report by Generation Hope,”EmpowerED Dads: Amplifying Voices, Advancing Higher Education for Student Fathers,” sheds crucial light on the unique challenges and needs of these individuals. As we strive for a more inclusive and equitable educational environment, it is imperative that we amplify the voices of student fathers and advocate for policies that support their success.

Student fathers often juggle multiple roles, balancing their studies with the demands of caregiving and employment. This multifaceted responsibility is compounded by societal stereotypes that frequently cast fathers, particularly fathers of color, as absent or uninvolved in their children’s lives. The report highlights that Black and Latino student fathers, in particular, face significant obstacles, including higher rates of basic needs insecurity and lower utilization of support services​.

Despite these challenges, student fathers demonstrate remarkable resilience and dedication. They are not merely pursuing degrees but striving to provide better futures for their families. However, their efforts are often overshadowed by a lack of visibility and recognition within the academic sphere. This invisibility can profoundly impact their self-esteem and academic performance, perpetuating a cycle of underachievement and disengagement.

The Need for Tailored Support

To address these issues, tailored support systems that acknowledge and address the specific needs of student fathers must be developed and implemented. Policies and institutional practices must evolve to provide flexible scheduling, accessible childcare, and financial assistance for this demographic. Additionally, mental health services should be made readily available to help student fathers manage the stress and anxiety that come with balancing their multiple roles.

As we strive for a more inclusive and equitable educational environment, it is imperative that we amplify the voices of student fathers and advocate for policies that support their success.

Furthermore, creating a campus culture that celebrates the contributions of student fathers can go a long way in fostering their sense of belonging and purpose. Universities should promote awareness campaigns and support groups that provide a platform for student fathers to share their experiences and build a supportive community.

Policy Reforms and Institutional Changes

Policy reforms are crucial in driving systemic change. Legislators and educational institutions must work together to ensure that student fathers are included in discussions about higher education support strategies. Financial aid policies should consider the unique financial pressures faced by student parents, and academic policies should offer greater flexibility to accommodate their schedules.

Generation Hope’s report underscores the importance of including student fathers in the broader conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education. By advocating for policies that recognize and value the experiences of student fathers, we can create a more equitable and supportive educational environment for all students.

A Call to Action

The journey of a student father is marked by resilience and a deep commitment to their families and education. It is time for us to recognize and support their efforts. By amplifying their voices and addressing their unique needs, we can help student fathers achieve their academic goals and secure better futures for themselves and their children.


Brittani Williams is the Director of Policy, Advocacy and Research at Generation Hope.

Generation Hope engages education and policy partners to drive systemic change and provides direct support to teen parents in college as well as their children through holistic, two-generation programming.

Democratizing the Liberal Arts

As part of his listening tour, Matt vandenBerg, the new president of Ohio Wesleyan University, created a YouTube and TikTok video of himself not listening to a legendary superstition that stepping on a seal outside of University Hall would bring bad luck. In the hilarious parody, vandenBerg cautiously steps, then stomps, dances, and jump-jacks on the seal before he is beset by a series of calamities that have him appearing at a university function sporting tattered clothes and a black eye. 

There is much to unpack here. First, it takes a certain level of confidence for a new president to humble (vandenBerg might say “humiliate”) himself in front of his students, and on their own medium at that. It is also refreshing to see a college president bringing some levity to a position that, certainly of late, is not perceived as being much fun. His inauguration on April 19 was another opportunity to depart from the implied rules. In referring to Paul Revere’s famous ride on the same date, vandenBerg evoked a rebellious spirit in laying out nine new initiatives the school would be taking on, including partnerships with the community and other institutions that would increase access and affordability. In his speech, vandenBerg rejected a number of “unhelpful” conventions in higher education – the idea that faculty and administrators are naturally at odds, that host communities are either competitive with or overly-reliant on their university partners, and, perhaps most importantly, that the liberal arts are for the fortunate few and will not bring the kind of return on investment Americans are looking for in a college degree. 

In our interview, President vandenBerg talks about that speech, as well as what drew him to Delaware, Ohio, how he plans to distinguish OWU’s mission from “what everyone else promises,” and what new college presidents might learn from the public’s current frustration with higher education. 

LearningWell: You were most recently at Presbyterian College in South Carolina. What made you leave there and come to OWU? 

MV: My family and I were committed to staying at Presbyterian College for a good number of years, but serendipity hits in your life at times, and for us, serendipity hit in the form of an old friend calling me to say, “I know you’re not looking for a new job opportunity. I just need you to pick up the phone and listen.” This friend happened to be leading the search for the presidency of Ohio Wesleyan University, and I realized that from that short conversation with her, I didn’t just want to know more about Ohio Wesleyan; I needed to know more.

So much of the spirit of the institution, its situation in the higher education landscape, and its aspirations resonated with me. But I also thought it might bring some important enhancements to the life of my family. After a consultation with my wife, I decided to throw my hat in the ring, and the rest is history. 

We had some trepidation, but in the end, moving my family to Delaware, Ohio, was a no-brainer, primarily for three reasons. Number one, the people. The students, faculty, staff, trustees, alumni, and the community members that we met were really special. They wanted to do big things. Together, we were going to be able to do transformative work to elevate and amplify a tremendous institution. 

Number two, the community. The city of Delaware, in Delaware County, loves its university. It was evident to us at first blush. There’s been a bedrock of trust built over decades between the institution and the community. That stands in stark contrast to where a lot of small, private, residential liberal arts institutions are situated. They are often in struggling communities and are the sole anchor that is relied upon to drive the local economy, to bring all of the artistic and humanistic enhancement to the community. That’s simply not the case with Ohio Wesleyan University and the city of Delaware and Delaware County. This is a healthy place looking to go from great to phenomenal, and that is always a charge that I get excited about. 

The third thing that got me so excited to come here was the transformative impact that OWU has on the lives of young people. I believe that in higher education we often focus on the transaction: How much does it cost? What degree do you graduate with? What is your first-year salary? Are you seeing that immediate return on investment? To me, if done well, higher education is not a transaction. It is a transition into adulthood, and it is supposed to be transformative. Ohio Wesleyan University intrinsically understands that. It’s baked into the ethos of this place. They’ve got 40,000 success stories to showcase that impact. So, that’s how I went from not looking for another position to realizing the calling of my life was to come to this spot in Ohio. 

LW: You recently had your inauguration. Tell me a little bit about what you said that day. What was most important for you to lay out in terms of your vision for the school?

MV: We wanted to be rebellious in terms of what an inauguration actually is. They are often kind of boring, stuffy — too focused on the new person getting the job. I believe that an inauguration should be an inflection point in an institution’s trajectory. It should be an opportunity to celebrate the past and everything that brought us to where we are. It should be a chance to grapple earnestly and honestly with the challenges and opportunities that we have today. And then it should also be a way to galvanize ourselves around an exciting future. 

If you’re a college president and you’re not leveraging the concerns and criticisms for self-reflection and self-improvement, you’re missing a big opportunity. 

That day, we made the case that we need to seek and secure distinction in this overcrowded higher education landscape. We were pretty direct in tackling that head-on. Not only will we not thrive in the future if we don’t figure out what it is that makes us distinctive, but we’re also doing a tremendous disservice to students and families by not pointing out the meaningful differences between institutions. We all tend to sell ourselves the same way using the same tired cliches: “Come here because we have small class sizes, faculty who really care about you and who know your name. We have tight-knit communities. We have beautiful campuses. We have successful alumni. We’ll give you a job or an internship. You’ll learn how to apply what you’re learning in the classroom to an external context.” Those are things that every institution is saying right now, and it can contribute to this sense of white noise that students and their families have when they go on different campus tours.

I want Ohio Wesleyan University to be able to answer the question of what makes us truly unique. The title of my inaugural address is “What’s in the Water?” — What is it about Ohio Wesleyan that we offer to students that they can’t or don’t or won’t get anywhere else? And how do we channel our energy, our resources, and our focus in the same direction so that our unique, meaningful, defensible value proposition truly shines? 

We invoked the spirit of 1842, our founding year, and we connected that to the historic spirit of the day on which the inauguration actually occurred. It was April 19th — the day of Paul Revere’s ride and the day of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.  That day sparked the American Revolution. So, we invoked the spirit of rebellion of that day to discuss how OWU began and to proclaim with confidence and joy where we were going. 

In 1842, a local Methodist minister went door-to- door, just like Paul Revere did, to rally the countryside in a call to do something important and in service to a greater purpose. That was a fun message to deliver, but it had a serious undertone. The idea was to apply a sense of rebellion to the way we move forward, and that means categorically rejecting all of the things in higher education that are broken, all the things that we think are supposed to be truisms but that are absolutely not. For example, the understanding that faculty and administrators are supposed to be at odds with each other — we categorically reject that notion. The idea that the liberal arts are not inherently valuable as an educational model, that they don’t lead to good careers, that they are a poor choice if you’re looking for return on investment. We categorically reject those notions. And lastly, we wanted to showcase that at OWU, we don’t just talk about things; we do them. Our love language is action. We made nine significant announcements that day, and they all boil down to three different things. One is investing in people, especially our students, faculty and staff; two is building community, especially through investments in our infrastructure; and three is changing lives through innovative partnerships. 

LW: Can we talk a little more about that third goal? 

MV: Establishing partnerships is a big part of what we want to do. We want to radically expand affordability and accessibility and build equitable pathways that help students get to where they want to go in their lives. We want to deliver on the student’s timetable, not necessarily just higher education’s timetable. So, we announced a few new ways of doing just that. 

Columbus State Community College is the major two-year institution in central Ohio. Together, we launched a powerful three-part partnership to help community college students realize that there is a viable pathway for them to a four-year degree at a liberal arts institution. The first component of our partnership is called “Preferred Pathway.” It’s fairly common for community college students to want to pursue a bachelor’s degree once they graduate. The problem is that, at many institutions, their credits don’t always fully transfer and they don’t maintain their hardfought status in their major.  They are promised this two-year pathway to a bachelor’s degree, and then they discover that it’s going to take them longer and cost them more to graduate than they were told. It can feel to them like a bait-and-switch. Moreover, for a lot of students, including those transferring in from a community college, just the idea of going to a private liberal arts college can sound expensive – perhaps even out of reach, financially. We knew we could improve that experience for students. In partnership with about 25 different professors, we hand-built transparent, hassle-free two-year pathways for students across 20 different majors. It’s the most comprehensive pathway program that Columbus State has among national liberal arts universities.

The second part of the partnership attacks the real and perceived cost issue, head-on. For up to 25 students with at least a 3.5 GPA at Columbus State, we have a tuition match program, so they actually pay the Columbus State tuition rate to attend and complete their Ohio Wesleyan University degree. The tuition match program means that students now not only have the logistical means to succeed, but they now have extraordinary financial support as well. No other university, public or private, can match that commitment.

We want to democratize access to the transformative benefits of a liberal arts education.

The third part of our partnership addresses a vexing national issue – and certainly one that affects our region as well. It’s the looming teacher shortage and the dearth of people entering the teaching profession. We don’t think that we can solve that problem on our own, but one of the things that we can do is begin to reduce the barriers to entry for people who do have an interest in the teaching profession. How do we encourage those students who feel a calling toward this work to get their credentials and degrees without saddling them with crippling debt?

In partnership with our local Delaware County school systems and Columbus State, we found a new way to deliver extraordinary value and encourage more teachers to enter the system. Using the College Credit Plus program in Ohio, students in their junior year of high school are able to earn credit toward their associate degree from Columbus State. By the time they graduate from high school, they get not only a high school diploma, but also an associate degree, and then they can jump seamlessly into Ohio Wesleyan University and complete their bachelor’s and teaching certificate in just two years. This program cuts the time to completion in half and reduces their costs dramatically. 

Another partnership, the Delaware County Promise, is a great example of our vision for the future. Delaware County is considered the healthiest, wealthiest, and fastest-growing county in the state of Ohio, and the unfortunate truth is that not everyone participates equally in that prosperity. We can prove over and over again that higher education is the great social mobility agent, but a lot of people who are from disadvantaged backgrounds, even in Delaware County, don’t think about going to their local liberal arts college, because they dismiss it as being out of reach. This was one of the earliest problems I remember thinking about when I came here. I started talking with city and county leaders, and we came up with an exciting program to tackle that problem, which we announced at the inauguration. “If you are from Delaware County or go to school in Delaware County, and you earn a 3.5 GPA in high school and your family makes $100,000 a year or less, you can now go to Ohio Wesleyan University absolutely tuition-free.” We worked out a way, through our own investments in financial aid, to make that possible and then partnered with the community and the Delaware County Foundation to make it happen. 

Ultimately, what we really want to do is to democratize access to the transformative benefits of a liberal arts education. We want to be able to reach anyone for whom the liberal arts can be a life-changer. We want a student’s personal choice to determine where they attend college, rather than financial barriers, social constraints, self-confidence constraints, or other challenges. We want personal choice and fit, as decided by the individual, to be the ultimate determinant. 

LW: Major change, as opposed to tradition, is not something we often associate with higher education. What are your thoughts on that?

MV: Higher education certainly features some significant strengths. For example, shared governance, academic freedom, and free speech strengthen what we do and how we do it. But we can improve in some areas.  Among our relative weaknesses is our sense of toxic egalitarianism — the idea that we have to do everything with the same amount of effort, that we can’t give anything we do more attention unless we give an equal measure of attention and investment to everything else. Most people who start a business, or run a business, understand that that is no way to succeed. We need to know our distinctive value proposition and make disciplined and strategic decisions accordingly.

Moreover, higher education has tended to have an incremental approach to mustering its way through challenges by adding a few programs here or there, adding a few more students, and reducing operating expenses a little bit. My abiding notion is that this moment in our history is not a time for incremental strategies alone. We should be thinking about continuous improvement — how we can be better and better at what we do — but if we don’t start breaking some of the implied rules about what higher education is and what it is supposed to be, we are going to miss the mark as our society – and students’ needs – continue to change at unprecedented levels.

LW: Do people ask you why you wanted to become a college president at a time when higher education, and presidents in particular, are under such scrutiny? 

MV: The presidency of a college can be a hard job, no doubt, as I said to a group of aspiring vice presidents and presidents in Washington, D.C., last week. I told them, “If you’re thinking about a presidency simply because it gives you a fancier title, because the pay is better, because you think people will respect you more, or because you receive more visibility, this job will eat you alive.” 

One underrated quality of liberal arts institutions is that we’re fundamentally good for democracy.

You have to want to do this work because it’s a calling. I’ve known I wanted to do this job since I was 20 years old. I know that is an oddly specific sense of vocation for a 20-year-old to have, but I have always believed in the value of higher education and particularly in the power of liberal arts colleges to transform lives. I don’t think liberal arts colleges are for everyone, but I do think they are for a lot more students than who currently realize it. That is what gets me out of bed in the morning. Religious connotations aside, I see myself as a liberal arts evangelist, helping to bring the word of what we do to more people who would benefit enormously from this important educational philosophy and delivery model.

Without a doubt, higher education is under attack by some, and many in our society question the value of a college degree. The truth of the matter is that going to college brings enormous financial and other benefits over the course of one’s career. An educated populace also benefits humanity writ large. But affordability concerns, rising costs, political rancor, the alarming deterioration in our public discourse, and other factors sometimes cloud how people understand that value. Nevertheless, for many, perceptions are reality. So, our job is to educate others and clarify what we do and why it matters. It seems to me that, for higher education leaders, now is a time for us to listen, to reflect, and to respond. I try to use what I’m hearing to become a better leader and to help OWU to improve. If you’re a college president and you’re not leveraging the concerns and criticisms for self-reflection and self-improvement, I think you’re missing a big opportunity. 

One underrated quality of liberal arts institutions is that we’re fundamentally good for democracy. We promote and engender in our students an appreciation for civic participation, free speech, intellectual inquiry, and service to others. And in these fractious times, we think it’s critical for our institutions to serve as an antidote for the deficits we see in our society’s discourse. Our educational approach is uniquely effective at training students to engage in constructive dialogue, especially amidst disagreement and difference. We believe that more people need to learn how to be productively engaged citizens who understand how their government works and who can work to address problems in ways that bring others together, rather than in ways that exacerbate divides. In the coming months, OWU will seek to amplify its role in that vital work. We think it’s essential to our democratic republic. And that work is just one more example of the vital role of higher education.

LearningWell Radio in Conversation with Dr. Wendy Suzuki

The following is a transcript of LearningWell Radio’s interview with Wendy Suzuki on her book “Good Anxiety.” You can listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Dana Humphrey: This is LearningWell Radio, the podcast of LearningWell magazine, covering the intersection of higher education and lifelong well-being. I’m Dana Humphrey.

Marjorie Malpiede: And I’m Marjorie Malpete, and we’re the hosts of LearningWell Radio.

DH: Dr. Wendy Suzuki is a neuroscientist at New York University, where she also serves as Dean of the College of Arts and Science. Her primary area of research is neuroplasticity, and recently her work has focused on understanding how aerobic exercise can be used to improve learning, memory, and higher cognitive abilities. She’s the author of Healthy Brain Happy Lice, a personal program to activate your brain and do everything better, and Good Anxiety, harnessing the power of the most misunderstood emotion. She’s had appearances on CBS This Morning, WNYC, Big Think the Moth, she has a TED talk, and now she’s joining us on LearningWell Radio. Wendy, thank you so much for being here today.

Wendy Suzuki: Thank you for having me, Dana. 

DH: Good Anxiety discusses how we can make everyday anxiety work for us rather than against us. And we will definitely talk more in depth about that. But the last time I saw you was at the Coalition for Transformational Education’s conference in March,

where you gave an electrifying presentation on the effect of exercise in the brain. It really set the house on fire. I have never had that much fun during a presentation at a conference. We all stood up, we went through some of the exercises that you have your students do during class. So I just wondered if you could give a bit of background on that. Why did you decide to start bringing physical activity into your classroom, and how did that process go? Were the students receptive? Did you notice a change in how they learned or how you taught them? 

WS: Yeah, this all started when I got interested in the effects of exercise on the brain because I had I had realized I wasn’t moving at all in my life and I was feeling run down and stressed and also I didn’t have friends outside of my own lab and I said I don’t know how to gain new friends but I do know that I can go to the gym and at least feel more physically strong and so I went to the gym and I ended up really changing my regular workout habits and I felt really great. And right about that time, I needed to teach a new class and I thought, oh, wouldn’t it be fun to learn about the effects of exercise on the brain since I’m noticing all these great effects on my life,

on my mood and on my memory and on my focus and it wouldn’t be fun to really dive deep with the students. And so I at developing that class. But then I found the thing that really gets me going is going to the gym and finding a great class and moving with a whole bunch of people. And so I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to actually bring exercise into the classroom? And so I immediately ran to my departmental administrator and said, hey, could I get some money for to hire an exercise instructor so I could bring exercise into the classroom? And they said, no, no, you’re you’re the teacher, you teach the class. And so I went back to my desk a little dejected and I thought maybe I’ll train to be an exercise instructor and I will teach the exercise part of the class too. So then I went back to my administrator and I said, “Hey, would you pay for me to go train how to teach exercise at the gym and then teach in the classroom?” And they said, “Yes, we will.” And so I went and I took training fitness,

uh, teaching class at the gym, and it was so much fun. And, and I, at the same time, I was developing this new class and, and I thought, wow, make, I could turn this into a study. Maybe I could test the effects or test their baseline effects of mood and reaction time before and after this class and see whether our regular workouts, which were going to be once a week, did any difference. And so this turned into a class that I called “Can Exercise Change Your Brain?” And you asked me whether it changed the classroom. I will never forget the very first day of that class that I ever taught.

It was in a classroom where I taught for 15 years, a typical classroom with lots of seats in it. All the seats had been pulled out, it was a completely empty classroom. I walked in, I was worrying head to toe Lululemon, which I usually don’t do in classroom. And I was feeling really nervous because while I’m very comfortable lecturing, I had to actually teach an exercise class to these students for the very first time. And I’ll never forget all the nervous laughter. I think they were quite scared when they saw me walked in the classroom in Lululemon and they realized, oh my God, I have to work out with her. But I must say that completely transformed to that classroom. It eliminated that invisible wall that’s always there between the talking head at the front of the classroom and all of the hopefully learning heads in the rest of the classroom. And we had such a great time. And so that’s what made me realize, oh my gosh, I’ve got to do this in my lectures. There’s no better way to, as you say, electrify or dries a room than to make everybody stand up and they don’t know exactly what’s going to happen and then they have to do a little dance to Taylor Swift.

That’s how that came to be. 

DH: It was so much fun at the conference. It really left such an amazing impression and there was quite a bit of nervous laughter when we were going through the exercises as well. Although I think it was all based on, “Gosh, I’m going to look so silly doing this.” But it was so much fun. As you alluded to, and you talk in the intro to your book about how your own anxiety about how you were feeling led you to try and experiment with ways to feel better, including exercise and nutrition. But it also led you on this path to exploring the difference and distinction between good and bad anxiety. So anxiety has bad rap. Can you explain how anxiety can be a force for good in our lives? 

WS: Yeah, so I think first and foremost, it’s really important for people to realize that anxiety is a normal human emotion. We all have it. There’s nothing abnormal about anxiety. It’s one of the more uncomfortable emotions, but in and of itself, it is part of our natural human set of emotions. But the other second thing, it’s a little bit better, is that anxiety evolved not to annoy us, but in fact, you might be surprised to learn that anxiety evolved to protect us. And good anxiety is the idea of getting back to the protective aspect of anxiety and trying to leave the bad rap, as you say, of anxiety on the doorstep. And the first important step that I’m sure everybody’s thinking about is, oh my God, there’s no way this can be good. It’s just so overwhelming. And I totally agree. Anxiety in our society today is overwhelming. The level is too high. And in fact, for most of us, too high to be protective or helpful. So a lot of my book is first showing us how to turn down the volume of anxiety note that I never say I’m going to get rid of it because you can’t it’s a normal human emotion but there are so many approaches and techniques and tools that one can use to turn the volume down and that is the first step And I think that can be helpful to everybody listening to listening to this

podcast So a few years ago. I’ll just go in a little aside here for a it. I had the opportunity to work with somebody who I, it was sort of a coach and I took a bunch of personality tests and one of the personality tests came back that I had high access to anxiety. And you get these results back and you’re reading through them and I’m like, that doesn’t sound very good. But I was walking through them with this coach and they were talking about how it actually was a good thing that it’s eyes and ears for danger that you’re talking about that when something is not quite right,

you see it, you’re expecting it. So it wasn’t all bad. So I was thinking about that so much as I read through this book about that experience of learning that anxiety can be a good thing.

DH: So, as you know, LearningWell is focused on issues around college student well-being, including student mental health. And I was struck when you were in the book talking about this relationship between stress and anxiety and resilience,

because I think resilience is a term that gets thrown around a lot when we talk about Gen Z mental health or the younger generation, they don’t have resilience, yadda yadda yadda. Can you talk about the relationship there, between stress and resilience? 

WS: Yeah, I think that’s such an important relationship because we all have stress. And I think the key element is that the stress that we all go through in our everyday modern life, that is actually the building block to our resilience and talk about flipping a bad thing into good. So the stress that you go through that you get through that can instead of just wearing you down think of it as building up a wall to your resilience and being able to get through next time even a harder thing because you got through this medium hard thing And that really points to another topic that I talk about a

lot in the book, which is mindset. How we approach our stress and our anxiety -provoking situations in our life is so strongly influenced by the mindset that we have.

Is this a terrible burden or is it a challenge that I’m going to give myself today to see whether I could reach that challenge. And in reaching it, really celebrate.

That is an achievement that I was able to attain. There’s so much in my life that I have switched in terms of just the mindset that I approach it with. It is transforming in the way that you wake up in the morning and that you approach the world. But that’s the core right there, switching your stress response into a building block for your life’s resilience.

DH: Yeah, I loved that. I think we all talk about moving from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, and I think that’s a pretty well-known term, but I loved this idea of this activist mindset that you brought up, that you can choose to change the things in your life. 

WS: Absolutely, and it is activist, positive that I think if you’re saying, oh, I don’t know how to do it, the other way you can ease into it is use your friend and relationship network. There are, I guarantee there are people in your life that on both sides,

some that are negativity things and some that have a wonderful mindset, maybe not about everything, but about certain things and maybe about things that you have as a challenge in your life? Can you look around? I’ve had so many kind of mindset models, particularly in my science career. Being a neuroscientist is really competitive and there’s a lot of pressure around grants, but I’ve always admired those scientists, really that had fun with their science that approached everything about their work with this sense of curiosity and joy, and use that as a model if you’re not finding it easily in yourself. And I guarantee, just look around, be a little bit observant, and you will find those people to be your activist mindset /positive mindset role models.

DH: Yeah, I love that. And it’s so funny. I think it comes so naturally to some people and there are other people, probably myself included, where you definitely have to work at it. As our listeners are largely in academia, professors, student affairs professionals, administrators, those who work with students, how can they take the wisdom from your book and apply it to their work with students? 

WS: I think number one tool is particularly in the book Good Anxiety, the last third of the entire book is a toolbox to decrease your anxiety, to lower the volume on your anxiety. And all of you out there, advisors, people in student affairs, deal with stressed out, highly anxious students. It’s the age that we are working in. And they need tools to approach it. And these were designed and they were written to be actionable. And yes, all of them are science-based, but some of them are easy to use. One of my favorites that I use often in my own life is call your funniest friend.

Call the friend that makes you laugh or go visit them in their dorm room. Things that you know will put you in a better mood. That’s the quickest way to flip your anxiety.

Maybe that’s too social if you’re too deep into your anxiety, but that’s where you can turn to your favorite music, your favorite show, things that make you smile,

things that make you laugh. I even bring this into my Instagram feed that has a large number of puppies and kittens and beautiful pictures of locations and art. And no, I don’t stare at people that have better houses and better cars And I do. I stare at beautiful locations and puppies and kittens that always make me smile.

DH: I love that idea. I think one of the things that we hear all the time and we’ve heard in our work for years is specifically around faculty feeling uncomfortable about having these conversations about mental health because they are not mental health professionals and they don’t want to cross a line. One of the things I love about this book is the framing of everyday anxiety and taking that away from the clinical anxiety. I think there is this tendency specifically now with the young adult mental health crisis to pathologize normal feelings that we all have. And I think that this book does such a good job of taking that back and taking that idea of anxiety is a normal feeling that we all have. And how do we deal with it on a normal level instead of immediately taking it to a clinical perspective?

WS: Yeah, I think of it as closing the door on that clinical perspective. I don’t have an MD, so I cannot speak to clinical anxiety, but I could speak to everyday anxiety because I have plenty of experience with that. And what I would encourage all the professors and all the administrators that counsel those professors is to be personal. Have you dealt with anxiety? Maybe you dealt with certain kinds of anxiety when you were a student. Share those experiences. Nobody’s asking you to diagnose and treat somebody with clinical anxiety. But the ask is that we all need to show a higher level of empathy, because there’s much more of it out there than there ever was either when we were in school or even just five years ago, for example. And everybody can do that. Everybody can be empathetic. Everybody can share their own experiences with anxiety, funny, or serious. Both are useful. And it’s just a challenge to to think about how can I find an appropriate way to help these students? Because I know each and every faculty out there wants their students to learn. And sometimes it requires some creativity around the levels of anxiety that comes up around certainly exam time. 

DH: Sure. And I, you know, another thing I just loved is when you talk about good anxiety can lead you to do all of these amazing things. It helps push you. And there was this feeling in the book of you can harness that anxiety, that good anxiety. 

WS: Exactly. What I like to describe is a three-step process to get to good anxiety.

One is to learn how to turn the volume down in your own anxiety. Nobody can function particularly well when anxiety is too high. So that’s where the movement, walking,

a great walk is a quick, immediate way to decrease your anxiety levels. And this is not a wives’ tale. This is from clinical studies showing that a 10 -minute walk can decrease your anxiety levels, breath work is one of the fastest ways also to quell your anxiety, and then all the tools in the last third of the book. Second, we haven’t talked about the second step of good anxiety and it’s a really important one,

which is understanding why you might be having these feelings of fear or worry that is the definition of anxiety. And when you ask yourself that, where does that get you? That flips you over to the reason for that worry, which is your values, the things that you hold dear. So I might be super, super worried about money and my next paycheck and whether I’m gonna pay for college or can I buy house that I want to buy and you could be subsumed with anxiety, but it says that your kind of financial stability is very important to you. There’s nothing wrong with that. And it’s, in fact, it’s useful to understand what you hold very dear to you, whether it’s financial stability, nothing wrong with that, your relationships, maybe there’s a lot of anxiety around, around friends or family members, whether it’s your job, of course, that means worry about job, means that you want to do your job, that you want to be seen, and you want to do a great job. Often on the flip side of that worry is something beautiful that you hold dear, and that also was my personal realization as I was writing the book, and it really does help me flip the story on that fear or that worry. That still comes up normally, I’m a normal human being, but it’s, oh yeah, I have always just needed a certain level of financial stability or a certain kind of group of friends to feel good.

And then the third step is to transform your anxiety into a gift or superpower and that is the flip to good anxiety. And the easiest example is turning a catastrophizing what if list that we all have had in our brain into a to -do list.

And this takes advantage of the fact that your what if lists aren’t about irrelevant things. They’re about very relevant things in your life. And flipping it to a to do list makes you more productive and uses that worry about things that you hold dear and puts it to use.

So that’s my favorite and easiest-to-apply superpower of anxiety, which is turning a what if list into a to do list. 

DH: I definitely will be using that one because first of all, I love the word catastrophizing. I used it all the time, but I have a tendency towards that. I will definitely use that going forward. I also love lists, but I just wanted to quickly circle back because I think this idea of reflecting and understanding yourself and who you are and what makes you tick is such an important piece of this. So I really appreciate everything you said about that and what drives you and what drives your anxiety. But overall, I just really want to say thank you so much for this book. It was such a wonderful tool, and I will definitely be passing it along. I encourage all of our listeners to read it, but also to look at your TED Talk and, self-promotional plug, to watch your incredible presentation at the Coalition for Transformational Education’s conference because it was truly a highlight. Thank you so much, Wendy, for coming to join us on LearningWell Radio. 

WS: Thank you so much for having me, Dana. It was a pleasure. 

Ian Elsner: This has been LearningWell Radio, a production of LearningWell. For more information about our work, go to learningwellmag.org. And if you like what we’re doing, leave us a rating or review. Thanks so much for listening.

Shifting Gears

Students at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering enter their studies with a sense of hope and purpose. They are often young people with an interest in public welfare and socially conscious work, setting out to design auspicious futures for an ever-changing, ever-complicated world. But what happens when four years of stress, hustle culture, and careerism obscure the sense of purpose that brought them to engineering in the first place? When students lose sight of their purpose, the effect is not only demoralizing in the short term — it can have lifelong implications for wellbeing, work engagement, and fulfillment.

Dr. Harly Ramsey observed firsthand how an engineering education culture can obscure purpose and impair wellbeing in students as a professor at the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC. She has been dedicated to offsetting this trend for several years, teaching in the Viterbi School’s Engineering in Society program (formerly the Engineering Writing Program), a unique program designed to integrate humanities topics such as ethics and communication into the engineering curriculum. It is from this intersection of thought that Ramsey, a professor of technical communication practice whose PhD is in English, approaches her role as an engineering educator. In 2021, The Coalition for Transformational Education gave USC a grant to launch the Vision Venture video series, an interview project that connects engineering students to recent alumni as a way of helping students reconnect to their sense of purpose, agency, and direction. 

When, in response to the Vision Venture project, Ramsey’s students participated in a series of anonymous surveys related to wellbeing, she was surprised by the troubling results. “These students sit in front of me twice a week. I feel like I know them.” Yet, she recalls, “I had no idea how stressed and isolated many of them felt.” She was also struck by her students’ warped perception of time, noting that many had lost sight of the future — and forgotten the reasons they wanted to be engineers in the first place. 

That lost sense of purpose is now central to Ramsey’s research, as well as to her approach to teaching. “The process of education that we put engineering students through in the course of four years has been found to decrease their interest in public welfare,” Ramsey says. Indeed, a 2014 article by sociologist Erin A. Cech, which Ramsey cites as influential to her work, reveals that despite widespread discourse on “the importance of training ethical, socially conscious engineers,” longitudinal data suggest that “students’ interest in public welfare concerns may actually decline over the course of their engineering education.”

“As a moral agent and a person who cares about my students,” Ramsey says she feels obligated to use the classroom to promote purpose and agency, laying the foundation for wellbeing after graduation. “Enough of them need help; let’s bring it to them,” she said.

It was with this mission in mind that Ramsey joined forces with Dr. Julie Loppacher, the director of USC’s Kortschak Center for Learning and Creativity, to bring 5-minute self-regulation exercises into the classroom. Loppacher and Ramsey designed the accessible, co-curricular model for improving student wellbeing, learning, and sense of purpose based on self-determination theory and presented the results at the 2023 Frontiers in Education Conference.

The culture of “pride in the grind culture” among engineering students adds to the collective stigma around mental health.

Triage Time

Stress and its impact on mental health are pervasive issues among college students across all disciplines, but for engineering students, the problem may be especially pronounced. A demanding academic workload, pressure to perform well in exams, and “a culture of normalized stress” among engineering students all contribute to the phenomenon of lost time (and loss of purpose) that Ramsey identified among her students and for which she coined the term “triage time” in 2022. Hustle culture, grind culture, careerism — by any name, normalized stress can be detrimental to students’ sense of agency and meaning, as the pressure to succeed obscures the pursuit of passion and purpose. For some, a social environment that rewards stress and encourages burnout for bragging points compounds the pressure. As 2024 Viterbi School graduate Jesse Tennant put it, “There is an environment where many are struggling and few want to admit it. Students seem to ‘out-stress’ each other. Many students stack their schedules to the max and constantly talk about how busy they are.” This, Tennant adds, culminates in “a cycle of escalating stress, where interacting with classmates can make one feel inadequate for not being stressed enough.” 

The sentiment echoes the findings of a 2023 report from the Harvard Graduate School of Education that rates of anxiety and depression among 18- to 25-year-olds, which are twice as high as rates among teens, are exacerbated by a pre-professional hustle culture that favors employability and income over purpose. That careerist approach to education may pose financial and social barriers to leading a meaningful life, causing some students to neglect the pursuit of joy and purposeful work.

While the culture of stress is not unique to the field of engineering, Tennant says, “I believe that engineering students have a unique learning experience. Many engineering classes routinely have low exam and project scores. I took a class last semester where the average for every exam was below 50%. While the class was curved at the end of the semester, scoring in the traditional F range is demoralizing and can make you question your intelligence and whether you ‘belong’ in the program.” Moreover, research suggests that engineering students, many of whom operate in a climate of normalized — and, at times, celebrated — stress, may be especially reluctant to seek help. The culture of “pride in the grind culture” among engineering students adds to the collective stigma around mental health, Ramsey says, compounding the barriers to getting help. 

Taking five

Self-determination theory identifies three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Loppacher and Ramsey wanted to test whether dedicating 5 minutes of class time to self-regulation techniques, such as goal-setting, journaling, and cognitive reframing, could help students meet these needs. “Emotions have an impact on our cognitive state and ability to learn,” Loppacher explains. “They can be profoundly positive, and they can be profoundly limiting.” Self-regulation techniques are academic and emotional tools that improve a person’s cognitive state, preparing them to learn, feel, and be better. Each technique is grounded in data, which Loppacher shares with students to provide a basis for every prompt. Rather than simply telling students that goal-setting increases self-efficacy and achievement, for example, Loppacher presents research that students who set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals are more likely to attain them. Participation is optional, and exercises are capped at 5 minutes at the start of class. 

At a time when youth mental health is considered a national emergency and experts fret over a seemingly irremediable generational divide, fostering open, intergenerational dialogue can dispel panic and misunderstanding.

While some professors may be reluctant to yield valuable class time to student wellbeing, restricting the exercises to 5 minutes and conducting research on their efficacy ensure that the process is accessible and productive. Ramsey and Loppacher emphasize that professors are not expected to be mental health professionals, nor should they be obligated to go beyond their scope of expertise or deduct learning time from their classes. In fact, Ramsey says, “Whether or not professors care about student wellbeing, self-determination theory is a learning tool that helps students perform better in class.” By fostering holistic learners, this approach can also increase professors’ self-efficacy by improving classroom engagement and performance. 

The student response

Ramsey and Loppacher will expand the program beyond the Viterbi School of Engineering in the 2024-2025 academic year, as they recognize a ubiquitous need for co-curricular supports. Loppacher conducts optional interviews with students who have participated in courses that implemented self-regulation techniques and concludes that there are many benefits to the program, both obvious and subtle. Many have noted the importance of intergenerational understanding as it relates to stress, hustle culture, and wellbeing. At a time when youth mental health is considered a national emergency and experts fret over a seemingly irremediable generational divide, fostering open, intergenerational dialogue can dispel panic and misunderstanding. “Intergenerational relationships are extremely important in our lives, especially as learners,” Loppacher says. In one interview, a student stated, “The intergenerational recognition of my stress levels was incredibly powerful.” When asked about the role faculty and staff play in student mental health, Tennant echoed this idea of recognition and care. “While many professors and staff genuinely care about students, this should be the standard, rather than an exceptional attribute,” he says. “Students should feel confident each semester that their mental health will be prioritized by the entire institution, rather than hoping they have a caring professor.”

The idea of care — for others, for oneself, and for the future — reverberates throughout many students’ reflections on the 5-minute self-regulation exercises. “The demonstration of care from my professor was the most important thing,” one student reflected. “This isn’t just a writing class,” said another, “you actually care.” Research underscores the importance of care: in the 2018 Gallup Alumni Survey, alumni who reported having “someone who cared about me as a person” during their undergraduate years were more than twice as likely to report high levels of well-being and work engagement later in life — but fewer than 5 percent of alumni said they had. Some students have reported that a mere acknowledgement of their “human-ness” by a professor was novel: “We’re all people…engineering is a very work-heavy major…so it’s helpful to have a reminder that you are not a machine…you need to do these things [self-regulation strategies] for the human part of yourself.”

The Jed Foundation at 25

The Jed Foundation (JED) annual gala in New York City never fails to impress. The beautifully choreographed event at Cipriani’s in Lower Manhattan draws participants of all kinds, from celebrities and well-heeled patrons to behavioral health advocates and young people from across the country. But behind the production and couture is a non-profit start-up with a remarkable influence on the mental health and well-being of high school and college students — and one of the country’s most significant and little-known success stories.  

This year’s gala was particularly inspirational, breaking records in attendance and fundraising while featuring personalities such as TV anchor Savannah Sellers and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who bestowed a lifetime achievement award on his friend and former college classmate, Phillip Satow. The gala honored the twenty-fifth year of the country’s leading non-profit dedicated to protecting emotional health and preventing suicide in young people, as well as the retirement of Satow, its co-founder, who has moved from Chairman of the Board of Directors to Chairman Emeritus and Board member. 

Phil and Donna Satow launched The Jed Foundation in 2000 in acknowledgement of the life and sudden death of their youngest child, Jed, who died by suicide two years earlier when he was a student at the University of Arizona. What the Satows chose to do with their unimaginable grief would change how colleges and universities view their role in protecting their students from tragedies such as Jed’s.

JED’s work in the past twenty-five years has not only provided an evidence-based model for suicide prevention, it has brought to the surface the important and sensitive truth that, for many, the college years are the most developmentally challenging of their lives. 

In accepting his award, Satow told the story of when, shortly after Jed’s death, the president of his son’s university asked him and his wife Donna the question that would lead to the launch of the Foundation. “What can I do to improve the safety of my 30,000 students?” Satow, who was already a highly successful pharmaceutical executive, responded in the best way he knew how: he and Donna devoted themselves to finding an answer to the question. 

Satow’s first “kitchen cabinet” was made up of medical professionals, suicide prevention experts, and business colleagues. After years of raising awareness and developing JED’s Comprehensive Approach to Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention for Colleges and Universities, the organization began offering JED Campus. Launched in 2013, the program engages colleges and universities in collaborative work with a dedicated JED Campus Advisor over the course of four years. After conducting an initial needs assessment, the Campus Advisor draws on the data to create a strategic plan with actionable opportunities that span seven domains: develop life skills; promote social connectedness; identify students at risk; increase help-seeking behavior; provide mental health and substance misuse services; follow crisis-management procedures; and promote means safety. 

In April 2024, JED published an impact report detailing improvements to student mental health at schools that completed JED Campus titled A Decade of Improving College Mental Health Systems: JED Campus Impact Report. A decade of data (2013 to 2023) from JED Campus schools and the Healthy Minds Network survey were analyzed and found schools that completed JED Campus saw statistically significant improvements in student mental health at the end of the program. Students at participating institutions were 25% less likely to report a suicide attempt, 13% less likely to report suicide planning, and 10% less likely to report suicidal ideation. Students whose schools make more progress on their JED strategic plans are more likely to demonstrate improvement. 

JED Campus is now in over 450 colleges and universities in the United States, reaching 5.6 million students, with the core of its programming expanding into high schools and school districts throughout the country. In 2022, JED received a $15 million grant from Mackenzie Scott, which Satow hopes will triple the number of students it reaches over the next several years, someday reaching more than 50 percent of colleges and universities. JED has recently doubled its staff from 40 to 95 to cover its expanding programming, which includes webinars and trainings, original research and reports, consulting services, public awareness campaigns, youth mental health resources, and policy, advocacy, and government relations work on the local, state, and federal levels. 

Shortly after the gala, Satow spoke with LearningWell about these accomplishments, including living up to expectations, proving the organization’s impact, and finally being able to answer the University of Arizona president’s question. 

LearningWell: Did you believe back in 2000 that the Jed Foundation would grow to this size and scope?

Phillip Satow: In many ways, yes. This was a hope that I had after I lost my son, when I thought about how many other kids were in similar situations and how many other families would be affected by a loss like ours. And here was a college president, obviously a very bright man, and he had no constructive idea what to do. And it dawned on me that we could have an incredible impact if we could establish a safety net under thousands of kids across so many campuses.

Shortly after Jed died, I brought together a number of experts and posed the question that I was asked by Jed’s college president.  They responded by suggesting the applicability of a model, sourced from the U.S.  Air Force and published in The British Medical Journal, with outcome data that showed it actually reduced suicide. So we had a model with evidence, and when we first started, one of the things we thought about was how broad our approach should be. Should we think horizontally or vertically? Should we bring this information to one school at a time, or should we bring awareness to all campuses in the United States and let them know a prevention model like this could really work to reduce suicide on their campuses? We ended up going horizontal, and even though we were small, we wanted to make sure that as many college counseling centers we could get to would have this information. I really did have that dream.

It would be very hard for many presidents not to feel obligated to call on JED, because we know we can indeed make a difference on their campuses.

LW: For a non-profit, JED is very entrepreneurial. You started outside of higher education and now serve so many colleges and universities and high schools. Do you ever think about how what you built can be applied in other scenarios? 

PS: I do, often. The idea for the model was far-sighted in many ways. In boundaried communities, you have leadership in a position to say, “Here is our policy that I am asking you to follow.” If you look at suicide in general in the United States, so many occur in boundaried communities like prisons and large health care systems. I believe there is something to our model that allows it to be applied more broadly than in colleges or in other academic spaces. We now consult with corporations and other organizations like national fraternities and even professional sports organizations. 

LW: What were some of the big milestones for you in JED’s 25-year history?

PS: I think there were a few things that really changed our growth trajectory. The decision to put “boots on the ground” made a big difference. At first, we put our model out there, but it was up to the schools to implement it. Over time, we decided it was important to have people assigned to schools and committees formed that we could collaborate with. That became the JED Campus program. Another major milestone for us came about due to the pandemic, which of course made things difficult for us, as for everyone, but it did bring the JED message alive – that mental health was an important priority for schools. And the third area that really distinguishes us is our data collection effort. We have an extraordinary amount of data that we can continuously display as evidence of our impact. From the beginning, we were always looking to collect support data for our impact framework.  I think that’s what sets us apart.

LW: When did you feel as though you had an answer to the question Jed’s college president asked you? 

PS: We had a subjective feeling as we were rolling out the JED Campus program into hundreds of schools but in the last couple of years there’s been real evidence of this. The American Council on Education released a survey in 2021 that showed that over 70% of college presidents reported that student mental health was their number one priority. Our impact report really shows how the needle has moved. Students at JED schools were 25% less likely to report a suicide attempt. This is all real data that shows how much has changed since 2000. 

LW: What directions do you see JED going in now?

PS: There’s much more to do in the college space. I think that, with the data we have, it would be very hard for many presidents not to feel obligated to call on JED, because we know we can indeed make a difference on their campuses. There are also around over 20,000 high schools in the United States, and we have a lot of work to do there. We’ve just launched a partnership with AASA, The Superintendents Association,  with the goal to help many K-12 school districts implement a comprehensive approach to mental health and suicide prevention

I think we will end up expanding significantly, but at the same time, we don’t want our success to hamper us. I know from my business career that if you take on too much, you may not do anything very well. And when we’re talking about kids’ lives, you’ve got to do everything superbly. So, I think the real challenge will be how we successfully assure high quality control in all those thousands of high schools and colleges. I don’t think anyone wants to see JED, as we continue to expand, be an organization of hundreds of employees.  We’ll need to use the latest technology in every way possible in order to provide excellent support in each school we serve.

LW: What do you think has been the secret to JED’ success?PS: First of all, it’s the people, starting with John MacPhee, our CEO for 12 years. Also our medical and clinical personnel, and of course, our excellent development department. We have also used leverage very well to scale our work – our partnership with AASA, The Superintendents Association, is an example. We are not just doing this one-school-at-a-time, and that has really benefited us. And the last thing would be our focus on outcomes data. Most organizations in the mental health field don’t have the data to prove that what they’re doing works. I think the fact that I came from the pharmaceutical industry (as did John) was helpful in that regard. We know that, in the health care world,you can’t promote anything that doesn’t have data to support it. I think that’s been a highly important concept that has been transferred to our work at the Jed Foundation. 

LearningWell Radio in Conversation with Dan Porterfield

The following is a transcript of LearningWell Radio’s interview with Dan Porterfield on his new book “Mindset Matters: The Power of College to Activate Lifelong Growth.” You can listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Marjorie Malpiede:

This is Learning Well Radio, the podcast of Learning Well Magazine, covering the intersection of higher education and lifelong wellbeing. I’m Marjorie Malpiede, the editor of Learning Well and your host. Today, Dan Porterfield is president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a global organization committed to realizing a free just and equitable society. He’s also the former president of Franklin and Marshall College, where from 2011 to 2018, he led the achievement of a number of student-centered milestones, including tripling the enrollment of low-income students and expanding student wellness and career services. Dan’s new book is called Mindset Matters, the Power of College to Activate Lifelong Growth. He joins us today at Learning Well Radio to talk about how higher education can achieve its promise to shape mindsets that enable students to thrive in an uncertain and rapidly changing world. Dan, welcome to Learning Well Radio.

Dan Porterfield:

Thank you, Marjorie, and thank you for that description of my book. It’s better than I could have done on my own.

Marjorie Malpiede:

I’ve got to tell you, I loved your book. Are you ready to give us some highlights?

Dan Porterfield:

Sure thing.

Marjorie Malpiede:

First, I wanted to ask, and it’s so obvious from the first page, this book really comes from a place of deep experience for you in terms of your mentoring students. Can you talk about those experiences first and how they may have led you or compelled you to write the book?

Dan Porterfield:

Oh, thank you, Marjorie. I was fortunate that I was exposed to education and great educators from the time I was growing up in Baltimore City as a child, which included having great coaches and mentors throughout all the different experiences I had playing sports in Baltimore, going to Loyola High School, later going to Georgetown University. I have a huge list of caring adults from my developmental times who played important roles in my life by setting an example, investing in me, listening and caring, encouraging me, sometimes challenging me or criticizing me, all those different kinds of experiences. But when I was younger, I coached basketball, I worked with court supervised youth, I worked with immigrant families in their homes in Washington, D.C., I taught in prisons and I had a set of experiences in my twenties that allowed me to be an educator, and that motivated me, inspired me to pursue a PhD and to envision college education as the place where I would develop my career. I got into working at the college level, having already both benefited from mentorship and been a mentor many times over. And so I do bring that joy to this book and everything I do.

Marjorie Malpiede:

Well, it comes through in the pages. The other thing I want to ask you, Dan, you were a college president. You were also particularly attuned to the students’ development in a way that you don’t always see in the president’s office.

Dan Porterfield:

I don’t know what to say about how other people get into this role of leading a college and university and what experiences they have, but my life has been so enriched by being a teacher and a mentor and a coach. So one of the things I’ve always looked for is more when I was at Georgetown University, I was senior vice president for strategic development and also an English professor I taught most semesters. But about five years into my experience at Georgetown, my wife and I chose to move into a residence hall with our three daughters who at that age were six, five and zero. And so, for eight years before going to F and M, we lived in the ground floor of Copley Residence Hall and were the faculty family. I was teaching, I was working at the senior level and I was living on campus, and all those roles were complementary of course, but the opportunity to be present 24/7 to the student experience at Georgetown was just so enlightening and inspiring to me. It made me want to be a president that was in close touch with the student body.

Marjorie Malpiede:

The book is called Mindset Matters. Great title by the way. And you start by describing growth and fixed mindsets, with a conclusion that encouraging a growth mindset is one of the major goals of higher education. Can you elaborate on that with an eye towards why, as you argue in the book, it’s more important than ever?

Dan Porterfield:

Yes. So first of all, Carol Dweck is the brilliant psychologist and professor of psychology who came up with the concept of growth and fixed mindsets. When I read her book Mindset years ago, it influenced how I taught my students at Georgetown and later at Franklin and Marshall, because Professor Dweck came to see through her research that people adopt a view about their capacity to handle change and to be able to grow in the face of change, to meet new challenges, to learn new skills, to climb new mountains, to develop new capacities. And she found that people tended to adopt either the mindset, I can do it, I’m a learner, or the opposite: I’m not good at that. I found myself as a professor and as a leader on Georgetown’s campus, so inspired by the idea that my actions as the professor, as the faculty and residents could directly influence a young person’s lifelong perception of their capacity to take on new challenges, to lead their learning, to be able to expand their capability. This idea that our capability and our talent is malleable and not fixed is I think first of all, absolutely true. And secondly, a great resource for educators because it reminds us if we can ignite in our students their capacity for self-development, if we can help them think of themselves as equipped and able to lead their own learning, we are giving them the gift of themselves for life. Be the person that ignites, in a younger student, their self-confidence that whatever may come, they can take responsibility for leading their learning. 

Marjorie Malpiede:

And to be on the receiving end of that, Dan, is so hopeful, and I got to say unusual in terms of the way many of us went through our education, which is What are you good at? Oh, okay, you’re good at that. And I think that’s just such an interesting insight, to think, You know what? I don’t really know what I’m going to be or do until I explore it more. And to your point, college is the place to do it.

Dan Porterfield:

Well, I think that also just for anybody listening, think about the educators in your life who were most influential. Almost always, the ones you lean on were the ones that said, You can do it and let me help you be able to know you can do it. Let me challenge you, instruct you, motivate you, and then express my faith in you. And I got that sense of educators having faith in me all across my learning journey from third grade on, but especially the Jesuits who taught me at high school and at Georgetown University who has a set, and I had at least 10 or 12 different professors or teachers who were Jesuits again and again, their worldview, their understanding of the human person was that we were beings in development, and that their job was to foster and nurture that developmental process, not to limit it.

Marjorie Malpiede:

In the book, you talk about five different kinds of mindsets that are critical to this holistic approach, which again is the Jesuit way of looking at learning, and you illuminate these with stories about students themselves. It’s one of the things I love most about your book because it was the best way to illustrate your point by talking about the students’ journeys. Can you describe those five mindsets and maybe tell us a little bit about the students that for you sort of characterize the best of those.

Dan Porterfield:

So overall, I believe that growth mindsets express themselves in certain directions. What I explored was how the residential college experience fosters in students growth mindsets for discovery to be the one that can look for answers. No one’s thought to look for creation, the one who can make something that didn’t exist before for mentorship, the one who can give mentoring so that another person can develop what’s great inside of them for teamwork, for collaboration, for working as a part of a group in a way that advances the power of the collective. And then for striving. And by striving, what I mean by that is that we drive our growth in a way that the growth is in pursuit of what we value most, that our values and our growth are reinforcing. So those five growth mindsets I think are exceptionally valuable in today’s economy and today’s society. 

The reason I say that is because as I think we all know, there’s so much change coming faster and faster. What is the cause of that change? A lot of it is technology, the rise of artificial intelligence being only the latest example. All of our jobs are evolving constantly because of technological change and because of the plethora of new knowledge, there’s also change happening demographically. There’s change happening in terms of the climate, the ecosystem, and there’s change happening in terms of communications technologies which connect people in far-flung places so much more easily. So if you think of the individual human being making her way in a world of rapid change, more change faster and faster and faster change, what is it that can allow for coherence and a feeling of empowerment? It’s that you think I have the capacity to thrive in change because I can be the one that discovers because I can create, because I can partner with people to do something together because I can learn on the go as a mentee and because I can pursue my values, my growth and my values, not just do what somebody else tells me to do. And so I find this notion of growth mindset is even more empowering if you think about being in a very dynamic sort of turbulent, disruptive ecosystem and economy because it centers the individual on our ability to adapt, to learn, and to grow, to meet new challenges. Now then explicated these five mindsets by telling the stories of the learning journeys of students I knew very well at Franklin and Marshall College.

“Their understanding of the human person was that we were beings in development, and that their job was to foster and nurture that developmental process, not to limit it.”

Marjorie Malpiede:

So one of the things that struck me is let’s start with the striver. I’ve got to say that sort of interested me the most. I love that term. You gave the examples of Julia and Aisha, amazing women with great stories to tell. So, again, in your mind and from your experience with them, they have achieved this striver mindset. Can you give us a little bit of what it means to be a striver, how these particularly young women sort of personified that?

Dan Porterfield:

So for me, a striver is first of all the person that’s always relentlessly looking for new experience, for new opportunity, for growth, for the chance to have a different kind of experience because they’ve got a new interest that sparked their curiosity. The strivers are the people on a college campus that are constantly raising their hand and saying, Yes, I’ll join in. Yes, let’s try to do that. They’re the ones that are inventing new events for people to attend or new clubs for students to grow where they’re the ones who are connecting what they’re learning in class to what they might do over the summer. They’re trying out and adopting new possibilities all the time. And the key though for striving is that they’re doing it not simply to achieve a job or to get an award – they’re doing it because they value that growth.

So in the case of Julia Ramsey, she came to Franklin and Marshall College with a deep yearning to be the student who would do it all and achieve the best grades and be the top one. But then she got sick and she was suffering from a condition that essentially affected the tissue in her muscle, very hard to diagnose. It made her exhausted. After a very strong freshman year, she came back for sophomore year and she simply couldn’t stay awake, she couldn’t keep her head up to study, she was lethargic all the time, and while rehearsing for a play she actually collapsed. She was diagnosed with a condition called EDS. She went through a process of trying to get better using all of her willpower. She was always the kid who could work harder, work longer, came back to school, collapsed again. And this time when she went home, she had to have treatment and medical care for more than 18 months.

And so this goal, she had to be the top student, was dramatically disrupted by this condition. And so instead she began to ask herself and talk with her family about: What do I value most, even more than being the number one student, which is kind of extrinsic; what’s intrinsic? What do I value now, as I’ve had so much taken away from me months and months lying in bed, unable to do anything? And she basically came to realize that some simple everyday pleasures like walking around on a campus and taking in what’s around her or having meaningful conversations with people or feeling that she could set her own schedule, that those things were even more important and more true to her than being the number one student in the school. And with the help of a who advised her try to do everything you can, just 5% better than you were, she gradually came to realize that she could control her illness a bit by dialing back the amount of time she spent on studies and dialing back that idea of being number one and dialing up a kind of learning and a growth that was speaking to her experience of being a human being enjoying life in and of itself.

And so she didn’t lower her expectations for herself. She re-centered her expectations on what was most valuable. Then her professors helped her because when she came back to school after that 18 month time on leave, now that her classmates, some of them had graduated that she started with, she eased back into school. She was able to balance what her body could do with her yearning for everyday experience. She graduated then over a course of a couple years with this feeling, even though she wouldn’t have chosen that path of struggle, she was glad it happened because it put her in touch with the values that she wanted to live well beyond college. I look at that story as a way of reminding people that if we can encourage students to strive for growth, but to do it with a deep appreciation for what they value most, we’ve got a great shot at helping students experience fulfillment. And that’s something so many college students today are struggling to feel a sense of fulfillment, sometimes going deep to just ask yourself what is it that really matters can help us focus on the inherently meaningful instead of the more performatively meaningful, if you will.

Marjorie Malpiede:

I am so glad of your explanation of that, and I realize this in the book, but one of my follow up questions to you, I think you’ve pretty much have answered because one of the things you think of when you think of strivers, I mean a lot of strivers are striving themselves into unhealthy situations and from the work that we do in covering student mental health, a lot of, in fact, I think it’s the number one identified source of stress on campus is reaching these academic milestones or making sure that you’re in every kind of leadership position that you’re stacking your resume, all these things that are kind of connote striving, but you are talking about something different, right?

Dan Porterfield:

Absolutely. So in the case of Aisha – and Aisha is a pseudonym – she was a remarkable achiever who came to America from West Africa at the age of, I think it was about 13, was reunited with her father and a stepmother in New York had to learn English on the fly, was expected as the eldest daughter to perform many household duties. And her father really was not comfortable with her even going to college. She had a bit of a battle royale with her father to have the opportunity to leave home and go to Franklin and Marshall, and he was very concerned that she would lose her identity as his daughter, that she would be inauthentic to how he understood she should live her life as a woman, which to him meant she’d returned to Africa for a marriage that he would arrange. And so Aisha at Franklin and Marshall College was this incredible, super engaged student with extraordinary learning, constant leadership and growth.

But when she went home to New York, she had to subordinate all of that. She had lived two identities because that school identity at home would’ve been deeply, deeply threatening to her father. And one of the things that she came to recognize is that she deeply valued having a relationship with her younger siblings and her father and stepmother, even though her father held these constraining views, these kind of older worldview, that she was willing to negotiate two identities and two lives because it’s so mattered to her to have her younger siblings in her life. She was an amazing student. She went on to win a George Mitchell scholarship and to study in Northern Ireland. She’s doing great things with her life now, but for her striving meant finding some kind of a measure of peace with being a bridge person with a foot in two worlds, not having to choose one or the other, and that striving is going to be her life calling basically to have both parts of her identity alive in her, not to have to choose one or the other.

Marjorie Malpiede:

I loved both of those stories and both of them, and I think all of the stories that you tell eliminate another important lesson, which is all of the mentors and supporters along the way that they encountered in college. So I want to turn next to some of the advice that you provide. I think that some of the most important messages here actually come from your subtitle, right, the Power of college to activate Lifelong Growth, many schools throughout the country, and you talk about what it takes to really, and I would say again, back to your examples, really have those interventions with the adults on campus that will lead to this growth, this amazing growth in the mindset that you talk about. So what has to happen, I know it’s a huge and perhaps simplistic question, but what would you say has to happen to change higher education in order for it to fulfill this promise? It has,

Dan Porterfield:

I guess I’d like to say let’s double down on what’s working in terms of what really to ignite growth mindsets in 18 to 23 year olds, which is another way of saying to help young people claim control of their own future, to believe that they have a greatness within them that they can develop and they can apply whatever they do. What’s needed is one, to have caring adults, mentors of various types, including definitely faculty members active in their education, and lots of research has shown the power of caring and involved faculty in the development of young people. It’s probably the number one thing that people remember about their own college experience along with their close friendships. So that happens with faculty that help to inspire students to push themselves academically. It happens with faculty who serve as mentors and as guideposts to give students a place to come to reflect together on what they like to do with their lives or what they’re encountering as challenges.

It also happens through writing centers, through career centers, through coaches, through people that work in residence halls and facilitate collective learning that way. The most important thing I believe, to develop the talents of young people and the confidence they can keep developing those talents is educational relationships with adults. The second next thing that I think critically matters is strong peer experience recruiting and encouraging students who want to be active learners and who want to take the constant opportunity to say yes to growth. And there’s a lot of students out there that really want to go to college, really want to grow and develop themselves, and the single biggest barrier to those students going to have those opportunities is finances. And I really believe that the investment our institutions need to make is in faculty mentors and in student financial aid. Those two investments above all others will unlock opportunity.

A third thing that’s worth thinking about is how we can help students to sequence their learning so that they have the experience of yes, learning something and then knowing they’ve learned. So it’s both learning, documenting, seeing that you’ve learned, and then the third step is learning how you can do it again, and then finally learning that you love it and those are the elements of a growth mindset or that you sequence learning, you see that you’ve learned, you know can learn again and you know love learning. And when that comes together, it comes together often not because of single magic moments, but of a series of well sequenced learning opportunities. And I saw that over and over at Franklin and Marshall College throughout every level of the curriculum, the faculty were so committed to helping students sequence their learning. I tell four stories in the chapter on the mindset for discovery about students named Charisma Lambert and Eddie Alena and a student named Morgan, a student named Wyatt, and how in each case individual faculty spent the time to help them make the incremental learning that then builds for the next incremental learning and the next incremental learning.

And all that adds up to a tremendously powerful wave of understanding that I’m a learner.

Marjorie Malpiede:

And Dan, that leads to a very strong point you make in the book about post-college lifelong learning, and we don’t think about that enough, and I know just for my own sons who’ve gone through college, they all think about the milestones of graduation and they think learning sort of stops there when in fact what you’re describing is it’s a mindset that continues forever. Correct.

Dan Porterfield:

Well, success in today’s workforce and certainly tomorrow’s requires constant learning and the beauty of a great college education is that you will take away from that the confidence that you can drive your own learning in the future, and that’s critical in almost any field because the field itself is going to change constantly and also your responsibilities as you progress are going to grow. So you’ve almost got to keep learning. I think that the colleges could do maybe an even better job of helping not just providing learning experiences, but helping students document through portfolios or through different ways of developing resumes so that resumes aren’t achievements but more they are a record of continuous progression.

Marjorie Malpiede:

Reflection can help with that too.

Dan Porterfield:

Reflection is essential to a growth mindset because you have to not just learn, but know you’ve learned and know you can learn again.

Marjorie Malpiede:

I’m really glad that you mentioned affordability and access, the financing conundrum of whatever reforms we’re trying to make in higher education. So when I noticed a lot of the examples in your book were of students who were low income or first gen, and I wonder about the correlation between that and this hunger or real desire to pursue their education despite their financial circumstances. What did you witness there in terms of motivation?

Dan Porterfield:

And this, of course, I was witnessing this long before I went to Franklin and Marshall College because I’ve worked with first gen college goers and immigrants and members of lower income communities my whole life, and what’s just so beautiful to witness if you’re working as an educator with people who are searching for opportunity and who have faced disadvantages, is this hunger to learn and grow and give back. I’ve worked with thousands of first gen college students, I have yet to meet a single first gen college student who didn’t want to give back. It’s amazing, not one. And that’s the beauty of education that when you seek it, you love it, you want others to have it too. When I went to Franklin and Marshall College, a group of us on the board and the administration worked to develop what we call the next generation talent strategy through which we reorganized the financial priorities of the institution in order to triple our investment in need-based financial aid.

And we made a promise to every student admitted that we would meet their full demonstrated financial need with a package that was mostly a grant and did involve some work study and also $5,000 a year of loan. We did feel that having some loan was actually a help because we could have more low income students if students were having a small loan as a part of their college experience. And so when we tripled our aid budget, we began to think, well, where are we going to recruit our students? And we reached out, first of all, to the Lancaster Public Schools in Pennsylvania where F&M is and then to a set of access programs around the country that we’re working with motivated lower income students. Some of them you’re probably familiar with, the Posse program, one called SEO in New York, one that was called College Match in California, college Track in California and in New Orleans.

Then we began to reach out also to different public charter schools, the KIPP Educational Network Achievement First Uncommon Schools, Green Dot Noble were some of the ones we worked with, Breakthrough Collaborative, another access program. We also worked with some private schools that had scholarship programs. We had all this financial aid money and we wanted to recruit students who would really benefit from F&M. So we felt partnerships was essential, and through all those different partnerships, we identified students who had what we called the ingredients of talent that we were looking for as a talent strategy. It was not framed as exactly a diversity strategy, as important as diversity is what qualities of talent would predict success for first gen students at a very rigorous liberal arts school. And so our qualities we looked for were curiosity because if you go to a liberal arts college, you’re going to take classes that you’ve never studied before, maybe geology or maybe dance or maybe philosophy classes that weren’t in your high school as a part of the curriculum.

Without curiosity, you might wonder what am I even doing studying this stuff? A second thing we looked for was saying yes to opportunity. Even if you didn’t have a lot of opportunity, what opportunity could you say yes to? Was it babysitting after school? Was it tutoring other students in your school? Was it holding a job over the summer to help your family out? We saw that saying yes to opportunity as predictive of success in a college context where students need to take initiative and seek out opportunity. The third thing was resilience because F&M’s, a very hard school, rigorous school in terms of academic expectations, so everybody struggles through the learning process. If they’re being challenged, who having faced challenges in their life were able to meet those challenges, not because they overcame them all, but because if they got knocked down, they could get back up.

If they had a setback, they had some perspective to help them go forward or they could lean on the resources of their culture or their religion or their family as an inspiration in dealing with difficult times. The talent to have a vision for education, somebody say, is that talent? Yes. If you’re going to commit yourself to four years of doing something meaningful and hard, you’re going to borrow money. You’re going to say, leave home, you’re going to start off in this whole new world. Do you go because somebody told you to or because you have a vision for why it matters. So those qualities of talent, again, saying yes to opportunity, resilience, curiosity, and having a vision of education. Were so highly predictive of success that our first gen students at Franklin and Marshall College right off the bat, even their first year, achieved the same grades pretty much as the student body as a whole.

And later we started to see first gen students overperforming in terms of representation at summa and magna com laude, or secure winning prestigious scholarship competitions. The graduation rates were always at or above domestic students as a whole at F&M. And so what I’m trying to say here is that we need to look at all students as a collection of assets and capabilities and potential. There’s talent in every zip code and there’s hunger in every zip code, and there’s a special kind of combination of talent and hunger that we find in lower income communities. Amazing point. It’s a collective effort. The faculty are critical to this because the faculty bought into this idea that Franklin and Marshall could triple at basically our enrollment of Pell Grant students, which meant triple our Latino students, triple our African-American students, triple our rural students. Everything tripled and the school got even stronger because there were that many more highly engaged students. But there are individual faculty members that I can name a lot, but someone like Ken Hess in chemistry who committed himself to working with all these first gen pre-med students and really was this amazing facilitator for students right off the bat feeling and knowing that they belonged. Ken was just one of many that I admire so much because of the way that they created a climate that allowed incoming students from underrepresented backgrounds to think of themselves as the talent in our talent strategy, not the diversity in somebody else’s student body.

Marjorie Malpiede:

I love that distinction and I am glad you made it because a lot of schools who have done similar efforts, very well intentioned, have sort of forgotten that piece. If you focus on the numbers and not the belonging, it’s not going to work.

Dan Porterfield:

And that doesn’t mean there’s not going to then be challenges. I write about Charisma Lambert, a student from Newark who overcame the feeling of imposter syndrome during her first year at F&M, and for her, a critical breakthrough enabled by faculty was that she could use F&M to learn about dynamics of her life story and Newark’s life story, that the college was equipping her to have even more understanding of the causes and consequences of inequity. And so she more than belonged F&M was her power pack for the life she wanted to live, or a different student, Nadia Johnson, who came into F&M believing that as a first gen college kid, she should be pre-med because if she was a doctor, she could help people in our community, and the only thing was that wasn’t where her interests lie.

She was doing it because she was living the identity of a high powered, high achieving student, but her fulfillment, she realized wasn’t found through that avenue with faculty guiding her and supporting her, she took the risk of changing majors, went into sociology, nailed it, and now for the last six years has been a incredible educator in Baltimore city and public education working with students like her and so fulfilled by doing it for her imposter syndrome was living into an identity of the high achiever at first that didn’t actually fit with what she values most. These journeys of learning and discovery, of course, like all growth, there’s pain in the process. I try to write with permission from my mentees about the pain points because it is in pain often that we experience growth and awareness and ultimately a sense of purpose in our lives

Marjorie Malpiede:

And for their educational journeys and certainly what they’re going to be facing. I want to ask one last question, and again, it’s two or three parts, so forgive me, but it’s a little more philosophical. I loved your point in the book about the necessity for a growth mindset given the world we’re living in towards a universal good versus something that’s just an individual benefit. You argue that growth mindset setters can navigate rapid change towards good outcomes like improving the planet or expanding economic opportunity, but how do we get students to think in terms of these universal goods when so much in their world and in society encourages them to think inwardly?

Dan Porterfield:

I think that the one way to do that is by having as the overall educational environment, it’s very vibrant where students are able to be exposed in and out of class to the experiences of others, the needs of communities, the needs of the world where college is in part about a widening of perspective and a coming to see the relationship of self and other through all kinds of relationships with people in your neighborhood, with people in your country, with people on the other side of the planet. We’re all living in a network of mutuality and dependency as Dr. King said. And so I think that a rich educational environment constantly exposing students to new and encouraging them to take the risk of learning the new is the best way to invite students to choose the course for them that will allow them to give back, but give back in a way that’s resonant with their sense of identity.

That’s why I think that for some it’s about discovery, and so they need faculty present to help them see themselves as able to discover. For others it’s about making their own mark as a creator. For others, it’s about teamwork. There shouldn’t be one way to make a difference, but the environment should always be about growth and expanding our range of exposures, if you will. I end the book by writing about three students who all ended up at Franklin and Marshall College because it was pretty much the only option for them of a school like this. They all came from schools where almost nobody went to college. One is a Muslim immigrant whose name is Akbar Hussein, who came from Bangladesh, lived in a workers’ factory as a child in Saudi Arabia before coming to America. The second is a student named Marra Jones, who came from a highly segregated community in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where there was tremendous racial discrimination and educational inequality in the schools and public health systems and housing that she grew up with.

She found her way to F&M because of a single college advisor who encouraged her to push herself to a school like this. The third Sheldon, Ruby comes from central Pennsylvania from a small rural community, all white fundamentalist Christian where he had never encountered anybody who was black, who was gay, who was Muslim, who was Jewish. His exposure, he was the only one in school just about that went to college. Any exposure he had, his first two years of college was new. And those three, Akbar, Marra and Sheldon, each one of them is exemplary, but they’re also representative of the talent in their communities. Today, Akbar at age 30 or something is the chief policy advisor to the governor of Pennsylvania. Marra is a freshly minted clinical psychologist having earned her PhD at University of Illinois. After serving and Teach for America, Sheldon spent his junior year studying abroad, including in Bangladesh living with a Muslim family.

He then won a wrangle fellowship which paid for his graduate education at Georgetown. Now he’s a diplomat in the US State Department, and these three students were just about the only ones in their schools who went to college. F and m was the only place that offered them admission. They were offered full scholarships because of our full need approaches, and they took their opportunity to work with incredible faculty to become for our country a policy leader, a clinical psychologist, and a diplomat, and one is black and one is Muslim American and one is white rural background. And that is the vision that I have for education for all young people: that before college and in college, we ignite what is great in young people by giving them the belief that they can drive their own learning and we support them every step of the way. And then we have the benefit as a society, I believe, of seeing people grow into roles of leadership and public service that will make our country stronger. Cynicism has never solved a single problem in our country. There’s plenty of people cynical about the world, and when they start solving problems, we should start adopting cynicism, but otherwise, we need to invest in people that are optimistic, can do mindset, that want to learn and give, and from that they will create the kind of world we want to live in.

Marjorie Malpiede:

I have a personal reflection here, Dan. We’ve had many conversations and I’ve always found you to be so optimistic, and I’m reading through the lines here in the book, and it’s also based on my own experience because every time I actually get out on campus and talk to students, I feel hopeful and I can see now why you are actually so optimistic.

Dan Porterfield:

All you’ve got to do in my opinion, is walk around and get to know young people, and I don’t only mean on college campuses, we just get to know young people. Real young people just listen, just engage. Just allow them to express the things that interest them, that make them laugh or that give them a feeling of optimism and then double down on that. Education is something where if you get it, I benefit. That’s what’s so distinctive about it compared to all the other social goods. If everybody gets it, my children are better off. And so I hope as a society we will come together around this notion that young people are rising. Generations are a place where we can land in all our disagreement, we can land around the idea that let’s invest in the greatness of our young people, let’s give them educational and work opportunities that give them the chance to be the leaders of their own lives. Let’s take pride in what it means to be a country that pays it forward.

Marjorie Malpiede:

Well, I am going to have that be the last word. Thank you so much, Dan. This has been an absolute joy to talk to you, and again, it has really been inspirational and it gives us all more reason to get up and do the work we do in higher ed.

Dan Porterfield:

There’s hundreds of thousands of people across all of our campuses of all types, with students of all backgrounds who are doing what I celebrate in the book every single day. That’s not the dominantly told story, but that is the dominant reality.

Marjorie Malpiede:

The book is called Mindset Matters, the Power of College to Activate Lifelong Growth, and it is available starting June 25th on Amazon, correct, Dan?

Dan Porterfield:

That’s right. Johns Hopkins University is the press, and I hope that readers who, if they do read it, take the time to linger over those stories because there is an eminence in the life experiences of students in our midst and ask ourselves, are these 35 or 40 students at Porterfield profiles from F&M? Are they all that different from the students on my campus in my neighborhood? The answer to that question actually is no. They’re exemplary, as I said before, but they’re also representative.

Marjorie Malpiede:

Thank you so much, my friend. I’m sincerely grateful for you joining us on Learning Well Radio today.

Ian Elsner:

This has been Learning WellRadio, a production of LearningWell, for more information about our work, go to learningwellmag.org. And if you like what we’re doing, leave us a rating or review. Thanks so much for listening.

This Is Us

It is a cold, rainy day in March, but Vassar’s campus still holds its appearance as the beautiful, contemplative place of learning for which it is famous. Its lush green quads and remarkable architecture reflect a traditional liberal arts experience. But like any community, Vassar is more than it appears to visitors. Over the past two decades, its landscape has significantly changed in many ways, both positive and challenging. 

Among its many distinctions, including its outsized number of famous alumni, Vassar’s President Elizabeth Bradley hopes the school will be known as a place of good health and wellbeing. To make this vision a reality, she recognizes that the college must establish a universal sense of belonging amid a new, more diverse student body where students of various identities express different expectations and needs. Like their Gen Z peers everywhere, many Vassar students struggle with their mental health.  

Since becoming President in 2017, Bradley has worked with faculty and the college’s senior leadership team to foster a campus of wellbeing as a key part of her administration’s agenda, with a focus on belonging in the classroom and in the community. “When I think of wellbeing, I think about our students’ ability to thrive, and to grow, and to learn to become confident young adults who will go out and do the things that are in their hearts to do,” she said. “You can’t thrive if you feel like you don’t belong — in or out of the classroom.”

A noted public health expert, Bradley believes success in this area requires all campus stakeholders to work on improving wellbeing within their respective realms and across departments when necessary. This means professors being attuned to the personal and emotional aspects of their students’ lives and practicing inclusive pedagogy along with their areas of expertise. Student affairs roles, such as the office of Student Growth and Engagement, steer students toward co-curricular activities that help them “thrive, not just survive.” 

Mental health services are highly utilized and, like many college counseling centers, the office is experimenting with new strategies like bringing community partners onto campus for students with acute needs. But even mental health is not confined to any one service, partly due to capacity and partly due to philosophy. Early in his tenure, Dean of the College Carlos Alamo-Pastrana asked, “Can we, as a community, shift our perspective on whose responsibility it is to think about wellness?” 

One inter-departmental effort that is central to wellbeing and belonging is the Office of Engaged Pluralism (EP). Like the term implies, EP seeks to engage all community members in acknowledging differences through an asset-lens where unique perspectives and norms are respected, if not universally agreed upon. It is both a program (offering workshops, trainings and events) and a pledge. The concept evolved from tensions on campus shortly after Vassar moved to need-blind admissions and the student body make-up changed significantly. 

All of these efforts, taken together, are demonstrations of the college’s commitment to building a campus of wellbeing, and one can’t help but wonder what role initiatives such as Engaged Pluralism may have played in more recent controversies, including the voluntary, and atypical, removal of the pro-Palestinian encampment at the school. But to better understand how Vassar’s intentionality on wellbeing and belonging has affected its students overall, LW discussed the topic with four students in various stages of their education. In this enlightening interview, the students talked honestly and graciously about their aspirations, their challenges, and what wellbeing means to them. Here is an edited transcript of some of what they had to say. 

Editor’s note: It is unclear whether any of the interviewees participated in the Vassar protest encampment which occurred after this conversation, but it is worth noting that each of them expressed support for the right to protest on this and other issues, though it is not reflected in this transcript. 

LW: Let’s start with mental health and wellbeing. What kinds of supports or strategies help you thrive here at Vassar?

Marissa is a junior majoring in Science, Technology and Society (STS) with a minor in prison studies.

Marissa: For me – I’m a student leader here on campus alongside a whole bunch of other amazing students. I’m the vice president of the Black Student Union. I’m the co-head of a small concert throwing organization that we have on campus. My friends are always saying, “Marissa, you’re so busy. How do you do it?” But I think the thing that allows me to do all these different things and be in all these different places but still be flourishing is the fact that I’m consistently working with people who all love it. We come together and we support each other and I think for me, thriving is being in these spaces where you are able to laugh but then cry about assignments and experience this whole breadth of emotions. The school has a counseling center, and there’s been times where I went there – some were good and some were not.But I feel like, overall, the thing that really allows me to continue going and not burn myself out is being in these spaces with these people. 

Prisha is a senior psychology major and international student from Bangalore, India.

Prisha: Can I add on to that? I think something that might go unnoticed, but that I feel has a big impact, is the fact that we acknowledge that mental health, your mental health, changes every day and that it does impact your work and your interpersonal relationships. Coming from an international standpoint, I think a lot of students come here as first-generation students arriving in a new country with all of these aspirations and goals for themselves and also expectations that I feel like they don’t give themselves enough grace around. They’re doing a lot here and their wellbeing is a part of something they need to take care of, not just their futures. 

For me, it’s in the really little things that I find solace; just having check-ins at the start of class or meetings like the “rose, thorn and bud question” — a rose is what went well this week. A thorn is something that didn’t go as well and a bud is something you’re looking forward to. Before I was asked those questions, I didn’t even think in that frame of mind of, “Oh, what went well this week?” I actually began to think about myself and what I’m putting out in the world, more than just going through the motions.

“My peers are a significant source of support for me. Another is my professors.”

Maya is a senior biochemistry and psychology double major.

Maya: I think I approach wellbeing from three avenues. My peers are a significant source of support for me. Another is my professors. I know that there are professors on campus who push you and want you to do your best, and sometimes it can feel very overwhelming. But there are other professors who are very, very understanding. I remember two years ago, I was going through a very difficult situation in my personal life and I was able to reach out to my professors and they immediately said, “I can be that avenue for you to make sure that you’re advocating for yourself and advocating for what you need during this time, extensions, whatever.” In general, professors will work with you, which is so nice on this campus. And that definitely helps a lot because things can get very overwhelming very quickly, especially during this time of year when you have burnout from papers and finals. 

But then the third avenue for me is all the work that I do as a leader on campus. I work at the women’s center. I’m a women’s center intern, and we do a lot of events that are centered around wellbeing, but I also lead a women of faith group. Religion is very important to me and has become even increasingly important to me as my years at Vassar have gone on. Which is interesting because a lot of people look at Vassar and they’re like, “Oh, it’s a liberal arts school. You could do so many other things. Why talk about religion?” I am a Christian and my beliefs have developed throughout my time here. And that’s because I’ve been able to ground myself in these groups and in these places where other people also believe. And the women of faith group, I mean we have people who are Jewish, we have people who are Muslim, we have people who are Christians and they’re coming from all different perspectives, but we’re able to unite about our experiences on this campus as well in life. And that has been so centering for me.

Mia is a first year, first-generation college student.

Mia: I would say a lot of the same things. Community is huge. I don’t think I would’ve made it through the year if I didn’t have people to rely on or people to have conversations with. And just to know that you’re not alone. People are having the same experiences, especially when you’re transitioning from high school to college. For me that included feeling like you don’t necessarily belong in the classroom just based on everyone else’s background. I am a first-generation, low- income student and I look at other people in the classroom and sometimes I think, “Do I really belong here?” Then I’ll talk to other people and it’s a very common experience to feel like that — it’s very normal. Knowing that you’re not alone makes it a lot better and helps you find ways to feel comfortable in this space.  The role of professors is huge. Before I came here, I’d never heard of a mental health day. I had a professor who said, “If you need a mental health day, you can just take it. You don’t have to email me or anything.” And I realized, wow, there’s a really big emphasis on who you are as a person outside of your academics. That is something that is sometimes really hard for me to separate because I’m a goal-oriented person. I will get through this task no matter what because I’m looking at a bigger picture. And sometimes that also can harm me because it can lead to burnout. Sometimes I have moments where I realize, “Wow, I’m definitely struggling.”

LW: What are some of the challenges to wellbeing and belonging here? How can things be improved? 

Prisha: I think I can give this a go. All of us need to better understand our different cultures and perspectives. I work at the Office of International Services and we do a bunch of these events throughout the year, some big, some small, all celebrating the different cultures that are present on our campus and give students, especially international students, a platform to celebrate their own cultures as well as to spread awareness. And something we always face is how can we get more students to come engage with us? I think a lot of international students feel the need to just disappear into the crowd of white Americans here on campus, and they feel a really strong need to conform.

“Considering how fast college goes by, you have to create your belonging quickly in four years.”

I think another way to cultivate a larger sense of belonging is how can we get white Americans or locals to also look at what we do? It’s like you see the email and right away, it’s not for me. And it’s just such a missed opportunity. If it was the other way around, if instead of putting the pressure on international students to fit in, we got all students to learn about all the different kinds of cultures we have here, it would benefit everyone. You would learn to be more tolerant, be more open. “Hey, this is what exists outside of this campus, outside of this state, this country, and this is what’s going on, and you should look at it.” That is something I’d like to change. 

Marissa: It can be tough here sometimes. Vassar is a PWI, predominantly white institution, and I think statistically the numbers of students of color are going up, but you could look out into the college center, into the dining hall, and it doesn’t feel that way. Oftentimes I hear people say, “This is a really small school. I feel like I know everybody.” And I think, “I don’t know everybody.” And I think that’s because even as extroverted as I am, there are different pools here, you have your cliques. Vassar is still just like any other school that way. And sometimes it can be hard to mesh those, even when we are all taught to be very multidisciplinary and interconnected. That’s why I rely on my peers to uphold one another. But sometimes it feels like if we don’t do it, nobody else is going to. And then we could fall through the cracks. Considering how fast college goes by, you have to create your belonging quickly in four years. And then you want to be able to not just make your own belonging, but to make spaces for other people like you to belong that are consistent, that are long lasting, that don’t disappear. 

Mia: I knew coming here it was going to be humbling. I knew the workload, the difference in material and curriculum was going to be huge for me. I came from a Title 1 school. It was not going to be the same. There’s always going to be something you don’t know. I think my biggest fear was also not having a community here. I was so scared I wasn’t going to make friends. I thought, “I’m going to be all alone. This is going to be so hard.” But I came in and I made friends the very first week, and they’re still my friends now. We’re eight months down the line and we have dinner every single night. You don’t realize how much people will impact you as you spend time here. So, I think you expect certain things and you just don’t know what it’s really going to be like until you get here. 

LW: You are all so inspiring and accomplished. I wonder, have you thought much about your purpose in life, which is different from just what you want to do. 

Maya: For me, personally, the desire to go into research, and specifically researching disorders like ALS, is because my dad was diagnosed with ALS and he passed away two years ago. (That’s the personal thing that I was struggling with.) So that was very embedded in me since his diagnosis. I understand the person suffering as well as how much suffering their family is going through and how much support they need during this time. And the fact that we have so many unanswered questions remaining despite all of the technological advancements that we have, seems like we need to really focus on certain aspects of these diseases to further our understanding and to further treatment and cures to these problems. I do think my experiences on campus, specifically talking with other people who are in my majors, who are also close friends, has further solidified my interest in research. I see the research that they’re doing with other professors on campus, or I see what they’re learning about and I’m like, oh, that’s really interesting. I want to learn about that, too. I would definitely say that finding my purpose in life has been facilitated throughout my time at Vassar. 

Marissa: I think, at least for me, my purpose — the thing that drives me — is to be happy. Because there was a period where I really wasn’t. And I look back at my younger self and I just want to give her a hug. But I look at her with grace and I look at the journey and I’m so grateful that I was able to go on it. And when I’m here, I think I also believe in the power of storytelling. And telling the stories, whether it be how it was back then or where I’m at now, it’s just being able to do that. And I think what college gave me was a toolbox for all that.

What’s Your Why?

For college students getting ready to embark on their post-graduate lives, a sense of purpose can be a North Star, illuminating the path toward personal development, fulfillment, and success. Having a clear sense of purpose provides students with direction and resilience, brings meaning to their endeavors, improves their mental health, and empowers them to make informed decisions about their futures. When students can identify and live according to their purpose, they can cultivate a deep sense of belonging within themselves and their communities. The pursuit of purpose shapes the college experience and lays the foundation for meaningful living beyond graduation — but how do students find something as elusive and individual as purpose? At Belmont University, they are finding it through alumni in the Purpose Mentorship Program.

“We are trying to help students know who they are, who they were made to be, what makes them unique — and how they can capitalize on that for the sake of communal flourishing,” said Joe Mankowski, the Transformational Project Strategist at Belmont University, where he heads the Purpose Mentorship Program. 

Belmont is a private Christian university in the heart of Nashville, Tennessee. It attracts students with dreams of making it on Music Row, young entrepreneurs, aspiring medical professionals, and — like most college students — young adults who are still trying to find their passion and understand how to pursue it. A 2019 study conducted by Gallup in partnership with Bates College explored that pursuit, defining and measuring purposeful work experiences among college graduates. The study found that 80 percent of college graduates say that it is extremely important (43 percent) or very important (37 percent) to find purpose in their work — yet, less than half of those graduates reported finding it. Graduates who report a strong sense of purpose in work are almost ten times more likely to meet the criteria of overall well-being, which encompasses mental, emotional, physical, and financial health. This research reiterated previous findings that deriving purpose from one’s work is correlated with “having someone who encourages students’ goals and dreams.” 

“We aren’t just training students for a job; we are forming whole people.”

In Belmont’s Purpose Mentorship Program, that “someone” is a university alum — a person who has been in the student’s position, often within the last several years, and made the transition from commencement day to purposeful work. Launched in the 2021-2022 academic year with funding from the Coalition for Transformational Education and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, the initiative is emblematic of a broader mission that President Greg Jones and Reverend Susan Pendleton Jones brought with them to Belmont. Making it a focal point of his administration, President Jones’s Discovering Purpose course asks students, “What’s your why?” This question, which is also the driving concept behind the Purpose Mentorship Program, prompts students to reflect on the process of meaning-making both as individuals and as members of a vibrant community. 

Originally piloted by the Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business and the Massey College of Business, the Purpose Mentorship Program fosters meaningful connection between alumni and students, helping students to envision their futures and articulate their goals. Alumni are recommended by faculty and staff based on character, humility, and leadership skills in addition to professional success. Each mentor circle is composed of one alumni mentor and a cohort of 2-5 students. Mentors are prepared with curriculum-based discussion points and encouraged to engage in their own self-reflection on purpose and identity. The groups meet monthly to walk through how one’s purpose develops over the course of the college years and manifests in life beyond graduation.

As a Belmont alumnus himself, Mankowski views the Purpose Mentorship Program as a reflection of Belmont’s mission to cultivate “whole-person development,” educating leaders of character and wisdom. “Being part of a community that has so consistently and fully invested in its students has motivated me to find ways to invest back into the community,” he says. 

Mankowski understands just how vital the relationships formed through the program are for students making decisions about their futures. Equally significant, he says, are the questions it asks. As he explains, “If you know why you’re here, it gives you so much latitude and freedom.” The program begins by asking students who they are in the context of their communities — college students, interns, roommates, daughters, sons, partners. While understanding those identities can begin to help students locate their goals, Mankowski says, it also is imperative that they “take a step back and ask, ‘Why do I think humans exist? Why do I think we work? Why do I think we love?’”

“In an achievement-based culture, it’s so easy for students to prioritize work at the expense of self-reflection, self-awareness and introspection. We are holding space for that exploration.”

In a climate of careerism, immense student debt, and hustle culture, students may fall into the trap of basing their identities entirely on work in an effort to secure high-income jobs. When students pursue these bestowed metrics of status and worth —  job titles, grade-point averages, salaries — at the expense of finding their purpose, their overall well-being can suffer. That’s why, according to Dr. Amy Crook, Vice President for Transformative Innovation, Character and Purpose, the search for purpose is more than work. It is a lifelong quest for identity and understanding — not just within oneself, but in service to others. “We want students to realize they are more than their job,” Crook said. “Their ultimate happiness, fulfillment, joy and ability to make the world a better place is much larger than their job titles. We aren’t just training students for a job; we are forming whole people, and we want them to feel confident in exploring these bigger questions. And we are doing so through supportive, caring contacts who can be honest about the obstacles they faced and the opportunities where they were able to make choices to have a more fulfilling life.”

Mankowski echoed this sentiment, noting that “in an achievement-based culture, it’s so easy for students to prioritize work at the expense of self-reflection, self-awareness and introspection. We are holding space for that exploration.” 

What better guides for their North Star journey than those who paved the way before them? Mankowski views alumni relationships as crucial to the purpose initiative. The program pairs students with alumni mentors based on 5 distinct areas of purpose designed to gauge motivations and values, rather than organizing them by career or major. These 5 personalities — the creative visionary, the compassionate guide, the sincere storyteller, the thoughtful investigator, and the organizational innovator — act as a litmus test for students and alumni to connect across professional disciplines, forming what Mankowski calls “unlikely partnerships” that reinforce the belief that purpose is not a professional identity, but an ideological one. The program also directs students to courses that may be best suited to their style of purpose — the sincere storyteller might enjoy a creative writing workshop, while the organizational innovator may gravitate toward the biology lab — bringing meaning and individuality into the classroom. This approach helps students connect their curriculum to real-world experiences, building the relationship between purpose and academic or professional life.

The transformative potential of the Purpose Mentorship Program lies in these relationships — between students and alumni mentors, and between academic life and self-reflection. Mankowski notes that the program gives students “a sense of unconditional mattering — that is how we connect with ourselves, with our life’s purpose, and with each other.”

Building Support for Student Parents

One out of every five college students is a parent. As with most students, student parents are balancing many and often competing demands on their time, including classes, studying, and work. Unlike their peers without kids, student parents also have to manage the complex scheduling puzzle of childcare responsibilities on top of everything else they handle each day.   

Parenting students are trying to succeed, while receiving limited support from higher education and financial aid systems that were not designed with them in mind. It is long past time for policymakers to recognize the need for targeted support to help this group flourish. Decision makers must pay more attention to parenting students with inclusive and specialized efforts. It will take better data collection, holistic wraparound services, and building trust through consistent action over time. 

This is especially important as colleges face enrollment challenges created by changing demographics. By supporting parenting students, and adopting student-centered policies, colleges and universities can become environments where student parents feel welcomed and supported to succeed—a win for student parents and for colleges trying to alleviate the enrollment crunch. 

Supporting parenting students is more than just a matter of fairness. It is also an issue of economic development and mobility. After all, when we ensure student parents succeed, we ensure their families succeed. As policy leaders are considering supports to retain historically undersupported students, student parents should be at the top of the list. Juggling the responsibilities of parenthood and being a college student is hard enough, the way in which our systems and policies are structured shouldn’t make it even harder.

Several states, including Texas, California, Illinois, and Oregon, recognized the need and enacted legislation to support parenting students in higher education. These state-level policies aim to dismantle barriers by mandating data collection, support services and accommodations on college campuses. And, while progress has been made, more needs to be done in acknowledging and addressing the unique challenges faced by parenting students.

Why support parenting students?

The landscape of higher education is rapidly evolving, and institutions must adapt to the needs of the increasingly diverse student body encapsulated by the incredibly diverse student parent population. Student parents are more likely than non-parent students to be people of color, women, and veterans, all groups that are entering higher education at increasing rates but often face barriers to success.

Research from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and Ascend at the Aspen Institute shows that parenting students face significant challenges in completing college compared to their peers without children. Only 37 percent of parenting students graduate with a certificate or degree within six years of enrollment, in contrast to nearly 60 percent of students without children. 

Parenting students encounter obstacles related to childcare, basic needs insecurity, time constraints, financial insecurity, and mental health, which can disrupt their path from enrollment to graduation day. We know that one of the fastest paths to economic security for a family is for a parent to gain a degree or other credential. Given these statistics, supporting student parents is not just the right thing to do—it also makes economic sense by creating opportunities to increase household incomes, reducing reliance on public benefit programs and ensuring a well-educated workforce to help drive economic growth and development. 

Supporting parenting students is good for colleges and states

Targeted support for parenting students can also help states meet their postsecondary  attainment goals. States need to increase the proportion of individuals with postsecondary credentials, such as degrees or certificates to help provide the skilled workforce that drives economic growth. State and federal governments should invest in students because that investment confers important community and societal benefits as well as individual benefits.

Without addressing the barriers faced by parenting students, states risk leaving behind a substantial portion of their population and falling short of their attainment targets. By creating a more inclusive and supportive environment, colleges and universities can attract and retain a diverse pool of students, thereby mitigating persistence barriers.

Mitigating persistence barriers for parenting students starts with better data collection at the state and federal levels. Evidence suggests that targeted support can enhance the success rates of parenting students. However, the lack of comprehensive data on this group creates a significant gap in colleges’ ability to address their needs effectively. The absence of data is a missed opportunity for the federal government, states, and institutions to improve student outcomes and underscores the need for greater attention to the unique challenges faced by students with children.

Parenting students encounter obstacles related to childcare, basic needs insecurity, time constraints, financial insecurity, and mental health, which can disrupt their path from enrollment to graduation day.

Targeted support needs for parenting students are equally important for mitigating persistence barriers. In our work at Generation Hope, we have seen targeted and direct services and supports make a massive difference in the success of students. This is why federal policymakers should integrate wraparound support services, such as counseling, mentoring, and access to resources like housing assistance and healthcare, to address the holistic needs of parenting students to help them increase degree attainment. 

Moreover, recognizing parenting students’ diverse backgrounds and experiences is crucial in designing effective support programs. Federal and state policy leaders should employ culturally responsive and trauma-informed approaches that consider the unique needs and challenges faced by parenting students, creating inclusive and supportive learning environments where all individuals feel valued and empowered to succeed.

If policy leaders and influencers do more to provide support for groups with the most complex needs, they can also make life easier for all students who face similar challenges like managing conflicting work and school schedules and struggling to provide for their basic needs. When we smooth the path to college completion for student parents, we make it just a little bit easier for other historically under-supported populations to get from enrollment to graduation day.

Brittani Williams, Director of Policy, Advocacy and Research at Generation Hope.

Generation Hope engages education and policy partners to drive systemic change and provides direct support to teen parents in college as well as their children through holistic, two-generation programming.

Edward Conroy, Senior Policy Advisor, New America Higher Education Policy Program. 

New America’s Higher Education team focuses on creating a higher education system that is accessible, affordable, equitable, and accountable for helping students lead fulfilling and economically secure lives. New America’s Student Parent Initiative conducts research, policy analysis, and advocacy work in the student parent space.

A Joyful Enterprise

Professor Tarek Masoud found his work the object of dissent across the political aisle earlier this year when he organized a Middle East Dialogues series featuring voices on both sides of the Israel-Palestine debate. In six one-on-one conversations, Masoud, the Director of the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School, invited figures with opposing but similarly divisive politics to explain and defend their stances. 

None of Masoud’s guests may be strangers to controversy, and neither is he. Reproving posts and concerned colleagues didn’t dissuade Masoud, whose choice to examine unpopular opinions on stage mirrors his teaching philosophy in the classroom. His experience leading students in intense, often tense debate and his belief they appreciate it nonetheless led him to write an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “Students Aren’t the Obstacle to Open Debate at Harvard.” He goes on: “It is us: faculty and administrators who are too afraid—of random people on social media, hard-core activists, irritable alumni, assorted ‘friends’ of Harvard—to allow a culture of open debate and dialogue to flourish.”

So how does the expert on democracy and governance in the Middle East approach concerns about student safety and belonging in the classroom, while encouraging pupils to confront topics and opinions they disapprove, even despise? Unease about pervasive mental health challenges on college campuses has fed debate over whether exposing students to objectionable content facilitates wellbeing by cultivating resilience, or puts them in harm’s way by leaving them feeling unsupported and disrespected. With LearningWell, Masoud discusses challenging students through argument, empowering them the same way, and his overriding conviction that learning, in all its discomfort, poses “some of the most joyful activities in the human experience.”

On LinkedIn, you posted about how the classroom should feel more like the gym than like home — that universities should be encouraging student discomfort, as opposed to a commonly talked about value, which is belonging. Can school be a gym where you also belong? 

I think school can absolutely be a gym where you belong. It can be a place of very rigorous inquiry that you nonetheless feel a very deep attachment to and feel deeply connected to. But the connection of the student to the community should be based on the right foundation. It should be based on the fact that we are here as a community of learners and teachers, who are engaged in this very difficult but very fruitful task of expanding the limits of human knowledge, testing what it is we think we know against what it is that others think they know. I want people to belong to Harvard. I want people to feel that they are home at Harvard, but not because we’re part of something called “Club Harvard,” not just because we’re the random people who happen to get lucky to be chosen by admissions officers, but because we are people who have this very deep commitment to this very important value of dedicating all of our energies to the task of open and honest inquiry.

In your own classroom, are there ways you try to foster both of those things, discomfort and belonging, with student mental health in mind? 

I think I have a high degree of confidence in my students. And I think student mental health is extremely important. And we as instructors obviously need to be very careful that what we’re doing is strengthening our students and not weakening them. I’m constantly thinking and rethinking about how I’m teaching to make sure that I’m not putting students in situations where their mental health is at risk. I strive not to put things in the conversation that are gratuitous and that aren’t going to serve any educational purpose except to shock and cause people to feel uncomfortable in ways that don’t advance the learning mission. So for me, the kind of uncomfortable position I might put my students in would be to read somebody whose views they don’t agree with. 

I teach in graduate school, which is also a little bit different. The teaching environment I’m in is one where sometimes I wish my students would think about my mental health because I will get very vigorous and rigorous pushback. I might say something that I think is completely anodyne, and some student will, in a very sharp way, show me all of the ways in which it reflects some less than noble aspect of my positionality. But in all of these places, we need to remind everybody that this is an institution of learning. And if I, Harvard, am prioritizing your comfort and I am making it possible for you to avoid discomfort and not strengthening you so that you can face discomfort and defeat it, then I’m not doing my job for you. You’re paying me an inordinate amount of money, and my job is to make sure that you come out of this place much stronger and much smarter. And I guess what I’m saying is there’s no way of avoiding, then, the discomfort. And what I think the institution needs to do is really help our students learn to manage discomfort, to transcend discomfort, and even to seek it out in the rest of their lives because they know that’s how they get stronger.

You touched on this in terms of graduate school versus undergraduate, but do you think that this approach would be effective, or come with different risks, at a school that isn’t Harvard and struggles more with things like retention and completion? 

First of all, in any institution, we as faculty need to be in touch with our students as persons and not just as disembodied brains into which we’re pouring information and with which we are having arguments. We always have to be attuned to our students as persons. And I probably have, in many cases I know I have, over the course of my career gone too far and had students say, “I felt that you were pushing too hard on me or not respecting me as a person.” So we should never allow the situation to get to that point. I would be distressed if somebody interpreted my call to center learning and debate and argumentation as somehow being a call to ignore the fact that we’re teaching human beings, and human beings have emotional reactions to things. 

The point is I want our students to come away with a feeling that they have a great deal of power. And there are arguments out there that they might deem to be harmful, that have caused them to conclude that they don’t have a lot of respect for the holders of those arguments. But you have a lot of power and a lot of strength to confront those arguments. And so I just want our students to develop a powerful sense of their own efficacy that is born fundamentally from the fact that these are super highflying and bright people.

And in terms of empowering students intellectually and otherwise, is that coming back to the idea that instead of being something that turns people away, this kind of debate could actually boost people’s interest in their own education?

So that’s the theory. I’ll also just tell you some empirics. A few years ago, I had some undergraduates take my class and ask to meet me. And I was fairly certain that what I was going to be told was that there was a feeling of a lack of safety in my classroom because I really do try to engage in rigorous argument and get people to argue with each other. And these students never agreed with anything I said. So I met with them. “So how are you finding the class?” And the ringleader said, “Oh, this is our favorite class. You are the only professor we’ve had at Harvard who is not afraid of us.” And I said, “Well, actually, I’m quite afraid of you. I just am not very smart, and I have low impulse control.” 

“I want our students to come away with a feeling that they have a great deal of power.”

I really do feel that our students want to be treated as adults and that means disagreeing with them sometimes. I really do have that belief, as long as they understand that the professor’s goal—this is very important— as long as they understand the professor’s goal is not to preach some gospel, rather to teach them and to make them stronger. So I think one thing students definitely get out of my classes is they’re like, “Tarek Massoud is not trying to convince me of anything. He is not trying to convince me of what he thinks.” In fact, I would be horrified if my students came out of my class as little copies of Tarek Masoud, spouting Tarek Masoud-isms. What the students, I think, come away from my class believing, and I do say this always, is that “What Tarek wants me to do is really know why I think what I think and to be able to defend my position.” And so I’m trying to make you the best version of yourself. I’m not trying to make you a version of me. And it doesn’t come out of any kind of strategy. None of this is terribly theorized in advance. It’s just kind of who I am. It’s why I got into academia. I got into academia in part because I’m not sure of what I know, in part because I love to argue, in part because everything I’ve ever learned, I learned by first arguing with it. 

Your comment about students enjoying this kind of debate more than people might expect reminds me of the article that you wrote for The Wall Street Journal. In that article, you place the responsibility more on faculty and administration, rather than students, for not cultivating these debates. I wonder, for other faculty who are interested but maybe hesitant, do you have advice for how they can establish these kinds of dialogues in their classrooms?

Look, I think it’s not easy. And I would certainly not say that every faculty member needs to do that. But my view is that those of us who do want to foster this space for open debate and inquiry should not find the administration of the university to be an obstacle to that. What I don’t want the administration of the university to do is tell us to do anything. I would not like the email from the administration of the university that says, “You must now foster debate on this.” I think we’re a heterodox enough institution that there are those of us who want to do that. And there are others who would prefer to have more comity in their classrooms in order to maximize the possibility that people learn. We teach different classes, different things, et cetera. So my plea is really for administrators to help those of us who want to expand the space for debate and discourse on campus, but not to say that everybody needs to be like me. I think that would not be a recipe for a healthy institution.

“I’m trying to make you the best version of yourself. I’m not trying to make you a version of me.”

And for faculty who are interested in leaning more into this kind of debate or dialogue, you mentioned taking a personal approach to it. What do you mean by that? 

I think, again, about the things that I mentioned earlier, number one being you can’t just foster this culture of debate without being attentive to your students as persons. And so you have to have that front of mind. The other point I would make is that one must also have a sense of humor. And I do think that one of the ways in which I am lucky is that I don’t take myself too seriously. Somebody wrote about me that I had a Midwestern sense of humor. It’s actually an Egyptian sense of humor. And I do think that helps, as well, because it reminds students that we are actually engaged in a very joyful enterprise. And we are among — “we” being people attached to universities, not just people attached to Harvard University — we are some of the most fortunate people in the world, engaged in what should be some of the most joyful activities in the human experience. And just reminding ourselves of that, from time to time, with smiles on our faces, with periodic reflections on how lucky we are to be in communion with each other, I think, is also helpful. 

Have you also encountered students who don’t like this culture of dialogue or have negative feedback about it? How do you help them through that discomfort?

Without question. Typically, it will express itself in the following way, this discomfort with dialogue. It will express itself with students being aggrieved that I platformed a certain position that they believe is unworthy of being even discussed at Harvard. It comes from actually quite a noble place that our students have very deep commitments to conceptions of what is just and what is right. And it grieves them when they see a professor who’s a figure that they should respect at a place like Harvard, no less, who is platforming these views or who is making people read these views that they believe should be consigned to the ash heap of history. 

And what I try to convince my students of is that I’m not platforming the views so much as I’m platforming them. I’m trying to give the student the opportunity to develop the most powerful arsenal against these arguments that they find to be unworthy. I’m starting from the premise that I believe you, the student, have valid reasons for thinking that this is unworthy. I want you to bring them to my class because there are other people, by the way, who don’t know, and you may convince them. Or, in the process of trying to convince them, you may detect where there are some gaps in your knowledge or argumentation. You either fill them, or you’ll change your mind. There isn’t a way in which this is bad for us, if our goal is to expand our knowledge, to become smarter, to know why it is we hold certain views.

What do you think about the perception that so-called “Wokeism” has radicalized this generation of students more than those before it?

I really don’t like the term “Wokeism” because it doesn’t take seriously the constellation of very deeply held values that I think animate a lot of our students and indeed our colleagues. And I think these values have been quite a constant presence throughout the academy. I saw a whole front page of The Crimson from the 1960s, and it literally could have been written today. I mean, did they use the term “structural racism”? I don’t think so. But they talked about the phenomenon, and the students were very angry and wanted the curriculum to be revised in ways that our students today say. So I don’t feel that this is a new phenomenon that has emerged out of the inundation of the students with a particular set of newfangled ideas. These are very deeply held ideas that emerge from, frankly, a kind of liberal belief in the primacy and value of humans and individuals. And I think it’s part of what makes students such a joy to interact with because they’re motivated by these ideas that are quite valorous. 

What has changed, probably, is there is more of a sense of the university and the classroom as a place for the playing out of public conflict and the classroom as a kind of public space in which people are taking stances and positions that will be or are public, as opposed to part of a private learning experience. Part of it is the move in our culture where everybody thinks of themselves now as a brand, as a social media presence, as an influencer. And so consequently, if all of this is happening in public, it’s much harder to change my view. I have always argued, “Look, the very best technology for increasing the quality of our pedagogy is not using clickers in the classroom or some newfangled program that tracks students doing this or that. It’s having a small class size.” And that is the original safe space. Because a small class size is where we can first develop the relationships to each other as persons that make it possible for people to venture with difficult and maybe even sometimes heterodox arguments. And it’s also small enough that the feeling of embarrassment and the imperative of winning and defeating one’s opponents is minimized.