Category: Mental Health

The two most visible student political groups at the University of Texas at Austin are also the most opposed.

“There’s College Republicans, which is rah-rah Republicans, and there’s College Democrats, which is rah-rah Democrats,” soon-to-be senior Carson Domey said. He gravitated towards neither and wondered how an in-between space could be so hard to come by among more than 40,000 undergraduates.

The 21-year-old eventually arrived at a solution, the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life, a leadership development group that promotes “people instead of partisanship.” The “room for exchange of ideas” drew him in, Domey said, but the difficulty getting there explains his interest in a new insight from the Harvard Youth Poll, a semi-annual, national survey from the Institute of Politics (IOP) at the Harvard Kennedy School. This spring’s poll, released in April, offers a window into youth politics, including that only 34 percent of young people who identify as Independent or unaffiliated report a sense of belonging, compared to 51 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans. 

This latest iteration of the Harvard poll homes in on the impact of mental health in more ways than one. When it comes to today’s youngest — and most anxious and depressed — voters, the intersection of personal wellbeing and political formation is the object of growing concern. 

In 2000, the Harvard Youth Poll emerged after two undergraduates noticed a curious trend among their classmates: They seemed interested in public service but also appeared to prefer community service activities over more traditional political engagement. Was there something different, the students wondered, about their generation’s relationship with politics?  

Was there something different, the students wondered, about their generation’s relationship with politics?  

To find out, they approached John Della Volpe, then-president of an opinion research firm with ties to the IOP, to help design and conduct a survey of their peers’ political attitudes and activities.

Fifty polls later, the project has stayed true to its original mission, although the form changes every time. Della Volpe, now director of polling at the IOP, said the different questions season-to-season reflect “each cohort’s unique views” and how “they’re interested in understanding perspectives of their generation.”

While the poll’s founders delved into trends in political engagement, the students of 2025 probed more personal categories. In addition to views on federal leadership, DEI initiatives, and foreign policy, this spring’s survey inquires about social connections, financial stress, and life goals.

One of the resounding themes this time is, as Carson Domey pointed out, feelings of belonging. Among its major findings, the final report highlights that fewer than half of respondents say they feel a sense of community, and only 17 percent feel “deeply connected” to a community.

From there, the survey correlates sense of belonging and civic engagement. Forty percent of those who report feeling “deeply connected” to a community say they consider themselves politically engaged, compared to 14 percent of those without a strong sense of belonging.

To Domey, the struggle for belonging among young Independents seems to reflect the impact of polarization on Gen Z and the longing for community and the pressure to identify with a party as a result. Party affiliation, from his standpoint, may have as much to do with political theory as want of personal connection. 

Party affiliation may have as much to do with political theory as want of personal connection. 

The Covid-19 pandemic certainly didn’t help these feelings of disconnect. One in five respondents to the Harvard poll indicate they became more socially isolated during the 2020 lockdown, and these people are in turn more likely to be dealing with symptoms of depression now — five years later.

Those at major transition points, either starting high school or college, during the initial quarantine are most likely to report a lasting negative impact on their social lives. They are now 19 and 23 years old, respectively. 

John Della Volpe said he is wary of the over-attribution of certain political trends among Gen Z to their experience during the pandemic. Yet the way that the emergency disrupted their lives is important, and all the more for being just one of many crises they’ve encountered so far.

For Della Volpe, the real eye opening moment on the weight so many young people carry came before the term “Covid-19” existed. He was conducting a focus group, not long after the 2016 mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. that left 49 killed and 53 wounded. 

“The way you think about your taxes or your finances,” one student told him, “that’s the way we think about living and dying every time we walk into a classroom.” 

Within around two years, the same young people read about, or perhaps witnessed, the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. during which a car attack killed one and injured 35 others, including students from the University of Virginia; the mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas, Nev. that killed 58; and the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. that killed 17 staff and students.

“This generation’s not monolithic, and everyone’s experience is different,” said Rachel Janfaza, a youth politics expert. “But across the board, it would be hard to say that their politics is not at least somewhat interwoven with the fact that they have grown up amid crisis, and it is taking a toll on their mental health.”

Overfamiliarity with catastrophe does seem to dovetail with another major finding of the Harvard survey: widespread disapproval and distrust in the government. Only 15 percent say they think the country is “heading in the right direction,” and 19 percent say they trust the federal government to do the right thing most or all the time.

This discontent does not discriminate by party. While Donald Trump’s approval rating is about the same (31 percent) as in 2017, approval of Democrats in Congress dropped from 42 to 23 percent.

Janfaza imagines young people have become suspicious that “adults, elected officials pretend to know what they’re doing and have it all figured out.” Following the trials of the Covid-19 pandemic, she said, “the curtain has been peeled back.” 

“What I will definitely say is there is a mass feeling of uncertainty that’s on both sides of the aisle.” Domey said. 

Now that uncertainty seems to be affecting young people’s plans for the future. In what might be the most important finding for generations to come, less than half of the Harvard poll respondents rated having children as “important.”  

This trend may be the result of financial anxiety, with a quarter of respondents saying they are “barely getting by.” But Janfaza mentioned a conglomeration of factors: “Less stigmatization around not wanting to have kids, paired with rising cost of living, and fear about climate change, and just overall gloom and doom.”

Still, if frustrated, Gen Z-ers are not resigned. “They are showing up. They are saying they want to be involved,” Janfaza said. “Their lives are affected by these issues in their communities, and they are speaking up and out about it in a number of ways.”

To Domey, the Harvard poll feels like a call to help students cultivate new sources of much-needed certainty in their lives, whether through community or other senses of purpose.

“Like, how do we care for the whole person in college?” he said.

If you studied or worked at a health-promoting university, would you know it? Would you recognize the institution’s commitment to wellbeing in your daily activities, your relationships, your environment? For the colleges and universities that are part of the U.S. Health Promoting Campuses Network (USHPCN), the answer to these questions is yes, or at least, that is the aspiration. 

The USHPCN is a coalition of colleges and universities dedicated to infusing health into their everyday operations, business practices, and academic mandates. It was launched in 2015 to promote the “Okanagan Charter: An International Charter for Health Promoting Universities and Colleges,” which offers a blueprint for making wellbeing an institution’s foundational principle.

As it celebrates its 10-year anniversary, the Okanagan Charter (OC) is now an institutional priority at 39 schools in the United States. Around 300 others are not official “adopters” of the charter but participate as “members” of its broader network. For these colleges and universities, the O.C. serves many purposes. It is a pledge, a road map, and in some cases, a license to experiment with new approaches outside the traditional lanes of higher education. More than anything perhaps, the Okanagan Charter is a major shift in thinking about what constitutes wellbeing on campus, as well as who is responsible.  

The Okanagan Charter is a major shift in thinking about what constitutes wellbeing on campus, as well as who is responsible.

“With the Okanagan Charter, institutions around the country are reimagining higher education as a catalyst for human and planetary flourishing on every campus, everywhere,” said Sislena Grocer Ledbetter, chair of USHPCN and associate vice president of counseling health and wellbeing at Western Washington University. 

International, Indigenous Origins 

The Okanagan Charter reflects an international recognition of the influence of higher education on “people, place, and planet”—the three domains frequently cited within the common language the OC provides. “Higher education,” the charter goes, “plays a central role in all aspects of the development of individuals, communities, societies and cultures—locally and globally.” Indeed, colleges and universities serve as not only large institutions but major employers, creative centers of learning and research, and educators of future generations. 

The OC grew out of the work of the World Health Organization’s Health Promoting Universities movement of the 1990s.  The document was formally launched at a 2015 International Conference on the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna, Canada. The first draft of the charter was based on input from 225 people with the support of a writing team and an additional 380 delegates who critiqued and refined the document. Its introduction includes an acknowledgement that the OC was developed on the territory of the Okanagan Nation.  

In addition to recognizing the influence of universities on people, place and planet, the charter’s creation and early appeal was in response to the growing international crisis in mental health. According to the Healthy Minds Study, the rate of (mental health) treatment (for college students) increased from 19% in 2007 to 34% by 2017, while the percentage of students with lifetime diagnoses increased from 22% to 36%. By 2015, it was becoming apparent that campuses in the United States were indeed not well. 

One recent paper, “The Okanagan Charter to improve wellbeing in higher education: shifting the paradigm,” suggests a public health approach is the way to solve this problem which led to overwhelmed counseling resources and concerns over inconsistent help-seeking. One of the authors is Rebecca Kennedy, assistant vice president for student health and wellbeing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the first school in the United States to sign the Charter. 

“For many years now, universities have been trying to help students on their campuses thrive and flourish, increasing the availability of services on campus,” Kennedy and her co-authors explain. “Many of these services, including mental health treatment, are directed towards individuals, which is important for that individual, but does nothing to create conditions that prevent the need for these services at the population level.” 

In their research, the authors found a paucity of population-based strategies and little examination on system-wide approaches. “There was little evidence of policy, systems, or settings wellbeing strategies in the higher education literature. There was a lack of scientific investigation and evaluation examining the impact of changes to public policies, regulations and laws that impact the health of college students.”

The Okanagan Charter is an effort to fill that void first by creating a framework for improved wellbeing at the population-level on campus and then capturing data that will show its effect over time. According to the charter, “Health promotion requires a positive, proactive approach, moving ‘beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions’ that create and enhance health in settings, organizations and systems, and address health determinants.” 

For colleges and universities, this means applying a “settings and systems” approach to scenarios one might think of as singular or isolated. One example the authors offer is the diet of college students. While adding more nutritional food to the dining hall menu may be one (downstream) solution to improving students’ notoriously unhealthy eating habits, keeping dining halls open and accessible after hours or during breaks so students avoid resorting to vending machines would be the upstream approach. A Campus Determinants Model, within the Okanagan Charter and mapped to person, place and planet, further demonstrates these distinctions.  

Understanding What Institutional Wellbeing Looks Like

The document, which is 11 pages, provides institutions with a common vision, language, and principles on how to become health and wellbeing-promoting campuses. It includes two calls to action: “Embed health into all aspects of campus culture, across the administration, operations, and academic mandates; and lead health promotion action and collaboration locally and globally.”

What that looks like for campuses within a sector as diverse and tenuously connected as higher education is the big question and the primary work of  the USHPCN. Associated with the International Health Promoting Universities & Colleges Network, the USHPCN supports campuses in interpreting and operationalizing the Okanagan Charter framework, acknowledging the unique factors that influence the OC’s adoption on each campus. Designees from the institutional members, as well as from the schools who have formally adopted the charter, work as a network, meeting regularly and sharing best practices and metrics.  

Julie Edwards is the assistant vice president of student health and wellbeing at Cornell University and the chair-elect of the steering committee of the USHPCN. She is well known among the OC community, as she chairs the potential adopter cohort and is frequently called upon to consult with schools just starting their journey. She urged Cornell to adopt the Charter in 2022 and has made it a pillar of her work and that of the entire university with the full engagement of partners, from faculty members and facility managers to the president’s office.  

“First and foremost, the Okanagan Charter gives us shared language and a shared vision,” Edwards said of the OC’s implementation at Cornell. “An unintended but powerful outcome is that people have become genuinely excited to understand this health-promoting concept and their role within it. Wellbeing is no longer looked at as just an initiative from Cornell Health.”

Edwards said Cornell had an existing foundation of wellbeing support for students, staff, and faculty, as well as for the planet through sustainability initiatives. The Okanagan Charter was the Venn diagram that put it all together. After the adoption of the Charter, the school created multiple guidelines that align with the guiding principles. For example, if you’re thinking of revising or creating a new policy at Cornell, you are asked to consider the question, “Is this health promoting?”  

These criteria are used in decision-making throughout campus. To diffuse some of the academic stress among Cornell’s high performing students, changes have been made to transcript policies, including to avoid discriminating against students who have had to take an incomplete. Many colleges have also implemented credit caps to reduce stress of taking over 20 credits in a semester. Another recent policy change is that employees at Cornell are now allowed two additional floating holidays to use as they please.  

Through the Okanagan Charter, Cornell developed a Community of Practice—a structure that Edwards describes as “bringing together diverse folks who have shared goals to work together to solve complex problems.” With the participation of about 150 people on campus, the Community of Practice is also working on assessing the impact of the policies that have been adopted. 

“My hope is that when students, staff and faculty come to Cornell, they can feel a sense of care and compassion and support for their wellbeing. They can feel that they have equitable access to the services that are provided, and they are able to connect with others in meaningful ways to flourish.” 

At a very different campus, the team from University of Massachusetts, Amherst is equally as enthusiastic, though less far along in the OC process.   “We’ve been forming relationships, listening to speakers, really cementing the excitement for this concept as we move into implementation,” said Elizabeth Cracco, the assistant vice chancellor of campus life and wellbeing. 

Cracco said the Okanagan Charter, which is now part of the university’s strategic plan, came into view after the pandemic when every stakeholder on campus focused on a common goal. “During the pandemic, there was such a great demonstration of serving the greater good of the campus, and that made us want to keep going, to keep thinking collectively around wellbeing.”

Connecting the OC’s population-based approach to student mental health is a welcome strategy for Cracco, who is a trained clinical psychologist with student counseling within her purview. She said the Okanagan Charter allowed her to add a layer to this work, expanding their existing focus on providing individual mental health support.

“The systems we have built to deal with students who are in distress have not gone away,” she said. “But using this collective impact framework, we are able to consider larger issues, such as, ‘How are we going to undo some of the intended or unintended consequences of everyone’s attention going to a screen instead of each other or themselves?’ That’s a whole campus problem. That’s faculty, staff and students.” 

Cracco said what excites her the most about the work is the unexpected partnerships it is forging with other stakeholders on campus. As was the case during the pandemic, she is working alongside numerous teams on campus that are experimenting with new ideas, including creating a greater sense of belonging in the classroom and even making changes to the built environment. “We have a faculty member in the school of architecture who is working with her senior students on the redesign of our residence hall lounges,” Cracco said. 

Cross-sector partnerships are a commonly reported benefit for schools who have adopted the Okanagan Charter. For some, like Furman University in South Carolina, the OC framework was a natural extension of what was already happening on campus. Since 2018, the school has offered the trademarked initiative “The Furman Advantage,” a student-centered pathway that requires a first- and second-year program combining academic advising and student wellbeing.  

Furman’s involvement in the Okanagan Charter, first as an institutional member and then as a full adopter, was initiated by the Wellbeing Strategy Committee, co-chaired by Dean of Students Jason Cassidy and Meghan Slining, a faculty member in health sciences who is a well-known public health expert on campus.  

Cassidy said he had a good feeling about the Okanagan Charter right away and appreciated being part of a learning community that the USHPCN provides. 

 “People from campuses all over the country are really open to sharing what they’ve done, how they’ve done it, and meeting with you one-on-one,” said Cassidy. “But there’s no playbook. They give us a unified skeleton, and then it’s up to us to put the meat on the bones that makes the most sense for our campus community. I think that’s the only way you could get something like this accomplished.” 

While the adoption of the OC may have been an easy lift at Furman, it still represents a significant change in thinking on campus. Slining said she is frequently asked to explain the OC to people who, in another world, would never be expected to understand it. Their response continues to pleasantly surprise her.  

“This is not business as usual where the only people who care about health and wellbeing are from the health sciences,” she said. “Centers and groups all over campus are writing the language into their mission statements and figuring out how to incorporate it into their work. They’re fired up.” 

For more than a decade, colleges and universities have been relying on the Healthy Minds Study to help them understand the mental health of their students and those at other schools throughout the country. Indeed, this annual indicator and benchmark has become the bellwether for the state of college student mental health, capturing the dramatic increase in the prevalence of mental health issues among college students beginning around 2014.   

But as important as this survey data continues to be, the Healthy Minds Network’s principal investigators, Drs. Sarah Lipson and Daniel Eisenberg, stress that surveillance is only the start of a larger public health approach to helping every student on campus thrive. This mindset has led to strong partnerships with institutions and non-profits working to understand how mental health data can be interpreted and applied, particularly when it comes to policy changes and institutional investments.  

The latest example of this research-to-practice approach is a new report by the Healthy Minds Network, UNCF (United Negro College Fund), and the Steve Fund on the mental health and wellbeing of students at Historically Black Colleges and Univeristities (HBCUs) and Predominently Black Institutions (PBIs). Released earlier this month, the report, “Flourishing: Bolstering the Mental Health of Students at HBCUs and PBIs,” ties Black students at HBCUs to better mental health outcomes than both Black students at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) and a national sample of students of all races. 

Akilah Patterson, the study’s project manager and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, said she was unsurprised by the results. Citing the strong sense of community HBCUs foster as a reason for students’ apparent wellbeing, she said, “nothing can really replace that.”

The concept and funding for the study came from UNCF, a major advocate and donor to HBCUs and their students. It partnered with the Healthy Minds Network to lead data collection and assessment, while the Steve Fund, a nonprofit promoting mental health among young people of color, contributed expertise.

Between spring and fall 2023, more than 2,500 students from 18 different HBCUs responded to a tailored version of the Healthy Minds Study. They answered questions from the standard Healthy Minds Study, along with a “Black College Mental Health Module,” added to provide insight into the Black college student experience.

The results suggest relatively better wellbeing among HBCU students across a number of scales. HBCU students report to be flourishing more (45% compared to 38% of Black students at PWIs and 36% of students nationally) and experiencing more campus belonging (83% compared to 72% of Black students at PWIs and 73% of students nationally).

The results suggest relatively better wellbeing among HBCU students across a number of scales.

While loneliness is endemic among students everywhere, significantly fewer students at HBCUs (56%) are experiencing “high loneliness” than Black students at PWIs (58%). Students at HBCUs are also less likely to keep negative feelings to themselves (74%) than Black students at PWIs (86%) or students nationally (83%).

Patterson said the wellbeing of HBCU students is an understudied area. “It’s not that it hasn’t been studied at all,” she explained, “but it hadn’t been studied in this way, on such a large scale, and also using some of the measures we chose to use.” 

In addition to insight into how HBCU students are already thriving, Patterson’s study suggests their institutions have room to improve support. Financial anxiety, for example, is the most reported stress factor among students at HBCUs. Twenty-three percent of HBCU students, compared to 18% of students nationally, say their financial situation is “always stressful”—an indicator correlated with greater risk of having one or more mental health problems.

Students’ financial struggles can be difficult for their institutions to tackle, Patterson said. But she hopes research like hers, and other projects going forward, encourage the kind of investment in HBCUs that, in turn, provides relief for the students. Empirically, she added, she believes the research “speaks for itself.” 

“We’ve been doing the work. HBCUs have been very committed for decades to the success and excellence of their students, and that’s not going to change.”

The Flourishing Factor

The spirit of this latest report from the Health Minds Network reflects an evolution of sorts for the data leader, along with many of its peers in the mental health research community. Their stronger focus on “flourishing” allows for greater examination of the many determinants that comprise mental health, such as financial wellbeing. 

In its 2023-2024 report, the Healthy Minds Network made headlines with news of slight improvements in student mental health, which had been trending negatively for several years. Lipson was particularly inspired by the 6% increase in student flourishing for several reasons, including the fact it is an outcome colleges mayhave some level of control over. 

“The web of causation for flourishing is much wider and often within an institution’s control,” she said. “When we think about what goes into flourishing—a sense of belonging, decreases in isolation, maximizing our built environment—there are levers here that institutions can pull, maybe not all of them, but more so than depression or anxiety.”

Flourishing has many definitions but is most often associated with healthy growth in a variety of domains. So anyone can flourish, with or without a mental health diagnosis. Additionally, while anxiety and depression are still alarmingly prevalent, not all students will experience either. From a public health perspective, flourishing is an outcome that is relevant to the entire population.  

Lipson said what is important about this measure, and indeed all of this research, is it helps administrators understand where to spend time and money based on what the evidence suggests is the best investment. To this end, the Healthy Minds Network has launched the creation of a best practices repository. While still a work in progress, the repository will provide that advice for a number of campus interventions.  

What is important about this research is it helps administrators understand where to spend time and money based on what the evidence suggests is the best investment. 

“What we should be investing in from a population, public health approach is a really difficult question given what little data currently exists,” Lipson said. “With the data repository, you can go to a publicly available resource and consider, ‘What are my options? What does the evidence look like? What schools have implemented this successfully, and who could I talk to there?’”

At noon three days a week, a room overlooking the pond at the University of Virginia falls into quiet meditation while the rest of campus churns with mid-day activity. Some students sit, some lay on the floor. A facilitator leads with guided thoughts and modes of breathing, but you’re welcome to do your own thing. After about 20 minutes, everyone is back on their way to lunch and afternoon classes.

“It’s very accessible to all kinds of people. It’s a nice break in the day, and it’s powerful for the people who have discovered it so far,” says Dearing Fife, a sophomore who organizes the sessions at the Contemplative Commons.

Dearing is a student advisor at the Commons, a new soaring glass and fieldstone building that is home to the Contemplative Sciences Center (CSC). For more than 12 years, the CSC had been operating from UVA’s religion department with multidisciplinary research, experiential learning, and mindfulness initiatives. The construction of the Commons represents more than an impressive new building to house a department and some activities. It is headquarters for the interdisciplinary face of wellbeing on campus—from grounding activities like yoga and meditation to scholarship on the many intersections of contemplation and nature, art, and technology.

The construction of the new Commons makes tangible President Ryan’s desire for UVA to be a top school for holistic student life while pushing boundaries on what higher education can look like in terms of mental health promotion. For many years, UVA had been the administrative backbone of the Flourishing Academic Network (FAN), an inter-institutional collaboration aimed at promoting student flourishing through higher education.

A Contemplative Commons

On the western edge of campus, the new 57,000-square-foot building sits beside the serene 11-acre pond and watershed area known as The Dell. Its U-shape wraps around a Ginkgo tree-lined courtyard, and connects to central campus via a pedestrian bridge over Emmet Street inspired by the High Line in New York, with benches and plantings. It’s hard to imagine a location better suited for a center dedicated to research, teaching, and outreach for contemplative experience.

“Our building is designed around the three themes of nature, art, and technology, and all three combine together to create contemplative opportunities for individuals,” says Kelly Crace, Executive Director of the Contemplative Sciences Center. “It’s intentionally multidisciplinary, creating wonderful spaces where students just love to come and study, whether they want to come into our art galleries, or come into our Conservatorium and experience light and sound in a variety of ways, or connect with nature through our biophilic design.”

The Commons houses, and reflects, work being done at UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center. The facility’s purpose is to support student flourishing through a host of indoor-outdoor spaces, academic classrooms, immersive learning and events. It will soon include art installations and flexible studios that can be configured as classrooms, research labs, or even yoga studios.

Technology plays an interesting role in both design and practice in the Commons, used both to enhance mindfulness experiences and to create intentional tech-free spaces for deeper reflection. The Conservatory is an immersive room with floor to ceiling windows, sounds and light panels, with state-of-the-art audio to mimic natural soundscapes—think ocean waves, rainforests, waterfalls, wind, and buzzing bees. Other areas at the Commons are tech-free zones, encouraging students to disconnect altogether.

Innovative Classrooms, both labs and studios, are designed as multi-modal spaces that allow instructors to change the room setup based on the session’s needs. Classes can alternate between traditional seating, or more free-form setup using yoga mats or meditation cushions. Some rooms feature sprung floors, ideal for movement-based practices like Tai Chi, or facilities conducive to a Japanese tea ceremony. Others serve as academic classes that faculty members would prefer to hold in something other than a traditional classroom building.

“There’s one class that meets in the Commons, for example, on medical Spanish. This professor has her own deep contemplative practice, and she incorporates it into every class that she leads,” says Connie Kresge, chief of staff of the CSC. “She’s not just bringing in somebody who’s pre-med to learn a few vocabulary words. She is saying, ‘Okay, you are going to be the front line of working with humans. How do you imbue your practice with understanding of this population and a contemplative, compassionate approach?’ And so they also get the benefit of a setting like the Commons.”

Research and Practice

In a world increasingly defined by speed, competition, and information overload, the CSC represents a shift in higher education. Housed within UVA’s Provost’s Office, CSC benefits from strong institutional support, ensuring its programs are not peripheral but central to the university’s academic mission. As Michael Sheehy, CSC’s Director of Research, points out, UVA’s investment in contemplative education is unique among public universities, positioning it as a leader..

With its three-pronged mission, CSC is reshaping how students, faculty, and the broader academic community engage with education, wellbeing, and leadership. Work and programming at the Contemplative Sciences Center is organized around three pillars: Research, focus on advancing contemplative studies through scholarship; University Life, integrating mindfulness into students’ days; and Systems Change, expanding contemplative education globally through leadership and K-12 initiatives.

At the heart of CSC’s work is a research lab known as CIRCL, which stands for Contemplative Innovation, Research, and Collaboration Lab. There, scholars study many aspects of the ways meditation, nature, and technology shape our well-being from a collaborative, cross-disciplinary perspective.

One of the current projects examines how different environments impact contemplative experiences, explains Sheehy. As part of the methodology, participants will be studied meditating in five different settings, and researchers then track brain activity, heart rate, and emotional responses. “If you meditate in a garden, does it feel different than if you meditate in a featureless white room?” he  asks. “What happens in your brain and body when you practice mindfulness in nature?” Sheehy is also editor of the Journal of Contemplative Studies and also Contemplative Currents, which  are uniquely poised to cover both peer-reviewed academic studies and open public scholarship.

Research, academics, and collaborations go well beyond the study of nature and meditation. CSC is diving into diverse studies such as virtual reality experiences, lucid dreaming research, and exploration of leadership and public policy.

“We’re having professors coming in from our Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy to talk about policy and leadership from a contemplative perspective, professors from religion to come talk about Buddhism, and we’re exploring collaborative work of how we can do things with the school of data science,” says Crace. “What’s really cool is getting a sense of the breadth and diversity that’s possible. People might initially think, Oh, so this is where you do yoga, or this is where you do mindfulness, that type of thing. Yes, and we’re so much more than that. Being able to bring in that diversity of collaboration, I think, is really important.”

University life          

But the CSC isn’t just about research—it’s about making curiosity and mindfulness part of daily student routines to support an overall culture of thriving. The CSC hosts monthly salons, where students and faculty can discuss contemplative topics with leading interdisciplinary scholars.  A Citizen Leaders Fellowship offers students a year-long leadership opportunity to gain skills needed to flourish during their time at UVA and after graduation.

Beyond the lab and classroom, the CSC and Commons are uniquely poised to support student flourishing with a wide range of campus programming—beginning with a celebratory weekend of concerts, food and activities in April to mark the grand opening of the Commons. Going forward, a weekly calendar of programming and well-being initiatives include regular yoga, meditation, Tai Chi, reflective writing, and spaces to cultivate mindfulness and resilience.

It’s a bold push against what Crace calls the “stress-glorification culture” of modern academia.

People ask, Why would a university have a building for contemplation? They don’t ask, Why do you have a building for the arts, and a building for sports?

 “’I stayed up two nights. Well, I stayed up three.’ It’s this constant one upping, where we’re trying to find distinction through how hard I’m working,” he says. “It’s not only how hard I’m working, but it’s important for you to know how hard I’m working, and it just creates a very toxic culture that really disrupts flourishing. We want to be a disruption to that stress culture.”

Systems Change

Flourishing is a key word in the overall picture of contemplative sciences and its place in a larger ecosystem of institutions helping young adults maturing in a way that best supports their wellness and full potential. Appropriately enough, the Flourishing Academic Network (FAN) grew out of key individuals at UVA committed to flourishing, including David Germano, a religious historian at the University of Virginia and Crace’s predecessor as former director of CSC, and alumni Jeffrey Walker, a finance executive, philanthropist, and member of the board.

“What we’re trying to do with FAN is taking a system orientation and looking at how we can prepare students for the real world, and allow them to succeed in higher ed,” says Walker. “It means giving them tools when they arrive, and educating them about what kind of tools there are out there, working on things like social emotional learning models, meditation, yoga, body movement, breath practices, peer to peer support, and also managing ego and collaborative models, and looking at leadership models.”

For real systemic change, the third pillar of the CSC reaches beyond the campus into the wider scope of academia with FAN, and reaching K-12 classrooms and international leadership programs.

 “The systems change work can be thought of as expanding what we do reaching outward,” says Kresge. One major initiative is the Compassionate Schools Project, a groundbreaking K-12 mindfulness curriculum leading new practices in Louisville, Kentucky. Another is the Dalai Lama Fellows Program, which trains young leaders around the world in mindfulness-based social change. In 2024, CSC took 17 Fellows to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

CSC is also working on a national initiative to integrate contemplative education into higher education policy. By partnering with education policymakers and university administrators, CSC hopes to make contemplative practices a core part of the American educational experience—and something both more easily understood and more widely undertaken.

“People ask, Why would a university have a building for contemplation? They don’t ask, Why do you have a building for the arts, and a building for sports? No one stops and says, what do you mean by arts?” says Kresge.. “We don’t have that barrier in our colloquial understand of the words arts and sports, but we do in our conversation of what contemplation is.”

Leaders like Kresge hope there would be a greater understanding of mindfulness and meditation as an ongoing tool and practice—like exercise—and not a one-time thing that can be taught in a seminar and crossed off a list.

Sheehy learned meditation from his grandmother when he was about 10 years old, and it made a lasting impression. “I’ve had the chance to live most of my life with access to knowledge about contemplative practices, because I’ve had experiential access to as a constant reference point,” he says. “That’s why I think the research we do is important, because we’re showing people how these practices wok, how powerful and empowering they can be, and give them agency over transforming their lives.”

Dearing Fife also had access to these practices at an early age, and the addition of the Contemplative Commons at UVA cements her belief she could not have found a better place for herself to attend school. A self-described “anxious kid,” she discovered meditation in middle school, and it’s been a core part of her life ever since. “Like brushing my teeth,” she says. “A non-negotiable.” She grew up knowing that learning to handle it was just going to be her thing.

“Everyone manages something in their life, and I have to manage my anxiety,” she says. She meditates once or twice a day, and believes it’s a tool many more college students would benefit from. She is aware of a first-year student who shows up to the noon meditations regularly, and likes to envision that it’s making a difference in her life—and that in a small way, as organizer of the sessions, Dearing contributes to that.

“It’s a big school, and I’m in Greek life, and that’s been great,” she says. “But I also wanted an academic realm where it’s like, This is my place, and this is where I’m going to impact the university,” she says. “And this, working at the Commons and CSC, is it.”

A continuation of our series on answers to the question:  “What experience or person in college most influenced your development as a human being?”

When Carter Jones left for college, he was thrilled to be moving on to the next chapter of his life, until a familiar anxiety dampened his excitement.  Would he fit in? – “like, really fit in” – as a student of color in a predominantly white school? He’d done it before, attending a suburban high school 15 miles outside his home in the city. His friends there had his back, but every new situation is a do-over when it comes to belonging. 

On one of the first days of school, Carter met Derrick, also a first-year student, and the two connected immediately. What they did not share in background (Derrick is White, from the suburbs, Carter is Black and Dominican from the inner city), they made up for in their mutual passions – sports, music, technology, and where to get the best pizza. The two became close friends. 

Halfway through that first year, Derrick shared with Carter that he had been struggling with his mental health. Like Carter, he had been worried about finding his place in a new environment. He  seemed preoccupied with his body image, though Carter said, “he looked fine to me.” In fact, Carter wasn’t aware how distressed his friend had become until he told him he was leaving school. It was then that Derrick explained that in his senior year of high school, he was so despondent, he had barely gone to school at all.   

When Derrick left college for home, it could have been the end of their friendship, but in many ways, it was just the beginning.

“I was like ‘are you kidding me?’ Here I find this great friend to go through school with and suddenly he leaves,” said Carter. “It was so disappointing.”

When Derrick left college for home, it could have been the end of their friendship, but in many ways, it was just the beginning. 

Then Carter did what Carter does.  He made it work.  Derrick lived in a town not far from campus and Carter found a way to visit often.  They’d watch football together, eat junk food and hang out. Soon, the family came to expect his Sunday visits and Derrick’s dad, Don, would pick Carter up at school and drop him off after dinner.  On those rides, they’d talk, and Carter was surprised to learn that Don, a successful businessman, had little money growing up.  He had put himself through college – the same college –  with loans and part-time jobs.  He could not afford to party in the dorms like the other students and, he, too, could feel out of place. 

“His upbringing was more like mine,” said Carter. “He was scaping by, hoping the next loan would come in to pay tuition.”

Derrick made the decision to return to school around the same time Carter was struggling to secure the money for that semester’s tuition.  “I am not going back without my best friend,” he told Carter, and they went to Don for advice.  Don created a financial plan for Carter that included working with aid officers, even the school’s president, to streamline tuition and allow for online participation so that Carter could graduate with a degree in computer science. When he needed an internship one summer, Don connected Carter with one of his own friends from college who was in technology.  

“His support for me was unbelievable,” said Carter.  “But it wasn’t just opening doors.  He was really invested in how I did and checked in all the time about my grades, how I was doing socially. I thanked him over and over again and he’d just say – stop, you are like a son to me.”

Asked how Don’s support changed his outlook on life, Carter said “Before, I felt like I was just getting by, not caring much about how I did but knowing how much faith Don had in me, it made me think of myself differently.  I began to really care about doing well. It mattered to me.”

Six years later, Derrick and Carter remain best friends and Carter continues to be part of Don’s family.  Carter may not ever know the depth of Don’s gratitude for showing up for his son, or how much of himself he saw in Carter, though it would benefit him for the rest of his life. But that’s not what this story is about – nor how it started.  It is about two college kids who find friendship and are smart or lucky enough to hold onto it. 

“It is amazing to me what relationships can do for your life,” said Carter. 

Names have been changed for this story.

College students consistently report feeling anxious and overwhelmed, many of them untethered by high levels of stress and the perception that they, alone, are struggling. What if colleges and universities offered these, and all students, a preventative well-being course where they learned resilience and coping skills, realistic perceptions of stress, and self-care? Would their levels of anxiety lessen? Would they feel more grounded?

This is the theory behind Be REAL, a mindfulness-based cognitive-behavioral coping program developed at the Center for Child and Family Well-being at the University of Washington (UW). The Be REAL Program (REsilient Attitudes & Living), is a six-week course that teaches students and staff a variety of skills that help improve well-being, starting with the acknowledgement that struggling is part of living.

While it partnered with the UW counseling center during the initial study, Be REAL is not a clinical solution. Rather, it is a population-based, preventative strategy aimed at helping all students thrive. 

“I think we are seeing a strong need to go from an individual approach to supporting mental health and well-being to a collective and a community approach,” said Sara McDermott, who leads the Be REAL training at the research center. “This is really important because our well-being is not related to one thing.  It’s related to our relationships, our stress levels, our politics, the food we have on the table, if we feel safe.”

The design of the Be REAL program is as sensible as its name. Typically, groups of students convene once a week for 90 minutes to learn mindfulness, stress management and cognitive behavioral skills that help with focus and executive functioning as well as self-compassion and compassion to others. In a combination of activities that build on themselves, the program is aimed at increasing students’ resilience by strengthening key protective factors, such as effective coping, perceptions of stress, and self-kindness, all of which can be in low supply among high performing students in demanding academic environments.

Originally launched as a study with a cohort of students living in residential halls at UW, the course is now available in a variety of settings. The flexibility built into the program is designed to meet students where they are, literally – whether it be dorms, classrooms or academic advising sessions.  As a general studies course, Be REAL can be a credit-bearing class for psychology students, or a mid-year elective for students needing to pick up one credit. (The Be REAL promotional video is featured on UW’s academic department web sites.) As a co-curricular program, it can be offered as a student support option for staff in residential life, advising, disability services, or any student-facing group.

“We are training folks in this work that already have relationships with students so we are supporting them in a way that is coming from the community,” said McDermott.  “That speaks volumes about how we can offer a collective approach to well-being.”

This “task-sharing model” does not require clinical skills but instead involves training people who work with students to facilitate groups, or to incorporate practices from the program into their work. Staff take the course themselves as part of their training to deliver the program in an effort to relate to and interpret what the students are experiencing which McDermott says is a benefit to both parties. “It’s really empowering to be able to say to students ‘Yeah, I tried that practice, and I found it really hard to do when you’re feeling a lot of different things.’”

McDermott says the program can also offer an opportunity for students to break out of the prescriptive patterns their majors demand. The self-compassion dynamic, and the sense of shared humanity, offers a different kind of learning experience. In an evaluation of the program, one student wrote, “the course created a space within academia where I felt seen and heard.”

99% of the students agreed that the program helped them learn ways for reducing stress.  

One of the program’s unique advantages is its position within a major university research center. Since its launch, the Be REAL program has been studied by researchers at UW’s Center for Child and Family Well-being and funded by patrons such as the Maritz Family Foundation and Brad and Judy Chase.  The  third study included 325 undergraduate students and 100 staff members at UW.  The published results noted, “Compared to students in the assessment-only group, students participating in Be REAL showed significant improvements in mindfulness, self-compassion, flourishing, resilience, happiness, emotion regulation problems, executive control, active coping, social connection, and depression and anxiety symptoms. These effects were maintained at follow-up.” 

In 2017 and 2018, the program conducted an evaluation in the UW residential halls and found that compared to students who had not yet received the program  students who participated in Be REAL reported improved well-being measures, including mindfulness, executive control, active coping, self-compassion, social connectedness, resilience and flourishing.  A majority of these changes were maintained at a three-month follow-up. 99% of the students agreed that the program helped them learn ways for reducing stress.  These and subsequent studies recommend the task-sharing model as an opportunity to include the entire campus community in the work of improving student and staff well-being.

McDermott says the proven efficacy of the program is both personally and practically rewarding.  With evidence comes additional funding and with funding, the program can expand.  Be REAL is now being offered in other colleges in addition to UW as well as with high-school-age teens. 

To learn more about the Be REAL program, including training opportunities to bring this program to your campus, contact, Sara McDermott, Be REAL Program Manager at saramcd@uw.edu