Category: Perspectives

In his new book, “After the University,” Chad Wellmon answers a question many in higher education are currently asking: How did we get here? This autobiography of American higher education takes us from the European guilds and knowledge factories that inspired our current system to the modern research university that now defines it. In doing so, Wellmon reminds us that the university has always shaped and reshaped itself to serve political, social, and economic interests. His underlying concern is — at what cost to the goods of disciplined study? 

Wellmon, who is the Commonwealth Professor of English and German at the University of Virginia, writes that the recent intensity of these external pressures has made the sector almost unrecognizable to itself. Over the years, we have created what Wellmon calls “the other university,” known not by its intellectual vigor but by outputs such as earnings, workers, and research. 

Wellmon’s own reverence for, and frustration with, higher education is woven throughout the book in his personal stories: the utility of education as a means of escaping his past, his questioning of its purpose in the 2010s, and his eventual understanding that the love of knowledge itself — not necessarily the institution — is what we should hold dear. In July, Wellmon spoke with LearningWell about the book’s main messages, as well as his motivation and experience in writing it. 

LW: Let’s start with your own experience in academia, particularly at U.Va. where you’ve been witness to a lot of upheaval and changes in higher education. What were some of the things that motivated you to write “After the University”?

CW: This book turned out to be an exercise in trying to make sense of the world in which I had found myself. I grew up in a family and in a place in which the university was not a real presence, with parents and siblings who didn’t go to college. In many ways, I am a poster child for the American system of higher education. It was my way out — socioeconomically, intellectually, spiritually, materially, and geographically. That’s how I thought about the university. 

Through undergrad, graduate school, and the tenure process at U.Va., the university was just the world in which I thrived. I understood myself through it. And then in 2012, when [then-President] Teresa Sullivan was forced to resign by the Board of Visitors, I started to question that. I was standing there on the lawn that summer with my two kids. We had posters and were chanting, protesting for academic freedom, against poor governance, and for the university. And then, all of a sudden, I just stopped and thought, “Wait, what are we defending exactly?” It wasn’t a revelation. It was just befuddlement. What is this thing that I’m out here on a sultry southern afternoon protesting for? It has to be something much bigger than this person whom I don’t really know. 

That was over a decade ago, and ever since then, I’ve been thinking and writing about the university, trying to make sense of this institution. Another key experience was in August 2017. My family had just moved onto campus, when far-right neo-Nazis marched behind our house and up the U.Va. Lawn and Rotunda with tiki torches. This was also the period when I was helping to lead an effort to reform U.Va.’s undergraduate general education curriculum. It was a seven-year process. These experiences reconstituted my relationship, everybody’s relationship, with the university. 

My family and I had moved onto campus, because I had been appointed principal of Brown College, one of U.Va.’s three residential colleges, where about 300 students live together over four years in a group of dorms on the center of campus. We ate in the dining hall. Students spent a lot of time in our house, eating and hanging out. As I got to know students outside of the classroom and office hours, I encountered a completely different institution. 

All this was happening at the same time as the curriculum reform project. I quickly realized how naive I had been in assuming that if U.Va. just had a good curriculum, we [faculty] could make it the center of students’ lives again — we could reorient the institution to what we thought it was supposed to be about. But the more time I spent with these students, the more I realized that the curriculum was almost tangential to their lives at U.Va. Their lives were lived outside of the curriculum. They were lived in their dorms and managed by student affairs people and an entire institutional apparatus about which I had been totally ignorant. They led their lives outside the classroom as I had imagined it. So there was this second moment after 2012 of being disabused of how ignorant I was of the very institution to which I thought I understood.

LW: In the book, you write about the yawning gap between what we claim universities are for and what they actually do. So this gap you talk about, you saw this manifest in the students themselves?

CW: Oh, absolutely. In the book, I call it the “other university,” this completely other half — now I would say other three quarters — in which students actually led their lives and that formed them in profound ways, both good and bad. I know student affairs people who literally saved the lives of several of my students with mental health services, people who are unfailingly dedicated to the wellbeing of students but dedicated in a way that’s almost wholly separated from what the faculty and the curriculum do.

LW: This value you call “disciplined study” — which you describe as intrinsic learning, the joy of learning, the joy of reading — how has the university removed itself from that?

CW: That’s the question I tried to set out to understand. Why is it that this institution that is so obviously about education, so obviously about the life of the mind, so obviously about what I call discipline study — why is it also about none of those things and more clearly about moving up the social ladder and earning more than your parents? Why is it so obviously about the connection with labor markets? Why is it so obviously about the production of patentable knowledge and technologies? All the things that universities do or claim to do I had largely taken for granted. Of course that’s what universities do. But so many of these things pull the institution in different directions. In some instances, they’re contradictory. And so that’s what I wanted to understand. I wanted to know how this happened. I tend to think historically, so most of the book is an attempt to understand the development of this tension. 

The book goes back to the beginning of the 19th century and the rise of the German research university. My point here is that this is not the first time that universities are being called to serve other entities and competing ends. When you think of 13th-century University of Paris and its intimate but conflicted relationship with the church or 18th-century University of Göttingen in Germany and the pressure it was put under to provide revenues for a sovereign by trying to get more young English aristocrats to come from abroad to pay higher fees –– these types of conflicts are central to the history of the university. There have always been tensions between what the university has understood itself to be sustaining, which is something like the scholarly communities and scholarly inquiry, and the demands and expectations of the external entities that tend to fund these institutions. And the thing about institutions is that on the one hand, they’re sustaining these communities, these practices. But on the other hand, they do that by seeking financial support, by sustaining the material conditions that make it possible for these scholars to do the kinds of things they do. Over the past 150 to 200 years, however, these historical tensions have intensified.

“Why is it that this institution that is so obviously about education, so obviously about the life of the mind, so obviously about what I call discipline study — why is it also about none of those things?”

Some of these tensions have produced a lot of good. As the university has understood itself to be in service to the public, it has democratized knowledge and made itself more accessible. But this has also changed the institutional conditions of disciplined study and put all kinds of new pressures on the university as an institution. For example, when 19th-century Prussians directly linked the university to a job market — that job market being Prussian bureaucrats or the administrative state — everybody who was going to work in the higher ranks of the Prussian bureaucracy was required to have very high levels of education. And it was meritocratic in a way. It was, in many ways, a good thing. But what it also did is that it made the university this mechanism that was coupled with a competitive job market. 

My book traces various instances in which universities became more tightly connected to institutions or demands to which they had previously been more loosely related. Again, many of which were wonderful and good. Who is against democratizing the university? Who wants to argue that the post-World War II American system of higher education and higher education itself should be shrunk? These are some of the contradictions that just didn’t make sense to me and I tried to explore in the book. 

LW: In terms of the rise of the modern American research university, of which U.Va. is one, is this another example of the sector being tethered to something that is important but detached from its original goal? 

CW: First, I would say that I don’t know if there was an original goal. I think the modern university was some kind of settlement where the institution becomes this mediating force with scholars and knowledge on one side and the state and all these other interests on the other. And the university positioned itself as this go-between, this mediating institution. The 19th-century American research university adapted some elements of the German research university model, but with at least one very important distinction. From the beginning, the American research university cloaked itself in “democracy.” Around 1900, the first president of University of Chicago, William Rainey Harper, gives a speech in California describing the American research university as the prophet of democracy. It is not just going to work on behalf of democracy, it will embody and point the way to democracy.

In the American context, there are several things that followed. One is that the reluctance among 19th-century Germans to talk so explicitly about instrumental or useful knowledge was not a problem for the American university. University knowledge was useful knowledge. University knowledge should help to improve agriculture, help to expand the rail system, help strengthen the military. To be a democratic university was not simply to open up the doors to people who had never been allowed in the hallowed halls of Oxbridge or Berlin or Paris, but to open it to all kinds of knowledge. No knowledge was too instrumental or too useful to be kept out. 

Again, incredible goods come from these radical changes, but so, too, do new tensions, as well as an accumulation of external expectations about what universities ought to do and the ends they ought to serve. Now it’s no longer simply to be a finishing school for the sons of the aristocracy. It’s no longer just the production of elite bureaucrats. The expectation or promise universities themselves make is to sustain democracy and, eventually, to produce the knowledge required by a modern industrializing world. 

We need to recognize the expectations that have been put on universities. We expect universities to solve questions of social injustice and equity. We expect them to deliver high earning salaries to their students. We expect them to cure our grandparents and our neighbors and ourselves in hospitals. We expect them to entertain us and manage professional sports teams. 

“We need to recognize the expectations that have been put on universities.”

LW: What have we lost in all this?

CW: I don’t know if we’ve lost something in particular. Had I been born a hundred years ago, I wouldn’t have had access to the kind of higher learning that I have been blessed with. It’s crucial that we acknowledge that, because “After the University,” for me at least, is not a recovery project. We don’t need to recover something that never actually existed. The university never existed in a world in which the goods of intellectual study were freely given to for everyone.

LW: Maybe the better question might be: What aren’t we doing?

CW: I will start by talking about what I wasn’t doing. Even though I didn’t want to think of myself as writing a “what we lost” story — and I was operating on that for a while because the university continued to be this precious world for me — I couldn’t see the places and the people in which discipline study and the love of learning was alive and well. I was blind to that, which is ironic. That’s why I begin the book with my dad, who throughout his life diligently prepared for his church Bible studies. For too long, I assumed that he stood for everything that I was trying to get away from, which meant everything from non-college-educated, low-income America to his own kind of radical Christian piety.

That was what I didn’t want to be. And I never would’ve recognized him as a model reader. I saw his Bible study as just one of the many crazy things that he did. I couldn’t recognize that he actually taught me how to read. He modeled discipline study for me in a way that none of the professors I’ve ever had, none of my colleagues that I’ve ever had, have done. He wasn’t getting paid to fill his yellow legal pad with notes, to sit with five different concordances. He did it because he had to. He did it because he wanted to. He was so excited about it and loved it so much that he just wanted to share it. I couldn’t see that. I think we build and structure our lives and institutions in ways that mitigate against those kinds of possibilities — that these kinds of intellectual necessities are add-ons; they are superfluous, leisure-time activities instead of the core of who we are. And I’ve come to see that I was wrong. 

LW: One of the big questions in the book is, Can the goods of disciplined study be recognized on their own terms? Where do you come out on that? 

CW: I think so much about the structure of higher education mitigates against this. There’s dismissiveness among some university faculty — I think it’s less so now — about students who are worried about careers or worried about getting a job. Damn right they’re worried about getting a job, because we have created this system over the past 70 years in which the system of higher education is the only mechanism to a good life, or that’s what we’ve come to believe collectively — that the B.A. is the only path to a good life. But this system didn’t deliver on the equity promises that were trotted out in the early of 1960s. I think what has happened is that the expectation has become even more intense as the competition for fewer high-paying jobs has grown more intense. The tensions that were already in the university have become that much more immediate. 

Every year, when I meet a new class of undergraduate students for the first time, I know that they’re going to have these anxieties about what’s going to happen four years from now and that everything in between will be related to that anxiety. The B.A. has been made into this single pathway to the upper middle class, which in some ways is true but in a lot of ways isn’t. But maybe even more importantly, we haven’t really asked about how that affects what we claim to be doing in universities, which is educating people. We just talk about outcomes and outputs. But what about the flourishing of students and the ways in which these institutions are shaping them?

LW: If the goal is to encourage and motivate discipline study, what is it we need to do to the university? Are we trying to save the sector? Are we trying to change the sector? Are we not looking at this correctly?

CW: These were some of the many questions that I realized I was asking and had to figure out. I think in the midst of what I had done with the curriculum, being a professor, being a principal of a college, I kept thinking, “We have to fight for the university. It’s lost its core.” But as I said earlier, I don’t know if it ever had a core. But more than that, I’ve come to relate to it almost as an ethical question because each chapter I wrote, I just kept getting sadder and sadder. But then by the end, the only way I can describe it is, I felt liberated.

Being liberated through this broader understanding of realizing, Oh wait, I’m not actually fighting for the university. The university is just the most recent institutional form that the goods of higher learning and the goods of discipline study have taken. Libraries, museums, churches, monastic communities, craft shops, workshops — there are so many institutions which have nurtured and sustained the kinds of practices that I think we ought to be fighting for. For me it’s not about defending or saving “the sector” of higher education. It’s not about defending the university per se. It’s about recognizing and then fighting for the practices that I think so many of us already hold dear. The university, for the time being, is still one of the primary places that affords a certain material environment for these things, but it’s not at all, historically speaking or even now, the only place. I think for too long the university has monopolized these things. 

LW: Given that, how would you move forward within the university? 

CW: It’s not, for me at least, an excuse to detach myself from or just give up on the university. But it does motivate me and others, I hope, to try to build good and beautiful places for disciplines alongside and apart from universities — healthy institutions that shape meaningful lives. That’s a rather abstract response, but that’s where I am now. It frees me to relate to the institution in a different sort of way, because I don’t expect everything from it. 

And it helps me see what’s worth fighting for — not for particular institutional structures and interests but for the practices that give those institutions value in the first place. 

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

Starting next month, Angela Lindner will lead the LearningWell Coaliton, taking over from the capable hands of Keith Buffinton. Like Buffinton, Lindner is an engineer. She has recently retired from the University of Florida, where she was the director of the Engineering Leadership Institute and vice provost for undergraduate affairs, as well as an associate professor.

Like all organizations, the LearningWell Coalition, the publisher of LearningWell magazine, is a reflection of the people who drive its mission, and in this interview, Lindner gives us a window into how she might make her mark. She describes her body of work in student-centered education, her perspective on higher education’s most pressing problems, and what drew her to the work of the Coalition — including the memorable way she was introduced to it.

The LearningWell Coalition is a growing network of colleges and universities — large and small, public and private — dedicated to ensuring that every student is prepared to flourish in work and in life. Through collaboration, networking, and access to evidence-based practices, they help institutions create and scale initiatives and opportunities to prepare students for lifelong flourishing.

LW: Welcome to the Coalition, and congratulations on your retirement from the University of Florida! 

AL: Thank you. Yes, it’s retirement in the sense that I’m emeritus status there, and I may come back and teach a class periodically, but it’s no longer my work to do. It’s bittersweet, but I’m a big proponent of allowing the next generation to lead and do great things and make mistakes, just like we did. There’s far too many faculty who stay way too long, and it’s blocking the ability of younger people to come in and lead.

LW: It’s worth noting that you’ve been teaching at the flagship school in the state that’s been at the epicenter of recent political pressure and change. What has that been like?

AL: That’s a great starting point for a conversation about these big topics of “Where are we headed in higher education?” — especially in states like Florida. The change is rapid. In that sense, we’re going through so many changes — forced changes. At the University of Florida, our nose is right out there. We’re going through a third presidential search attempt right now as we speak, and it’s very critical to many disciplines and to faculty. It’s existential. 

I went to the College of Charleston, which is a city that cannot hide its history. And that’s the beauty of Charleston — it’s right out there, right? I left college fully believing in the liberal arts education and what that truly means, opening your mind to many different ideas, and sifting through the core values that you had from your family and your faith tradition — to be more accepting and to understand inclusion was not a bad word. 

LW: What were your pre-U.F. days like? What drew you to academia?

AL: I worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Ann Arbor as a chemical engineer from 1986 to 1989, followed by working as a project engineer at General Motors Corp. in Warren, Michigan from 1989 to 1991. I had an “epiphany” moment in my car on a commute home from G.M. one day: I wanted to teach and mentor undergraduate students. I was seeking a purpose higher than making profit for my company. That is when I nurtured the resolve to visit the University of Michigan’s campus to meet with two environmental engineering faculty members, who ultimately admitted me into the Ph.D. program. Ironically, given the tensions that are swirling in the U.S. Department of Education today, I was admitted to the University of Michigan with a scholarship from the D.O.E. for women pursuing doctorates in engineering. I suspect this scholarship would not be allowed today.

LW: How did you get to the University of Florida?

AL: I’ve been at the University of Florida since 1998. I chose U.F. as my career home because the faculty in the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences, especially the chair, Dr. Joe Delfino, exhibited a strong care for their undergraduate students. I was convinced this was the best place for me to pursue my solidified purpose in undergraduate and graduate education. The moment I decided to accept U.F.’s offer was when I received a packet from Joe that included a hand-written note affixed to a sheet of paper saying, “We covered this in our faculty meeting today.” The sheet of paper had text that reminded the faculty that the student is the reason why they were at U.F. I have cherished that original piece of paper throughout my career at U.F., and it followed me into my associate dean role in the U.F. college of engineering and onto my role in the U.F. provost’s office. 

LW: What first put the LearningWell Coalition on your radar?

AL: There are seminal moments in in one’s life that they remember exactly where they were when something happened. This was one of them for me, actually. I was in my garage at home on the exercise bike back in early June 2023, listening to [former editor of Inside Higher Ed] Doug Lederman on his podcast interviewing this Rick Miller [president emeritus of Olin College]. I knew about Olin because I come out of engineering, but I was fascinated by what Rick was saying about the work of the Coalition and the core values of higher education. I immediately went into the Coalition’s website and found out how to contact them through an online form. University of Florida has a project called U.F. Quest, and it aligns so beautifully with the language that was shared in this podcast. And I’m still on the bike, and I’m writing, “How can I talk to you about becoming a member?”

Within hours I get an email response, and that week, we were on Zoom together, Rick and the executive director Keith Buffinton and I. And I just sort of laid out the whole situation we were in at the time with U.F. Quest and with our general education in the state of Florida. I left that call with a deep, profound sense of calmness that we have advocates outside of the state of Florida that will help us to tell the narrative of U.F. Quest and the transformational impacts. They get it. 

From there, it’s been just an incredible, tremendous relationship between the University of Florida and the Coalition. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having that external validation of what we were doing. Which is why I think expanding the membership of the Coalition is so critical. 

LW: Is that one of the key priorities as you step in as E.D.?

AL: It’s one of them. And also, how do we recognize and measure the goodness of the initiatives that are going on in the member institutions? I’m excited to see the numbers double and see its role expand, not just next year, but 10 to 15 years from now, because I think it’s going to take us that long for higher education to really be able to ask the right questions — to take a good internal look at ourselves, at why higher education has lost public trust and what we should be doing to prepare the whole student for the evolving world.

LW: Let’s talk about that issue of public trust. This is a critical time in higher ed and redefining people’s expectations of it. What role can the Coalition play during this realignment?

AL: That’s a good question. A critical element of the work of the Coalition is to keep asking questions. Higher education is out of equilibrium right now and for many different reasons. Being out of equilibrium is a journey of going from order, to disorder, and reorder. Higher ed is on that path now, and the Coalition, I believe, provides this other place to discuss what we all agree is the mission of higher ed, or should be. For us, it is keeping the personal and professional development of students at the center of all we do. 

“I think with A.I. upon us, my hopeful side — which comes out most days — believes that all of this is going to force us to ask some fundamental questions: What is the purpose of higher ed? What does it mean to be an educated human?”

I think with A.I. upon us, my hopeful side — which comes out most days — believes that all of this is going to force us to ask some fundamental questions: What is the purpose of higher ed? What does it mean to be an educated human? How do we have that conversation, and agree? I believe that’s what higher ed is for — to form and shape and at least point students in a direction of being able to impact humanity and the world in positive ways. It goes back to core values. What’s our unifying principle? I do think we’re being asked that question, and I think the Coalition is going to play a major role in helping support institutions towards that goal. 

So yes, we’re in the disorder now. I can’t tell you how long it’ll last. I am confident that when we’re back in the reorder, whatever it looks like, we’re going to look back and be grateful for the disorder because there would be no other way that we would have gotten to the next place. 

LW: When we talked earlier, you mentioned the Gallup-Purdue Big Six, which correlates to lifelong wellbeing and career success. How can we continue to prioritize those pillars, like mentorship and belonging, when so much of the conversation has shifted to tangible R.O.I.? 

AL: No question some institutions of higher ed do it better than others. I come out of one of the largest public institutions in the country, which creates an environment with the biggest opportunity for nurturing the Gallup Big Six experiences. First, do they align at all, R.O.I. and the Gallup Big Six? The Big Six is implying that if you offer these experiences to undergraduate students, it means that they matter in the mission of your university. Why? Because it means that faculty’s time spent on the formation of students, with students, is valued. Pure and simple, you cannot replace any faculty member with a machine or A.I. If you were going to fulfill the Gallup Big Six, a student must know a faculty member cares about me as a person, right? That’s what’s implied with the Gallup Big Six. Taking that further, one would assume that if that is of value to the institution, then the faculty — and tenure and promotion — are evaluated based on the amount of meaningful time they spend with the students. 

The other side of this is that we would have to assume — and it’s not a correct assumption, as we’re learning in the Coalition’s faculty learning communities — that faculty know how to do these things. Many of the faculty were students who did not have access to these principles in practice. We’ve just had two years of faculty learning communities, and I would say over half of the faculty that participated said they joined so they could learn how to connect with their students — how to keep the student at the center of their teaching. That shocked me. I just thought we were, you know, picking the low hanging fruit here. So we need to coach faculty on how to do these things.

What R.O.I. implies is that money leads. That’s what’s driving everything, right? And it’s corporatizing the institution. There is great value in making sure that that the institution uses the tuition dollars and state dollars and philanthropy dollars in a responsible way. But not without leadership that guides the community in shared values, hopefully including the value of spending time with our students — which by the way, short of time for the faculty, costs nothing, right?

We need to ask the same questions that we force our students to ask themselves. Why are we here? What’s our purpose? The answers to these big questions translate into where the money flows and how we evaluate our performance. That can translate to large class sizes where students’ hearts are not engaging because you’re swimming in this water of R.O.I. and you’re being rewarded for efficiency. But I also say, from a very hopeful side, that these aren’t polar opposites here — that if you look at it from like a long game perspective, R.O.I. is very much connected to having students who come out courageous and well-spoken with communication skills, with great ideas to go up and take leadership positions. 

LW: What is the wellness environment the Coalition is looking at right now? Are there ways the Coalition could shift the conversation about wellbeing? Does it need to be shifted? 

AL: One of the more promising happenings in higher ed is that we’re seeing the language of wellbeing used much more frequently and at the drop of a hat. At the individual level, at the program level, at the institution level and national level. I am concerned that if we just run so fast with the wellbeing terminology, we don’t have a shared sense of what it means. But I’m so excited that the Coalition is trying to lasso that — to have some pillars that define wellbeing and how we measure it, assess it. I see this as incredibly positive. Our students recognize this, and what is so remarkable about these students is they are determined that their career is not going to take over their life. We never thought about those things in my generation, but they’re dogged about it, and fearless. 

LW: Tell me more about that. What are they fearless about?

AL: They are standing up for their life balance even while they’re speaking to their future employers. Here’s one example: At the University of Florida, we brought in guest speakers who were current C.E.O.s or former presidents, and students would raise their hand and ask, “Working in a national lab, tell me about what you did to promote life balance outside of work. What did you do to promote families?” One guest lecturer was the former C.E.O. of a major defense company and very traditional, and she just point blank looked at him and said, “There is no balance. If you love your work, there’s no balance.”

You should have seen the student essays writing reflections on what they heard. They excoriated that. They all wanted photos with her, but the essays were just like, “No, we’re not buying this.” The students are pressing towards a life with wellbeing, and they use terms like balance — in engineering even! Even the guys were saying, “I want to have children.” So we cannot deny this. Students lead the way, whether we admit it or not. It’ll be a very interesting clash of cultures, I think, but I find it hopeful because their force is going to be much more powerful in the end. It’s the the sum of the parts, not just a takeover.

I’m a mosaic artist, and every part has meaning in mosaic art. If you leave one out, you know it’s not there. In higher education, there is no one part that feels entirely responsible for the outcome of the student. We need to have a unifying leadership to say, “Your part is here; your part is here.” If it’s successful, we see students coming out as full, whole persons who felt like they belonged in college. That’s kind of what I’m mulling on: how to create this mosaic where every part matters and contributes.

LW: I love that metaphor. And a mosaic artist! Tell us more about yourself. What do you like to do in your free time?

AL: Well, my husband and I rescue greyhounds. Since 2000, we’ve adopted 10 former racing greyhounds, and we now have two, and they’re from Ireland. So, we’re dog people. 

I used to be a marathon runner, an ultra-marathon runner, and I still like to run, but I’m much more reasonable now, and diversified. I do a lot of gardening. And every day my hands get dirty. It’s a good balance.

I’m originally from South Carolina and still consider it my home. I’ve been in the South most of my life. I understand the South very well. Growing up in a very segregated state, I have been through many of the events that I worry are being hidden or veiled in our teaching. My hometown is Orangeburg, South Carolina, and, in 1968, I was a kid at the time of the Orangeburg Massacre on the campus of South Carolina State College [now University]. Going through a tragedy like the Massacre in such a small town becomes part of your identity, and depending on how parents were at the time, you came out of it with one perspective or another. Thank God my parents were very good at being open and transparent about what was happening at the time. 

My mom, who completed high school, grew up very poor on a farm, where her parents, with only a middle school education, were South Carolina tobacco sharecroppers. And so these are the salt of the earth kind of people. My dad went to college because of the G.I. Bill after World War II. In my childhood home, education was something that you don’t waste, and that shaped my whole way of thinking — that college was a privilege and you didn’t waste it.

I still feel this way. Education is a privilege, and this is all the more reason not only that students should not waste the opportunity but also that our institutions of higher education must deliver on their commitment to their students.

The Steve Fund is a non-profit organization that promotes the mental health and emotional wellbeing of young people, particularly those from underserved and under-resourced communities. Since its seminal report in 2016, identifying and addressing the unique mental health issues of this student population, the Steve Fund has been helping colleges, universities, and high schools strengthen cultures of belonging and build systems of care that support all students. Their Excellence in Mental Health on Campus framework has been utilized at 66 colleges and universities in 23 states, reaching over 1.1 million students. 

Part of the Steve Fund’s contribution to the field of college student mental health comes from the participation of a national network of Mental Health Experts, one of whom is Dr. Rae Lundy, the chief psychologist and director of counseling at Georgia State University. In this first article in a new content partnership series with the Steve Fund, LearningWell interviews Dr. Lundy about how her growth as a clinician aligns with the changing needs of her Black and Brown students. From her lived experience to her expansive body of work, Dr. Lundy explains why a culturally responsible framework for mental health and wellbeing is critical to helping all students flourish.  

LW: Tell us about your professional journey and how that tracks with the changing needs of students, particularly those from underserved and under-resourced communities? 

RL: I am currently at Georgia State University in Atlanta. We have about 54,000 students on six campuses. I’ve been in the role of chief psychologist and director of counseling for three years, managing psychiatry and what’s called student victim assistance. For me, and for many of my colleagues, this is a calling. I love college students. They’re in that developmental space where their identities are emerging, and they are kind of crystallizing who they are. 

I completed my training at the University of Notre Dame, where I studied identity and race, looking at how one’s racial identity serves as a buffer against discrimination. That was part of my lived experience, and I took that knowledge into my work. My first role was actually at a counseling center at a large P.W.I. (predominantly white institution), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As the only Black psychologist in the counseling center, all Black and Brown students were referred to me, and it was apparent that what I had studied in school, I was seeing in real time in terms of the concerns students were experiencing. On top of anxiety and depression, they were also experiencing issues of belonging and how the intersectionality of their identities impacted their academic functioning. It was a great training ground for this work, so after staying there several years, I went to North Carolina Central University, which was the start of a long stretch of me working at H.B.C.U.s (historically Black colleges and universities).

At North Carolina Central University, I found, like many of my fellow administrators at H.B.C.U.s, that I was carrying like five roles. My students were experiencing distress related to a number of different concerns, including financial concerns. Many of them were first-generation college students,and I felt this overwhelming need to be everything and all things to them. I was working in the counseling center, doing confidential work, but I was also doing a lot of outreach, meeting students where they were. I was an advisor for a student group. And in doing all of those things, it felt like there was this need to support mental health in a way that the institutions at the time didn’t understand. It was about stigma, which is looked at very differently today. 

The main thing we were doing is to try to get folks to have conversations about mental health. I was doing confidential one-on-one individual counseling, but really what I discovered was that expressive therapies and unique ways of reaching students were a better way of getting them to process and be open to having deeper conversations about how they were feeling. I had some tremendous success with that. We had an increase of students coming to the center. We did what we called interpersonal process groups: So maybe they didn’t want to talk about a specific thing, but they knew they needed and wanted to be around someone like my colleagues and me. 

It got me thinking about this idea I now lean into called C.R.I. — compassion, reflection, and intention. I began to share with folks that it’s okay to acknowledge and be compassionate towards yourself. We’re all compassionate towards our friends. Why would you not give yourself the same attention? This idea of C.R.I. was a way for me to have mental health in all spaces. Oftentimes, in the mental health field, we are going to our therapist location, or now we’re meeting virtually. For many college students, we need to bring down this barrier around the conversation, which is what I was really passionate and excited about. 

LW: Why was this engagement work particularly important for students, particularly those from underserved and under-resourced communities?  

RL: There is research to support that help-seeking behaviors of students, particularly those from underserved and under-resourced communities, are often psychologically and negatively reinforced. There is a sense that one might be punished for asking for help — or that it is a sign of weakness. For Black and Brown communities, asking for help can reinforce the idea that you’re not as smart as others. Did you really get here on your own? One might see why it would be more challenging to ask for support.

“For those from underserved and under-resourced communities, there is a sense that one might be punished for asking for help — or that it is a sign of weakness.”

Or if you think about it, if a student is a first-generation college student, if most in their family havenever had this experience before, who do they ask for help from? That’s true of all support in college. If you’re a first-generation college student and you’re asking about what you need to do to register for classes or find additional funding, but your parents and your grandparents have never done that, that becomes a barrier and a burden that they might internalize as something they have to handle on their own, while not really knowing what resources to turn to. That is why organizations like the Steve Fund are actively seeking to present themselves as resources for these students. 

When you talk about belonging and identity, so much of that is connected to performance, self-care, and wellness, but in some communities, you haven’t been given permission to take care of yourself because your identity is wrapped up in how much you’re doing for others. What emotional wellbeingand mental health ask of us is to be introspective, to connect, and to see what is going on internally within ourselves. Many times, Black and Brown students either haven’t been given that space, or we haven’t held space for them to do that. Another issue is exceptionalism, this idea that you’re articulate — for a Black or Brown person — or you’re smart — for a Black or Brown person. And that’s a lot to carry. 

Some of the most prevalent challenges you see are around anxiety. And that’s true of college students in general. But anxiety and depression manifest differently for Black and Brown students. Oftentimes, it presents as an irritable mood or what could be misinterpreted as the angry Black or Brown person. My recommendation has been for folks to ensure that we are being culturally responsive and informed as we are doing this work so that we have a good sense of: How does this particular mental health outcome manifest or look differently in varying settings? And then if we think about the concept of privilege, who gets to have emotional responses? Who gets to be expressive?  And if we think about your earlier question, you asked whether it’s okay for me to ask for help; if it’s not, then it’s probably not okay for me to appear sad. It’s probably not okay for me to appear uncomfortable.

LW: I can imagine that all of this experience was useful when you actually created a college counseling center from scratch, correct? 

RL: Yes. I was approached by the president of a smaller H.B.C.U. — Wiley College at the time, now Wiley University — in Marshall, Texas. They didn’t have a counseling center or any substantive mental health services for their students. After visiting the institution, I fell in love with the campus, with the students, and I thought, “No student should go without mental health support.” I soon discovered that Wiley was not unique. It was like many smaller institutions that just didn’t have funding. In years past, institutions may have thought they had the option of not investing in mental health. This was before universities realized that mental health is directly connected to retention. For smaller schools, retention is directly related to keeping the doors open.   

Once the link between retention and mental health was established, we were able to have open conversations around mental health, acknowledging that it’s not an afterthought or a second, third, or fourth priority when you’re thinking about academic success. If a student is not emotionally well, they can’t show up and be present in class. With that in mind, I was able to advocate for the students. I was initially a counseling center of one, and then we grew to be a fully functioning center. When I left, we had three additional staff, a training program, and a broad range of services.  

I eventually brought the knowledge gained from Wiley with me to Georgia State. I moved here for personal reasons, to become a caregiver to my elderly father. It was so interesting to end up here,which is his alma mater. 

LW: What have you found to be some of the most effective strategies to deal with the unique mental health challenges of Black and Brown students? 

NL: I believe leaning into forms of therapy and support outside of one-to-one individual counseling is particularly effective — things like group counseling, outreach experiences, ambassadorships, and opportunities for connection in what we call third spaces. We are creating other spaces outside of the classroom, outside of one’s home, that become brave and safe spaces for people to simply be and discover themselves. 

Group counseling demystifies, or challenges, the idea that I’m alone in experiencing things. Also, Black and Brown students have historically come from what we would consider collectivist cultures; these are backgrounds where you might have two or three generations living in a home. And so this idea around mental health is not just one-to-one individual counseling but also group counseling, some of which reinforces what has felt safe and healing and connecting for them in spaces that were safe,healing, and connecting before they got to college or university.

“I believe leaning into forms of therapy and support outside of one-to-one individual counseling is particularly effective.”

And then we think of expressive therapies. Movement is a beautiful way to release emotions and connect to oneself. In expressive spaces, the emphasis is not just on what clients are verbally saying but also how they are emoting. We look at somatic interventions, which really connect to the body, which again connect back to this idea of cultures where many Black and Brown communities use movement as a way to express themselves. 

I think a lot about meeting students and clients where they are. They may not be ready for traditional forms of treatment, but they are often on TikTok. Some of that information isn’t always accurate, but what if we have licensed, competent individuals who share it and can provide meaningful content onwellness strategies and wellbeing interventions? When this happens, students have agency to take in information in ways that are digestible for them. It’s true we have standardized, evidence-based treatments and a certain language within the mental health field, but by not engaging on platforms like TikTok, we miss a subset of the population in need of care, and often that population includes our Black and Brown students.

LW: That brings me to my next question. You are about to launch a new passion project, which is an app developed specifically for individuals of color. What is that all about?  

It’s called Amelia Sage, a wellbeing app for women of color. Amelia Sage combines artificial intelligence with the oversight of licensed clinicians. There will be wellness plans and daily interactions for participants to experience. And the app’s goal is to promote flourishing. I’ve been in the weeds recently, defining what it means to be well and recognizing that wellness is not without itschallenges. The work is grounded heavily in the dimensions of wellness. We look at social, intellectual, financial, and all areas of wellbeing; and within that framework, we promote whole wellbeing. We are currently finalizing details for a 14-day mental health wellness plan, and a primary goal is to share it with college students.  

All of this connects back to what the Steve Fund does by putting information and resources readily available at students’ fingertips. For good, bad, right, wrong, or indifferent — everything is at their fingertips. And so we want to make sure that what they are engaging with and really internalizing is information that’s going to help them be well and flourish.

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

In September 2025, Suzy Welch made waves with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that asks a question many, it seems, were already asking themselves: “Is Gen Z Unemployable?“

Welch is an author and professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, and widely known as the founder and C.E.O. of Becoming You Labs, a think tank and product design studio that helps disseminate Becoming You to schools and organizations around the world. Becoming You is a methodology — as well as an NYU class, a workshop series, and a best-selling book — she designed to help people land on their best-suited career path. The underlying premise of the methodology is that our purpose pathways lie at the intersection of our values, cognitive and emotional aptitudes, and economically viable interests. For the values-discovery piece, Welch invented the Values Bridge, a scientifically validated assessment that ranks individuals’ values from one to 16 and measures how fully they are living each one, or not.

Aggregate data from the Values Bridge unearthed the concern that led to Welch’s Journal article. In it, she describes discovering that the most-held values among Gen Z are: eudemonia (often referred to as self-care), voice (the expression of individuality), and non sibi (helping others). But when she surveyed a group of hiring managers about the value they most want in their employees, the answers instead prized: achievement (drive for success), workcentrism (desire for work to shape life), and scope (desire to learn and for adventure). Only 2 percent of Gen Zers — 154 out of more than 7,500 — identified the three values deemed most desirable by employers in their top five.

This priorities gap between employers and young staff gave evidence, and voice, to a common feeling among business leaders that Gen Z just didn’t seem to work all that hard. On the other hand, many praised the rising generation’s apparent sensibilities towards work-life balance and wondered aloud whether there was ever a time in which the older didn’t criticize the ways of the younger. 

In this candid interview with Welch, we zoom out to explore what motivated her work on values and how to interpret the data that continues to drive a national conversation. 

For more complete definitions of the 16 values, please see the Values Bridge index. Values discussed in this interview include the aforementioned eudemonia, voice, non sibi, achievement, workcentrism, and scope — as well as affluence (wealth), familycentrism (desire for family to shape life), and belovedness (romantic love).

LW: What inspired you to start the Values Bridge? I’m guessing it was an extension of Becoming You?

SW: Well, Becoming You is a methodology that helps students answer the question, “What should I do with my life?” It’s a 22-part methodology, and it excavates three data sets: your values, your cognitive and emotional aptitudes, and your economically viable interests. I used some of the very established psychometric instruments to help students identify their values. And while some of this work is incredibly renowned, I felt frustrated that it didn’t do exactly what I wanted. 

At the time, I was developing a new values inventory. I did this as part of my Ph.D. work. And then I set about working with psychometricians and behavioral scientists to create the Values Bridge. It was lucky I didn’t know what I didn’t know because that took about a year and a half of the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life — but worth it. I introduced it in beta to my students at NYU and immediately realized that it could so broaden and deepen their understanding of values. So we pushed forward with the tool and finished it, and then were able to release it to the general public. And then of course, it immediately started getting adopted by a lot of schools and other institutions because of its efficacy and because of the conversations that it started and because of the understanding that it opened up. 

LW: Got it. So what would you say is the big difference between what you created and what existed in terms of value assessments?  

SW: The most frustrating thing about the other values assessments is that they don’t allow people to have conflicting values: If you have values that are conflicting, one cancels out the other. And that’s just not how life is. People walk around with conflicting values. They value affluence, and they value self-care. They value achievement, and they value familycentrism. And so the Values Bridge captures and reflects back to you these conflicts and allows you to then say, “Okay, well, how am I going to resolve them?” It doesn’t negate the reality of a personal experience. So I think it’s just a very subtle instrument because it’s the newest, and I had the benefit of all the great work that’s been done in the field of values over the past 150 years to help me create a new tool.

LW: And without asking you to go through your entire Ph.D., what is so important, especially for young people, about understanding or knowing what your values are? 

SW: I think that it’s every single human being; it has no age bracket to it. We all do better by understanding our values because our values are our whys. They are why we do things. And so I think the more we understand why we do things or why we want to do things, the better we operate in the world — the more compassionate self-awareness we can have, but also the more compassionate self-awareness we can have of others. I mean, the name of the tool is the Values Bridge. The idea of it is to build bridges so that people can talk to each other about their values. We have to stop judging each other. The Values Bridge is completely agnostic. It’s like, if you’re not hurting anybody, your values are your values to live. 

But also, to be quite practical about it, you need to know your values so you can figure out what to do with your life. The premise of the Becoming You methodology is that the most aligned career is one that’s at the intersection of your values, your aptitudes, and your interests. So I have a singular purpose with this process, which is to get you to the right job. And you need to know your values because to work in a field or to have a job that doesn’t align with your values is actually quite a painful thing. It’s kind of a dull ache. And anybody who’s done it can tell you, “Yeah, it hurt.” I don’t want anybody to be in that kind of job. That’s what it’s all about.

“You need to know your values because to work in a field or to have a job that doesn’t align with your values is actually quite a painful thing. It’s kind of a dull ache.”

LW: The op-ed you wrote on the top values of Gen Z was definitely a conversation-starter. Do you often get put on the spot to explain Gen Z and why they are the way they are?

SW: I do. And I say it’s not my area. I’m always asked, “Oh, can you please explain why Gen Z has eudemonia as their number one value?” And I say, “I have no idea.” My hypothesis is just like yours: They went through the pandemic. They found out that anything could fall out the bottom at any time. They decided they didn’t want to postpone joy. They decided they didn’t like the bargain their parents had that you waited to have joy. And they said, “We vote no.” That’s my theory. It’s a hypothesis, but I am not saying this in any way as an authority. My area of focus is not values formation; it’s values expression. I don’t try to figure out why you are the way you are. I take you as you are and say, “Given that, what should you do with your life?”

LW: One of the both really interesting and also challenging pieces about the top three values for Gen Z, I could see, is that they have voice and eudemonia — and then they also have non sibi, or wanting to help people.

SW: And those are not in conflict.

LW: They’re not?

SW: They’re not in conflict. The problem is when number four is affluence, as it typically is. Taking care of yourself, having a lot of individuality, and helping other people — on a one-to-one basis — are completely doable all in the same hour, with no conflict whatsoever. It’s then, again, when you get affluence and achievement up there in the top five, too. Even if achievement keeps coming up with Gen Z — which it appears to be in early, early, early data — it’s going to bump into eudemonia. It may be rising, but it’s still going to hit a ceiling when it hits eudemonia because really there’s a big conflict between achievement and self-care.

LW: Remind me, do other generations, older generations, share eudemonia and voice, or are those very specific to Gen Z?

SW: It’s not very specific to Gen Z, but it’s absolutely age correlated. The older you get, the lower eudemonia goes. By the time you get to my generation, eudemonia is peripheral — in the bottom five. You can almost draw a line; every generation, eudemonia goes slightly down. Same thing with voice. Non sibi is a generally strong American value. It’s very high across all generations. 

LW: With the Gen Z findings, did you find people’s reactions leaned more toward “Why is Gen Z like this? How do we fix them?” versus “They’re telling us something; let’s find out what it is”? 

SW: When I talk to business leaders, which I do a lot as a board member and a person who is in the corporate world, they are not surprised by the data findings. They say, “This is what we’re experiencing.” And then, depending on the hiring power of the company, they have different reactions. 

If they’re Goldman Sachs or if they’re Meta, they say, “This is not our problem because we get this 2 percent [of Gen Z with achievement, workcentrism, and scope in their top five values]. Those are our people. They want to work for us, and it’s easy for us to find them.” Some companies have less hiring power. They don’t have as good brands. They’ve had financial troubles. They want the 2 percent, but they can’t get them, and they express frustration. Then there are other companies that have no hiring power, and they are like, “Well, this is just a problem that individual managers are going to have to handle on a one-by-one basis.”

Gen Z’s reaction to the data was varied. There were some Gen Z people who said things like, “Why would I want the values of the older generations? Why would I want the values of hiring managers? I don’t like their lives. I don’t like what they’ve done to the world.” But some Gen Zers see the results, and they see themselves, and they think, “Oh God, this is tough because I do have affluence at number four or I do have achievement at number five. What am I going to do about this?” And that’s a real conversation. 

I don’t believe people should try to repress their values. I think that’s very painful. I don’t think that people should not be who they are. At the same time, sometimes when I have students who are really conflicted, I say, “Is there a possibility you look at your life as seasons, where maybe you are going to be in a season where values that are not your top values are going to be more expressed?” But look, I can’t tell them what to do. The only ones who I could really give strong advice to were my own four children, but even with them, it was a dialogue. 

LW: There’s something that feels sort of aspirational about values. So, if my values are X, Y, and Z, does that mean that I actually fulfill those in the way that I act?

SW: Actually, this is a point I should have made earlier — thank you for jogging my brain on it — which is that one of the things that I really wanted to do is test what your values are and how much you’re living them. That is one of the most important pieces of data the Values Bridge gives you. We give you your authenticity gap score.

Here’s an example: Scope is the value of how much action you want, how much activity, how much learning, how much growth, how much travel, how much adventure. What we see all the time is that women in their 30s and 40s who have high scope have a huge authenticity gap. It can be 90 percent. And what’s the reason? Typically, these are your childbearing years, and when you are raising little children, you just don’t get to have a lot of action and activity and travel and adventure and learning. You’re not able to express your scope. You’re going to do it later, and you know that. Sometimes the kids go away, and your authenticity gap closes. 

So for all of the people who take the Values Bridge, you do get those gaps. A lot of times my students will get back their results, and they’ll see that eudemonia is their top value, and they’ll see a gigantic authenticity gap. And then they’ll see achievement is down at number eight, and it has no authenticity gap because they’re fully expressing it. In fact, sometimes they have a negative authenticity gap because they’re overexpressing it. So one of the things I like about the tool is that it’s like a report card. It’s almost like a doctor’s report on how much you’re living each value. And a lot of times my students are not as shocked about their rank-order values as they are about their authenticity gaps. Because they look at it, and they go, “Oh no, this is absolutely a self-portrait. This is exactly where I’m feeling pain.”

“One of the things I like about the tool is that it’s like a report card. It’s almost like a doctor’s report on how much you’re living each value.”

LW: You have an idea of what your values might be, but once you’re faced with the fact that you’re not fulfilling them, that could be very distressing.

SW: Yes, it can be distressing, and then illuminating. They want to know how to fix it. I can’t tell you the number of times — this happens to me every single class — the kids get their results back, and then at the break, there’s a stampede of young women down the stairs because what they’re all getting is voice as a top value and an authenticity gap of 60-plus percent. And they’re like, “I am clearly not using my voice.” I’ve seen students literally in tears saying, “This is putting words and numbers to my daily experience.” It’s very poignant. And my female students say to me, “Can you please teach a class on how I can have no authenticity gap with my voice?” And I say, “I wish I could.” Right now, I’m teaching as many classes as you can humanly teach. But we’re trying to create curricular materials so that we can walk them through that process.

LW: Bridging authenticity gaps almost feels like a class that is life in some ways.

SW: Yeah, it is. I often say, “Welcome to life.” I say it all the time when they talk to me about their gaps and their disconnects. There’s this function where you can check a box and your values come up next to your partners — because many of my students are married, because I teach MBAs. And then they do it, and their partner takes it, and they see where their gaps are. And they say, “Well, I have belovedness at number one, and my partner’s belovedness is at number 16.” And I say, “Welcome to life.” This is the work of our life.

LW: So from the hiring perspective, is it possible that a hiring manager who thinks they most want achievement and workcentrism actually has a favorite employee whose top values are eudemonia and voice? But maybe with an authenticity gap? I wonder if those kinds of things have come up for you.

SW: They come up all the time because we work with so many companies. It’s very, very interesting to see how the Values Bridge is being used in organizations. And look, some of it’s kind of out of our control. Companies take it, and they use it as they want. Some companies use it as a team building exercise. People can just learn about each other’s values so that they can have more compassionate awareness of each other and more words to speak to each other. 

But definitely, we see, all the time, organizations using it to hire. Many times, people who are coming to my company take it, and I see their values as part of the interview process. But for me, it’s always just a conversation. I would never say, “Oh, I’m not taking somebody because their top value is X.” 

LW: Do you think that what different hiring managers look for might vary depending on the industry that they’re in?

SW: I don’t think so. Not with values. Maybe between nonprofit and for-profit. But in any for-profit environment, hiring managers generally want people who want to win and work hard.

LW: What do you think this all means for the future of work? It sounds like at top companies, they’re going to hire who they’re going to hire. For the rest of Gen Z and for the rest of the companies, how might things change? Will Gen Z not be hired? 

SW: Oh, I don’t know. Look, regardless of their values, Gen Z’s having a very hard time being hired right now. I was just at the Wall Street Journal the other day going over the data with them. This is a tough job market. And values may be playing a role in it, but there’s a decrease in entry-level jobs, and there’s an increase in the amount of experience that is being expected for entry-level jobs. This is not about values. And how this plays out, I don’t know. 

I think we’re in a great moment of holding our breaths because if you have 10 economists in the room, five think that A.I. is going to actually start creating many more jobs and this great flourishing; and the other five are going to say we’re going to be working three days a week and most people will not be employed and we’re going to have to go to universal income. There’s no accepted narrative about what’s about to happen. The jury’s out.

LW: And for people working in colleges, do you find that this values work is impacting their job? Or how do you guide them in terms of what students today need to be prepared for?

SW: We’re just so amazed by the interest in the Values Bridge at the college level. Every kid entering Wharton is taking the Values Bridge. This is a new thing. It’s beautiful. And there are many other schools — 170 schools or something like that — right now using the Values Bridge with undergraduates to create a common language, to build bridges. 

Look, career offices are trying to get kids into jobs that make sense, and the Values Bridge is another tool for them. More than ever, given the price of college, parents are saying, “My kid’s got to have a job coming out.” So I think any tool that can help kids figure out what their job paths should be and help kids get employed coming out of college is going to get a good hard look by colleges. And I think, more than just the Values Bridge, colleges are interested in the entire Becoming You methodology because values are not enough. If you just get a job based on your values, but you don’t have the aptitudes or the interests, it’s not as sustainable. 

LW: Right. Well, I like the idea, too, of creating this language for students. So if they’re all coming in and taking this test, they can then have conversations about it outside of class. It might just come up, and it contributes to their knowing better what they want and what they don’t want. 

SW: I know. And what you seek when you are in any kind of community, like a college community, is a common language — a shared language that increases compassion instead of polarization. I love it when I see my students using language to talk to each other, and it’s just fun. It excites me because it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing.

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